WALK OUTSIDE FOR THIRTY MINUTES EVERY DAY. LIFE-RELATED EXERCISE PROVIDES THE MOST BENEFIT FOR LASTING HEALTH
I want to encourage you to make your daily life as active as you can by incorporating what I call universal exercise. Universal exercise means life-related exercise—activities directly connected to life. These are the activities that provide the most benefit and balance for all of us.
When do you think people were generally healthier—in the past when they led physically active daily lives, or today when they are so exercise-conscious? I always ask this question in seminars and the audience almost always responds: “In the past.”
Healthy people rarely think about exercise. Their lives are so active that there’s no need. They play; they enjoy and challenge themselves; they may garden, do home repairs, dance, or engage in sports. In other words, they are active but they are not formally exercising. We’ve been educated to think we need structured exercise. We don’t. What we need is to move our bodies, to play, to enjoy ourselves physically, to challenge and stimulate ourselves. Structured exercise has a kind of hardness and rigidity about it; play has a soft and flexible quality.
Here’s an analogy I like. Who is healthier—the person who eats a healthful diet or the person who eats an inadequate diet and takes supplements? My point is that since healthy people are clearly getting all the nourishment they need from their diet, the idea of taking supplements never occurs to them.
Let’s apply this observation to exercise. Structured exercise is nothing more than a supplement for those people who have inadequate daily activity. In order to feel well, those who lead sedentary lives have to compensate with some kind of regular program of exercise.
Exercise versus Play
Healthy children never think about exercise until they go to school where they are taught that they need to exercise. Before that they simply played and were healthy and happy. Children lose their energy only when they’re told to do something they don’t want to do, such as cleaning their rooms. A child’s natural need to move is changing now because of poor diet. It’s not natural for children to want to sit around all day and watch television. My children enjoy television but they know it’s self-limiting. After a while they are always running off to do something else. Only on rare occasions do I have to say, “That’s enough TV.”
The best exercise for your health is the exercise that human beings were designed to do, exercise that doesn’t require machinery, gyms, or classes. Like the air we breathe, it’s free of charge. I refer to walking. Walking outside at a comfortable pace with an unforced stride is the best exercise on the planet.
Don’t worry about cardiovascular rates and, please, don’t engage in “power walking.” The value of walking comes from the rhythmic movement—not the pace. A somewhat brisk half-hour walk every day (or two fifteen-minute ones) will keep the body fit and the spirits high. Walking increases flexibility and improves digestion, energy, and cardiovascular health. It strengthens the bones and helps clear the mind and balance the nervous system. Walking is the ideal activity for everyone. It is the brown rice of physical activity, so to speak. It’s best not to think of walking as “exercise” per se. You can think of it as a way to get from point A to point B, if you like; you can think of it as a period of time to clear your mind and let your thoughts come. The more open your mind is when you walk, the more benefit you will receive. The people who get the least out of walking are the ones who are trying to accomplish something, such as getting their heart rate up or listening to music or a podcast on their phone. Why? When we have an agenda, the mind closes to other possibilities. Take children as your model. Children have the best activity; they play and enjoy themselves. They don’t think they’re exercising or getting healthy. As long as they’re playing and enjoying themselves, their minds are open.
If strenuous exercise were the panacea it is said to be, then professional athletes would be among the healthiest people in the world. Yet this is not the case. Many, perhaps even a majority, of them suffer from serious chronic injuries and other health problems. Many die young. Modern nutritional thinking says that large amounts of animal food are necessary for building stamina and keeping a competitive edge. As a result, the diet of athletes is usually high in meat, dairy products, and refined carbohydrates. Athletes are given to believe that their health will not suffer since participation in strenuous sports compensates for dietary excess. Now, you don’t have to be a genius to understand that if you eat excessively, your body will suffer the effects regardless of how much you exercise. It’s a matter of common sense.
Not too long ago, I saw the results of a research study on the immune system of professional athletes as compared to that of the average person. According to this study, the immune system of the professional athlete is weaker than that of the average person. Apparently, professional athletes are more likely to come down with colds than are those who don’t compete professionally. When the body is overworked, immunity is impaired. Pushing the body beyond its natural limits in any way is not a healthful thing to do.
“The sovereign invigorator of the body is exercise, and of all exercises walking is the best.”
—Thomas Jefferson
Walking and Balance
It’s not necessary to walk briskly for a full half-hour at one time. Two fifteen-minute walks are also effective. Keep in mind that the benefits of walking come from the balancing effect of rhythmic movement on the body. We derive the greatest benefits from walking when our arms are free to swing like a pendulum. The alternating movement of arms and legs has a balancing effect on the body as a whole, and on its functions as well. To be specific, this is what happens: both parts of the digestive system, the ascending and the descending colon, coordinate with each other; the left lung and the right lung do the same as well as the kidneys and adrenals. Both branches of the autonomic nervous system—that part of the overall nervous system that regulates breathing, digestion, and, in fact, all of the body’s automatic functions—are coordinated and brought into balance.
At the same time, walking helps balance the mind. When you feel anxious or worried, try taking a walk. After a short time, you will find yourself thinking more clearly and, in general, feeling better. If you are depressed, taking a walk will refresh your spirits. If you are overtired, a walk will renew your energy. If you have too much energy, a walk will settle you down.
The feet and legs have two roots, one is the heart and lungs and the other is the brain. Each step is activating and coordinating the two chambers of the heart and both lungs. At the same time walking activates and harmonizes the left and right hemispheres of the brain. The bottom of the feet especially correlate with the brain. The greatest benefit comes from walking barefoot on the grass or beach by the edge of the water.
“Today I have grown taller from walking with trees.”
—Karl Baker
Walk Outdoors
Walking outdoors is far more beneficial than walking indoors. We need to be outside for one simple but compelling reason. Nature has the best circulation. Anything we do outdoors helps our circulation more than anything done inside. A walk outside in pleasant surroundings, in the woods or in a park, for example, amid grass and trees, is ideal; but even a walk on a busy city street is better than walking inside on a treadmill or track. When you walk, the quality of the air you take in is important and, as a rule, outdoor air is less polluted than indoor air. One of the most important benefits of walking is exchanging your internal environment with the external. Walking outdoors harmonizes, cleans, refreshes, and renews you in every possible way—physically, energetically, emotionally, and mentally. With this in mind, try to keep your home or office well ventilated. Open your windows.
Do Healthy People Exercise?
Let’s consider an earlier statement of mine: healthy people rarely think about exercising. The fact is that the most valuable exercise occurs as we go about living our daily lives. When we walk, shop, clean, or do other things around the house, we are exercising without really thinking about it. And when we are active while doing what we enjoy—whether it’s dancing, tennis, martial arts, swimming, mountain climbing, or biking—we are exercising without having to force ourselves. It’s important to find activities that are satisfying, challenging, and stimulating. The thought should not be, “I have to do this, it’s good for me,” but rather, “I can’t wait to get out there and do this.” It’s simply common sense that if you engage in activities you enjoy, you will keep on doing them and never think of them as “exercise.” I want to be very clear about this. I am not saying don’t exercise. What I’m saying is this: make your life active. Do whatever stimulates and challenges you. If you think it’s “good” for you, don’t do it.
Again, take healthy children as a model. Observe them. See how they always try to challenge and stimulate themselves. When they’ve had enough of something, they move on to something else.
Many people find daily exercise combined with a healthful diet to be the easiest Strengthening Health recommendation to follow. Walking is an enjoyable way to keep physically fit. If you are not already in the habit of walking, you will be surprised by the deep sense of well-being that a daily walk gives.
“All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche
A Barometer
If our exercise is appropriate, our appetite for healthful food will be enhanced. Appropriate exercise helps us eat less and feel more satisfied. We can tell that our exercise is inappropriate if our craving for rich food and sweets increases, if we overeat but feel less satisfied.
Cleaning
In more traditional times, even as recently as fifty years ago, cleaning was valued in proportion to its benefits. Cleanliness, of both person and surroundings, was said to be next in importance to godliness. Like walking, the benefits of cleaning are universal—unless you have an attitude about it! We feel better physically and mentally when we clean. Cleaning clears the mind as it activates the body. It helps harmonize and balance our condition. Try it and you’ll see.
Obesity in Children
Obesity is a major problem in the United States. Approximately two out of three adults are overweight and more than one in six children are overweight or obese. “Morbidly obese” is the term used to define that degree of obesity that is considered life threatening. There are so many obese children that even the government has been forced to take notice. Obesity in children is the cause of the current epidemic of Childhood Onset Diabetes. Obesity starts with diet. Children who are fed too many high-fat foods and sweets are less inclined to run around and play because their young bodies are too busy trying to metabolize all the excess. These children are most comfortable slumped in front of a TV set or computer for hours at a time.
Many of my children’s friends are not from macrobiotic families, so at our birthday parties we usually serve ice cream and other sugared foods to make their friends feel comfortable. Of course, there are always plenty of macrobiotic goodies as well. Over the past decade, I’ve noticed that often these children hardly touch the cake and ice cream, although my children usually eat their fair share. My explanation of this seemingly odd behavior is that these children don’t find party foods to be anything special. These foods are special for my children because they don’t have them very often. For their friends, however, cake and ice cream are actually everyday foods. The result is an ever-increasing rate of obesity among children.
A healthful diet creates a natural craving for activity. It’s a kind of chain reaction. We need a good diet in order to be active. If we are active and if we are satisfied with our food, chances are we won’t find ourselves overeating.
War and Nutrition
If we use history as a guide, we can see the effects of the decline in nutrition and activity levels by analyzing the health of the soldiers who fought in various wars. Roman soldiers were hired mercenaries. They were paid in grain, primarily an ancient type of barley, and this grain was their principal source of nutrition. Fueled by a grain-based diet, Roman soldiers conquered almost half the world. Roman generals maintained a strict daily regimen that kept their legions fit for the task of conquering strong foes, sometimes armies far larger than their own. It was not unusual for a legion to march twenty-five to thirty miles a day, each man carrying full weaponry and daily food supplies on his back. The fall of the Roman Empire followed on the heels of widespread changes in eating habits and daily activity. The Roman legionnaires, by eating the foods of the lands they had conquered and occupied, grew lazy and gluttonous, often gorging themselves until they vomited. Banquets, at which huge amounts of food were consumed, became a daily feature of life. A downfall was inevitable.
Autopsies of young soldiers who died in action in the Korean War revealed badly clogged arteries and signs of advanced cardiovascular disease. The medical community was shocked. The question asked was whether the government’s policy of feeding soldiers a high-protein, high-meat diet had caused the disease. Autopsies of soldiers who died in the Vietnam War presented similar findings. In light of the evidence, it’s difficult to understand why the government took so long to change its food recommendations.
Key Points:
• Walk outside to get the maximum benefit. Walking outside aligns you with the natural environment. Contact with the earth, exposure to trees and grass and to the natural circulation of air are crucial to good health.
• Walking is not exercise. It is natural movement. It creates harmony between body and mind, improves circulation and digestion, and increases flexibility and bone strength.
• Walking outside renews you in every way—physically, energetically, emotionally, and mentally.
• Walk once a day for a minimum of thirty minutes or twice a day for fifteen minutes. A natural, comfortable stride is recommended.
• Imitate children and try to play rather than exercise.
• Life-related activities such as cleaning, gardening, dancing, etc., provide the most benefits.
GIVE YOURSELF A DAILY BODY RUB
Gently rub your entire body with a hot, damp cotton washcloth for ten to fifteen minutes every morning and/or night. Do the rub before or after your bath or shower. Do it separately from either at the sink or in a dedicated body rub basin. The body rub is the secret of the fountain of youth. In effect, it winds back the body’s biological clock. If you do a daily body rub, walk outside for thirty minutes, and chew your food thoroughly, day by day you will become younger in body and mind. Others will remark and ask what you have been doing!
The body rub is one of the world’s best beauty treatments. People come to me for counseling with a variety of skin problems—brown liver spots, white patches, blemishes, and skin that is loose, dry, or sagging. Often they blame these conditions on age, but I believe they have unhealthy skin because they don’t know how to care for themselves.
Within a few months, sometimes as little as a few weeks, these blemishes begin to disappear. Beautiful new and younger-looking skin comes shining through. Of course, your progress depends on what you eat and how well and faithfully you do the body rub. Everyone wants to look younger and healthier. Billions of dollars are spent every year on beauty creams, remedies, and treatments, most of which don’t work. The body rub is free and it does work.
New Skin in Twenty-Eight Days
The skin completely renews itself every twenty-eight days. In essence, your skin is no more than a month old at any given moment. Cells in the skin are continuously dying and replacing themselves. We can renew our skin in a healthy or unhealthy way. How the skin renews itself depends on what we have been eating over the previous days, weeks, and months. One of the benefits of eating well is that fresh blood is drawn continuously to the surface areas of the body, stimulating the skin. If we eat healthful foods and do the body rub, we can nourish our skin on a daily basis and, as a result, our skin will become younger-looking and more beautiful. Once past puberty, people of all ages can benefit from the body rub. Healthy skin is slightly shiny and moist. If your skin is healthy, your entire body perspires lightly and easily. Such skin is smooth, soft to the touch, and resilient. If you push or pull it, it bounces back energetically. Healthy skin looks fresh without the aid of creams and moisturizers, and is free of blemishes and pimples. The skin is an excellent barometer of overall health. I always use skin diagnosis in counseling. It tells me about the client’s diet, past health problems, and ability to maintain good health in the future.
Most of us take our skin for granted. We all want skin that looks young and healthy, yet few of us give a thought to the skin’s function. Skin is our largest organ, containing oil, sweat glands, blood vessels, nerve cells, and immune cells. It has innumerable functions. It protects us from the environment, helps to keep us warm and to cool us down, produces vitamin D, excretes toxins, and, most importantly, keeps us in one piece!
The Skin Is Our Largest Organ.
The skin is a large, hard-working organ, and one of its more significant jobs is to discharge toxins from our bodies.
However, certain foods clog our skin—fatty meat, dairy products, tropical fruit, sugar, eggs, chicken, baked flour products, etc. Clogged skin means that moisture and oil cannot pass through the pores. If we eat the above-mentioned foods on a daily basis, our skin becomes dry. Most people think that dry skin is caused by a lack of oil, so they turn to the common remedy for dry skin—moisturizer. Applying such a remedy will temporarily moisten the skin, but then what happens? Where does the moisturizer go? It is absorbed into the fat layer of the skin, further clogging it, especially if the moisturizer is petroleum-based, like mineral oil and such saturated-fat products as coconut or palm oil.
The skin’s tiny capillaries are connected to the body’s large main arteries and veins through a vast network of blood vessels of ever-increasing size. It stands to reason that if these capillaries become clogged, the functioning of the circulatory system will be adversely affected. If the skin becomes so clogged that it can no longer discharge oil or moisture, then the excess fat and fluid go back into circulation through the blood vessels, looking, so to speak, for another exit. Over time, circulation will become sluggish, often to the point of putting a strain on the heart.
To help understand this process dynamically, it’s useful to look at the mechanism of an event that occurs all too often in our daily lives—the traffic jam. A traffic jam on one road often clogs traffic on other nearby roads. It takes only one backed-up highway exit to slow the flow of traffic and overload the entire system. Most of us have experienced, to our discomfort, what happens on a late Sunday afternoon in the summer when several exits are blocked by traffic.
Nervous System, Immune System, and Meridians
There are peripheral nerve cells in the skin that govern sensitivity and sensory perception. Since the peripheral nerve cells also send messages to the central nervous system, they influence our emotions as well. In fact, the body’s entire system of nerves is affected by the condition of the skin. Imbalances in the skin affect how we respond to heat, cold, touch, pressure, and vibrations. Depending on the condition of our skin, we may become over- or under-sensitive to any of the above.
The skin also contains lymphocytes, cells that are an important part of the immune system. Lymphocytes protect against viruses, bacteria, and parasites. When the skin is clogged, its ability to provide immunity is weakened.
Acupuncture Meridians
Acupuncture meridians run under the skin and are connected to the body’s internal organs. Meridians are not vessels or containers. They are energy streams, somewhat analogous to mountain streams, and, as such, they have precise paths. Meridians nourish the organs and allow them to discharge excess pressure. They help the internal organs regulate themselves and adjust to the environment. Although Western science does not acknowledge the existence of meridians, they have been known and used for thousands of years in the Far East. The ancient arts of acupuncture and shiatsu massage are based on and use the extensive system of meridian points.
I use meridian diagnosis extensively. It is one of my main methods for assessing someone’s state of health. Meridian diagnosis gives me more information about the functioning of the body’s organs and systems than any other aspect of traditional Far Eastern diagnosis. It allows me to determine how well or poorly the body’s energy is flowing along its meridians. The quality of energy flow is what tells me how the corresponding organ is functioning. The meridians actually become clogged as fatty deposits collect under the skin and as organ function weakens. When the organs are not able to adjust, they lose their ability to maintain a healthy condition. They are either losing energy or building up excess pressure.
The Pressure Valve
The skin is the body’s largest organ; it is also the body’s largest opening. The skin functions as a kind of pressure valve. There are many ways to release pressure. Talking, writing, physical activity, urination, bowel elimination, menstruation, and sex are just some of them. Obviously, when the skin is clogged, it cannot release pressure smoothly or easily. One of the criteria of healthy skin is that its pores can open at will to release excess pressure from the body—in the same way that they open to release excess heat from the body. Our skin continually interacts with the environment in an attempt to keep the body’s temperature and pressure balanced between the internal and external environments.
The body rub helps the skin function more efficiently. Clogged skin loses its ability to release internal pressure, leaving us much more adversely affected by stress. Once the skin is no longer clogged, we can release fluids and toxins the way Nature intended—by perspiring freely over our entire body. It’s a commonly held belief that excess energy can be released only through exercise and activity. Not true. We all know people who talk more than seems appropriate.
What is not understood is that excessive talking is somewhat involuntary. It’s the body’s way of trying to rid itself of excess energy and stress. However, if the skin is open, internal pressure is released continuously. Once you are doing the body rub every day, you will be amazed at how much calmer you are and how much better you feel.
The Kidneys, Intestines, Lungs, and Liver
The kidneys are our main excretory organs. They work together with the intestines to eliminate excess from the body. The liver aids this process by detoxifying the blood. The body’s normal way of discharging excess is through urination and bowel elimination. As long as the kidneys, intestines, and liver are functioning efficiently, the body will not send excess to the skin. But if these organs become tired, sluggish, or stagnated, the body’s only choice is to send that excess to the surface—that is, to the skin or possibly to the lungs—for discharge.
One of the great benefits of the body rub is that it takes some of the strain off the kidneys, intestines, lungs, and liver. By helping to clean the body, the body rub gives those organs a chance to rest and repair so they can function more easily and efficiently. It is vitally important to concentrate on the health of your skin. If the skin is unable to aid in the elimination of toxins and if the kidneys, intestines, and liver are clogged and sluggish, the body has no choice but to store the excess waste, which then increases the strain on your health.
Perspiration
If you don’t perspire easily, this may be an indication that your skin is dry and clogged. Perspiration is natural. Many of us perspire only from certain parts of the body, like the armpits or the forehead. If your skin is functioning properly, you should perspire from your entire body. When, for instance, you take a sauna, your pores should open easily. You should soon be covered in perspiration from head to toe. After the body rub becomes part of your daily routine, your skin will open and you will perspire freely, releasing those fluids and toxins that have been trapped inside.
Doing the Body Rub—Gently Rub, Not Scrub
I have explained the dynamics of the skin’s structure and function in some detail in order to help you understand the importance of the health practice that I call the body rub. The body rub is deeply cleansing to the skin. It draws out the fat that has been collecting beneath the surface and clogging your pores. A word of warning: if your skin looks and feels drier at first than it did before you began doing the body rub, take heart. This is good news. It’s proof that you are doing the body rub accurately. Fat must gather under the surface of the skin before it can be discharged, and as it gathers, the skin becomes drier. I have one client who characterized the skin on her arms and legs as reptilian during the first month. Please, be patient and you will see your skin improve steadily from this point on, as she did.
The body rub is easy to do and brings immediate gratification. Some of my clients call it their morning cup of coffee—the ones who do it before bedtime report an improvement in their sleep. The body rub is easy to do. Fill your bathroom sink or a dedicated body rub basin with the hottest tap water possible—though not scalding. The washcloth should be 100 percent cotton, preferably organic, and unbleached or white. Fold it in half once and then in half again, making four layers. Dip the cloth in the hot water and then squeeze out the excess. The cloth should be damp but not dripping. Re-dip it in the hot water as often as necessary. Rub your skin in a back-and-forth motion, gently and systematically. A useful image is that of the tide coming in and going out. Progress in an orderly way over your entire body. You can work from the face down to the feet or from the extremities in toward the center (just below the navel).
The Areas of Importance Are as Follows:
1. Hands, wrists, fingers (and between the fingers), feet (tops and bottoms), ankles, toes (and between the toes)
2. Face and neck
3. Armpits and groin
4. Centerline of the body, from tip of the chin to pubic bone; chest and abdominal areas
5. Bottom of rib cage zigzagging from right to left
6. Back, including sacrum and coccyx (tailbone)
8. All other areas of body
IF YOU ARE PRESSED FOR TIME, DO STEPS 1 AND 2 OR 1, 2, AND 3
Do not attempt to redden your skin by using a lot of pressure. Use only the weight of your hand without pressing. Keep in mind that this is a rub and not a scrub. Your back-and-forth movement should be vigorous but gentle; light yet not too light. If there are parts of the skin that don’t turn red, don’t worry, just spend a bit more time on them. Eventually, when the overall condition of your skin improves and your circulation is responding to the treatment, your skin will redden quickly. A word of caution: many people have very delicate, weak skin. If your skin is thin and weak and you apply too much pressure, you can literally rub your skin off. You can think of the scabs that result as your battle scars! If you are very gentle in the beginning, your skin will become stronger more quickly. The initial process is similar to starting an exercise program. Begin slowly and build up gradually for the best results. Please be very careful when doing your face, especially the forehead and bridge of the nose. The skin along the spine is also exceptionally sensitive.
Keep Your Bath or Shower Separate
When you do the body rub, please do it separately from your bath or shower. Do it right before or right after. If you remain under the shower or in the tub water when doing the rub, you will lose too many vital minerals. Hot steam relaxes the body, but since steam has the capacity to draw out minerals, too much steam can be dangerous. Five to seven minutes is safe. I recommend two methods for keeping warm if you become chilled while doing the rub, usually in winter. One is to fill the tub with hot water to just below your ankles. Then sit on the edge of the tub and proceed with the rub. The second method, the one I prefer, is to start with a very short hot shower, then turn the water off and do the rub. This allows the steam and heat from the shower to keep you warm. The bathroom will have begun to cool down by the time you are through with the rub, at which point you can finish with another very short hot shower.
Other Benefits
Another benefit of the daily body rub is that it encourages you to become more open and accepting of your body. If you really dislike doing the rub, one possibility is that you are uncomfortable with your body. In time, if you do the rub on a daily basis, your self-image will improve. You will learn to appreciate your uniqueness and you will grow to genuinely care for and respect your body. If you spend a little extra time on areas you particularly don’t like, your self-image will change more quickly. Done regularly, the body rub will improve every aspect of your physical, emotional, and mental health. A word of caution: using a loofah or dry brush is not the same practice as the body rub. The purpose of the rub is to coax the pores of the skin to open in order to draw out stored fats and toxins. If you combine hot, damp heat with the softness of a washcloth, you can easily achieve your goal. A loofa, however, even if damp, will only impede your progress. Yes, it can remove the dead outer skin, but its very coarseness causes the pores of the living skin to close tightly, thus sealing in those fats and toxins. A dry brush may be very effective for abrading dead skin and tightening your pores, but by using one you will accomplish exactly the opposite of what you want. The body rub takes longer, but it is much more effective if your goal is to create healthy, resilient skin.
I have spent years trying to determine the best way to do the body rub, and my conclusion is that strong pressure is not as effective as light pressure. As I said earlier, the body rub is a rub, not a scrub. Light pressure applied by the natural weight of the hand is what best stimulates the circulation of energy and the opening of the pores of the skin. Once the pores can open easily, they can also close easily, and it is this easy opening and closing in response to both internal and external environments that is one of the hallmarks of resilient skin. If you do a daily body rub with a damp cloth and light pressure, you will discover this for yourself.
When you eat well and do the rub, in effect what you are doing is to draw a continuous supply of fresh blood to any given area. As for the face, one of the effects of improved circulation is the reduction and possible elimination of fine lines and wrinkles. Also, the rub improves muscle tone as well as skin texture, so that when the facial muscles are strengthened, wrinkles tend to fade or vanish.
If you’ve eaten a lot of cheese and other fatty and baked foods in your life, you no doubt have deposits of cellulite in your legs, hips, and buttocks. Some of my clients tell me that these parts of their bodies literally look like cottage cheese! The body rub will help break down these deposits and allow them to leave your system. Of course, if you continue to eat foods that cause cellulite, you will find yourself in an endless cycle of frustration. Now that you know the cause of cellulite, the next time you are tempted to eat cheese, just picture where it will end up. Maybe that will help you resist the temptation.
If you have very rough, red skin and feel you have to use a moisturizer, use it sparingly before going to sleep. Please don’t use it in the morning. Just do the body rub. After a while, even very rough, dry skin will soften and regenerate. Except for extreme cases of very dry skin, it is unnecessary and hinders rather than helps. If used habitually, even the best-quality moisturizer can clog the skin. If you must use a moisturizer, select one made with liquid vegetable oil, such as sesame or olive; avoid any oil that becomes solid at room temperature, such as coconut oil.
Key Points:
• Use a medium-weight cotton washcloth. Fold it in half twice.
• Organic cotton is best.
• Fill your sink or your basin with hot water, dip the cloth, and wring it out. Re-dip the cloth frequently to keep it hot and fresh.
• Rub gently in a back-and-forth motion. Do not rub in circles.
• Rub gently; don’t scrub. Gentle pressure yields better results.
• Do the rub separately from your bath or shower.
• The purpose of the rub is to open your pores and draw out fats and toxins. This will allow your skin to breathe naturally.
• Years of animal and dairy food, fruits, sweets, baked and fatty food clog the skin and prevent it from breathing naturally.
• The skin needs to breathe freely just as the lungs do.
Doing the Body Rub Results In:
• An increase in the circulation of blood, lymph, and energy that will improve the nutrition, oxygen flow, stimulation, and health of all your organs.
• Better energy all day after a morning rub and deeper sleep after an evening rub.
• More effective release of stored toxins.
• Improved immunity to disease.
• Clearer thinking, keener memory, and more optimistic outlook.
• Improved self-image.
• Increased sensual awareness.
CULTIVATE AND TAKE TIME FOR HOBBIES
Hobbies are very, very important for good health. Yet these days how many of us have a hobby? Not many, I suspect. Hobby is a rather old-fashioned word, so I’m often asked what I mean when I use it. To me, a hobby is something that brings an aspect of completion or fullness or balance to our lives, something we do for enjoyment—a favorite activity (not passivity)—but not what we do day to day for a living.
“To insure good health: eat lightly, breathe deeply, live moderately.”
—William Londen
Let me give you an example from an older time. The samurai of Japan were professional warriors, rigorously trained in the martial arts, who spent their lives fighting. To make sure their development wasn’t overly one-sided, they also studied tea ceremony or poetry or brush painting, something very different, very highly refined, in order to make balance.
Now let me give you an example from modern life. I ask, “Do you have a hobby?” You answer, “Yes, reading.” But if your job is mental, reading doesn’t meet my definition of a hobby. A hobby has to be different from work, something that brings polarity and interest to your life.
I like this example: years ago, in Science News, I came across a piece about a scientist with very interesting ideas. What struck me was the fact that a couple of times a week he and his brother got together and played guitar and sang just for the fun of it. His work was technical, highly skilled, demanding, and precise. His hobby released him, balanced his work. In my view, the reason he had such interesting ideas was because he spent his free time doing something he enjoyed that was very different from his work.
“Dare to err and dare to dream. Deep meaning often lies in childish play.”
—Johann Friedrich von Schiller
Hobbies are a kind of self-reflection, a way of maintaining balance, a way to develop different sides of our nature. They are for our enjoyment, pleasure, and satisfaction. My advice is, if you don’t have a hobby, choose anything you think you might enjoy. If you find you don’t like it, try something else. Often clients will tell me they don’t have time for a hobby. My answer is always the same: “You don’t not have time for a hobby, because a hobby will enrich your life. Your practice and your health will improve if you have a hobby.” Everything needs polarity. We add chopped parsley to sweet vegetable soup. The garnish brings the soup to life. The garnish is the hobby, in a manner of speaking.
Key Points:
• Hobbies make balance for the more structured and pressured areas of life.
• Hobbies help relieve stress and promote physical and mental flexibility.
• Hobbies keep your mind more open and flexible and can bring a deep sense of satisfaction.
• Have fun with your hobbies.
Create a More Natural Environment
Recharging Station
What is a home? In the macrobiotic way of thinking, home is a charging station, a place to relax, return to balance, and enrich life. Therefore, we must create the healthiest environment we can so that we are nourished rather than depleted by our surroundings. The more natural the environment around us, the brighter, more refreshed, and positive we feel. Then, automatically, we make better choices in all the other areas of life.
Let’s say you go on a picnic. The food tastes especially delicious and you sleep more soundly that night. Why? You’re out of doors in the country with congenial company, the air is fresh, and usually you engage in some sort of physical activity. All this contributes to improved circulation. Whatever you do that improves your circulation creates a healthier appetite and a deeper, more restful night’s sleep.
The direction modern life is taking is well beyond our control, but there are steps we can take that will reverse many of its worst effects. Most of us worry about those things over which we have no control, yet ignore those things we can change, things we can do every day to improve our lives. We have a choice. We can take time for our meals of grains and vegetables, stick to our daily schedule, walk, do the body rub, and surround ourselves with green plants and natural materials, on our person and in our home. Each of the first five steps, if done regularly, strengthens the effect of the others. Together, the first five steps form the essence of good health. Whether we apply these principles to the life of one person, to a family, to a community, or to a society, east, west, north, or south, they work. They are simple; they are unique. They worked in the past, they work today, and they will work in the future. Why? Because they are based on the common sense of our ancestors but adapted to modern life.
SURROUND YOURSELF WITH GREEN PLANTS
There was a time, not so long ago, when houseplants were considered merely decorative. Walking into a house or office filled with green plants was a pleasant, even soothing, experience, but hardly a life-enhancing one; not so any more. Plants are a necessity these days. We depend on them to clean the air we breathe, having discovered that green plants are far more efficient at removing pollutants than any machine.
Plants absorb many harmful contaminants, such as formaldehyde, benzene, and carbon monoxide. Formaldehyde, one of the worst, is considered to be a contributing factor to the high cancer rate in the United States. Formaldehyde is found in many of the materials used in home building and furnishings, including plywood, particle board, decorative paneling, floor covering, and carpet backing. It is also found in items we regularly bring into the house, such as grocery bags, waxed bags, facial tissues, common cleaning agents, fire-retardant and permanent-press clothing, tobacco, and cooking and heating gas.
Among the most efficient air cleaners are spider plants, golden pothos, and elephant ear philodendron. Dr. William Wolverton, formerly a senior research scientist at NASA, has calculated that fifteen to twenty of these common houseplants can clean and refresh the air in an average-sized house. Interestingly, NASA has concluded that plants become more effective at cleaning the air as pollution levels increase. It seems that in areas of low-level pollution, fewer molecules come into contact with the leaf’s surface, so the benefits are not as great. Why are green plants so effective? They are natural generators of the negative ions in the air we breathe. Negative ionization promotes a feeling of well-being, of freshness, and of rejuvenation.
Negative Ionization
Negative ionization increases with movement. If you walk by a waterfall, if you walk in the woods, you feel refreshed and exhilarated. The natural circulation of the water as it falls and the wind as it blows through the trees increases the amount of negative ionization in the air. When you clean a room, when you do the body rub, you are also increasing it.
An ion is a particle that can carry either a negative or a positive electrical charge. In this case, negatively charged ions are the ones we want around us. Negative ionization occurs when ions move away from the earth. It’s helpful to think of negative ions as moving up and out, cleaning and refreshing everything as they go. Positive ions are those that move toward the center of the earth. Think of them as moving down and in, bringing heaviness and stagnation with them.
Any room that’s not cleaned for a while will take on a dark, heavy feeling. When you open the window and pull up the shades to let in air and sunlight, when you clean the space, what you are actually doing is changing positive ions to negative ones. Fresh air, sunlight, and thorough cleaning can transform any room by infusing it with refreshed energy. Being in such a room feels wonderful. Negative ionization is big news these days. Many people are buying ionizing machines for their homes. Green plants are far cheaper and far more effective. They play a significant role in promoting good health.
Large, strong plants that grow upward are more effective than hanging plants for changing the energy in your house or office. Buy potted plants that sit on the floor. If space permits, make sure a few of them are large. A hanging plant is better than no plant at all, so, if you have a space problem, resort to using one. Use as many plants as you care to, making sure there are not so many that the room looks overcrowded or movement is hampered. You don’t want your guests to feel they need a machete!
Noise Pollution
One of the unsung virtues of plants is that they protect us from noise pollution. Have you ever spent time in an evergreen forest? In 1985, I was invited to teach at a macrobiotic summer camp that was held in a pine forest north of Oslo, Norway. One day, during my free time, I went for a walk in the woods. For some reason, it felt eerie being there. It took a while for me to realize that this was the first time I had ever experienced complete quiet. There was simply nothing to hear.
Plants have the ability to absorb sound. All plants can do this, but evergreens are especially adept at soaking up noise. If you keep a lot of plants in the house, they will help keep the noise level down. It’s easier to maintain good health in a quiet house. Doors slamming, television or music blasting, and people shouting all take their toll on our health.
“One must be out-of-doors enough to experience wholesome reality, as ballast to thought and sentiment. Health requires this relaxation, this aimless life.”
—Henry David Thoreau
Green Plants in the Bedroom
The most important places in the house to keep plants are the bedroom, the kitchen, and the bathroom. Many people think plants should not be kept in the bedroom. I disagree. During the day, plants give out oxygen and take in carbon dioxide. At night, they give out carbon dioxide and take in oxygen. We need more oxygen during the day, less at night, more in summer, less in winter. This natural cycle of taking in and giving out leads to greater overall oxygen intake. Having plants in the bedroom at night helps us sleep more deeply and that means we can take in more oxygen over the course of the next day. Plants in the bedroom serve to regulate the oxygen ratio so that we receive the right amount of oxygen while we sleep. As I said earlier, the body cleans and repairs itself during the night and our plants will be right there to aid in the nocturnal rejuvenation.
It’s essential to have green plants in the kitchen. Ideally, the kitchen should be sealed off from the rest of the house so that cooking fumes and odors can be vented outside. Gas fumes generate a lot of pollution that spreads easily throughout the house. Green plants will help minimize their effect on our health. Water is one of the main sources of pollution in today’s houses, so it’s best to keep green plants in the bathroom as well.
Because green plants work so diligently night and day to clean the air we breathe, they deserve proper care. Actually, houseplants require only minimal attention, but they do have certain needs. They require the right amount of water at regular intervals, and they must have the appropriate light. If you place a plant in direct sunlight, make sure it’s meant to have a strong exposure. Different species have different needs, so be sure to get some advice from the florist or consult a book. Keep your plants in clay pots so that their roots can breathe. Check every couple of seasons to see whether they require larger pots.
Key Points:
• The most important places for green plants are the bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, and any other room in which you spend time.
• Green plants generate negative ionization that creates a calmer, more peaceful, and refreshing environment.
• Green plants enable us to be clearer, brighter, and more active during the day. Their presence promotes quiet, restful, deep sleep at night.
• Green plants are the most efficient air filtration system known, especially spider plants, golden pothos (devil’s ivy), snake plants, peace lily, and elephant ear philodendron.
• Choose strong, upward-growing plants overhanging ones.
• Choose plants that are hardy and easy to care for.
WEAR PURE COTTON CLOTHING NEXT TO YOUR SKIN
The body runs on electrical impulses. Nutrition, digestion, immunity, and our nervous system all depend on electrical impulses to do their work. Because pure cotton carries less of a static electrical charge than other material, when worn directly against the skin it helps neutralize imbalances within the body. If you have an imbalance in your nervous, immune, or digestive system or in your meridians, pure cotton will help counteract that imbalance. Wearing pure cotton next to your skin is one of the quickest and easiest ways to improve and maintain your health.
Synthetics carry the strongest static electrical charge. Think of the fireworks display that occurs when you make a bed using synthetic sheets or blankets. Try making the bed with the lights off! The strong static electrical charge in synthetics interferes with the body’s functioning. Synthetic fabrics make imbalances worse. Some materials that are natural to begin with go through chemical processing that produces the same effect on the body as synthetics. Rayon is a good example.
Cotton is the most neutral fabric, followed by linen, silk, and wool. Silk is natural, but its animal quality gives it a strong static charge. Wool is also natural, but it carries a much stronger charge than cotton or even silk. It’s best not to wear wool directly against the skin.
Everyone, but especially people living in modern houses or high-rise apartment buildings, has an electromagnetic imbalance in his or her environment. Natural materials help lessen all imbalances. Synthetics increase, amplify, and enhance imbalances. Whatever the condition of your body or your environment, it will worsen if you wear synthetics directly against your skin. If you are feeling tired, wearing a synthetic next to your skin will increase your fatigue. If you are feeling anxious, it will make you feel more anxious. Your health problems will worsen quickly if you wear synthetics against your skin.
It is especially important to wear pure cotton underwear, bras, socks, and pajamas and to use pure cotton sheets, pillowcases, towels, and washcloths. Organic cotton is even better. If you follow this simple suggestion, you will feel more refreshed and enjoy better resistance to illness. Start by replacing your underwear and socks. It’s often difficult to find all-cotton goods. Shop carefully and make sure to read the content labels. These days, even items advertised as cotton often contain a small percentage of synthetic. When you do find what suits you, keep a record of where the item was purchased. This is helpful when it’s time to reorder.
Key Points:
• Cotton is a buffer that helps neutralize imbalances in the body and environment.
• Woolens and synthetics can amplify imbalances in your body and environment.
• Underwear, socks, bras, sheets, pillowcases, and towels should be 100 percent cotton.
• Wear cotton against the skin under clothing made from other materials.
• Try to find organic cotton.
USE NATURAL MATERIALS, WOOD, COTTON, WOOL, ETC. IN YOUR HOME
Think of your home as a recharging station. We leave home to go to work, to shop, to go to school, or to play. We return to refresh, re-nourish, and rebalance so we have the energy and the will to leave again. If our homes and furnishings are made from natural materials, we can recharge more effectively.
It’s best to have furniture made of real wood, to choose cotton for your upholstery, drapes, and curtains and wool for your carpeting. Wool carpeting is far better for your health than synthetic which, like imitation wood and plywood, is processed with formaldehyde. If you can replace the man-made materials in your home with natural ones, you will feel much more comfortable in your day-to-day life.
Natural Bedding
Try to buy 100 percent organic cotton sheets. They can be expensive, so keep your eye out for sales. Avoid sheets that do not require ironing. They have been treated with formaldehyde. It’s far better for your health to sleep on high-quality, wrinkled but non-toxic sheets than on smooth toxic ones. It’s all a matter of priorities. Reasonably priced, high-quality, pure cotton towels and washcloths are relatively easy to find. Still, it’s necessary to read the content labels carefully.
A futon is a good possible choice for a mattress. Futons are generally made of cotton and their frames of wood. Make sure the futon you buy is all-cotton or cotton and wool. If you are not ready to change your entire bed, you can buy just the futon mattress and place it over your existing mattress or box spring. Organic rubber/latex mattresses are also a good choice. You can also buy an organic latex topper to place over your existing mattress. Conventional mattresses are made with synthetic materials (and metal as well, in the case of innerspring mattresses), so the sooner you can replace yours with a futon or natural bed, the faster your health will improve. You will enjoy the experience of having natural materials close to you. In the beginning, it may take some effort to replace all your synthetic belongings; but after the initial outlay of energy and money, it will be easy to replace items as they wear out. Surrounding yourself with cotton is a good health habit that will help you feel and look your best.
Transparent Building
Years ago when teaching at a seminar in Switzerland, I had the privilege of spending time in a house built of completely natural materials. The concrete was free of iron so it gave off no electromagnetic charge, and the wood had been specially treated. When you were inside this house, you felt almost as if you were outdoors. It was the most transparent building environment I have ever been in. Teaching at that seminar was effortless because I was being energized all day.
Contrast that environment with that of department stores, for instance, where you are surrounded by synthetic materials and relentless fluorescent lighting. In such an environment, I very quickly become irritable. Being in man-made surroundings exhausts your body and shatters your thinking. I always feel sorry for the salespeople who have to endure this discomfort on a daily basis. Often, nowadays, there’s also loud music playing. I sometimes wonder if these stores are uncomfortable on purpose. Maybe the idea is to get you to buy quickly and leave.
It’s best that whatever you bring into your home be as free of chemicals and toxins as possible. Avoid using household cleaning products with high chemical content. They create their own pollution. A wide variety of excellent chemical-free cleaning products are available in health food stores, most of which are not tested on animals.
Natural-food stores also have a large selection of self-care products, including cosmetics. Use these instead of conventional products that are full of chemicals detrimental to health, chemicals that are absorbed through the pores and into the body’s organs, where they create an additional burden on the immune system. Natural products are just as effective as—and in most cases superior to—those laced with chemicals. If you are unable to find what you need in your area, you can order from any number of catalogue companies that specialize in natural products.
Fooling the Compass
I often carry a compass with me to check out different environments. I have been amazed by some of my findings. In certain apartment buildings, my compass was a full ninety degrees off! The concrete used in these buildings carries such a strong electromagnetic charge that when I was facing north my compass said I was facing east. Imagine how this distortion affects our health. If a compass can be thrown so severely out of balance, then we certainly can be too. The heart of our blood is hemoglobin, an iron-containing protein. Iron is magnetic, so our blood is profoundly affected by electromagnetic fields of energy.
Many studies have shown that electromagnetic fields are detrimental to health. Older homes, generally built with more natural materials, tend to have weaker electromagnetic fields than new ones.
At one time, I lived in a hundred-year-old Victorian farmhouse that had a very comfortable feeling. It was simply decorated, with old furniture that we liked and had gotten used to. The quality of the house and the decorations helped create a feeling of comfort and well-being. When friends visited, they often remarked on this. My point is that if we surround ourselves with natural materials, we can create a harmonious and balanced environment in which we can refresh and recharge ourselves.
How many times have you found yourself in physical surroundings that make you feel uneasy, even fidgety, without being able to understand why? It could be that you are sensitive enough to be adversely affected by unnatural surroundings. The excessive use of synthetics and chemically toxic materials is what creates this discomfort. Natural materials can help. Natural materials, such as wood, cotton, and wool, act as a buffer, helping to lessen and balance electromagnetic interference.
Things We Can Control
Certain things are within our control. It’s best not to use microwave ovens. Their so-called acceptable levels of radiation pollute our homes. Electric blankets are very harmful. We want to rest and recharge naturally, without interference. Electric stoves are another major source of electromagnetic radiation. I recommend that you cook with gas. If natural gas isn’t available where you live, switch from electricity to propane gas. It’s easy to do and convenient to use. Cooking with electricity affects the taste and consistency of food. The flavors don’t harmonize naturally, and it’s difficult to achieve the desired crispness. Professional chefs always choose to cook with gas.
If you have any fluorescent light bulbs in your house, replace them with incandescent or full-spectrum ones. You and your house will look much better in the glow of incandescent lighting. And your state of mind will improve. Fluorescent lighting has been proven to cause depression.
Television sets also emit harmful rays, so try to avoid spending hours sitting in front of yours. Remember that the farther away you sit from the television set, the less exposure you will receive. It’s best to turn the TV off when you’re not watching it, as electromagnetic fields pass through walls. Lastly, please don’t put a television set in your bedroom.
I am aware that the beginning of anything can be overwhelming, and the practice of macrobiotics is no exception. Let’s say that you have begun to eat good food in an orderly way, and have started your walking program and are doing the body rub and reaping its benefits. The next step is to surround yourself with materials that will enhance your sense of well-being and contribute to your overall good health.
Key Points:
• Choose natural materials when replacing home furnishings.
• Use natural wood, cotton, and wool instead of synthetic materials in your home.
• Try a natural futon, a cotton and wool mattress, or a natural rubber/latex mattress for sleeping.
• Use natural cleaning products, soaps, and cosmetics.
• Stop using microwave ovens and electric blankets.
• Cook with natural, propane, or even butane gas. Please do not cook with electricity.
• Watch television sparingly.
Make Your Macrobiotic Practice Work
KEEPING TO THE FORMAT OF MEALS IMPROVES YOUR ABILITY TO MAKE HEALTHFUL FOOD CHOICES. GOOD EATING HABITS, STEPS ONE AND TWO, ARE THE CONTROLLING FACTORS IN GOOD HEALTH.
The Biggest Mistake
The sixth step incorporates the essence of each of the five previous steps. The point here is that by keeping to the Format of Meals, we automatically have clear guidelines as to wise food choices under any and all circumstances, whether we’re eating at home, in a restaurant, or on an airplane. As I said earlier, the biggest mistake most people make is to focus on Diet: Content and Quality rather than on Eating Habits: Format of Meals. Eating Habits are what keep us on track.
Eating at Home versus Eating Out
Food choices that are clear when we eat at home can seem murky when we eat out. When we’re at home, we can choose the highest-quality organically grown brown rice, organic vegetables, the best-quality miso and so on. If we are at the mercy of a mediocre restaurant, we might order white rice and steamed broccoli (possibly even frozen). The quality is lower, yes, but the Format is intact. We have a grain and a vegetable on our plate. Quality can always be adjusted up or down depending on where we find ourselves. Of course, the degree of the adjustment depends on our condition. We must ask: “What can my health afford at this time? How liberal can I be?”
As simple as this might sound, most people see little or no connection between meals at home and meals outside the home. At home they take care to make good choices but when they eat out they often throw away the guidelines, meaning the Format of Meals, and choose whatever appeals to them. This is a serious mistake. The Format is what helps us maintain our direction toward health. If, however, we believe Content and Quality are more important than Format and we can’t get organic short-grain rice, the temptation is to abandon the Format as well. Once we create a separation in our minds between what we eat at home and what we eat outside, it follows that we begin to see food in terms of black and white. We think, “I ate something I shouldn’t have, I’m off the diet, I’m in trouble, I can never eat out, this is too hard.” But, really, if we focus on the Format wherever we are, we will automatically make the wisest choices possible and we will continue to move in the direction of health.
The Second Biggest Mistake
Let’s look at maintaining the direction toward health from another angle: structure (another word for Format) versus variety. The second biggest mistake most people make is to allow the structure, which should be tight, to become loose. Once that happens, the need for variety diminishes and eventually changes to a pattern of repetition, a pattern that directs us away from health. If the legs of a table are loose, the table can be said to have a wobbly structure. It can barely support itself. If we remove the legs altogether, the table will collapse completely. Or to use Nature’s model once again, the sun rises and sets every day, a phenomenon that is part of the structure of the universe. If the sun doesn’t rise or set, it’s all over for the planet. In the same way, once we let the structure or Format go, we set ourselves on a path away from health.
Here are the main danger signals:
• You don’t sit down and take time for your meals.
• You start to read, watch TV, or listen to the radio during meals.
• You eat quickly and forget to chew well.
• You do other things while eating.
• Your mealtimes become irregular.
• You stop having a grain and vegetable with every meal.
How does this work? Let’s say you want to have lunch at twelve-thirty, no later than one o’clock, but you’re too busy to eat. By the time you do eat, your appetite is completely altered because your blood sugar has fallen. Low blood sugar means that in order to feel satisfied, either you have to eat more than usual—in other words, overeat—or you have to have something sweet. It follows that, once having eaten a late lunch, you have no appetite for dinner at the regular time. If you keep to your regular dinnertime but eat less than usual, an hour or two later you’ll want a snack. Or, instead of dinner at six, let’s say you decide to eat at eight-thirty. Either way, you won’t have three full hours between dinner and bedtime since you have to go to bed at a reasonable hour in order to get up early the next morning. You don’t sleep very well that night (no one sleeps well on a full stomach). It’s difficult to get up the next morning and, when you do drag yourself out of bed, you don’t feel refreshed. You can see how one change in the structure or Format inevitably leads to another and how, in the end, these changes will lead you away from health.
Although having a grain and vegetable with every meal comes under the heading of Diet, there is an overlap with Format. The meal you sit down to eat must qualify as a meal, meaning it must contain a grain or grain product and a vegetable. When you stop having both a grain and a vegetable with every meal, most commonly that meal is breakfast and it’s the vegetable that disappears from the plate. If you’ve reached this stage, you can pretty much assume you’ve begun to lose your direction. You’re getting way off track.
Balance and Imbalance Perpetuate Themselves.
One of the guiding principles of life is that balance perpetuates itself. And, as you might suspect, imbalance perpetuates itself as well. As you let go of more and more of the structure, you start to feel more and more pressure. You might believe the buildup of pressure comes from having to market, prepare, and cook the food or from the pressure of having to eat at a regular time—but I don’t think so. I think the reverse is true. The usual pattern is that you feel rushed, so you begin to rush your meals. The more we rush our meals, the more rushed we feel. Sitting down and taking time for meals actually eases pressure. If you think of a meal as a time for recharging, reorienting, and regaining balance, if no matter how stressed you feel you take the time to sit down, eat slowly, and chew well, when you finish eating you will feel refreshed and calm. Any decisions you make in this frame of mind are bound to be wiser than those made under pressure.
Some people find it helpful to think of chewing as a form of meditation, somewhat like breathing practices. The result in both cases is heightened mental and emotional clarity and a feeling of deep calm. Remember, it’s important to come to the table prepared to chew. Before you sit down, ask yourself, “What are my priorities?” If good health is one of them, then take time for your meal, eat your food slowly, and chew it well.
Structure versus Variety
Let’s go back to structure versus variety. I said earlier that when the structure becomes loose, the need for variety diminishes—or we could say, tightens—and eventually repetition replaces variety altogether. In effect, polarity is reversed. What do I mean by this? Let me start with a basic premise: the more we seek variety, the more nutrition we get from our food. If we eat the same few foods over and over again, eventually not much happens. If someone repeats the same thing over and over again, eventually you stop hearing what is being said. It goes in one ear and out the other. It’s no different with food. In one end and out the other—without much benefit.
Unfortunately, often we don’t notice that this is happening. It’s difficult to be aware of what we’re eating day to day. Food is the closest thing to us, so we don’t have the advantage of perspective. We think we have variety—we eat blanched, steamed, and sautéed vegetables daily; we eat different grains, oatmeal, brown rice, millet, barley—where’s the repetition in all this? Every morning we have oatmeal and steamed kale; for lunch we have rice and blanched broccoli and cabbage; for dinner miso soup, rice with sesame seeds, sautéed mixed vegetables, pressed salad with napa cabbage. Isn’t that variety? No. It’s repetition. Taking several dishes and repeating them day after day after day is repetition. Having blanched broccoli and cabbage every day for lunch is repetition. Having oatmeal for breakfast every morning is repetition.
Appetite is stimulated by variety. Variety also creates satisfaction. If we lack variety in both ingredients and preparation, we don’t feel satisfied with our food, and so we overeat at mealtimes and snack before bed.
Key Points:
• Good eating habits, steps one and two, are the controlling factors in good health.
• Good eating habits automatically lead to healthier food choices.
• When traveling or eating out, keep to the format of grains and vegetables as the basis of a meal. Quality can be adjusted up or down. White rice or commercial pasta is a better choice than going without a grain.
• Vegan commercial vegetable soup is a better choice than no soup at all.
KEEP A DAILY MENU BOOK TO HELP YOU BECOME MORE OBJECTIVE ABOUT YOUR MACROBIOTIC PRACTICE
Underlying everything in this book so far is the basic question, how do we keep moving in the direction of health? Keeping a menu book—or a journal, if you prefer to call it that—is the best way I know of. It’s very difficult to be aware of what we’re doing day to day, especially with regard to diet. As I’ve said before, food is the closest thing to us, so it’s hard to be objective. The power of a menu book is that it lets you see if you are really getting enough variety.
Enter the date, time, and menu for every meal, snack, or nibble that passes your lips, along with a brief comment on how you felt that day. Review your menu book every so often and reflect on its contents. It’s difficult to be objective when you are entering information. Objectivity comes later. In this way, you will know whether or not you are getting variety. Keeping a daily menu book takes the guesswork out of tracking the changes in your health. (It’s not necessary to include recipes, although you may if you wish.)
Your menu book can be as simple or as detailed as you care to make it. Some people keep track of their daily functions as well as their daily food—bowel movements, bedtime, sleep patterns, moods, and so on. Looking back, you can see how you were feeling physically, mentally, and emotionally on any given day. Then you can begin to correlate what you ate or did on a particular day with how you felt that day. For instance: I did this and I felt really good—my thinking was clear, I ate this and I didn’t feel very well, I did this and I was irritable, I did that and I was really tired. You can’t learn this sort of thing in school. How certain foods, patterns, and behaviors affect you can only be self-taught. If you write just a sentence or two every day, that should be enough to jog your memory and help you discover whether you are really doing what you think you’re doing. I can’t stress enough the importance of keeping a menu book. It’s one way to measure how serious your commitment is to improving and strengthening your health.
I must confess that I’ve never really kept a menu book; but in the past, during the years when I was teaching several times a week, I kept a kind of journal. I entered the outline of every lecture I gave along with some comments, no matter how often I lectured on the same topic. It’s interesting to look back over these journals. There are times when I thought my condition was good and my thinking orderly, but my journal shows otherwise. Or, looking back at other periods when my notes indicate that my condition was off, I can see by the outline of my lecture that my thinking was very clear and orderly. The point is that when you’re in the throes of doing something, it’s nearly impossible to be objective. But when you look back, you can often see the truth.
One final comment on this point: you might think you don’t need to do this, you’re an experienced cook, you don’t need to improve your cooking. Let me assure you that even experienced, longtime macrobiotic cooks keep menu books. I can guarantee that if you keep one, your practice will improve, as will your cooking. Objectivity is the key. You can see where you’ve fallen short or gone overboard.
Key Points:
• Keep a hard or spiral-bound book in your kitchen to record your menus and snacks.
• Keep notes on your activities, symptoms, and general feelings.
• Refer back to previous days, weeks, and months to see any patterns that emerge from your practice.
• Keeping a daily menu book is one of the best ways to improve your practice and discover your mistakes.
• Such a journal allows you to evaluate your practice and its benefits more objectively.
Cultivate the Spirit of Health
“In order to change we must be sick and tired of being sick and tired.”
—Author Unknown
The seventh step is the one that completes the other six, the one without which the other six remain mechanical and, in a sense, external to us, animated by willpower rather than love. What is too often missing from current macrobiotic practice is the spirit of health itself. It’s taken me a long time to work out how to convey the essence of this spirit—one that is inseparable from the theory and practice of macrobiotics. Lacking this spirit, we can never make the transition to lasting health. Please bear with me as I repeat once again: health is a direction, a condition we move toward day by day throughout life. Sickness is also a direction. Depending on the totality of our eating habits, diet, and daily lifestyle practices, we move in one direction or the other. It should be no surprise then that if we follow the macrobiotic guidelines accurately, we move toward health. If we ignore them, we move toward sickness. Let me state something unequivocally: health is a condition we grow into throughout our lives. This is a very important point. Today, the most commonly held belief is that we start out in life with a certain amount of health—call it our capital—that we spend as we age until, in a manner of speaking, we are bankrupt. Now, to believe that aging is a fate that brings, among other things, the loss of bones, teeth, beautiful skin, flexibility, memory, and the ability to enjoy and fully participate in life—that this fate is as sure as death and taxes—is a very heavy burden to bear. Yet this belief is so strong that everyone who can afford to carries the financial burden of a lifetime of health insurance.
Is this kind of deterioration really the human fate? I don’t think so. Is the aging process I have just described based on a natural model of aging—of living in harmony with Nature—or is it simply the experience of those who live an anti-natural lifestyle? I think you know the answer. Let me assure you that it is not natural to deteriorate with age. If you look at Nature’s model—take for instance, trees—what do you see? Once the aptly named “mighty oak” has grown to fullness, then seedlings sprout and when these seedlings need more light and more space to continue growing, the oak passes on. In other words, when the oak has fulfilled its destiny, it moves on.
“A wise man should consider that health is the greatest of human blessings, and learn how by his own thought to derive the benefit from his illness.”
—Hippocrates
In the past, people readily moved on when they had had enough of life. It was that simple. (In fact, the novels of the 19th century are filled with death-bed scenes involving characters who, having reached this point, put their affairs in order, paid their debts, said their farewells to family and friends, and either sat down or lay down and died.) They chose the time and place of their death. They died not of sickness but because they had had enough of life. Some of you might have had parents or grandparents who were able to do this. Odd though it might seem to us, it’s really no different from anything else we’ve had enough of in life. No matter how much we enjoy something, eventually we reach a point of satiation where more isn’t going to add to the experience. In fact, it may well detract from it. We can have the best conversation, the best meal, the best vacation, whatever. Still, sooner or later, we get to the point of fullness and satisfaction. We’ve had enough. It’s time to move on. It’s a sign of spiritual maturity to know when that time is.
For the first eighteen to twenty years after birth, we grow our bodies. At that point, the body should stop growing—in terms of weight as well as height. Our natural weight is achieved somewhere between the ages of sixteen and twenty. People new to macrobiotics are sometimes quite heavy. The prospect of losing weight appeals to them, but often they lose more than they are comfortable with. I always ask, “How much did you weigh when you were sixteen? How much did you weigh when you got your first driver’s license? That’s your natural weight, and that’s probably what you’ll end up weighing.” They become alarmed. “That’s too thin,” they say. No, it’s not too thin. Let me explain. As I said, we spend the first part of life growing the body. At birth, the body is not completely formed. The nervous system is not fully developed, nor are the lungs, immune system, or bones. We take the next sixteen to twenty years to grow these, after which we stop growing physically and begin to grow mentally and spiritually. That is, we begin to grow our consciousness.
“Dwell not upon thy weariness, thy strength shall be according to the measure of thy desire.”
—Arabian Proverb
Health itself has three aspects: physical, mental, and spiritual. Physical health is the foundation of mental and spiritual health. When we have good vitality, good energy, then we sleep well. If we sleep well, then we are alert and our memory is excellent. We don’t anger easily. We are filled with a deep sense of joy and appreciation. On the other hand, with limited physical vitality, sleep isn’t usually sound or refreshing, memory is unreliable, and there is a tendency to become easily irritated. Worst of all, joy and alertness are lost, along with feelings of gratitude for life itself. As I said, the first part of life is devoted to the growth of the body and the creation of a high degree of physical health. Physical health is the foundation for the growth and nourishment of mental and spiritual health. When you look at traditional societies, you see that they valued their elders for their life’s experience and their ability to guide younger people. Think about it, if the elders were incapable of guiding their own lives because of impaired memory and physical debilitation, how could they guide anyone else? Why would anyone seek them out? The answer is that the memory of the elders didn’t deteriorate. On the contrary, it increased with age. Their patience with life itself, their joy, their appreciation for all of life, their understanding of the relationship between difficulty and happiness—all these increased and flowered as they aged. Just as the flower represents the culmination of the growth process of a plant, the final maturation before passing on to the next stage, in the same way old age should be the flowering of our life on earth.
What we refer to when we talk about health these days—health being merely an absence of serious illness—is a very recent model. The world’s health began to deteriorate at the time of the Industrial Revolution, but the definitive turning point was World War II.
It’s most important that we reexamine our definition of health itself. We must ask ourselves what health is and what we need to do to develop it so that old age is once again a flowering. One thing that does change with age is that we become less interested in sensory experience and more interested in social matters. We become more interested in discovering for ourselves the meaning of life—that is, in discovering what we came here to do so that we can complete the task, so that one day we can honestly say we are satisfied, we have had enough of this life.
“And man dies and is buried, and all his words and actions are forgotten, but the food he has eaten lives after him in the sound or rotten bones of his children.”
—George Orwell
I’d have to say, based on my years of counseling so many seriously ill older people, that most of them never did what they really wanted to with their lives. They were waiting until retirement to make their dreams a reality, but once retired they found they didn’t want to do anything. Almost inevitably what followed was a very rapid physical and mental deterioration. It’s almost axiomatic that doing what we really want to do day to day is what nourishes life and health. Those activities that we never grow tired of, that we don’t want to retire from, that, in effect, never end for us, are life- and health-giving. Work we love is a form of play. If we live this way, then, like the elders of traditional eras, when we are ready to hand the baton off to someone else we will do it with gratitude and in the spirit of adventure.
Let’s start here: we are all guided by our consciousness. If our consciousness keeps telling us that we are going to get sick and die, then that’s generally what happens. But if our consciousness is constantly guiding us toward health, health is what we get. A genuinely healthy person has more energy, more vitality, and a greater interest in life as he or she ages. I have seen it over and over. We all have this capacity.
I have spent the greater part of my adult life trying to create the guidelines that will help those who are interested achieve the kind of health I have been describing. Let’s examine the seventh step or last guideline in more detail.
“Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so shall you become.”
—James Allen
BE OPEN AND CURIOUS AND CULTIVATE AN ENDLESS APPRECIATION FOR ALL OF LIFE
Everyone likes to look at healthy children. Why do you suppose that is? For one thing, their faces are open and clear, not closed and clouded with conceptual thinking, bad experiences, and heavy responsibilities. Since they don’t have to get up in the morning and work at jobs they hate, their faces reflect an incredible openness and sense of curiosity. This openness is the source of their energy. When you look at a child, you see bright freshness. The same sort of freshness you see when you look at a healthy plant. A healthy plant is one that is getting the proper nourishment. The soil, water, sunlight, breeze, temperature—everything is suitable. We can say the plant has good nourishment and good circulation. When we look at a healthy child, we see the same thing. Healthy children can eat very, very little or they can eat a lot, or they can eat very simple food and still grow very well. The reason for this is that they have good digestion, meaning they are able to absorb nutrition very efficiently from whatever amount of food they eat. At the same time, they have excellent circulation. They can go out in the coldest weather with almost no clothing on and they don’t feel the cold. Their circulation is so good that they have no hardness in their bodies. You can bend children, twist them like pretzels, and the more you do this the funnier they think it is.
We can see this very clearly by looking at plants. If their nourishment, temperature, or circulation is off, plants react very quickly by losing their freshness. If you over-water, they become limp and lifeless; if you under-water, they become hard, dry, and inflexible. What I am trying to convey with this analogy is that openness or freshness, curiosity, and appreciation mean that we are connected to Nature, connected to life itself—or to God, if you prefer to say it that way. The benefits of a good connection are good nourishment and good circulation.
Experts today are concerned about children’s lack of activity. As I mentioned earlier, we are in the midst of a nationwide epidemic of juvenile obesity as well as juvenile diabetes. Parents are being urged to take their children outside and play with them. Isn’t this a strange idea? When I was a kid, our parents couldn’t get us to come indoors, even for meals. It was a constant battle. There is something really wrong when kids don’t want to play. Before children were told that they had to exercise to be healthy, they had the best exercise in the world—play—but once they were introduced to it as a concept, they no longer wanted to exercise at all. Today, children’s minds are infected with unhealthy ideas from many sources. Their minds are full of junk ideas, their bodies full of junk food. The inevitable result is a loss of openness and circulation. All of a sudden, it’s too cold or too hot to go outside. Minds and bodies close and become inflexible and our children no longer have the openness, freshness, and curiosity they had just two or three years earlier.
“Plant a kernel of wheat and you reap a pint; plant a pint and you reap a bushel. Always the law works to give you back more than you give.”
—Anthony Norvell
The way for anyone to recover openness and curiosity is to consciously practice gratitude and appreciation. This practice opens the mind and the heart. When we complain, blame, and criticize, we close our minds. You can say we close ourselves off to life itself or to Nature or to God. Let me give you an example of what I mean. In the early years of my practice, I had a client with colon cancer who had refused surgery. This man, who was a concentration camp survivor, had an iron will. For a year and a half, he ate everything I recommended. After the first nine months, he went to have a checkup with the doctor who had diagnosed him. When the doctor couldn’t find any trace of the cancer, he assumed he had misdiagnosed the case. My client continued to practice macrobiotics for another nine months. Then one day I got a phone call from his son. He told me his father had begun to eat other sorts of food and was having health problems again. I suggested that his father return to my original recommendations. The son called back and told me his father was refusing to eat the macrobiotic way, that he would rather die than continue to eat the food. And that’s what happened. He ate the macrobiotic way for eighteen months, but during all that time he failed to develop a sense of gratitude or appreciation for what had been given to him. I know it sounds harsh, but I have seen this kind of response again and again in my thirty-odd years of counseling. The man with colon cancer was so strong-willed that he would have eaten sawdust for a year and a half if I had recommended it. Yet because he didn’t develop a deep sense of appreciation, the food that gave him back his life never became delicious to him.
“To speak gratitude is courteous and pleasant, to enact gratitude is generous and noble, but to live gratitude is to touch heaven.”
—Johannes A. Gaertner
Let’s say there’s a man you like, someone you appreciate, and that person does something you’re not too crazy about. You don’t drop him. Since you’re fond of him and appreciate his qualities, you don’t give too much weight to what he’s done. You cut him some slack. However, if you aren’t open to him to start with and, as a consequence, can’t appreciate his finer qualities, then what he’s just done becomes a huge impediment and chances are you’ll drop him altogether.
What I’m getting at is this: appreciation shows openness. If we’re open to someone, we see more and more of their good qualities. If we’re closed, we see more and more of their negative ones. Appreciation is an expression of our openness to life, our willingness to receive life itself. And that openness manifests itself day to day in a deep interest in and curiosity about life, about everything—food, friendship, love, sex, adventures, travel, history, and so on.
“Take only memories, leave nothing but footprints.”
—Chief Seattle
BE FLEXIBLE AND ADAPTABLE IN YOUR PRACTICE
There are only two ways I know of that will help you keep your practice flexible and adaptable. One is to establish a deep connection with the source of life and renewal that is the natural world. You can do this by practicing the 7 Steps really well. The other is to keep in touch with new developments in macrobiotic thinking. Everything changes over time. Everything adapts or dies. Nothing is fixed in cement, including macrobiotics. In today’s rapidly changing world, adaptability and flexibility are more important than ever before. Those people who have been practicing for five, ten, twenty years and haven’t adapted their ways of cooking and eating to the changing conditions of life inevitably get into trouble. We have to look carefully at what we’re doing on a daily basis. If we can’t recognize an imbalance in ourselves—and it’s very hard to see in oneself—then we should seek guidance.
Of course, the degree of flexibility you can permit yourself depends on your health and the circumstances in which you find yourself. Health is freedom. The better your health, the more relaxed you can afford to be socially. If your health can’t afford it, then no matter what the situation or circumstance is, it’s better not to mess around. If you’re healthy, one binge won’t harm you; but if you have a serious health problem and you’ve been practicing well, one binge can cause devastation. If health were money and you were making five hundred dollars a week, then a thousand-dollar car repair would represent serious damage to your financial health. But if you were making ten thousand a week, it would be no big deal.
Ideally, of course, it would be wonderful if everyone could eat very carefully day to day and be adaptable and flexible socially when appropriate. To be able to do this depends on your degree of health. My hope is that you make yourself healthy as quickly as possible so you can do what you want. Let me repeat that health is freedom. People think that freedom produces more freedom, but I don’t agree. I prefer to use words like order or structure rather than discipline, but the meaning is the same. Freedom rests on and comes out of discipline.
“When you’re finished changing, you’re finished.”
—Benjamin Franklin
Where is it most important to exercise discipline, in our Eating Habits or in our Diet? Do we exercise discipline by making sure we sit down to eat, take time for meals, have a grain and vegetable with every meal, etc., or do we exercise it by thinking, I can eat this, I can’t eat that? The answer, of course, is we apply discipline with respect to our Eating Habits. For most people, diet is not discipline. If we enjoy the food, we look forward to eating it. In my book, that’s not discipline. One last point: please try to be flexible and adaptable not only in your own practice but also in your dealings with your children, partners, relatives, and friends.
DEVELOP A STRONG WILL AND THE DETERMINATION TO CREATE YOUR OWN HEALTH
The will to create enduring health has to come from within. No matter how loving, generous, and helpful family and friends are, this is a gift they cannot give us. My longtime observation is that people who want to become well do just that. I am always being asked, “Can macrobiotics help cure my illness?” But the question should be, “Can macrobiotics help me cure myself?” It’s the person who determines the outcome, not the disease, just as it’s the person who determines what illness he or she will get. Have you ever wondered why it is that we get one sort of illness and not another? Based on my counseling experience, I can tell you that we get only that type of illness or disease that perfectly fits our nature. Why should this be the case? Think about it. Becoming ill is an indication—an alarm-bell, in some cases—that we’ve gotten way off track, that we are seriously out of balance. And we each get out of balance in our own particular way. The type of illness we contract tells us what we need to learn about ourselves in order to get back on track.
“Valor consists in the power of self-recovery.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
If we are open and appreciative, then we can understand the significance of the illness in our lives, and we can change. If not, then we will just go on repeating the behavior that brought us the illness in the first place. Those who have overcome a terminal illness all say the same thing. “My illness was the best thing that ever happened to me. It changed my life.”
“It is idle to say that men are not responsible for their misfortunes.”
—Samuel Butler
Some years ago, I invited a young couple from Philadelphia to be part of a panel discussion I led after a lecture I gave at a natural-foods convention. The husband had had testicular cancer many years before and had refused to have his testicle removed surgically. In the beginning, he didn’t practice macrobiotics consistently well. He’d visit me, practice well for a while, and then ease up. Well, the cancer spread, it put pressure on his kidneys, and he nearly died. He had to have serious, heavy-duty chemotherapy. He recovered, but his doctors claimed that the spread was due to my interference in his medical treatment. He said, “No, he gave me good advice but I didn’t take it. This was entirely my fault.” At any rate, his doctors told him he would be sterile. It’s important to know that throughout this long ordeal, he never gave up practicing his version of macrobiotics. I assured him that if he could bring himself to practice really well, he could overcome the sterility. I’m happy to tell you the couple has three strong, healthy children. During the panel discussion, his wife said, “My husband’s cancer was the best thing that ever happened to us. Without it, we wouldn’t have found the macrobiotic way of life and we wouldn’t have had such wonderful children,” one of whom is a highly gifted pianist. I was used to hearing such remarks from the person who’d been ill, but this was the first time I had ever heard—and from a spouse—that macrobiotics was the best thing that had ever happened to an entire family.
“Who is strong? He that can conquer his bad habits.”
—Benjamin Franklin
BE ACCURATE IN YOUR PRACTICE
Accuracy is a spiritual practice, plain and simple. If we are accurate in our practice, it means that we have the ability to devote ourselves to something, to be with something completely without any separation, without any distraction. It means that we understand the value of small things and how the small relates to the large, how the part relates to the whole. So often, it’s the little things in life that make a difference. It’s been said, and rightly so, that God is in the details. For example, we can make the most wonderful dish in the world, but if we don’t season it properly, it won’t come to life, it won’t taste delicious even though everything up to the point of seasoning was done well. The point at which we add salt to a dish determines the degree of flavor the dish will have, whether it will taste salty or sweet. In this case, accurate timing is crucial.
To practice the macrobiotic way of life accurately means you must pay attention. You must give your undivided attention to sitting down to eat, to chewing well, to getting variety, to doing the body rub, and so on. To pay attention means to be there, mind, body, and spirit—with no separation—in the moment you are doing these things. Accuracy is something that is learned by example and training very early in life. If we haven’t had the good fortune to learn it then, we have to work hard to recover our ability to be accurate. And this ability is often the deciding factor in whether or not we recover. Accuracy is a condition of body, mind, and spirit. It is a spiritual practice, not a mechanical one.
“When walking, walk. When eating, eat.”
—Zen Proverb
My father was a diamond setter. He taught only two people, my cousin and myself, although there were many others who wanted to learn the trade at that time. When you apprenticed yourself to him, your first job was to sweep the floors, sweep them well and sweep them endlessly, because the bits of precious metals and gems that had fallen to the floor in the course of the work had to be recovered. Almost everybody failed the sweeping test. They couldn’t or didn’t want to learn to sweep accurately. If they couldn’t be accurate when sweeping, my father wouldn’t teach them anything more. He’d say, “They’re not worth teaching. They can’t even sweep the floor.” His thinking was, if you’re going to do something, do it well or don’t do it at all.
Accuracy regarding the seemingly smallest and most meaningless tasks—that is, the willingness, the patience and the ability to do the most meaningless thing fully and completely—is a quality that fewer and fewer people seem to value. Yet those living in spiritual communities, such as monasteries, willingly undertake the most menial chores and do them with appreciation and joy, understanding that it is through this work that they will grow spiritually. If you find it difficult to be accurate, then perhaps one way to develop this quality would be to take on more and more menial tasks and do them with a full heart. Try it and see. The more accurate and precise you can be in your practice, the more you will receive from your efforts—across the board.
Now, although I use the word “accurate,” often the client will substitute the word “strict.” I want to be clear about this—accuracy and strictness are two entirely different qualities. For one person, to eat simply is accurate. For another, to eat widely is accurate. For some, to eat in restaurants is accurate. For others, to stay away from restaurants is accurate. Accuracy and strictness are not connected in any way; but often when people hear “accuracy,” they interpret it as strictness. Strictness is a straight path to rigidity, and rigidity is a condition of hardness.
“Good timber does not grow with ease. The stronger the wind, the stronger the trees.”
—J. Willard Marriot
Please, think about the meaning of the word accuracy and about how to be accurate. Accuracy implies flexibility and adaptability according to the circumstances. It’s impossible to be accurate if you don’t know what the requirements are. Part of learning to be accurate is to find out what the requirements are. They might involve attending classes, reading books, and so on—in other words, taking the time to find out whatever it is you really need to do to develop that quality of mind, body, and spirit we call accuracy.
CREATE A GOOD SUPPORT NETWORK.
The need to create a good support network is greater than ever. So much of what we have to learn can only be transmitted personally. In the old days, serious students had the attractive option of living in study houses. Most of us who are still actively teaching macrobiotics spent time living in study houses—six months, a year, five years—where we lived and breathed the subject. We roomed together, studied together, played together, cooked for each other, and ate together. The focus of life in the study house was to deepen one’s understanding of all aspects of the macrobiotic way. The sort of education we got was very different from what most people have access to today.
Short of a study house, what can you do to create a support network? All of us need to find ways to be around healthy macrobiotic people. If among your friends or acquaintances there’s a macrobiotic family that knows how to practice well, try to spend time with them. If you live in a major city, chances are you can find a macrobiotic community there. Information of this sort is sometimes posted on health food store bulletin boards. If you live in a more remote area, the best thing you can do is to attend major macrobiotic programs at least a few times a year—even if you have to travel great distances to get to them. Doing this will make all the difference in your practice and your health. Being in a group of people who are healthy really picks you up. There’s a group dynamic that works to everyone’s benefit. Your health will improve more rapidly than it would on your own, no matter how well you are practicing. And if your practice has deteriorated because of isolation, you will be inspired to clean up your act.
When I first established my school, the Strengthening Health Institute, the program consisted of two non-residential weekends. I soon realized that for the program to become more effective, it had to be residential. Students need to feel they are part of the school; they need to be involved at every level. I wanted to recreate the experience I had had of living and breathing macrobiotics, and that’s very difficult to achieve if students arrive in the morning and leave in the evening. Macrobiotic study programs generally offer a traditional learning structure. As with martial-arts schools, there is usually a mix of new and experienced students, something along the lines of a one-room schoolhouse where different grades are taught together and a bit like the structure in large families where the older children typically help the younger ones.
Please do whatever it takes to create your network. Without one, it is much harder to move in the direction of health.
LEARN TO COOK WELL
Finally, learn to cook well. I can’t emphasize this enough. Macrobiotic food has a bad reputation. Many people think the food is terrible. Well, it all depends on your experience. If your first macrobiotic meal is bad, it’s easy to dismiss all macrobiotic food. It’s useful to remember that the world is full of bad cooks—no matter what sort of food they are preparing. And macrobiotics is no exception. However, a bad macrobiotic meal may be worse for you than an ordinary meal! Unrefined, organic grains and vegetables carry more ki (energy) than their counterparts. They store more energy and vitality. If macrobiotic food is well prepared, it nourishes you more than ordinary food. The downside is that if it’s poorly prepared, the effects stay with you longer. We can say that macrobiotic cuisine has the potential to be the most delicious or the most dreadful of any cuisine.
“Good cooking does not depend on whether the dish is large or small, expensive or economical. If one has the art, then a piece of celery or salted cabbage can be made into a marvelous delicacy; whereas if one has not the art, not all the greatest delicacies and rarities of land, sea or sky are of any avail.”
—Yuan Mei
Please remember that no one’s cooking is perfect. Perfection is not the point and it’s not our goal. Even the best cooks falter. What we strive for is the ability to express ourselves accurately through our cooking, in the same way that artists express themselves accurately through their art. I don’t think anyone will dispute that cooking is an art. What’s more, cooking is a form of art that creates life. And what is art, if not the expression of one’s personal vision of life on earth? Our ability to stay with macrobiotics—and not just to stay with it but to embrace it with a full heart, to choose it enthusiastically over all other ways of life—depends a lot on how well we learn to cook. Whether we cook every day or periodically, we should know how to cook well. The more we know about what it takes to put a delicious macrobiotic meal on the table, the more appreciative we can be of the efforts of others.
I’ve observed over the years that there seem to be two different takes on the subject of macrobiotic food. The basic one, and the one I subscribe to, is that the food itself is delicious. Our job is to learn how to bring out its natural taste, color, and texture, using simple ingredients and traditional techniques. Simple ingredients and proper techniques are all we need to produce a delicious, satisfying meal. In this style of cooking, modeled after Japanese temple cooking, seasoning, spices, and oil are used sparingly but to great effect.
Then there’s the other approach. The thinking behind it goes something like this: “I’ll put up with this food for now, but once I get healthy I’ll be able to eat the good stuff. I’ll be able to eat more widely.” There’s nothing wrong, per se, with eating widely or with eating simply. It all depends on our condition. What’s wrong is the implication that once we can use more oil, once we can cook with herbs and spices, once we can eat tropical fruits and vegetables, then we’ll be practicing the “real” macrobiotics and our food will be truly delicious. This is simply not true. Furthermore, what’s particularly unsettling about this approach is the belief that the simple meals we eat day to day are not the most delicious, satisfying, nourishing, or fulfilling ones we can have. I think this is a dangerous approach. There is nothing more delicious than well-prepared brown rice or miso soup or blanched, steamed, or sautéed vegetables. On what do I base my assertion? The test for me is how many days in a row, how many years in a row I can eat a particular food and continue to find it delicious, satisfying, and nourishing. Now, we’ve all gone to fine restaurants and thought the food was incredible and said, “That was one of the best meals I’ve ever had.” I translate such a statement to mean that if we eat such a meal once a year, it does taste that delicious. But if we eat it once a month, it tastes a bit less delicious. And, if we eat it weekly, well—you get the picture. If we eat such a meal every day, it’s a safe bet that we won’t be able to stand the sight or smell of it after a while. It’s just too much. It’s an assault on our senses. What this means to me is that such a meal is not truly delicious. Of course, from time to time, it’s wonderful to have such a meal. It’s a bit like describing someone as a great person and then saying you can only take that person in limited doses—which is quite different from saying, “This is a great person, someone I really want to spend lots of time with.”
“Cook it with pleasure—eat it with joy.”
—Clarissa Dickson Wright
The problem is that learning to bring out the truly delicious natural taste of food without relying on such things as herbs and spices to take up the slack takes more time, patience, sensitivity, and skill than other sorts of cooking. Here’s a generalization I think is valid: since I’ve been involved in macrobiotics, I’ve observed that you can divide people practicing macrobiotics into two groups. Those who, when they come up against a problem, look inward and those who, in the same circumstances, look outward. The ones who look outward don’t last. (Actually, they don’t last at anything.) Let’s say they become dissatisfied with one or more aspects of the macrobiotic way of life—the philosophy, the healthcare, the spirituality, the cooking, whatever—it doesn’t really matter. Eventually we all meet with resistance. We come up against the brick wall of ourselves, so to speak. It’s part of living. And then we have two basic choices. We can look outward and think, “Someone out there has got to get me past this, someone has got to help me or I’m out of here.” Or we can look inward and think, “I already have the means to help myself. If I just stick with this, I’ll get through it.” Inevitably, we all arrive at that point of resistance in our cooking. We find ourselves thinking, “Is this all there is, no more ingredients, no more choices?” I can guarantee this will happen to you. When it does, if you stop and ask yourself, “What can I do to make my food more delicious and exciting?” a new dimension will open up and you will be able to take your cooking to the next level. This is how the process of growth works.
If we look outside ourselves for the answer, then we relinquish the ability and the power to create or change our lives. This doesn’t mean that we have to do everything by ourselves, that we can’t ask for help. At one time or another, we all need guides; but we are the ones who choose them. We are the ones who decide when we need help and for how long a time. We might decide we need shiatsu massage or that we want to improve our cooking or that we have to learn more about macrobiotic philosophy so that we can better help ourselves. This frame of mind is the polar opposite of someone who thinks, “This person is going to help me” or “that person is going to save my life.” That’s dependence. We are moving toward freedom.
Everything I’ve been saying comes down to this: a healthy person is self-reliant and self-sufficient. My approach to life has always been that if we’re here, we already have what we need to take care of all our problems. We might require help from time to time to get past a rough spot or to have something pointed out to us or to give us a little push. But, still, it’s up to us to choose what we want to do and how much energy we want to give it. It’s up to us to take the initiative in our own lives. In other words, it’s up to us to behave in a self-sufficient manner, and that means not waiting around for someone or something “out there” to come to our aid. Modern life encourages dependence. Part of the macrobiotic journey or adventure—for it is an adventure—is to free ourselves of that dependence by learning to develop our own healing ability and, through struggle, to gain the power to create the life we want.
“A good cook is like a sorceress who dispenses happiness.”
—Elsa Schiaparelli
For many of us today, the principal issue is one of health. The challenge is how to create good health so that we are free to live our lives. But let’s not forget that health is guided by spirit. And it is in the spirit of macrobiotics to look at the challenges and difficulties that come our way as gifts. For it is in meeting challenges and in overcoming difficulties that we begin to develop the power to heal ourselves, the power to build the life we want. To be truly healthy, we have to embrace the spirit of health.
Which brings me to my final point. Although the spirit of health has many components, it would be a grave mistake to forget the totality. We cannot separate one part from any of the others without destroying the whole. For instance, leaning to cook well requires accuracy, but it also it requires flexibility and openness. You see what I mean. Macrobiotic thinking differs from modern thinking in both its ability and its willingness to look first at the whole, and only then at the parts out of which that whole is formed. If we look at life through the lens of macrobiotics, it becomes clear that each part of life is dependent on all the other parts. It follows then that if we destroy any part of life, we contribute to the destruction of all of life. On the brighter side—or what used to be called “the side of the angels”—if we enhance any part of life, we help to refresh all of life.