How do you reconcile a desire to "tread softly on the earth" and all your particular health requirements and preferences with the unpredictability and other variables of travel when you go on holiday? And what is a holiday or vacation meant to do for you? La Vimea is a unique "biotique" hotel in the South Tyrol that helped me to find out what was possible to achieve now and (hopefully) even more easily in the future...
Travelling away from home can be an extra-challenge for those of us with health challenges and sensitivities of any kind because it takes us out of our routine. It's not so much the distance but the upheaval that can be difficult to cope with (on top of the extra tiredness that comes with travel) when you probably have well-established survival tactics in place at home that enable you to cope pretty well with your health most of the time. Booking a holiday can feel a bit like planning to blow all that carefully created homeostasis to pieces in the name of having fun and there have been times when I wonder why I do it; is it even worth it (the answer, by the way, is yes). Changes in sleep arrangements and diet can throw health into disarray when maintaining that balance has become a finely tuned thing.
Is "gluten free" a distraction from health as suggested by this article? I think so; not that its a bad idea but its the way we go about it, focussing on the avoidance and not on what is actively most healthy for us to eat. There's such a core life lesson in this....a reminder to focus on what we DO want, to embrace what is POSITIVE for us, rather than being in resistance mode, avoiding what doesn't work.
Revisiting this topic a year on during a (now rare) flare-up of Epstein-Barr symptoms, it feels like a great time to talk about all the massive health improvements achieved in that year through some new approaches to healing what can feel most stuck; not least via Anthony William The Medical Medium's amazing book which deserves another shout-out for being just so nail-on-the head with my experiences. If you have a so-called "unshiftable" chronic illness going on, this post is for you!
An article I chanced upon suggested olive oil for menopausal itch because of the oleuropein that olive oil contains (I take a daily capsule of olive leaf for that very reason as its an excellent antioxidant). Stood in my bathroom this morning, my eye falling on that unused bottle of argan oil, an instinct suddenly told me (as I recalled that olive-like smell..) that argan oil may also contain oleuropein if that's the thing that smells like rancid olives...so I slapped some all over my calves, my hips and especially my chest, which has been feeling like I have a third-degree sunburn for three days now. Voila - pain gone!
To open up to tuning-in – directly – to the food that best serves us as an individual – is self-empowerment realised; and is the most direct way to achieving optimum health and all the trimmings that come with that (including ideal body weight, strong bones, balanced hormones and longevity). How do we do this, do we have to learn a whole new skill set? No, we just listen to all the overt and more subtle clues our body is so diligently presenting to us. Believe me, the natural high you get when you effortlessly sync with your body’s most direct food requests and then allow your instincts to take over how you interact with that food to create colourful, ingenious, deeply-satisfying meals is the stuff of divine inspiration; its like playing in heaven’s kitchen.When you live in a place of joy and highly-tuned instinct around food you eat when you are hungry and you know just what to eat when you do; how easy can it get? After just a few months of living consistently like this, your body starts to trust that you are listening to it and delivering what it most needs in order to thrive...Its like the body lets out one enormous sigh of relief and sheds all of its stored-up layers of surplus fat and so much emotional baggage too…because it is now striving to meet the higher vibration of all the wonderful food you are delivering to it. It very quickly and easily drops all that old weight over the side, like so much unnecessary ballast, before taking off for the ride of its life and the sheer exhilaration of how different your body can feel is palpable; a very different way of experiencing life in human form.
So far, I've not addressed the topic of how and why I became a vegetarian in this space though I've been meaning to for some time as its one of my great passions to have chosen this way and its had such a great impact on my health. As I come up to the three-year … Continue reading Choosing to be vegetarian – an honest appraisal
Getting back into that mindset of 'yes, I can do the things I want' is a really BIG part of any recovery plan, one that exponentially delivers the return on this new and positive mindset in the form of the ever-increasing good health and expanded lifestyle that it delivers. Here's some superfood sources that may help you start the process of trusting that you are physically capable of doing all that you dream of doing in an ideal day.
A few days of extreme fibro-fog sent me off on a path of research that opened up even more doors of profound understanding than ever; showing me how the feedback loop that we are (within our own bodies and far beyond) exists in the ecstasy of harmonic flow...except when its 'glued' together by - well - to get into all that I suggest you read on as there's no pocket version of what I found out. Another one of my more substantial posts but with a lot of playful exploration and optimism inside for anyone who experiences fibro-fog or so-called chronic illness.
I say "be sulphite aware" like you probably already are but if you've never (knowingly) crossed swords with these things, you may not have a clue what I'm talking about. Sulphites are a preservative slipped into all sorts of food and particularly wine (and then, particularly, white wine) but look out for them and you'll … Continue reading Being sulphite aware
Living whole 