Colour and Emotion

Psychologists studying the effect of light have discovered that colour can influence our bodies, moods and feelings. Red, the colour of fire and passion, has the power to excite the senses. Blue, cooling and quieting, brings serenity, calms our feelings and slows our reactions.
Sit in a red room and your chatter will become animated and time will fly by. Sit in a blue room and your thoughts will become introspective. Relax, there is no need to hurry. Time will hang heavier here. Each colour has its own properties and excerts its individual influence, subtly impacting on our emotions and behaviour in different ways. Green brings us solace, orange joy and violet inspiration.
It is only by becoming aware of these effects that we can harness the power of colour and actively use it to express our feelings or to change key aspects or our lives. Create a completely new atmosphere in your home by simply changing the decor. Improve your image by wearing the colours that bring your face alive. Or even enhance your health by focusing on the colour that will help to bring balance and harmony to your body and mind.
(by Lori Reid from the colour book)

May you be guided

"From the heart of Ancient Africa
Pulsates the drumbeat of Wisdom
As old as its Legends, As Noble as its People,
As Challenging as its Warriors
This is your time   Your Place of Choosing
Your moment of Decision
Fly as the Eagle   Roar as the Lion
Live Life Deliberately, Passionately, Never Passively.
May You be Guided."
(by Eivind Gjoesund)

Importance of Medicinal Plants

Plants were once a primary source of all the medicines in the world and they still continue to provide mankind with new remedies. Natural products and their derivates represent more than 50% of all drugs in clinical use in the world. Higher plants contribute no less than 25% to the total. Well-known examples of plant-derived medicines include quinine, morphine, codeine, aspirine, atropine, reserpine and cocaine. Recently, important new anti-cancer drugs such as taxol (Taxus spp) and vincristine (Catharanthus roseus) have been developed. In South Africa, a large part of the day-to-day medicine is still derived from plants and large volumes of plants or their extracts are sold in the informal and commercial sectors of the economy. South Africa's contribution to world medicine includes Cape aloes (Aloe ferox), buchu (Agathosma betulina) and devils claw (Harpagophytum procumbrens), but local equivalents exist for many of the famous remedies used elsewhere. There is a growing interest in natural and traditional medicines as a source of new commercial products. Medicinal plants are somthing of the future, not of the past!
(by Ben-Eric Van Wyk from Medicinal Plants of South Africa)

Animals as Spirit Guides

Those spirits that are in animal form that teach us, guide us, empower us, and help us heal are called animal spirit guides or spirit animals. In shamanic and indigenous cultures, they may be called totem animals or power animals. Often these terms are used interchangeably, although there are subtle differences in meaning.
The term power animal has its origin in shamanism. This is a specialized animal guide that shamans or shamanic practitioners acquire early in their initiation into their practice. Their power animal travels with them whenever they go on a shamanic journey, which is an altered state of awareness in which the practitioner sends their soul or consciousness into non-ordinary reality - a shamanic term for the spirit world - to receive teachings, guidance, and healings. You can, however, have a relationship with a power animal even if you're not a shaman or shamanic practitioner. They may come to you in meditations, visions, dreams, or shamanic journeys. It's a highly personal and specialized relationship with an animal spirit guide, one in which the personality and characteristics of the particular power animal that you've attracted to you is typically reflective of your own personality and characteristic.
(by Steven D. Farmer from Animal Spirit Guides)

Vitamin B12

What is does: Needed for making use of protein. Helps the blood carry oxygen, hence essential for energy. Needed for synthesis of DNA. Essential for nerves and memory. Deals with tobacco smoke and other toxins.
Deficiency signs: Poor hair condition, eczema or dermatitis, mouth oversensitive to heat or cold, irritability, anxiety or tension, lack of energy, constipation, tender or sore muscles, pale skin.
How much: Recommended daily allowance: 1mcg;   Optimal daily allowance: 25mcg
Supplementary Range: 10-500mcg
Toxicity: None reported with oral dose. Very rarely, an allergic reaction to injection occurs.
Best food sources: Oysters (15mcg), sardines (25mcg), tuna (5mcg), lamb (trace), eggs (1.7mcg), shrimp (1mcg), cottage cheese (5mcg), milk (0.3mcg), turkey and chicken (2mcg), cheese (1.5mcg)
Best supplement: Methylcobalamine
Helpers: Works with folic acid. Best taken as B complex with food
Robbers: Alcohol, smoking, lack of stomach acid.
(by Patrick Holford from The Optimum Nutrition Bible) 

The Myth of the Bean

The simplistic view of food combining is that carbohydrates and protein foods should be separated because they are digested differently. The fact that eating certain kinds of beans produces flatulence is often quoted as a negative effect, because beans contain both protein and carbohydrates. However, it is now known that this is not the reason for beans' boisterous reputation.
Some beans contain proteins such as lectin, which cannot be digested by the enzymes in our digestive system, even when eaten alone. These proteins can, however, be digested by the bacteria that live in the large intestine. So when you eat beans you feed not only yourself but also these bacteria. After a good meal of lectins, these bacteria produce gas, hence the flatulence. It has got nothing to do with food combining. Many cultures throughout the world have evolved to eat a diet in which beans or lentils are a staple food -  but they suffer no digestive problems.
(By Patrick Holford from The Optimum Nutrition Bible)

The Value of Fresh Juices and Drinks

The advantage of juices is that they focus and concentrate the energy of enzymes, minerals, vitamins, and phytonutrients. Juices carry the amplified healing energy of fruits and vegetables plus added food concentrates such as chlorella. Fruit juices act primarily as cleansers. Citrus fruits, for example, have solvent actions; apples contain malic acid and galacturonic acid, which are detoxifiers; pineapples have a high bromelain content, which has many healing and anti-inflammatory effects. Fruits - and fruit juices even more so - help to cleanse and purify the organs. Vegetable juices have more of a tonic effect that heals, stabilizes, and builds the body. Like fruit juices, each vegetable has a specific power to heal a particular organ. For example, beets and dandelions help heal the liver. Green juices contain chlorophyll, which is a tonifier that leads to incredible healing experiences for many.
(by Dr. Gabriel Cousens from Power Juices Super Drinks)

Energy and Health

Consider the most basic function of energy, which is to keep your body alive. Your body is in a healthy state when its energy is in a healthy state. Such a notion goes beyond the worldview of mainstream medicine. A hundred years ago, germs were the stars of medicine. All the excitement centered on discovering new bacteria and viruses, matching them up with diseases they caused, and then killing the germes before they could hurt the body. Today germs are the stars of the show, and the same pattern is repeating itself. The biggest excitement centres on finding new genes, matching them with specific diseases, then trying to manipulate or splice them before harm is done to the body. Yet the star should have been energy, because germs and genes, like any object, are reducible to energy, and therefore all harm caused to the body is traceable to this fundamental force. 
(By Deepak Chopra from Reinventing The Body, Resurrecting The Soul) 

Citrus Flu Tonic

With winter approaching, a good recepy for a flu fighter drink might be appropriate:
Citrus Flu Tonic:
1          Grapefruit, juiced
2          Oranges, juiced
1          Lemon, juiced
1tsp      Orange Rind Juice
1/4 inch Ginger Root, minced
2ml        Echinacea Liquid Extract (2 dropperfuls)
1  tsp     Royal Jelly

Cut the grapefruit and oranges into eights, but only after you scrape, scrape, scrape the pulp from the inside rind. Therein rests the miracle flavonoids and their magical curative powers. Buy organic fruits so you can include a bit of rind with its potent essential oils without the pesticides. Remove as many seeds as possible. Mince the fresh ginger and blend all ingredients until smooth. Royal jelly takes the edge off of the acidic flavour and, as a cousin to bee propolis, adds its own antibacterial capacity to suppress staphylococcus and streptococcus. But you could substitute with honey. A morning drink.
(by Steve Meyerowitz from Power Juices Super Drinks)

Fasting for Spiritual Strengthening

When John baptized Christ, the Spirit led Him into the desert - not for a vacation, but a preparation through fasting. Each day was another day closer to the suffering of the Cross. Any man would want to run from such a fate, but Christ used fasting to strengthen His resolve. One of Satan's main tactics is to encourage any addiction or lifestyle that makes the body the master, where man is moved by every little whim of the flesh. Fasting is a powerful discipline for bringing the body under submission. You take control. It suffers and you say NO. A soldier without needs cannot be tempted and will not turn from duty. Each great servant of God had his/her time of fasting. It is an essential spiritual discipline and without it we are weak. It fortifies spiritual foundations, builds intimacy with God and strengthens resolve.

Prayer of the day

Today, I will allow myself to be surprised by God.

I will invite and welcome the miracles which are so effortless to the Divine Mind.

I will be open to the greatness and generosity, to the unparalleled imagination.

I will respond with gratitude and dwell in the light of wonder!

The Quantum Mechanical Human Body

To comprehend how this is possible, we have to delve deeper into the body itself. In Ayurveda, the physical body is the gateway to what I call the "quantum mechanical human body". Physics informs us that the fabric of nature lies at the quantum level, far beyond atoms and molecules. A quantum, defined as the basic unit in matter of energy, is from 10,000,000 to 100,000,000 times smaller than the smallest atom. At this level, matter and energy become interchangeable. All quanta are made of invisible vibrations - ghosts of energy - waiting to take physical form. Ayurveda says that the same is true of the human body - it first takes from as intense but invisible vibrations, called quantum fluctuations, before it proceeds to coalesce into impulses of energy and particles of matter.
The quantum mechanical body is the underlying basis for everything we are: thoughts, emotions, proteins, cells, organs - any visible or invisible part of ourselves. At the quantum level, your body is sending out all kinds of invisible signals, waiting for you to pick them up. You have a quantum pulse underlying your physical one, and a quantum heart beating it out. In fact, Ayurveda holds that all the organs and processes in your body have a quantum equivalent.
(By Deepak Chopra, Perfect Health)

Enzymes, The Spark of Life

Enzymes are the universal "Spark of Life". The word ENZYME comes from the Greek root ENZYMOS, which means "to cause change". Enzymes are responsible for every metabolic action in the body. From blinking an eye to secreting saliva, from the beating of the heart to digesting nutrients, enzymes are the champions that make it all happen. They are the catalysts that enable cells to work and chemical reactions to happen without themselves being consumed in the process. Enzymes are ancient and modern magic.
Enzymes are energized protein molecules made up of specific protein structures called APOENZYMES. Enzymes work with cofactors, such as  vitamins and minerals, to spark biochemical reactions. It is the energy created by the enzymes that produces biochemical reactions, which is the magic that orchestrates a trillion cells to cooperatively function. These actions and reactions regulate the body's  diverse processes and are an essential part of larger processes like digestion. Without this "spark of life" of enzymes, life would simply cease to exist.
Specific enzymes are tailored for specific means and needs. There are thousands of different enzymes in the body, each with a precise encoded function. There are enzymes for digestion; cellular function and energy; repairing tissue, organs, and cells; utilizing and decoding nutrients; concentrating iron in the blood; coagulating blood; eliminating carbon dioxide from the lungs; detoxifying waste from the kidneys, colon, and liver; and a relatively infinite number of cooperative interactions that enable the miraculous process of life to happen.
(by Renee Loux Underkoffler from Living Cuisine, The Art and Spirit of Raw Foods)