Sustainable Eating

Thai Yoga Concepts: Sustainable Eating and Sustainable Health: Part 4 of 4

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Thai Yoga Concepts: Sustainable Eating and Sustainable Health: Part 4 of 4

By Dr. Anthony B. James DM(P), ND, MD(AM), SMOKH

(Repost: Transcribed from a live talk at the Florida Sustainable Living and Perma-culture Conference, Plant City Florida, March 26, 2011)

Edible should also mean to buy local

Besides the lowered impact on the environment, another reason to buy local is to support your local community! We buy food from Peggy and Jeff at Eco-farm because they are our neighbors! That’s it, that’s the reason. We want to support them, they are up to good things, they are helping us to have a longer, healthier, happier life and by God, if I’m going to support anybody in the world, before I send 100 bucks to the American Red Cross, I’m going to send 100 bucks to Peggy and Jeff with my local CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) and buy some food with it. I need them and they need me and that’s why I do it. Buy local. Make it personal. If you don’t personally know someone that you can buy food from, you need to cure that by getting out and meeting somebody who grows food.

A clear conscience makes the food taste better!

These choices to bring consciousness to what and how we eat need to be personal and emotional. That is conscience, by the way, and we need conscience. Edible means to eat food with a clear conscience. To have a clear conscience about what you eat. What does conscience mean? I’ll give you my definition. Conscience is an emotional realization of the truth. So its very important for me to have a good conscience about what I eat and to emotionally know that I am doing the best that I can. If I don’t know that and I go ahead and I consume it anyways, then I am acquiescing to the possibility that the food may cause harm to me and to somebody else. That’s tough, I know.

5% Meat

Edible means to eat less meat. Research from many sources suggests minimum 95% plant-based nutrition and 5% animal products. That’s just science, its nothing personal. You want to live happier, healthier, longer lives? You want to support the soil on the inside and out? You want to support the ecology and reduce global warming? You want to have more support for democracy in the world? Eat less meat. And then, whatever meat you do eat, make sure that you’re supporting the local farmers, that it is organic, grass fed, free range, chemical free, antibiotic free, etc.

Don’t expect to change overnight! I use the 95/5 idea because it is unrealistic to expect everyone to become a vegetarian now. We have several thousand years of indoctrination into “eating meat equals prosperity” to overcome. We’re not going to be able to turn on a dime. You vegetarians and you vegans, get the freak off the backs of your meat-eating friends! Get off their backs, because what you resist, persists. The harder you push them, the harder they will hold on to those unproductive ways of eating. If you want people to change the way they eat then do it by example. Make the most nutritious, happy, fun-filled, exciting food that you can to share with them, so that they feel like it would be crazy not to eat your delicious food. That will make it easier.

95% Plant Based Diet

Edible means to prefer a plant-based diet. Aside from the morality question of cruelty to animals from factory production of animal based foods, animal food factories are the single largest users of antibiotics. 70% of all manufactured antibiotics go to animal food production. You need to know this especially if you are against the use of antibiotics and you think that the epidemic increase in antibiotic-resistant methicillin and staph bacteria is not a good thing. 70% of the antibiotics are not being used on human patients, but they are going to the cows that people eat. Then they go from their urine and their feces into the water supply. Then from aquifers into the water supplies of the hospitals where it is then recycled into the bodies of people with deficient immune systems, where they then become susceptible to antibiotic resistant bacteria. See? It’s the circle of life. Eat less meat. Prefer a plant-based diet.

Eat the widest variety of foods you can manage

Why? That’s the way foods naturally grow in the world, in a healthy ecosystem, and it is also the way they are supposed to come into our system, in great variety and in seasonal rotation.  Every type of food offers a different nutrient profile and benefit towards helping you living a full healthy and happy life. Give every good thing in nature the possibility of sharing its life enhancing qualities with you. Variety and diversity strengthen your immune system and make your taste buds happy. There is research that suggest that rotating your foods and diet can reduce allergies and may even be part of a productive strategy for mental and emotional health. Ortho-molecular Medicine and research specializes in this field.  Try more. Try everything!

For everyone sake grow something!

Grow a good perma-culture based garden in a little square foot of land- you should be able to grow 6, 8 or 10 different kinds of plants. If you don’t have that little plot then invest in a pot of some kind and put an edible plant, vegetable, herb, or flower in it. Practice becoming a more conscious person by nurturing and caring for it until it matures and then eat it! Everyone can and should grow something. No reason why not!

I’m serious, grow something to eat!

ANYTHING! Everybody here should be growing one food item. Grow anything! Grow a chive! I mean come on, grow something. Anybody can grow a Chia pet. You can eat them! It’s about elevating your consciousness and bringing energy, attention, consciousness, breath and pressure to changing your environment. GROW SOMETHING.

Perma-culture experience in Thailand

Go to Thailand, you’ll see farms that if you’re not paying attention you would never know it was a farm because it looks like an overgrown jungle. You say, “What do you mean, this is a farm?” And they say, “This is a multi-generational farm! We’ve been farming here for years.” You say, “But we’re on a trail in the jungle!” And they say, “No, no, you’re on a trail through the farm!” You look around saying, “What farm? What are you talking about?” The guy reaches out and plucks a leaf off a bush and says, ‘”Put this in your mouth.” You take a bite of it- its green tea! “Whoa! Oh! There are tea plants here!” He says, “No, there are ten thousand! This is a tea plantation.” This all happened to me and I thought I was in a jungle. I said “Well, what is all this other weeds and under-growth around the base here?” He says, “Oh, that’s edible morning glories, and these are coffee.” Did you know coffee and tea grow together? They can! You don’t have to mono-culture either coffee or tea! I said “Oh, well what is this kind of viny thing here that looks like it’s choking the life out of these plants?” “Oh,” he says, “that’s edible morning glory.” Turns out to be one of my most favorite edible green foods on the whole planet.

Reasonable eating means seasonal eating

Edible means to eat seasonally for your region of the country. A billion years of survival data in our DNA tells us that the most appropriate foods for us to eat at any given time are the foods that are ripe and ready for harvest right this moment. That’s what we are supposed to be eating right now. If you don’t know what that is, well that shows the measure of separation from the environment that you are currently suffering. The proper treatment is education and experience!

Stick out your nose, open up the window, look outside, talk to a friend and say, “Hey! It’s the end of March, what is in season? What foods are in season in my geographic area?” Seek them out as your primary foods. It will change! The foods you eat are supposed to rotate, just like in nature. The soil isn’t always the same. The variety that you see in the natural ecology in December is not the same as you see in March. There will still be an equally great diversity but it will just be different. “Same same but different” as the Thai’s say “Munkan mai munkan.”

Edible should mean- eat only foods that you know you’re not allergic to!

Stop eating that which inflames you! I’d bet that everyone in this room knows or suspects something that they eat that they are allergic to. When you eat foods that are allergens, they cause a histamine reaction in your brain. This triggers an inflammatory response in your tissue, which triggers edema. Inflammation and edema are the hotbeds of disease. So one of the ways to prevent disease through your eating habits is to stop eating the foods that you already know you’re allergic to. That means stop eating any food that when you eat it regularly it makes you feel bad. It’s really easy, but we’re so out of touch with our inner ecology that we don’t know this.

Consider your overall attitude towards eating new food in general, if it has a label, READ IT.

Don’t buy it until you actually read the label. You will be surprised how many times you will put something back that you were 99% sure you were going to buy after you read the label.

Don’t waste food- compost food waste

Composting is one of the very best ways to justify our existence on this planet. It’s one of the proven simple technologies that actually feeds the earth. As a practice it runs contrary to the trends overwhelming the eco-systems and environment with harmful waste. Composting keep the useful biomass out of the land fill and on the soil where it belongs. Keep in mind that “circle of life” thing. Using your own compost to enhance the soil of your garden, or your friends garden will help insure more vital and amazing foods. These foods have more minerals and bio-available nutrients and healthy bacteria. Composting supports the process of these foods becoming our essential medicines. Everyone should compost.

Make the best possible food choices according to your understanding

Before shopping, make a list- if it is not on your list it is probably not edible. Involve your family, friends, church, social network or group in a food project, or join one. Edible should be part of that.

Make your food beyond interesting and nutritious

We have to be ninja. I’m a ninja for food! You want to know I am a healthy food ninja? How I went from a raging carnivore to a plant based diet? Know how I do it? Julie and I, we craft in the secret dark recesses of our attic with our candles and our sigils on the floor and our sacred tomes of secret knowledge (I mean favorite recipe books) and we flip the pages and we recite the ancient magic incantations of holistic, organic, local, fresh, seasonal ingredients and we put them (boil, boil, toil and trouble) into our cauldron (our safe crokery) and we put our own energy and our own sacred essence in to that boiling cauldron of magic elixir and we call it to allurement, we call it to glamor, and healing affirmation and we call it to create life and we call it to manifest our vision for the world as we see the swirl of the world inside that pot and then we serve that on the table and its an irresistible force. People are drawn to it, “OOOOHHH! What is that?” And Julie goes, “Dinner!” Then they eat and they are like, “oh, uh, um, how?” You can see it, the trying to adjust, trying to adapt, trying to encapsulate the idea that the tastiest thing that’s ever crossed this inner and outer brain barrier, has no meat! And it’s tasty! And it’s medicine! Then they start to make these little adjustments. “Hey, do you have a recipe? What are the ingredients? Is it hard to make?” “Nah,” we say, “you just throw some healthy ingredients, veggies, herbs, grains, herbs, minerals in a bowl and stir it up! It’s easy!” And then they start to do it and next thing you know, you’ve saved a soul, you’ve got another person who is going to live a longer, healthier, happier life.

Thai Yoga Concepts:Sustainable Eating and Sustainable Health Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

Learn SomaVeda® Thai Yoga!

Disclaimer:

All Information is provided for educational purposes only and not intended to be used for any therapeutic purpose, neither is it intended to diagnose, prevent, treat or cure any disease. Please consult a health care professional for diagnosis and treatment of medical conditions. While all attempts have been made to ensure the accuracy of this information. The author and ThaiYogaCenter.Com does not accept any responsibility for any errors or omissions.

Copyright© 2011, Dr. Anthony B. James   All rights reserved under International and Pan American copyright conventions. World rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Inquires should be addressed to: Dr. Anthony B. James, 5401 Saving Grace Ln. Brooksville, FL 34602 ·  http://www.ThaiYogaCenter.Com

Thai Yoga Concepts: Sustainable Eating and Sustainable Health: Part 3 of 4

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Thai Yoga Concepts: Sustainable Eating and Sustainable Health: Part 3 of 4

Dr. Anthony B James receives the UTTS Hanuman Award

By Dr. Anthony B. James DM(P), ND, MD(AM), SMOKH

(Repost: Transcribed from a live talk at the Florida Sustainable Living and Perma-culture Conference, Plant City Florida, March 26, 2011)

Food and eating strategies need to be based on non-violence

We are utterly and completely dependent on the viruses and the bacteria in the soil for our life. Somehow we lost that connection and so when we begin to experience them in our body, we think that they are foreign invaders and so we have to cut, kill and burn them. We think we have to destroy them so we do the same thing as when we apply pesticide to the soil outside, we kill them! Then the soil is no longer is able to sustain the biodiversity that life is dependent upon, monoculture prevails and diversity dies. Inevitably there is a dissolution of life and a cascading domino effect on other ecologies and eventually everybody draws the same picture: if we continue to create monoculture, the world is going to be unsuitable for human existence at a definite point in time. Everybody comes to the same conclusion. If we do the same inside of our body, guess what? We come to the same conclusion. We don’t need to kill the bacteria in our body, we don’t need to kill the viruses in our body; they have ALWAYS been with us. We need to learn how to be an ecosystem within our selves and we need to learn how to communicate. Non-violent communication, how about that? NVC applied to your body’s internal ecology. I am not trying to kill the bacteria in my body; I am negotiating an existence that is compatible, mutual, and supportive. That’s what my food strategies are about.

If it’s not right we fix it not kill it

People will say, “Well, what about infection?” Yeah? What about it? What do you do when the soil PH is not right? What do you do if you look at the soil and the mycology and bacterial structure of the soil is not right? Do you then kill it? What do you do? You AMEND it. You actually bring in plants and structure that out of their life cycle will create the balance that you want. Why? Because that is sustainable. If you dump chemicals on it, it will chemically give you a balance on a test and then you will have the imbalance that will be the consequence of the chemically induced state and it won’t be sustainable. The longer you do that to the soil and the longer you force it to produce, eventually it looks like desertification. You will kill it and reduce its ability to sustain life at the microbial level to a point to where it is no longer possible for life to be sustained. The soil will turn to sand and rock, no longer able to sustain life. We are going to end up doing the same thing to our selves because we don’t eat right and we don’t have productive eating strategies. We need to bring the same sustainable strategies to eating that we would to the soil, inner soil and outer soil, that’s what I’m saying.

Do you want to know how to get connected to the earth?

The easiest way in the world to re-establish and to revitalize your connection to the earth is to bring consciousness to what you eat. It’s so simple and you don’t have to get all big and spiritual about it. My late, adopted father Chief Floyd Real bird would have said it the same way. He would have said, “I don’t give a damn about ritual and external ceremony, the only thing mother earth cares about is how you live! Mother earth doesn’t care if you do a smudge, you light some sage or you whoop a pipe around in the air. Mother earth doesn’t care! Mother earth is all about how gentle you walk on her, how compatible you are with her other children and these kinds of things.” It is more important who you are than what you do. You want to get in touch with the planet, you want to get in touch with your roots, and you want to get in touch with your most fundamental spiritual essence? You want to get in touch with the source of life? Bring consciousness to your food. It’s the easiest way.

I am the laziest person that you’ve ever met in your whole life so I’m looking for the easiest way. What is the easiest way I can make all these universal connections? Cause’ I’m a lazy guy, right? So I’ve figured it out. The easiest way to handle all those things is to bring consciousness to what I eat! And guess what? Just by doing that not only do I get to live healthier and happier and be more functioning, but my family does too. Just by doing that alone, I lost 50 lbs in the last 2 years. I haven’t been on a diet for one minute. I eat like a freaking horse because I love to eat! I just brought consciousness to my food and my body. Soil harmonized. It equalized. It balanced. It looks like me 50 lbs lighter.

Get down on the food chain

Lets run through a couple of things. One, consider eating lower on the food chain. Ever hear the justification of “the little things eat the bigger things and then it goes on until we’re at the top of the food chain eating every damn thing else?” When you start thinking of sentient beings in the company of other sentient beings, that’s not going to work is it? It is not sustainable if we eat and or consume everything else. It’s not going to work! We need to eat a little bit lower down. On the food chain we are about where the herbivores are. Eating much above that doesn’t work and looks like were going to destroy the planet. We have that whole food chain thing wrong and we need to get down on the food chain. As a perma-culture person would say it, we need to get our hands dirty!

Get your hands dirty

What do you have to do if you want to know what is going on with the soil?

The finest, most sophisticated technological instrument ever created for agriculture is the finger! I think that’s why we have them. Some people say it’s for tools. Maybe if a tool is a hoe but that’s not the only reason we have fingers. We have fingers so we can point at each other and say “Hey! You aint’ doin’ the right thing!” We have fingers so we can put them in the dirt and know what’s happening. That’s how we make our connection, right? Want to develop superpowers? Spend more time with your fingers in the dirt. In yoga we call them Siddhas. You want to develop Siddhas? You want to become a Reishi yogi, a magnificent supernatural superman or woman? I’ll give you a secret- get your fingers dirty, get your hands dirty and it will change your life.

Change your definition of what is “edible”

Second, consider changing your definition of “edible.” I want to challenge what that means. One idea that I would recommend to you is to bring consciousness to your definition of the word edible because it may be enlightening and very helpful for you. In that context I have a corollary, and I want you to be crystal clear about this: “Substantially the same as food,” does NOT equal food. Whenever you see something that’s labeled, marked or promoted to you as “substantially equivalent to food,” that means it is not food. Food is food and anything that’s not food is something else!

Oil, tar and coal and their derivatives are not edible

Most likely the “substantially equivalent” is chemical and it actually a derivative of crude oil. 99% of “substantially the equivalent of food,” is a derivative of oil, and as a species we were never meant to consume oil or oil byproducts.

We evolved as a species over billions of years from plankton to human beings or if you take the creationist biblical perspective it has only been 6 or 7 thousand years. However you do it, the entire time we have been here, it is only in the last hundred years that we have been exposed to byproducts of carbon and oil because they were underground. There were a few sources of natural tars and natural oils but 99% of humanity didn’t have access to them. So biologically in our DNA we do not have the ability to metabolize crude oil in any form, derivative or solvent. Oil is one of the primary ecologic contributors that has contaminated our food supply. One of the biggest things we can do is be clear that “substantially the same as food,” does not equal food.

Edible should mean organic, fresh, whole, non-GMO food

If it is not organic we should automatically question whether or not it is adulterated and to what degree. We have to keep the idea in the back of our mind that there are no known safe levels for any chemical in the human body. It is not a true or scientific statement to say that the amount of contamination with XYZ chemical has been deemed to be safe for humans. Don’t take my word for it, research it yourself and you will find that scientifically speaking, there are no known safe levels of any chemical substance in the human body. If anybody says otherwise then they actually haven’t looked at the science.

Edible should mean the reduction of adulterated food consumption

Adulterated food includes foods that on the surface are advertised as “natural” or “real” but have been adulterated by the manufacturing process and include things such as trans fats, hydrogenated fats and oils, high fructose corn syrup, refined sugar, aspartame, etc. Though these foods are advertised and promoted as natural or as derivatives of natural substances, they are not! From a marketing standpoint all additives, chemicals and constituents that are derived from oil are technically derived from natural substance because oil is natural. All of them, which are coming from the parent, are equally harmful, including baby oil! Just because it says “baby” doesn’t mean that it is healthy for you. For example, baby oil contains Benzene. Benzene is considered to be one of the most deadly, dangerous, immune disrupters that man has made. Plutonium is the most dangerous, but Benzene completely, immediately and instantaneously disrupts your immune system. It’s in baby oil and chapstick!

Edible should be local

Weigh and measure what you eat based on how far it travels to get in your mouth. The further from you the origin of your food is the higher the carbon footprint. That means more oil in the air. Your carbon footprint is your contribution to environmental toxicity, contamination of water, support of the fossil fuel industry, oppression of native peoples due to deforestation, etc. All of this eventually comes back around to increase your own toxic exposure. That’s the way it works. I have my favorite foods that come from other countries.

For me, it has been a challenge to reduce the amount of food that comes from foreign countries. That includes herbs, spices, the kind of rice that I prefer, etc. It has been a real challenge and I’m still working on it. I’m not perfect at it, I’m transitional and it’s very hard when you have a beautiful kitchen like I have that is fully stocked with spices and 8 different kinds of rice and all kinds of stuff. It all represents an investment. See, mentally I have a problem tossing out everything in my closet that has a foreign origin because I can’t help but think of the economics of it. However, when I start to think about the economics of it, I start to be able to let it go a little better.

Continued in Thai Yoga Concepts: Sustainable Eating and Sustainable Health Part 4.

Sustainable Part 1, Sustainable Part 2, Sustainable Part 3, Sustainable Part 4

Learn SomaVeda® Thai Yoga!

 

Disclaimer:

All Information is provided for educational purposes only and not intended to be used for any therapeutic purpose, neither is it intended to diagnose, prevent, treat or cure any disease. Please consult a health care professional for diagnosis and treatment of medical conditions. While all attempts have been made to ensure the accuracy of this information. The author and ThaiYogaCenter.Com does not accept any responsibility for any errors or omissions.

Copyright© 2011, Dr. Anthony B. James DNM(P), ND(T), MD(AM), PhD, RAAP, SMOKH  All rights reserved under International and Pan American copyright conventions. World rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Inquires should be addressed to: Dr. Anthony B. James, 5401 Saving Grace Ln. Brooksville, FL 34602 ·  http://www.ThaiYogaCenter.Com

Thai Yoga Concepts: Sustainable Eating and Sustainable Health: Part 2 of 4

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Thai Yoga Concepts: Sustainable Eating and Sustainable Health: Part 2 of 4

UTTS issues Dr. Anthony James Lifetime Credentials

By Dr. Anthony B. James DNM(P), ND(T), MD(AM), SMOKH

(Re-Post: Transcribed from a live talk at the Florida Sustainable Living and Perma-culture Conference, Plant City Florida, March 26, 2011)

An amazing possibility is occurring right now!

Right now this second there are groups just like the group in this room who are having the exact same conversation about exactly the same topics in about a hundred different locations around the planet! Right now this minute! That’s never happened before, so that’s our possibility of hope. But what are we going to do with it? That’s the question.

Its one thing to philosophically get it and it’s another thing to have practical solutions. I’m going to go through some practical solutions. We’re ahead of the curb, right? I’m a hopeful guy, I actually do believe that there is hope that we can come out of this and we can actually survive in a good way. That is what I work for.

What’s the core issue with sustainability?

I want to focus on what I think is really the fundamental issue in sustainable eating and health. Pardon me if this is elementary because I know there are some experts in the room, but I’m just speaking across the board.

I believe the number one issue is food. I have all these doctor technologies and no matter what I learn I keep coming back food as the number one issue. It’s the one issue above all others that we actually have the capacity to substantially control. So because we have the ability to have some input in relation to what we eat, where it comes from and what the impact is of our food on ourselves and on our environment, it’s one of the places where we can add our influence, both internally and externally. That’s why I choose to focus on food. I’m going to keep coming at it from a health point of view because I just can’t help it!

Whatever it takes to live a long and happy life!

Hippocrates said “let they food be thy medicine and thy medicine be thy food.” So what is medicine? There are a lot of misconceptions about what medicine is. The definition of medicine is same as the definition of sustainable living! There’s a source of conflict and confusion right there. We compartmentalize and create distinctions and say, “medicine is over here, and food is over here.” There is some crossover but it is a misconception and a misperception that they are unrelated. Let’s go back to the definition of sustainable living: Whatever it takes to live a long healthy and happy life, while respecting and caring for the community of life in which we live. Well guess what? That’s the definition of medicine too: whatever it takes to live a long and happy life. Let food be your medicine, let food be part of your strategy of whatever it takes. Let whatever it takes to be happy be your food, so let’s stop eating things that don’t make us happy. That’s a real simple way to say it isn’t it?

Stay away from the dominant cultures medical system

Statistically speaking, other then changing your eating habits the number one thing you can do to prolong your life and guarantee that you’ll have a long healthy life in this country (I’m not necessarily talking about the whole world) is to do whatever it takes to stay out of hospitals and to stay out of the conventional medical system.

The current system has failed. Where is the outrage?

I’m a pastoral medical doctor so I get a copy of JAMA and the different journals that are published under the banner of JAMA. According to JAMA, give or take, some 380,000 people a year die directly from medical malpractice. I think this is a conservative estimate because it might be a little self-incriminating. We drive down the highway and see billboards of the sheriff with the reflective glasses and the words “drive drunk and pay the price.” We see MADD billboards with the cameo of the teenage son or daughter who will not live a long and happy life because of an incursion due to drunk driving. Virtually every city in the country including has federal, state and local funding of millions of dollars for the formation of DUI task forces, random roadblocks, and breathalyzers. There have been 12,000 constructed expansions of prisons in the US just to take the additional prisoner loads of DUI’s into the jail system and the legal system. There are about 48,000 deaths a year on average as a result of drunk driving.

It gets worse

I’m not saying that I support drunk driving, but compare that to 380,000 deaths a year due to medical malpractice. When is the last time you were driving down the road and you saw a billboard with a man or a woman in a white jacket with a stethoscope hanging around their neck with a “have you seen this person? Call “1-800-STOPDOC” to report that you have seen one of these people wanted for murder, mayhem, malpractice and for just damn not trying to help you and being part of a system that kills you at 4, 5 and 6 times the annual rate of drunk drivers.” That’s not the bad news; it gets worse. I’m not quoting the national inquirer, although technically it might be more accurate and I’m sorry to say that.

According to these medical statistics, another 400,000 die simply from unsuccessful procedures that were properly applied. In other words, it wasn’t malpractice. They did exactly what was the standard medical practice according to standard medical disciplines, according to standard medical procedures. 400,000 people died from operations that were considered a complete success. They did everything right and the patient died. These numbers are per year, not in the last 100 years, but the annual numbers! 400,000 people died from side effects.

There are no side effects!

There is no such thing as a side effect! How many people have heard that there is such a thing as a drug side effect? You have been misled and that is a programming issue and propaganda issue because there are actually NO side effects of any known prescription drug or procedure. There are secondary effects that we don’t want, which are less popular. You can get a copy of a Merck Manual or the Physician’s Desk Reference to Drugs and for every single drug there will be the primary benefit listed and immediately there will be up to 92 different secondary effects. For marketing, they are referred to as “side effects” as if they are optional.

A chemical doesn’t know what a side-effect is

A relative of mine has an advanced degree in pharmacology. He would say that it is all chemistry- you ingest the chemical and get the effect. The chemical doesn’t know primary from secondary. The chemical doesn’t know what a side effect is, it just does what it does. For many of these drugs there are up to 92 side effects and I’ve even seen a drug that has more than that. Generally there are between 70 and 90 secondary effects and about a third of them are fatal. That’s how you get these 400,000 deaths. We need to be logical, so how do we get there? That’s not the malpractice, that’s when everybody agreed that it was appropriate for you and it still caused you harm.

The source of your primary health care has to be your eating habits

So what is the alternative? If we are not going to rely on the conventional medical system as our primary health care, then “let food be your medicine and medicine be your food.” The source of your primary health care has to be your eating habits. You have no choice! There is no other alternative. I know some of you that might be offended to even hear me say so, but I am giving you my professional medical advice. As you would with any doctor, or perhaps as you should do with any doctor, take my advise or leave it.

Health is a fluid balance between toxicity and deficiency

Traditional Chinese Medicine theory postulates that health is a dynamic equilibrium between internal and external pernicious influences. Health is a constant balancing act. This could be anything that reduces our capacity to live the full natural possibility of life or whatever life as a human being on this planet could be. That includes everything from the environment and landscape, both internal and external. Internal pernicious influences are what take place when harmful influences bridge the world-skin barrier and become part of us causing changes within us. This includes mental and emotional psychology, the ecology of our inner world and how we handle toxins, virus, bacteria, and cancers. The external landscape is everything outside of your skin that has the ability to affect your longevity, health and well being.

We can also talk about the 5 elements because we have fire, earth, metal, water, and wood, or in Chinese medicine and Ayurveda we have ether, air, fire, water and earth. Any way you slice it, whatever is out there is part of us and then we have this really funny philosophy that says that we are also part of everything that’s out there.

We are children of the soil

So health is about managing this equilibrium between the inside and the outside, the two landscapes. Sometimes we use the word soil, and I know perma-culture people really want to talk about the soil a lot; in fact, that’s one reason I love them! The first book I ever read on the soil was Secrets of the Soil and I developed this whole different idea about the ground and what the nature of the soil was. I learned that it was alive and there was energy in it and that it was communicating to me!

Of course I knew from my bible lessons as a child that eventually I would become the soil. I thought, “Whoa! Dirt to dirt! So what you’re saying is that I’m actually a child of the soil and that I am soil in a flesh bag walking around for a while and then I go back to my origin which is the soil?” Somewhere I had lost the connection or the conscious knowledge that I was really just a bag of dirt walking around. What is my function then, as mobile dirt?

I realized that part of the reason why we are so unhealthy is because we have been separated from our proper relationship to our mother ecology, which of course is the soil. Now that we are ego-encapsulated soil flesh bags we think that we are separate and somehow isolated from the total environment that surrounds us. We pretend and we act and we create structures that are based on this false idea that we are somehow separate from the soil. We no longer rely on the soil as our nutrient base and we no longer honor the fact that its part of our lifestyle to sustain the soil.

What is my path in life?

When we say, “Oh, I’m looking for my path,” we are really wondering, “What is the purpose of a human being?” A human bring is a mobile expression of the vital life of the planet. There are probably lots of purposes for human beings but part of the reason why we were given legs in the first place was to act as landscapers, caretakers, moderators and enhancers of the vital communication capacity of the earth that is expressed in the life of the soil. It is the proper time to rejoin the community of other sentient beings and the earth which all return their essence to the dirt. You might say, “Oh my god, that’s just crazy!” You know what? If you start to think about it like that for a minute, I think some things might come clear.

We are not that special

Like the Native Americans say, “What is a human being? An upright two-legged being.” No different than any other! No different than the four-legged, no different from the ones with wings, no different than the ones that swim. No different than the ones who crawl through the earth and no different than the microbes. Guess what? Microbes are sentient. How about that? Bacteria is sentient, virus is sentient. Like the Dalai Llama says, “ALL LIVING BEINGS ARE SENTIENT.” We pray for all sentient beings, so when we are praying for all sentient beings we pray for the virus and the bacteria.

Sustainable Eating Part 1, Sustainable Eating Part 2, Sustainable Eating Part 3, Sustainable Eating Part 4

 

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Copyright© 2011, Dr. Anthony B. James.  All rights reserved under International and Pan American copyright conventions. World rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Inquires should be addressed to: Dr. Anthony B. James http://www.ThaiYogaCenter.Com