Do you remember when you were a kid and you loved eating cereal right before bed each night? Well it turns out that our bodies don't digest food very well after sundown. So if you don't sleep so well or your kids get stomach aches or you need to shed a few pounds, close the kitchen and keep reading!
Our body mimics the universe
According to Ayurveda and Chinese Medicine, our bodies mimic the natural universe. When the sun rises in the sky, so too our digestive fire wakes up and starts to roar. As the sun sets, our internal fire which is our metabolism also goes to sleep for the night.
A recent New York Times article describes the latest health fraud against our children. Evidently Froot Loops has received the Smart Choices label for being a nutritious choice for breakfast. Never mind that Froot Loops are 41% white sugar. For years I have been on a crusade against artificial food coloring and flavoring. So when this news came out, I decided it was finally time to share the research about the harmful effects of these petrochemical food additives.
This new food-labeling campaign is called Smart Choices and is backed by most of the nation’s largest food manufacturers, like Kellogg's which makes Froot Loops. Supposedly it is “designed to help shoppers easily identify smarter food and beverage choices.” What is smart about a cereal in which the primary ingredient is sugar, and which contains artificial food coloring that is proven in Europe to cause cancer and behavioral problems in children? Obviously it is a marketing campaign to keep mainstream America interested in junk food as the public consciousness around nutrition becomes more sophisticated and informed.
When I was still in the throes of sleep deprivation when my son was a toddler and never slept , my grandmother made a comment that has stuck with me for years. She said that kids never had sleep problems when she was a young parent. I've always wondered about that. We all slept as kids, and our parents worried about a lot of things but not about getting us to sleep. Why are there thousands of books these days instructing parents how to teach their kids to sleep? Isn't it a biological imperative? Why wasn't my kid just sleeping and letting me sleep? Was it something in the water?
I recently listened to an excellent tele-seminar with David Crow, a master Ayurvedic herbalist, aromatherapist and well-known author. It was extremely illuminating and very much worthwhile. Thankfully, the whole thing was recorded.
David and his company, Floracopeia, have made it available for any of my readers to listen to and download free of charge for a limited time period. It's called The Dharma of Essential Oils and the Flowering of Spiritual Culture. It is a profound synthesis of medicine, ecology and spirituality and I highly encourage you to check it out.
You can listen online, download it to your computer and/or burn to a cd or put on your ipod. Click here to check it out.
A few months ago I also attended an evening lecture with David about meditating with and on essential oils. We sat with a dip stick of lavender oil, (then tulsi, then jasmine) and felt impressions of the plant. Then we observed the effect of each scent on the quality of our meditative state. It was fascinating. I learned so much about the plants themselves, as well as the benefits each plant offers to our meditation practice. David's oils are extremely high quality, and he oversees the cultivation of many of the plants he uses.
Since attending David's lecture, I've had a new appreciation for the power of plants as medicine and also as allies on the spiritual journey. Their fragrance is an offering to the whole of nature that deserves the utmost respect and conservation efforts.
Do you remember when you were a kid and you loved eating cereal right before bed each night? Well it turns out that our bodies don't digest food very well after sundown. So if you don't sleep so well or your kids get stomach aches or you need to shed a few pounds, close the kitchen and keep reading!
A recent 
When I was still in the throes of sleep deprivation when my son was a toddler and never slept , my grandmother made a comment that has stuck with me for years. She said that kids never had sleep problems when she was a young parent. I've always wondered about that. We all slept as kids, and our parents worried about a lot of things but not about getting us to sleep. Why are there thousands of books these days instructing parents how to teach their kids to sleep? Isn't it a biological imperative? Why wasn't my kid just sleeping and letting me sleep? Was it something in the water?
