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Whole Foods Nutrition
Recipes
Athletics Coaching / Fitness
Spring Specials
Mother's Day Specials
The Healthy Being e-zine:
(to subscribe, please e-mail: Amaiah and we will put you on our distribution list - Thanks!)
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Amaiah is certified in Asian Healing
Arts and Whole Foods Nutrition from the Heartwood
Institute in California. Her training with Paul Pitchford, author of Healing
with Whole Foods, forms the foundation of her nutritional counselling
practice.
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Triathlon Bike Course Profiles
For all of you who are interested in how various triathlon bike courses ride, I added a series of bike course profiles to our website at this link
Sooke Triathlon Bike Course
Periodization: One Month
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We welcome you to the Spring 2007 issue of Mandala
Massage and Fitness' "The Healthy Being" newsletter. The
bi-monthly newsletter provides regular fitness, whole foods nutrition and
wellness information to clients and subscribers. We are expecting our first baby in June, so we intend to incorporate health and wellness tips for babies, children and new parents into future issues. We welcome your feedback -
suggestions and recipes are most appreciated. Please forward the
newsletter to others that may be interested.
In Good Health, Amaiah and Dennis Paradine, Thanks!
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Whole Foods Nutrition
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Spring Renewal – Honoring the Wood
Element - Our Liver and Gallbladder (TCM)
We are now officially in the Spring Season, having
passed equinox and now feeling the sun’s rays warming the earth, causing
the sap to rise up strongly in plants and winter-dormant trees such as Gary Oaks and Big-Leaf Maples. We humans often
experience this strong Spring energy as increased libido, bursts of
creativity, a desire to clean our houses/yards/ gardens and cleanse our
bodies of winter’s heavy foods through exercise and a lighter diet. Ideally we have the energy and
drive to follow through on our passions for movement, creative pursuits and physical cleansing. This depends largely on the balance of the
Liver and Gallbladder - the "Wood Element" organ systems in TCM - which are responsible for channelling these surges of Spring energy in both body and mind.
All is good and we feel calm and “in the flow” when these systems are functioning well. However, when blocked or
deficient in blood or chi, mild but persistent irritability or full-on
anger can result. Do you
ever notice more ‘road rage’ and expressed impatience this time of year
in yourself, your partner or others? On the other hand, if not expressed,
a Wood Element imbalance often manifests as depression and a sense of
‘not knowing what to do with one-self’ and poor judgement and decision-making abilities. Physical signs of Liver/Gall Bladder imbalance can
include pain in the right ribcage and back, headaches, a bitter taste in
the mouth, eye problems (redness and/or either very dry or excessively
watery eyes), stomach problems, diarrhea, irregular and problematic
menstruation and an inflexible rigid body. Knowing how to
nourish and support our Wood Element organ systems is key for the Spring
Season.
Top Five ways to Love Your Liver and Gall Bladder:
1)
Exercise
and stretching – walking brings chi to all the muscles and tendons; tai
chi, chi gong, yoga and martial arts are excellent for opening and
strengthening the joints. Sideways bending and twisting
movements are especially good to keep the Liver/GB from stagnating.(1)
2)
Avoid
Heavy and Fatty Foods Which Tend to Stagnate the Liver –greatly reduce or
avoid cheese, mammal meats, nut butters, very hot spicy foods, alcohol,
hydrogenated or any poor quality fats (which are in many processed foods). (2)
3) Nourish
the Liver Through Spring Foods – this season our diet should be the lightest of the year and incorporate more "yang" or ascending foods which help us embody the expansiveness of Spring. Naturally sweet and pungent foods are recommended for Spring by the Chinese classics. You may find you naturally start craving more raw foods like
sprouts, salads with young greens, and sweet starchy vegetables such as young beets and carrots. If you have a cold, deficient constitution, you can balance the raw, more cooling foods by
also using some pungent warming foods and spices like onions, garlic,
mustard greens, rosemary and marjoram in your food and lightly cooking more of your food. (3)
If you tend towards Liver stagnation (i.e. depression, frustration, chronic indigestion), incorporate some sour
or bitter tastes into your diet which stimulate the tissues to release toxins and
the Gall Bladder to excrete bile to assist with the breakdown of fat (see
Recipes: Carrot, Beet & Lemon Love Your Liver Salad and Dandelion Cocktail).
4)
Creative
Expression – painting, dance, poetry, building a bookshelf, playing an
instrument, cooking a special meal … whatever your creative passion – active expression will
help to nourish and channel the Wood Element in a healthy way.
5)
Quality
Rest and Relaxation – all the purposeful Yang activity of the Liver and
Gallbladder needs to be balanced with rest and relaxation. Meditation for 20 minutes a day,
doing nothing at the beach or on a quiet forest bench, slow ‘yin’
walking, receiving balancing, relaxing bodywork are all ways to ‘let go’ and nourish the yin of the Liver.
Other Ways to Love your Liver:
- Slowly introduce a 'green food' powder into your daily diet. Many of these contain young dried wheat grass and other liver-supporting herbs and ingredients.
- Eat lots of dark green leafy vegetables such as steamed kale, collards, chard, spinach, and young nettles.
- Alotting time in our lives for planning - visualizing what we want, where we want to go, creating a business plan is helpful for the Liver.
- See a TCM practitioner for an assessment of your Organ Systems followed by an acupuncture treatment.
- Receive a Zen Shiatsu Session or Jin Shin Do to help balance your Liver & Gall Bladder.
- Get outdoors hiking to see the trees leafing out and spring flowers.
- For the Gall Bladder Meridian - stretch iliotibial bands and glut muscles; massage sides of legs and hips – roll hips on a soft small
ball. Breathe deeply and let out any frustrations or repressed emotions.
- There
are many different Liver/Gall Bladder syndromes, so it is best to consult
an acupuncturist or other TCM practitioner, or a Naturopathic Doctor with training in Traditional Chinese Medicine to get assistance with TCM diagnosis
and dietary therapy (see links on our webpage).
Sources and Good Resources for Understanding TCM Organ Systems and Nutrition
- 1 Leggett, D. Recipes for Self-Healing, 1999.
- 2 Bernhart, Andy. Integrated Dietary Therapy, 2007.
- 3 Pitchford, Paul. Healing with Whole Foods, 1993.
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Recipes
Beet,
Carrot & Lemon “Love-Your-Liver” Salad
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5 medium carrots, grated |
Grate the carrots and beets finely and put in a large glass jar or pyrex food container (do not use plastic). |
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2 medium beets, grated |
Squeeze the lemon juice and add to the beet/carrot mixture. |
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1 lemon, juiced |
Add the olive oil and mix with a fork. |
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¼ cup extra virgin olive oil*
Or substitute hemp, flax or any omega 3-6-9 oil (these oils are best left out and added just before serving to prevent oxidation) |
Refrigerate for a few hours and serve as a side salad or add to a green salad.
Tastes like mandarin oranges! |
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Dandelion Cocktail - Serves 3
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100 small, washed dandelion leaves from a clean, unsprayed area or 8-10 large cultivated dandelion leaves (available from some health food grocers) |
Dandelion leaves are very high in Vitamins A, B & C and minerals such as copper, magnesium, potassium, calcium and iron. This coctail makes a great liver tonic for your spring cleanse! |
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1 ½ cups tomato juice |
Place all ingredients in a blender and blend for 3-5 minutes. |
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2 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce |
*** |
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Dash of Tabasco sauce |
Recipe from: Schofield, Janet. Discovering Wild Plants: Alaska, Western Canada, the Northwest. 1992. |
Chinese Noodle Soup - Serves 4-6
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2 cups noodles, cooked and drained (buckwheat soba noodles work well) |
This is a quick , nutritious soup to make with vegetable broth already made up; or use veggie boullion cubes or miso with 4 c water. |
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4 cups vegetable broth |
Heat broth and add carrots, onion and salt. |
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1 carrot, cut into flowers or thin diagonals |
Simmer 10 minutes, until vegetables still slightly tender |
| 1 green onion, chopped |
Add greens and cook until bright-colored. |
| 2 cups spring greens, finely cut (baby kale, beet greens, dandelion, parsely, spinach…) |
Variation: Add lemon juice or vinegar with a bit of hot sauce to make a Hot and Sour Soup |
| ½ cup sprouts |
*** |
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Sea salt or Tamari soy sauce to taste |
Recipe adapted from: Pitchford, Paul. Healing With Whole Foods. 1993. |
Athletics Coaching / Fitness |
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Spring Training
Dennis Paradine, NCCP Level 3 Coach So, it is spring and you'd like to do a few races this year -
whether they be triathlons, running races or adventure racing. Perhaps you
have spent the last six months in a semi-comatose state around your
computer at work and lying on the couch on the weekends wishing the rain (and the extra
pounds) would go away. So, what do you do?
Well, if you are most athletes - or a
neuveau athlete - when the first spring energy hits you would go out and train just as intensely as you did
last summer and fall, run 20 km really hard, swim numerous laps and then
for the fun of it do a really hard set riding up Observatory Hill three times on the bike...
And you would feel great, energized and happy and think that you are
faster and stronger than Superman! And in three weeks time, with a few more workouts like that, you would
likely crash - tired, sick, possibly with an injury or a sore back, and
wondering what went wrong.
As a coach, I first ask what went right? (1)
the motivation was there to train, to get into shape and
set a goal to enter a race or two; (2) you took action on the motivation
and started to train; (3) you remembered what you did last year; (4) you
cross-trained with a bike, swim, run combination instead of running six times a week from scratch
and ensuring certain injury.
I would also ask what you could change to
prevent the spring "over-training meltdown". Here's where some training fundamentals come in:
(1) Most importantly, start up training
(or new activities within a training program) slowly, to allow time for the
physiological muscle and body changes to occur, and in the long term allowing for a larger
training volume.
(2) Check in with yourself (or a coach) to
see what you need to work on to meet your goals, what specific imbalances
you may need to fix before putting in hard or long training. This could
be as simple as making sure you do enough sit ups, push-ups and leg/arm
extensions to keep your abdominals and back muscles strong
(particularly important for triathletes), or quite complex, such as
specific attention being needed to improve flexibility and/or strength in
the rotator cuff muscles of the shoulders.
(3) Spend most of your training time (~90%)
doing Zone 1 (easy) workouts, with much less time doing harder intervals
or hill workouts (an appropriate mix of frequency, intensity and
duration). To go fast, the first key is to go slow most of the time. Then,
when you race you are fresh and can bring your race to that next level.
(4) Periodize your training so over a four (or three) week period, starting with an easy week, building a bit harder, then put in a hard week and finally rest and recover (see figure to left). By sustaining an appropriate workload over time you will build capacity without hitting fatigue or burnout!
Have fun training, racing or just having fun getting back into great shape this spring and summer! Hope to see you about in sunny Victoria!
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Spring Wellness Specials |
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We have a number of new specials on our website. Here are two of the most popular to help you get started on your chosen wellness path:
Fitness Assessment (1 hour, $30)
Fitness is a key component of health and wellness. Your core strength, cardiovascular fitness, flexibility, balance and posture will be assessed in this motivational one-hour session designed to get you started in the right direction.
Whole Foods Nutrition Mini-Sessions (1 hour, $30 each)
Do you want to start adding healthier foods to your diet but don't know where to start, or feel overwhelmed by conflicting information? Spring is the perfect time to make positive, life-affirming changes to what you (and your family) are eating. Taking some extra time now to form great nutrition habits can help you in the long term to build your energy level, prevent chronic diseases like Type II diabetes, cardiovascular disease, some cancers, and help you achieve and maintain a healthy weight for your life!
Renew your Cupboards : We will help you identify what foods in your home you currently depend on that may be replaced with healthier whole-foods alternatives. Includes home-visit, nutrition tips and handouts.
Whole Foods Shopping Trip: A shopping trip to a local health food store or supermarket with us will help you explore healthy foods choices and target in on truly healthy foods for you and your family, while becoming more aware of natural foods marketing hype, and how to eat healthy for the lowest cost.
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Mother's Day Specials
Satori Mother's Day Specials... Mother and Daughter Massage and Foot Pampering (80 minutes each) $180
Treat your mother (and yourself) to a relaxing side-by-side aromatherapy foot soak and gentle exfoliating foot scrub, followed by a one-hour full body massage in the comfort of your own home sanctuary. Rest, relax and reconnect with your mother on this special day! |
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