Fertilizing Yourself

The following article (originally titled "Do You Know How to Fertilize a Flat Belly?") by Jena La Flamme appeared in the July 2009 Alok Holistic Health e-newsletter (alokhealth.com)

If you've been reading my emails for a while, you may remember a confession I made a couple of years ago about killing half my houseplants. Yes, a widespread plant massacre occurred entirely due to neglect on my part. (Oops.) I was, um, yeah, "too busy" to water, remember to water them, I am a New Yorker remember, does that count as an excuse? (Yeah, right!)

Rest assured, I did change my ways after that and not one houseplant has died since. On the contrary, I have good news to report. One of the plants, an aloe vera plant, a hearty soul indeed, has not only survived, but has flourished! It came to me via an old roommate that was about to put it on the street as a giveaway, when I intercepted and adopted it for myself.

For two years, every time I moved, it moved with me, and over that time it grew a little, and to my delight, spawned one little off-spring plant, a cute baby aloe that lived with it in the pot.

Not so long ago, I noticed that the pot was low on soil, and so I bought some quality, fertilized potting soil and re-potted it. This was a few months ago, and now, all of a sudden, to my great surprise, six new plants have popped up within weeks!

This is totally unprecedented!

And it begs the question... What change sparked this creative activity?

It wasn't more sun, and it wasn't just more water, it was clearly...the fertilizer.

The difference astounded me. This was the only plant of my collection that I had given fresh, fertilized soil to, and it was the only one that had so drastically flourished.

It made me wonder, what if I fertilized my own soil better? How would I grow and spawn creations? What would fertilize me anyway, which foods, what thoughts, and which companionship would nourish me so?

What would renew me? What would refresh me? What would allow me to release the energy that's been stagnating within me for years? What would help me flush out all the new energy that I can feel pushing, yearning to circulate?

What would foster new ideas, new projects and new connections lurking within me, eager to germinate from seed to sprout?

And what about you?

Answering these same questions may not be as easy as going to the local hardware store to buy packaged fertilizer, but discovering your own brand or blend of fertilizer is well worthwhile. The right stuff will support you to be as expressive as my fertile little aloe vera, and with the heat of summer rising, it may be a good time to start looking at what you can add to your pot.

The following appeared in the July 2009 issue of Alok Holistic Health e-newsletter (alokhealth.com) by Zohar Zemach Wilson.

"My whole family is lactose intolerant and when we take pictures we can't say cheese." - Jay London

"How can anyone govern a nation that has two hundred and forty-six different kinds of cheese?" - Charles De Gaulle

Dearest reader

A friend of mine who has returned from a visit to Switzerland, brought back with him lots of fatty Swiss cheeses. He told me that he was very surprised to find out that the Swiss eat lots of fatty cheese, yet they remain skinny. He offered me some cheese, but since I'm not a big fan of dairy products, I declined.

Few days later I went away for the weekend. I [hung] a hammock in a forest, near a small pool of fresh water. During most of the weekend I watched and listened to nutrition lectures on the Integrative Nutrition iPod.

In one of the lectures, Dr. Andrew Weil, MD was asked about his favorite food. To my surprise he said that he loves fatty Swiss cheese since most Swiss cows graze freely on high quality mountain grass. Whereas cheese from cows fed with industrial grains hardly has any of the nutritionally important Omega 3 fatty acid (ratio of 20:1 between Omega 6 and Omega 3), cheese from grass-fed cows has lots of Omega 3 (ratio of 1:1 between Omega 6 and Omega 3). Additionally, many of the Swiss fatty cheeses are from milk that hasn't been pasteurized, a process that destroys the quality of the milk.

The next time I met my friend, I shared with him my cheese findings and told him that now I'll be happy to taste some of his Swiss Cheese. My friend rubbed his belly and smiled, making me understand that no cheese remained.

This article appeared in the March 1996 issue of Vegetarian Times Magazine

Teaching Tolerance

by Sharon Bloyd-Peshkin

Tolerance is not an easy virtue to teach a child. So many things in our society--from moralistic children's tales to well-meaning relatives--conspire to teach values in black-and-white terms. It's good to share, it's bad to hit, it's good to clean up the juice you spilled, it's bad to scribble in library books. To a young child, the obvious implication is that people who do good things are good people, and people who do bad things are bad people. It's a misconception that some people never outgrow.

In my family, vegetarianism has turned out to be our vehicle for teaching tolerance. Hannah, my 4-year-old daughter, has chosen to be vegetarian, despite plenty of opportunities to eat meat at school and in the homes of various friends an relatives. Having been born into a vegetarian family, eating a vegetarian diet is, for her, as natural and normal as brushing her teeth and listening to stories before bedtime.

For a while, she regarded her Uncle Jim's tendency to eat fish as an odd quirk. ("Uncle Jim eats things that a aren't food," she informed me one day.) But then, she started to be disturbed about what she had long known--that many of the people she loves eat animals, something she had decided was not the right thing to do. For several months, she quizzed me about other people's eating habits, trying to make sense of the difference.

"Does Grandma eat meat?"
"Yes, she does."
"Why?"
"Well, each of us makes our own decision about what we will and won't eat."
"But it's not good to eat animals."
"That's what we decided. But everyone doesn't feel the same way." Silence.
"But why does Grandma eat meat?"
"Well, sweetie, most people do. That doesn't make it right. It doesn't make it good. But since they've always eaten meat and thought of it as food, it's hard for them to think of it as an animal."

I longed for an analogy to use as a simple way to make sense of the seeming contradiction, but I couldn't find one, so we repeated this conversation in various permutations over the next few weeks.

"Is it bad to eat meat?"
"Well, it isn't good." (I knew I wouldn't get away with this.)
"But is it bad?"
"Not exactly. It's a choice we don't agree with."

Hannah was clearly trying to make sense of this apparent paradox.  We went through a week of pretend picnics at which Hannah asked me to hold various stuffed animals to my mouth and pretend that I was eating meat. I complied, wondering whether the point of this game was to try to associate someone she loves with an act of which she disapproves. Then, one day, we were talking about having some people to dinner when Hannah chimed in. "We should have meat for people who want meat and not-meat for people who don't want meat."

I explained that people who eat meat will still enjoy a vegetarian meal, but I commended her for her thoughtfulness. And I realized she now understood that people can do things we don't approve of and still be good people.

Vegetarianism has become the analogy we use for all sorts of other tolerance issues. Why do we give money to the man playing the accordion in the subway while others pass him by? Why does Jenny whine to get her way when Hannah is told to use words instead? Why does Andy take toys away from his baby sister but Hannah is supposed to share with her baby brother? In each case, we don't approve of the action, but we don't reject the people, either. It's a lesson that many adults still struggle to learn.

"I have learned to walk; ever since, I let myself run.
I have learned to fly; ever sine, I do not want to be pushed before moving along.

Now I am light,
now I fly,
now I see myself beneath myself,
now a God dances through me."

- Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)