Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Think about...

My life is my message.

We may have our private opinions but why should they be a bar to the meeting of hearts?

Gentleness, self-sacrifice and generosity are the exclusive possession of no one race or religion.

- Mohandas Gandhi

Friday, March 5, 2010

Awareness

I work in the natural health industry. I choose to work for a company that rightfully boasts incredibly high levels of integrity in areas of sustainability, purity and quality. The people that I work along side of make the product a reflection of their own beliefs and commitment to holistic health and wellness.

My Dad calls me the "snake oil woman", and I am ok with that. I like snakes, and they can even be beneficial to "health" - Wikipedia posts:

Snake wine (蛇酒, pinyin: shéjǐu; rượu rắn in Vietnamese) is an alcoholic beverage produced by infusing whole snakes in rice wine or grain alcohol. The drink used in China during the Western Zhou dynasty and considered an important curative and believed to reinvigorate a person according to Traditional Chinese medicine[1]. It can be found in China, Vietnam and throughout Southeast Asia.

I also like wine :)

Truthfully, I sell to stores, practitioners, doctors and everyday people like you and I. I educate these same individuals on the benefits of Fish oil and it's incredible Omega 3 properties. (I won't go into all of the benefits of Omega 3 because in being truthful with my intentions of the blog - I am writing to write, and if someone is interested you know where to find me.) I am proud of what I do, because I feel that I help people. I educate them on a product that is from the earth (the ocean to be specific), is so incredibly wonderful for our minds and bodies, and other than reacting with allergies has no negative affects on people who choose to supplement with it. In addition, I am fortunate to work for a company that chooses the most sustainable source of fish on the planet, is "green" through and through, follows Health Canada's and the FDA's guidelines to a "T", is not too proud to take a knock on the chin when something can be improved upon and purchases the rights to 3rd party testing to make sure that the consumer knows that what they are ingesting is safe and pure.

Safety and purity... that is a concern with fish oils. Fish comes from the sea, and sadly enough although the sea is breathtaking... the sea is dirty, the sea is contaminated and the sea is full of species that are quickly facing the end of their lives due to over farming and toxins. Ascenta does it right. Ascenta uses the most sustainable species of fish, Ascenta molecularly distils the oils, uses a natural clay cleaning process and introduces enzymes to bring it back to it's natural triglyceride state. On top of all this, as I said, Ascenta gives the consumer a Pure Check report showing exactly what is in their single bottle of fish oil. Therefore, the customer can consume the oil and not be at risk of being bombarded with toxins, and they can feel happy that they have invested in a company that gives 1% of their yearly sales back to the planet in which they have borrowed from.

So.. why I am writing about this when I clearly work with this in my mind everyday?

There was a press release put out a couple of days ago exposing companies in the U.S. that are guilty of having high levels of PCBs in their oils. Sure I may be rightfully biased, but I have just spent paragraphs telling you about a company that takes pains to do things correctly. A company that puts their own money out there to make sure that our footprint is not any larger than it has to be, and it's consumers are adding to their health - not taking aways from it. So let me ask you this - Knowing that a small Canadian company out of Nova Scotia can do this, why can't a large American company do this? When does the point come where saving money became more important to some people / companies than the health of the humans and animals that we coexist with? Doesn't the mere awareness of the health of the earth, including it's inhabitants, provide us with the means to merely exist?

This is a small example to a larger question in my mind... when did some humans stop recognizing the tender balance that must be present for living beings to exist in a symbiotic relationship with the earth? To be more specific to my rantings, when did the bottom dollar start to be more important than the cause that these companies have clearly dedicated themselves to? They work in the Natural Health industry! When did PCBs start to be a part of Natural Health?

In the end... let's just be more aware of what we are putting in our bodies. Let's use the gifts of the earth to nourish us, but let's ask the questions... let's be aware.

Monday, March 1, 2010

At peace with a sign..

I was 20 years old and driving through the Australian Outback. I came across a sign that said "You are not in (location)". Before seeing the humor, I remember being extremely irritated and thinking that I couldn't have come up with a more useless and random sign if I entered a million dollar contest. That comment may lead a person to believe that I am completely void of imagination, but knowing the circumstances you may think differently:

At this point I had a '78 "three in the tree" Holden Kingswood whose engine we had put back together with coat hangers. An at home rust kit and had been applied "artfully" to the exterior, and we were relying on the gas in our tank and two full jerry cans in the "boot" to somehow take us to our next destination along a very flat, hot and isolated highway. The catch was the destination was unknown - we (thought)we were "flying by the seat of our pants". So you could see how my reaction to my unknown whereabouts, as demonstrated by this sign, was not as freeing and hilarious of a feeling as it would have been if I truely knew what "flying by the seat of my pants" meant. I could proclaim that as my intention, but I am not sure if I was able to truly understand the definition of allowing myself to be free from the inside instead of carelessly following an unknown path in search of the next soulful thrill.

This sign entered my life 12 years ago. I have randomly thought back to the encounter over the years, but it wasn't until today, in a hot yoga class, that I came to peace with the irony of it's truth as we can apply it to our lives today.

The beginning of my time on the yoga mat is usually spent by the teacher guiding me through a breathing meditation to let go of my day as it has passed, and the expectations of the day as it will come. Yet today, she said something different..."Let yourself be where you aren't..."

So I did... I let my breathe flow like water into areas it should go naturally, and I took away my conscious thought therefore allowing myself to escape from the heat, the exertion and the awareness of the person beside me. I was no longer in the physical "yoga class", and I was fine... free without the expectations that certain surface awareness can bring. Maybe that is the true meaning of "flying by the seat of your pants"... it isn't a destination - it is simply being where you aren't. Interesting.