this week is cleanse week on dr. oz

today (4/30/2013) was Dr. Alejandro Junger talking about his 3-day cleanse and a few women who had followed it and how they felt better, slept better, had nicer skin and there were a couple women who have followed the program for 30+ days and their better health–one was suffering from autoimmune disorder diagnosed as rheumatoid arthritis and on medication, etc. and has been off medication for 3 months now and lost 30 pounds.  Dr. Junger talks about leaky gut and healing the gut and how the gut is the second brain because “around the intestines is a huge nervous system, that there’s more neurons around the intestines than in the brain in your skull.”  Junger says, “Fixing the gut is the first thing–that’s where health and disease begin.”  www.doctoroz.com/videos/3-day-jumpstart-cleanse-kit

and tomorrow is Deepak Chopra’s stress cleanse with meditation–in the commercial Doctor Oz states “Meditation causes brain cells to regrow.”  Regrow!!!

and there’s juicing on Thursday’s episode!  :)  I am a huge fan of juicing.

“Every flower has its fairy…

(***I found a flower fairy wearing a yellow dress in a pansy in my garden

“Every flower has its fairy, every tree its spirit.”

“Every plant–every aspect of the natural world–has some spirit, some energy associated with it.  What we call the fairies and elves are just a small part of The Realm, but they are all Mother Earth’s children….They hold the key to many mysteries of life.  They stimulate intuition, creativity, and artistic energies.  They hold the secrets to the true healing powers of plants, stones, and all of Nature.”

“Sometimes in life it is more important to feel than to know.  By stirring some of those forgotten embers, by remembering what we felt and knew as a child, we rediscover the joys and mysteries of the world.  We open ourselves to the spirits of Nature and all her elements.  Remember that we can starve as much from a lack of wonder as we can from a lack of food.  Nature and all of her spirits keep the wonder in us alive.”

–Ted Andrews (Faerie Charms)

“Let the river of your life flow freely and deeply,***

“Let the river of your life flow freely and deeply,

and the pebbles of your love fall into the water

to create ripples that will touch us all.”

–Bernie Siegel

(found in Secrets to Lifelong Prosperity by Heidi Baer)

OMG!!–really! Oh my food inspiration of complete deliciousness***

“Roasted Sweet Potato and Black Bean Tacos”   I think I’m in love

I have recently clutter cleared and gotten rid of a whole bunch of recipes out of my space and the result was that I had a faint spark of inspiration in cooking (gasp!!)–especially when I unearthed a “Baked Feta” recipe from the March 2012 issue of O, The Oprah Magazine where I happened to have the ingredients and it was quick and simple–I’m talking *instant* gratification (see story here).  My heart was singing and I was ready for more, so I pulled out a few more recipes to try and hastily wrote them onto my grocery list lest the inspiration faded.

Quite frankly, what often happens is I go to the store with my enormous list of new things to buy for my new recipes and I get overwhelmed and wait too long and end up making something else that is familiar with the new ingredients.  I almost did that this time after getting back from our busy Thursday of piano and gymnastics.  But I made the decision of making these tacos and just having a later dinner.

The “Roasted Sweet Potato and Black Bean Tacos” were ripped out of the February 2012 of my O, The Oprah magazine.  I also added chopped zucchini to it and for the chipotle sauce I only added one chipotle pepper and NOT the whole 7 oz. can –too spicy for me and my kids–but not for my husband so he had to suffer with mild chipotle sauce.  Three of the four of us went back for more.  And you can find the recipe here!  Please please just try it.  It’s sophisticated and child-friendly, teenager-friendly all at the same time.

bless your mess***

(art by my daughter when she was about eight-years-old)

“We’re sort of like Aunt Clara on Bewitched (Aunt Clara is a clumsy witch on the tv show Bewitched)–incompetent.  Bless your mess…and you created it and if you manifested that, then you can change it.”

– from Creating your Heart’s Desire program with Sonia Choquette

Think of how much much more control we have over our lives when we honor, acknowledge, and take responsibility for what we have created and where we are in our lives…Maybe we don’t have control over everything but we had a part in creating it.  And if we can just do a little, subtle tweak here and there, then maybe that’s all we need to do in order to get onto a smoother track.  (I’m not talking about the heavy stuff in life–that’s what therapists are for.)

What about the piles of recipes, knitting/crocheting hobbies with yarns and patterns–patterns not only to last a  lifetime but hundreds of reincarnations! , art piles, paper piles, piles of books to read, tv shows to watch, movies on queue, etc….or is that just me lol;)  There, I’ve admitted it!  Good stress, fun stress, I’ll admit *distracting* stress.  More fun than other stuff stuff.  Stress I created and manifested.  Stress in a certain area that once acknowledged I can change and tweak so it works better in my life.

I dumped a whole large brown bag of recipes into the recycling a couple weeks ago.  I admit I felt a slight tinge of panic and what else was in there that I might need.  There was a shift in lightness, though.  And the interesting thing is that I ended up trying a new recipe that I never would have found and didn’t know was in there—which is the whole point of having all of these piles of recipes– having new, amazing recipes to try.

***The recipe was for a feta appetizer ***YUM!!! my kids ate it, it’s simple and delicious and you can serve it with regular cracker, or rice crackers or veggies, I even chopped up the leftovers and put it in my soup.  Delicious!!!   ok, I hate to admit this because I’m sort of organized, but I couldn’t find the recipe in my recipe book (?!?) but I did find it on the internet–thanks internet!

Try this!!!    ***Baked Feta (in the March 2012 issue of O, The Oprah Magazine)

www.oprah.com/food/Simple-Recipes-You-Can-Memorize-Go-To-Recipes/4

Wow! from “bless this mess” to “baked feta”–it’s a winning combination and see you never know what effect clutter clearing will have on your life.  I recommend you clear out one pile of clutter and see where it affects your life…

FREE 21-day meditation with Oprah and Deepak Chopra –”Everybody thinks of changing humanity…

“Everybody thinks of changing humanity and nobody thinks of changing himself.”

–Leo Tolstoy

I have nothing to gain from this but I TRULY believe in it—it is a 21-day program that they will later sell for around $30-40 so why not do it now for free?!?   I cannot tell you, you must experience it for yourself.  I did the last one offered for 21 days and my teenage son did it for some of them, not all of them.  It does not have to be all or nothing, there is some flexibility in when you listen and meditate.  Even if you do some of the meditations—IT IS WORTH IT!:)

FYI—***Last time you could even sign up late.

www.oprah.com/deepakchopra

Namaste and many many blessings***

p.s.  this could be the thing that changes your life but it’s so *subtle* you don’t realize it–honor it, embrace it, accept it, allow it***

“Know you what it is to be a child?…

“Know you what it is to be a child?  It is to be something very different from the man of today.  It is to have a spirit yet streaming from the waters of baptism; it is to believe in love, to believe in loveliness, to believe in belief; it is to be so little that the elves can reach to whisper in your ear, it is to turn pumpkins into coaches and mice into horses, lowness into loftiness, and nothing into everything, for each child has its fairy godmother in its soul.”

–Shelley