Category: Spring

5 Flavours to Eat for Health

23/1/2019

In Chinese medicine and in Ayurveda, the hallmark of a balanced meal is the inclusion of all of the flavours. By including all of the flavours in a meal, you’re going to feel very satisfied. And satisfaction is a crucial element of enjoyable, intuitive eating. One of these flavours is bitter, a very important taste that many of us are missing on our plates.

Throughout Spring and Summer in my Southeast Queensland neighbourhood, edible weeds pop up everywhere including in my own my backyard.

Under the kids’ trampoline out of the lawnmower’s reach, I find dandelion greens, sow thistle, billy goat weed, sheep sorrel, and wild carrot, among other largely unknown yet freely available sources of nutrition*. At the farmer’s market I uncover a similar array: mustard greens, endive, chicory, kale, parsley, rocket.

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Spring energetics - moving from darkness into light

12/10/2018

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Wild edibles have been popping up everywhere in our hood - check out these bitter dandelion greens. Perfect with some sour lemon juice, olive oil and salt for a simple spring salad.

Spring is here, and although I LOVE it, the transition has been rough...

Winter just isn't my thing (as nice as all those warm cups of chai tea are!) Spring is my favourite season of the year - and not just because it's my birthday season. As the weather started warming up, our little family enjoyed daily expeditions to a local mulberry tree. It seemed our hands and faces were perpetually stained purple, and life was sweet.

Then we had a car crash.

And it was as if our whole world was turned upside down.

Someone rear ended us on the highway. Miraculously no one was hurt, but it shook us all up. Since then, my family and I have encountered battle after battle. Physical, emotional, mental, you name it.

It started with that car crash involving all of us (such a scary experience with babies in the back). Between us we've been through a bout of hospitalisation for appendicitis, some heavy repressed memories resurfacing, a shitload of emotional processing (with anger, shame and vulnerability at the forefront), the extreme physical fatigue that accompanies such emotional processing, a teething baby (aren't they just always teething?!) and learning about the "tantrum explosion" stage of a certain ginger haired three-nager.

Kairi eating dirt. Might be some Wood energetic medicine I don't know about?!

Yin to Yang, dark to light

You could say that the car crash not only shook us up: it woke us up from various slumbers we'd all been sleeping through. For me, it has shone a spotlight onto some dark places I've been ignoring for a long time.

Seasonal transitions can be interesting to say the least. And the transition from winter to spring is perhaps the most tumultuous transition. It’s a tug-o-war between the quiet, dark, restorative, inward Yin energy of winter into the bold, outward, ascending, bright Yang energy of spring – and the shift can be massive!

Spring energetics - wood element

In Chinese medicine Spring is associated with the element Wood. The energy of new growth and germination marks this season, and here in SE Queensland new plant life is springing up all around us. This is my favourite time of the year for urban foraging and wildcrafting edible weeds.

The meridian that corresponds with the wood element is the liver / gallbladder meridian. Wood element within us governs our sense of vision, the emotion of anger, and the sound of shouting. Wood energy can aggravate the mind by allowing pressure to build (like a seed germinating), propelling us forward into creating, planning and working.

Wood element is about us having purpose and vision in our lives, our planning ability. Type A personalities this is the time to be careful to keep your perfectionist / overworking tendencies in check! (talking to myself here - I’ve taken on WAY too much work lately resulting in thoughtless shortcuts, frustrating setbacks and angry outbursts, and I now need to reassess my workload. AGAIN!)

When vision is stifled, we feel that anger and frustration and want to shout, and at the right time and place we can and should shout. Anger is an energy that needs space and if pent up that pressure can become dangerous.

Anger, indigestion... and growth

Amidst the storm of emotional turbulence that has marked this year's dark to light seasonal transition, I’ve had some seriously angry outbursts. As a bunch of shit has happened and painful repressed memories from my past have resurfaced, I've been feeling more than my usual lot of anger towards myself and others from my past and present.

I find yelling into the earth, punching a pillow, or just roaring while standing in my kitchen helps me let some steam off and transmute my pain so I (hopefully) don’t dump it onto other people - usually my poor husband!

I've found that yelling and moving my body helps me tap into the deeper emotions of grief and pain, so that I can then cry and move through those - and hopefully come out the other side to a lighter place.

The energy of new growth and germination marks this season - and clearly that growth isn't always comfortable! If too much Wood energy builds pressure and is not released, it can result in symptoms like hypertension, headaches, sore muscles, indigestion, allergies, irritability, insomnia and outbursts of rage.

This year's winter into spring has been a gloriously turbulent, disastrously beautiful, emotionally and physically exhausting transition for us - maybe it has been for you too. Personally I've had to reach out and practice extreme vulnerability with close friends (not one of my strong points), and practice those uncomfortable skills of feeling unpleasant emotions, releasing through crying and yelling, and applying bucket loads of self-compassion.

But it's not all emotional turbulence and digestive ails. With Spring there's also that palpable quickening in the air; that shimmer of morning dew on newly sprouting herbs in the garden; that pulsation of warm, wet earth underneath bare feet. New growth, even if it's forced and we don't feel ready for it. The promise of new life.

As I wake from a winter slumber (physically and metaphorically) I'm beginning to see how old ways of being are no longer working for me, and have been forced to deal with issues that have been sitting in the dark for years.

I'm also seeing the seeds I planted many months and years ago start to germinate into exciting new projects which I'll be sharing with you in the coming months.

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Treating allergies naturally

10/10/2017

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Do you dread high pollen count days? Is spring a season of antihistamine overload, soggy tissues, and hiding indoors? Treating seasonal allergies naturally is straight forward with the right know-how.

The sleeping earth of winter is re-awakening, spring is well and truly here, and nature heralds her return. We feel an extraordinary push for life and movement within our own bodies, and we see it in the natural world. And with our own blossoming comes that of the beautiful plant world: so many, pollen-producing, allergenic plants!

The glorious feeling of taking that first breath of crisp, early spring air might be somewhat stifled if you’re one of many sufferers of seasonal allergies. All those pollens and animal hair can set off your allergic rhinitis, a fancy way of saying hay fever. Worse still: when your allergies trigger your asthma!

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Summer body WOES are made in winter

20/8/2017

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It's the end of winter, nearly spring. This is Imbolc - the time of metaphoric rebirth. Half way between the winter solstice and the spring equinox, this is traditionally a time for purification and spring cleaning in anticipation of the new surge in life approaching.

We may well still have a few cold snaps ahead of us but the energy has shifted.

Both energetically and in the natural world, now is the time we see new growth following the seeming dormancy of Winter. Imbolc is a time of hope, a time filled with the excitement of new possibilities for the future, the time for manifestation of whatever dreams we've been seeding over winter.

And troublingly - but not surprisingly - there are plenty of body-shaming industries ready to capitalise on the collective feelings of hope and excitement that coincide with the change in season.

One industry that plays a huge part in forming the mass constructed social expectations placed on bodies associated with this time of year is, of course, the diet industry.

Being late winter when the growing warmth is reminding us of the bikini season 'just around the corner', this is when we hear an escalation of mantras like, "Summer bodies are made in winter" along with increased pressure to buy those programs and products that employ this infuriating rhetoric.

The marketing strategies of those selling diet plans, weight loss products, 8- or 12-week training regimes and body-beautifying yoga challenges adopt this kind of tagline in order to incite a feeling of urgency or even panic in those who, shamefully, 'still haven't started working on their summer body.'

Well fuck that.

I say, "Body shame is perpetuated by stupid sayings like 'Summer bodies are made in winter.'"

Your body is not the problem. Your belief that your body is the problem, is the problem.

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detoxification: so NOT about juice fasts & colonics

21/4/2017

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When you hear the word "detoxification", what springs to mind? Juice fasting and colon cleanses? Coffee enemas and starvation? Health spas and slimming teas? For years, this is what I thought when I heard that oh-so-sexy-sounding word, and practised, much to my body's distress.

For the vast majority of people, these things are totally unnecessary - and they can actually set a person up for disordered eating and eating disorders.

When it comes to optimising your body’s detoxification processes, just doing a 3-day juice fast or a colonic – then going back to your normal diet – won’t cut it. It’s time to understand how our bodies really work, and what you can do to gently detoxify every day.

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Casey's blog

5 Flavours to Eat for Health

Spring energetics - moving from darkness into light

Yin to Yang, dark to light

Spring energetics - wood element

Anger, indigestion... and growth

Treating allergies naturally

Summer body WOES are made in winter

detoxification: so NOT about juice fasts & colonics

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