December 10, 2008 at 11:14 pm (Mother Nature, journey)
Tags: bike, fitness, gardening, Mother Nature, walk, yoga
The final part of my journey with Mother Nature was fitness. So here’s the question, what does Mother Nature have to do with fitness? Everything of course. She wants us to enjoy life and experience all of its wonders. It’s hard to do that if your out of shape.
At 45 I’m not big on high impact sports. I love to walk though. I walk around my neighborhood and admire my neighbors gardens. I also ride my bike. A bike with a basket is great to run errands with.
Gardening is an all purpose exercise. Bending squatting, lifting and digging. Gardening has it all. It’s about as a complete work out has you can get. And all of it done outside.
This time of year with snow and ice it’s hard to get outside for any type of exercise and I’m really not a gym type person. My solution is yoga. I discovered yoga in earnest last winter and love it. It keeps me in shape for the spring and helps me relax anytime.
I was never a big on exercise. I knew it was something I was supposed to do, but just didn’t get around to it most of the time. I’m glad I finally started.
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December 9, 2008 at 12:05 am (Mother Nature, journey)
Tags: food, healthy, medicine, minerals, nature, protein, vitamins
I hate to admit it, but my mom was right. Yours probably was too. You need to eat your vegetables. You also need fruits, grains.dairy and protein.
Food is some of the most powerful medicine there is. If we eat the way we should, most of us could throw out our multivitamins. With a few exceptions food contains all the mineral and vitamins we need.
However, in the United States food is literally killing people. People are eating way to much food in general, to many sugars and not enough food in its natural state.
Mother Nature provides most food they way it was meant for us to eat it. Apples for example are perfect the way they are. We do not need to bake them with sugar and eat them with ice cream.
We also need to be concerned about how our food is grown and raised. Mother Nature did not intend for cows and chickens to be forced feed and kept in pens in which they can not even turn around. Nor did she mean for them to be pumped full of water, antibiotics and steroids.
There have been studies done that show that the eggs from a chicken that spends it’s day outside pecking around the barn yard contain more protein than chickens that are caged.
We now have corn and grains that are disease free and grow to a uniform size. They also have less vitamins and minerals.
We need to be less concerned with convenience and more concerned with healthy food. We need to be less concerned with price and more concerned about the living and growing conditions of the food we eat.
Think of it this way. No parent would allow a child to reach their hand into a jar of antibiotics and eat them. But we don’t think twice about feeding them food everyday that has been pumped full of antibiotics.
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December 7, 2008 at 10:07 pm (Mother Nature, general, journey)
Tags: alternative medicine, bark, herbs, nature, poison, roots
Never fails, I make a list and leave something out. If you’ve been following along with the journey then you will know that aalternative medicine was not on the original list.
Well it should have been. Alternative medicine as always been a big part of my life. My mother used to treat me with the remedies she learned her from grandmother. I’ve taken that knowledge and added to it.
Mother nature has provided all the medicine that we will ever need. It is all around us everyday, literary in nature. Herbs are the most common medicine found in nature, but barks, roots and flowers are also used. On some plants all the parts are used. Mother Nature doesn’t like waste.
However natural treatments and remedies are not something to play around with. Mother Nature also provides some on the most powerful poisons on earth. Alternative medicine should only be practiced by someone that knows what they are doing.
Finding a person qualified in alternative medicine can be tricky. Most states have no guidelines. There are however numerous good books available on herbal medicine. Most of them include basic remedies and will also list harmful herbs.
I believe that traditional medicine needs to embrace more of the alternative medicine ways. There is room for both approaches in the treatment of humans and animals.
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December 5, 2008 at 12:33 am (Mother Nature, journey)
Tags: compost, energy, environment, nature, recycle, reusable, thrift
The environment and nature are almost the same thing, but not quite. For anyone with a Christan background think about the trinity. Each part is a whole but all the parts also make a whole. Confused yet?
Anyway, recognizing my connection with nature made me more aware about the environment. Yes I taking better care of my little piece of land but what about else could I do?
Turns out there was a lot I could do, and most of it was painless.
I’ve always composted our grass and leaves. Now I compost a lot of our kitchen waste. Coffee grounds, eggs shells, vegetable scraps, paper towel and stale bread. These are just a few of the things that go into the compost bucket.
I now have canvas shopping bags, all the light bulbs are now CFL’s, we recycle and don’t use things like paper plates anymore. I buy biodegradable soaps and cleaners. I read a lot of labels and consider how something is packaged. I have a reusable lunch bag and a set of regular silverware in my desk at work.
We really watch how we drive and make the most out of those trips. I drive by the grocery store on my way home, now I stop then instead of going back later. I also walk and bike.
Me and my daughter both shop at second hand stores. We also make a lot of our bath products instead of buying them.
We try not to throw anything out. We either try to find a new use for it or find a new home for it. My daughter has a lot of friends that are just starting out. They all love to receive things at no cost.
I’ve researched solar and wind power and will probably be adding solar panels to our home soon. Our next car will at the least be a hybrid if not completely electric. We’re not buying one now because our cars run fine. When your thinking about the environment not throwing away things that work perfectly good is part of the equation. It takes a lot of energy to make new things.
To my surprise, I also noticed that I wasn’t spending near as much money. This is not what I set out to do, but it is a direct result of being more environmentally friendly. So you if you could care less about the environment, then do these things for your bottom line.
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December 3, 2008 at 3:23 pm (Mother Nature, journey)
Tags: alternative religion, bugs, garden, nature, plants, wild life
I have another word press blog, it’s call playing n the dirt. It’s main page is about gardening. Any type of gardening, but a lot of vegetable growing. I’ve always loved to play in dirt. My mom could keep me busy for hours when I was a kid with a spoon, a bowl, some water and dirt. When my mom or grandfather wanted to garden, I wanted to be with them.
As an adult things didn’t change much. Even if it was just house plants in an apartment, I’ve always grown something. I’ve never used chemicals of any kind. Long before I read all the bad stuff about them, it just didn’t seem right to me.
Shortly after I started researching Alternative Religions, I found a group of them called earth based religions. It would take several books to describe them all, but most earth based religions have one thing in common. They all have a strong link to nature. They respect nature and it’s forces.
Most of these religions have roots that are much older than any type of Christianity. There are still traces of the religious rites in our societies today. Ground hog day, February 2nd is one just day. So is May day and any harvest festival.
It all began it click into place for me. I had always felt so at peace outside. I loved the smell of dirt in the spring and waited each year for the first sign of tulips. I could stare for hours at the night sky or the clouds. I had struggled for years to understand Christianity, for it to make sense. But all of nature was in my soul, it always had been. No one needed to teach me about this, because some how I just knew.
I have continued to garden and with even more respect to nature. I no longer till the dirt, it destroys the ecosystem of millions of living creatures below the surface of the dirt. I try to make sure I can replenish the nutrients in the soil the plants take out. I try to grow native plants. I try to provide for wildlife, birds and squirrels to name a few. One rule my daughter hates, if the bug is outside you can not kill it. If it frightens you, move. I try to study any new garden area before I plant in it.
As a result of reading a lot about earth based religions I feel more connected with nature than ever. My gardens are also doing better than ever.
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December 2, 2008 at 12:40 am (Mother Nature, journey)
Tags: alternative religion, chakra, Christan, metaphysical, nature, Wicca
I grew up with generations of Christan traditions. We didn’t just go to church we served the church. Pastors, deacons, music leaders, bible teachers, piano players. If you can name it, my grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, siblings and cousins were involved in it or leading it. Including myself for many years.
But then out of no where life threw me one it’s famous curve balls and all the traditions and service wasn’t enough. I was left with to many questions and a hollow feeling.
I guess some people would have gone to their doctor, gotten a prescription for depression and continued on. Instead I went to the library. And I found a wonderful new word, metaphysical.
I read some books by Sylvia Browne to get started. They didn’t seem to weird and the gave me the courage to search some more. Then I found a really good book about chakra’s which led me to reading almost anything I could find about Buddhism and Hinduism. I started meditating on a regular basis.
I was feeling better very day. I was finding the answers to questions I hadn’t even realized were bothering me. I was sleeping better. But I didn’t stop there. I found another new word Wicca.
No Wicca is not witch craft. It is considered an earth based religion by most people. (The status of “religion” is debated by a lot of people.) What ever it is, it made a lot of sense to me. I connected immediately with the earth based and nature part of Wicca. I connected with the herbs, teas, oil and candles. One reason I think felt so “at home” with Wicca was because the medicines of teas and herbs reminded me of my grandmothers. But I still wasn’t done.
Wicca led me back to of all places the controversial lost books of the bible. The Gospels of Thomas and Mary Magdalene to name a few. I’ve read them and others. I feel they are just as valid as any other book that is in the bible. And I’m saddened about the politics of the church, then and now.
I’m more comfortable now with many of the Alternative Religions than I ever was with Christianity. I still read, explore and research almost daily. I doubt this part of the journey will ever be over.
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