Soul Care Revolution

Spring Sprouts – how to make your own sprouts at home

elham — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 07:52:26 +0000

Lentils and Mung beans are probably the easiest beans to sprout, are great sources of protein, and are light and fresh so they cut through the heavy, damp energy that can accumulate in spring time.

You can buy sprouts at the grocery store, but these are so simple and so cheap to make at home it is worth giving it a try. Here’s how.

Here I'm using a sprouting jar to soak radish and fenugreek seeds

Equipment:

A bowl with a lid (or a plate on top) and a colander

A Sprouting Jar

~!!!~

Make your own sprouting jar

1 16+ oz mason jar or cleaned out glass salsa/sauce jar

A 6 x 6 inch square of cheese cloth, old pantyhose, or mesh or netting

A rubber band

~!!!~

1. Measure 1/2 C lentils and rinse in a sieve

2. Place lentils in your sprouting jar or bowl and cover with 2 C water

3. Cover your jar with the netting and secure with a rubber band or place the plate over the bowl and leave in a dark, cool corner of the kitchen overnight

4. In the morning, pour out the water through the mesh or transfer the lentils to a colander if using a bowl. Lentils will be swollen from absorbing the water all night long. Leave the jar at a tilt to ensure water drains out so the beans don’t mold. If using a colander, rinse the lentils in the colander and allow to drain completely. Set aside in a cool, shady place.

5. Continue to rinse the lentils twice a day, morning and evening. Within a couple days you should see little green tails start to poke out. They are ready to eat! You can eat them right away for a crunchy, high protein treat, or let the sprouts grow longer for a higher water-content, sweeter sprout.

6. After the sprouts have reached the desired length, transfer to the refrigerator so they don’t start to mold.

Enjoy!

Some interesting facts about lentils:

Lentils are extremely high in fiber, folic acid and protein and are proven to reduce cholesterol, blood sugar levels and to reduce the risk of breast cancer by 24 percent when eating twice a week. That’s pretty amazing. *

1C cooked lentils = 18 grams of protein

1C sprouted lentils=49g protein **

* Results from the Nurses’ Health Study II, cited in The Encyclopedia of Healing Foods, p. 397

**Compare to 21g in 3oz lean beef

Living Courageously

elham — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 18:33:20 +0000

“The way to live is with vulnerability and stop controlling and predicting.”

Check out this fabulous TED talk on living with courage and vulnerability.

Brené Brown points out that ‘Courage’ comes from the Latin word, Cour, which means heart. And it originally was used to describe those who told their stories with their whole heart, accepting the good and the bad.

Wow. How much of ourselves are we willing to accept, much less to share? For me, I have to ask myself, do I ever use food to block away the parts of myself I have trouble accepting? The feelings? The memories? The hopes or needs that I deny or the desires that I ignore? The answer is very clearly a ‘yes’ for me. Of course. And that’s all part of the journey, I suppose.

I’m a health coach and still notice the frustrating struggle of negative emotions and building stress and then just wanting to avoid it, to push it away, to stuff those feelings down with another bite or a pastry or tea. Yet I know even healthy food, when eaten when my body isn’t hungry, becomes unhealthy, and it is yet another thing to feel ‘bad’ about, and the spiral continues.

So I can stop, observe, halt the judgment, and then allow myself to see that relationship to food as a ‘signal’ and nothing more or less. It is a signal that in some area of life I have an opportunity to live with both halves of my heart – with courage. I can journal it out, share it, pray about it, blog it, talk with a coach, a colleague or a friend. I’m trying to learn how to even accept those frustrating aspects of myself and hand them over to God to transform so that they can just be another part of my experience of being human.

It’s a tall order, having the courage to be vulnerable, to be imperfect. The liberation to be whole though, now that is true freedom. Freedom to be ourselves and not have to stuff any ‘undesireable’ parts away with food or compulsion or self-hatred.

In what areas of life do you want to be more courageous and release into the light?

Zucchini Flax Seed Breakfast Muffins (Sugar and Gluten Free)

elham — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 08:11:12 +0000

Eat Happy Food

Often I hear that people I work with don’t have enough time for breakfast in the morning, much less a health one, and then end up skipping breakfast, eating on the run, or stopping for fast food or coffee. I feel, though, that not having enough time in the morning isn’t an excuse for not eating breakfast. It’s just yet another creative challenge to arise to.

By baking these muffins when you DO have the time, and then keeping them in the refrigerator or even frozen, you have a very quick, nutritious, filling and easy way to have a whole-foods breakfast. Like little meals on the go, these muffins contain whole grains, protein, essential oils, a fruit and a vegetable!

Enjoy

Zucchini Flax Seed Breakfast Muffins

Preheat oven to 350 F, grease the muffin tin or use liner cups

Prep time 20 minutes, baking time 20 minutes

Dry ingredients

1 ½ cups gluten free flour (brown rice or a mix). Or, if not GF, try spelt flour.

½ Cup GF rolled oats

¼ C white rice flour, coconut flour or arrowroot flour

2 tsp aluminum-free baking soda

Wet ingredients

1 zucchini, unpeeled and grated (makes at least 1 ½ cups)

1/3 C melted butter, or melted virgin coconut oil***

½ C liquid honey

1 Tbs vanilla

1 C water

2 eggs (optional, for added protein)***

Mix-ins

1/3 C ground flax seeds

½ C raw sunflower seeds

½ C raisins or currents

Grated peel from one orange (make sure it is organic and you wash the rind well before grating)

1 Tbs apple cider vinegar

Directions

Mix together all of the dry ingredients in a bowl

Mix together the wet ingredients in a separate bowl

Add wet to dry and fold together with out over-stirring, and then gently fold in the ‘mix-ins’

Stir in the apple cider vinegar and allow the batter to rise and foam a bit. (This adds fluffiness and makes the gluten-free muffins less dense.)

Pour into a muffin pan to make 12 muffins

Bake for 20 minutes at 350F

If you will be eating them all within a few days, these can keep in the refrigerator. Otherwise, take out those you will eat soon and put the rest in a freezer-safe bag and store in the freezer. These muffins warm up really well in the toaster oven. There you go! You and your honey have breakfast all week!

*** You can make these muffins vegan by using coconut oil instead of butter and by removing the eggs. Since the eggs are only included in the breakfast muffin to add protein, they are not needed to hold the batter together. Instead, soak the flax seeds a 1/4 C of warm water for 10 minutes before adding them with the wet ingredients.

recipe by Elham Simmons

“A Big Fat Debate” by Kristin Wartman

elham — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 22:35:53 +0000

March 7, 2011

A Big Fat Debate

By kristin wartman

The low-fat trend finally appears to be on its way out. The notion that saturated fats are detrimental to our health is deeply embedded in our Zeitgeist—but shockingly, the opposite just might be true. For over 50 years the medical establishment, public health officials, nutritionists, and dieticians have been telling the American people to eat a low-fat diet, and in particular, to avoid saturated fats. Only recently, have nutrition experts begun to encourage people to eat “healthy fats.”

This past December, the Los Angeles Times reported that excess carbohydrates and sugar, not fat, are responsible for America’s obesity and diabetes epidemics. One of the lead researchers in this field, Dr. Frank Hu, professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health, said, “The country’s big low-fat message backfired. The overemphasis on reducing fat caused the consumption of carbohydrates and sugar in our diets to soar. That shift may be linked to the biggest health problems in America today.” Another expert, Dr. Walter Willett, chairman of the department of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, said, “Fat is not the problem.”

Last month, Martha Rose Shulman of the New York Times Recipes for Health section, wrote that she’s taken the “no low-fat pledge.” Shulman writes, “I took a pledge the other day that will surprise my longtime followers. It even surprised me. I pledged to drop the term ‘low-fat’ from my vocabulary.”

Shulman, an influential food and recipe writer with over 25 books to her name, has long promoted low-fat and light cooking, but now writes, “There are many recipes in my cookbooks from the 90s that now look and taste dated to me. I’ve put back some of the oil and cheese that I took out when editors were telling me to keep total fat at 30 percent of total calories–a concept that is now obsolete even among policymakers.”

She and a room full of “nutrition scientists, dietitians, doctors, chefs and food service titans” recently listened to experts on nutrition debunk some of the common fat myths. Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, who co-directs the program in cardiovascular epidemiology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School and is an assistant professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, was also there and said, “No randomized trial looking at weight change has shown that people did better on a low-fat diet. For many people, low-fat diets are even worse than moderate or high-fat diets because they’re often high in carbohydrates from rapidly digested foods such as white flour, white rice, potatoes, refined snacks and sugary drinks.”

These are clear indications that an important tipping point in the mainstream understanding of fat and nutrition is underway. But it did take some time. Back in 2002, Gary Taubes wrote about it in the New York Times magazine, laying out a fine deconstruction of the low-fat premise presented to the American people. He pointed out that the science behind this recommendation was never proven and was actually based on “a leap of faith” (more on this here).

In 2001, Dr. Hu, writing in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition, noted, “It is now increasingly recognized that the low-fat campaign has been based on little scientific evidence and may have caused unintended health problems.” Or, as Michael Pollan pithily puts it in his In Defense of Food, “The amount of saturated fat in the diet may have little if any bearing on the risk of heart disease, and the evidence that increasing polyunsaturated fats in the diet will reduce risk is slim to nil.”

This brings up several important issues in the fat debate. It is still widely held that what matters are the types of fat we consume. Even in Shulman’s article on her fat re-education, there are contradictions—it’s clear she just can’t get her head around the idea that saturated fats may indeed be healthy. She writes, “Saturated fat—the kind found in animals and dairy products, as well as in any hydrogenated fat—is also regarded as a less healthy fat because it raises L.D.L cholesterol, or ‘bad’ cholesterol in the blood, and this kind of cholesterol is related to heart disease. But even saturated fat is not so bad compared to refined carbohydrates, the doctors say, and if we were to eliminate it from our diet we would also be eliminating many foods that are also rich in healthy fats, like fish, whose omega-3 fatty acids are vital to good health.”

But as Pollan points out, the idea that saturated fats are a less healthy fat just isn’t true, as the picture is fairly complex. Indeed, most foods are composed of a many different types of fats. For example, half the fat found in beef is unsaturated and most of that fat is the same monounsaturated fat found in olive oil. Lard is 60 percent unsaturated and most of the fat in chicken fat is unsaturated as well, according to Taubes 2008 book Good Calories, Bad Calories. In his New York Times article he writes, “Even saturated fats–AKA, the bad fats—are not nearly as deleterious as you would think. True, they will elevate your bad cholesterol, but they will also elevate your good cholesterol. In other words, it’s a virtual wash.” Taubes continues, “Foods considered more or less deadly under the low-fat dogma turn out to be comparatively benign if you actually look at their fat content. More than two-thirds of the fat in a porterhouse steak, for instance, will definitively improve your cholesterol profile (at least in comparison with the baked potato next to it); it’s true that the remainder will raise your L.D.L., the bad stuff, but it will also boost your H.D.L. The same is true for lard. If you work out the numbers, you come to the surreal conclusion that you can eat lard straight from the can and conceivably reduce your risk of heart disease.”

Nearly every day new research and studies come out debunking popular fat myths; despite this, misinformation persists. On the Mayo Clinic’s Web site, saturated fats are lumped in with trans-fats under the banner “harmful dietary fat” and the site claims that saturated fat can increase your risk of cardiovascular disease and Type 2 diabetes.

The link to cardiovascular disease is tenuous at best—the idea being that saturated fats raise your cholesterol and triglyceride levels which in turn leads to cardiovascular disease. But according to the most recent studies, including one reported in the Los Angeles Times article, this is not true. “Contrary to what many expect—dietary fat intake is not directly related to blood fat. Rather, the amount of carbohydrates in the diet appears to be a potent contributor,” Marni Jameson writes.

And during a symposium called “The Great Fat Debate: Is There Validity In the Age-Old Dietary Guidance?” at the American Dietetic Association’s Food and Nutrition Conference and Expo, four leading experts agreed that replacing saturated fat with carbohydrates is likely to raise the risk of cardiovascular disease. Dr. Walter Willett said, “If anything, the literature shows a slight advantage of the high fat diet.”

And as for diabetes, there is no data to support the notion that a high-fat diet increases the risk for diabetes. Again, if anything, the opposite appears to be true. In a 2008 study reported in the Los Angeles Times article, obese men and women with metabolic syndrome (a precursor to diabetes) that went on a high saturated-fat, low-carb diet saw their triglycerides drop by 50 percent and their levels of good H.D.L. cholesterol increase by 15 percent.

But old dietary habits die hard and convincing people that what they’ve been told for the past 50 years is just plain wrong, is a hard sell. Not only that, but the continued recommendations to eat low-fat versions of foods (as in the USDA’s latest dietary guidelines and on the Mayo Clinic’s Web site) don’t help. Americans are confused about nutrition and disease and it’s only getting more complex with corporations claiming to make healthier foods (see Mark Bittman’s take on McDonald’s oatmeal and my take on Wal-Mart’s health washing).

Keep in mind, there is one type of fat that is implicated in high cholesterol, atherosclerosis, heart disease, and diabetes: Trans-fat. Trans-fats raise bad cholesterol, lower good cholesterol, and increase triglycerides, they also promotes inflammation and insulin resistance, according to a 2000 article in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition. This points to the one basic axiom that always hold true: Eat real, whole foods and nothing else—now, if we could only just all agree on what those are.

Kristin Wartman blogs at http://kristinwartman.wordpress.com/

Are the foods you’re eating causing your cravings?

elham — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 14:22:42 +0000

You may think that grabbing that Snickers is satisfying your craving and, hopefully, making it go away, but the truth is, specific foods may actually be what trigger those cravings in the first place!

Now, there are many possible triggers and I discuss emotional, environment, and even spiritual causes of cravings with my clients, but one of the main ones – and one of the easiest to prevent, are food cravings caused by other foods you are eating.

Here’s the thing – when you have a craving, your body isn’t making a mistake. You don’t have a ‘stupid body’ with an appetite for Snickers bars. The human body is a highly evolved, finely tuned instrument that manages billions of functions to keep you breathing, digesting, assimilating, pumping blood, expelling toxins, thinking, moving, sensing, and more every moment of every day. It does all the correct calculations and gives you the right answers – and its whole function is to survive, so it’s not going to ask for something that will harm it. So the error that produces a message such as “feed me sugar pops” must be happening in two possible places – either from bad data input, or misinterpretation of the results.

Starting with the first – if confusing food is put into your body, your body will do its best to make sense of it and give you a signal for how to respond and make it less confusing.

So what is confusing food?

I’m glad you asked.

Confusing foods are foods that have been significantly changed from their original form – the form our bodies evolved over millions of years to recognize as food in nature. The more extreme the changes, the more confusing the food.

To make this clear, lets look at something I like to call “The Great Continuum of Corn!”

One way we eat corn in the most natural sate is corn on the cob. Really fresh, sweet corn from the farmers market is so tender and juicy it can even be eaten raw. Often, though, corn on the cob is grilled or boiled. Here we are not even going to go into all the different variations of corn that were much more available in the past –before a certain mono-crop, genetically engineered and rendered infertile has taken over the market. Let’s just imagine we are starting with some homegrown corn from our local farmers market – fresh, juicy, sweet – a whole, real food.

Now, moving along this continuum we have already gone from raw to lightly cooked. In the next few steps we find canned corned which still resembles the juicy kernels, but has undergone processing and often had some flavorings or preservatives added. Then we may see creamed corn, which still contains the moisture of the kernels. After that, when the kernels are dried, the water content is removed and it can be ground to make the basis for corn meal, or popped to make pop corn. Of course, these are rarely eaten plain, so add, at least, butter and salt to the popcorn, and make the corn meal into corn bread or corn tortillas.

As we get further and further from the original, fresh, raw corn on the cob from the farmers market and start adding ingredients, taking away water, fiber and nutrients, then grinding, pressing, oozing, extruding and popping, we see corn flakes, corn chips, corn nuts, and even corn dogs!

Even further refined and extracted we’ll find corn starch and the ubiquitous – and infamous – high fructose corn syrup.* This last one (though, admittedly, probably the only source of corn in candy corn) has come a loooooooooong way along the great continuum of corn from that original fresh cob.

So when your body, which is made up of systems that evolved for millions of years to recognize corn as food, is fed one of those extreme variations, like Doritos or something containing corn meal as a filler, corn starch as a thickener, or corn syrup as a sweetener, it goes through something like the following process…

“Hmmm, what is this? Let me run it against my memory banks of food to see what to do with it.” Now, if you have an allergy or intolerance, this is where your body might say “NOT FOOD! This is a foreign substance! Get it out!” Or, if it’s not intolerant, it might recognize an aspect of the corn and say “Aha! I remember this. Corn. But where is the water? Where is the fiber? Where are the many nutrients you soaked up from the rich soil, fresh water and warm sun? I can’t find them. Well, since this is corn, the other parts must be there somewhere, SO KEEP EATING.”

To make it even more confusing, often these messages don’t happen right as you are eating, but rather come at the end of the day when the body is processing and assimilating the various meals and snacks you have already consumed, you’re sitting on the sofa at home and there is a whole list of incomplete foods your body wants you to go out and find the missing parts to. This results in that evening “I feel like I want to eat something but I’m not sure what” feeling.

Ta da! There is the source of your craving.

Your body isn’t asking for that Snickers (did you just think ‘Yes it is?’ No, it really isn’t.) It is asking for the missing pieces to all the processed, chemicalized and fragmented foods you ate earlier today or maybe even earlier this week.

So what’s the solution? As I said, these are cravings with a clear cause and unlike emotional, environmental or spiritual triggers, can be very simply addressed by asking one question of all the food you eat.

“Would I find this in nature?”

If not, how much has it had to change to make it to your plate? What has been added to it or taken away from it? How has it been processed and packaged?

When you have a choice, then, and want to avoid having even more cravings later on, save your body the confusion and grab the fig instead of the Fig Newton. Eat the whole grains instead of the whole grain sugary cereal. Enjoy that fresh, juicy, sweet corn on the cob.
Send your body clear messages, make it happy, and reap the rewards!

*According to this site that boasts ‘A Zillion Uses for Corn’ there are over 40 different types of starches and glucose derived from corn. Yikes!

http://www.ontariocorn.org/classroom/products.html

The Institute for Integrative Nutrition featured me on their Blog. I’m so honored!

elham — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 20:11:01 +0000

How to Live the Life of Your Dreams

Posted on March 1, 2011 by Integrative Nutrition

Integrative Nutrition graduate and Health Coach, Elham Simmons took a leap of faith and now lives the life of her dreams. Read her inspiring interview with us to find out how she did it.

What were you doing before Integrative Nutrition?

Before starting at Integrative Nutrition I had been a teaching assistant at a high school in South Africa, a paralegal for a non-profit in DC, and then worked for a couple years in helping train human resources to do grassroots spiritual community development around the Northwest. It was all interesting work and something about each job resonated with a core aspect of myself – and yet each time there was another important part of myself that wasn’t present. Health and nutrition were a personal interest — I was going to bed reading whole foods and macrobiotic cookbooks and conducting experiments in my kitchen with whole grains, green smoothies, and gluten-free muffins — but they had nothing to do with my professional life. I now think back on this time as essential prep work. I was learning about my strengths and interests and about how I show up in the world.

When I heard about Integrative Nutrition I was at a potluck talking to a vibrant woman who I later discovered was Integrative Nutrition graduate. We first bonded over the vegetarian chili and were soon sharing muffin recipes. She told me about the school on a Saturday night. On Monday morning I was enrolled. It was as if the two parallel paths I had been walking – human and spiritual development in my professional life, and health and nutrition in my personal life – had come to a point in the road and finally merged into one!

How have you incorporated your Integrative Nutrition education into your life?

At every stage with Integrative Nutrition, from the warm up classes, to the Immersion Program and the Miami conference, to now being an alumna, I’ve found that Integrative Nutrition has helped me wind a little closer – like that spiral logo – to the very core of my life and purpose.

Immediately I connected to a stunningly clear vision of myself as a health coach working with individuals and groups to help people connect to their own light and heal their relationship to food and nourishment. I was calm and graceful and living somewhere bright and beautiful, right near the water. I didn’t know where it was or how to get there, but that image became my ‘compass’. Within the first month I started making food changes, getting off of coffee and sugar, and then, with the support and community of amazing friends I made in the program, I quit my job and was building a bustling coaching practice by graduation!

During Immersion I went deeper into my core belief systems and started a process of deeply connecting to my authentic self and what I want from life, healing old pains and limitations in my thoughts and in my body. Then, after getting home from the Miami conference I made a vision board that included the image of stucco homes with tiled roofs cascading down a green hillside towards beautiful blue water. Less than 6 months later I was living in Switzerland in a Unesco World Heritage site where I am greeted every day with the stunning view of sprawling vineyards, majestic Alps and the moody expanse of Lake Geneva. I go for walks or runs nearly every day through terraced hills that have been cultivated in the traditional ways for hundreds of years and eat fresh, unprocessed food that is grown right in this region. I never could have imagined being here three years ago.

“What it came down to, for me, was that Integrative Nutrition was seeing the whole picture of people’s health, not just focusing on trying to control fragmented aspects of life. “

Why did you choose Integrative Nutrition’s Health Coach Training Program?

When I first looked at the website on that Saturday night my initial reaction was “Oh no, not a bunch of fad diets and self-help mumbo jumbo. People are already confused enough as it is!” Then I went back for a second look on Sunday. I watched some videos about Joshua [Rosenthal] explaining primary foods and started to realize “Oh! This is about helping people navigate past all the fads and gimmicks to connect authentically to themselves – to their own lives, to their own wisdom, to their own health and mission. I can definitely get on board with that!” What it came down to, for me, was that Integrative Nutrition was seeing the whole picture of people’s health, not just focusing on trying to control fragmented aspects of life. Once I saw that there were no questions anymore. This was the program for me.

Is there a need for Health Coaches in your area of the world?

All my life I have considered myself a ‘world citizen’. I was born in Finland to a Persian mother and an American father of Scottish and French ancestry. I’ve lived in Ecuador, France, South Africa, Washington DC, the Pacific Northwest, and now Switzerland. There is no tying me down. And that is the real beauty of being a health coach! I now see most of my clients over Skype and have worked with people in the Far East, Europe, North America, and Africa. I have a blog, a newsletter, twitter and all that – but most of all, I have a global community and a global presence. Being able to have my own business and operate from any place in the world has set me free to embrace that global nomad aspect of myself. And if there is one thing I have learned from IIN, it is be your truest, most authentic self, and that is the most powerful service you can offer your clients. I see it happening all the time. My courage and passion for life wakes up the memory of courage and passion in the people I work with and they start seeing miraculous transformations in their lives.

What are your future plans?

Oh my goodness I am so excited for this next stage of life! In my usual style, I am off on another grand adventure – this time to Barcelona, Spain! I long for the color, the sun, the art, the freshness, and the warm beaches. This is part of my soul calling and feels so right. To make it there I am ramping up my referral networks, building my practice, getting out my blog www.soulcarerevolution.com and planning to work 20 hours a week as a health coach then enjoy my time learning Catalan, basking in the sunlight and the art, and having a fabulous time in, what I feel, is the heart of the Mediterranean. Yeah, it’s new and scary and means taking another huge leap of faith, but I learned at IIN that when my soul calls me forward I just can’t hold it back. It all started with this question: What would I do if I knew I could not fail? So now I invite you to ask yourself. What would you do if you know you could not fail? The world is yours!

“My courage and passion for life wakes up the memory of courage and passion in the people I work with and they start seeing miraculous transformations in their lives.”

Find out more about Integrative Nutrition’s Health Coach Training Program.

What does ‘Soul Care’ have to do with weight loss?

elham — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 08:37:28 +0000

For the ladies out there, do you ever walk by a mirror and think “Dang! Who is that beautiful woman?”

I know it happens to people, but it wasn’t usually something that happened to me. It just wasn’t part of my thought process. Instead I would think “woah, why am I wearing this?” Or, “Should I cut my hair or grow it out? Either way it looks funny.” These were just normal thoughts. And I’m not even talking about the other extreme of the narcissistic “gotta check the mirror ten times gosh I’m a hottie” kind of thinking. I’m talking about looking in the mirror, and regardless of what’s there, seeing the beauty before all else.

A couple weeks ago I had one of those moments and it caught me so off guard I had to prance around and giggle and dance out some joy for a minute. I had a moment alone at home and was wrapped in my sarong, getting ready for bath. No makeup, hair fresh out of a winter cap, nothing fancy. I walked back into my room to grab a towel and on the way out saw something in the mirror that made me stop.

For the last few months I have been focusing my meditation on connecting to the ‘true me’… the me that emerges when bathed in love and light. The me that is always there as a possibility in my soul, but who often gets upstaged or cut off by fear. The proverbial ‘tree inside the acorn’. There have been moments — honestly, years – where I’ve tried to deny her altogether. And yet, as shoved aside as she got, I never REALLY forgot her. She just became this impossible dream, this nagging feeling that I’m not quite living my life all out, that there is something waiting in the wings.

That unease, that awkward sensation that ‘something’s missing’ sometimes expressed as a compulsive pattern of strictly healthy food and then backing into cheese and almond croissants when that strict approach still didn’t fill the void. It was that belief, that feeling inside, that said “I’m supposed to be beautiful/successful/inspired, gosh darn it. What went wrong? Maybe when I loose this weigh/buy those jeans/start this exercise program/read that book I’ll finally figure it out and life will be on track and I can breathe deeply again.”

Well, no matter how many times I did all those things, as you’ve probably guessed or experienced, something was still off. Then, in an unguarded moment it was like that beautiful woman I kept pushing off stage with my worries, doubts and fears had a moment when she looked across the mirror and winked at me.

Okay, so it wasn’t so completely out of the blue. All that week I had been inviting her to come forward, praying, meditating, journaling and – above all – listening to her. When faced with a choice I would put it before the two dominant parts of myself, the “woman cloaked in fear” who had made the majority of choices in my life, producing the less-than-lithe physical form I know so well, and “woman bathed in light” who had so far been reduced to cameos and off-stage voices. “Woman cloaked in fear”, a.k.a “Miss frumpy lumpy”, was most likely to go for the bread and nutella, the coffee or the extra hour up late on the Internet. “Woman bathed in light” would just shrug her shoulders and say “nah, I don’t really need that. A walk right now would be nice, though, and afterward I could really go for a sweet, juicy persimmon!”

It didn’t take long before I held a summit between these two ladies and put it to them straight. “Look,” I said, “Woman bathed in light seems to know what’s going on with food and being healthy. She’s calm, graceful and makes simple, healthy choices. How about we let her be in charge and see how that goes?” Woman cloaked in Fear just nodded her head and said, “Fine with me. I’ve got enough to worry about already. If Glow Girl wants to take over, all the better! In fact,” and she snuck up close to whisper in my ear so ‘Glow Girl’ wouldn’t hear, “I want to be beautiful, too. It’s just, I don’t know how – I never thought that could be me. If she can help us I really think we should let her take over. If I start to get worried or scared just remind me gently and I’ll be quiet again.” My heart filled with compassion for Miss Frumpy Lumpy and I whispered back, “Sounds great. Thanks for being honest and telling me. You know, you seem tired. Why don’t you go take a nap and we’ll call you if we need you.”

Now, before you start wondering if Elham has thoroughly lost it this time, just check in and see if any version of “Glow girl” and “Miss Frumpy Lumpy” exist in you. Maybe it’s “Super dude” and “The short circuit kid”, or “Lion woman” and “frazzled mom.” I’d say what happened when I looked in the mirror today was that I caught a glimpse of ‘Woman bathed in light’ as she is starting to emerge. Every time I feed her with prayer, meditation, love and acceptance, her voice gets louder. Every time I listen to that voice and follow her wise counsel her presence becomes even more noticeable. It’s not a question of ‘when’ I look or feel a certain way anymore, but of how.

The more I choose to let my soul wash out fear, the more the rest of my life aligns with that reality in me – the one that is confident, assured, and making simple, healthy choices. She is in each of us. She is ready to respond as soon as we go looking. If you were to pause and listen now, what would your soul be ready to do for you?

Can Fasting be Healthy?

elham — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 09:05:08 +0000

Dear friends, I’m sharing a post I wrote a year ago about how spiritual fasting can be physically healthy. Do you agree with this? Have you experienced something similar? Was your experience totally different? Please share your thoughts!

With love,

Elham

–

March 1st, 2010

I’m sitting at my desk upstairs right now. Java, the family dog, is sleeping on her folded up blanket under my desk, and I’m finishing off a bowl of Persian stew – it’s my mom’s variation combining a plethora of leafy greens, celery, kidney beans and organic lamb, all over rice. The Bahá’í Fast begins tomorrow – 19 days of abstaining from consuming food or drink between sunrise and sunset and focusing on the development of inner spiritual qualities. As I enjoy what may be my final lunch until March 21st, I’m reflecting on how being a holistic health coach could change my approach to Fasting this year.

Being in this field of holistic health, now when I mention preparing for this Fast people often respond with comments like “Wait, but you can have water, right?” or “How is that healthy? Isn’t it better for your body to eat a big meal at lunch?” “Don’t you just end up staying up late and eating?” “So, hold on, can’t you just do a juice fast?” These comments, often well-intentioned advice posing as questions, reflect a view of a particular type of fasting. With the ‘master cleanse’, elimination diets, juice fasts and the like becoming very popular, these fasts take a body-centered approach to health and healing. Their objective, perfectly legitimate, is to remove the toxins, the inflammatory foods, and all the undigested gunk that builds up in the body over time, hampering its natural ability to cleanse and heal itself. It’s fine to try these when the body is feeling sluggish or to clean up your diet, but this is not, however, the same type of fast as the one undertaken for spiritual purposes – and yet this is not to say that a spiritual fast is ‘unhealthy’ for the body.

Over the last few years, and especially in the last year as a professional health coach, it has become more and more clear to me that a condition of energetic, lasting, authentic health does not actually start with the body. No matter how many green juices I was drinking, or how whole and organic my food was, or even if I had all the right supplements in all the right amounts, if I was unhappy with work, or with a relationship, or if I was overbooked, or if my life just didn’t feel like it was in line with those deep aspirations of my soul, then something always felt ‘off’. I wasn’t operating at full energy and the food could actually become a way to buffer the impact of the imbalance or the lack of nourishment I was feeling with the rest of my life.

In health coaching now, I’ve learned to look at this as the balance between primary and secondary foods. You may be surprised to learn that everything you eat is actually just a ‘secondary’ food. The primary foods, the ‘foods’ that really nourish us, establish our baseline of energy, fulfillment, happiness and health, are our relationships, career, physical activity and spirituality. Yeah, that’s right! Remember those moments where you feel deeply energized from being around people you love, doing work that you really enjoy and is meaningful to you, taking a refreshing walk (instead of, perhaps, that extra cup of coffee), or just connecting to your own spirit, finding stillness, peace and joy inside. That’s primary food. As often happens, though, the primary foods are ignored or considered as something separate from health, so when those essential parts of life are out of whack – draining our energy, unfulfilled, or somehow inauthentic and wearing us down – then the secondary foods bear the impact and we experience cravings, overeating, undereating, irregular meals, caffeine overdose or sugar addictions just to try to restore the sense of balanced energy that our whole being craves.

So as I approach the fast this year, I am thinking of it as a time where I’m taking out the ‘buffer’ of secondary foods and really have a chance to get in touch with the quality of my primary foods. With that comes looking at the very nature of my thoughts and beliefs about what I really want in each of those areas: relationship, career, physical activity and spirituality. If I begin with self-limiting thoughts about what I feel I want in the area of relationship – for example, ‘I’m always giving and never feel appreciated’ – then that is the experience of relationship that I am going to recreate every time until I actually go in an uproot that original limiting belief. This, as you can imagine, takes some honest self-evaluation and reflection – this is the process of purging toxic thoughts, inflammatory relationships, and all the undigested emotional gunk that is stopping my spirit from flowing freely and creating a life I love. When faced with all that, sometimes I think it would be so much easier to just hold onto that limiting thought, put up with the unfulfilling relationships and then grab a chocolate bar to buffer some of the impact of the disappointment and frustration.

For the next 19 days, though, between sunrise and sunset that chocolate bar (organic, raw or otherwise) is no longer an option. Instead, this is a chance to go in, be with the discomfort or imbalance for a while, and then ask my soul what it really wants and where it is feeling stuck. That, then, is my clue that there may be a thought that I can reexamine and replace with something more empowering. I recently read a passage by the 19th Century author James Allen where he said “Act is the blossom of thought, and joy and suffering are its fruits; thus does a man garner in the sweet and bitter fruitage of his own husbandry.” Our thoughts really do create our experience of reality, and just like planting a garden, if we plant thoughts or feelings of ugliness and limitation, soon those are the fruits we reap. Fasting, then, is part of the process of tending to our inner spiritual garden – uprooting thoughts of self-pity to plant stronger thoughts of gratitude, or replacing thoughts of obligation and oppression with thoughts of authenticity and freedom.

This 19 day fast, we are told, is a time to prepare for the whole coming year. I can’t imagine how the mere act of abstaining from food and drink for a few hours each day would prepare me for a year, but when I look at it as tilling the soil to find the points of balance and imbalance in my life, pulling the weeds of limiting thoughts and patterns, nourishing the soil with prayer, and then planting new thoughts, beliefs, habits and actions that resonate with the deep longing of my soul, then wow! I am almost ready to put aside my Persian stew to get started and see what fruits will come from these days of inner preparation, knowing that primary and secondary, inner and outer are all connected, and that this is one step I can take towards cultivating more balance, authenticity, health and energy in life.

Elham Simmons is a holistic health coach currently living in Switzerland.

You can find out more about her coaching practice working with people across the globe and schedule a FREE one hour consultation at

www.elhamsimmons.com

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www.soulcarerevolution.com

Seven belief systems that could be sabotaging your health goals

elham — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 20:59:26 +0000

You probably already know which foods to start eating to improve your health now.

You probably already know which foods to reduce to improve your health now.

You probably also already know how much exercise you need to improve your health now.

But, if you aren’t doing those things, do you know why?

In the last two years as a health coach I have asked myself this question over and over. Why do some people have great results while others struggle to embrace their breakthroughs? Why, at different points in my life, is it easy for me to eat well, exercise, and be in my ideal physical form, and at others it’s all I can do to make sure I eat some fruits and veggies each day?

What I believe it comes down to are not the conscious changes we make in our lives, but the shifts and transformations that take place in the subconscious – in the very way we view ourselves, our lives, and our place in the world. For the last six months I have been studying, experimenting, taking classes, and researching to figure out how to make those subconscious changes that really are the key to achieving something other than the most-predictable future, a future that actually looks different from the present!

Looking deep into my own patterns and thoughts, and paying attention to the language and patterns of my clients, these are some of the most common beliefs that seem to be sabotaging all well-intentioned efforts to have a breakthrough in health, energy, and personal vitality:

1.   Life will be better when I am healthy and beautiful.
2.   This is how my body is made and there is nothing I can do about it.
3.   I have to control my body otherwise it will control me.
4.   I’ve tried everything and nothing works for me.
5.   It is selfish to prioritize my own health.
6.   I don’t have the time to be healthy.
7.   Once I have my ideal body/life/schedule/etc, then I can love and accept it.

What do all of these have in common?

They come from a place of inherent powerlessness to create, direct and shape our own lives.

In my experience, women are especially susceptible to taking on this mindset. There are many different subtle varieties of these beliefs – some around finances or relationships, other whole systems around health, time, the value of our work, or even how other people see and respect us.

What I’ve noticed is that while any one of these belief systems is in place it can sabotage efforts to actively and creatively transform life. What I’ve also noticed is that when one area is uncovered and made conscious, then others start to shift as well.

And you know what else, this actually gets me kind of mad! Like, I get so frustrated when I realize the ways in which brilliant, beautiful, creative, talented, passionate people like you and me get trapped inside thoughts and beliefs that are just plain false. I truly believe we are all like mines full of beautiful treasures and unique gifts only we can offer the world and that we all deserve to unlock those mines and bring those gems to the light.

So I’ve put together a program that takes the 6-month healthy coaching program to a deeper level and actively works to reclaim your personal power to create your own life.

The process is simple. The process is profound. If you are ready to get out of your own way, the process will work.

So, some final questions -

Ask yourself – how is my current state of being serving me?
Then ask, what is it costing me to stay this way?

When you realize the costs are outweighing the benefits I would be honored to accompany you to actively create what you truly want in your life.

What is your decision-making style?

elham — Sat, 08 Jan 2011 16:18:54 +0000

There are many paths to knowledge. Which path do you follow to make a decision?

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Make your own sprouting jar

1 16+ oz mason jar or cleaned out glass salsa/sauce jar

A 6 x 6 inch square of cheese cloth, old pantyhose, or mesh or netting

A rubber band

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The Institute for Integrative Nutrition featured me on their Blog. I’m so honored!

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Can Fasting be Healthy?

Seven belief systems that could be sabotaging your health goals

What is your decision-making style?

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