Masaru Emoto has invited everybody to pray for the sickened water at the Fukushima Nuclear Plant in Japan, at noon today. Here are the words he suggests:
"The water of Fukushima Nuclear Plant, we are sorry to make you suffer. Please forgive us. We thank you, and we love you."
Even if you come too late today, it is never too late to send loving thoughts to suffering people and to the violated Earth. Prayer lowers blood pressure by making you one with everything around you. When we get upset or feel anger, disappointment, and so on, these negative emotions stand between us and the world. When we pray, we step back into the web of beings in this Universe.
Masaru Emoto has been, for many years, fighting to keep water and our mother planet healthy, and I admire him for this. As a fellow water fighter I do stretch out my hand to him.
However, I wish he wouldn’t call himself a scientist and what he does science. In reality, his beautiful photos in “Messages from Water” are poetry, and they would not lose anything of their power if he would call himself a poet. Water does not speak Japanese, nor English.
Water, however, and our whole ancient Gaia planet, needs all our attention and love so that we all and our children and our children’s children will survive. The Japanese reactor accident has made clear again that we humans cannot contain the nuclear forces we unleash with every newly built atomic power plant. The discussion in Europe about this is fierce – and surely comes down on the side of dismantling existing power plants and not to build new ones. While we here are still distracted by Charlie Sheen, and the like.
I am sick and tired of the old arguments of the atomic industry. One woman on the radio said that it was not the fault of the reactor – “the reactor was fine” – but it was the tsunami that did it in. Well, we humans don’t control earthquakes and tsunamis, and ANY leaking reactor forces Armageddon on the people in its vicinity, and perhaps on all of us.
We can use wind and sun, and we can live closer to the land and less over the top. We can make justice and happiness for all a priority, instead of consumption and celebrities and wanting ever more. For all that I am sending my prayers to Fukushima today. Read More
Blog: On Health. On Writing. On Life. On Everything.
Oryx Goulash and Kalahari Truffles - Namibian Dishes
March 30, 2011
Namibians have, because of their relative lack of vegetable farming, more meat (and no fish) in their diet – similar to Patagonia. Here are two dishes I especially liked:
Kalahari truffles
During rainy season – of which we surely got the brunt – Kalahari truffles pop up everywhere in the savannah. They are extremely tasty and sought after. But don’t think they will be showing easily: They make themselves noticeable by a tiny crack in the ground, and that crack is extremely hard to find, especially this year, with the very high grasses after the heavy rains.
Our friends live at the skirts of the Kalahari Desert but don’t find the truffles themselves. Ovambos collect the mushrooms that look more or less like sandy potato. The Ovambos are a loose connection of Bantu tribes, and make up the majority of people in Namibia; white people hover around six percent. So, politically, the political power is securely in Ovambo hands.
I’m not sure if the Ovambos follow their noses; the Kalahari truffle has that exquisite earthy aroma I know so well from European mushrooms, predominantly the so-called steinpilz (stone mushroom). One Ovambo woman seemed to be the expert; she offered several loads of truffles, all of which we gladly bought. She might have known the places where the truffles thrive - family secrets handed down in families from generation to generation.
We had a feast with Kalahari truffles, which need to be scrubbed extensively – but in truth, one never gets rids of the sand completely – and peeled. Inside they are light-colored, not black like French truffles. When cooked, they have firm flesh. We sautéed the mushrooms in olive oil with onions and ground oryx (antelope) meat. Side dishes: green beans and caramelized sweet potatoes. - Leftover mushroom are peeled, blanched and frozen, to be used later.
Oryx Goulash
Oryx are the most abundant meat deliverers in the area where I stayed with my friends. Without them, neither the white people nor the Ovambos could survive in Namibia. The goulash was made again with lots of onions and plenty of olive oil. Wild animals have no visible fat, so oryx dishes require much olive oil. My friends had harvested the oil themselves, under much hardship – hoeing the large olive grove by hand. The onions and the meat simmered for about two hours with pepper, salt and thyme until the goulash was just right – tomatoes might have made the goulash more Hungarian, I guess. We served the goulash with rice and two different kinds of coleslaw: one with carrots and yogurt, one with smoked pork belly and vinegar. Read More
Beyond The Five Tibetans: Alexa’s Alternative
March 23, 2011
A while ago, I stopped doing the Five Tibetans. I really liked the short routine that got me fit. But it also got me lower back pain. I tried some adjustments, but the pain wouldn’t leave. So, I started a new routine.
My new routine doesn’t have a fancy name, nor can it serve you a wonderful story of its presumed discovery – old Tibetan wisdom unearthed by a stiff British officer desperate to regain his youth – but it works for me.
And it needs about ten minutes of your daily time; nobody can claim they don’t have those ten minutes! If the Five Tibetans work for you – by all means, stay with them! Because I believe in wisdom handed down by generations.
If the Five Tibetans don’t work for you, here is Alexa’s Alternative:
• Bending: This exercise works on your upper back and your posture without putting undue strain on your lower back. You roll your upper back backward over a big yoga ball twenty-one times, each time lifting your arms over your head, then lowering them. Lacking a yoga ball (which I don’t have here in my Namibia hotel room), you can do this exercise also by hanging backward over the edge of a bed. Make sure that your lower back stays securely on the bed, and that you don’t slip from the bed and hit your head.
• Grounding: These are really knee bends but I call this exercise grounding because it strengthens your legs, and really grounds you. Do twenty-one knee bends. If initially that seems too hard, do less. Try five. Or try one. If that is impossible, try a half one. Daily try will soon make you stronger, and able to do more.
• Hanging: Hanging your spine out, that is. This exercise can be done from a bar. Pull yourself up twenty-one times. I really can’t pull myself up, and I can only count to ten, but even this small effort lengthens my spine, re-aligns it and strengthen my arms. When I travel, I bend forward and touch a table with my hands, pulling slightly down and back (without bending my knees). You feel that this also lengthens your spine, taking the kinks out; unfortunately it doesn’t do much for your arms strength.
• Reaching: This is the exercise that I find most fun. Take a heavy ball (I use a six-pound ball at home, and a book or a filled water bottle on the road), and stem it up twenty-one times as high as you can reach . You’ll feel your whole side lengthening. This slims your waist, strengthens your arms and let the arm flab vanish. Then do the other arm twenty-one times. Don’t do this exercise with two balls, lifting them simultaneously – you wouldn’t get the effect on your sides (but would still exercise your arms). But stretching your sides gives the exhilarating effect.
• Swinging: Take the heavy ball and move it from one hand to the other in a smooth swing twenty-one times. Don’t twist sharply in your waist, machine-like – let it be a graceful dance.
You notice, I kept the number twenty-one from the Five Tibetans. Twenty-five repetitions seem to give enough of a workout without putting undue stress on the muscles and joints.
Don’t do more than twenty-one in a single session. You are allowed one repetition during the day, not more. You will see that even with one cycle per day your legs plant you stronger on this Earth, your back is straighter, your bingo wings melt away.
For better memorizing, I put the exercises alphabetically: bending, grounding, hanging, reaching, swinging. Read More