Green Smoothies

I am one of those people who walks around with a mason jar full of green smoothie, or green goo as a friend calls it. It seems to fasinate or horrify people who see it.

Some even try it. My niece was visiting recently and watched me make this green masterpiece every morning & decided to try it. As we drove around to beaches & trails & farmer's markets she also carried the mason jar of green stuff.

Such a great way to have a breakfast in a jar that gives you a lot of nutrition and keeps you full until lunch, but more importantly doesn't weigh you down & make you sleepy.



What to put in your smoothie:

some sweet fruit to make it taste good, frozen if that's all that's available

a banana or even a 1/2 an avocado if you need it to be really filling

a bunch of lettuce greens - like 1/2 a blenderful, this ensures you are getting your leafy greens & provides lots of protein & nutrients

I use water in mine, you could use some yogurt or almond milk

I add most of my supplements in here too, experiment with with, some people don't like the taste of B vitamins or other supplements, I am fine with it. I find that this way I am not having to swallow a lot of vitamins and I get a slower steady supply of them as I sip my shake.

Sunchoke Salad

I grew sunchokes this year for the first time. They are huge plants that kind of look like sunflowers. My plants are about 10 feet tall. The flowers are smaller & have less petals than a sunflower though. I cut the tops off & brought the flowers in. You eat the tubers, they look kind of like bumpy potatoes.

Now that it is October (ok, starting today its November) I am harvesting the sunchokes a few at a time. These are best harvested after a frost. I'll just keep going down to the garden & getting a few at a time since they don't last too long in the fridge.

Sunchokes aka Jerusalem Artichokes are rich in inulin which helps to balance blood sugar.  And they help to improve bacteria ecology in the colon.

I just eat raw food, so although they can be cooked, I have been finding ways to eat them raw. I bring them
along with a few apples when I go out harvesting herbs & just eat one like an apple. And yesterday I harvested a bunch to marinade in apple cider vinegar along with a piece of hot pepper, peppercorns, herbs, and garlic.

Freshly dug sunchokes

And some kale and a calendula flower from the garden

I sliced the sunchokes on the mandolin (carefully to keep my fingers intact) & marinaded them & the kale in lime, garlic, Bragg & olive oil.

Poured all that over the greens & added the calendula petals.

Harvesting Dandelions

Fall is the time to harvest dandelion roots.

I use the tops fresh in the juicer (using just a handful of leaves, you need to assess the condition of your liver before having too many of them juiced) and drying the rest of the tops for infusions during the winter. 

I slice the roots & dry them in a warm place - near the wood stove. Those I will use in  infusions this year, since I have plenty of tincture leftover from last year.

I have hung the tops on a little clothesline near the woodstove.

Mushrooms

Went to a local mushroom identification workshop this weekend. I have never learned about how to ID mushrooms before. It was very interesting & something I will look more into. We have so many kinds of mushrooms on the island ( apparently around 4,000 kinds !)

Found some chanterelles,  & a few other kinds as well.

Chanterelles hiding

I am in the process of working way more with our local trees: harvesting leaves & twigs, & making some salves, vinegars, infusions & tinctures. I will be including this information in my 2012 Herbal Apprenticeship & will most likely offer a workshop on local medicinal trees next spring.

Rosehips

Harvesting rosehips

Fall has arrived here at the coast, the leaves are bright yellow & today looking a little soggy as it pours rain. Took a long walk with the dogs to harvest some fall medicinal plants: some hawthorne berries, alder, salal berries, and found some wonderful rosehips.

I love using rose, since it is related to the heart chakra, so important for those of use who do healing work & reiki as it keeps a strong & open heart chakra for offering compassionate healing to others. I read an article last week that had a lot to say about the new energies coming in to earth at this time & in there it said : "We are in a time where we must open to the heart and reside within its wisdom."

I collect rose petals all summer & tincture them for a relaxing pain killer that also calms the nerves & tastes fantastic. I use rose essential oil in my body care products. And now in the fall I am collecting the hips. I am not a fan of the taste of rosehips in tea, although a lot of people like it. I prefer having rose petal tea. This year I am using my rosehips in an elixir I am making with a million others herbs in it ! 

Rosehips are rich in vitamin C. I am combining those with a bunch of fresh hawthorne berries from the trees in my yard, in my gallon of elixir. Hawthorne is also for the heart, for all aspects of heart health & offers strength to the the veins. 

Yellow Dock Root

I was harvesting some yellow dock seeds & roots today. 
This one is really amazing.

PERSONAL HEALING COURSES

PERSONAL HEALING & 
personal growth 
COURSE

• Chakra work
• Stones & crystals
• Herbs
• reiki

I am going to continue to offer this course several times a year. Myself & my students are finding this course very powerful in terms of healing, clearing & moving on.

This course is more than what it seems in terms of healing on a deep level. You will be working in a very focused way on clearing & balancing one chakra at a time. You will be coming to class once a month.

You will be receiving a reiki attunement and a session each month. You will have received journal work for the upcoming chakra to work on during the month before the next class, so you will be doing the clearing before we actually do the class ! Doing the journal work in this way gives you time to work on focusing on one particular chakra for a whole month & let things come up for you as they may.

‘Clearing’ with reiki comes in many guises. Remember that suddenly not being able to come to class for any reason should be looked at more deeply. Is this a chakra that you really need to be focusing on? Are you anxious about issues with this chakra, are you resistant even on a subconscious level to letting go of energies tangled in & around this chakra? And all of this is fine, we all clear, heal & grow as we are ready & in ways that we are ready to use.

Very briefly:

Physical clearing can involve imbalance returning to weak spots: headaches, colds & flu, aching joints

Emotional clearing can involve letting go of old habits & behaviours that no longer serve us, releasing old & stuck patterns, & traumas

Remember to understand that when you clear, you make room for higher light vibrations. You are letting go of lower densities of vibrations.

As you become more comfortable with clearing which allows us to learn & grow, you can see through these guises for what they are. You can let go, receive more reiki healing & move on.

As you move on you bring in higher vibrations which reflects in your life as

• ·      Ease in manifesting what you desire
• ·      Ability to offer healing & serve others this way
• ·      Feeling whole & balanced physically, emotionally & spiritually

While all of this is an ongoing process, initially clearing usually is quite powerful, and any further clearing does not carry the same impact. We often let go in layers.

During the class we discuss the aspects of the chakra homework that we are comfortable talking about. We use the journal writing you have done to discuss as a group ways to move on, it also sets intention for the healing to be done during your reiki session.

I think it is the combination of using personal journal work, healing stones, herbal tea, and vibrational essences along with the reiki attunement & a reiki session that makes this course so powerful.

When working in groups we multiply the amount of energy in the room and the amount of healing that can be done. It is way more powerful to work as a group with a common purpose for bringing healing & balance to the body as a whole, and specifically to the chakra we are working on.  It is really special to be able to get together with like minded people once a month to share ideas & healing & energy.

Energetically we are in a very powerful time where we can choose to align ourselves with the ever increasing energies coming to this planet & heal ourselves & fill ourselves with high vibrational energies. I am finding that I am rewriting courses that seemed to be so new & up to date just a few months ago, but as the vibrations change so must the classes!

I have totally rewritten & changed this course as of this month, it will now be 10 classes, the first one being reiki level 1. If you already have your reiki 1 or more than that, you can begin with the 2nd class.

We will have 1 class for each of the major chakras, so that is 7 more classes. The other classes are intro to the chakras, with an overall look at the energetic body as a whole, determining the size, spin & shape of each chakra. And the last class ties it all together & looks at the upper chakras, beyond the crown.