Viewing entries tagged
Healthy Aging
This is the most delicious “simple” smoothie. It is refreshing, and if you use sweet ripe pears it is even better. This combination is great for a morning cleanse and afternoon refresher! Make enough to last a day or two. YUM!
Ingredients
2 ripe pears
½ of a bunch of Italian parsley
3 - 4 cups of water
Blend into a drink - add water as needed. Pour into a glass jar and keep refrigerated.
Our bodies need fast and easy nourishment and this recipe provides just that - check it out below!
Ingredients
1 Kobacha squash
1 Sweet potato or yam
1 onion (sweet yellow are best)
4 gloves of garlic
1-2 tbsp olive oil
16 oz broth: veggie, chicken, or beef (you could use water as well)
Seasoning
Depending on the flavor of the squash and potato you may not need any seasoning at all. But, in case you do want to bump up the flavors, try some of these:
Salt
Pepper
Cumin
Cayenne
Maybe a splash of curry and/or cinnamon. Sometimes, just one teaspoon of tamari can turn up the notch of the flavor without it tasting like tamari. Balsamic vinegar will do the same – just ½ tsp, and possibly 1 tsp if a large amount.
Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Chop veggies and arrange them on a baking sheet. Leave the garlic cloves in their skin. Sprinkle a little olive oil on the chopped onion and the garlic.
Bake until all the ingredients until they are tender.
*Note: The garlic usually cooks much faster than the rest of the vegetables. So check it after about 20 minutes. When it is tender remove it from the oven and cook the remainder of the veggies.
When the veggies are tender blend them with the broth.
When I discovered using fresh herbs on my everyday meals everything changed. A fresh herb, cooked or raw, can change a boring meal into something special.
Here is my special Rosemary Tofu Toast. Everyone I make this for thinks I am nuts when I pull raw tofu out of the fridge. Although I don't eat tofu a lot, every now and then I have to have this meal. Give it a try, and if you really don't like the idea of raw tofu, then use some raw goat cheese, avocado or just plain toast with the rosemary and olive oil.
Recipe
1 piece of your favorite toast (mine is spelt sourdough)
1 sprig of fresh rosemary
2 tablespoons of EVOO
2 slices of raw (firm) tofu
Warm sauce pan and add olive oil (don't get it too hot).
Finely chop the rosemary and add it to the olive oil, and cook it for just a minute or so (it should sizzle, but don't let it burn).
Pop bread into the toaster.
When the toast is crispy, place about 1 tablespoon of the EVOO rosemary mixture on the toast.
Top with the tofu, and all the remaining EVOO rosemary mixture.
Salt and pepper and then top it off with chili flakes (a must).
PS. If you haven’t heard, my friend Kami McBride has an amazing herb book called The Herbal Kitchen and it has… drumroll…250 (Yes, two hundred and fifty) recipes that have inspired my herbal kitchen for sure. You can check it out here
This recipe was inspired by Edible Hawaiian Islands Magazine - the winter edition.
When I saw this recipe I thought that Ramen might be a good thing to share with you. I have been buying this Lotus brand of Ramen for several months. Ramen is one of the most simple meals when you are not in the mood to cook much, and every now and then a gal needs noodles!
I keep mine in the freezer so that it stays fresh. Use whatever vegetables you might have on hand and whatever broth you might have. It is all good!
Instructions:
Boil the noodles for 4 minutes.
Strain and place the noodles into a bowl. Add warm broth, chopped veggies and whatever else your little heart desires.
In the picture I used some steamed spinach, left over pumpkin squash and chopped cabbage. Enjoy!
Check out the Edible Recipe HERE for more ideas.
OK, I am going to brag - everyone says my chocolate chip cookies are the best. I have to believe it is because of the ingredients I use, which is specifically the unbleached spelt flour. They are delicious with the spelt but they are not gluten free, and some people must have gluten free. So, I set out to make a gluten free version following my same guidelines so that everyone can have this tasty treat. OMG! They are delicious, light and very flavorful and they are higher in protein because of the almond flour. Eat them as a snack or even for breakfast - and did I mention, they are so delicious!!!
Ingredients:
1 cup rice flour
1 cup almond flower
1 cup coconut oil
1 cup coconut sugar
2 tsp double acting baking powder
2 tsp vanilla
2 tbsp flax meal
½ cup water
¾ cup chopped walnuts
¾ cup shredded (dried) coconut
¾ cup dark chocolate chips
½ tsp Celtic Sea Salt
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Add flax meal to ½ cup water and 2 tsp of vanilla, and let it sit while you combine the other ingredients.
Combine the rice, almond flour and baking powder together in a large bowl. Mix in the coconut sugar and coconut oil. Then mix in the flax and vanilla mixture. Mix well.
Fold in the shredded coconut, walnuts and chocolate chips.
Lastly add the salt.
Assemble cookies on parchment paper and bake at 350 for about 20 to 25 minutes. I like to bag my cookies and/or put them in a ball jar and freeze after they cool slightly. This keeps them very fresh.
Note: My famous cookies that are not gluten free are made the same way except with spelt flour instead of almond and rice (not the bleached spelt flour).
Enjoy!!
In continuing with my theme of STRESS and Living As A Spiritual Practice, I set out to write a blog post about movement. But then horrific shootings and the California fires, among other things happening in the world took over me. How can I write about such simple things like movement when grief, shock, trauma and mourning was living within me? Along with the recent election many people are sad, angry, afraid, and feeling helpless, yet others are happy and celebrating. On so many levels our emotional bodies must deal with all of this.
We must all be feeling a range of emotions that might have to be cast aside so we can get through our days, and this could quite possibly cause our bodies and souls stress we don’t even acknowledge. For this reason I am moved to share an experience that I had years ago that is helping me to deal with my wild range of emotions. First let me introduce to you Matthew Fox, the man that taught me this practice.
Matthew Fox is an American priest and theologian. Formerly a member of the Dominican Order within the Roman Catholic Church, he became a member of the Episcopal Church following his expulsion from the order in 1993. Fox was an early and influential exponent of a movement that came to be known as Creation Spirituality. (Wikipedia)
I read many of Matthew’s books years ago, and then studied with him at a conference in Mexico. It was there I experienced his “Cosmic Mass” of which the principles of the ritual have lived on in me.
Below is a paragraph from Matthew Fox’s website about the Cosmic Mass. There you can also learn more about the value of this ritual. For now, I am going to share my take away from the Mass and how I integrate the concepts of it into my life as often as possible.
Is this truly a Mass?
Of course it is. If you deconstruct the Mass, taking it apart and looking for its constituent parts, you will find that the Mass follows the Four Paths of Creation Spirituality: The Via Positiva or celebration of existence (Thomas Aquinas says this is the first dimension to Worship: To say Thank You for Creation); the Via Negativa or sorrow for sins; the Via Creativa, the blessing of wine and bread as the food of the Cosmic Christ; and the Sending Off which is the Via Transformativa.
When I experienced the Mass we were in a very large conference room at a hotel in Acapulco. What follows is a brief description of my experience, best I can remember.
There were no chairs or tables in the room in this huge conference room. It was empty except for four large visual screens, one up in each corner of the room along with powerful speakers for the music. It was staged something like a rock concert. Mr. Fox gave a talk first to prepare us for the experience. Then the lights went down and we began. In the first stage of the Mass there was vibrant beautiful music of celebration. We all moved and danced wildly while we viewed a slide show in the four corners of the room. Beautiful pictures of life, children, and nature - all colorful beautiful visuals - took us over as we moved with inspiration, gratitude and celebration.
After about fifteen minutes of dancing and celebrating the music stopped and the screens became black and dark. Mr. Fox took a moment of tenderness to recite a short reading and soon the screens were replaced with visuals of destruction, pollution, starvation, war, and death. The room became silent.
People were now sitting on the floor as we made the transition from dancing in celebration to sitting in the dark as we were given a space to cry and mourn. As I recall the experience, I am moved emotionally as it was so very special to sit among a hundred people or so and face the truth of our existence, to mourn together and allow ourselves to feel what we were certainly feeling on some level but had not really allowed it to surface.
Once the mourning and grieving space had cleansed our hearts and souls, we took some time to give blessings and prayers of apology. Then the atmosphere was shifted back to celebration. Beautiful visuals of possibility, peace, union, community, birth, renewal and a beautiful Earth filled our hearts with hope and love. We danced wildly again with a renewed spirit. We were transformed and made stronger for what is and what lies ahead.
The Mass took about one hour. We emerged internally transformed and wet from our physical cleanse, like we had just come out of a hot yoga class. Everyone was bright eyed, loving and lighter. We had met our feelings head on. We cried for what is happening to our brothers and sisters, the animals and the Earth. We now possessed renewed strength from our bond and a cleansed soul to move on. I remember Matthew saying that people are starved for ritual that feels real and deep to them.
To put it simply, here are the stages of the Mass in my terms:
As a prayer we give thanks for this life, ignite the feeling of gratitude for who and what we are individually and together grateful for. It is a simple acknowledged heartfelt, “Thank you”.
Then we face the sorrow that we feel for the destruction, grief (ours and others), anger, hatred, and fear for what might lie ahead. We allow our vulnerability and tenderness to surface, and to grieve with sadness and compassion.
Lastly, we move from our grief and send off a prayer of blessings, and then more celebration for what we have, and the possibilities that lie ahead. We emerge cleansed and strengthened.
When I read the news about people going up in flames with their families and loved ones while trying to escape, I can’t help but hurt for them. I let myself really go there and feel how horrific this must be. The idea is to look at the destruction and horror right in the face, to feel it and allow yourself to honor the grief and move it through you. Honoring the grief is a way of honoring life, because we are honoring the absence of what has died. I bring this up because so many of us, myself included at times, acknowledge how bad some things are, or must be, and then brush it aside or stuff it. Then we get on with our day, while not really going to the heart of our feelings and allowing them to surface.
When I was sick and in so much pain a few months back, I cleansed a lifetime of stuffed emotions, I had no idea were there. This made me realize that I had not really faced and felt many things in my life that deserved to be faced and felt. Now, when so called “negative emotions” arrive, I try to create a space to let them take center stage. I let myself feel the hurt or the fear, and then cast a prayer and look toward the light of a new day. Keeping a daily journal is a great way to process emotions. Tapping is another. Sometimes when I take a walk I merely express myself out loud (yes, I go by myself). Several years ago my singing teacher told us to sing our emotions as loud as we could - even if we are crying. If we needed privacy, which I surely did, she instructed us to get in our car….alone! The idea was to sing emotionally what is true for us until it feels like it is over and/or is out of us. This is a very useful technique.
Meditation is effective to calm us and bring us back to center, but it does not always move the emotions that may need moving.
Since our world is offering us a lot to pray for, as well as a lot to celebrate, perhaps you can create your own ritual to process your emotions. It probably does not matter how you do it, the important thing to do is to make sure you pay attention to your feelings and emotions. Be with them fully and move them through to the other side.
Many medicate with alcohol, marijuana, opioids, sex, exercise, work or food...whatever. It is fun to change the channel of our consciousness sometimes, but let’s not let some of these recreational or habitual practices override what might be lurking deep inside of us. Otherwise they will surface someday, and most likely in a disease of some kind.
If you have a process that works for you, please share it. We are all learning how to live in this new and evolving world that none of us are prepared for. None of us have lived tomorrow yet, so let’s pay close attention to our feelings of today.
Happy ThanksGiving to all! I am so very grateful to have this space to share with you.
Aloha, Susan Teton
Do you know how much toxins you’re exposed to on a daily basis in our modern life? Lots! We are unfortunately exposed to tons of toxic chemicals in the air (inside and outside), water, food, and the personal care products we use. As a result, we end up living with so much of these toxins trapped in our poor body with our liver and kidney (our detoxification organs) overburdened and overtaxed.
And guess what? This accumulation of toxins show up on our FACE!
And, there is something we can do about it inside and out that is super easy.
OMG! My skin! I hear many women who are getting older complain about their sluggish looking skin. In addition to all the toxins you’re taking in internally, your face and neck are also absorbing other things flying around in the air externally. If you continue to allow toxins to accumulate in your body, naturally, your skin will take a hit and signs of aging will creep up on your skin prematurely.
It is vital that you cleanse inside and out periodically to rid yourself of toxins that accumulate. And doing so will help your skin become healthy, smooth, and glowy. You might be thinking that you don’t have the time or the money for some elaborate and expensive cleanses but there is another kind of cleanse that you can do regularly that is affordable and only takes minutes. And you can do it with one single product.
You can ingest this product to keep your system cleansing itself on a regular basis, and you can put it on your face to do the same thing. Yippee! You can use this simple, affordable method that keeps you aging beautifully!
What is it? It is Sacred Clay.
Clay is probably one of the most powerful supplements that you can use on a daily basis to sweep out heavy metals and other toxins that accumulate in the body as we live. This daily one stop protocol can sweep out these toxins and revitalize your skin all at the same time.
Here is how to use it:
In the body:
Take one tablespoon of clay in a glass of water each day. That’s all you have to do.
On the face:
For a quick facial, all you have to do is add some water and make a paste for your skin. Apply it on your face, neck and chest if you like, let it dry and then wash it off. I like to apply it about 15 minutes before my shower.
For the body & bath:
To bathe in it, add about ½ to 1 cup of clay in your bath water. When you drain the tub it will not clog your drains. If you feel a flu coming on, or you have an infection, or perhaps you ate a toxic meal, Sacred Clay, in a nice warm bath will come to your rescue.
Keeping your system and your skin clean and revitalized on a regular basis will not only help you stay healthy, but it will also help you to age beautifully with smooth, glowing skin!
Here is some vital information about Sacred Clay and where you can get it:
Go to Vitality Herbs & Clay and mention Susan Teton at checkout.
This company by far has the best clay for detoxification. Check out their other products and give them a call. They are super informative.
There are other protocols that can help revitalize your skin and keep it moist and beautiful. I have all kinds of other tricks up my sleeve to help keep you vibrant and aging beautifully. I would be happy to offer you a complimentary consultation, so give me a call and let’s chat…
Schedule a call now right HERE. I would love to hear from you.
Want more tips from Susan? Subscribe and download her "I Love My Body Meditation" MP3.
Wouldn't you love to just wake up every morning and know exactly what to do to unstiff yourself and set yourself up for comfort and flexibility throughout the day?
I have met so many people who just want to head straight for the coffee pot, myself included. Or, some might pop a pill, hit the freezer for a shot of vodka, or light up the bong. You think I am kidding. I know people who do this. Some also, just dress, head out the door and sooner or later the back loosens or it does not.
Since I am one of those people who does wake up with a stiff back, and it takes at least an hour for me to wake up, there is no way I can start work, or go out for a walk or run without doing some sort of stretching. Even the idea of yoga sounds awful if I am stiff.
When complaining to a friend about how long it takes me to wake up, she offered her solution, “I wake up, pee and go straight to the yoga mat, and breathe myself awake.” OMG. A light bulb went off when I heard this. This I can do. My mind did not have to think a routine, or a lot of movement, or anything but walk to the mat. Somehow the mindset worked for me. It sounded inviting, slow and peaceful, and has been my practice ever since.
I want to share this same practice with you, because so many people have back issues, particularly upon rising. And, this practice serves so much more than the back.
So, here is what I recommend. Set up your yoga mat or a blanket in a spot in the house where it will be waiting for you first thing upon rising. Relieve yourself, grab a glass of water and go to the spot and simply do the “cat cow” stretches - slowly. If it is easy, turn on some soft morning music that feeds your soul.
Cat Cow instructions:
Be extremely gentle and keep breathing. Chances are, if you are like me, you don’t stop there and instead continue on with a few more stretches. It depends on how much time I have.
The point here is to get on the mat and unstiff your whole back and bring some fresh breath into your body - “breathe yourself awake while loosening your back.” During this time you can also begin to go in and give your body gratitude and instructions for the day.
This practice will set up your spine for a more productive day, I am sure of it.
My vision for you is to be comfortable in your body. This is important especially as you get older. Much of people’s back pain today can be alleviated. Since I have had chronic back pain for years, I have learned how to keep myself pain free, and that is with continual movement and strengthening.
Keeping our back healthy is so crucial at any age but especially as we get older. And speaking of getting older, today my interview is airing on the Menopause is a Trip Summit. Listen HERE for more valuable insight into the wonderful process we are living. You will also be able to download the “I love My Body” meditation mp3 for free.
Do you want to learn how to keep our back (and the rest of the body) healthy and more? I have got lots of tricks up my sleeve and I can’t wait to share them with you. Schedule a strategy session with me HERE.
