Macrobiotics for Beginners

Welcome to the world of Macrobiotics!   You are brave to take your first step.  The  payoffs I promise will be enormous for you.  We, as humans, all come from nature. Nature is always changing in a balanced way.  Our body has an innate ability to naturally heal itself, that is if we get out of its way and allow it to do so.   Aligning with nature  is the best way to allow this to happen.

Beginning a macrobiotic lifestyle supports you in aligning with nature.   Macrobiotics:  from the Greek translation macro (large) bios (way of life) provides tools for you to become aware of all aspects of your life: physical, emotional, mental and spiritual and suggests the practices to recreate your well being through the understanding of energy.

Macrobiotics study is dynamic and fun and involves  learning simple tools to sharpen your existing intuitional understanding of energy.   Everything has energy including our bodies, a tree, a rock, a baby etc.   We naturally knew this as a child when we would often avoid not thinking too hard on a decision and use your innate feelings as guidance instead.  Food choices were easy and balanced: reaching  for a piece of watermelon to cool off in the summer  or a big bowl of chili in the winter to stay warm.  But as we grew older we forgot how to trust our choices and began to make emotionally protective, blind or rote choices clouded often times with conceptual rationalizations. Also with the growth of the standard American diet in our country and mass media sending us daily messages to purchase and consume factory produced food  products we lost our way.

Our program will help you return to your innate intuitive ability by teaching you  concrete tools you can learn for support.  As a GPS,  you will be given guidance for reconnecting  with the energy in your body, your food and the environment around you.  We will teach you the simple tools of  Yang (contracting) and Yin (expanding) and later in the advance membership section the Five Transformations of these energies.  Once you develop an understanding of these and learn how to recognize them in your food choices and daily activities you will be empowered to choose wisely and recover your health and balance.   These  magical tools can empower you to heal quickly from  a simple headache (knowing what foods make your body more contracted (showing up as a back headache) and what makes it expand (showing up as a headache in the front of your head) even from a serious illness.  Once you learn these tools and begin to apply them to your day to day choices you will feel more in the drivers seat in regaining and sustaining your health and balance in any situation.

You may have heard that macrobiotics is  simply a hippy diet, that it takes too long to cook, is too expensive  and that the ingredients are not well known and hard to find.  First off, macrobiotics is not a diet, but a way of life guided by an understanding of energy and balance.  It did originate in the United States by teachers from Japan:  Michio Kushi and George Oshawa and many followers of macrobiotics were hippies originally and have become prominent leaders of the natural food movement.  In fact we have these macrobiotic pioneers  to thank for introducing some of the best quality organic  foods to the United States such as brown rice, sourdough bread, tofu, tempeh, miso and good quality sea salt.   Macrobiotic foods are actually cheaper than foods in the Standard American diet since the prices of factory farm animal foods and processed foods continue to rise.  These are especially at a cost saving if you order grains, sea vegetables, beans and condiments in bulk.  Regarding the time it takes to cook, there are simple easy dishes to prepare in macrobiotic cooking that take just as much time as dishes in the Standard American Diet and learning better menu choices when eating out can help you save cooking time as well.   Ingredients for macrobiotic food dishes are not hard to find and can easily be found now on the internet or at your local health food market.

We are all so fortunate to have so many resources at our finger tips-- why not make the best possible choices in our food and lifestyle- choices that will support our well being on all levels.  Food creates our blood which creates our cells, organs, tissue, emotions, mental and spiritual states so we always start there!   Begin to keep a journal of what you eat daily and how you feel at the end of the day and begin to read labels of the food items you are consuming. See if you can match up your daily physical, emotional and mental complaints to the side effects of some of the foods you are choosing!

Begin to add some delicious, new macrobiotic food items to your weekly menus, not subtract! After you become a wizard at understanding food labels , choose the very best,  organic and non GMO foods.  Start with grain, the main food item in the standard suggested macrobiotic diet.   Add one new dish like organic brown rice or oatmeal once a week and eventually your cravings will change for extreme foods.  These will help you begin your journey back to balance.

As a basic member you  will learn new  lifestyle choices you can add daily that will also help bring you to balance,  like walking outside at least 30 min per day, keeping green plants in your bedroom,  doing  a daily body rub (not scrub) before or after your shower to stimulate circulation and help your skin discharge toxins. Shiastu massage/ Do In- the study of the body's meridians and acupuncture points and oriental diagnosis will be covered in more advanced studies.

Macro Magic is designed to help walk you thru the steps of adding these fun, easy and exciting routines to your lifestyle.  Why not give it a try and see how your feel!

In our cooking video series you will learn how to make all the great basic  macrobiotic dishes to begin adding to your weekly menus.  Along the path we would also like to suggest treating yourself to a cooking health consultation to help you get started and speed up the transition  especially if you are struggling with a severe health condition.

Meet you at the cutting board!

Sheri-Lynn