Archives

Transformation Through Food
by Sandra Brandt

Food is more than just, well, an obvious way of feeding ourselves. It is actually a means through which we experience life itself. In Doris Dorrie’s documentary film How To Cook Your Life, Edward Espe Brown, Zen practitioner, chef, and cookbook author, pronounces in his characteristically mischievous manner, “We’re cooking the food, but in terms of practice, the food is cooking us.” Through a series of beautifully filmed images of food and food preparation, many of them in teaching sessions with retreat participants, he examines the relationship between food and patience, food and anger, food and “cutting through confusion,” and other choice issues.

Read the article

The Power of Fermentation
by Carolyn Herriot

Modern researchers are just beginning to understand the calculable health benefits that fermented foods convey to human immunity, intestinal health, and general well being. Intestinal flora is thought to impact a wide array of human health issues, and there is speculation that many modern diseases are in part caused by abandoning the ancient practice of fermentation.

Read the article

The Lack of Vitamin K2 in Our Diet: What Went Wrong?
by Dr. Kate Rhéaume-Bleue

Humans began domesticating animals between 4,000 and 10,000 years ago, depending on the area of the world you consider. In an evolution from the hunter-gatherer lifestyle, our ancestors realized that by managing the whereabouts of select docile creatures, we could benefit from a reliable source of nutrition without all the running about. The practice was simple enough: restrict the animals’ roaming to a reasonable-sized area of their natural habitat (an area that provided said animals with ample food and water) and protect them from predators, and the animals will, in turn, provide us with dietary protein, essential fats, vitamins, and minerals.

Read the article

See Clearly Without Glasses, Contacts, or Surgery
by Summer Bozohora, Natural Vision Specialist (Intern)

How often have you heard someone say they are unable to see a situation clearly? It can often turn out to be a literal statement. Most of us are fitted with our first pair of glasses six months to one year after some stressful event. Our nervous system, under stress, can result in blurred vision. Blurred vision is a temporary intolerance or sensitivity to having light converge directly on the retina because, at the time, it is too much for our nervous system to process. Stop and think back – when did you receive your first glasses? What was happening for you at that time?

Read the article

How Self-Sufficient Are You?
by Carol Marriott

When Jim Anderson was a kid growing up on a farm, he was responsible for watering his mom’s chickens in the morning before going to school. He’d fill up two large buckets at the hand pump and carefully make his way down to the chicken house. By the time he got the water into the chicken coup, water had invariably sloshed all over his school clothes and chicken poop covered his shoes. It is a memory he’d rather forget, but what he remembers most about this experience is that in the freezing temperatures of an Alberta winter morning, the water pump never froze up.

Read the article

Pilates – Leading the Way Towards Functional Movement
by Tanis Lee

In recent years, the term functional movement has become a focal point, if not a catch phrase, within the health and fitness community. As the fitness industry has evolved, so has our demand for positive results and healthier options. It is not merely a choice between being fit or not; in fact, people are often searching for a fitness regimen that betters their life as a whole. Today’s environment poses unique challenges for our bodies, making the presence of chronic pain and poor posture a more natural occurrence within our society. As a result, the demand to enhance ones ability to perform functional movements with ease and grace has dramatically increased. On the forefront of this growing industry is the Method of Pilates. Developed throughout the early 1900s, this method of physical conditioning has the ability to enhance functional movement patterns, reduce stress, and increase overall health.

Read the article

Organize Your Clutter, Transform Your Life
by Theresa Torgunrud

How often have you heard someone say, “I need to be more organized!” What does this really mean? Is it just a random figure of speech? Does it imply some personal inadequacy? Does it reflect a part of the self-help movement so present in our popular culture? Does it indicate things are headed to the chaos seen on reality television shows? Or, is this a request for help to deal with something fundamentally important? A professional organizer addresses these questions.

Read the article

Healing Through the Archangels
by Simone M. Matthews

The question I am most often asked is, “What is an Archangel?” Please keep reading as the answer may surprise you! Take a moment to cast your mind back to the beginning of creation some 13 billion years ago. Within the void, the infinite darkness, a spark of LOVE (also called Source Energy, Infinite Intelligence, or God) said, “Let there be Light,” and in that moment “there was Light.” Science refers to this moment as the Big Bang, and it is from this first Light that all of creation expands out infinitely. From Source’s/God’s central core, energy waves are continually being expressed/released at very high frequencies, and as these waves expand out further away from the centre of Source, they slowly decrease in vibration creating colour, then sound until finally, at their lower levels of vibration, physical matter.

Read the article

Editorial
by Melva Armstrong

It is nearly four months of living on an acreage now and I am thoroughly enjoying it. I love being so close with the natural world – the birds, the trees, the land, and the big beautiful sky. I get to watch the most amazing sunsets and sunrises, which makes it understandable why the “Land of Living Skies” motto is on our vehicle license plates. When I’m not busy with WHOLifE, I am outside as much as possible, splitting wood, helping feed beet pulp and hay to the horses, and walking up and down the tree-lined, hilly road beside the property with three dogs excitedly running along with me, finding delight in the many new scents they discover each day.

Read the editorial

Plus:

Are Your Comfort Foods Meetings Your Needs?
Introducing We’Moon: An Iconic Feminist Datebook
Tao of Inner Tai Chi: Circulating Chi for Harmony and Longevity
From Crisis to Purpose: Change One Thing, Change Everything
Looking Through Prison Walls
News of Note