Meet Giacomo
Meet Giacomo, my Italian neighbour. Giacomo enjoys gardening, making his own wine, cooking for himself and has recently undergone triple bypass heart surgery and is recovering fabulously. He has just celebrated his 92nd birthday.
Meet Giacomo, my Italian neighbour. Giacomo enjoys gardening, making his own wine, cooking for himself and has recently undergone triple bypass heart surgery and is recovering fabulously. He has just celebrated his 92nd birthday.
As mentioned before, naturopaths are not necessarily defined by our toolbox of modalities. What, then, does define us as a profession? As we witness a rise in the demand for complementary and alternative medicine, and with it, the rise in something called the “Holistic Medical Doctor”, what sets naturopathic doctors apart?
I love guacamole. The smooth, slightly bitter taste of fresh avocado, cut with the sour, clean taste of lemon, the pure pungency of raw garlic (I love garlic, especially raw), the sweetness of tomato, all rounded out with a hint of salt.
Guacamole, combined with some rice crackers, carrot sticks or healthy whole grain chips, is the perfect snack to lubricate a humorous, hand-waving, mid-afternoon conversation around the kitchen table. It combines the 6 Ayurvedic tastes, making a balanced, nurturing snack to help foster communication and familial bonding.
Guacamole marks the beginnings of my dabbling in “Whole Foodism”, which began sluggishly before starting naturopathic school. In guac, each ingredient is whole, fresh and eaten raw, their ripe flavours mingling in the perfect taste bud-stimulating combination. I remember a stiflingly hot afternoon, too hot to cook, sitting on the front veranda of my Cartagena, Colombia apartment, eating a cooling, soothingly filling guacamole snack. It sure beat rice and beans…
This snack represents what health food should be: fresh, simple and a natural mingle of flavours. Nature’s chemistry comes together to entertain, nurture and fuel. Ingredients are measured imprecisely, variably, depending on the size of the fruits in season, leaving each batch with a subtly different blend of flavours. What could be more perfect than that?
The shear simplistic beauty of this snack became an inspiration for a quick, loosely painted rendition using acrylic, thickly and freely applied, on canvass board, created in my aunt’s Calgary home.
Perfect Guacamole:
2 ripe avocados: peel, mush and leave in one of the pits
juice from one fresh lemon
2 cloves of minced, raw garlic
1 tomato, cut into small pieces
1 pinch of salt
Mix well, dip rice crackers, chips or raw vegetables
Even Nonna loves it!
I don’t know about you but the word “gratitude” carries a fair amount of guilt and resentment for me. Being citizens of privileged countries like Canada, we’re constantly told that we should be grateful, as in, “finish your food, there are starving children in Africa!”
This realization that we have certain things that others do not often results in guilty feelings about the facts of life that we’re not responsible for (directly) and cannot change. Gratitude, at least for me, has associated feelings of injustice and helplessness. It is almost as if that by admitting I am grateful for my food, my home, my family, my friends, etc., I am acknowledging the fact that I, more than anyone else, did not earn or deserve them and brings to light the possibility that these things can be taken from me.
When we talk about meditating on or cultivating a feeling of gratitude, the opposite is usually understood. We seek to cultivate gratitude precisely for the reason that we are, in fact, not grateful and are focusing on the negative aspects of our lives, the things we are not grateful for.
However, gratitude is not about guilt-trips or comparisons. It’s simply recognizing that we are all fortunate in our own way, helping us to see the full half of our glasses.
A classmate once showed a group of students and I a powerful and engaging visualization exercise based on recognizing the things to be grateful for in our lifes. I often struggle in meditation, especially the stricter Vipassana or Zen meditations, in which we are told to calm and focus the mind. It seems that more I try to focus the more I realize I am trying, pushing to make something happen and then the more I try not to try. And try not to try not to try. Until I get lost in a vast tangle of effort. (How can we exert the effort to find effortlessness?) I found with the gratitude meditation, however, my mind calmed, focused and participated in the meditation. My mind was free to conjure up images in a Freudian pattern of free association, and I simply had to acknowledge that I was, indeed, grateful for those things.
I started by sitting quietly and focusing on my breath, calming it, deepening it and quietening it. The first thought I began with was “I am grateful for my breath.” I began to feel a sensation of blissful relaxation as I reveled in the beauty, simplicity and luxury of my breath. Without trying to sound flakey, I found myself bask in the gratefulness for it. I moved on to other body sensations, gifts and functions – “I am grateful for my lungs, for my brown hair, for a body that can meditate and relax, for this cushion, for the way I can stretch, enjoy yoga, exercise and move outside.” I let my mind wander on to the next object, maintaining mindfulness by reminding myself to acknowledge the gratitude I felt towards these things: my home, my dog, my school, country, books, nature, loving family, the sun. Whatever came up, I recognized my gratitude for having it in my life.
The most therapeutic and eye-opening part of the meditation, however, was when my mind, as most minds do, began to wander to more negative aspects of my life, things that I wasn’t necessarily grateful for – my exams, work, stress, anxiety, family problems, school problems, uncertainty, long distance relationship, lack of money, etc. I then realized how, despite what I originally thought, I was actually grateful for these things. Negative experiences supplied the yin to my yang, they helped to balance and shape who I am and without these perceptibly negative times, I wouldn’t have faced the challenges and character-building situations that have made me who I am and led me to where I am.
Once I got the grateful ball rolling, the possibilities were endless. After a few minutes, I ended the meditation and left with a clear sense of relaxation and satisfaction for all that I have, both positive and negative.
I’ve noticed that cultivating gratitude is an important ingredient in overcoming addictions and dealing with mental illness. In the AA meeting I recently attended, I noticed a running them of gratitude and the need to thank the Higher Power on a daily basis. I once read a saying, “Image if you woke up tomorrow with just the things you thanked God for today.” Whether you are comfortable with the G word or not, I think this idea opens our minds to the many riches we may not realize we have (not just the food on our table that we should eat because of the Africans who may not have it) but the totality of our life experience.
Colombian food mainly consists of: white rice, a large portion of bland, unseasoned, tough meat, potatoes and a “salad” (which means one leaf of iceburg lettuce and a pale, sad tomato slice).
Like all of the mothers of naturopathic medical students, my mother is reading the book The Supercharged Hormone Diet by Dr. Natasha Turner, N.D. I had the chance to flip through it and discovered a recipe for this easy “detox water” that Dr. Turner recommends to accompany the diet.
Another naturopathic exam session has come and gone. The end of our last midterm week tucked an uncomfortable 49 exams (in less than two years) under our already stuffed belts. Despite the over-stuffing of knowledge (taxing our Spleens, according to TCM, which is the equivalent of overeating at a buffet), I can’t help but feel empty at the end of these week-long ordeals.
After being enchanted by Montreal, I was determined to show Joe that Toronto isn’t all concrete and business suits. I may not be an expert on all that Toronto has to offer as a city; I don’t frequent clubs, I’m not that into high fashion and I don’t eat out often. However, I am very familiar with one thing about Toronto: its parks. (more…)
Walking down University Avenue in Toronto past all the major hospitals, including the Princess Margaret, a hospital that specializes in oncology, one can’t help but notice the lines of smokers puffing away outside, in front of the hospital doors, in the frigid February air.
This morning I dropped J off at the airport as he caught the 8am flight back to Bogotá, Colombia. These past two weeks, where I showed him a bit of my world, after sharing his for two years, in both Bogotá and Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, were a whirlwind of activity. He met all of my family and enjoyed all the great things that Toronto has to offer.