Yum – Raw Granola

A few days ago my wife and I attended an all day meditation class. We were asked to bring something to share during the lunch break. I knew that I wouldn’t have the time just before class to prepare anything, so I kind of put the idea of bringing something out of my mind and tried to neglect it. My wife didn’t. She suggested that we bring some granola that I’d make a couple days earlier. Her thinking was that it was done, raw, I could make more AND it tasted great. I agreed and didn’t think much more about it.

During the lunch, I was glad to see that multiple people picked it up and gave it a try. Turns out that the bowl was emptied quite quickly. A number of people sought out the chief (me) in order to figure out what was in it and they politely share their application. It’s not often that I go somewhere with my wife and not see everyone praising her over one of her fabulous concoctions!

Originally, I mentioned for the folks to just connect to this blog and search for granola. The search in the upper right hand side works really well at finding keywords and the article would simple come up. If you go and do that, you’ll find that the old granola article that I posted referenced a recipe that is no longer on the web! Dang. The old site that has been down for a while now and the folks that ran it seemed to have disappeared somewhere east of the rockies. Looks like the original recipe is gone for good.

So, from memory, here it is. Note that I make it different each time so the ratios really depend on what you have available to you when you start mixing. The one key ingredient, ground cinnamon powder, you’ve got to have that.

IMG_9456_ingredients

  • 1-2 cups raw hulled sunflower seeds soaked overnight
  • 1 (or more) cup raw hulled pumpkin seeds soaked overnight
  • 1 cup raisins soaked overnight
  • ½ cup dried apricots soaked overnight
  • 1 cup almonds soaked overnight
  • 1 cup pecans soaked overnight
  • 2 apples
  • 1 heaping spoon full ground cinnamon powder
  • ½ ripe pineapple (optional)
  • ¼ to ½ cup maple syrup

You’ll also need a food processor and dehydrator.

Step 1, soak the nuts and seeds! Give them time to rehydrate and start growing. With the nuts, soak for 6-8 hours and then rinse them off good. With the seeds, do the same but also let them grow for a while. Say, overnight. Make sure to rinse them good before using them for the granola. Also, soak the raisins and apricots. Yet, with the raisins and apricots, rinse them a few times before soaking them. You want to get any residue off the fruit before letting it hydrate. When we use this fruit, we’re also going to use the water that it’s soaking in. When you soak fruit, the water picks up a lot of the sugar. Since we’ll be removing the water in the dehydrator, there is no need to drain out that extra sugar!

IMG_9460_bowl

As you can see in the above picture, I’ve run each main ingredient through the food processor. I pulsed each one and then poured it into the bowl. Each time, I made sure that there was some texture left with the particular ingredient. I don’t really like large chunks, so if you were to look at the almonds and pecans, you’d see that the biggest pieces are about ¼ to ½ the nut.

When it came to the apples, I cored them and ran them through the grader option. With the raisins and apricots, I mixed it until it was paste. The fruit is the glue that holds everything together.

When I added the pineapple this time, I wanted that chewy fruity feel so I cut it down to pie shaped pieces knowing that the dehydrator will take it down the rest of the way.

Step 2, mix it all together. Get everything evenly distributed and then add a large heaping spoon full of ground cinnamon powder and the maple syrup. Mix it more until the herb is spread evenly.

IMG_9462_sheets

I like sheets of granola, thus I spread this large bowl out on four dehydrator sheets. Notice that I pressed it down to the width of the pineapple chunks.

Step 3, dehydrate overnight or maybe a bit longer.

IMG_9465_finished

You can peel it off and eat at any point, I like it when it’s still bendable but breaks apart if bent too far. This is usually 24 hours at 115 degrees.

When it’s done, you can’t tell there was ever any apple added. You’ll see the dark raisin and nut pieces, but everything else just kind of blends in like cereal.

Oh, most people think of this as candy! With all the fruit, it’s really sweet. I treat it like candy too. In a way, it’s like peanut brittle. The last picture doesn’t really show it, but in order to store it in an airtight zip lock bag, I fold the sheets over and over again until the pieces are 2-3 inches in size. Thus, each time I go for a snack, I get a cookie size piece to enjoy!

Note that the real trick here is the ground cinnamon powder. It’s just not the same without it!

 

Peppermint Aromatherapy with Dev Khalsa

I came across a video from Dev Khalsa a couple weeks ago regarding muscle testing and found myself oddly attracted to just about all his videos. He’s got a couple websites and a YouTube channel where he’s shared, what I find as great tidbits of information (that are more like tips) regarding staying healthy. Basically, tips for living in harmony with yourself – which I always consider priceless!

I picked out a sample so you can judge for yourself. Most of his videos are short. This one is just over three minutes. This video is predominately about peppermint essential oil.

Before going there, I have to admit that I love peppermint essential oil. The first peppermint oil that I ever used was oil that I’d distilled myself. A whole lb of pure peppermint leaf produced about 50 drops pure essential oil. I took just one drop of this oil and added it to a little bit of green smoothie first thing in the morning as a digestive aid. Well, it works! After a few days the cramping and bloating that I’d experienced for years was under control. It also tends to move mucus out of the lungs. This is great for getting relief from colds.

Give it a try!

Note that this video was put up a few years ago. But if you visit one of his websites, you’ll notice that he’s still posting articles even if he’s not posting videos. He’s got lots of cool stories that I’m hoping to get the time to read through.

Good Day.

 

Pranayama as spoken by Mahamandaleshwar Swami Jasraj Puriji

Here is a short video that speaks briefly regarding the use of the lungs. I learned at a young age that the number one thing that will extend your life and keep your stress down is if you use your entire lungs to breathe. This Swami mentions something similar to what I learned.

The beautiful part about his understanding is that it seems to be rooted in his experience rather than standard ‘book’ learning. In other words, you can actually feel what he’s saying.

I would like to add to what he says in order to fill it out just a little. The lungs are like a pair of big balloons. Actually, each lung is like an inverted tree where the branches allow for air flows and the leaves are where the chemical reactions of respiration occur. When the air flows down into the lungs, if you only draw it half way, only half the tree works for you. Drawing it all the way allows every little ‘leaf’ to interact with the breath and perform respiration. You want to use the entire tree!

Notice what happens when you sit at a desk all day long. The spine stiffens up and the ribs tend to stop moving. When this happens, the top of the shoulders knot up and eventually, the body registers pain. The breathing is shallow and the air barely enters the body.

In order to directly counter pain from sitting, the fastest and most direct way is to start using more of your lungs. Breathe deep. Consciously allow the air to flow all the way down to the point where the abdomen is forced to move out of the way. Loosen restrictive clothing around the waist and fill up.

It also helps to move a little.

Ever wonder why singing is so good for you? Not only does it require deep breathing in order to carry the tune, but it creates vibrations in the body that trigger cells to shake lose what they no longer need, and accept the things that they do. Put on some good music and breathe!

Consciously Breathe. You’ll always feel better when you do!

Tapping into Calm

In my experience, when a student of yoga takes the extra effort to breathe – fully and consciously – they are more charged by the end of the practice than someone that doesn’t. The simple act of holding your arms out to the side can be a serious challenge, if there is not some active participation in breathing.

Breathing is also key to reducing the amount of stress in your life. When researching stress and yoga, I came across an article posted at the Yoga Journal website that seemed to ring true with me. Thus, I clipped this content from a much larger article in order to share it with you here.

From Change Your Stress Response.

Tapping into Calm

How do we explain why participants in the aerobics group didn’t derive the same benefit as the participants who learned yoga? Better yet, how do we explain the results from the study that was based on a single session of Iyengar Yoga?

Kerstin Khattab, MD, an Iyengar Yoga teacher and one of the researchers in the Schleswig-Holstein study, believes that the key is yoga’s dual demands on body and mind. “Some of the poses in our study, such as Dhanurasana (Bow Pose) or Sirsasana (Headstand), are likely to cause a strong sympathetic nervous system reaction. But as you learn to hold these poses with a calm mind, focusing on the breath, the poses become a training in how to remain calm in stressful situations.”

In other words, the physical challenge of a pose becomes the equivalent of a stressor. If you do aerobics, which has no direct breathing or mindfulness component, the physical challenge can trigger a full-fledged stress response in the body. But when physical demands are met with mindfulness and steady breathing, as they are in yoga, the nervous system responds differently: It maintains activation while keeping an underlying sense of calm. It remains skillfully engaged but without going into full-fledged fight-or-flight mode.

The great sage and codifier of yoga, Patanjali, must have been aware of the power of asana when he wrote sutra 2:46, Sthira sukham asanam: Postures should embody steadiness and ease. If you can find both elements in the midst of a stressful arm balance, you’re not just training your mind. You’re enabling your autonomic nervous system to imprint that response and therefore allow you to return to it during everyday stress.

At first, you will need to very consciously tap into this response during your yoga practice by focusing on your breathing and thoughts. But with enough conscious practice, the rehearsed challenge response can become an ingrained automatic response—on and off the mat.

Yoga also trains the nervous system to return to balance quickly after a challenge response. By alternating strenuous poses with gentler ones, yoga conditions you to move easily between states of challenge and rest. Letting go of all effort in Savasana (Corpse Pose), for example, seals in this flexibility, because the pose teaches the nervous system to let go once the challenges of your practice have been met.

Next time you’re on or off your mat and find that life is a little stressing, breathe!

Muscle testing video series

One of the most important things that can put you on the best healing path is to get the ego thoughts out of the way! The I think I know thoughts are the ones that generally get in the way. These are the thoughts that are defined as being part of our conscious education. They also tend to be thoughts that others have shared with us and we accept them as being the truth without even really questioning.

In order to set yourself on a path to discovering the real truth for you, these ego thoughts need to be set aside or circumvented in order to get to the I feel this is right thoughts. The I feel thoughts are ones that originate from the internal self rather than the worldly self that you normally identify with. The I feel thoughts are also the ones that are dominate during meditation or surface as intuitive thoughts.

One of the best ways to work around the I think thoughts is to remove intellect from the equation. Sure, you might have studied and practiced nutrition guidance for 20 years, but you can’t tell the body how to digest something. You can witness it happening, but you don’t really consciously get involved.

With the case of the nutritionist, they might be helping people because they’re getting lucky. Or, they might be helping people because the programs that they follow seem to help the most people based on the scientific studies that the3 nutritionists reads and follows.

But do you really need this type of education in order to get in touch with your own body?

I would contend no.

To demonstrate this idea, all we have to do is look at the concept of muscle testing. If you Google up Applied Kinesiology, you’ll find a bunch of information that both supports and denies the concept. Being a scientist, I find it very interesting that there are arguments both in support and in denial of this art. Yet, knowing that there are lots of things regarding human consciousness that haven’t been scientifically proven I tend to keep an open mind and give them a try.

Thus, I get to come to what I wanted to share today. I found a video series from Charlotte Reid where she demonstrates her own abilities and techniques with regards to her own essential oils treatment program. She has a YouTube channel, but her website doesn’t seem to be current.

I started with the video Using muscle testing with essential oils part 1 standing sway test muscle test and then watched the rest of the series that she made that day.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did and that you give it some practice time.

Good day!