Wednesday, August 6, 2014

Summer in Colombia

Here's a little taste of Central Colombia:
In July, my husband and I travelled to Miami to visit Alex's parents and then to Colombia to visit former bandmates Hector and Claudia in Medellin and another friend's family in Bogota.  We started our trip with a 3 hour flight delay in RDU, slept in the Miami airport on the floor for about 2 hours, boarded an easy flight to Bogota where our friends met us to take us to the bus station, then slept on and off on a 9 hour bus ride deep into the central tropical mountains of Colombia.  We were dropped off by the bus in the dark across from a roadside restaurant, tired, hungry, and me with a bit of motion sickness. The bus driver said, "This SHOULD be it, this is the only Rio Claro, but I don't know this place you are staying."  Luckily, yes, we were in the right place and saw the sign Refugio Rio Claro.  We put on our headlamps and headed down a 1 km dirt road to the main office, greeted by cicadas, frogs, trickling water from the river, and of course, lots of flying insects.  It felt good to be walking on firm ground!
 
Li-lan doing Qi gong in a stalactite cave in Rio Claro
Wild-looking tropical flower! Each step/groove you
see is a repository of water for bees and insects and
a gray flower grows out from it.  In front of our room
 

A Honda Fit hatchback jam packed with fruit for sale
Alex playing bongos on the plaza in Villa de Leyva
Our friends in Medellin.  Hector and Claudia (in black) used to play with our band Different Drum and we also had a Latin Band called Son Libre.

Hand molded stucco house by Octavio Mendoza in Villa de Leyva, everything inside was hand sculpted

 
Click here to watch a Video of Rio Claro, Alex plays the trumpet.  We are upriver about 2 miles from the main office. 
 

Sunday, May 25, 2014

Causes of a Displaced Uterus


CAUSES OF THE DISPLACED UTERUS

A displaced uterus disrupts hemodynamic and homeostasis”.  “The function of the uterus depends on proper flow”   Dr. Rosita Arvigo
 
"The uterus is a woman's second brain, if she is out of balance, so is the woman." Don Elijio Panti, Maya medicine man and Dr. Rosita's teacher




1)    Repeated pregnancies close together with difficult deliveries

2)    Inadequate professional care during pregnancy, delivery, postpartum

3)    Carrying heavy burdens just before or during menstruation and too soon after childbirth

4)    Walking barefoot on cold floors or wet grass, sitting on cold wet surface

5)    Wearing high heel shoes

6)    Running on cement surfaces

7)    Injury to the sacrum or tailbone from a fall, severe blow, or car accident

8)    Chronic constipation, straining during bowel movements

9)    Poor alignment of pelvic bones with the spinal column

10)                       Carrying children on the hip for prolonged periods of time

11)                       Modern life:  too much sitting, feeling of constant overwhelm

12)                       Emotional armoring from rape, sexual abuse, or incest

13)                       Aging and the pull of gravity on the ligaments

14)                       Career in high impact dancing, aerobics, or sports

15)                       Chronic cough

16)                       Surgical procedures

17)                       Motor vehicle accidents

 
Receiving a session from an Arvigo practitioner and learning the Arvigo self care massage helps the reproductive organs by relaxing tight ligaments and toning weak ones, facilitates the movement of arterial and venous blood, moves congested lymph fluid and nodes and opens up energy channels that are stagnant, so that nutrients, disease fighting agents, hormones, proper nerve signals, and Qi flow efficiently through the whole body.  Each individual then has more capacity for balance and healing.
 









 

Sunday, April 13, 2014

Another spring wild food friend: Chickweed

Spring is officially here in North Carolina!  What once used to be a nuisance in my garden because I didn't allow time to pull up weeds in my garden early enough, has become a yummy wild edible food this year.  It's chickweed and it grows in my vegetable garden soil wherever I didn't mulch last fall.  The above photo is from my first pick of chickweed two weeks ago.  Do a Google image search to get a closer look and see if you find it in your vegetable/flower garden. 
      I learned from a fellow herbalist several years ago that chickweed helps in cleansing our lymphatic system: our body's garbage disposal of what the circulatory system is not able to clear, specifically fats.  Together with a diet adjustment modulating phlegm-producing foods such as sugar, cow dairy, fried foods, alcohol, fatty animal meats, and possibly wheat gluten, adding chickweed can be helpful for facilitating detox of phlegm/congestion conditions like seasonal allergies and excess weight from calorie-rich winter foods. Chickweed is also a mild diuretic, very much like asparagus, cilantro, parsley, dandelion leaf. 

Nature always provides what our body needs during the season, so chickweed is a beneficially food to consume this time of year, very much like dandelion leaves and flowers, which I wrote about a few years ago in this blog Dandelion Flower Tea.  Reading back on this has inspired me to go out and pick dandelion flowers to make sun-infused tea today! 

How have I been using chickweed the past few weeks?

1)  I added a small handful to my green smoothie that I blended up in my Magic Bullet, with water, mandarin oranges, hemp seed, chia seed, homemade water kefir, and dash of apple cider vinegar.  Experiment with your own green smoothie recipe!

Spring is the Wood element in Chinese medicine 5-element theory, consisting of the Liver and Gallbladder meridians, and one of the ways to balance our internal Wood element is to experiment, be creative, and try out new ideas!  Interested in knowing more about the Wood element?  Check out my previous blog post Spring as Growth

2)  I've picked the tender top leaves and mixed it with romaine lettuce very much like how you would add arugula or sprouts to salads.

3)  Chopped the tender top shoots together with cilantro/parsley and added to soups and broths at the end as a garnish.

4)  After reading about dried chickweed tea, maybe I'll try to dry some this year! 

Do you have any other uses you've tried?