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Self Healing Australia
Winter Newsletter
2009

Winter Foods and such

Winter is the season when we can feel the most vulnerable, insecure, and lacking in motivation.

Foods that can make us feel supported, warm, and secure are buckwheat, oats, soba noodles, miso soup, adzuki beans, roots, greens, and salty condiments.

By adding the above foods to your diet, you’ll feel more self-confident and less stressed, retain your sense of humour, and have a greater sense of balance and stability.

Cooking style for Winter

With the seasonal change from autumn to winter, we tend towards longer cooking methods, that include stronger soups, sauteed vegetables, casseroles, and baked dishes.

A little more oil, seasoning, condiments like gomasio, and sea salt (only used in cooking) are appropriate as they warm the body.

Vegetables are cut into larger chunks for longer cooking, while buckwheat, along with fried rice and soba noodles are the grains most appropriate at this time.

If you are living in the northern hemisphere, Summer foods and cooking styles are available free online in the Macrobiotic Handbook for All Seasons.

Lima Bean & Leek Casserole

  • 1 cup dry lima beans (soaked overnight)
  • 1 medium leek
  • 1 teaspoon thyme
  • 1 bay leaf
  • 1 strip kombu
  • 3 shiitake mushrooms (soaked for 10 minutes)
  • 2 tablespoons kuzu or arrowroot
  • sea salt to taste

Discard soaking water of lima beans and place in large saucepan covered with water.

Boil for ten minutes, and then remove foam forming on top of beans. Cut strip of kombu into pieces, add to beans, and cook for a further 35 minutes.

Remove stalks from shiitake mushrooms, cut into small pieces and add to beans. Slice leek and add to pot, cover with water adding thyme, bay leaf, and sea salt. Let simmer for 15 minutes.

Dissolve kuzu in 1/4 cup of cold water, add to casserole, and stir until kuzu turns transparent.

Serve with brown rice or noodles.

Serves 4.

More recipes are available free online
in the Macrobiotic Handbook for All Seasons.

    Bach Flowers - Agrimony

    Agrimony can assist in helping us to accept and share our fears, limitations and worries instead of trying to cover them up to others.

    The Agrimony person often believes that their happiness is dependent on making others around them happy. As a result they feel that their own troubles are insignificant compared with those of other people.

    They choose not to burden other people and pretend that everything is fine when often it's not. The sad clown often typifies the Agrimony state. And friends are often the last to know when something is amiss.

    General dosage is 4 - 5 drops under the tongue at least 3 times a day.

Kidney meridian meditation

Close your eyes and start to breathe deeply. Make the exhalation longer than the inhalation. Imagine your arms spread palms open to receive whatever the Universe has to offer you.

As you breathe in, imagine the energy entering your body through the soles of your feet. Feel as though there is a doorway in the middle of sole. Breathe in the energy through this doorway allowing it fill you up, and then when you breathe out feel the energy flow effortlessly and without strain back into the world.

Continue breathing in and out feeling the energy becoming stronger. Imagine yourself melting becoming drops of water dripping from melting ice. The drops are becoming larger and larger until they form a trickle of water. Keep on breathing in and out, allowing yourself to melt a little more so that now you feel yourself like a small stream flowing downhill. Feel how you move effortlessly letting gravity pull you along.

As you flow downhill, you can feel the pure joy of effortless movement. There is no fear or care about anything except for the joy of flowing. Whenever you come to an obstacle or a rock, you move effortlessly around it, over it, through it with your laughter and joy. There is no stopping you.

Now you have become a large stream that flows into large river, which flows into an even larger river, that races to the sea. Sense that as the river you are everywhere at once, at the source and at the end as you become one with the sea. Remember this feeling of oneness and realise that although you are constantly changing you will always be in the flow of life.

Then slowly come back to your body and open your eyes.

Link of the Season



 PureCalma.com online wellbeing magazine.


On The Fence

© Issi Aaron
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Shiatsu point therapy
for tiredness, lower sex drive and lower back pain

The tension in the bones (the pressure of the womb during gestation) represents our ancestral energy or kidney energy. It gives us our ability to act.

This can be likened to the drawing of a bow (the tension) and the arc of the arrow (our lives or kidney energy).

When the Kidney meridian is not functioning well, we are prone to stress, fear, and anxiety. When the meridian is functioning well, we can move effortlessly through the world feeling motivated and confident.

KI 3 is located behind the inside of the leg between the ankle bone and the tendon.

KI 3 can be used for symptomatic relief from tiredness, decline in sexual drive, swollen ankles, lower back pain, and heat in the soles of the feet.

Press into KI 3 until you feel the soreness, then maintain the pressure while breathing deeply until you feel the the soreness release in the point. Repeat on the other leg.

For more infomation on shiatsu please click here.

Yoga for Summer
Forward Bend Pose

This pose tonifies the liver, spleen, and kidneys,
and helps with digestion.
    • Sit on the floor with one leg straight and the other bent pressing the sole of the foot against the inner thigh.
    • Inhale, and as you exhale stretch forwardto grasp your ankle with both hands.
    • Inhale and then exhale slowly trying to touch your chest to your knee. Hold the pose and breath deeply for two breaths.
    • Exhale and slowly return to starting position.

    • Repeat with the other leg bent.

    Book of the Season


    Modalities and You
    Chi Nei Tsang

    What is Chi Nei Tsang?

    Chi Nei Tsang literally means “working the energy of the internal organs” or “internal organs chi transformation”. It uses all the principles of kung fu and tai chi chuan known as chi kung. It is a form of applied chi kung.

    It was generated in time immemorial in the mountain ranges of Taoist China. It was used by monks in monasteries to help detoxify, strengthen and refine their bodies in order to carry the high energy required to perform the highest levels of spiritual practices.

    Chi Nei Tsang is an integral part of the Universal Tao System created by Taoist chi kung master and author Mantak Chia It uses all the wisdom and skills cultivated in ancient Chinese disciplines such as tai chi chuan, chi kung and Taoist esoteric meditations of “awakening” and “enlightenment”.

    As such it is a complete system of physical, mental, and spiritual development that emphasizes teaching clients to work on themselves and practitioners to raise their spirit,recycle negative energies from treatments and increase the capacity to carry healing power.

    What is Khadro Chi Nei Tsang?

    Khadro Chi Nei Tsang is a holistic approach to massage therapy of ancient Taoist Chinese origin. It integrates the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual aspects of oneself and goes to the very origin of health problems, including psychosomatic responses.

    Khadro Chi Nei Tsang practitioners are trained in chi kung and work mainly on the abdomen with deep, soft and gentle touch, to train internal organs to work more efficiently and also address unprocessed emotional charges.

    All of the body systems are addressed: digestion, respiration, lymph, nervous, endocrine, urinary, reproductive, skeleto-muscular and the acupuncture energy system (Chi).

    For additional information on Khadro Chi Nei Tsang workshops please contact Fuji Teodosio: fujiteodosio@yahoo.com.au

    Love is giving somebody something


    they never knew they were missing.

    Shiatsu gift vouchers are a wonderful gift

    to give and receive.

    Contact Issi:

    issi@self-healing.com.au

    tel: (02) 9558 8111

    © Self Healing Australia 2008

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