The Best Nightshade-Free Vegetable Soup Ever!

Nightshade-Free Vegetable Soup

The combination of black pepper and garlic makes this soup nice and spicy without the use of peppers! The vinegar and lime really make the flavor of this soup reminiscent of traditional vegetable soup using tomatoes

¼ head green cabbage

1 large onion

1 cup celery

2 large cloves garlic

Kale, enough to make approximately ½ cup when chopped

1 medium carrot

2 medium radishes

2 baby bok choys

a splash of balsamic vinegar

1 teaspoon ground pepper

2 tablespoons fish sauce (make sure no MSG)

1 tablespoon gluten-free tamari

1 box premade organic beef broth (cheap at Aldi’s)

Put all vegetables (washed well) through slicing attachment of Cuisinart, or chop by hand. Combine in pressure cooker with remaining ingredients. Bring to pressure on high, then lower temperature to cook at pressure for 6 minutes. Use quick release method to release steam per pressure cooker instructions.

Serve with lime wedges and a pat of butter! The small amount of fat coming from the butter helps balance the vegetables for people who have a tendency to run low blood pressures. Or consume with a meat meal!

Interactive Guided Imagery (sm)

If you could spend an hour that would leave you feeling relaxed, full of self-compassion, with more clarity and awareness than before, would that interest you? What if it helped you connect with your true nature, your enlightened nature? Here is a quote from Sandra Maitri's book The Spiritual Dimension of the Enneagram:

"The more asleep we are to the reality beneath our shells, the less we feel that life is fulfilling, meaningful, and pleasurable...our suffering is not the result of being alone or of being in the wrong relationship, is not because we don't have enough money or because we have too much of it, or because of anything of the sort. Nor is it because our outer surface doesn't look as pretty as we think it should or because our personality isn't as pleasant as we think it might be. We suffer because we are living at a distance from our depths – it's as simple as that."

Interactive Guided Imagery is the fast track to connect with our own depths. When done with a Certified Interactive Imagery Guide it is safe, relaxing and enjoyable. I record each person's sessions for their eyes only, using an audiovisual technology so that they can replay and relive the experience. People tell me how surprised they were at how much self-compassion arose in them while viewing the recordings. Developing true self-compassion may be as important as insight for transforming our suffering.

I love Interactive Guided Imagery. Also abbreviated IGI, it is supposed to have a small "sm" for service mark after it - I don't know how to make that subscript. The founders of the Academy for Guided Imagery wanted to preserve the potency of the skill so that not just anybody could use it - so they put "sm" after it. Spoils the look IMO. And still very few people have heard of it, many years after it came into being.

I got certified in IGI in 2004 I think, after 3 years of rigorous learning and practice. NOT something you can go to a weekend class to learn. I think the Academy may now host weekend workshops for healthcare professionals to give them a taste, but I wish they wouldn't. As one of the few dietitians to take the full course and become certified, I fear that people might attend these weekend workshops and then feel qualified to practice, thus doing their clients a disservice.

Now with the advent of Skype and Google Hangouts, this wonderful modality can be accessed easily. I am doing my best to make that happen.

Why? See below my answer to a young woman who wondered if IGI could help with her depression:

First of all, we don't assume that there is anything wrong with anything we are feeling. Feeling depressed can be like a red light on the dashboard of your car – an indicator of something important that you need to pay attention to. You wouldn't want to "fix" your car so that the red light doesn't come on when it's time to change the oil!

So the feeling really is an indication of information for you. Interactive Guided Imagery is a very good way to access that information. During an imagery session I help you to connect with a part of yourself that knows you very well and loves you unconditionally – that is your Inner Advisor. In the company of your Inner Advisor during an imagery session, you can feel the feeling, whatever it is. Tuning into the feeling, you allow an image to form of what it looks like. What do you notice about it, what sort of qualities does it have? What feelings do you have about it? Express your feelings to it. Ask the depression what it's there for? What does it offer? What does it want you to know? You can have a safe conversation with it because you are held by the guide (me) and in the presence of your Inner Wisdom and Self Compassion (your Inner Advisor). 

It can feel like depression is a force that is against us, something to struggle with that might overcome us. On the other hand, using imagery, we can access the voice of depression knowing that it is just one part of us, and that all our parts are trying to help us. It is certainly true that our parts sometimes speak to us in ways that are not very helpful! That is why imagery sessions can be so useful. You can ask the part to speak to you in ways that are helpful and that you can understand.

You may want to have several sessions in order to feel free to explore with no pressure to solve anything. Other Inner Advisers may show up that specialize in helping you with this particular issue. This is a lovely way to find out what your nervous system is trying to tell you about your life and how it might like to unfold for you.

This can work with any symptom. As I mentioned, once you have made contact with that part of yourself that shows up as your Inner Advisor, you can go on to dialogue with images of the symptoms themselves.You can ask them what they are there for, what they want, need or offer you. You can also feel into what you, yourself need right now  (ex: courage, self-love, etc.) in order to deal with whatever is up, and evoke memories of a time when you had a lot of that quality. That is called evocative imagery and using that, you can "turn up the volume" on the quality and summon it whenever you want. These are just some of the examples of the many ways imagery can work for us.

I hope the readers of this blog will leave questions and comments below! You can also always write to me at TrustinBeing@gmail.com.

Love, Laura

Aug 4, 2015

It is 7:06 in the morning and I am writing the first post in this blog for 2015. Never mind that it is August 4. This blog began as a way for me to share important things, things that I normally write about in my journal, but things that might matter to somebody else when seen through their lens and applied to their very different life.

Some time ago someone advised me to begin "The Artist's Way". In that book the author advises the reader to write three pages every morning, first thing upon arising. I did that as spiritual practice and I enjoyed it very much. I even saved all those pages, heaven knows where they are now after the move. The point about it was to get the mind limbered up and lubricated so that the words and ideas would flow. It worked. And then I didn't write anything for some time. Now is the right time to begin anew.

Many things are changing for me. My beloved and I are living in a new house, in a new town 25 miles away from the home on Stallings Avenue in East Atlanta Village I bought in 2009 with the intention of living there forever. That was my first experience of inner-city living in a lifetime of longing to live in a neighborhood of quaint midcentury houses. Within less than a year I had put the house on the market again in reaction to a flare of PTSD brought on by an exchange of gunfire directly across the street. The house did not sell, I calmed down, settled in and began to adapt.

This move was prompted by my dream of having a little bit of land to have a bigger garden and some animals, a place big enough to hold workshops and retreats and to rent out rooms B & B style. We looked for almost a year before we found the right place. This is it and I am both happy to be here and nostalgic for my inner-city home, the place where so many good memories and so much growth occurred  .

In that place I did my most successful gardening to date, growing hundreds of pounds of strawberries in the front yard rather by accident. Who knew that 11 tiny strawberry plants consisting of a few roots and not even a leaf could multiply and cover an entire front yard?

Also in that place I learned to share my space in a way different than I had ever shared space before. Starting with housemates and progressing to renting the studio and occasionally the whole house using Airbnb, I approached my childhood dream of having a house full of people. As an only child I craved a big warm family and imagined having a big family of kids when I grew up. Of course being that same only child I needed my space and particularly I needed quiet. That took negotiation and boundary setting and being willing to stand my ground even though it was very uncomfortable.

My dear dog Holly who is been my companion since December 2002 has terminal cancer. She has been my friend, often my closest friend, during the long-distance marriage, the second divorce,  the solo move to Atlanta, the first freezing winter in the new house. She put up with me going back to work and the indignity of a new dog, Timmy, bought to keep her company. I am sad.

So today for the second day in a row the air outside is cooler than the air inside when I take the dogs out, and even though the temperature reached into the 90s the mosquitoes have gone. Things are definitely changing.

Letter to a Friend

Hello my friend, I hope you are having a good day! I thought I would have written you this hours ago, but now is the time!

I have been trying to think of the best way to use your help. I want you to help keep me accountable, and there are so many areas in my life that could benefit from that. I know myself to be very resistant to accountability. This is a lifelong pattern, and I think Matt Kahn is right, I am going to need to love myself more in order to shift it. I have already started using Matt's advice particularly directed to the areas where I procrastinate. This is bringing up a lot of my old stuff so it is a very fruitful area of inquiry.

Last night I watched Matt's YouTube video about Twin Flames and Soulmates. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2da2CQEyy0 It was very good, although I recognize twin flame energy in myself and in the past would've felt bad about it. Matt doesn't exactly address that, but I am using his general advice to love myself more no matter what the issue. I think there is a little bit of idealism in there as well, because one of the ways we learn in relationship is by facing our own stuff that comes up, and everyone has stuff no matter how evolved they may be. In the past people have called me insecure and I have taken it as a criticism. Now I am feeling quite a bit of compassion toward the person feeling insecure, me or someone else. In the past I have also been impatient and annoyed with people who acted insecure.

I am enjoying my Enneagram reading so much right now! I am almost halfway through Sandra Maitri's Spiritual Dimension of the Enneagram. I think maybe I loaned it to you one time? I have read parts of it over and over but never have read it from the beginning straight through. Again, I don't think I would've been able to benefit from it until I could take a really compassionate and loving attitude toward myself, really greenlighting myself for being that way. I am resonating strongly with many of the attributes of the "three" type. I can't wait to get to the explanation of "Wings" since at this rate I think I am either a four with a three wing or three with a four wing! Ha!

I just remembered something – that when I first heard about greenlighting, teachers said to go ahead and greenlight ourselves to keep doing what we're doing until we're ready to stop. That's a little bit different than the way I understand it now – it's more like Matt says, when you really love the one (that is, yourself) doing that thing you hate, you stop having to do it compulsively. At least I think the behavior loosens and I have more space around it and more awareness.

When my kids were little I used a book called Totally Organized and I really liked it. I found it again in the move and read the first chapter this morning. I felt inspired to use one of the methods in the book, which is to take a stopwatch and allow five minutes for clearing clutter from each room. When the five minutes is over, move to the next room. The clutter is not completely cleared but it is so much better and I was able to keep up the momentum and not get stuck.

I am not yet ready to ask for accountability to do this every day though! I don't know why, except that in the past I have failed even with accountability, and I don't want to fail again.

I feel that I am going at a very slow pace, but somehow the slowness and deliberateness seems to be very rich and it actually feels like a practice to notice the discomfort and shame that comes up.

The other thing that I noticed that was really interesting to me was that I have been toying with the idea that in order to add something in, one has to subtract something. I am always adding more things in, but never subtracting anything. So yesterday, Corwin was gone all day until very late at night and my felt-sense was that my day was completely empty! There was not even anything to subtract! Of course there were a lot of things I could've done, but nothing was very interesting or compelling to me and I noticed boredom. That was really surprising. I think I usually just fill my time with one thing after another, getting involved in the details rather than taking a big picture. When I stepped back it looked very empty. That is so interesting to me and I think by sitting with that I may get some insights. Of course I have the automatic response to fill it up, but at least for today I have gone slow again and have noticed a depth and richness to the experience.

You know what my friend? I think that in writing you, I have written a blog post! It has been so long since I have posted anything to my blog, and I really need to love that person who hasn't blogged and who feels bad about it.

Much love to you,

Laura