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Macrobiotics is commonly regarded as a diet programme, a way to treat cancer and other serious illnesses by making dietary changes. It is much more than this. It is a whole way of understanding the universe and applying this understanding in our lives. I sometimes describe macrobiotics as a way of understanding "how everything affects everything" - how food, lifestyle, relationships, the environment, the cosmos. . . affect our health, our thinking, our attitudes, our behaviour, our actions. . . and how these, in turn, affect our food, lifestyle, relationships, the environment, the cosmos. . . The way to understand so many complex issues is simple - by reducing everything to yin and yang, or expansion and contraction energy. Everything can be viewed as either more expanded / expanding or more contracted / contracting. Alcohol - expanding A few examples will make this clear. Alcohol, for example, has strong smell. We can say its smell expands. It also evaporates easily. It changes from liquid to vapour and vapour is a more expanded state compared with liquid. Alcohol is made by a process of fermentation, during while the original substance - rice, barley, grapes, etc - breaks apart. Again, this is an expanding process. So overall, we can say that alcohol has strong expanding energy. The effect of drinking alcohol is to make us more "expanded" - for example, more relaxed. When a person drinks excessive amounts of alcohol, that person becomes expanded in several ways. For example, the mind becomes so expanded that the person is unable to focus and think properly. Speech, too, becomes expanded and people are known to talk more freely after a few drinks. The face and eyes turn red because blood vessels become expanded and blood becomes more clearly visible. And so on. Salt – contracting Salt, in contrast, is very contracted. It will not rot, ferment or break apart in other ways even in a million years. When salt is applied to meat, fish or vegetables, these foods become more hard and dry, that is, more contracted. Salty snacks are therefore often served with alcohol. The more of such snacks a person eats, the more alcohol he or she will drink. People who large amounts of salt will, over time, become overly contracted. A common problem is hardening and narrowing of the blood vessels, which raises blood pressure and can lead to heart attacks. In the study of macrobiotics, you will also learn that heavy salt eaters may develop white or grey hair. Their hair follicles contract. This prevents nutrients from reaching the hair and the hair turns white. The mind of such people become contracted as well. On the one hand, they are highly focused. On the other hand, they can also be stubborn. And so on. Music Slow music with long, sustained notes is more expanding and, therefore, more relaxing. Fast music with lots of short notes is more contracting. It can be energising, it can also be stressful. Stress itself is a contracted condition. A person who is stressed feels tight and tensed, that is contracted. The person may feel the whole world coming down on him, that is, contracting towards him. A person who is stressed automatically reaches out for alcohol, chocolate and sweets, soft music, soft cushion and other things that are expanded / expanding. It may not always be obvious what is more expanded and what is more contracted. But when you put some thought to it, and when you have enough experience, you will know. This understanding of expanding and contracting energies, of yin and yang, can be applied to make your life more balanced and steady. It can also lead to recovery from serious illnesses such as cancer. The application of macrobiotic knowledge and understanding is not always easy, of course. It requires years of practice. It is, however, a fascinating subject. You can learn more about macrobiotics from these pages and from my book, The Magic Spectacles of Yin and Yang. There are also some excellent macrobiotic sites on the web, including: |
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