Naturally

Last week at this time, I was preparing for my March cooking class. The focus was seitan - wheat gluten, a perfect meat substitute for those without gluten sensitivity. Cooking classes draw fascinating groups of people together that would not otherwise gather. There were meat eaters who were looking for healthy alternatives, vegetarians looking for another option, and everything in between. I was happy to see 2 men in the crowd.

Maintaining a vegetarian lifestyle requires commitment. To sustain the commitment, each person needs to have their own personal reason(s) for doing so that go deep down to the core of their being. Without conviction, changing a lifestyle is difficult to sustain over time. Being a healthy vegetarian requires time and effort, particularly in the kitchen, but there's the menu planning and the shopping. Typically, this falls to the woman in the home, and more men are enjoying cooking, but rarely do they do the planning or shopping.

About half way into the 2 hour class, a woman asked a question that I've never heard before. I've been teaching classes for 22 years as a nurse, energy worker, yoga teacher, and her question got my attention. Actually, I think she stated outloud what many feel but don't articulate.

She said something like, "Doesn't (eating like) this just come naturally?" I asked her to repeat what she said because I didn't get what she was talking about. When I finally responded to her, I said, "No, this way of eating doesn't come naturally. Making healthy choices requires your consciousness. I want you to bring your full consciousness to the process of making decisions about what you eat." I added a few things about mindfulness, too.

Even now as I write about this, I'm almost speechless.

I've always been a firm believer that education, knowledge, and information are the key to positive, healthy, life-altering/sustainable change. I give this woman credit for coming to the class - vegetarian cooking is very foreign to her. She did see that it is not as hard as people think. Vegetables are not our enemies, and our bodies love them. Of course, there are ingredients and essentials to a well-rounded vegetarian kitchen, and these new ingredients can feel overwhelming to a person eating the S.A.D. (standard American diet).

As with vegetarian cooking and lifestyle, nothing in life just comes naturally. There is a difference between passive/apathetic/indifferent and using intuition to guide us in each day and moment. We can "go with the flow" when we're engaged in life, listening to the messages around and within us, living consciously, coming to our day to day tasks awake, and paying attention to the details of our lives. Then, our lives do "appear" to happen naturally.

If we wait for things to just happen, they likely never will. Our attention and willingness to participate is required for a vibrant, deeply satisfying life.

In April - sweet and spicy tempeh & veggies with rice noodles, and much more!


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