Maia Well Being

In 2014 I studied fermentation, I did this because I got really very sick, with a thryoid/autoimmune diagnosis. Fermented foods helped to ease my symptoms in a very obvious way.

I really got excited about how we can prepare food in a better way, to provide nutrients that are more bio-available to our gut, foods that nourish our nervous system, foods that fill us with healthy bacteria… foods that are ready to meet our intestines… Foods that outperform anything you can get in a pill or potion.

One of the nutrition aspects of the fermentation study was learning about the importance of our mineral level. And it was put really simply! Which makes it understandable for anyone, which means we can all make better choices to nurture ourselves back to balance.

What does increasing mineral intake do for you?

When we are feeling run down, or overwhelmed in away aspect of your being, increasing minerals is an external way of supporting your being to come back to balance, resilience and your true potential.

Being able to go to a shop and choose “the right” food is a luxury, which makes any diet choice luxurious. Growing your own is not always possible, so I recommend learning what is natural to your location, for that season. Or, what would you have harvested and preserved to see you through the current season.

Also, eat what wants to grow, there will be plants (weeds) that want to grow there, that are exactly what you need, learn how to select and prepare these plants. Everything you need is in your backyard.

Should I remove food from my diet?

I didn’t. I couldn’t. I knew instinctively that I did not have the capacity to function without the response my body was having to what I was eating… poor as it was, if I had of stopped coffee, it would have been a whole lot worse.

I was reaching for the foods because they nourished the bacteria level I was currently existing on. What I needed to do was start feeding up the bacteria levels that I wanted.

Working from a place of realising I needed to honestly, truly love myself, I chose acceptance for my desperate body, I accepted I had chosen or created it, and that meant I needed to stop fighting what it was…

And, if we have a functioning digestive system, we are going to easily eat & excrete the occassional junk food binge, birthday cake, party beverages… without major disruption.

What you should remove from your diet.

Blenders, juicers, packaged foods, pills, supplements, superfoods or any foods that have travelled the world to reach you, out of season fruits.

Anything that has been processed. ANYTHING.

The golden question…
How would I get this if I didn’t have power or petrol?

How long would it take you to eat the same amount of raw celery sticks as what you put in a juicer? Because that is how long it should take you to eat that much raw celery.

The golden question is what swims through my mind with any purchase I make, any switch I turn on… it is more about awareness than not doing it.

My 20 years of indigestion/heartburn gone at 34!

It wasn’t a change to diet or adding in any pills, it was a structural refinement. At 43 I have not experienced heartburn or indigestion in 9 years, and if my memory is correct, aren’t we sold digestive issues like this as an accepted part of ageing?

Your Stress Response, activates muscles, posturing us, readying us, and in this posture the digestive organs are pushed out of alignment. Veins, arteries, lymphatic system and neural pathways are kinked, and when we are locked in this posture, the tubes that feed into our stomach are compromised, as the diaphragm kinks them, and the sphincter is compromised… and all of these things lead to acid escaping, as well as food not entering cleanly into the stomach…

There is now lots of stuff in the body where it is not meant to be longterm, and it is becoming toxic, so the body pulls minerals to deal with this… and because our digestive system is not functioning optimally, we are not absorbing nutrients to rebuild the mineral levels, at the same time the minerals being drained from within us are being used up completely, so over time, the bones start to be depleted…

And all of this perpetuates the stress response, the tightening of muscles to posture the body, putting pressure on the joints, creating inflammation, draining the skeleton, draining our life force.

How do I learn all that I need to know to help myself?

I question why we need to know so many details, why we isolate and blame, when we are all one being and all different parts of us are dynamically integrated… so for minerals I learnt the following simple understanding for something really complex.

Vinegar and bicarbonate soda…
When you mix vinegar and bicarbonate soda together, they neutralise each other and you are left with water and waste products.

Above is a really simple explanation of how our body deals with toxins. The vinegar being the toxins, and our mineral level the bicarbonate soda, per say. When we have a good mineral level, we are balancing mineral/toxins from multiple sides…

First… we are drawn to a better food choices, ones that will nourish our health, we aren’t desperate and don’t need a quick fix.

Two… our mineral levels, supported by our foods, optimally absorbed by a functioning digestive system, mean that when we encounter toxins (processed foods, skin care products, coffee, alcohol, sugar, chlorinated water…) our body will better neutralise them, and excrete the waste products.

But, as Hamid Jabbar Mentions in his Medicine Stories interview (linked below)… there may be something more he hasn’t quite put his finger on yet… but I’ve experienced it. The power we each hold within how we move our body. It’s the balance we become, the free flowing energy we remember in Maia Movement (just a name).

We remember what it is to be our own energy source, and each move we make within our Space of Emptiness cycles our energy within our system. Each move we make outside our Space of Emptiness drains our energy and causes inflammation that further drains our energy.

It sounds limited and weak, but this is quantum physics! Our Space of Emptiness is our true potential, it may not fit the look or timeframe of the supposed way to be, but it is our place of total power…

The food we eat and our digestive system health.

Our mineral level is a combination of the food we eat, and how well our digestive system is functioning, and all of our organ systems are dynamically linked to each of the others, and as a whole physical being of multiple organ systems we are dynamically integrated with our emotional-spiritual-mental aspects, and we are dynamically integrated with earth force and cosmos.

If you are feeling poorly, keep it really simple, local, fresh, cooked, animal fatty, fermented foods.

Eat
Whole, local, living foods. Choose soft foods, cooked or fermented foods.

Bone Broth
Start here… it nourishes the coating on your nerve pathways. Bone Broth will start soothing your nervous system and replenishing the mucous lining of your digestive tract. If you can, choose grass fed and grass finished meat.

If you have been vegan or vegetarian, this is the best place to start getting the much needed nutrients back into your system. If you are really compromised, this may be an important first step, especially before fermented foods.

Increase fresh leafy greens
Steam greens in bone broth for a snack. Add a small portion of steamed greens to each meal. If you are feeling really poorly, I recommend choosing steamed greens over salad. My preference is fresh picked local greens, (preferably chemical free) over well traveled organic. Steam them in some broth for a superfood soup.

Fermented foods
Rejuvelac, is a quick whole fermented food recipe, that makes you a delicious, replenishing beverage

Chew your food
We are meant to swallow food that we have processed into nearly liquid, with our teeth. Our saliva contains enzymes and bacteria that begins breaking down food, so that it is ready for the intestines.

Water and eating
Water is said to dilute digestive juices, so should not be consumed before, during or close after eating. AS I type this, I feel a little funny about it, but I remember when I started doing this my level of thirst decreased, I needed to drink way less water as a whole. It made sense that if the digestive juices are compromised, the food we eat becomes toxic in our gut instead of being properly processed, and the desperate need for water is to flush out these toxins… try it and see, it has become second nature to me now.

Bitter foods
The fermentation course also introduced me to bitters, an herbal elixir that gets the liver pumping before you eat… well, there are plenty of easily grown plants that offer the same, just pick a leaf and chew before eating… I use wild lettuce, chicory, mugwort… learn about your local (weeds) as they can be potent food.

Innate intelligence
Our nervous system is designed to take in all the variables and respond to them for our highest good. So, learning how to muscle test for the best foods for yourself is so beneficial… we don’t always know what is growing in front of us, but if we trust our gut instinct, we can ask the correct questions to discover whether it is edible and how to prepare it.

How do I make this easy?
Eating mineral rich food is as simple as gently steaming the following
leafy greens, asparagus, vegetables, chemical & stimulant free,  locally grown, natural growth rate, in season, in the ground… and adding a small serving to each meal, or having this small serve as a snack.

Bone Broth & Greens
1/2 cup bone broth
2 Tablespoons finely chopped fresh leafy greens
Gently boil, add sea salt, fresh ground pepper, a squeeze of lemon juice, or a Tablespoon of fermented vegetable juice. The best Cup of Soup you will ever have.

Nurturing your digestive system is getting bone broth and fermented foods into your gut. It is preparing grains correctly before cooking them, it is cooking your food with love, instead of convenience. It is preparing with your hands, not a machine. Our skin is part of our digestive system, and we need the absorption of minerals that come from harvesting and handling.

Parasympathetic nervous system energy is our rest digest heal.

At the same time I was learning about minerals, I was also making the correlation between subconscious muscle tension, and how this impacts my digestive system function… I felt how my skeletal alignment was causing the digestive issues.

When our weight rests on the earth, the comfort and quality of what we can feel is good if our muscles & bones are working in harmony, and we can observe our breath causing a tidal wave to flow freely through any part of our body… this would be when our digestive system is functioning, with all the circulation needed.

When we are not feeling the above (say we cannot feel our right toe touching, or it is lifted off the ground) that means we have subconscious muscle tension, restricting our joints, restricting our breath and holding our body weight away from the earth.

All nervous system energy is good, and it should be subconsciously directed to suit the situation we find ourselves within. If it is locked into one flow, we are draining areas organs not relevant to that nervous system energy and over stimulating the areas that are relevant.

Digestive system dysfuntion exists when we are locked in the posture of stress, we won’t be resting well, and we will take longer to heal (from anything), but we won’t feel it, as things get progressively more uncomfortable, the nervous system will shut down what we feel, and provide us with pain killing and feel good hormones, allowing us to push on through.

The stress response pulls blood & lymphatic flow, and shuts down nervous system activity, redirecting all this energy into the areas needed for running and fighting… the muscles contracted to posture us hold the digestive & reproductive organs tightly, limiting their ability to pulse as they should.

Through repetition the stress response locks on, and stays on, until we create a feeling of physical safety, it will not release.

Until we become exhausted and fall apart, and get scary test results and diagnosis.

But we no longer feel what we are doing, or what has been created. We are told this is a normal part of ageing, this is happening to us. We are told to go and do more, and to build new habits, find new coping mechanisms… all the while we are layering more subconscious muscle tension.

Subconscious muscle tension requires energy & minerals for contracting & holding contracted muscles. If we can’t feel what we are doing, we cannot stop doing it.

Our breath is unable to move freely through areas of subconscious muscle tension, adding to our stress response, perpetuating the cycle. (1hour 38minutes with Hamid & Amber)

Maia Movement is about reconnecting with what we can feel. That is what we can work with. And in the beginning, for a lot of people, it is either pain, or nothing. We either feel pain, or nothing.

So we learn acceptance, of what we can feel, the pain or the nothing, and we start to explore our range of motion, the limits of our subconscious muscle tension, and we learn unconditional love as we move with respect to our own limit.

Working within the limit is our safe space, our freedom, where feeling safe allows our nervous system to release subconscious muscle tension, releasing the energy and minerals required for holding contracted muscles back into the system.

There is no quick fix, removing food from the diet does not take away the issue you have, it just stops pressing the issues button, selecting your life to suit you emotional state is a beautiful luxury… (59 minutes, Hamid & Amber get into treatments and diets, it is awesome)

Living well, is knowing you are always feeling your best, based on all your unique variables… it is the space of emptiness between denial and stimulation, denial is being under the influence (sometimes obliviously) of the past and stimulation to create something better is living in the future.

When we are outside the Space of Emptiness, anything we do will perpetuate the imbalance, making us feel better, or high, or fabulous… or worse, drained, exhausted, painful… either way our life force, our mineral levels, our energy is being drained.

Hamid Jabbar mentioned he feels great after giving blood, so there is still something he is doing that is creating a buildup that feels better when drained off… the same principle as people who need to burn off excess energy with a big run, or people who need to calm themselves with yoga… if we are in balance, we are not needing to find this relief… we always have an opportunity to refine ourselves.

Maia Movement is about “how” you are doing it… and balance is the Space of Emptiness where there is no doing, subconsciously (past) or consciously (future).

Being the movement, working within your true potential, is a place where your energy is circulating within your field, you are joy in motion. You are the unique expression of the universe, your breath the heart beat of the universe providing you exactly what you need.