Do I EVER get tired of seeing this place? Nope.



As I plan to dig my car out of snow piles at the Croton train station this evening -- upon returning from work in New York City -- I'm reminded that there once was a time when THIS place was what I came home to in the evenings after work in Honolulu!

Hmmm . . . wonder how long it'll be before I return "home" for good!

Mele Kalikimaka . . . from New York ??

Mele Kalikimaka from the land where palm trees sway!
Originally uploaded by pixelmama

As much as I'm loving Christmas in New York . . . I sure miss living in Hawaii!

As my friend Chris has taught me well to do . . . I'll stay living in the moment and just keep enjoying this wonderful cold weather and the joys of the season. I look forward to the winter solstice on Tuesday night -- the earth's true New Year's eve!

What says "Happy Holidays" better than Love, Music and Peace?

It's sunny and gorgeous here in New York today.  I'm finally getting my christmas tree up, and I've enlisted the help of my friend's son, Danny (much taller than I am!) who's looking to earn some extra moolah.

Thanks, Dan!

I'll be wrapping presents, baking cookies to give away as gifts (the attorneys I work with love 'em) and just doing the comfy, homey thing all day.

Have a happy weekend, all -- LOVING the ones you're with . . . enjoying some good MUSIC . . . and letting
PEACE keep your days sweet. 

Happy Christmas Week!

Ennerdale, Lake District, England

Ennerdale, Lake District, England
Originally uploaded by DaveWilsonPhotography

Part of Wainright's Coast-to-Coast Walk goes through this beautiful town in the Lake District in England. The walk is about 200 miles and goes from St. Bee's on the Irish Sea to Robin Hood's Bay on the North Sea. One can walk it from either direction, of course, but they say it's a bit easier from west to east -- as you hit the steeper parts earlier (when one has the most energy) and the prevailing winds are also with the hiker this way, they say. Not sure about the latter -- but most people walk the C2C west to east.

I hope to be here in late August of 2011!

THIS says it all . . . re: electon day yesterday!

I Screwed You All - But Thanks for Blaming it on the Black Guy
Originally uploaded by jeffmcneill

Gratitude

                           Artwork above by the wonderful Andy Dooley!

ON GRATITUDE by Gabriella Kortsch, Ph.D., CHT
A multitude of scientific studies all give the same results: feeling and focusing on gratitude is highly beneficial for your physiological, psychological, emotional and spiritual health. This information first hit the airwaves less than a decade ago and in my monthly newsletter article in October 2006 (entitled, "Happiness:  Has it become a Science or is it a Question of Luck?"), I referred to what were at that time, recent studies, indicating that amazingly, the most important component to maintaining and/or raising our level of happiness is accomplished by keeping a gratitude journal. 

Today I’d like to encourage you to contemplate ten excellent reasons that demonstrate exactly why you should make gratitude an integral component of your daily routine -- not something to do occasionally, or when you wake up, or when you go to bed, but to integrate it into your daily life in such a way that it is always there in your conscious awareness, in some fashion, just as your awareness of the amount of light where you are is always present. It can easily (and painlessly) become second nature, if only you choose, and LET gratitude occupy that place in your life.

1. Gratitude lowers your stress levels as measured by blood pressure and perspiration and breathing.

Because you focus on something that gives you a certain amount of happiness or pleasure, gratitude is capable of affecting you on these very physiological levels. If you think for a moment of a grinding problem in your life and note how it makes you feel, and then switch your focus to something beautiful in your surroundings, allowing yourself to feel gratitude for it being there (the blue sky, a frolicking puppy, a bold purple bougainvillea climbing up a white-washed garden wall, a contagiously laughing child behind a wrought-iron gate, the elusive scent of a night jasmine, the full moon in a star-lit sky, the burst of flavor in your mouth as you bite into a ripe peach, etc.), you will note that you immediately feel very different compared to how you felt a moment ago.

2. Gratitude increases your levels of alertness, enthusiasm, determination, and attentiveness as indicated in several studies.
What happens when you think about a huge pile of work that needs to be done? Don’t you feel a bit overwhelmed, perhaps even tired, just by thinking about it? Now quickly think about spending a two-week vacation on Bora-Bora or traveling around a country you have yet to explore, perhaps Istanbul and the Cappadocia region of Turkey. Didn’t you immediately feel more alert and enthused? It’s exactly the same thing again with gratitude.

3. Sleep duration and sleep quality are also positively affected by gratitude as indicated in the same studies.

We all know what happens to the quality of our sleep when we are worried and stressed. And what happens when our lives flow, when things are going well. Again, by focusing on gratitude, we get a similar effect, even when things are not flowing.

4. By creating a good feeling inside of you, gratitude literally changes your energetic frequency.

It follows that if you change from a not-so-good feeling to a better one, your inner state of energy will increase, or quicken. Raising the energy of what you focus on raises your energy in many different ways. Focus on a war movie with devastation, grayness, desperation and mindless torture and killing, or focus on a movie such as “A Beautiful Mind” or “Eat, Pray, Love,” and you will clearly feel the energetic difference. Focusing on gratitude for something in your life, something as simple as the examples in the first point of this article, and you will immediately notice the change in energy.

5. Gratitude allows you to shift your perspective about the matters you had been contemplating prior to feeling the gratitude.

When you change your inner energy, as established in the previous points, you will be in a new place inside your body, mind, heart and spirit. This position in the new feeling and thinking place will allow you to see whatever problem you are currently facing from a new perspective because when you feel better, you can see things differently. This may even allow you to more easily find a solution to your situation.

6. Gratitude strengthens the neural pathway that demonstrates to you that you are capable of choosing to focus elsewhere whenever you wish.

As you focus on gratitude again and again, noticing the increase in energetic frequency, noticing that you do feel better by focusing on gratitude, you are not only creating a new habit -- and hence, creating and strengthening a new neural pathway to the detriment of earlier-formed neural pathways that do not serve you well -- but you are also creating the neural pathway of belief in your own power to change your focus as and when you wish in order to benefit yourself. And once you believe that changing how you feel is in your power and not in the power of your circumstances, you are on the road towards inner peace and freedom.

7. Gratitude strengthens another very important neural pathway that begins to determine that you prefer to be in this place of inner well-being that you achieve as you focus on gratitude, as opposed to the place you were in before you exercised your feelings of gratitude.

If you lived in a studio apartment as a student, and then started earning good money and moved into a 3-bedroom home, you soon become habituated to more space. If you are accustomed to eating in fast-food places and one day you start going to five-star restaurants, you soon become habituated to a superior quality of food, surroundings and service. In the same way you rapidly become accustomed to being in a much better energetic place – a place of much greater inner well-being – once you begin to choose to focus on gratitude throughout your day. Being accustomed to being there, means that you will adjust back to being there quickly, on the occasions that you stray off the path energetically.

8. By becoming a habit, gratitude automatically allows you to remain in a much better inner space that is not easily perturbed.

The stronger the habit, the more robust the neural pathway that is associated to your choice to focus on gratitude throughout your day. As this begins to become the normal place in which you live (i.e., a better place of inner well-being), it is much harder to perturb that place. In other words in the same way in which someone who trains at the gym on a regular basis, or someone who power walks or runs on a regular basis, has a physical condition that is harder to knock off kilter, so it also applies to someone who has chosen to have a continual feeling of inner well-being, and who will therefore not be easily thrown into a negative place no matter what the outer circumstances.

9. Gratitude causes you to focus on the now as opposed to focusing on past pain or sorrow, or focusing on future worries.

Just for a moment think of something that is worrying you. For another moment think of something that caused you pain in the past. Now focus on something you are grateful for … perhaps the warmth of the sunshine flooding through your window, or the aroma of cinnamon coming from your kitchen, or the brilliance of the sun in the sky. Now evaluate: while you were focused on feeling gratitude, you no longer had the future worry or the past pain in your mind and emotions. The gratitude left no room for it – not if you allowed the gratitude to flood your being for that moment. And the reason for that is the fact that focusing on gratitude takes you – immediately – to the NOW where there is no room for thoughts and emotions from the past or future. It is a place of utter peace.

10. Experiencing gratitude implies that your ego cannot dominate you because it can only dominate when you are not in the now.

Using the term ego in the sense that it is that part of you that has untold unwanted thoughts that you feel you are not in control of, thoughts that in turn take you to untold feelings over which you also have no control, then by focusing on gratitude and bringing yourself into the now as explained in the previous point, your ego – all those unwanted thoughts and unwanted emotions brought about by those thoughts, no longer has the power to dominate you. The one that you are when you are in the now is the eternal you, the divine you, the you that always was and always will be and hence, the you that is not the ego.

Consider these points throughout your day. They are simple. They work. Your life improves. Your subconscious thought patterns and beliefs change. Your inner well-being increases and this new increased level of well-being becomes second nature.

Kailua Beach, Oahu, Hawaii

Kailua Beach, Oahu, Hawaii
Originally uploaded by quangas

Beach Stuff
Originally uploaded by _BigK_

Surfer Crossing
Originally uploaded by _BigK_

HAWAII BOUND! (Kalani Sanders's Photo)

Surfer Crossing
Originally uploaded by _BigK_

I cannot WAIT to touch down in my beloved Hawaii in just a few short weeks!  I'll be joined there by a wonderful friend from England ... and will be met at the airport by another wonderful friend -- someone who knows the Island of Oahu like the back of his hand, as he's lived there for nearly 30 years!  Who's got it better than me?!

That sign over there to the right stands outside a terrific surf shop up on the North Shore in the town of Haleiwa.  We'll be staying on the North Shore (home of the famous "Bonzai Pipeline") for the first few days ... in a little 2-bedroom cottage in Pupukea.  I'll get to explore stuff I never got a chance to when I lived there.  That's part of what this trip is all about.  Mainly, though, it's a physical and spiritual retreat for ourselves . . . with FUN permeating every day!  (We're going to do what WE want to do when WE want to do it.  My friend and I figure we both deserve it -- given what we've each been through in the last 10 years with our kids!  It's LIBERATION time!)

I found myself overcome with fear today . . .

It struck out of the blue, it seemed, almost like a presence crawling up my neck. The fear was of losing my job (I'm an "at will" employee . . . can be dismissed without cause with no explanation) since there is such a climate of fear as so many wonder about the "security" of their jobs. But then, almost as "out of the blue" as the fear arrived, a beautiful thought came to me. In one sentence I know so well: "I shall not want." Psalm 23. One of my most beloved. So I began to type out on my computer what I recalled of it from memory, and as I did, the fear shattered like broken crystal. I found this on YouTube ... and thought the acoustic guitar mad fantastic!

Southern Ocean

Southern Ocean
Originally uploaded by rozsavage

Whoo, Whoo ... I got to be one of the names on an earth ball that Roz Savage presented at the Copenhagen Climate Change summit (for being one of her supporters on the Big Ben to Brussels walk I helped sponsor). Exciting stuff, indeed. :-)

Road to Raw, Part II - Check Out My New Blog - Click on Link to the Right --->

I've been following the adventurous ocean-rower (and eco-advocate) Roz Savage, as she's rowed from Honolulu, Hawaii to Kiriboti and after 104 days at sea, she has just arrived on land. For a bit of inspiration, check out her WEBSITE. Her journal/blog entries are terrific ... and as she listened to mucho books on tape as she rowed along, one can avail oneself to quite a few good book reviews at the same time.

PS: She also solo rowed the Atlantic and has a book about that coming out next month, I believe.

FOOD, INC.

Check out this compelling new documentary coming out soon entitled, "FOOD, INC.".

Staying "Forever Young" ... or how to simplify, simplify, simplify!

I haven't visited this blog in over a month -- but all is well in Naomi's world. Just completed another move (within about 7 months of the last one ... boring story not worth discussing) and feel as if my 2009 goal of "Simplify! Simplify! Simplify!" is being taken to a whole new level. By the time I'm finished settling in, I'll be down to about a THIRD of what I owned when I originally packed my things for this latest move, and I'm thrilled. My goal is to have only books that I love and will reference again, only ONE of any item (that's something other than clothing), and in general to have fewer possessions than I have ever had. Anything I keep will be something that inspires beauty, or is useful, or clearly contributes to people's well-being.

About the featured YouTube song, Forever Young, been thinking lately about just what that means, as the song has always appealed to me. And it's not because I see aging as a bad thing, either ... aging is simply one's life unfolding so it cannot really be a bad thing. But "forever young" is such a soul attitude, knowing there is still so much to see, do and become. In other words, living with a child-like mindset of unlimited possibilities despite how our bodies are changing with time.

So enjoy Joan's sweet version of this Dylan classic ... and live FOREVER YOUNG today!

The Importance of Honoring Your Own Timing (by Karen Knowler)

I get a terrific weekly newsletter from Karen Knowler (called "Successfully Raw"), and this was the feature article this week. It is definitely worth a read, I think, as it doesn't just apply to those of us who have "gone raw" (or are considering going raw or anywhere else along that line), but to everyone ... as I think we all need to honor the "personal timing" of each of our lives:

The Importance of Honoring Your Own Timing (by Karen Knowler)

One of the great things about working with so many clients, past and present and both in group and 1:1 situations, is that common themes, patterns and problems become even more obvious than usual. This past month there have been many themes coming through over and over again, but the main one that I'm going to pull out of the mix is the importance of timing. It is only too common that I come across people who want to go raw "overnight" or "now!" or "in the next month" or at least some time really soon. Now, there's absolutely nothing wrong with having that kind of passion and excitement about something; in fact I wish there were more of it in this world! However, as I learned myself, and as I see time and time again, sometimes these transitions take a fair bit longer than we hope, think or expect. For my own part it took me five years to go and stay raw. Which I did for the next 5½ years, with no effort at all - but only because I was then fully ready.

I share this with you firstly to put some perspective on things (yes, five years of yo-yoing for me, that's a long time!) and second of all to bring up the importance of honoring your OWN timing. As with all things in life -- whether they be moving home, changing jobs, leaving or starting relationships -- generally speaking we do this, if circumstances permit, in "our own time." And sometimes this can be a fast process and other times more lengthy. Along your raw food journey you will encounter challenges that you never knew were possible. You will come face to face with things you have been burying for years (usually using food), you will realize things about yourself that both amaze you and sometimes sadden you. You will be able to sense a potential that before you had no concept of, and while one part of you will want to reach out and grab that with both hands, another part of you will cower away at what that might mean.

All of these things and more can mess around with our mind as we try to figure out what on earth it is we really want. "To be raw or not to be raw?" That is the question! Add to this the most common derailer and demotivator of all -- fear (and fear comes lurking up at every corner) -- and it's no wonder that the "overnight", "now" and "within the next month" can stretch on to become months away or even, as in my case, years. I have a belief that goes something like this: "The greater your fear, the larger your potential." (emphasis Naomi's!) Ponder this for a moment in relation to your own experiences on your raw food journey so far, and see if it doesn't bring up some deeper sense of knowing for you . . . One of my biggest and most constantly pressing observations is that for those of us who choose to live life "in the raw" the world is not really that brilliantly set up for us. And this can be why it feels like it's hard to play "big" or full out as the person we truly are or know we can be. And no, I don't just mean food-wise, I mean in all ways.

Indeed, the further I go on my own journey (and right now the whole thing for me has speeded right up - more later), the more I realize how incredibly important, nay imperative, it is that I only do things I love, only surround myself with likeminded people, only make choices that work for me and everyone else (and not just everyone else) and that I am true to myself on a moment-by-moment basis.) (Emphasis, Naomi's) Now, getting to this place can take time. And sometimes "time" means a long time. For me this has been 16 years and it's only really been for the past two years or so that I've been operating consistently in the way that I have aspired to for probably every single one of those 14 years previous.

Walking this path has been riveting, amazing, fascinating, challenging, turbulent and even grueling at times, but not once have I ever felt it wasn't worth it; even though I may have sometimes wished I could have gone back! Indeed, no other path has brought me so wonderfully and so consistently back to myself and to a place of peace that is unparalleled. There is no price that is too high to pay to feel this level of peace. And yet, to get to this peace, we do have to struggle through the swamp sometimes. And that swamp, if you haven't already figured it out yet, is largely, if not completely, self-created. It's the world, the life that we have created through choices we made days, weeks, month and years ago and it's the canvas that we have chosen to paint, whether that be consciously or unconsciously. Rewriting your life script takes time and energy, no doubt about it. And, although I am normally a "shades of grey" person, typically seeing subtleties in life and gradients in most things, when it comes to being "in the raw" or not, as far as I can see it, there is either a sense of moving forward with things or a sense of going back - never standing still, as life is always moving alongside us as we move forward with it, or past us, which leaves us feeling "behind" even if we thought we were standing still.

So as far as timing goes, sometimes on our journey, when things seem to be going a little fast, it is exactly the right time to pause, or to stop. Sometimes we DO need to let life pass us by a little so that we can feel cocooned from whatever growth was feeling intimidating to us. Some of us will choose a hefty chunk of bread or tub of Ben and Jerry's to work this magic, others alcohol, others some other form of "less-than- supportive" behavior which may or may not be of the edible variety. It's all just detail, but the essence remains the same: We need to pace ourselves. Learning when to stop, when to go, when to pause and when to leap forward is all part of the intuitive journey. Only YOU know what feels good and when. And often there is no external rhyme nor reason to this, it just feels right.

And then sometimes it can feel very wrong!

All these feelings, the good and the not-so-good, are simply signs to us as to what we should really be doing. And this can mean upping the ante in our diet, or stepping it back for a day or more, in order to recalibrate before moving on - when it feels right. As far as words of wisdom go, if there's one thing I want to leave you with you this week, it's that giving yourself permission to be real with yourself in this way, to hear whether your whole person is giving you the green, amber or red light is to take a huge step forward in your evolution even when the outside appearance might appear to dictate otherwise. Awareness is everything. It's what you do with it and how you approach that "what" that really counts. Growth is not always linear and it's not always what we think it is.

When you go at your own pace, you are only ever really moving forward, even if you choose to believe otherwise! When you relax into this knowing, conversely, the whole journey can seem, in its own sweet and irony- laden way, to suddenly speed up and us with it! But when it's on your terms and only yours, then speed never equals "too fast," -- it can only ever truly be present moment perfection when you honor your own timing, precisely because it is your OWN timing. This is where you will find your peace waiting for you too.

© 2009 Karen Knowler

Karen Knowler, The Raw Food Coach, publishes "Successfully Raw" - a free weekly eZine for raw food lovers everywhere. If you're ready to look good, feel great and create a raw life you love get your FREE tips, tools and recipes now at http://www.therawfoodcoach.com/

The Breathtaking Effects of Cutting Back on Meat

Effects Eating Meat Has on Mother Earth

One beautiful guitar piece ... "Those Who Wait"

This guy's music reminds me of a guy I dated in Hawaii ... a beautiful guitarist whose music was full of soul and heart. Just like he was. Aloha, Chris!

Check Out Mike Adams (The Health Ranger) in Equador

Spring has Sprung! Happy Mother's Day to all my UK Friends

Check out this lovely little video of Angela Stokes and her Mum (on Mother's Day ... how fitting) as Angela's mom demonstrates just how easy it is to begin container gardening in one's own back yard.