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Macrobiotic Dietary Healing
by Harold
Kulungian |
MACROBIOTICS IS
ACID-FREE VEGETARIAN COOKING. Centered on whole grains, legumes, fresh
vegetables, and proper fermented foods, this type of diet is the oldest and
still most prevalent on this planet. There is nothing strange or bizarre about
returning to the traditional staple foods of mankind. Once you begin, it
becomes the most obvious common sense.
This fare is as delicious as it
is salubrious. It makes a clean palate, a clean tongue, giving refinement of
taste. You will discover "You are what you eat." is more than a
cliche.
HOW DOES MACROBIOTICS HEAL?
This food is highly
digestible. It flows through the body effortlessly. It cleanses, detoxifies,
and deacidifies us. We begin to feel very clear-headed and buoyant as our
digestive system is strengthened through the removal of unmetabolised food and
mucus. By changing our blood to a more alkaline condition, the improved
assimilation of our food shows in brilliant skin and strong shiny hair. This
de-acidification is the basis of healing and the secret of
macrobiotics.
Acid-free natural diet restores our metabolism to its
proper functioning. Whatever our ailment -- from constipation to cancer -- if
we eat this way we will be healed. This food produces a new body and a new
spirit -- because it is in harmony with our blood and body chemistry, whereas
the acid diet is inimical to us.
Acid is the #1 enemy of health. If we
do not eat heavy animal food, which requires acid to break it down, we can get
along fine without acid foods. The acid-effects of the modern American diet --
in all its varieties -- may be seen most readily in people's hair. How often do
we see a truly healthy head of hair? As rarely as we see a truly healthy
person! The condition of the hair reflects the condition of the internal organs
and the overall health. On acid-free diet, you will never lose your hair or go
grey. Your face will always be free of wrinkles and sagging flesh.
The
acid-effects of modern diet are pervasive: indigestion, headache, constipation,
bloated condition, skin problems, arthritis and other inflammatory ailments,
all the way to cancer.
Another major culprit in the modern diet is fat.
When it hardens in our body, fat produces clogging in arteries and organs,
heart condition, lung problems, asthma, hearing impairment, and ultimately,
when the spine gets clogged, paralysis. Macrobiotics will cleanse our body of
fat in 3 months, restoring us to health.
Emotional problems and mental
health are likewise rooted in diet. The tension we feel in us, and ascribe to
external causes, is really coming from tightness in our gut due to indigestible
food. Fear and anger, also, are coming from our overburdened organs of
digestion. A soon as we correct our diet, we become dauntless, fear nothing,
and experience a deep centered calm.
When I was introduced to
macrobiotics in 1974, my health was so poor that it was an effort to lug myself
up a flight of stairs (185 lbs). Within a year I was striding up the 26 flights
of the University of Massachusetts library, 3 steps at a time, enjoying the
exercise (135 lbs).
The discovery of the dietary basis of health was a
turning-point in my life. Macrobiotics became my absorbing study. I gave up my
academic career and decided to devote myself to this healing art.
For 20
years I had been in search of the wisdom of life at 7 universities. With
degrees from Harvard and Tufts, I had pursued graduate studies in philosophy,
history, and literature. The last of the wandering scholars! Yet all my
intellectual endeavors could not avail me the happiness I discovered through a
few cooking lessons.
Looking aback at my life, I began to see how much
of human tragedy and misfortune is due ultimately to bad health from improper
diet. My cynical and sad youth had a basis in -- unrequited love, the old
story. But it had a deeper basis in my own physical condition. I failed to
seize the moment when it came because I was fearfully depressed, congested in
my vital organs from animal food.
Our daily food is the foundation of
our happiness or misery, our successes or failures, our joy in life or our
depression, our health or sickness, our longevity or premature
death.
After 17 years of macrobiotics, studying and teaching, I marvel
at the human body's resilience in springing back to health in response to
proper diet. I have taken my stand on this proposition: Sickness is due
ultimately to diet. And whatever was done by diet can be undone by diet. I
welcome the biggest challenges.
This work is more exciting and more
gratifying than anything I can imagine. I enjoy teaching people how to heal
themselves. The spiritual satisfaction and the ineffable gratitude I receive on
seeing major illnesses, such as cancer, reversed, is the greatest
reward.
Many have healed themselves by this natural diet. Have the
courage to use your own judgment as to where sickness comes from, and begin.
Read Anthony J. Sattilaro, M.D., Recalled to Life: The Story of My Recovery
from Cancer (1982) and Michio Kushi, The Cancer Prevention Diet (St.
Martin's Press, 1983).
To put it philosophically: If there is such a
thing as truth, then there is truth in diet. Experience is the unmistakable
test. I took my stand confident that when the word got out where health was to
be found, people would be moving in this direction. The word is getting out.
Macrobiotics is no longer assumed to be a cult, but is increasingly recognized
as what it is: Common sense in diet. It is an idea whose time has come. I
invite you to begin the adventure of healing, so that you may secure your
health once and for all, and make these discoveries for yourself. You will look
5 to 10 years younger. And feel many years younger than that, stronger than
you've ever been.
With good reason macrobiotics is known as "The art of
rejuvenation and longevity." The firmness and flexibility this food gives is
extraordinary. At 55, I can duck walk as easily as walk. Surely there are not
many activities which can have a more profound effect on your life than a
conscious change of diet.
I am free to travel to your home, teach the
cooking, help set up the kitchen, and give consultations covering all factors
that may be affecting one's health adversely, clothing, breathing, exercise,
and environmental condition. |
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EAT
YOUR WAY TO HEALTH
Harold Kulungian