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GOMASIO
A
Macrobiotic Secret of Natural Healing
by
Harold Kulungian |
Gomasio is the principal table
condiment in the Macrobiotic way of natural foods diet. Use it in lieu of salt
to season your food at table, giving hearty delicious taste.
Gomasio
also functions as a medicine in itself, due to its powerful ant-acid
biochemical effect--a thousand times more effective than AlkaSeltzer, which is
Yin, fizzy. You can take 1/2 to l teaspoonful directly on the palm of your
hand, and suck on it well, before swallowing: strengthens digestion and
improves energy immediately.
You can sober up a drunk person, and cause
his sanpaku eyes, with the whites showing beneath the iris, to come back into
focus quickly from 1 or 2 teaspoonsful.
Together with a simple bland
diet of slow-cooked whole grains and legumes in iron pot, gomasio will
accelerate the de-acidification of the digestive tract and improve the
assimilation of the food, to heal anemia, hypoglycemia, multiple sclerosis, and
especially all the inflammatory disorders and diseases that are ultimately due
to an excessively acidic diet.
For example, the original designation,
"multiple neuritus," by which MS was formerly known, indicates
acid-inflammation of the nerves from excessively acidic diet. Gomasio is also
wonderfully healing for all other blood-related diseases--which means virtually
all diseases, including diabetes and cancer.
So beginning with the daily
use of gomasio in one's diet, one obtains a key secret to rapid effortless
natural healing of virtually any health problem, since gomasio changes the
quality of the blood very quickly.
Just one example I've witnessed: A
nursing mother eats or drinks something acidic and 5 minutes later the baby
starts to cry because her milk has become acidic and is giving the baby painful
belly-ache, known as colic. So the mother takes gomasio and de-acidifies her
blood quickly, and her milk also. The baby suckles the gomasiod milk and
immediately stops crying because the milk has been returned to an easily
digestible alkaline quality.
Western Medicine knows nothing about
de-acidification as the basis of natural healing. The doctors have never tasted
and experienced the healing effects of gomasio. So it is a huge challenge to
offer this gift in such a way that their pride won't prevent them from tasting
it, accepting it, and discovering the natural healing experiment in their own
bodies.
Believe me, this is a real problem, as I can testify from sad
experience. A few years ago, after reading Dr. Bernard Lown's THE LOST ART OF
HEALING (Houghton-Mifflin, Boston, 1996), I telephoned the renowned Harvard
cardiologist, and invited him: "Dr. Lown, how would you like to discover the
lost art of healing?" "Oh, I'd be very interested in that, indeed!" he assured
me. So I sent him three Macrobiotic books, including a cookbook, some of my
recent writings, a quantity of my fresh home-made gomasio, plus a 32 oz. bag of
pure sun dried LIMA SEASALT.
For a month I wrote him each week a
substantial letter, responding to the problems in the case histories he
included in his book of patients who had died of heart disease despite the good
doctor's prescriptions.
No response as promised, so I telephoned him
again: "Dr. Lown, have you received the books and letters and gifts, the
gomasio and sea salt I sent you, to relieve your lower back-pain from iodized
salt?"
"Look, I receive things in the mail all the time! I can't reply
to all these things!" "But, Dr. Lown, you assured me you are interested in
discovering the lost art of healing, didn't you?" "Thank you very much, but at
my age I'm too old to discover Macrobiotics." Whereupon he hung up--another
dramatic example of what Toynbee calls "The Great Refusal."
From his
STUDY OF HISTORY, volumes 5 and 6 on "The Disintegrations of Civilizations,"
Arnold Toynbee concluded that the ruling class of a collapsing civilization
will never be receptive to creative solutions coming from outside their ranks.
Macrobiotic holistic medicine is from the Orient, from Japan.
The late
Lima Ohsawa (1899-1999), First Lady of Macrobiotics, in her cookbook, THE ART
OF JUST COOKING (Autumn Press, 1974, 1981), had this to say about the
importance of home-made gomasio:
"It is in the
preparation of simple foods like rice and gomasio that a cook's real skill is
tried. It is far easier to assemble a rich gourmet feast than to produce
consistently delicious, well-balanced sesame-salt. Mastery of this simple
condiment means mastery of the center of your life." A powerful statement, certainly, and one that can only
be tested by experience, especially long experience, as I have tested it. I
always come back to gomasio with new relish for life due to its tonifying
effect, giving new strength and energy.
Lima's recipe recommends a
proportion of 15 parts sesame seeds to one part salt. I make it just a little
stronger, about 12 to 1. But since a quantity of salt always remains imbedded
in the grooves of the suribachi, for you to dig out with your fingers and lick
it (very delicious!), after you have finished grinding it, it's wise to use
just a little extra salt.
Here are the directions for use with a 9 inch
standard suribachi, a Japanese mortar, with grooves in it, that comes with a
wooden pestle, and can be ordered through a natural foods store. Without a
suribachi, you cannot make gomasio; so don't think of making it via the
shortcut of an electric blender. It won't be gomasio, but something
else?
- First roast 3 tablespoons of
sea salt in an iron skillet until it turns grey, well cooked. The best salt for
making gomasio is LIMA SUNDRIED SEASALT, because it is fairly fine to begin
with, high in minerals, and much easier to grind into a fine powder than a
courser salt.
- Let the salt cool before
handling it, to avoid getting burnt. Then pour it into the suribachi and grind
it briskly into a fine powder, the finer the better.
- Next roast 2 cups of
un-hulled whole brown sesame seeds in the same large iron skillet, on low heat,
stirring constantly to avoid burning. Be sure to turn the heat down to low
after roasting the sea salt, or the sesame seeds will start popping right out
of the skillet, and you'll have to quickly clap a lid on them. The seeds must
be roasted or toasted until they are crisp and will make a clicking sound when
pressed between your thumbnail and forefinger.
- Now comes the lovely ritual
of grinding the seeds on top of the roasted and ground salt. Use only enough
pressure to crack the seeds, so that their oil will coat each grain of salt.
You do not want to make a mush, a paste. By using just the right amount of
pressure, the gomasio will come out light and sandy. Grind in a spiralic
movement from the bottom and then up the sides of the suribachi, for left
handers in a clockwise direction, for righthanders in a counter-clockwise
direction. It is a beautiful exercise, so enjoy it, though it may take almost a
half hour to grind the 2 cups of seeds until they are 95%
crushed.
- Store the gomasio in a
crockery bowl with lid, or wooden container, or a tightly closed glass jar, and
keep in a cool, dry place. DO NOT REFRIGERATE, since a moist place would cause
it to spoil quickly. I have many times kept gomasio for 6 months without it
spoiling and still tasting fine. How long it keeps depends on how it was made
and stored.
Harold Kulungian
Amherst,
Massachusetts
harkulungian@netscape.net
26
January 2001 |
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