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Editorial: The Art of Balance

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The Art of Balance

by Morgan Jones

10 December 2002

“Life is a balance between taking on and letting go.”

David Briscoe, founder of Macrobioitcs America, wrote this phrase when I asked him to describe the essence of his lecture called The Big Balance that he presents from time to time.


David lives in Northern California and travels to Austin only a couple of times a year. He lectures at many venues around the country, and he is usually the most popular speaker at all the major macrobiotic conferences. David's gentle and intelligent style, his ability to make complex issue clear and understandable, and his practical approach to healthy and happy living in the real world have won him praise again and again from those who have attended his lectures. Listening to David is a great opportunity to hear one of the finest macrobiotic teachers in the world today.

When I asked David to describe his first lecture, as usual he went right to the heart of the matter.

Again and again I seem to discover that the important truths in this life turn out to be pretty simple ideas. I don't know how many books I have read on diet, nutrition, healing, spirituality, and the like over the past 20 years
—it's a big number. But nowhere in all this reading did I ever find this one powerful truth expressed so clearly and understandably.

We macrobiotic teachers work toward one simple goal: We want to help our students and friends (who are, after all, one and the same) become aware of the subtle affects of the hundreds of choices we each make everyday (most made unconsciously), and how the residue of these choices can accumulate over a lifetime to create, well, us
—our bodies, our minds, and our emotions. This is the wisdom David has shared with us, and we try to pass it on.

Accumulate. That's the operative word here. From my personal observations, it seems to me that illness
—whether you describe it as emotional or physical or spiritual—is the end result of accumulating stuff that isn't compatible with the human body and human chemistry. In my own case, some of this accumulation was the physical kind -- from butter and cheese and meat that clogged my arteries and intestines; from baked flour products that turned into paste in my gut; from an excess of sugar that turned to fat, made my thinking scattered, caused my hair to fall out, robbed me of energy, made my vision blurry, and left me unable to turn my ideas into actions. And—how do I say this without sounding too new-age?—I also accumulated a lot of emotional baggage that resulted in clogged thinking and unhappiness that manifested as a lack of contentment.

“What you take in minus what you eliminate equals you,” David wrote.

Yep. That makes sense. But can it really be that easy? Is that all there is to know and suddenly every detail of life is perfect?

Well, it wasn't that easy for me. I still had to work hard to learn how to incorporate this idea into my daily routine. (The devil is always in the details, no?) But after more than 7 years of using David's powerful compass on my healing journey, I think I can say that I am on the right path. I've lost all my excess weight; I have overcome my hypoglycemia so I don't fight to stay awake in the afternoons; I have regained a sharp mental focus; my memory improved; my eyesight improved; my low back pain is gone; as is the pain in my knees and several other joints; I sleep 4 to 5 fewer hours per night but now have more than enough energy to keep going strong from 5 am to 10 pm every day; and I am infinitely more peaceful and tolerant and grateful than ever before.

I can't tell you for certain that this idea will be the last, best one for guiding my efforts to improve my health, lengthen my life, and increase my joy. But what I can say is, "So far, so good."

So now you might be thinking,
“OK. For the sake of argument, let's say that Morgan might be onto something. How—exactly—can I stop accumulating the stuff that clogs my body and my thinking, and how—exactly—can I eliminate the excess I have accumulated to this point in my life These are the questions David speaks so eloquently about in his Big Balance lecture, and these are the very same questions we expand upon in our weekend health conference called The Origins of Disease—The Road to Recovery.


If you want to get a clearer idea of where disease comes from, how it can be prevented or reversed, and how to do this effectively while living a modern-day life in a high-tech world, please come and join us for the next weekend conference. It might just change your life as it has mine.

Or, if you want to jump into the deep end of the pool of knowledge, you might check the class schedule at The Natural Epicurean to see when Dan will next be offering her course entitled The Fundamentals of Cooking for Disease Prevention &Reversal.

It's really pretty simple. As soon as you take charge, the healing begins.
 

Peace, love, and brown rice.

 

Last modified: 02/21/05