Using Nature’s Secrets to Look Great and Feel Terrific, Stay young, slim, strong, and energetic – Naturally
On a calm black night, you can smell the seaweed giving life and breath to earth and feel the easy flow of waves caressing the ocean floor. This is Maine near the Canadian border, the home of the seaweed man, Larch Hanson. I love getting emails and buying seaweed from him. He has devoted four decades of his life romancing the ocean. He harvests and dries seaweed and teaches the love and craft of husbanding the ocean’s gifts. He also teaches furniture making and body work. He takes apprentices and overnight guests stay free. He is as generous as the waves and open air.
You can learn alot from someone who makes his own boat by hand and seasons it with salad oil, who lives far from chemicals, people, and industry. After a while body and mind slow to a natural pace. Here is some advice from Larch about reducing pain naturally that I will share with you. He notices that this website has articles on arthritis, hip and joint injuries and he has cured his own ailments. Quoting Larch, he met a woman and they worked together:
It turned out that this woman was a candidate for a left hip replacement. I noticed that she was eating foods that would make her blood acidic, so I gradually helped her adjust her diet. An acidic descending colon would tend to create an acid condition in the region of that left hip. Minerals would be dissolving out of the joint. Her diet improved, she started to regain flexibility as a result of the bodywork. There was less pain.
Then I suggested that she start eating a bit of nori. I said, “When I eat nori, there are after-tastes that are similar to my own blood if I cut myself accidentally and taste it. Nori is similar to my blood and connective tissue, and when I have a wound or a sprain, I am drawn to eat nori, to speed the healing.” I suggested that she go swimming at the Y.
Soon the hip joint was pain-free, and when I worked on that hip, it was softer, the joint was more spacious.
After all, we are a tensegrity structure of spreader-bones and fascial-cables, and by harmonizing and adjusting the tensions in a tensegrity structure, a structural bodyworker can usually get the tensegrity structure to extend toward the sky while grounding more securely and aligning with the forces of heaven and earth that are always flowing through us. This translates to less compression in the joints! We are like iron filings standing up in a magnetic field, or stalks of grain aligned with the flow. Finally I said to her, “You know, I used to live in Sarasota, Florida, and I swam in a warm ocean every day…..” Next thing I knew, she moved, and I lost my bodywork partner to the Gulf of Mexico. . . .
In the case of a knee, all the muscles and tendons that cross the joint (from above and below) are lengthened by the structural bodyworker so that the joint will have less compression and a better chance for regeneration of cartilage. If the legs are rotated laterally because there’s too much shortening of the rotator muscles in the hips, lengthening work needs to be done so that the feet track straight, thus taking strain off the knee joints, especially the ligaments on the insides of the knees. Whenever I have pain in my knees, I can usually improve the situation by stretching my hamstrings with forward bends, stretching my gracilis muscles (that’s the muscle used to clamp the horse, riding bareback) with side stretches, and paying attention to keeping my feet pointing straight ahead when I walk, not rotated outward. There are repatterning exercises that I do with people after the structural lengthening work is accomplished.
The bodywork [I do] is all about the redistribution of energy/tension.
Wetsuits are a great metaphor in my life. Imagine that you have pulled on a wetsuit over your bones, a fascial body-glove that isn’t quite fitting the bones properly…….and you walk into a room with a wall that’s nothing but hands. These are educated hands, and you lean
in against the wall and slowly turn your body as the hands ever-so-gently-but-firmly stretch and smooth your body-glove until it fits your bones precisely. After awhile you walk around the room and feel your bones distributing your breath throughout your body-glove, extending your will to be and love with perfect clear intention. This bodywork is a dance.
(I asked him if he uses seaweed body wraps, and he aswered: )
I don’t wrap people in seaweed packs, but it would be fair to say that my apprentices get pretty wrapped up in the work! When we handle digitata kelp, they always comment about how soft and smooth their skin becomes. I do use ginger compresses to soften the body and improve circulation.
I sometimes recommend naps on slant boards (with knees up) to help a person take pressure off the lumbar region so that person can regenerate the lower back. It’s all about re-establishing length, one way or another, and softening the body while bringing the motions of respiration back into the areas of the body that have become hardened and stiff. In my own body, I can feel respiration all the way down into my knees. The lengthening response (taught to the body through the process of structural bodywork) that occurs in my back on the in breath also travels down into my hamstrings. It wasn’t always like that. When I was 30, I was pinned between two trucks and pushed for thirty feet while bumpers were grinding away on my knees and hips. I was crawling the next day, contracted with pain. It was that experience that started me on the path to becoming a structural bodyworker who now enjoys working with his young apprentices in the surf ! (end of quote)
I will try a seaweed wrap using Larch’s soup mix that contains digitata and kelp. Or I might use a big piece of kelp in the bath tub as a scrub–what an invigorating cleansing feeling! Then I’ll turn out the lights and soak in deep ocean gazing at the moon.
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Hi Letha!
First, I just have to say that I love your work! It’s soo nice to see a female that is so devoted to alternative medicine. All the acupuncturists that I have ever seen, are/were men. (Not the most understanding when it comes to wanting to get rid of cellulite, or to lose a little weight)! I just recently got your book “Feed Your Tiger.” I have decided that I am a Bear/Tiger. I was just about to order Laminaria 4, and was wondering what else I should take along with it, because I dont know what to do. I am just a bit overwhelmed. My acupuncturists recomended E.Z. Slim, and I did lose a few pounds on it, but it made me feel jittery, so my acupuncturists said it was too strong for me, and he prefer’s me to not take anything if I could. Well, I have gained some of the weight back, and I still go to acupuncture every week, and I think he treats me each time for sweet addictions and too much heat in stomache, but he never prescribes me any type of herb, unless i absolutely need it. It is frusturating, because I know acupuncture helps, but I need herbs too. What’s a girl to do? If you have any suggestions for me on herbs I should take, that would be nice. Thank you for everything!
Thanks, Shelly.
I hear you! I want to use alternative medicine for everything possible –looks, health, vitality, longevity.
Why not! drugs are not always safe and surgery has its downside too. So If you have a sweet tooth, you are a Bear.
Even if you don’t have blood sugar problems, you will benefit from some blood sugar balancing foods and herbs
because they support the pancreas and, therefore, absorption, energy, and reduce cellulite.
Power mushrooms pills are useful because one called fuling in it is diuretic. It is recommended for chronic fatigue.
Everyone loses weight better and has stronger will power will improved energy. The pills come from Health Concerns in Calif.
If you are allergic to mushrooms, avoid all mushroom products. Otherwise, you can use the recommended dose. to order call: 1 800 2339355 and use my name LETHA as password.
To start, use the baseline diet from Feed Your Tiger because it will make your body and digestion more alkaline therefore more ready to cleanse, detox and lose weight. Then especially now in spring when the weather is damp, you can incorporate remedies from the Bear chapter. Gymnema is an herbal pill that helps reduce sweet cravings and supports digestion.
So you are attaching the problem from several angles
1 . making the body more alkaline with the baseline diet in Feed Your Tiger to protect immunity and increase cleansing
2. adding an energy tonic – Power mushrooms
3. adding Gymnema to help reduce sweet tooth
4. then add some recipes for bears. See at this website: no bake brownies for example. Easy to make, fast, and satisfying without sugar and butter
Hope you enjoy the book and website.
A word about acupuncturists in America: they are so devoted to their teachers and the tradition that they have not bothered to translate terms like qi or jing – chinese terminology into something useful for modern western people. Acupuncture in China, where I have studied and worked in a shanghai hospital, accomplishes miraculous things. It can cure and improve many many conditions that western medicine is still discovering. However, there is no emphasis on beauty – only in the US do plastic surgeons care about our looks. But there is a vital connection between health and beauty. How can any one with a chronic skin condition, hair loss, overweight, or any other beauty issue consider it only a beauty issue? The reservoir of health for our hair, skin, and bones is our blood and bone marrow. Our nervous system, the stresses we place on it everyday, impact our health and beauty. The great advantage of Asian medicine is the emphasis it places on food and herbal tonics and its prevention of illness with wise diet and lifestyle.
best wishes, Letha
thank you for getting back with me so soon! that was another issue that i was going to ask about-energy, but you already addressed it, with the suggestion of power mushrooms. will those herbs give me the energy i need to exercise? i did boxing on my wii video game, where i had to “bob and weave” for 8 minutes, and my legs got very shakey after; almost as if i ran 5 miles, and i wanted to eat everything in sight! i dont know what it is, but by day 16 to 19, a few days after i ovulate, i am bloated already,have sore breasts, and cravings start with the usual lack of energy. and like i mentioned earlier, i even see an acupuncturist once a week! i am 36, and when i tell him i think my hormones are making me “out-of-whack” he tells me i am too young, and to not worry about it. (he is from china, where he too studied and worked at the shanghai hospital). i think he thinks that if he tells me not to worry, then i wont. anyways, i am planning on following the baseline diet, and trying the herbs you suggested. i’m excited that i got to “talk” to you. what a time and place we live in where little ol me can chat with a famous author! i am honored, and my kids are going to freak out when i tell them in the morning, because they are also interested in alternative medicine, and they have watched some of your t.v. interviews, as well as your other videos with me, and think you are, in their words, “cool.” thank you so much for your time!
It is a pleasure, Shelly, to hear from you and I am sure you will make progress with Feed Your Tiger. You feel shaky after exercise because your blood sugar may be low. You can take the power mushroom pills before exercising to give you a boost. Also have a small meal within 30 min. after exercising while your metabolism is hyped from movement.
Glad you like my little home videos at this website. They are not professional, but offered from the heart.
best to you and the kids, L.
Thank you so much Letha. I am going to try to start the baseline diet Monday. One more question, and then I will leave well enough alone; Can I follow the Dragon diet, if I’m a Bear? The days for the Dragon diet seem to be a littler easier for me to grasp, on paper at least, and I love the recipes you have for the Cranes. I know you have the baseline diet divided up for us, but it is just easier for me if someone tells me what to eat each day. If that isn’t the case, then I will devote another few days to reading, and make sure I get the proper foods for my animal. Thank you. Take care.
Shelly
Don’t worry about mixing diet suggestions from Feed Your Tiger. They are all healthy. However, the different chapters and diets impact more on certain addictions and health/beauty issues. You can be the judge of what you need more and when:
Dragons foods/supplements reduce cravings for junk food, salty and fried foods
Bear foods/supplements help reduce sweet tooth and diabetes
Tiger chapter reduces excess acidity, a problem for joints, muscles and nerves
Crane foods are nourishing, clear complexion, sometimes laxative when necessary, and help workaholics become more nourished.