Tag Archives: Blue Moon

From Mayhem to Bhakti

02 October
Bhakti Fest

Bhakti Fest

That’s right! Last month I went to Mayhem Fest here in Florida with headliners Korn, Lamb of God, Rob Zombie, and Fiver Finger Death Punch. This month, I went to Bhakti Fest in California with headliners Krishna Das, Bhagavan Das, Deva Premal & Mitten, Jai Uttal, Wah!, and Geoffrey Gordon to name a few (very few).

Two very different festivals, but both very similar to me. People gather, complete strangers, to enjoy music that transport them to a different place, that elevates their spirit. I enjoy all music, except country music; (don’t ask me why, it just doesn’t do anything for me).  So going in, I had similar goals to accomplish at each festival that relate to spiritual growth and the intentions I had set on the last Blue Moon.

Independence

I’ve been working on becoming more independent and trusting the universe that nothing will go wrong if I do things on my own. I used to be scared of being away from Denis too long because I always felt we would loose precious time being apart. I also feared that something would happened to us and I wanted to spend as much time together. I got inspired last year to work on this issue and so far I’ve been able to accomplish it. Proof is I went to Mayhem Fest without Denis and at Bhakti Fest we had different schedules, and last week, I went to a concert by myself. Just me, myself, and I had a blast!

Fear

I don’t have many regrets in life, but the ones I do have are all tied to fear. Being afraid of doing something. Well no more! I decided to evaluate whenever a fear surfaces and tries to stop me from doing things I want to do. For example, when I first got tickets to Mayhem Fest, I was afraid for Denis. It was going to be his first “rock” (metal) concert (for 8 hours!) and I was afraid. So instead of selling the tickets or giving them away, I went with someone else. At Bhakti I was scared of doing yoga for 5 days (including the intensive) and of going to LA. I had heard so many scary stories of the police, etc in LA that I almost wanted to skip visiting the city.  But I didn’t let that fear stopped me and jumped in to each class for 5 days and went around LA trusting our GPS!

Let Go – Clearing Mind Clutter

Most people know that I. LOVE. CLEARING. CLUTTER! I’m now convinced is one of my talents I was born with! But clearing the clutter in the mind is much more difficult that cleaning your space. So I went to both festivals hoping to clear some of the clutter in my head and it worked!

Dance

I love dancing but I almost never have time to dance. So this time at both festivals I took every opportunity to dance. Well, yes at Mayhem there isn’t much “dancing” but jumping and throwing your hands in the air count as dancing. Oh and who can forget rocking your head and hair back and forth to the sound of any Lamb of God song? Yeah that’s dancing in my book!

Guilt

Mayhem Fest - Korn

Like Korn’s song says: “Let the Guilt Go“, that is one of my BIGGEST issues I’ve been working out this passed 10 months. As any person brought up in the catholic religion, we are made to believe everything is our fault and we must feel guilty for everything. When I was getting ready to go to Mayhem Fest (10 minutes before I left the house) I felt guilty for not taking Denis with me. I finally talked it out loud and expressed myself and realized how stupid of me. I would have felt guilty taking him because metal is not his cup of tea and for not taking him. At Bhakti Fest, I felt guilty leaving early, at 1am, and not staying for the later kirtan even though I was exhausted and sleepy. I felt guilty for not buying more things to support the vendors, and felt guilty for not going to more yoga classes. Finally, I talked to myself and reassured myself that it was OK to rest and not overwork my body and overspend beyond my traveling budget.

At each festival the music, energy, and situations helped me overcome different issues I had to deal with. As different as both festivals were, I went in with the same goals. Best part of both festivals, I had a great time!

What Kind of Issues Can a Juice Fast bring?

30 August

Denis and I had wanted to do a green juice fast for the longest time. We do a monthly liquid fast during the full moon and it feels great. So we wanted to know what it was like to just do a green juice fast. We decided this full moon was good time to do it and planned to get all our juices from Josh’s Organic Garden.
We started on Monday and finished it on Saturday. Initially we wanted to do seven days, but I had the feeling I wouldn’t last more than two days. I thought for sure by Tuesday I would quit and go back to eating. Sure enough by day two I was ready to quit, but decided to stick with it because a lot of emotions were surfacing and I wanted to see what else would come up.
Instead of describing how each day went, I wanted to share some insights I had during my fast, not about how my body responded or all the benefits I enjoyed, but the emotions I had to deal with during the green juice fast. We followed Dr. Young’s pH Miracle Cleanse in case you’re wondering.

Empty Refrigerator

Since we decided to get all the juices already made at the Josh’s Juice bar, we didn’t shop and our refrigerator was empty. I hid the truffles we had purchased during our trip to Naples and any other “goodies” I would cheat with.
Seeing the refrigerator with no greens, no food made me sad. I felt like I had nothing in life. Empty. Without a home, without love, without money. I felt like my world was ending because my refrigerator was empty. I immediately told Denis about this and he hugged me and laughed. So I started laughing too. This happened the second day of the fast and it was the reason I decided to keep going.
I don’t know exactly how my brain/mind believes that food equal the meaning of life (apparently). All I can say is that it may go back all the way to childhood but I’m not sure yet.

Not Having to Make Food

The second thing that surfaced in my mind was this. I had extra time in my hands by not having to prepare food and not going to yoga class so I was able to take time for blogging. While I was working on my blog, I kept thinking: “Oh I have to go make food, I better stop typing” and then I would remember: Oh I’m fasting no need to make food. Ten minutes later I would start panicking cause I hadn’t make food yet and it was getting late, but then I would remember I’m fasting, no need to make food. And that continue the whole night.
One of the first reasons I got sold on the “Raw” idea was cause it took less time to prepare food. I’m constantly looking to cut things out so that I can have more time to do other things. And I always feel stressed out about making food. Once this issue came right in front of me, I realized that I think making food is all I do and live for. To feed people. I don’t know exactly how to handle this information, but it was very interesting to find that deep inside I feel food is my ONLY job and purpose in life.

Variety of Food

I’ve always known this about me: I get bored with the same thing over and over. And that’s just not food. Everything. Well except for my partner in life (9 years and still not bored one bit!)… Anyways, so going into the fast I knew that having the same juice everyday wasn’t going to work for me and would probably quit by day two. But this time was worse than ever. I didn’t want to see the green juice even as hungry as I would get, I didn’t want it. Instead I wanted to keep drinking water but not the green juice. I believe one of the reasons why I’m creative in the kitchen is because I have to have variety. Even my lunch salad is different everyday.

Sticking with the green juice fast help me see that my issue with food variety is deeper than I imagined.

Dreams about Food

Going in I had the feeling I would be dreaming about food every night and eating all sorts of junk in my dreams. I actually thought that in the dreams I would want to stop my raw diet. But I was wrong.  One night I had a dream about a carnival, possibly Renaissance fest, where I had to drop off something for work. I walked through the food to where I was going, but no I didn’t stop for any food even thought I was offered a donut. That was one of the two dreams about food I had.

During the fast, I wasn’t even attracted to junk food. I didn’t even for a minute think I would run and start eating a SAD diet again, even a vegan junk cooked diet for that matter. But I did want and was tempted to eat the sun dried olives in my refrigerator, my avocados and some oil. So all doubts that I had about ever “cheating” or going back to a cooked vegan diet are no longer there. I now know that I love my raw food, even under stressful circumstances, I only want raw food.

In conclusion, and now a day after we broke the fast, I’ve got work to do with all this information I collected during this fast. I do have to say that compared to the first fast I ever did (6 years ago, water fast for three days while I was still on a vegetarian SAD diet), I did excellent. But compared to my monthly liquid fast, I did not do well at all. I complained the whole time and didn’t want to drink my juice.

Physically my body felt great, happy, healthy and grateful. I’m going to try it again, possibly the next full moon or the one after. Not having any fruits this week was amazing for my body and it let me know so.

So what’s next? Meditate on all these issues that came up.

Becoming a Morning Person and Exercising

22 July

One of the intentions I made for the Blue Moon was to become a morning person. I have always been a night owl, better yet a vampire. I become alive at night and died during the day. Always have.
Denis is the same way. Which is not good when we both have 9-to-5 jobs and neither one of us wants to go to sleep at night.
So this year I decided I was going to try and teach my body different, to wake up early and also exercise in the morning… after 29 years of being a night person. “YEAH RIGHT” my body said and laughed in my face.

I tried many times and failed. Of course it didn’t help I stayed up watching TV, reading books, or blogging. But I made a breakthrough! After two weeks of waking up earlier and earlier, my body is finally doing it on its own. Mind you I still wake up ready to kill someone and destroy the world, but I wake up. And to my surprise, I wake up to roller blade!

I don’t know how long this will last as so many of my other “trends” for lack of a nicer term for addiction, but the great thing is that I was able to do it and enjoy it too.

Of course, it’s now 1:48am and I’m here typing away, and probably won’t get up by 7:30am to rollerblade, but that’s ok. I also need to learn to give myself some credit for trying.

Some of you have heard me say this before, my online friend Mike at 365 Ways to Go Green, has a blog about how you can do one green thing a day, well I can open another blog call “365 excuses to NOT exercise” because I can come up with all sorts of excuses why I cannot exercise.

In the meantime, I’m enjoying rollerblading in the morning. Now if I could just get myself to a yoga class, that would be awesome! LOL But one thing at the time!

Photo by alykat

Full Moon Liquid Fast

27 February
Full Moon Liquid Fast

Full Moon in Sedona Arizona - 2007

About four months ago, Denis and I decided to challenge our diets and take it one step further. We decided to fast and only eat, or drink in this case, liquids once a month on the full moon.

We noticed that around the full moon it was hard to deal with everyone’s energy. At work, on the road, online, on TV, at the beach, everyone is more stressed than usual.

A liquid fast entails only consuming liquids such as soups, smoothies, juices, water, puddings; basically anything that doesn’t require chewing.

I am a huge fan of soups and smoothies… always been! And preparing only liquid foods was very easy for me.  I also had great help from several books with not only great raw vegan soup recipes but smoothies and juices.

We start our liquid fast about three days before the full moon and so far it has helped us deal with the “Full Moon” energy around us. I have set reminders in my calendars to let me know when the full moon starts so that we can start our fast.

Here are some of the recipes that I make during the liquid fast:

Miso Soup

Green Soup

Borsch

Green Juice Delight

Juices

Thank God, Orange Juice, & Grapefruit Juice

Happy Full Moon 2010!

Blue Moon – Set Your Intentions

30 December
Cathedral Rock - Sedona, AZ

Cathedral Rock - Sedona, AZ

Last Blue Moon we had, I was in Sedona, AZ on the top of Cathedral Rock at a drum circle I was invited to celebrate the blue moon. Earlier that day I was told that it was a good idea to set your intentions or goals for your life on the night of the blue moon. So I grabbed a writing pad with the hotel stationary and wrote my intentions at the top of Cathedral Rock while the drums played.

I came home and put the list in my night stand drawer. Months later I looked at my list and found I had accomplished many items from it. A year later I found the list while I was cleaning my drawer and read it again this time crossing every item I had accomplished. When I was done, all of the items had been crossed. So without pressuring myself or recalling the list everyday, I was able to accomplish all the things I had set that night at the drumming circle on the Blue Moon.

This year, the Blue Moon falls New Years Eve and therefore making it more interesting as many people use this time to set their intensions, goals, or resolutions for the New Year.

I invite you to take this opportunity to sit down and write a list of the things you want to accomplish in your life. I’ve created a template here to help you putting down your thoughts.

I would also recommend being honest with yourself as you set your intentions on the Blue Moon. I know I can be honest with others but lie to myself when it comes to knowing my limitations. For example, deadlines; I can tell someone if I can complete a task in certain time, but I lie when I tell myself “Oh! I can write this blog in 20 minutes!” when I know it really takes me 2 hours or more. So, know your limitations and don’t stress about what your goals are. When I wrote my first list, one of the items was to clean my garage and un-clutter my entire house. I started with one closet at a time, one box in the garage, a couple of drawers here and there, and three months later I had completed that item.

Have a Happy Blue Moon, the next one is 2012!

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