WHY DOES EATING LOCAL, ORGANIC FOODS MATTER?

Why does eating local, organic foods matter?

You can't really start a conversation about this with intelligent person without the topic of pesticide and genetically modified foods coming up. Thank god for that! I'm sure people are aware, they know for example that eating MSG ( monosodium glutamate ) potato chips isn't good for you, drinking aspartame ( poisoning and side effects ) diet drinks isn't good for you.

It is unfortunate that all this crucially important information comes through conspiracy theorist - it tends to loose momentum at least ten fold due to it. If a raving guy on youtube presents these facts of what is in our food, and how oestrous it is to give this to us, by the time he mentions "The Elite" or "New World Order" ( what is NWO ) people huff and puff and look at something else.

I believe in Integral point of view. Each and everyone has truth some more than others, but we all have truth in us. Conspiracy theorists know because it comes naturally for them to search news and books on details of how mankind is getting sucker bunched. They run into things that pass through main news like water through sieve, without much of a look from the public. So the news reaches a small amount of people because of the ravings including what ever is popular at the moment.

What Food and People need is a serious documentary ( writing this I wonder has Michael Moore delved on this yet ), we need a serious channel to tell us what is going on so that most people can be reached, without people telling them Bush is new satan. A documentary of substance, of hard facts, news articles, studies.

There is so much information out there for people to see if they would just look.
I've had to train myself to watch some of these exposé videos on food, drugs and controlling our living environment, I've had to learn to listen to the facts and block out the conspiracies just to keep up with what's good for me and what is not. ( this is why you see me post these videos on psychological drugs, chemtrails, genetically modified foods )

Which is where I get back to the original point - why eat local and organic foods?

Because you know how it's grown, you know if it's genetically modified, you know it is purest you can get, best for your body, mind and soul.

Do your best to buy clean normal foods, organics when you can, local and close by - and say no to genetically modified seeds and cancer inducing pesticide through your vote on who takes a seat in your government.

Love, Light and Joy!

Niina

Now feel free to check out these Two Episodes on 

"Food: The Ultimate Secret Exposed",

but keep your filter up. :)

NEW DIMENSIONS MEDIA - NEW WEBSITE

New Dimensions Media

"The New Dimensions Foundation is a social profit, public benefit, tax exempt, 501(c)(3) educational, organization supported by listeners. Our primary activity is the independent production of broadcast dialogues and other quality programs that explore creative solutions to urgent challenges facing humankind.

The purpose of New Dimensions Radio is to deliver life-affirming, socially and spiritually relevant information, practical knowledge and perennial wisdom through the voices and visions of those who are asking new questions and are looking at the world in positive and inspiring ways. It is through the exchange of ideas and information that we can be empowered and enabled to meet the future with greater energy and clarity.

New Dimensions seeks out the most innovative and creative people on the planet, engages them in spontaneous, deep dialogues, and broadcasts these programs to a worldwide audience.

Our programming presents a diversity of views from many traditions and cultures, and strives to provide listeners with an experience of what it means to be human on the planet in these times.

New Dimensions fosters the process of living a more healthy life of mind,body and spirit while deepening our connections to self, family,community, planet and the natural world."

New website to check out!

Love, Light and Joy!

Niina

NEWS - WHERE MINDFULNESS MATTERS

Source: http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/why_mindfulness_matters/

WHY MIDFULNESS MATTERS
By Jason Marsh / May 17, 2010
This month on Greater Good, experts explain the benefits of mindfulness--and how you can cultivate it.


It’s been 30 years since Jon Kabat-Zinn launched his Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center. What began as a bit of a lark—an attempt by a molecular biologist to bring Buddhist meditation (minus the Buddhism) into the mainstream of medicine—has grown into a genuine social movement, with variations of the MBSR program developing everywhere from elementary schools to hospitals to the halls of Congress. At the same time, a growing body of research has documented the physical and psychological health benefits of practicing mindfulness, even for just a few weeks.

Still, the term “mindfulness” is likely to raise more than a few questions. For starters: What, exactly, is it?

“Simply put, mindfulness is moment-to-moment awareness,” writes Kabat-Zinn in his groundbreaking book Full Catastrophe Living. “It is cultivated by purposefully paying attention to things we ordinarily never give a moment’s thought to. It is a systematic approach to developing new kinds of control and wisdom in our lives.”

Kabat-Zinn has made it his life’s work to promote secular applications of mindfulness. And this month on Greater Good, we’re highlighting why that work is so important.

Throughout the month, we’ll be featuring stories by pioneers who have applied Kabat-Zinn’s MBSR program to different realms, from schools to prisons to childbirth and parenting education to the lives of Iraq war veterans. Each story is unique, but they all demonstrate the profound benefits that can come from cultivating mindfulness: reduced stress, heightened compassion and self-control, and a deeper engagement with the people in our lives. And they all make clear that these benefits can be made available to almost anyone with proper training.

This training can take different forms. Kabat-Zinn has stressed that although mindfulness can be cultivated through formal meditation, that’s not the only way.

“It’s not really about sitting in the full lotus, like pretending you’re a statue in a British museum,” he said in his presentation at a recent Greater Good Science Center event. “It’s about living your life as if it really mattered, moment by moment by moment by moment.”

Source: http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/why_mindfulness_matters/

NEWS - MEDITATION HELPS INCREASE ATTENTION SPAN

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100714121737.htm

MEDITATION HELPS INCREASE ATTENTION SPAN

ScienceDaily (July 16, 2010) — It's nearly impossible to pay attention to one thing for a long time. A new study looks at whether Buddhist meditation can improve a person's ability to be attentive and finds that meditation training helps people do better at focusing for a long time on a task that requires them to distinguish small differences between things they see.


The research was inspired by work on Buddhist monks, who spend years training in meditation. "You wonder if the mental skills, the calmness, the peace that they express, if those things are a result of their very intensive training or if they were just very special people to begin with," says Katherine MacLean, who worked on the study as a graduate student at the University of California, Davis. Her co-advisor, Clifford Saron, did some research with monks decades ago and wanted to study meditation by putting volunteers through intensive training and seeing how it changes their mental abilities.

About 140 people applied to participate; they heard about it via word of mouth and advertisements in Buddhist-themed magazines. Sixty were selected for the study. A group of thirty people went on a meditation retreat while the second group waited their turn; that meant the second group served as a control for the first group. All of the participants had been on at least three five-to-ten day meditation retreats before, so they weren't new to the practice. They studied meditation for three months at a retreat in Colorado with B. Alan Wallace, one of the study's co-authors and a meditation teacher and Buddhist scholar.

The people took part in several experiments; results from one are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. At three points during the retreat, each participant took a test on a computer to measure how well they could make fine visual distinctions and sustain visual attention. They watched a screen intently as lines flashed on it; most were of the same length, but every now and then a shorter one would appear, and the volunteer had to click the mouse in response.

Participants got better at discriminating the short lines as the training went on. This improvement in perception made it easier to sustain attention, so they also improved their task performance over a long period of time. This improvement persisted five months after the retreat, particularly for people who continued to meditate every day.

The task lasted 30 minutes and was very demanding. "Because this task is so boring and yet is also very neutral, it’s kind of a perfect index of meditation training," says MacLean. "People may think meditation is something that makes you feel good and going on a meditation retreat is like going on vacation, and you get to be at peace with yourself. That's what people think until they try it. Then you realize how challenging it is to just sit and observe something without being distracted."

This experiment is one of many that were done by Saron, MacLean and a team of nearly 30 researchers with the same group of participants. It's the most comprehensive study of intensive meditation to date, using methods drawn from fields as diverse as molecular biology, neuroscience, and anthropology. Future analyses of these same volunteers will look at other mental abilities, such as how well people can regulate their emotions and their general well-being.
Source: Science Daily