We’re here, born on Planet Earth to be happy. Organic living is about being a better, happier human by making an incredible choice for your life and choosing the power of living positively. The benefits of an organic lifepath combine together all the spiritual and emotional benefits of inviting positivity into our life by bonding and living sincerely with Mother Nature. Living organically has immense physical benefits for our body-mind systems and makes them a more comfortable place for our Spirit to dwell. We’re treating our body-mind as the Temple for our Spirit.
What is ‘Organic’?
The organic movement is not only food or plant-based, but includes anything grown by farmers who use renewable resources and who emphasise the conservation of soil and water, thereby enhancing the environment. Here is an example: the quality of the packaging for your bamboo toothbrush would be ethically sourced, produced and bio-degradable.
Getting Started
So, how do we get started? Let this lifepath unfold gently with slow, baby steps. Try this plan for 7 weeks, slowly incorporating organic into your daily life. My recommendation is to add one new step every week.
Week 1: Olive oil and fresh lemons
Start by taking organic oil mixed with fresh lemon juice morning and night—drink a 10 ml spoon of each stirred together in the morning on an empty stomach. You will see benefits very soon: unwanted belly fat will melt and skin tone will improve.
Week 2: Coffee and tea
Find your brew first, taking into account the fact that organic fresh ground roast coffee is stronger than regular non-organic. Then perhaps you can grind roasted whole beans for your daily coffee. Daily drinking of green tea in the afternoons has a noticed benefit of clearing ‘brain fog’ caused by an out-of-balance gut.
Week 3: Coconut oil and the many ways to use it
Use it for mouth oil-pulling, self-massage, and self-care. You can even save your used coffee seed residue and add coconut oil for a healthy body scrub. This is my tried-and-tested personal experience: 100 per cent pure and raw organic coconut oil when compared to non-organic is like comparing rough wool to pure silk in texture!
Week 4: Dark chocolate
This is a daily time-out treat perfect for intention setting and meditation, especially gratitude. I prefer to buy a Fairtrade brand whenever I can get it.
Week 5: Turmeric
Take this wonder spice as a cup of daily ‘tea’. You can mix it with a half teaspoon of coconut oil and this formula acts in the same way as mother’s breast milk for absorption. Turmeric in powder form is best absorbed by the gut when it is in suspension, and this is facilitated by letting the water go off the boil before making your tea.
Week 6: Growing your own garden and sprouting
Organic lettuce seeds are readily available online and learning to sprout is easy with organic lentils. You can read up about the benefits of planting, growing and harvesting by the Moon cycles: you’ll need to know that every week of the Moon phase is not a ‘planting’ week, for example.
Week 7: Thrive
When you think of the word, ‘Thrive’, think of the seemingly small things that happened as you were birthed into this life: first you had to breathe, then you needed washing and the protection of warmth, then nurturing, fluids and sleep. Your little body-mind started moving for your survival and health. Before this, you had been moving in the ‘void-space’ of your mother’s womb. Putting all these vital elements together is achieved by our various practices.
Putting It All Together
By week 7, we’re putting all our steps together and working towards grounding our own spirituality in everyday life. Making your own body-mind organism more harmonious with the organic whole of the Universe is an important step to thriving, with breath, water and balancing, sleep and relaxing.
Yogic Pranayama
Learn how to breathe properly with a yogic pranayama practice. Make alkaline water and drink it on the main Moon phase days, particularly on the new moon and full moon. Use your lemons, fresh or mineral water and you’ll need to source organic peppermint, cucumber and ginger.
Sleeping and Relaxing
Organic cotton bedding helps a lot, as does finding a good quality organic lavender oil and making a spray for yourself and your bedding. You can burn it in an oil burner to relax before bedtime. Sleeping in crisp cotton bedsheets is amazing for good quality sleep! Your body temperature can regulate itself overnight better, and you help your skin to breathe.
Good Luck on the Path
Now that you’re on the path, there are so many ways to use organic basics in small ways in your daily life. You can ground lentils to make a good flour for flatbreads or roti; growing ginger is easy and seasonal; harvest rainwater for gardening; coconut oil is fabulous for hair conditioning and add an Ayurvedic head massage to your self-care routine.
If you want to know how long it takes to get to a new version of ‘you’, then consider this. Physically, our body’s 10-13 trillion cells replace themselves every three months or so. The 7 weeks you spend introducing organic into your life gently and slowly is half of this powerful process of renewal: you’re helping Mother Nature to flow in slowly.
Thirty years in her own practice and teaching meditation now for more than 25 years in Ireland, Susan Ni Rahilly’s Hatha Yoga teaching is inspired by Zen.