Mindstates
Raw Food Delights
by Elyssa Paige
Finding freedom can be as simple as sinking your teeth into a juicy, ripened summer peach. Sounds farfetched? Think about it. What is your relationship with food? Do you live to eat or do you eat to live? The food choices you make will shed light upon your answer.
Take a tour of the average supermarket in America and you’ll find brightly colored varieties of conveniently packaged food, crammed with artificial flavors and preservatives, likely inspired by a corporate bottom line and not nutritional value. These “foods” are so highly processed that live nutrients are nowhere to be found in them. Our bodies have adapted to this, of course. But how do you feel when you eat this kind of food, especially when compared to your body’s reaction to a garden fresh green salad?
Raw food is alive with vitamins, minerals, and the enzymes our bodies need to utilize nutrients. Heat is known to kill the life force in food. Even if you buy organic fruits and vegetables, you lessen their nutritional content the longer you light fire beneath them.
What processed foods actually feed are our addictions. We can reach our highest health potential by eating raw foods that are unprocessed and alive—this is what nurtures the body, mind and spirit.
Meet Happy Oasis, inspirational author and adventure anthropologist striving to educate people on the wonders of a raw food diet. Oasis has taught seminars in 20 countries for over 20 years and has spent significant time exploring her oneness with nature by living atop a tree-covered mountain, feasting on wild plants, and bathing in canyon streams.
Defining freedom through her wild lifestyle, Oasis chooses raw foods “for energy, health, taste, simplicity, and fun!” She eats to live and has inspired thousands to free themselves from the condition of living to eat and having a negative, often addictive, relationship with food.
For most people, this shift is easier said than done. Not all of us can sleep underneath the stars every night and awaken with the sun to nibble on wild leaves. Oasis provides us with some everyday suggestions to create a positive connection with our daily meals right here and now:
“Speak with the food in a meditative state and ask ‘what is behind this uncomfortable addictive feeling?’ When we slow down and eat in silence, the awkward truth may arise. To heal is to embrace the awkwardness, to simply be conscious, [to] breathe and love oneself with full acceptance. [It’s] realizing that food issues are rooted in deeper, usually emotional issues.”
When we explore our food issues and accept them, the next step is to release them and begin the practice of what Oasis calls “blissipline.” Of course, this applies to positive dining habits, such as moderation, mindful eating, and plant-based food choices, but the “blissipline” doesn’t end there.
We are what we eat. Oasis considers that “we eat not only food, but thoughts. [Whether they are] negative or positive, we imbibe in the feelings consequent from these thoughts. [When we practice] exercise, glee, and loving kindness, they feed us and shape us for the better.”
This is a path of consciousness, from what’s at the end of our forks to what we feel and think. It’s also about giving—to ourselves and the people around us. Oasis defines freedom as “choosing to be joyful, ethical, honorable, and of service to others, regardless of circumstance. People have an incredible, mostly untapped potential to heal themselves, to heal others, [and] to co-create heaven on earth.”
Oasis manifests this dream as the President and Chief Visionary Officer of The Raw Spirit Festival, described as the “grandest raw vegan eco-peace celebration on earth.” Taking place this year from September 12-14 in the Red Rock Mountains of Sedona, Arizona, this event is an inspirational weekend featuring seminars with such well-known health innovators as David Wolfe, Patricia Bragg, and Steve Meyerowitz. Live music will fill your ears all weekend with such performers as Scott Huckabay, Snatam Kaur, and Donna De Lory, to name a few. Explore educational booths, poetry, theater, an art garden, yoga, meditation, nature trails and a creative children’s program. The festival is sure to tantalize your taste buds with a raw restaurant food court, raw vegan demos, tasting parties, and a chocolate emporium.
“This is more than a raw vegan food festival,” says Oasis. “Our vision is to integrate healthy living, eco-sustainable solutions and world peace because together these comprise a comprehensive strategy for addressing current global challenges. We feel that our Raw Spirit Fest, non-profit organization belongs to the entire ever-expanding, international community.”
Come experience this celebration and connect with people who share a common vision of peace and wellbeing. Experience the “blissipline” of a healthy lifestyle and rejoice in the transformation it creates within you.
To learn more about the Raw Spirit Festival, visit www.rawspirit.com or call 928.776.1497