Alchemy of Being

ALCHEMY OF BEING MODULE 1 STUDY NOTES ENERGETICS Copyright © 2021 Nicky Clinch Ltd. All Rights Reserved Copyright © 2021 Nicky Clinch Ltd. All Rights Reserved 1 THE HISTORY & PHILOSOPHY OF MACROBIOTICS Why Look at the History of Macrobiotics? The origins of any teaching reveals a lot about the character and content of that teaching. We can learn much about the character of macrobiotics by seeing where it has come from. This allows us to put macrobiotics in context of other teachings and practices around the world, and especially at this time with modern western understandings. LAO TZU (around 604-531 BC) Lao Tzu is said to have written the Tao Te Ching, describing the creation of the universe and its workings of the relative world. Here is a translation of the first two chapters, from the book ‘The Complete Works of Lao Tzu’ by Ni Hua-Ching that is beautiful and worth a read. To give you a context to the depth of the work of field and flow In which we work in in the realm of maturation. Copyright © 2021 Nicky Clinch Ltd. All Rights Reserved 2 Macrobiotics in the West ANCIENT GREECE The word ‘macrobios’ was used to describe a natural way of living and eating to create Big Long Life – Health and Longevity “Let food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food”. Hippocrates ( 5th C BC) And there are many types of ‘food’. The environment we are in, the energy field we are living in and living from. All that we take in and absorb is some form of food. So in this module we are looking at the whole being and what we are feeding ourselves with. Back to the East (Worth a read just for interest) SAGEN ISHISUKA (1850-1910) In Japan, during the Edo period 1600 – 1868 the country promoted seclusion, in which a traditional way of life and diet was preserved, while much of the word was affected by industrialization and a modern materialistic and scientific view of life. Much of the macrobiotic understanding comes from this time. Traditional medicine was based on an understanding of Ki, for example acupuncture, moxibustion, herbal medicine, and use of food remedies and compresses. During the Edo period, rice was central to all meals, except for the poor who may have had to eat other grains. Other common foods were fish, vegetables, miso, shoyu, tofu, pickled vegetables, some chicken, and a little fruit. No meat was eaten, large mammals were not bred for eating, in fact eating meat was looked down on. Dairy foods were also not eaten. From 1868 onwards, Japan put energy into modernising, taking much of the science, technology, and medicine from the West. In 1883 the Japanese government outlawed traditional medicine including acupuncture, moxa, massage and herbal medicine and established Western medicine as the official system. (In Copyright © 2021 Nicky Clinch Ltd. All Rights Reserved 3 the 1850s Louis Pasteur had published his ‘germ theory of disease’ which came to dominate Western medicine, leading to development of ‘allopathic’ medicine. It also encouraged the eating of meat, dairy and sugar – these were seen as a way of developing greater size and strength (at this time the average height of Japanese men was 5 foot 4 inches, and women under 5 feet.) Ishisuka studied western medicine and became a doctor, and at the age of 28 years became an army doctor. He later developed a kidney infection which western medicine could not get rid of, so he studied oriental classics such as the Yellow Emperors Classic of Internal Medicine. He gave up eating meat, dairy, sugar etc. and ate a traditional diet and cured himself. In 1895 he left the army, and in 1897 brought out a 500 page book on the links between diet and health containing much scientific data and research. In 1898 he brought out a smaller and simpler book, ‘A Method of Nourishing Life Through Food’, which was very popular, with 23 editions being printed. In these books he used a scientific understanding, especially the sodium/potassium balance of foods and the body. He proposed: 1. Na/K balance is very important to health (more than other nutrients). 2. Food is the most important factor determining this balance. 3. Diet is the most important factor for health – all sickness begins with a Na/K imbalance in the body (challenging allopathic medicine). 4. Diet affects physical health but also thinking, spirituality, and whole societies. Health, life and destiny is created by the food we eat. (We still see this principle in modern macrobiotics.) His dietary principles ( we can see many fundamental macrobiotic concepts and practices here!) 1. From our teeth, we are primarily eaters of plant foods. 2. We have long intestines typical of mammals eating a more plant-based diet. 3. Eat local foods for a better Na/K balance. 4. In history, every major civilisation had some grain as the principal food, supplemented with fish, fruit, veg etc. except in the far north where more animal food was needed. 5. Eat seasonally for a better Na/K balance. Copyright © 2021 Nicky Clinch Ltd. All Rights Reserved 4 6. Cooking is very important as it affects the Na/K balance of food. 7. He also recommended exercise and special baths. His book was very popular, and apparently he gave 100 consultations a day, and became very famous for curing illness. In 1908 his followers formed the Shoku-Yo, or ‘Food Cure Society’, to help peoples physical, mental and spiritual health. 1910 he passed on. George & Lima Ohsawa (Yukikazu Sakurazawa, 1893-1966 and 1899-2000) George Ohsawa’s character – he was born into the Samuri class of Japan, stoical, holding emotions in, never complaining. His early life was very difficult, his father left his mother, they were very poor and had little food or clothing. Then his mother died and he went to live with his father. He liked poetry and writing [8 Soil] but his father made him go to business school, after which he worked in various businesses for some years. He then got into Shoku-Yo, and began to feel a purpose in teaching, first in Japan, and then in the West. Very yang, strict, often severe, which set the tone for macrobiotics as a whole, certainly into the early 1980s when I started to study macrobiotics. In 1912 when he was 19 years old he developed tuberculosis, which his mother and brother had already died from, which had become more common in modernising Japan. He picked up a book by Sagen Ishisuka and cured himself. In 1916 he joined the Food Cure Society, at first teaching Ishizuka’s ideas, and then his own from his studies of Chinese philosophy and western science. George Ohsawa on his In 1929 he resigned from the Food Cure Society to travel to the west to spread first visit to France (top), his ideas, first to Paris, creating the first macrobiotic community there. In 1931 and on his second with Lima (above) he published ‘The Unique Principle and Science of the Far East’, to bring Eastern ideas to the west. He returned to Japan in 1935, and was very active in the world peace movement, as well as promoting a plant-based diet for health. In 1945 he was jailed for 6 or more months for his anti-war activities, and almost died from cold and starvation. In 1948 he started a macrobiotic study house called Maison Ignoramus in Tokyo, where early students like Michio and Aveline Kushi, Herman and Cornelia Aihara and Tomio Kikuchi studied with him. Copyright © 2021 Nicky Clinch Ltd. All Rights Reserved 5 In 1953 he travelled with Lima to India to teach macrobiotics, and in 1955 travelled to Africa to try to convince the famous Dr Schweitzer of the benefits of a macrobiotic diet. While with Dr Schweitzer in the Congo, he developed a serious case of tropical ulcers, which he then healed by eating a yang macrobiotic diet, but unfortunately Dr Schweitzer was unimpressed! In 1956 he returned to France, and lectured widely in Belgium, France, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Italy and apparently also England. He inspired the Lima factory to start in Belgium, which is still producing and distributing a wide range of high quality natural foods. For the rest of his life he travelled the world teaching in Europe, the USA and Japan, and published hundreds of articles and books in Japanese, French and English. He died in 1966 at the age of 73, apparently from a heart attack, some think caused by a recurrence of the tropical ulcer bacterium that he developed in Africa. Some of Ohsawa’s central ideas: 1. He replaced Na/K balance with yin and yang, as saw to be more universal. 2. He applied yin and yang to many areas of life, including biology, physics, chemistry and medicine. 3. He called his teachings ‘macrobiotics’ after the Greek tradition. 4. He summarised principles of creation of life in his ‘Unique Principle’ – 7 principles and 12 theorems – look at in detail later as very useful to understand life and healing. 5. He felt the primary purpose of life was to develop judgement, or consciousness. He taught that we can use seven levels of judgement, from physical to spiritual. 6. He changed the definitions of yin and yang in one respect – contraction and expansion. 7. He used the yin – yang approach to diet and illness, plus some traditional foods, dishes and plasters to heal. 8. Red blood cells created in the small intestine (only produced in the bone marrow in emergencies eg. when starved, as early animals were when red blood cell production was found in the bone marrow).

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