Moderate Hedonism
At one of my classes this past year, one of my students said to me, “What kind of spiritual teacher are you? You swear, drink beer and coffee, and eat meat and chocolate.”
My response was, Biofield Tuning is not a spiritual practice and I am not a spiritual teacher. I am interested in what it means to be a healthy human, on all levels.
So I decided to create my own category of health philosophy, which I call Moderate Hedonism.
Let’s look at the definition of these two words:
Moderate: kept or keeping within reasonable or proper limits; not extreme,excessive, or intense
Hedonism: living and behaving in ways that mean you get as much pleasure out of life as possible
One of the biggest problems we have in our culture is the problem of either/or. Most people seem to fall into one category or another: liberal/conservative, conventional/alternative, spiritual/scientific, all/nothing, and so on.
Bothism
I am what I call a BOTHIST, meaning I tend to fall in the middle of these things – both/and, rather than either/or.
Moderate Hedonism is the healthy marriage of the devil and angel -it is the awareness that sometimes it is appropriate to eat the chocolate cake, married with the awareness that just half the piece is plenty.
Being a successful Moderate Hedonist means that you have to have overcome all your compulsivity about things. You have to know how and when to say no, and be able to do that without any kind of inner struggle.
I always ask myself, how much of this pleasurable substance can my body comfortably metabolize with no ill consequences? Some days, I can manage just one beer, some days none at all. And on rare days, if it is hot and I have been very active, I can manage two beers and feel great.
Same with sweets or anything else. Every once in a great while I can eat an entire pint of ice cream in one sitting – but most of the time just a couple of inches out of it is plenty. The thing is is that it is different every day! Because of this, there can’t be any blanket rules, any ultimatums. What worked yesterday might not work today, and vice versa. I have to trust myself to know what I can handle.
Addiction is Tension
I recently traveled with my husband, who is a smoker, to Jamaica. He was so worked up by the time we landed that he actually abandoned me in the airport of a foreign country that neither one of us had ever been to in order to go fill his uncontrollable craving for a cigarette! This is not Moderate Hedonism. To be truly healthy, we must not be beholden to any cravings or compulsions.
And sometimes getting to that place requires complete abstinence for a while. I struggled to get over my sugar addiction for decades – but then I finally won. I actually went for months at one point with no sweets of any kind, not even honey or maple syrup – just to really clean out my system and totally shake out those cravings.
Over the years I have also given up pretty much everything addicting for various amounts of time. And the end result of all of that, and all of the other things I have done for my health (including lots of Biofield Tuning!), is that now I have the freedom to enjoy anything I want (coffee, bread, meat, sugar, alcohol, etc) in moderation. It’s not an easy place to get to! But once you get there, you are FREE to enjoy whatever you want.
Beyond Spiritual
This is why I say that Biofield Tuning is not a spiritual practice. Let’s look at the definition of the word spiritual:
Spiritual: of, relating to, or affecting the human spirit or soul as opposed to material or physical things
Yes, we are working on your subtle energy or what some might call your soul. But we are also working on your BODY. Biofield Tuning is bodywork, that helps make your systems more coherent and functional. I used to suffer from gas, bloating, indigestion, heartburn, stomach aches, mid back pain, chronic yeast infections, rosacea, cold feet, a short fuse and a bunch of other small random things besides. I don’t suffer from any of that anymore and mostly, I credit this work for that.
And, most recently, I went from Vermont to Australia where I taught two 3 day classes in less than two weeks, then flew to San Diego where I taught my biggest class yet, then straight back to Vermont where I was in the office the day after I got back doing office work and group sessions – and never felt tired or jet lagged once in the entire trip.
I was actually quite concerned about going to Australia because I went when I was 20 and spent three miserable days in a lizard infested youth hostel trying to acclimatize to the other side of the planet. I was afraid I was going to go through a similar thing. But I didn’t. Not even a blip. I actually felt completely normal from the get go.
And then coming back to San Diego, not only was I unfazed, I was also, oddly, incredibly energized. In fact I was so energized that I took a picture of myself. Do I look like someone who is 48 years old and has just spent 20 hours not sleeping on planes and in airports?
Raise Your Voltage
The reason I am sharing all this is not to make you hate me, but to say, this is the outcome of moderate hedonism plus Biofield Tuning- huge amounts of energy and resiliency. This is not from drinking green smoothies and doing yoga. I don’t exercise. And I really don’t like green vegetables very much. Despite not exercising and skipping the kale juice, I am actually quite “toned” – not from lifting weights but simply from being strong and healthy.
I’m not interested in “raising my vibration”. Rather, I am interested in raising my voltage. How much energy can I run through my system, can my system hold? I’m not interested in “ascending” either – rather, I seek to descend into my body, to fully occupy and embody myself, right here and now, grounded onto planet Earth.
We raise our voltage by integrating and expressing trapped emotions, by speaking our truth, by following our passion. We raise our voltage by listening to and honoring our conscience, by avoiding stressors, by not spending energy foolishly. The more we allow ourselves to choose things which bring a sense of “ah” and not choose things which bring a sense of “ugh”, the more spirit, the more light we bring into our being. And, we also raise our voltage by being exposed to pure sound.
Sound Raises Voltage
There is actually science behind this – in the book “The 4th Phase of Water” by Gerald Pollack, experiments showed that introducing ultrasound frequencies into water that was already holding a charge increased the voltage. Since your body is 90% water by molecules and 70ish% water by volume, this is very significant! Why you can go out dancing for hours and not feel tired, or get a lot more cleaning done when you pump up the jam.
Everyone who experiences Biofield Tuning says the same thing: “I feel lighter”. The lighter we feel, the more energy we have, the more resilient and adaptable we are. In this crazy heavy dangerous world, those are all traits worth cultivating. You can receive the energizing and lightening effects of sound through Biofield Tuning -through being a practitioner or participating in in-person, distance or group sessions – or through toning or singing or drumming or what have you.
I hope I have inspired you to get more TONED 🙂