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Botanical Bliss: Wear Organic, Eat Organic
Today I sit with the question: If we are all so clear about eating organic, why are we not wearing organic clothing? Our conventional clothes contain toxic fertilizers/pesticides/herbicides/insecticides, heavy metals, endocrine disruptors, teratogens (causes birth defects) and carcinogens. The question lingers from a blissful day yesterday spent at a “Native Dye” workshop with my friends…
Read MoreMini-Sabbatical Coming Soon
When I first went to France at 17, I was struck by how Paris shut down for the month of August. I thought taking the month of August off sounded fabulously good. Time to get expansive. Reconnect deeply with family and friends, in an unhurried manner. Time for lingering meals. Slow food. Slow sex. Acres…
Read MoreBotanical Alchemist | Organic Fashion Designer
Was surfing Etsy last weekend, minding my own business, when I came across a mystic from North Carolina named Andrea Crouse. Check her out. That’s Andrea (above), modeling her Tulsi dress in organic stretchy wool. Here she is (above) in her super foxy fall shirt made of organic hemp/cotton with pin tucks in all the right places…
Read MoreCleansing As Honeymoon Between You + Your Body
Here’s a trick I’ve learned. When people at social gatherings ask why you’re not eating toxins and drinking a glass of wine with them, look them in the eye and tell them, “I’m on honeymoon with my body.” You have an exclusive pleasure coming your way of serving your body the foods that are most…
Read MoreHomage to Betty Ford: We'd Have No Dr. Drew Without You
When Gerald Ford became president in 1974 after Nixon’s resignation, I was seven years old. Sadly, it took Betty Ford’s death last Friday, July 8, 2011, for me to understand fully her legacy and how aligned her worldview was with mine. Here’s what pierces my heart. In 1964, Betty became dependent on prescription pain pills,…
Read MoreOrgasm Balances Your Hormones: According to Hippocrates + Modern Research
You know the Hippocratic Oath? I took it back in 1994. Do No Harm. Got it. Hippocrates got it, too – and he wanted you to get some. Turns out that during Hippocrates’ time and right up until the Freudian era (the 1930s), doctors prescribed orgasm as a treatment for women with various “ailments” such as hysteria…
Read MoreSacred Socks & Pablo Neruda
Maybe you didn’t quite get just how obsessed I am with knitting. Here’s an example: I could not properly express the joy I feel with my new socks, knitted from delicious “soft girl” yarn from local Petaluma sheep, until I came across Pablo Neruda’s Ode to Socks, excerpted way below in English and Spanish. Thank you,…
Read MoreOrganically Jeaned: Change Up the Paradigm
Learned today that the European Union has rigid boundaries on the type of cotton they import – no toxic dyes, no cheap cotton laced with DDT, as several cottons from China and India were recently demonstrated to contain. The EU regularly tests their imported textiles carefully; we in the US do not. One of the worst…
Read MoreOrganic Right Up Next to Your Skin: Undies
Perhaps the most important layer in my organic experiment is my undies. Right up next to your privateness, you want no endocrine disruptors or heavy metals. Surprisingly, I found this to be one of the harder items to procure before January 1, 2011 when my experiment begins. Here in Berkeley, there’s a foxy brand called Pact.…
Read MoreMental Vitamin: Sewing | Knitting | Cooking
Love this idea from neuroscientist Kelly Lambert, PhD’s book on depression, about choosing alternatives to the conventional quick-fix of changing your neurotransmitter mix with a prescription for Lexapro, Prozac or Wellbutryn or some new pill. “Lambert shows how when you knit a sweater or plant a garden, when you prepare a meal or simply repair…
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