Welcome to Sacred Chef secrets and recipes.. my collection of recipes and writings, gathered over a lifetime of cooking and teaching. What is the whole Sacred Chef thing? Well, what is more sacred than feeding the hungry and satisfying our body’s need for nourishment? Cooking, for me, is very muchContinue Reading
by Robert Hamilton I think it will be enlightening to look back into the very roots of our religious and cultural identities, to see where our gods have come from and what defined our relationships with them. Historically the Judeo-Christian religions were, once established, all pervading in their control overContinue Reading
Our skin is our single largest living organ and it literally defines who we are. Without our skin, we would be a skeleton in a puddle of blood and that would take some getting used to, I imagine. Skin is often derided for being at the surface of things and thus incorrectly labelled superficial – so skin deep – but what this elastic covering achieves for our anatomical structure is more than just a tidy appearance. Skin breathes and like a baboon’s bottom its colour and appearance indicates our state of health – it is a barometer for all to see, of our moods, our level of hydration, our age and whether we are succumbing to disease.Continue Reading
It is, today, a very pertinent question, I think, whether religion is considered primarily, as a social phenomenon or merely a personal relationship with one’s god? For several millennia religions like Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and later Christianity and Islam have influenced the direction of humanities evolvement and, dare I say, progress. Around the globe the socialising force of various religions have shaped the cultural and economic realities of numerous regions and countries. But, at the same time, individuals and their priests, or ministers of religion, have professed that the true meaning of religion lies with one’s own relationship to god. Can then these large entities, established church groups, who often wield enormous power, even today, claim a socially benign status based on this individual right to worship one’s god, without prejudice? Religion a socialising force or a private affair?Continue Reading
We are not alone. In fact we are hosts to trillions of micro-organisms happily munching on our waste products and doing a sterling job within our digestive system. It may come as a bit of a shock to those of us with obsessive compulsive cleaning tendencies, that killing all the tiny invisible bugs is not a really good idea. Bacteria are all around us, within us and performing vital tasks for our health and the health of this planet. Of course like everything in existence there are good and bad bacteria, not intrinsically bad but just bad for humans and probably quite good for something else. The good bacteria, or gut flora, are involved in a myriad of useful functions, like fermenting unused energy substrates, producing vitamins for us, preventing the growth of bad bacteria, producing hormones to help us store fats and improving our immune functioning. If we did not have all these bacteria munching away our bodies would be unable to digest many of the carbohydrates that we consume, such as certain starches, fibres, proteins, and sugars like lactose. Studies with animals indicate that we may need to eat 30% more calories to maintain our stable body weight without the helpful presence of gut flora. The good bacteria transforms carbohydrates into short chain fatty acids and these are able to be processed by our cells into nutrition and energy. Lactic and acetic acid are also produced by this saccahrolytic fermentation and they are used by our muscles. There are numerous other positive functions supported by good bacteria in our systems.Continue Reading
In our western health culture the kidneys are perhaps one of the most invisible and possibly neglected bodily organs. These two vaguely bean shaped organs are located near our spine at the small of the back, just below the liver and spleen. Our kidneys matter. Responsible, in the main, for the removal of urea, mineral salts, toxins and other waste products from the blood, they are seemingly behind us and out of sight, out of mind. Perhaps their association with excreting waste has led to a lack of polite conversation about them over the years. The kidney is not, at this juncture in time, the somewhat sexy organ that the liver has been of late, with its infamous association with drugs, alcohol and partying. Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) however prescribes far greater influence for the kidneys upon our physical health and indeed our lives.Continue Reading
by Sudha Hamilton Published in WellBeing Magazine “O, what a world of unseen visions and heard silences, this insubstantial country of the mind! What ineffable essences, these touchless rememberings and unshowable reveries! And the privacy of it all! A secret theatre of speechless monologue and prevenient counsel, an invisible mansion ofContinue Reading
by Sudha Hamilton Looking back in time in search of the origins of astrology, we are faced with the question, what is astrology? Is it an advanced scientific hypothesis, based on the premise that the heavenly bodies give off an ‘influence,’ which affects individual events on earth, or isContinue Reading
We live at a time when we wish to have the greatest wellbeing in the history of humanity. We are alive during a time of unprecedented new approaches to health and healing, when practitioners of pioneering wellbeing modalities are arriving, almost, daily. In this book I have collected my publishedContinue Reading
by Robert Hamilton In this essay, I will be critically assessing the argument, put forward by Robert Di Vito in his published article, “Old Testament Anthropology and the Construction of Personal Identity,” that Lot’s contentious offering of his daughters to a ‘mob’ of men in Genesis 19 is an exampleContinue Reading