Getting to the “Heart of Things” in Lisbon, Portugal

This past week, I traveled to Lisbon, Portugal to participate in two events.

The first three days of my trip, I participated in The GreenFest, a three day festival at the Estoril Congress Center. As you may guess, The GreenFest commits to annually showcasing and demonstrating the current progress and topics surrounding sustainability in business, technology and lifestyle. The practice of macrobiotics fosters personal, social and environmental health. One of these ways, for example, is the emphasis on eating local, indigenous foods which  naturally reduces our carbon footprint. I was happy to be a part of this discussion in Portugal. At The GreenFest, I gave two presentations:

1) What’s Your Gut Telling You?

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2) Live and Prosper with ‘The Great Life Diet’

The second three days of the trip, I participated in The Macrobiotics Teachers and Practitioners Conference with others from around Europe. I met new friends as well as reconnected with some old ones.  The theme this year was “Macrobiotics from the Heart: the emotional and spiritual dimension of macrobiotic healing“.

Interestingly, I met a wonderful and creatively enterprising young woman, who graduated from The Macrobiotic Institute in Lisbon. She publishes a bilingual blog and has read “The Great Life Diet”. It is a great blog, friendly, and with many recipes and information. She informed me that in Portuguese, the title of my book translates to “A Fulfilling Life”. She’s going to run a contest on her blog asking readers what a fulfilling life means to them and the person with the most inspiring answer will receive a copy of my book in Portuguese.

The  conference was a deeply moving series of discussions of which the topic brought us all together in a very encouraging, supportive manner. I was inspired to reconnect with others and see how they have evolved on their macrobiotic path as well as observing the  convergence of our core ideas, despite the diversity of our practices(in some ways). This was revealed to me in hearing another teacher say what I have been thinking and feeling for many years: It is spiritual health that the practice of macrobiotics fosters, which gives guidance and direction to emotional and physical health.

The result and common theme of these meetings was how to make macrobiotics more open and embracing, and how to evolve macrobiotics as a model of health. We intend to have a group website for all of the participants to showcase the diverse applicability of the practice of macrobiotics as well as the overall unity and diversity of our teaching and practice. I had the opportunity to talk about the image of health that guides my practice as well as new directions for macrobiotic practice.  I look forward to sharing these ideas about macrobiotic practice in the near future.

The trip to Lisbon was inspiring and full. I hope you enjoy the photos! Until next time.