A busy travelling lifestyle can have a detrimental effect on your well-being. Felicity Cousins finds out if macrobiotics can help.
When was the last time you were without your mobile phone or access to your emails? Or concentrated on what your body needed to eat rather than grabbing something on the hop? Or got up early to do something for yourself rather than to catch a train or plane?
One of the greatest challenges we face is balancing our commitments to work, family and ourselves. To find out if a happy medium is even possible in today’s hectic business world, I have joined a group of strangers on a health mini-break at Scotland’s Penninghame Foundation.
Located in 36 hectares of grounds in Dumfries and Galloway, Penninghame House is a macrobiotic learning and training centre focused on health and understanding the effects of food on well-being. Macrobiotics means “big life” (from the Greek makro, meaning large or long, and bio, meaning life) and is a lifestyle choice rather than a diet, developed by George Ohsawa in Japan in the 1920s. The idea is that you choose foods that help to prolong your life and balance your body and mind, rather than force your organs to deal with processed food and sugars that can knock you off-kilter.
Typical foods to be avoided in macrobiotics include sugar, caffeine, alcohol, dairy products and meat. All of these are struck off the list for my four-day trip – though I must confess I have smuggled a chicken tikka wrap, packet of crisps and a soft drink into my room in case all the tofu, lentils and beans gets too much.
Marie and Raymond Butler, the founders and owners of Penninghame House, run several different courses with another husband-and-wife team, Bill Tara and Marlene Watson-Tara, offering lectures on nutrition, cooking with macrobiotic ingredients, health remedies such as healing teas and massage, and one-to-one health assessments. Together, the four of them have more than a century of experience in the field.
On arrival I am shown to my room, passing incredible antiques and artwork that the Butlers have collected over the years. The room is beautiful, overlooking the long driveway, the well-kept lawns and woodlands sheltering the River Cree.
Marie greets me warmly. She had her own reason for embarking on macrobiotics; she suffered from terrible eczema for years, which she cured through her diet. Ray, meanwhile, used to snore so badly that he was missing out on the deep restorative sleep he needed. A London clinic advised him to have laser treatment on the soft palate but Marie convinced him to try macrobiotics. Two weeks later, he stopped snoring. He also says he defeated gout through his choice of food rather than by taking pills.
Ray says: “I started to understand that I had been eating in the extremes – fast food and heavy protein-based things, swinging back and forth with desserts and lots of sugar. I lived in that sort of zone. And it seemed to be the norm for lots of alcohol to be around. If you went to a dinner party it started with drinks, then throughout the meal alcohol was served for each course and continued afterwards.”
If this sounds familiar, taking one of Penninghame’s courses could set you on a healthier path. Ray says: “We have an executive burnout/stress management course planned for June called the Great Escape, which will concentrate on achieving balance and eating in the ‘middle zone’ [when you are completely balanced, without too much acid or alkaline]. There will also be advice on how to eat to help avoid stress, and travel tips.”
But how willing are people to sign up for a weekend of tofu? He says: “I would have laughed at tofu in the past too, but it depends on how you cook it. We have had people here who didn’t even know they had eaten it because it tasted so different [from what they would have perceived].”
On the first night, I pad downstairs to join the Butlers and the rest of the group for a five-course formal macrobiotic dining experience. We are served crispy tofu tempura Martinis, delicate garlic miso broth, adzuki bean and roasted squash burgers with beetroot reduction and braised pak choi, daikon (white radish) pickle and arame kinpira (sautéed seaweed) with crispy shiitake mushrooms, followed by a wonderful sugar-free chocolate mousse and tofu lemon cheesecake. Even better, we’re told that everything passing our lips is helping our bodies in some way – from our kidneys and liver to our skin and energy levels.
That’s all very well, but how easy is it for business travellers to keep up this kind of thing on the road? Ray says: “Bring in a few things slowly – I have miso soup every day and when I travel I take sachets with me. I carry seaweed too – I eat a sheet of toasted nori a day as it is a natural source of minerals. Introduce a few things step-by-step and in a week you can start to see changes in your well-being.”
Each morning, after an early session of Chi ball (exercise for mind and body) and a walk through the grounds, we head to the classroom for lectures by Bill Tara. Seen widely as a guru in the macrobiotic world, his talks are detailed, amusing and memorable. He tells us that in the US, 30 per cent of the population is classified as obese, and that the UK will have the same statistic in eight years if we continue the way we are.
Bill covers the history of nutrition, habit and health, culture and lifestyle, the impact of work pressures and the principals of a macrobiotic way of life. He soon has me scribbling down soundbites such as: “If you don’t look after your body, where are you going to live?” and: “Health is a product of personal habit.”
After three days in my peaceful detox cocoon, everything begins to sink in and I feel calmer and more energised than I have for a long time. I’m determined to keep it up when I go home, although it does seem daunting. To help, Penninghame is introducing starter packs with menus, recipes and basic macrobiotic ingredients for visitors to take home.
Still, I confide to Bill that I’m not sure how my friends and family will react if I start eating seaweed and drinking miso soup for breakfast. “In modern-day society, if you are going to be healthy you may be seen as eccentric,” he says. “But that’s okay because you are doing this for yourself. Don’t worry, just be healthy.”
Ray adds: “I meet some business people who have ticked all the boxes for wealth and success but are not very well. The purpose is not to make ourselves ill but to get a balance and enjoy our time here on earth. There is no reason why we can’t be healthy and vital in middle and old age.”
And with that, I scurry back to my room and stuff my three-day-old chicken tikka wrap, Hula Hoops and fizzy drink in the bin.
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