Browsing Tag

what makes you eat

Guest Posts, Making Shit Happen, manifesting

Never Too Late.

January 6, 2014

By Caspar Poyck.

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2014: a year of growth, art, beauty and manifesting your dreams. It’s NEVER too late!

The last year or two have been filled with challenges and changes for many. It was as if a crazy wind blew through our collective lives.

With challenges also come opportunities and growth. Change can be toward something better.
As long as we are alive we will encounter change and as long as that’s happening we can choose how to use the cards life has dealt us.

The only constant in life is change

If babies never stumbed and fell, humans would be a non-walking species. A 101 year old Indian man didn’t start running marathons until he was 89!

runner

It’s never too late!

Happy New Year 2014 !

This means a new chance, a symbolic anchor to shift your perspectives, to make choices, to step into your held back dreams and desires.

Right now is a potent time when we head toward the spring season; when life around us reawakens from winter and gives birth to new life and potential. The birds and bees are getting ready to joyfully buzz and flutter. Let’s be part of the joy!

Jennifer talks a lot about boxes, about not putting oneself in a box. From different angles we appear to fit in different boxes. To some people I am a chef, to others I am a therapist, some have called me philosopher and to others still I am an actor/musician. To one person I am papa.
To me I am all of those and more. Food, therapy, conversation, art, they are all languages to express oneself and one’s gift/divinity through. We all have a talent that is our language.

When we meet people we quickly ask:
“So what do you do ?” with which we really are asking: “what is your job ?”

Does the way we pay our rent or mortgage define who we are as a person?

I want to introduce you to a friend of mine. Bas Meeuws is a childhood friend of mine and his job description for many years was a psysio-therapist but what “he does” is something else. His passion, his art, his contribution to the world and himself is as an artist.
His soul is one of an artist and it was NEVER too late !

Bas surprised us all two years ago when he told us he had built up a portfolio of photographic flower- still lives and had found a gallery to represent him.

©Bas Meeuws

©Bas Meeuws

Since then his works have been in expositions at the PAN, the Miljonair Fair, The Westfries Museum (one work in their permanent collection) and his book is for sale in places like The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam alongside Rembrandt.
I have already sold two pieces to a collector in Beverly Hills and a gallery devoted to his art is in development in Taiwan. His dream is taking flight and there’s no stopping him.

This is for good reason; he is in harmony with his dream/inner self and the world and zeitgeist around him.

He brings together the Old Masters style of luxiourious wealth and beauty of the Dutch Golden Century and expresses it in a 21st presentation. Each individual flower, vase, table, insect etc. is digitally photographed. They are then arranged into bouquets on the computer after which they are printed on photopaper and mounted behind plexiglass on DiBond.

©Bas Meeuws

©Bas Meeuws

They bring distinguished, old world romance to a modern home and a refreshingly modern accent to a classic interior.

Did you know the Old Master painters from 16th-17th century Holland used the positioning of a flower in a still life as a storytelling metaphor ? That the level of wilting, the insects present, the placing of the vase etc. all told a little bit of a story?

As we go into this new year of possibilities to manifest the life we truly desire, think about the words you choose to describe yourself and your life; are these possitive or negative affirmations?

Are you your job or are you your soul’s expression?

Be aware of the people you choose to spend time with; are they wind in your sails or choppy waves to navigate ? And do the objects you surround yourself with and their placement in your life subconsciously suggest the ideas and inspiration you need and want?

May 2014 bring you inspiration, belief in your desires,
respect for yourself to live your one life on your own terms and beauty, lots of beauty.

Until We Break Bread Together,

Caspar Poyck, Chef and psycho-digestive therapist.

www.whatmakesyoueat.com

Guest Posts, Inspiration, Travels

The Traveler of Here by Caspar Poyck.

July 19, 2012

The traveler of here.

~ Guest Post by Caspar Poyck C. Ht.

Tuscan sunset

One of my very dearest friends in the whole world; Jennifer Pastiloff is in Italy for another one of her amazing Manifestation Yoga Retreats. 

Before her travels started she wrote a blog about kindness that inspired me to write this.

I love exploring and traveling into hearts, minds and into life itself.

When I came to the U.S. from The Netherlands at age 21, I took trains and busses and hitch-hiked to California from New York without much of a plan. From 2003-2005 I traveled a big part of our physical world and have gone on many 1-3 month trips before and since.

On these trips through Central America, Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Europe there have been many moments with people who picked me up and gave me rides. New friends who showed me secret spots, who translated for me and had conversations in hand-signals and facial expressions. People took me in for lodging and for food.

These “strangers” showed me “their world”, I was wide-eyed and grateful, at times we sang and we danced together. Kindness was always there in abundance !

When traveling, my eyes and ears, my mind and heart are wide open to experiencing the world and the people around me.

I expect nothing yet I expect everything !

High expectation to have great experiences, yet no expectation as to what they should be has me say “yes” to almost everything.

This creates potential and manifestation; this creates pleasure and learning.

Our mind has an amazing filter: our senses take in more than we can consciously process so only small amounts of what “the system” perceives comes into our awareness.

HOW this filter is set up is how we see our world!

The world is a reflection of ourselves.

Remember when you bought your most recent car? Remember how in the first few weeks you saw that same model everywhere? There weren’t more of them on the road; your filter was just tuned into seeing them more.

Are you a parent ? Do you remember how when you or your spouse were pregnant it seemed like everywhere you looked there were pregnant women? Same thing.

This is what happens on a trip. The filter is set-up to see the new, the good, the beautiful, the playful, the interesting, the delicious and the kind.

Thus we see and experience them more.

 

I can bring this into my day-to-day life as well. The place I call home is a destination that many people dream of one day visiting on their “vacation of a lifetime” !

 

I LIVE IN A PLACE I COULD EXPERIENCE AS A TRAVEL DESTINATION if I set up my filter to look at it that way!

 

When I choose to I look at the things around me with (literally) wide eyes and feel a sense of wonder. I check out buildings, people and their body-language, trees and flowers, etc., and I remember when I just got here and the city was new and how it filled me with interest, hope, excitement and joy.

 

I can experience that kindness here at home as well !

One of the ways it came to me this week was in the form of the stranger who gave me a $20 bill so my daughter could camp next to hers.

(I erroneously thought my back-country pass covered that campground and appropriately they don’t “take plastic” in the woods).

 

 

We can’t all be in Italy with Jennifer this week, but WE CAN choose how we filter the vacation destination we live in.

 

Meditation, prayer and affirmations are all exercises to entrain our conscious mind to perceive the world as it’s best for us.

 

Make this playful “Traveler of Here Meditation” your practice of the week.

 

Spend 10 minutes every morning looking at things around you as if you’re a child, as if you’re on vacation, as if it’s all new to you.

 

Really exaggerate it !

 

Look at the world with your eyes a little strained open and your brow pulled up. Do it with a smile on your face. See new things and things anew.

 

Have you seen the frescoes at the top of the buildings downtown ? How about the way that biker is humming to himself as he zips by ? The woman’s original shoes in line at Peet’s Coffee ?

 

Feel like a traveler while you’re here; in a greater spiritual sense you already are anyway.

 

Feel the pleasure and gratitude of knowing that wherever your home is, if you didn’t already live there you would be the traveler there right now!

 

To the people around you, you are the kind stranger I ran into so many times all over the world. We are the same people !

 

Tomorrow I will smile at people as a kind stranger on my travels and will look at my world again as the “traveler of here.” Meet me on the road ! Let’s tell stories, eat a meal together and look at our world in wonderment.

 

 

To Jennifer, my sister: have an amazing trip, take it all in with wide eyes and share in the kindness as you always do.

 

Happy travels to you all,

Caspar

The above post was written while I was in Italy last week leading my retreat. As many of you know I got very very ill and my internet service was spotty but this delicious post was worth the wait. Caspar and I will be together again hosting a retreat Oct 19-21, 2012 in Ojai, California. You can even take a cooking class with him. Click here to sign up.

Connect with Caspar here.