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My words were titled “Out My Window” and this is my winter view.  But the door is/was always open and my mind?  Oh, my  mind traveled inwardly as far as I dared, and outwardly?  As near as my next door neighbor and as far as the other side of the world.

In this column I tell how a friend and I decided to join those wise Far Eastern people and get our Ying and Yang back in balance.  The test, using of the whites of our eyes told us we needed help, and with cooking and eating good brown rice, we’d be new people within  a week or two.  Just rice?  New people?  Balanced Ying and Yang? Yeah, and,  what else is new?

From Out My Window… by Ethel Ohlin Bradford

Well, just as I nearly got my Ying and Yang in proper balance, I gave up.  Weak Willie, that’s me.

Oh, I know how important some Orientals say this bodily balance is, but when the third day on Yinging and Yanging arrived, I said to heck with it.  I was happy before I ever heard of it and I’ll be just as happy without it.

Now, if you don’t know about Ying and Yang, let me tell you.  Unless you have such balance (‘tis said) you can’t have perfect health.  Mentally, physically or emotionally.

But, by golly, if I’d done any more such balancing, I wouldn’t have been either happy or healthy.  In fact, I was so sick of it all that I thought I was going to upchuck right there in my own dining room…all over my own carpet.  Just one more bit of Ying and Yang food would have done it, too.  Egad.

Now, to find out if your Ying and Yang are out of balance, look at yourself in the mirror at eye level.  There should be white showing on two sides of the iris.  If there is white showing under the iris, you are out of balance.  Two white sides, good, good, good.  Three white sides, bad, bad, bad, and you’d better get your diet back to basics and correct it.

The only diet to get you off the teeter-totter of imbalance (they say) is the correct proportion of Ying and Yang and that’s mighty hard to do with our western diet.  You are advised to go back to the ancient perfect diet of rice.  Unpolished brown rice.

Cook it in water, like any rice, with a small amount of salt and chew each bite 40 to 50 times.  Add no sugar, milk, fruit or honey.  Nothing but unpolished brown rice.  No coffee, tea, soda pop, vitamins…nothing but that dang rice.

A friend and I began it together, thinking we’d be strength to each other’s weakness.  The first day was ‘a piece of cake.’  Eat, eat, eat, whenever hungry.  Nice, fluffy, wholesome, perfectly balanced rice.

The second day wasn’t too bad, either.  I thought of how healthy I was becoming and smugly watched others ignorantly eating all the horrible un-Ying and un-Yang food.  The third day, though, began to tell on me.  I longed for a cuppa coffee.  For a smidge of spice or sugar on that bland rice.  I could almost taste fruit juice and began hurrying past all food for fear I’d just reach out and begin eating.  Anything but rice.

The evening of the third day I again stubbornly sat down to another bowl of that rotten stuff.  I began chewing away but it stuck in my throat and I thought I’d wurp it up right then and there.  I took a sip of water to wash it down and cursed as I took still another mouthful.

I cussed it.  I fought it.  I argued.  I told myself how healthy I was becoming.  I shamed myself over how weak willed I was, and then…suddenly I said to heck with Ying and Yang.  I went to the freezer, took out a container of homemade soup, whapped it in the micro and in ten minutes was in bliss.  The sheer bliss of eating food.  Food that wasn’t rice.  Food that had a taste.  Food, food, food.

I dreaded telling my friend, but I needn’t have worried for the next morning a call came inviting me to lunch so that together we could throw out the sickening rice diet and eat.  I accepted gladly but had to admit that I’d already tossed out my Ying and Yang stuff the night before.

So we sat facing each other eating, tasting and drinking with no care whether the food was Ying , Yang or neither.  And enjoyed every bite.

Ah, I suppose I’m still out of balance, but who cares?  Not me.

Copyright 2012 Ethel Ohlin Bradford