Gluten Free Vegan: A Lifestyle of No-Harm

My concern for animals and the horrible things we do to them as humans, whether it's for what we put on our plates for each meal or the testing we do for the products we use, began in second grade when I did a report on the National Anti-Vivisection Society.

A heavy topic to tackle when you're only 8-years-old, isn't it?

But as far back as I can remember I've always loved animals. Often, I liked them more than people.

Somewhere along the way, however, between second grade and life beyond that, I melted back into society's accepted, encouraged and brainwashed behaviors. I returned to being a materialistic carnivore, always with cabinets filled with the latest products and plates full of meat, dairy and eggs. I stopped worrying about how the products ended up in my home or on my dining room table.

I awakened once more after stepping onto my yoga mat in January 2014. That was the day I learned the word ahimsa - the Sanskrit word for non-harming. Ahimsa means living a lifestyle of non-violence, part of the first of the eight limbs of yoga set forth in Patanjali's Yoga Sutras centuries ago. The eight limbs of yoga deal with our ethical standards, our sense of integrity, how we conduct ourselves and how we treat others, and they serve as guidelines on how to live a meaningful and purposeful life without doing harm to fellow beings.

At the time, I had been reading about various diet changes that I could make to ease the Crohn's Disease pain I'd been suffering from for three years. Eating more veggies and fruits and less meat, dairy and eggs was recommended. But hearing about the concept of ahimsa brought me back to my 8-year-old self and everything that I'd researched and believed in my heart as a small child to be a God-conscious and loving-kind way to live. I knew that eating meat, dairy and eggs was not in alignment with my Authentic Self. I'd known it since second grade. But I'd forgotten.

Thanks to my spiritual-awakening journey, I remembered, and I will never again forget.

Fast forward two years, I'm almost pain-free, and I've never had so much energy, clarity of mind and overall peace from the inside-out.

Here, at Let Love Glow, I'm honored to be able to share with you GFVEGANIZEIT.

My mission is to share the gfvegan lifestyle (in live and online classes as well as in a weekly newsletter) so that eating and living choices become two additional ways that we, as human beings, can Let Love Glow...One Being, One Loving-Kind Act and One Blissful Moment At-A-Time.

There's so much love, light, peace and joy to be had in living a gfvegan lifestyle, and I'm looking forward to sharing the journey with you.

Hugs Love and Namaste --- DD