The Touchwood Project

Malcolm and I are developing 4 different themes for our week-long holidays here in Orkney (and perhaps also in Perthshire):

• Eco Technology at Home
• Traditional Crafts and Culture
• Bushcraft and Outdoor Skills and
• Detox for Your Health

The Detox for Your Health course is the one we have the least developed, because neither of us are health professionals. But I believe having a 5-day holiday where people explore issues of health and wellbeing and — as with all our courses — take practical steps to make changes in their own lives is essential.

I know from personal experience that what you eat has a tremendous impact on your mood, how energetic you are, how you see yourself as a person as well as your physical well-being. I cut out sugar, wheat, dairy and alcohol six months ago and it’s had a huge impact on me. Malcolm stopped eating sugar, drinking coffee and alcohol more than 10 years ago and he’s never regretted it for an instant.

While I think everyone could benefit from cutting out sugar almost entirely from their diets, I’m not tied to any one philosophy of nutrition. I’m more interested in how to empower people to make decisions for themselves, to give them 5 days of great food, ambience and people to give them enough energy and can-do spirit to make the changes they deem right for themselves.

So I’m looking at 2 things: a course in Sustainable Health at Schumacher College, and collaborating with nutritional therapist Catherine Broome.

The course at Schumacher piques my interest because Schumacher seems to take a similar approach to learning that we do: cross-disciplinary, hands-on and empowering the individual. It’s an 8-month long course and would require me to get to Devon which is clear across the country. It’s also £5,000, which ain’t cheap. But I’ve sent them an enquiry to find out more and if it looks like a good way for me to get training to better develop a holiday programme here, then I’ll go for it with help from grant from the Lottery Fund’s Awards for All or similar (hopefully).

I spoke to Catherine a week ago about her take on nutrition and was delighted to see she’s into wild foods as well as being trained at the Institute for Optimum Nutrition. The Optimum Nutrition Bible is a book I come back to again and again as I move towards a healthier lifestyle.

One part Malcolm likes is the Stone Age diet chart, which basically says that the ideal diet is very similar to that of the Stone Age. Learning lessons from the past and updating them for 21st century living is what we’re all about, after all.

So we’ll see how to it goes with the course and what we’re able to develop for a holiday. Suggestions welcome.

Tags: Orkney

Trackback URI | Comments RSS