impRAWvise 

Since it is the beginning of the year right now, it is a great time to start something that you kept pushing around, just because now it is all about to be cleared down so that a new sense of happiness, well being and flow can be way easier to attain this way. The truth is that we all have things that we would like to change in our lives, but we keep postponing them, trying to convince ourselves that we are just waiting for the right time. But, as the year has just began, this is a wonderful time to get some clarity on our goals and desires and even set our goals for the year ahead, even if we have never done that before. Knowing where we are heading to brings us momentum and a lovely sense of grounding, focus and flow. If going vegan has been on your mind for a while, maybe now is the time to give it a try and see how it works for yourself. For the first part of this posts series I am going to talk about my whys and how I keep thing moving from this point of view, and then in the next post I am also going to talk about the hows, which are are some of the most important things when starting a new journey in our lives. The whys are pretty simple for me and I am going to keep it focused and clear by choosing three main ideas to discus about in this post: health, animal lives, environmental aspects.

HEALTH

Going vegan for health matters is a thing that many people are familiar with and also a thing that many people start their vegan journeys with. It is great to go vegan for health reasons, but the thing is that many people believe that just by going vegan they are going to be automatically healthier and feel better, which is not always the case. There are still processed foods loaded with unhealthy sugars or fats, or just chemicals that are still not falling under the definition of living a healthy life, so one has to also pay attention to that and focus more on the actual healthy vegan foods and not only on the vegan foods just by themselves. Of course, food is not all and in order to achieve true well being and lasting health there are also other important things such as the mindset that we are having, the exercises that we are giving our bodies and the spiritual connections that we choose to have more or less, but these are all important elements of living a healthy, vegan and fulfilling lifestyle, no matter what. So, the thing is that going vegan is actually a lifestyle choice and not just a diet, it is more then meets the eye and as you will see in the following whys, it is a journey and not so much like a task or something you have to do, but more like something you choose to do because it is what really makes you feel your best.

ANIMAL LIVES

There is so much pain and suffering that goes on in the process of raising animals for human consumption, and lots of those things are not even known by so many of us. We choose to turn our heads around and look into another direction. We choose to believe that it is either not so bad as it seems, or that well, if it was that bad, shouldnt it be someone elses fault? Well, maybe it is not about being guilty here, we certainly do not have to point fingers, nor to accuse other people for doing the things because they do, they might be trying their best, but thats all that they know. The best thing to do is actually to make a conscious choice to take our responsibility for our choices back to ourselves and decide to know better so that we can then do better. One thing I would like to emphasize the most here and that is the energetic aspect of this system that raises animals for human s to eat them, and that would be the idea that energy is still being transferred through all the stages of this process so that literally means that if an animal is suffering, than dies and then gets to be put on the table as food, what king of energetic input is that going to bring to the human body? It is a simple and clear question and from this point forward is only a matter of awareness and of what are we really choosing to put into our bodies and how are we really feeding ourselves? Is it with love, joy, nourishment, or is it with suffering and pain?

ENVIRONMENTAL ASPECTS

We have reached our third idea for discussing the whys of going vegan and this would be of course, the environmental aspect. The thing is that we are living on Earth and the resources and the savings of the planet have been depleted by human beings over the years, the climate changes are more and more severe and they are as a result impacting us all. One thing that derives from the previous aspect is that the massive raise of animal lives for human consumption is contributing heavily to the pollution of Earth, things such as methane gas from cows, chemicals used for antibiotics that animals raised in poor conditions get when they are sick, but also pesticides and herbicides that are used on industrial farming practices are all important contributors to the environmental damages that have occurred during the last decades. We need fresh and clean air to breath, we need clean waters and we need to be able to live a happy and sustainable life, so in those conditions, going vegan can help, by cutting down on those lands used for industrial animal raise and by using them instead for crops that would feed the people directly and contribute to a healthier climate as well as a world with less hunger and less suffering, bringing instead more compassion towards not only animals but also other human beings from depleted areas of the world.

This is all of course a very small part of a very profound and complex matter that has many other points and sub points, either if we are talking about health, animal lives or the environmental aspects, they are all part of the big picture, but the truth is that veganism can positively contribute to all of those areas of humanity and can even create powerful shifts and long lasting good effects on the way we interact with the ones around us: animals, other human beings and the Earth itself. If you think that going vegan sounds good for you, know that you can always find out more information about those topics by just doing your own research and finding your own whys and fundamentals that are in the long term going to help you sustain such a lifestyle and make conscious and fulfilling choices at all times. Going vegan is a choice, it is a lifestyle and it is definitely something that we choose to embrace and bring into our lives because that is how we feel best, because that is how we are finding our way towards living happy, healthy and fulfilling lives so that we can then be able to reach our full potential and be true to ourselves always, at all times.