A sweet recipe for success to test out ‘hippy-dippy’ notions

I had emptied out two unused bedrooms and prepared them for re-painting. I had carefully stored and stacked all ornaments, pictures and photographs. I had correctly disposed of mountains of worn-out, used-up stuff, and distributed several bags of decent leftover things to charity shops.

I had worked mightily and sweated hard and left everything spotless, but no sooner had I stopped than the uncountable low mood that had pestered me for the whole summer returned.

I might, suggested the old friend I consulted, be suffering from a Low Vibration Frequency.

“You and your hippy-dippy Californian notions,” I snarled.

It may have been the cumulative effect of the dismal summer, an unprecedented (in my experience) number of heart-wrenching funerals and removals in the space of a few short weeks, and then ripping two painful tears in the cartilage of my knee and being unable to walk because I had to stay off the joint until it got a proper seeing-to...

I am a great believer in the restorative powers of exercise, so enforced immobility is not my friend.

Anyhow, between one thing and another, the humour was not the best.

At least, my friend encouraged, look up the concept of Low Vibration Frequency and find ways to counteract it.

Low Vibration Frequency?

Never heard of it.

But of course, the internet had.

Low vibration, I learned during my secret internet search – never was I ever going to admit to her that I’d checked it out - is a spiritual energy frequency associated with negative emotions such as persistent feelings of sadness or anger, apathy/lethargy, sluggish thinking, mental fog, poor memory and constant fatigue.

Sounded more like Long Covid to me, I thought bitterly, but let’s not go back THERE.

The internet site suggested I carry out some self-assessment.

Firstly, mood. Hmmm. Well, the mood was a bit low and irritability was at a moderate high, admittedly. Definitely feeling a bit jaundiced about life. Certainly not feeling happy, energized, enthusiastic or bright which is how a high vibration person is apparently supposed to feel.

The advice is to always use the word ‘feel’ rather than the word ‘am’ when describing or thinking about the negative emotions one is experiencing.

I was not my feelings, the website explained.

Well, I know that, I thought irritably.

Acknowledge your feelings, the site advised.

Well, I thought savagely, of course I was acknowledging my feelings.

That’s why I was consulting the website in the first place.

If I focused on my actual problem, the site explained, those negative feelings would continue. However, if I focused on the feeling itself, giving no mental energy whatsoever to the problem, then the negative emotion would pass.

But I didn’t know what the problem was!

This is useless, I shouted inwardly.

Useless, stupid website! If I knew what the problem was, obviously I would fix things!

I rang my friend.

“It didn’t work,” I complained. “It’s all stupid.”

“Look, she said, “It’s great you did some research. However, that sort of attitude comes from pig-ignorance and dumb stubborn-headedness. If life suddenly took this big turn for the worse, it’s due to a drop in your vibration level. Try journalling.”

In my eye was I ever going to try journalling, I said crossly.

“Go away now,” my friend said, “you’re bringing down my vibration.”

I returned to the site.

Physical effects of low vibration include headaches, fatigue, digestive issues, skin problems, sleep disturbance and frequent illness. Nope. Nope. Nope.

A symptom: A very cluttered home. I’m a Virgo. I simply don’t do clutter. So, no.

Bad food – coffee, fizzy drinks, alcohol, sweets, loads of processed foods and so on. No.

“Stimulate your mind,” the site suggested next, a bit wearily.

“Inspire your inner artist by trying out an activity that has nothing to do with your responsibilities. Stimulate your mind with this cherished activity until you feel better.”

I ended up watching a video featuring somebody called a Master Medicine Energy Practitioner who maintains that you can literally move yourself out of a bad mood or illness by eating the right kind of food.

And, therefore, testing your body’s reaction to certain foods is key.

What you do is you hold your arm down close to your body, and you get someone to try to pull your arm out while someone else holds a particular food item near you, that is, in your energy field.

The more you can resist the arm-puller, the better the food is for you.

Hang on a second here, I thought. I rang my mother-in-law to report that I’d just watched a video of a renowned global energy expert demonstrating a technique that was extraordinarily similar to what she and my late father-in-law used to do 10 or 15 years ago to check whether any of us had food intolerances.

“Ah, we got that off a doctor in Kerry years ago,” she said.

“Good Lord,” I said again.

“Isn’t it a small world?”

“Go back and try it,” she said.

Then she sent me her recipe for the gluten-free queen cakes she usually makes for my husband.

“Not a hope,” I said glumly, “they wouldn’t work out for me.”

But she got me the gluten-free baking powder and we sourced the Xanthan gum stuff and I ventured into the tricky world of gluten-free baking.

To my amazement, my gluten-free queen cakes turned out so well that my husband ate five in a row. This was amazing.

So then I tried the allergy-testing arm-pulling thing on him. He has an intolerance to gluten. After eating five whole gluten-free cakes one after another, his arm strongly resisted the pull.

The allergy test worked! The gluten-free cakes were a success!

I was suddenly cheerful again.

An arm-pulling allergy-test and a batch of gluten-free queen cakes.

How simple is that.

Try something new. Yep.