Anne Dunev, PhD CN – Los Angeles Certified Nutritionist and Holistic Doctor
My own version of having it all means having: profound spirituality, intense wisdom—and still being a babe.

Or, as my friend Astrid says, “We’re still babin’”.

Am I influenced by a society that worships youth and rock hard bodies?  Undoubtedly.  Will I go to a some lengths to keep my looks?  Given.  Do I want a face that is stretched so ironed free of all my life experience? Naaaa. Then it wouldn’t quite match the dimples in my thighs!

When I was in my 30’s I visited Sardinia few times in the summer months. This is a paradise of emerald seas and craggy coasts, visited by some of the most beautiful yachts in the world. The Cala di Volpe Hotel sponsored summer concerts with top recording artists that were international gatherings of the wealthy and beautiful. Of all nationalities present, I was struck by how wonderful the older Italian women looked. None were x-ray skinny, like the New York ladies that lunch.  Many of them were probably grandmothers, but they looked beautiful and sexy. They were groomed, without looking like they were trying too hard, they had lush figures that spoke of a confident sensuality, and, most of all, they looked like they were having fun. I vowed then that I would emulate those Italian cousins of Sophia Loren.

As a natural health practitioner, I am very lucky to be in a field that recognizes the spirit, mind, body connection. To me, this is what makes us who we are as humans.  It also explains our great contradictions. But more on that subject in coming blogs.  All I want to do here is establish my particular slant on the journey of life and discovery of truth. Because that is really all this is about—finding out one’s own truth.

So, what works for me is the balance between function and beauty. It works in art, and it works in the healing arts, as well. I have tried to approach being a practitioner as an artist. Because that is what works for me.  Just as music and art are deeply grounded in math, health is dependent on harmony and vibration.

So, to be “babin’” at any age is not just clutching at youth, but an assertion and recognition that sensuality and passion are an innate part of a life; no matter the age.  In the U.S. the word sensuality too often means sexuality, as we are somewhat infantile in our pursuits, thanks in no small part to the overkill of the Madison Avenue maxim that sex sells.  Europeans have a better understanding that sensuality is not limited to the sex organs, but involves all the organs of perception.

So, to me, health food is not just brown rice and steamed vegetables.  Fine French cuisine, which involves whole foods, often sourced freshly from farm and woods, is health food. Hence the low incidence of heart disease among the French, despite all real butter that is the basis of the cuisine.  Isn’t it odd that the more Americans become obsessed with fat, the fatter they become?  Here is a classic example of the wrong-headedness of worshipping quantity in the U.S., over quality.

The French may love their food. But the Italians love each other.  So dining becomes a family affair, prepared and enjoyed as an accompaniment to sharing and conversation.

Americans are accompanied by their televisions, car radios and I-Pods, while they eat food flavored with synthetic chemicals, slammed into their brains by a giant serving of MSG to ensure the maximum kick to the neurons.  What a ride. Straight into the nursing home where they can be served bland food consisting mainly of starch and be drugged into zombie Ville so they are no trouble to the staff while they wait for the Winged Charriot.

This is the “New” Establishment that waits for the baby-boomers, and we need a new social revolution against it. Not to get political, but there is a war still going on, that is all about profit and greed, only the geography has changed.  The taxpayers are footing the bill, and the corporations and lending institutions are reaping the benefits.

But there is another war going on. That is a war for our minds and hearts. It is being waged via our bodies, because the “crap” most of us are eating in America is making us fat, dumb and miserable (usually diagnosed as “depression” and treated with mind-altering pharmaceutical drugs).  Get the connection?  We are being poisoned by chemicals and pseudo-food. Even the unprocessed food we eat, the fruits, vegetables, meats and dairy products, are devoid of nutrition, and laden with chemicals and hormones to artificially plump up the produce and live-stock. All of this makes the body sick, which burdens us mentally. We are diagnosed as mental patients, given psychotropic drugs that have side-effects that make us worse—or even worse, not care. Because a lot of the drugs numb us so we are flat-lining. And if you don’t care anymore, if the passion is gone, what is the point?

So, it is not about being a “babe” for the sake of youth. It’s about standing up and saying I won’t go down that path, I won’t become a part of the Matrix, I am going to find my own truth, and it ain’t what the government and corporations and media are handing out. So, being a “babe” is really a revolutionary act!!