Salt and Energy

A Metaphor for Life

It started as a Christmas present for family and friends. It started with five pounds of sea salt that was lying around and my interest in smoking foods. Smoked Sea Salt was the result. From a simple idea, it has become an expression of self that, through the business I am building, carries my energy to others.

Salt is essential for activating cells in all plant and animal life. Although salt may seem ubiquitous today, control of the supply once animated whole civilizations including where to settle, the need to conquer or be conquered. Salt, then, is a powerful metaphor for life that runs through all of history. That metaphor is powerful within me, resonating at all levels of my being. I am using the seven energy centres of the body (sometimes called Chakras), as a framework to explore this metaphor.

Root - Earth

Salt is of the Earth and the Earth provides the sustaining elements that allow us physical beings to interact with each other and the world around us. But it also provided us with our initial spark that grows into that which we are and that which we can become. Salt is essential to physical life, technically because, in solution it allows the flow of electrical impulses through the body. It is also essential to our metaphysical life, enabling the flow of energy that allows our connectedness to the universe.

Water

It is true that my product is made with Sea Salt from the great oceans of the world. But that too is a great metaphor. The salt in the ocean is the result of the endless cycle of evaporation and condensation. Water evaporates from the oceans, falls as rain on the land and the streams and rivers carry the salt of the Earth back to the sea. We call this climate, I call it the deep breaths of Gaia that form part of the great energy flow of the universe that is mirrored in each of us when we take a mindful breath.

Pure water is life giving, salt water is not, at least not directly. But few things can match the delight of stepping into the warm waters of a tropical sea, moving with ease and grace that its buoyancy gives you. The salt in my life mixes with my energy and creates a buoyancy that literally "Floats my Boat".

Power

I add fire to my salt. I do it in two ways. First I infuse the crystals with smoke made from the smoldering embers of wood chips. It is a slow process. The smoldering power in each of us needs to move in mindful and productive ways or it may explode in rage and resentment. The second fire in me is passion for what I do. For much of my life the fire in me lacked a creative outlet. Without a place to move I became a walking bomb exploding in ways that frightened me and those around me. But a simple act of adding sea salt to a smoker became a metaphor for how I can move through life mindfully and productively. What simple act awaits you.

Heart

In our heart we hold the beliefs, values and attitudes that carry us through life. They are the sum total of all that we have acquired from family, school, church and the culture that we live in. I sell my salt at a market where I can directly interact with the people that stroll by. Many of these people have hypertension, or have overweight as a self image. I do not engage in the pro-salt/anti-salt debate, nor would I ever encourage someone to contravene their doctor's advice. However I invite you to consider that these manifestations may themselves be a metaphor for the power within that cannot move mindfully and productively because of the burden of accumulated beliefs, values and attitudes. What simple act awaits them.

Throat

The throat gives us voice, the mouth gives us taste and the nose gives us smell. I love the aroma of the smoke, I love the taste that salt can give to some of my favourite foods. I get high on the notion that my product can add to the joy of eating. My salt has allowed me to engage the world with mindfulness that makes me shout that I am, The Salty Don!

3rd Eye

Each of us at some time or another asks the question who am I, who is the real me. Am I the son, am I the father, am I the husband, am I the boss/worker/slave. There is the person that the world expects/tells us to be and there is that spark that speaks for the authentic self, that invites new possibilities undreamt of.

Crown

There is a little bit of me in every grain of salt. That is my physical connection to you. But I hope the connection is beyond the physical and that The Salty Don is a metaphor for your one simple act that will transform your life and open your magnificence to all its possibilities.

Don Henderson, WEL-Systems:Master Facilitator. Don is the Founder of The Salty Don, purveyor of gourmet salt and pepper to enhance any meal.