John,
Thank you again for reposting your message, and those pictures (they are quite revealing!).
If you look over at the thread "Macrobiotics + Cigarettes?" (
Macrobiotics + Cigarettes? ), you will find an attitude that is still prevalent among many of the older long time macrobiotic people who are still smoking.
The general belief and attitude in the macrobiotic movement, has been for the longest time, that smoking tobacco does not cause cancer, but instead cancer is caused by eating out of balance (and unhealthily) and that the cancer grows on the cesspool of waste products deposited in the body.
Many macrobiotic people believe that if they (regularly) eat miso soup with sea weed, and other dishes containing seaweed, plus eat a diet containing 50 or more percent of organic whole grains (much of it being brown rice), temperate climate quality vegetables, and the rest of the foods recommended in a healing standard macrobiotic diet by Michio Kushi (still an avid smoker, himself), that one shouldn't get cancer or any other diseases related to smoking or breathing secondhand (sidestream) smoke.
As an ex-smoker who got bronchitus related to smoking before doing macrobiotics, and who never had any congestion or respiratory problems (besides the fact that I was quite thin [seven feet tall and weighing less than 200 pounds for 14 years!]) during the time that I was eating a suggested macrobiotic diet (while following the philosophy of yin and yang), I find it difficult to refute the evidence as it relates to macrobiotics and smoking, while at the same time understanding that within the context of people who haven't been eating macrobiotically (fatty foods including meat, poultry, dairy, plus acid vegetables like tomatoes, potatoes, plus tropic fruits, plus refined grains and flour products, plus all the refined sugars, and extremely acidifying beverages such as coffee and black tea, plus all the alcoholic beverages, drugs, and chemicals in both medicines and also foods consumed daily, I can easily understand for these folks that it is highly likely that they will be very suceptable to various diseases including lung cancer.
The point that I brought up in an earlier incarnation of this forum: WebBBS Archive: "Is smoking macrobiotic?" (
http://www.cybermacro.com/forums/mainold/151.shtml ) back in January of 1999, was that these beliefs that I was taught to accept, are still very strong in the macrobiotic movement and was wondering how to get macrobiotic teacher/counselorss to stop teaching student and clients to start or continue smoking, as well as making our common use areas difficult to be in when these people do smoke there (I once restarted smoking in the Winter of 1986-7 when I found myself relaxing in the living room of a building owned by a well known macrobiotic teacher/counselor watching a video when he walked in and started smoking [many years before that [1974-5] I asked him "Why do you smoke?" and he replied, "Because I enjoy it!".])
Since I lived in one of his buildings (both of those times) and also was fed there, I found myself too intimidated to confront him and also about all the people he influenced to start or continue to smoke.
Several other macrobiotic teacher/counsellors advised me to stop smoking in the intervening years, and I quit for a year or two but started again spurred by different circumstances.
As I have recounted before, I quit cold-turkey about 16 years ago, and while I am glad that I am smoke-free and don't smell like a cigarette butt, I would have been better off, I feel if I had gradually quit (like over a few days or a week as I was smoking hand-rolled cigarettes made from sugar-free and possibly unadulterated tobacco) while doing something to replace it like more exercise, meditation, and cooking (at the time that I quit cold turkey, I was living in a facility for the homeless, where 50 or more men were sleeping on cots, and maybe a dozen or so of them would get up and smoke a cigarette on the perimeter of that room [in the middle of the snowy winter , with little venilation] and the air had visible layers to it, I had trouble sleeping and it made me sooo angry that I vowed never to smoke again.
I believe that macrobiotics is about freedom though when others violate our freedoms again and again, sometimes we need to speak out, instead of just run away as I have done so many times before in my life.
While I feel that macrobiotic foods, diet, and philosophy (yin and yang, Unique Principle, Order of the Universe, 5 Element Theory, and all that) can help one to heal from many ailments and diseases and maybe can also aleviate the symptoms cause by dirty habits like smoking, I feel that people who smoke around others in our common space are arrogant, insensitive, unthoughtful, and maybe deserve to be thrown out of our common space until they can learn to respect it.
During all the years that I smoked while doing macrobiotics I never whined or complained when I was asked to take it outside (in a matter of fact, for a number of years I carried a little portable ashtray in my pocket) but now I am seeing millions of people being forced to go outside (and some of them I'm having to chase downwind from me as I am squeegeeing the outside windows of the establishments of my customers) and most of the are whining.
I feel that macrobiotically oriented peopl can quit gradually (and permanently) if the are doing it for their own reasons, if they are clear about not smoking, and if they find activities that support them at not smoking (obviously staying in close physical contact with smokers does not help one to quit smoking!).
I can easilly see how persons who do not practice macrobiotics might have a more difficult time quitting smoking (if one is eating a mixture of foods that together do not create balance, smoking becomes a very attractive artificial mechanism to try to somehow achieve that balance), and who represent by far (maybe more than 99% of the smoking population) greater numbers, how they might need to quit by cold turkey methods (most of those people need religions and philosophies presenting them with absolute values, with little flexibility) but people doing macrobiotics may find flexibilty to be of a greater use.
Macrobiotics does not believe in absoluely bad foods and since any substance we ingest can be considered a food then cigarettes can be considered a food.
It may be a food to avoid but in a philosophy that involves choice we can choose to or not consume it.
I haven't eaten a cheese or tomato pizza in over 10 years (and I love the texture, the chewyness, and the convenience of pizza), nor any ice cream in more than 6 years (and I love the soft, cool, easy to eat feel of ice cream) and there are many more foods that I love and don't eat because of the negative effects that I have after consuming them, so I don't and the same thing applies to cigarettes.
If any of the newer macrobiotic people wish to quit smoking I say yes but trying doing it gently.
Not every disease needs to be surgically removed or bombarded with chemicals, and not every cigarette smoker needs to quit cold turkey.
John, I imagine that you first came and posted at this macrobiotic site either becausen you were interested in macrobiotics, or because someone here invited you to do so, or because you were looking for smoking being discussed in discussion sites via search engines, or who knows(?), but this macrobiotics movement is not like the other groups where the folks might alll have a different activity as the basis of their group but all pretty much have the same dietary philosophy and practice (like having a Big Mac when they are hungry or a glass of milk [does everybody really need milk?] when they are thirsty).
My point being tha macrobiotics approaches life from a different context and it is quite possible that many people involved in it might take a different path to resolve their addictions, habits, and non-useful practices.
I'm saying that just stopping may not be the best solution, for all macrobiotic people.
No one is advised to abruptly start macrobiotics, and eat all the recommended foods immediately in a balanced way, but instead to transition into it while slowly eliminating the unhelpful foods, the drugs, chemicals, supplements and everything that deters one from following an easy balanced macrobiotic practice.
Can you understand what I am saying?
Breathe deep, hug hard, live long.
Thank you, very much.
Bruce Paine