Interview with Author Dyan Garris

I had a chance to virtually sit down and talk with New Age recording artist Dyan Garris about the release of her cookbook, Voice of the Angels Cookbook - Talk To Your Food! - Intuitive Cooking. Here's what she had to say:

Dyan, you learned to cook from your paternal grandmother. How much of an influence do you think she had in you writing Voice of the Angels Cookbook?

My grandmother had a great influence in the writing of my cookbook. A lot of the recipes are Greek family recipes. And there is a story, “Ode to Popcorn,” at the end that is based on a story she used to tell us.

What is the first dish you remember making with your grandmother's help?

Ah! We made the most delicious Spanakopita. For those that don’t know, that is spinach pie. It’s spinach and feta cheese wrapped in flaky, buttery phyllo dough. Over the years I perfected the recipe by intuitively making it my own way. It truly is to live for!

Do you think your grandmother had a similar influence in your spiritual growth?

I came from a family of people who all had great intuition. My grandmother had great concentration and focus. My mother had so much healing in her hands and in her lovely singing voice. And you couldn’t get away with much of anything with my father. He seemed to always know what we were up to. It was uncanny. However, none of them really addressed or used their gifts. Perhaps intuition, healing ability, and psychic ability weren’t deemed as acceptable in those days as they may be now. I was raised strictly by the book in the Greek Orthodox faith. It was a good solid foundation.

You say that intuitive cooking is listening to your inner voice and hearing what your physical body wants to be fed. How does this differ from craving foods to meet an emotional need? For example, you're stressed and want to use food to relax.

We’ve come to equate food with love, therefore making it more of an emotional need rather than a survival need. In general, our relationship with food has become distorted. When one is balanced in terms of having their emotional needs already met, they find they don’t need to use food to fill an emotional void. When one finds other ways to release stress other than with food, one can begin to really hear and intuit what the physical body really needs and wants. And when that happens there is opportunity for balance.

Where did you get the idea for your book?

The book is a part of the spiritual toolbox that I’m almost finished building. The cookbook was one step in the progression of tools for spiritual growth and transformation. The book is a prelude to learning how to integrate mind, body, and spirit, and learning that in a fun, natural, normal, creative kind of way. Learning to integrate is a necessary step in the process of manifesting. My newest book is “Money and Manifesting.” Manifesting is not applying the Law of Attraction and the power of the mind to get what one desires. Manifesting is a co-creative process. Most importantly, the cookbook is a co-creation. Everything I’ve built is co-created and that’s where all my ideas come from. They come from the intuitive part of self that guides us to engage fully in our life’s true purpose. So, I’m not just out there telling people to learn to integrate, intuit, co-create, and learn to manifest. I actually live what I’m espousing.

Following the advice in your book, will readers learn to apply intuitive cooking to their own family recipes?

Yes, readers will learn to apply their own intuition to their own recipes. There are several “Intuitively Speaking” paragraphs in the book that guide a person to begin doing that. Then they can expand that into their own recipes. Everyone should follow their own intuition. That is the goal. We should all be in touch with ourselves at a core level.

Can people lose weight with intuitive cooking?

I believe people can lose weight with intuitive cooking and intuitive eating. When you’re eating things and cooking things that your body really wants, rather than what your mind may tell you it wants, you’re keeping things more natural and healthy. Also, if we expand our concept of how we gain or lose weight to not just be a function of calories in and energy expended, we begin to shift the paradigm a little bit. What if extra weight is just a cover up of the expression of internal joy? Then one could examine where they weren’t being joyful. If one then gave themselves permission to feel and express joy, if one could remember when they were joyful, perhaps the heavy cover of weight would just come off quickly and naturally. If you can get to the root of anything and uncover the real cause of something, you can bring yourself more into balance.

Are the recipes in your book easy enough to for less experienced cooks to follow?

The book has sixty color photographs and complete instructions for every recipe. I included a lot of very easy recipes because I believe that cooking should be fun and easy. Several of those easy recipes are fish recipes because people seem to have trouble with the idea of cooking fish. And there are more challenging recipes as well. Most of those are the Greek recipes. We talked about my grandmother earlier, but a lot of people don’t know that my father was a restaurateur. I grew up in restaurants with flaming cheese and a whole lot of Opa! For my cookbook, I wanted to integrate easy recipes with recipes that people won’t find anywhere else, and elegant yet easy recipes for entertaining. Another thing that I did was to test everything. You won’t find anything in there that doesn’t work.

Along with recipes, your book has messages from angels that deal with food. Are you saying you literally heard from angels?

I’ve been talking to angels ever since I was a little girl. They would gather in my room every night and I would see them everywhere during the day. They walked with me to school. It never occurred to me that this was strange. Only much later did I discover that this didn’t happen to everyone.

Some people will not embrace the new age funkiness of the "channeled message in your book. Do you think they can still benefit from following your advice and recipes?

As a society we seem to have a need to label and categorize things so we can perhaps have a point of understanding. My cookbook really is about getting beyond what we think things appear to be and taking basic things to a higher level. If the book is an exercise in integrating mind, body, and spirit, then we can say that the messages are simply the “spirit” part. Here is an example of one of the messages:

Layers

In kindergarten, most cannot grasp, for example, the higher concepts of trigonometry. Then as we grow and go through different grade levels, eventually, one’s brain develops to the point where it has the capacity to seamlessly integrate such concepts. Such learning is a multi-step process. It is in layers, like lasagna. First you are introduced to higher concepts. Then you begin to open your mind to such things, then you have lessons in it and finally, you integrate and apply it.

It is the same with spiritual concepts. You can look at a thing or experience a thing 100 times and not get it. Then you are presented with many layers and lessons and tests and all of a sudden, one day you just get it!

Why is spiritual growth such a process? Why cannot we just know all at once? It is because some things are so much better in layers, like lasagna. Individually, the components are tasty all on their own, but it is at its ultimate best when all of the layers are fully integrated as one. Food for thought. © Dyan Garris- Daily Channeled Message - 04/30/2007 www.voiceoftheangels.com Pg. 105 (Voice of the Angels Cookbook – Talk to Your Food! Intuitive Cooking)

The messages are there for a very good reason. They are an ingredient in the bigger spiritual recipe. Everyone gets to do whatever they want with the raw ingredients. Intuitively, of course. Bon appétit!