Something remarkable happens when I'm at the natural foods store, standing in front of the bin of Celtic Sea Salt.

It's like a crowd of long-lost relations has gathered on the ocean shore as I'm rowing toward them in my wooden boat. They're smiling broadly, hopping up and down, sending up flares that make the air above them sparkle.

And every cell of my body is waving madly back at them, shedding the weariness of separation, lit up with homecoming.

Okay, that's a lot of drama for standing in the aisle at the grocery store. But what do I make of this sense of coming home?

As Belly Queen, I've had the opportunity to study human body and being in many dimensions. I've come to understand our bodies as portions of the ocean made portable. After all, where did life on this planet begin? In the ocean. (For my musings on this subject, see Serotonin, Peristalsis, and the Origins of Life, page 102 in The Woman's Belly Book.)

No wonder all my cells get excited at the sight of Celtic Sea Salt. French farmers have harvested this salt by hand from the coastal waters of Brittany. Standing in the aisle at the grocery store in Asheville, NC, I can hear the salt in the bin still whispering "ocean." The coarse granules put me on the scent of my ancestral home. They lay out a banquet of minerals and trace elements that my body is craving even if my mind can't put a name to the hunger.

The minerals in sea salt help the blood and most other body fluids maintain the alkalinity that keeps us in mental, emotional, and physical health. If the foods we eat fail to provide an adequate supply, we set ourselves up for bone loss: our bones release the minerals they've been storing to make up the shortfall. (For more on acid-alkaline balance — also known as pH balance — see Acid Blues by Dr. Christiane Northrup's colleague Marcelle Pick, OB/GYN NP.)

Minerals are key to keeping us healthy. Magnesium, for example, takes part in more than 300 biochemical processes, including the fundamental one that turns food into cellular energy. Magnesium deficiency depletes every organ you hold dear, including heart, brain, kidneys, and liver. According to Carolyn Dean, author of The Magnesium Miracle, deficiency can factor into anxiety and panic attacks, depression, migraines, insomnia, and other miseries.

Magnesium also plays a central role in carbohydrate metabolism. Deficiency of this mineral can increase insulin resistance, which in turn can lead to diabetes — and which we may experience as that uncanny ability to put on extra weight.

To up your intake, eat your greens — chlorophyll packs magnesium. Sprinkle your sea salt — Celtic Sea Salt Brand is my personal fave (see free offer below). And drink your ocean — concentrated sea water harvested from protected areas of ocean may be the best source of supplementation. To increase your body's capacity to absorb minerals, consider supporting your gut's own flora with "probiotics" — friendly bacteria such as Lactobacillus acidophilus and Lactobacillus bifidus.

I can only speculate that taking in an abundant supply of magnesium and other minerals plays an important part in strengthening our body's magnetic field, centered within our body's center. What's so important about magnetic fields? Both the human body and the earth's body may depend on balanced magnetic fields for our survival.

We're in the process of learning what is compromising our planet's integrity, and what restoring that integrity may require. Nourishing our body's center with breath, movement, and minerals may well equip us to help the healing process for ourselves, the earth, and the creatures with whom we share the globe.

As we strengthen our body's center, making our midriffs mighty indeed, we prepare ourselves for a resonance with the earth that leads to wholeness.

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Call 800-867-7258 or go online to learn more about Celtic Sea Salt. You'll receive a copy of the current Grain of Salt newsletter plus a sample of each of the three varieties of Celtic Sea Salt® — Light Grey Celtic, Fine Ground Celtic, and Flower of the Ocean.