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I have always found the Biblical expression `Become what thou art' full of meaning. Becoming beautiful is like that. But it is not a static state of perfection, as the glossy magazines would have us believe - one fleeting moment on a well-made-up, well-lit face, captured for eternity by the camera. It is a living process, an unfolding of your uniqueness, no matter what your age or where you start from - a kind of journey which, for me, is one of the two most exciting things in life. The other, I believe, is creativity itself, whether it is expressed in painting a picture, cooking a meal, running a business, loving a man or caring for a child. And the wonderful thing about the whole process of becoming what you really are is that it inevitably leads to greater creativity and satisfaction in what you do. What could be better than that?

Christmas had been full of laughter. But on Boxing Day when the children left, Emma began to cry. Grief racked her body. It was as though she had been taken over by a power beyond herself. There was no apparent reason for this, yet it went on for three hours. That was the beginning. Within three weeks, each time she went out to walk in the woods near her house, the trees, the grass, the rocks – all came alive. They seemed to vibrate with energy and to glisten with light, almost to breathe. Their colors had become overwhelming – too intense to bear. Panic set in. This healthy and competent woman in her early fifties feared that she was losing her mind. The doctor suggested tranquillizers, sleeping pills and psychotherapy. “Don’t worry,” he assured her. “We will soon have it all under control.” For Rebecca, 32, the crunch came at work after neglecting her relationship with her lover and ignoring a mounting biological urge to have a child, then passing up two intriguing job offers and working 18 hours a day for seven months on a marketing plan for a new toothpaste. She knew it was just what she needed for a promotion which would make her the first woman on the board. Then the managing director announced the take over. The launch had to be scrapped. The product would have been in direct competition with the new company’s own product already on the market. Two days later, her boyfriend announced he had fallen in love with someone else and was leaving. Then one morning while doing her morning run in the park, Rebecca sprained her left ankle so badly that she could not walk at all for two weeks. This meant that now, when it was absolutely crucial that she be at work to secure her future, she found herself completely bedridden. She felt her life collapsing around her and knew she was helpless to do anything about it. THE MOULTING BEGINS Two women in crisis – that moment in life when the foundations of personal safety, beliefs, security or values are challenged, overwhelmed by either internal forces or external events. When any one of us experiences such a crisis it is a sign that a moulting is about to take place. We are being asked to walk a passage which, if made with awareness and trust, can expand our experience of life and our sense of ourselves enormously. This demand for personal metamorphosis may be triggered by a death, the ending of a love affair, the recognition that one is addicted to alcohol, drugs or work, a dawning awareness that what you have always worked for and what you have achieved no longer holds meaning for you, the loss of a job or reputation, or even the detoxification process of a cleansing regime. Although each person’s metamorphosis is unique, experiences of profound change have much in common. The advice to people in the midst of crisis is pretty standard too. It goes something like this: “Pull yourself together,” or “Don’t worry,” or “Go see the doctor” (who most often supplies a long-standing prescription for potent antidepressants, barbiturates, or tranquillizers). In the case of women – particularly women of menopausal age – the men in their lives (whether they be husbands, lovers or bosses) are frequently made so uncomfortable by the unexpected changes in a woman’s feelings and behavior (changes that they themselves feel unable to handle) that they insist she must be mentally or biologically ill. For they, like most of us, just want things to return to normal. We are all afraid of crisis, and fair enough. Change that is truly transformative seldom comes easily. FRIENDSHIP HEALS As it turned out, Emma was lucky. Despite her embarrassment and shame about what had been happening to her, she frequently spoke about it to people whom she did not know very well. “It was as if I had to tell someone” she says “and I couldn’t speak to my family and closest friends since they were convinced I was crazy.” One of the people she told was a woman who had herself been through a similar experience five years earlier. Emma, relieved to find anybody who “understood” and didn’t brand her psychotic, began spending time with this woman. On the advice of her husband who thought a change of scene would be good for her, she decided to spend a fortnight with her new friend in a small holiday cottage in the Lowlands of Scotland. There the two women lived together, ate together and walked in the wilderness. Emma’s symptoms continued, but the woman she was with was not in the least afraid of them, neither did she worry about Emma’s intense emotions – feelings of grief at the loss of her children, of uncertainty about her future, of abandonment much like a baby must feel when taken from its mother – nor about her strange bodily sensations which were particularly severe at night. She simply stayed with her friend and allowed it all to happen. In Emma’s own words, “The experience of her simply letting me be in the state I was in and her complete sense of trust that what was happening to me was all right was incredible for me. I learnt from it that the death I feared was not physical death as I had thought, but the death of everything in myself that was meant to die – the end of the life I had lived as a mother, always sacrificing myself for the sake of my children and my husband, and the death of my image of myself as a responsible but limited person with no real sense of identity apart from the way I could serve others.” After about ten days, her symptoms peaked and then began to subside. By the time she got home she was still experiencing strange energy flows in her body and the colors still seemed extraordinarily bright (it took about three months for all that to change) but now she no longer feared what was happening because, she says, “I could feel for the first time in my life that there really was something inside me – something very alive and real. I am determined to get to know it and to find out what it is all about. Where it will lead I don’t know. I have begun to paint – to try to get some of that vibrancy of color on paper. Incidentally, a lot of people don’t like the `new me’. They prefer the `good old reliable Emma’. But I feel, far from my life being over, that I am beginning a new adventure and that wherever it takes me, it is uniquely mine.” HARBINGERS OF CHANGE This sense of impending death which Emma experienced is common in the experience of moulting. It is something I have experienced again and again before a major change takes place in my life. As American expert in transformative psychology, John Wier Perry MD says,: “Whenever a profound experience of change is about to take place, its harbinger is the motif of death. This is not particularly mysterious, since it is the limited view and appraisal of oneself that must be outgrown or transformed, and to accomplish transformation the self-image must be dissolved… one is forced to let go of old expectations… let oneself be tossed about by the winds of change…cultivating a more capacious consciousness, open to new dimensions of experience.” Perry, a Jungian analyst, encourages people to work through their experiences—even when they are very extreme – without the mitigating effect of drugs. Instead they are given the support of a safe place to be while their particular moulting is taking place, and a lot of loving support from people who have, from experience in their own lives, learned to turn the experience of crisis into a passage to power. Perry insists that, like the crab in need of a new shell, what precipitates such a crisis is the surfacing of energy from deep within the psyche, which has been bound up in the structures of a self-image or a worldview that has become obsolete – too limited to suit a person’s needs. AS INNER AND OUTER MEET One of the most common objections amongst conventional “batten-down-the-hatches” psychologists to viewing crisis as part of a transformational process is that, while a crisis such as Emma’s appears largely to have arisen from within, that of Rebecca was triggered entirely by outside events – the company take over, the decision of the man in her life to leave her, the accident to her ankle which put her to bed – all things over which she had no control. Or did she? According to transpersonal psychologist Barbara Sommers, the outer and the inner world are not as separate as we might imagine. A woman like Rebecca may be far more responsible for precipitating the outer events that triggered her crisis than she thinks. Each of us has an inner and an outer world. When these two get out of balance, say, by emphasizing external or material values to the detriment of more personal deeper values, then a person invites disruption. The more someone like Rebecca pushes on with her ambitions and neglects her inner voice, the closer she brings herself to situations that precipitate crisis. Then crisis becomes a way of rebalancing things by forcing her to turn and look within. Things fail: She loses the man she loves because she has, by her actions, undervalued and neglected the relationship, and she damages her body so she is quite literally forced to go to bed, to be alone and to listen to her inner voice. In Sommers’ words, “The real woman inside her doesn’t like the way she has been living so she starts to cry out, `What about me?’ The more she drives her energy into her conscious external life, the more power from her unconscious is generated to redress the balance. The `feeling’ side of her (as opposed to the `doing’ side) actually magnetizes a field around her so things start to happen.” According to Sommers the important thing about Rebecca’s crisis is that out of its forcing her to be with herself, instead of constantly being caught up in doing, comes the opportunity to ask questions such as “Who am I?” and “What do I want? – is my goal really to have a seat on the board? Or is that something I think I want because my father, my society, my friends think it is important?” All crises big or small are opportunities to get in touch with the wholeness of ourselves, not just to live lopsidedly or as partial people pushed into the way we are living by our culture, by education or by other people’s views or values. REHEARSAL FOR REBIRTH All crisis offers transformation provided, as the poet Rilke says, we have the courage to embrace it: “…this very abyss is full of the darkness of God, and where one experiences it, let him climb down and howl in it (that is more necessary than to cross over it.” Let yourself become aware of any structures of your own life – emotional, physical, environmental, intellectual – which no longer serve you and the choices you are making. See if there are any passages that are appropriate for you to make consciously. Making simple changes willingly can be useful practice for developing the skill of transforming crises, when they appear, into passages to power. You might like to experience the passage to new energy and clarity that a detoxification diet followed for a few days can bring. Or you might try doing without some addictive substance or activity which you feel is draining your energies. If you choose to do either, notice any changes that come about and pay attention to any messages that you get from within in the process. After all a brand new year has just begin. It may well be calling forth a new you...perhaps the richest most creative just waiting to be born.

Coffee is the world’s most cherished drink. More than eight billion pounds of it are traded each year. Coffee has belonged to the elite “Food of the Gods” category for centuries. Those that fit into this category, such as chocolate and coffee, have certain things in common—like great intensity. Honor their power by taking them in pure, unadulterated form and small quantities. Provided the products you choose have not been contaminated by poisons and pesticides, they will expand your consciousness while bestowing clarity and joy. But use them carelessly, in too great a quantity and without regard for purity, and they will undermine health and seriously distort your perceptions of reality. These are but a few of the challenges and the rewards foods from the Dark Gods bestows upon us. Once associated with Persians and Arabs, coffee has become so much a part of modern life that most who habitually drink it dread being without it. If you’re going to drink coffee, there are certain things you need to know—such as how to choose the best coffee, how to protect yourself from the ever-increasing contamination from pesticides and herbicides, and about the magnificent mythologies behind this dark, ubiquitous drink. MYTHIC ORIGINS There are wonderful tales about where coffee comes from. An Abyssinian story insists that a goatherd called Kaldi noticed one day that his flock was much friskier when they ate the fruit of a certain glossy green tree. Kaldi decided to try some himself, and experienced a rush of energy. A passing monk noticed the energy and asked where it came from. Kaldi introduced him to the coffee tree. The monk then gathered some beans and took them home for himself. There is truth to the spirit of this tale. Coffee was indeed introduced to the world by monks. Christian monastics believed that the archangel Gabriel was responsible for bringing this fruit to the earth. Meanwhile, Muslims insisted that a banished dervish called Omar, weak from exhaustion, came upon the coffee plant and took its fruit, only to find that his energy flooded back in force. They insist it was he who brought this magnificent food to the world. By the 6th century, coffee trees were being cultivated in what today is known as the Yemen in Arabia. In the beginning, coffee beans were ground and used to make tea. There’s no record of how this practice changed and it became a question of tossing the beans on the fire to benefit from the aromatic alchemical change which takes place when you roast them. The way coffee was first prepared is probably the way the thick, grainy drink we now call Turkish coffee is still prepared—by grinding up the roasted beans, putting them into boiling water and heating the mixture to a boil several times over a flame until it burns down to make a powerful, thick black soup. FORBIDDEN DRINK Coffee, like any other food which has alkaline drug properties and strong effects, has been banned for periods throughout history. In the 16th century it was even forbidden in Mecca. However, the Sultan himself so loved the beverage that he insisted it be made legal again. In the 17th century, the Catholic church did its best to ban coffee throughout Europe. But the Pope, an avid coffee drinker, insisted that this not happen. Not long after, cappuccino was invented. In both France and the United States, by the 17th century, coffee houses began to appear here and there—much in the same spirit in which they still exist throughout the world. They were places where people could meet and talk in an atmosphere of warmth and camaraderie. SEEDS OF REVOLUTION The French historian Michelet in 1789 insisted that the widespread availability of coffee in cafés played a central part in the development of the French revolution. In such places, philosophers and activists gathered to plan the future of France. Even in colonial America, where the first coffee house was opened in Boston in 1670, coffee houses played an active part in the planning for the American revolution. Across the Atlantic, in Turkey, so important was coffee—which had then come to be considered a household staple—that a woman could sue her husband for divorce on the grounds that he was not giving her a fair share of the beverage. Coffee warms us, stimulates us and has a natural diuretic and purgative effect on the body. From the point of view of our creativity and mental functioning, coffee most definitely has something to offer. The cafés in Paris in the 20th century were filled with famous writers, artists, politicians and thinkers who enjoyed the stimulation that coffee can bring; among them Ernest Hemingway, Collette, Jean-Paul Sartre, Picasso and even W.B. Yeats. DANGERS AND TRUTHS Let’s look at dangers first. Research shows that women who drink coffee while eating the typical high-carb diet have a greater risk of breast cancer and bladder cancer, as well as obesity. If you are pregnant or breastfeeding, under no circumstances should you be drinking coffee. Coffee taken during pregnancy increases the rate of birth defects and miscarriages. Most studies into the damaging effects of coffee, however, have been done using readily-available coffee in the market-place, almost all of which is contaminated by plants have have been cultivated using GMO seeds and/or sprayed with an ever-increasing number of herbicides and pesticides which build up to poison the body by interfering with metabolic processes. In so-called developed countries such as Europe and the United States, once an herbicide or pesticide is labelled “dangerous to human health” and made illegal, the chemical companies who produce it then send the banned chemical to third world countries for use there. MUST BE CERTIFIED ORGANIC Coffee is mostly grown in third world countries—in which there are no statutory controls over how much of a specific herbicide or pesticide can be sprayed on crops. As a result, coffee has become one of the most contaminated foods in the world. Personally, I take with a grain of salt some of the negative results of scientific research that’s been done into how damaging coffee is to the human body. I suspect that at least some of the damage may be due not to the caffeine, as is commonly supposed, but to the chemical contamination which most coffee beans now carry. This makes the argument for organic coffee a strong one. Coffee grown organically does not exploit the native peoples who work in the coffee plantations, but rather gives them fair financial remuneration for their work. Certified organic coffee is also free of the chemical dangers in relation to human health. So, when buying coffee, go organic. There is an aesthetic reason for this too. Organic coffees have a finer flavor than the coffees that have been grown with herbicides and pesticides. GOOD NEWS Despite all the warnings about how dangerous coffee is to health—and there is truth in most of them—clean, organic coffee has many benefits to mind and body. It has been prescribed for generations in the treatment of asthma, vertigo, headache, jaundice and even snake bite. A poultice of wet coffee grounds speeds the healing of insect stings and bruises. Coffee enemas are used internally as a strong purgative stimulant both to the bowels and to the liver in the natural treatment of serious illness, including cancer. Reports from several recent studies support positive effects that can be gleaned from using the right kind of coffee in the right amounts. Here are just a few of the recent findings: Japanese researchers have discovered that people who are not regular consumers of coffee experience a 30% increase in capillary flow after drinking 5 ounces of coffee. At Johns Hopkins University researchers reported that 200mg of caffeine in a cup of coffee improves memory for as much as 24 hours. At University of Oslo in Norway, researchers report that coffee has potent anti-inflammatory chemo-protective and anti-aging qualities. A Spanish study published in the International Journal of Sports Nutrition shows that coffee taken before a workout can increase your energy expenditure for up to three hours afterward. ESPRESSO IS KING If you are going to drink coffee, the best kind to go for is certified organic espresso. Espresso, which the uninformed often shun, believing it to be too strong, is most often derived from Coffea arabica. Arabica grows high up on steep mountain slopes. It needs lots of shade and plenty of rainfall to flourish. Its flavor is richer, deeper and more full-bodied than the less expensive Coffea canephora or robusta coffee. Most people still believe that espresso is very high in caffeine. In truth, one shot of 1.5 fl oz. of espresso contains about 64mg of caffeine compared to 95g in the standard 8oz cup of coffee. The dark roasting, on which the flavor of espresso depends, burns off some of the caffeine content. The darker the roast, the less caffeine is present in the coffee. HOW TO MAKE COFFEE WORK FOR YOU There are some important things for you to know if you want to get the best from drinking coffee. It’s essential to adhere to them or you can undermine coffee’s benefits and suffer from its dangers. Here’s the way to go: Drink only certified organic coffee, and make it fair trade. Go for certified organic espresso instead of the conventional cup of java. It is healthiest and boasts the greatest benefits for energy. The darker the roast, the better for wellbeing. Always drink coffee black, in all its intensity, without milk, cream or sweeteners of any kind. When you do this, the rich blend of polyphenol anti-oxidants, bioflavonoids, minerals and vitamins not only help neutralize the more aggressive effects of caffeine. They work in harmony to support your mind and body. Limit your consumption of to one cup a day—two if you must. Drink a shot of espresso in the morning before—never after—exercising. It can not only improve your athletic prowess, it can uplift you for the day. I’ve investigated and experimented with many espresso blends in the last few months. Let me share with you the two certified organic espressos that I find the best. You can buy them either ground or as whole beans to grind yourself. Do try them and let me know what you think won’t you? CAFFE SANORA, ORGANIC, FINE GRIND COFFEE Like fruits and vegetables unroasted coffee beans are loaded with powerful antioxidants. Sadly, most are destroyed in the extreme heat of roasting. That's why Caffe Sanora set out to create an all-natural coffee roasting process we call HealthyRoast. This revolutionary method gives you a great cup of good health; Premium organic coffee with more antioxidants than most green teas. Buy Caffe Sanora Organic Coffee MT. WHITNEY COFFEE ROASTERS, ORGANIC MAMMOTH ESPRESSO GRIND The best coffees in the world are a joy to the mind and soul. Brew a wonderful cup, sit down, and take a sip. Buy Mt Whitney Organic Coffee

Remember food combining, developed by William Howard Hay MD? It has changed thousands of people’s lives, protecting them from fatigue, weight gain, degenerative diseases and early aging. The basic principles behind food combining are simple: Don’t mix foods that fight. Never eat proteins and starches at the same meal. Never eat fruit and vegetables at the same meal. And do not eat dessert after a meal. If you do, the dessert gets trapped in the stomach and starts to rot, since it can’t be digested properly. These fundamentals of what has long been known as Conscientious Food Combining are easy to learn and even easier put into practice. The benefits of doing so are many, including freedom from reflux, poor digestion and long-term fatigue. DIGEST TO THRIVE Your body expends more energy on the digestion of food than on any other function. Think how sluggish and sleepy you feel after a traditional Sunday lunch. It may surprise you to learn that the energy your body needs to digest food is even greater than that which you use when taking strenuous exercise. When you take in food, your system has to redirect blood supply—and therefore vital life energy—away from the brain and other organs towards the gut. Once there, your energy reserves get busy breaking down your meal. When you eat foods that fight each other, or more food than your body needs, you greatly diminish your overall vitality. You also build up body pollution. Any food—even good quality food—in excess tends to pollute the body. PROTEINS AND CARBS ARE NO-GO Leave behind the old practice of meat-and-potatoes or fish-and-chips. When the wrong foods are mixed together, this further delays digestion and produces toxicity while increasing both appetite and digestive upsets. Most people’s bodies are not designed to efficiently digest more than one concentrated food in the stomach at once. In the simplest terms, you need an acid medium to digest protein and an alkaline one to digest starch. Eat concentrated proteins and starches together—fish and chips, bacon sandwiches, meat and potatoes—and nothing gets digested. An awareness of this principle lies at the core of virtually every tradition of natural healing. Eating concentrated proteins and starches at the same meal wreaks havoc with digestion. It increases the number of incompletely broken down food particles that find their way into the bloodstream to cause food allergies, depression and exhaustion. Concentrated proteins such as cheese, eggs, fish and meat must have an acid medium for good digestion. If there are any starchy or sugary food including breads, pastas or sweets in the stomach at the same time, they neutralize the acid medium, so the proteins remain incompletely digested and poorly assimilated. All carbohydrates foods need an alkaline medium for digestion and must be eaten at a separate meal. What you can get away with is the occasional garnish for protein foods or fruits—such as sesame seeds or raisins—but you would not want to add them in greater quantity. OUT WITH Convenience FOODS Ready-in-a-minute pre-cooked meals, junk foods, and the standard meat-and-two-veg Western meals are incredibly energy-draining. They present your digestive system with the greatest difficulty of all. Virtually all of these manufactured items are grossly deficient in essential nutrient. for it to break down and make use of. Convenience foods and junk foods are also grossly deficient in essential nutrients as well. So are chemically fertilized fruits and vegetables and foods which have been excessively processed to alter their natural state. Convenience foods contain additives such as artificial colorings and flavorings which are potentially harmful. Such foods include breads, sugar, most meats, sweets, and coffee and all the ready-in-a-minute snacks and meals that fill the shelves of our supermarkets. They have no place at the food combining table. CREATE VITALITY If you want to build energy quickly, start right now to separate your concentrated starches from your concentrated proteins, eating each at separate meals. This will help protect your system from a build-up of acid wastes, restore metabolic balance, and resolve the energy crisis which takes place when digestion is overtaxed. Most important, it can bring you a whole new kind of energy which can have you looking good and feeling better than ever with each week that passes. It is not only separating the kind of foods that you eat that matters for an abundance of energy. You need to be just as conscientious about what you eat. The human body is not genetically equipped to handle the refined flours, sugars and excess quantities of poor quality proteins that make up the typical western way of eating. Our ancient ancestors, whose genetic makeup we share, had no bread, sugar, junk fats or pre-packaged, pre-cooked convenience foods. They ate simple, ordinary, wholesome foods—as much of them as they could kill or gather. Their diet was high in green leaves and vegetables—all complex carbohydrates—and moderate in protein. This is the way our own bodies genetically expect to be fed: Good, wholesome, preferably organic foods, simply prepared and eaten as closely as possible to their natural state. FREEDOM TO THRIVE This way of eating calls for real foods rich in fiber, and plenty of the best fats: Organic coconut oil and extra virgin olive oil, for instance. The health-enhancing properties of real living foods have long been tested and eulogized by highly respected European and American physicians—from Gordon Latto and Philip Kilsby in Britain, Max Bircher-Benner in Switzerland and Max Gerson in Germany, to Henry Lindlahr and JK Tilden in the United States. Eating for energy asks that you combine your foods sensibly, and that as much as possible you choose foods grown on healthy organic soils and served as closely as possible to their natural state, either cooked or raw. This is not as complicated as it sounds. Here are the basic principles of eating of high vitality eating. They quickly become second nature. EAT FRUIT ON ITS OWN Fruit passes through your digestive system very rapidly. It needs little help from digestive enzymes to break it down. If you try to eat fruit at a meal with other foods, its digestion and assimilation are slowed drastically and you can get fermentation in the gut causing indigestion, wind and discomfort. If you have a blood sugar problem, insulin resistance or an overgrowth of Candida albicans, then stay away from sugary fruits altogether, or eat no more than a couple of servings of berries a day. Instead of fruit for breakfast you might have a green drink made from the tops of green vegetables in a juicer or a blender. MAKE ONE MEAL A DAY A BIG SALAD A vibrant, living salad based on home-grown or store-bought sprouted seeds and green vegetables is the mainstay eating for high energy. It’s the best way to get optimal support for rebuilding cells and tissues, rebalancing biochemical processes, and restoring normal metabolism. Sometimes, of course, this is not possible—for example, when you have to eat in restaurants all the time. In this case, you can replace the living salad with a big dish of lightly steamed or wok-fried fresh vegetables cooked in coconut oil and served with a side-dish of soup or a protein food. That being said, the more often you are able to make a living salad the focus of the meal, the sooner you will reap the rewards of your new lifestyle. Remember that your digestive system needs time to complete the digestion of a meal before you put anything else into it. Four or five hours need to elapse between lunch and dinner. Otherwise digestion is not complete, and increased toxicity ensues. Always drink as much filtered or spring water or herb teas between meals as you like. But don’t drink liquids at a meal as they will dilute the important digestive enzymes. AIDE MÉMOIRE Eat fruit or a green drink in the first half of the day followed by a protein or carbohydrate lunch and dinner, both of which should include a big, fresh, raw salad. Leave four to five hours between lunch and dinner for efficient digestion. Eat as much as your body needs and listen to its signals of how hungry you really are. Take your time, chew thoroughly and stop as soon as you feel you have had enough. Never overeat. Get rid of packaged convenience foods that rob you of vitality and undermine well-being. These include breakfast cereals, breads, pasta, sugar and all the so-called goodies made from it. Cut back on tea and coffee. If you drink either, make sure it’s organic so you avoid taking chemicals and pesticides into your body. After wheat, coffee is the second most sprayed commodity in the world. Restrict alcohol to a glass or two of good wine with a meal, once a day. Never eat a concentrated starch food with a concentrated protein food at the same meal. Eat fruit on its own, or leave at least 20 to 30 minutes between a fruit starter and the next course of your meal. You can pick and choose your own foods and make up your own menus once you get your head around these basic principles. Practice Conscientious Food Combining for a month and I think you’ll be delighted with how you look and feel. You can also say goodbye forever to mainstream medications designed to treat GERD—gastroesophageal reflux disease—with all their nasty side effects. Meanwhile your energy will just keep on building.

Fresh pressed apple, grape or carrot juice is like nectar from the gods compared to the bottled variety you can buy. And raw juices have remarkable healing properties. I was taught years ago by two doctors that they are not only great drinks for children, but ideal to give whenever a child is ill. Raw juices cannot be made in a food processor or blender. They require a special juice extractor - usually a centrifuge affair, into which you feed the fruits and vegetables as it chops them and spins out their precious juices. Then you are left with the juice which you drink and the pulp which you toss into the compost. The health-promoting properties of fresh juices depends on their being drunk live - that is, within a few minutes of being made - so that the oxidation process which sets in almost immediately does not destroy essential vitamins and enzymes. I find however that if you make a thermos full of juice and chill it immediately by filling it with ice cubes it will keep for several hours. Raw juices are by no means only valuable because of their therapeutic properties. Some - such as fresh apple, grape and pineapple - are also the best tasting drinks I've ever come across. Here are some of the most common juices and some of their uses: carrot An excellent juice, rich in beta-carotene which the body turns into vitamin A - an important nutrient in protecting from infection and in encouraging healing. It also contains vitamins C, D, E & K. apple A good cleanser, apple juice is believed to purify the blood and is useful as a general tonic. It contains vitamin C, many of the B complex vitamins and lots of potassium and folic acid. Apple juice also helps overcome any sort of digestive upset. Apple juice and carrot juice mixed together make a great all round drink - delicious! grape This juice is famous not only for its deliciousness but also for its natural sugars.

The media is suddenly obsessed with fasting. On one hand, this is a good thing. The right kind of fasting can be a tremendously powerful tool for rejuvenation, weightloss, restoring insulin sensitivity, promoting human growth hormone—the anti-aging hormone—and lots of other things. Fasting can clear your mind and body of what is preventing you from living your life on top form. What worries me is the way so many wild fasting practices have turned up recently. One day it’s a cure-all for everybody. The next it leads people to binge on junk foods. So what is all the buzz about? Fasting is a powerful tool. But it needs to be taken seriously, fully understood and carefully followed. In recent months I have had a number of people join our Cura Romana Journey or Inner Circle Gold on line programs who were in trouble after their metabolism became all screwed up by their having tried to follow one of the current fast-yourself-slim diets. This is a sad state of affairs. More unbiased information about fasting, its blessings and its drawbacks needs to be forthcoming. MY LIFE IN FASTING When it comes to fasting of all kinds I’d wager there are few who have researched and experimented with it as long as I have. I was introduced to the ancient tradition of fasting in my mid-twenties when I had been unwell for many years, and it changed my life. I first wrote about intermittent fasting more than thirty years ago in The Joy of Beauty. I’ve continued to research and write about it in many other books since. I became fascinated by the profound healing of body, mind and spirit that takes place when people fast wisely. I have done so many kinds of fasts—juice fasts, water fasts, fasts using nothing but free-form amino acids, and intermittent fasts. I’ve just about tried them all. I even did a 40 day fast on water then spent the last five days of it skiing at St Moritz. WAKE UP AND SMELL THE FLOWERS I remember well the healing physical effects of carrying out my very first fast. My head became clearer and clearer. After the first few days my vision was so sharpened it was as if I were looking at the world through a crystal glass. It’s impossible to describe the changes that took place in my thinking and my emotions during the fast. I can only say that the world looked different. I realized that there was so much beauty around me which I had continued to miss. Fasting made me stop and think, stop and feel. I found delight in the simplest of things—just sitting under a tree, washing vegetables, or combing my hair. Everything seemed important. I found I wanted to do everything with real awareness. I also gained a sense of distance from my own problems, enabling me to make the decisions facing me calmly and quietly. As a result, since then, whenever I feel myself hung-up over something or whenever I sense I’m not seeing things clearly, I will quietly fast—often just for a day or two until I feel clear again. To some people this may seem an eccentricity, but not, I believe, to anyone who has actually tried fasting. DAYS ON DAYS OFF The buzz now, however, is intermittent fasting. This form of fasting has many faces. Some are better than others. The most lauded at the moment is where you spend two or more days a week drinking water while during the rest of the week you eat “normally” either with or without a very low calorie diet for the purpose of losing weight. The right kind of fast, while eating the right kind of foods, is indeed capable of facilitating weight loss provided you are capable of following it religiously for several weeks, while your body shifts from a glucose-based metabolism to a fat-based metabolism. But, even with the best will in the world, very few people can carry out this exacting procedure for long enough to allow this important metabolic transformation to take place. The second problem with days-on-days-off fasting is that it tends to precipitate binge eating during eating days. Few people understand that if you want to benefit from the experience you must rigorously fast when you are meant to be fasting and avoid binge eating on the days when you do eat. It’s essential, too, that you alter the kind of foods you eat if you want good results both in terms of weight loss and enhanced health for the future. MUCH MORE EFFECTIVE The other way to practice intermittent fasting works much better. It is a lot easier to carry out and protects your body from unnecessary strain. Here’s how it works: Instead of the day-on-day-off practice, commit yourself to eating only during a specific window of time—say 8 hours— each and every day. This is convenient and do-able for almost anybody, and it protects you from bingeing. You do all your eating between, say, 11am and 7pm and have no food or drinks except clean water and herb teas in between. For example, you skip breakfast and make lunch your first meal of the day, and you don’t eat anything after 7pm that evening. How does it all work? It takes from six to eight hours for your body to burn stored glycogen in your tissues after eating carbohydrate foods. Once this happens, your system starts to turn towards fat as its primary fuel. After a few weeks of this time-restricted fasting, food cravings that may have dogged you for eons are likely to have disappeared. (And you can take organic coconut oil which is rich in short-chain fatty acids which are quickly broken down to deal with any food cravings.) But you absolutely must be choosy about the foods you eat during the hours that you are eating. Download my little book Healthy and Lean For Life to learn more about what kind of foods protect from weight gain, foster natural weight loss and create powerful protection from degenerative diseases. It is free on the home page of www.curaromana.com in the lower right-hand corner. SPONTANEOUS INTERMITTENT FASTING So natural a procedure is fasting that in some cases it can happen spontaneously. By the time most Cura Romana participants have completed 24 days on the Essential Spray+Food Plan part of their program, and are ready to move into Consolidation, they are already fasting intermittently. At this point in their program the body has been taken through a process of deep cleansing. Food cravings have long since disappeared. Control centers for appetite, emotions, and hormones are functioning well so their food preferences are now excellent. Quite spontaneously most participants choose to skip breakfast. They say they love the vital, empty feel this brings them. They don’t need to be taught how to do intermittent fasting, they just do it. What has happened to them is that their bodies have already become adapted to burning fat instead of glucose for energy. Unnatural hunger is gone and sugar addictions no longer exist. HEALTH PAYOFFS The benefits of this kind of intermittent fasting are many. The procedure of incorporating this practice into your life becomes easy and natural. It is the start of a new way of living and eating that helps protect us from degenerative conditions long into the future. Here are just a few of the benefits it brings: Insulin sensitivity increases. So does the efficiency of mitochondrial energy, helping to slow aging and disease. Stress resistance improves dramatically. Oxidative stress diminishes since the body’s proteins, nucleic acids and lipids are protected from much free radical damage. Next week we can delve further into fasting—intermittent and otherwise. We’ll look in greater depths at the powerful therapeutic potentials it can have for weight loss, metabolic improvements, even as an effective treatment for mental and emotional disorders. We’ll examine its spiritual dimensions as well as its advantages and disadvantages. Then we’ll clarify who should and who should not fast. See you then.

Early on in the twentieth century, a few scientists—mostly in Germany—experimented with chemicals as a means of fertilizing food crops. They found that a mixture of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium (NPK) would grow big yield crops of good-looking vegetables, grains, legumes and fruits. But little interest was taken in their discoveries until the end of World War II. At that time most foods were still grown pretty much as they had always been—by farmers who manured, mulched, and rotated their crops to keep soils rich and in good condition. To put it another way, most food was grown organically, although nobody had even coined the word; for this was no more than what traditional farmers throughout the world had done for thousands of years. MASS DESTRUCTION BEGAN HERE When the war ended, big chemical conglomerates who had been involved in the manufacture of phosphates and nitrates as war materiel found themselves stuck with huge stockpiles. They went looking for new markets. Aware of the early research into chemical fertilizing, they turned towards farmers, and began to sell them artificial NPK fertilizers at costs low enough to make it all look very attractive. These purveyors of chemicals also spread the false belief that NPK is all you need to grow healthy crops. There were unfortunately two very important facts that the chemical hawkers left out. Probably they did not even know. After all, it was not good for their profit margins to know. The first is that, although plants grow big on artificial fertilizers, they do not grow resistant to disease. The second is that the health of human beings eating food plants grown this way is, sooner or later, seriously undermined. CHEMICAL VICTIMS Plants grown only on NPK are deprived of essential minerals and other micro-substances they need to synthesize natural complexes in roots and leaves, which ward off attack by insects, weeds and animals. So before long the new artificially fertilized vegetables and fruits began to develop diseases. The chemical hawkers were quick to the rescue. The answer to this problem, they said, would be found in using more chemicals. That is how pesticides, herbicides, nemacides and fungicides came into being. They provided chemical companies with yet another exciting business opportunity—especially since the longer you fertilize chemically, the more depleted in organic matter your soils become, and the less they contain of the minerals and trace elements needed to synthesize natural protective complexes during growth, so the more pesticides you need. So as time went on, more and more pesticides and other chemicals were sold. Before long another important fact began torear its ugly head. It was this: like plants, human beings need a lot more than nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus from the foods they eat too, to maintain their own health. Your body cannot make minerals. It has to take them in, in a good balance, from the foods you eat. In addition to nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus, it requires magnesium, manganese and calcium, selenium, zinc, copper, iodine, boron, molybdenum, vanadium, and probably other elements as yet undiscovered as well, to stay healthy. These elements need to come from the foods you eat. Generally they do, when foods are grown organically in healthy, traditionally fertilized soils. But they are increasingly missing and unbalanced in the foods we buy today, thanks to our legacy of chemical farming. EARTH’S BLESSED CREATORS The organic matter in healthy soil is Nature's factory for biological activity. It is built up as a result of the breakdown of vegetable and animal matter by the soil's natural 'residents'—worms, bacteria and other useful micro-organisms. The presence of these creatures in the right quantity and type gives rise to physical, chemical and biological properties that create fertility in our soils and make plants grown on them highly resistant to disease. When it comes to human health, they do a lot more. The minerals and trace elements we need to look after our metabolic processes, on which health and leanness depend, must be in an organic form—that is, taken from living things like plant or animal foods. You cannot eat nails—inorganic iron—for instance, and expect to protect yourself from anaemia, or chew sand—inorganic silica—and be sure to get enough silica, the trace element that keeps your nails and hair strong and beautiful, and helps protect your bones from osteoporosis. It is the organic matter in soils that enables plants grown on them to transform inorganic iron and silica into the organic form which is taken up by the vegetables and fruits, grains and legumes. Destroy the soil's organic matter through chemical farming, and slowly but inexorably you destroy the health of people and animals living on foods grown on it. Eating food grown organically protects from significant mineral deficiencies, as well as from distortions in mineral balances. What few people realize is that an overload of one or more mineral elements alters your body’s ability to get enough of other minerals, undermining the people's health. No such protection is available when foods are chemically grown. So eat organic even if you have to grow your own foods in the garden or feed on sprouted seeds you grow in your kitchen window. Your body will bless you with energy, protection from early aging, and the sense of wellbeing that many long for but few as yet experience.

I once spent the night lying on a platform above an animal watering hole, staring into the vastness of space beholding the great, fathomless mystery of the African sky. Aaron, my youngest son, then three years old, lay curled up next to me like a kitten lost in his dreams. Dazzled by the inconceivable expanse of the sky whose darkness was so overcome with the light from billions of stars that lived in it, I lost myself in timelessness and infinity. That night, I came not to think or to wonder but to know, with absolute certainty in every cell and molecule of my body, that this cosmic world was not something separate from myself, nor I from it. We were, in a way I will never be able to understand rationally, one being. It was one of the greatest moments of my life. Like the proverbial iceberg, most of us live with the lion’s share of our potential for freedom, joy, creativity and authentic power submerged beneath a sea of unknowing. We go about our day-to-day duties and pleasures conscious only of what comes to us through our five senses. How does it taste and feel? What does it sound like? What do we see in front of our eyes? Meanwhile, beneath the vast ocean of consciousness that constitutes what it is to be fully human, our greater selves hibernate, waiting to be awakened. Sometimes—when we fall in love perhaps, or when we are faced with an event of life-shattering proportions like a critical illness or the death of a close friend—a submerged area of our being erupts in magic or horror, and often in surges of passion, energy and beauty. Then, for a time, the mundane quality of everyday life is replaced with a sense of expanded being. Not only do we feel more alive, we wake up to find that familiar things—the tree that stands outside a bedroom window, the cat that greets us when we come home each day, a simple shell we picked up and slipped into our pocket while walking on the beach—have taken on a luminosity which we can’t explain. Other times, without warning while listening to music or walking down a city street, we are suddenly gripped with a sense that the world is far greater than we ever imagined it to be, and a certainty that all we see around us somehow is us. While the experience lasts, everything seems right in the world. Then, like the sun at the point of setting, everything fades beneath the mundane horizon, leaving only the faintest wisp of color to remind us that we once stood in its glory, felt its rays on our bodies and knew that being at one with the universe brings a sense of meaning to our own life and to the lives of others that is simply indescribable. The greatest desire I have is to live my life conscious of the oneness to which we all belong. After all, the magnificence of that African sky not only stretches out to infinity above us, it lies within us, calling to us—asking us to discover that it is who we are.

What gives you charisma? The Chanel suit you wear? The car you drive? The way you've been taught to use your body or speak your words? Not really. Stylish or intoxicating as these things may be, they are ultimately externals—stuff put on from the outside. As such, they offer any man or woman little more than the appearance of charisma. And, like pastiche, appearances never deceive a discerning eye. What are the characteristics of real charisma? Where does it come from? How do you get it? And what is living with it all about? Charisma—the real McCoy—has unique qualities: Expansiveness, energy, joy, creativity. It is not only a way of being which calls forth all the powers at your disposal— from pragmatic to inspirational, from intellectual to intuitional. It's a natural way of relating to yourself, those you work with and play with—even to the planet itself. At its core, charisma is disarmingly simple yet immeasurably complex. Living your life with charisma is nothing more than living from a full and honest outpouring of individuality—that spirit that is unique to you. This unique nature, which every one of us has, most of us have to discover within us. And discovering it can be a lot of fun. How? In a myriad of ways—from the simple and playful, to the infinitely profound. Stop for a moment and think of the colors you like best, for instance. Think of how you choose to have your hair cut, or maybe the kind of make-up you wear (or choose NOT to wear). Charisma is explicit in the way you think and talk, in the deep values you embody, the dreams you dream and the things you create—whether they be works of art, intellectual or physical feats, or just your day-to-day ways of being. Charisma is also evident in the rhythms and fluctuations of your energies. How different are you on the tennis court, to when you hold a child in your arms, produce a piece of work, get involved in an intellectual discussion, or embrace a lover? In each of these circumstances, so long as you are true to yourself, you will have charisma—the originality of your essential being shines through. Connecting with that essence—your soul—coming to respect it and courageously choosing to live from it, brings charisma to birth naturally. Sometimes this can feel challenging; frequently it's exciting. It can even be amazing. As your innate charisma emerges, the externals of your life—the clothes, the cars, your preferences, the way you move, how you relate to your world around you—cease to be anything you have to think about or try to make happen. They unfold and develop naturally, beautifully, mysteriously—even organically—from within. And they become ever more honest and potent expressions of who, at the very core of your being, you are. Whatever forms or shapes your natural charisma takes, one quality permeates every facet of it: Aliveness. Radiant well-being develops, together with a sense of profound respect for yourself, just as you are. The more you dare to allow your unique nature to shine through, the more charisma you will have. And the simpler everything in your life becomes. In the 21st century crazy world we live in, we are bombarded by a litany of challenges. These include breathing polluted air, to interacting with the corrupt mainstream media trying to sell us things we don't need or want at prices we can ill afford as well as publishing false reports about events occurring in the world. All of this can feel as though it's contriving to interfere with our process of unfolding. I suggest that you take a decision now not to let any of this get in the way of discovering the essence of who YOU are. I believe that each of designed to become a creator in a new world—for ourselves as well as for the planet as a whole. I hope you will join me in the process of charisma unfolding and in discovering who, in essence, you are at the deepest levels of your being. For along with all the chaos and horror, suffering and loss that surrounds us, there is also great promise for a new way of living. Has there ever been a more perfect moment for your charisma to come into its own—both for yourself and those you care for? Join me in exploring the power of charisma . Set yourself free.