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I have little patience with the nonsense talked about cellulite. The prevailing opinion still seems to be that it is merely a ‘normal’ condition of 80-90% of post-pubertal females. The silly debates about whether or not it exists and the trivial yet often painful treatments designed to banish it miss the point. I have learned a lot about cellulite through working with women on Leslie Kenton’s Cura Romana®, many of whom have calmly told me when they start the program that nothing will help their cellulite. I have such a passion to lay bare the truth about cellulite, its cause and its cure that I have just finished a book on it which will be available on line in the next three months. In the meantime, I’m keen to share with you some important stuff related to it here. INTERNAL POLLUTION What they haven’t understood is that cellulite is no simple cosmetic problem of concern only to vain women who have been sold a bill of goods by the beauty industry. It is a sign that internal pollution is present in parts of your body which not only reduces your energy levels and mars physical beauty. These women are often shocked to experience their lumpy thighs transforming into sleek flesh while following my internet-based Cura Romana Journey Program. Here’s the bottom line: Whether or not you care passionately about having smooth sleek thighs, if you see cellulite developing you can be sure your body is telling you that something within needs attention. Just as the appearance of slime in a river bed indicates that the ecology of the earth is disturbed, a peau d'orange thigh tells a woman that the ecology of her body is out of whack and if you want to shed your cellulite nothing short of a revolution in body ecology is called for. END CRASH DIETS Many women with cellulite have gone on and off slimming diets where they lose weight then regain it in a cyclic pattern year after year. This does more than practically anything else to encourage the buildup of cellulite in the body. Crash dieting is the worst thing you can do if you want to get rid of cellulite. High-carb, low-fat diet programs result in your losing large quantities of water, electrolytes, minerals, glycogen stores and other fat-free tissue including muscle, with only minimal loss of fat from your body. Thanks to some very dodgy food dogma that came out in the 1960s, we’ve long been led to believe that a high-carb, low-fat way of eating is the right one for health, for energy, and to keep our bodies running properly. This will surprise you: IT JUST AIN’T TRUE! The rising rates of obesity and diabetes world-wide in the past half century attest to this fact. The powers-that-be, including most so-called scientists, the lion’s share of the medical profession and the mainstream media are still churning out the same old advice: “Eat carbs for energy and cut out the fat from your diet.” Ignore it. If you want to clear cellulite from your body, it’s time to wake up to the truth. REVOLUTIONARY STUFF Cellulite as well as weight gain and degenerative illness results from the carb-based foods we have been taught to eat—grains, cereals and all that packaged convenience stuff we have been devouring for half a century. High-carb, low-fat eating not only breeds puckered thighs, it depletes your vitality. It makes people who have inherited a tendency to put on weight obese. This way of eating is also largely responsible for the development of virtually all degenerative illnesses from heart disease, cancer, arthritis and the rest. If you want a lean, strong body, lots of energy and great protection against early aging, cool the carbs—you don’t need them. Instead, eat sufficient top-quality proteins, lots of green vegetables as well as…wait for it…THE RIGHT KIND OF FAT. Yes, the right kind of fat, provided your grains, cereals and sugars are kept very low indeed, can not only prevent cellulite, it can gradually eliminate it. Now this is revolutionary stuff. More about all this to come soon. BANISH TOXICITY Crash dieting depletes your body of its supply of nutrients that are necessary to fuel the exact metabolic processes on which the elimination of cellulite depends. It also breaks down the muscle tissue in your body on which firm flesh depends and gradually replaces it with fat and sludge which turns into more cellulite. In the process you can experience disturbances in blood sugar regulating mechanisms so you suffer periods of fatigue during the day and then have to fight with so-called 'will power' to keep from eating cookies and drinking coffee just to keep going (all of which further pollute your body, deplete your energy reserves and contribute to the buildup of yet more tissue sludge and cellulite). If losing fat needs to be part of your own anti-cellulite program stay away from conventional slimming programs. What is a desirable weight-loss program? It is one which transforms metabolism and teaches you how to prevent regain permanently. Take a look at my Leslie Kenton’s Cura Romana® programs (HURRY Get 10% off any of our Journey program before April 1st). These programs bring about rapid, hunger-free weight loss while at the same time building strong, sleek, firm muscles to replace the pockets of tissue sludge and cellulite so many people have gone on crash diets to try to get rid of. In the years that I have been mentoring people through Cura Romana, I have discovered that when you provide the body with what it needs in order to shed fat and heal itself, in time cellulite ceases to be a problem.

I cannot recommend sprouts highly enough. Not only can they be grown in your kitchen to provide delicious and inexpensive organic salads all year round, but they boast some extraordinary energy-giving properties. When a seed, pulse or grain begins to germinate, it becomes a wondrous energy factory, producing vast amounts of essential nutrients. For instance, the vitamin E content of wheat grains - already one of the best sources in nature - increases up to three times upon sprouting. The B2 content of oats rises by at least 1300 per cent. Apart from the vitamins, sprouts also contain considerable quantities of minerals and even protein, all in readily-assimilable form. The process of germination, like the process of digestion, converts complex energy reserves into the simple energy compounds needed for metabolism. Sprouts are in effect a 'predigested' food, so that when you eat them your body is able to absorb their nourishment. They are also rich in chlorophyll, which supports your body's production of hemoglobin (the oxygen carrying molecule in the blood), vital for cell energy metabolism. In just a few minutes a day, you can cultivate a continual sprout supply so that you never run out of fresh salad ingredients. One of the simplest ways to grow a variety of sprouts is as a mix. I particularly like a combination of alfalfa with lentil and mung. To this I occasionally add a few fenugreek or radish seeds for extra zest. Another of my favorites is wheatsprouts, which have a delicious chewy texture and nutty flavor. These I sprout on their own because they are ready so quickly - usually in 2-3 days. Incidentally, even someone with a food sensitivity to wheat can usually enjoy wheat sprouts problem-free, thanks to the changes that occur in the grain during germination. Leslie's sprout magic mix In a large glass jar place 6 tablespoons of alfalfa seeds and 2 tablespoons each of lentils and mung beans. Fill the jar with water and leave to soak for about 12 hours (or overnight). Drain the excess water away by placing a sieve over the neck of the jar, and then rinse and drain twice more. Divide the mixture between two (or more) jars so that there are no more than two inches of sprouts in each. This way your sprouts will have room to breathe and grow. Rinse and drain the sprouts twice a day. Alternatively, take a seed tray and line it with paper kitchen towels, then spread the sprout mix over the bottom of it. Simply spritz the sprouts with water from a plant spray twice a day and stir them around gently for aeration. After 4-6 days, when the alfalfa seeds have developed little green leaves, the mix is ready to harvest. Rinse the sprouts well and drain. Store them in the fridge in an airtight container or in sealed polythene bags, to be used abundantly in salads and other vegetable dishes.

Your body. A burden? A joy? An object to be admired and pampered? A source of shame better neglected and hidden? Both men and women are funny about their bodies. The media is full of advice on how we are supposed to look, smell and feel, how we should exercise, reshape, renew and bring our bodies into line with consensus values about size and shape. Seldom is much of it of use. For most of what is written and taught about the body comes from the prevalent (albeit unconscious) notion of the body as thing. Carried in the wake of this mechanistic approach to the body, which books, magazines and media programs take, is the notion that every human being needs the same sort of food, the same sort of exercise, the same sort of treatment. Nothing could be further from the truth. Your body is most assuredly not a thing. It is a living energetic organism which in its shape and form and texture has become a reflection of your attitudes towards yourself and becomes a map for the way you live as a result. If you feel uneasy about your body, or foreign from it, or narcissistic about it, this shows in how you look, behave, and in the way you limit your experience of joy and creativity in day-to-day life. Shift those attitudes and gradually you will alter the way you look and feel dramatically. We forget that the body is also the medium through which each human being experiences all reality - from the most exciting theoretical thought to the most instinctual animal passion. This is an important theme I want to explore in depth in future blogs. I want to share with you ways of setting the body free from all that binds it and therefore all of us from whatever restricts us from feeling fully alive and free just to be who we are—instead of trying to fit in with consensus reality and other people’s rules. Anybody who has read anything I have written, or been to one of my workshops, or taken a CURA ROMANA JOURNEY with me, knows I have zero tolerance for blind conformity and a passion for authentic freedom. Guess what...the greatest joy for any of us is beginning to live out this kind of authenticity is experienced, not in your mind but through your physical body.

When I was six years old I had my first love affair. Yes, really. Of course, not until years later did I recognize the experience for what it was. But like every first love, it changed my life forever. My father was a jazz musician so our house was equipped with the best possible sound equipment. Both he and I loved to listen to music—just about any music—at full volume. This my mother could not stand—which made it something even more exciting. While my playmates roamed the hills of Hollywood skinning their knees, I would lie on my belly in the living room, listening to music at full blast. THE MAGIC BEGINS One day, combing through our vast supply of records, I came upon Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring.” It meant nothing to me, but I liked the colors on the cover, so I put it on the record player, turned up the volume and flopped in front of our huge speakers. Strange, mysterious, often discordant sound flooded my body, opening a secret door to somewhere deep inside me. It was a place I had never been before. I did not even know it existed. I trembled with fear and excitement as the music wound its way into me. I flushed hot and then cold; my heart raced then calmed. I lost all sense of place and time as I rode the waves of an imaginal sea into unexplored worlds, too numerous to identify. ONE WITH STILLNESS I have no idea how long this lasted. Before long, even the “boat” carrying me along, and all the images that came with it, had dissolved like sugar in water. Then, in perfect union, the sounds and child-that-had-been-me swirled into a vortex, becoming lost in each other. We shared excitement, fear, longing, fierceness and sadness. Like lovers, we had come together—music and child—in an immediate, passionate, all encompassing union. Eventually I found myself at the centre of this whirlpool. There, even the ecstasy of the movement vanished. Like Alice down the rabbit hole, I tumbled—not into Wonderland, but into that place of unspeakable stillness. Zen practitioners claim this place is available at every moment to each one of us. For me it was an indescribable event—beyond space, beyond time, outside thought. Here I knew, without the slightest possibility of ever being able to describe it, that everything was exactly as it should be. In the words of Zen Master Daisetz Suzuki, it is a place where I would eat when I am hungry, sleep when tired. I knew that “it was fine yesterday and today it is raining.” Or, in the words of Julian of Norwich, that “All things shall be well, and all things shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.” My affair with Stravinsky lasted more than four hours. At least that’s what my mother said. “Don’t tell me you are still listening to that awful music.” She had to raise her voice to be heard above the sounds. “For God’s sake, turn it off. Do something useful.” MY USEFUL LIFE So I did something useful. I went to school, then to university where I learned at least some of what you are supposed to learn. I earned praises for good marks, went to work, won prizes, gave birth to four children, wrote books, gave talks and made television programmes. In effect I did what millions of men and women do—became the breadwinner, the carer, the nurturer of others’ lives. And I loved it. Yet through all the years between six and now, my passion for music, painting, books, poetry, architecture and design never left me. Far from it. During most of those years, my longing not only to experience the emptiness that listening to Stravinsky had brought me that day—an epiphany, and the experience of being fully alive for the first time in my life—but also to create things: books, films, relationships, and to explore physical places, inviting me to move beyond thoughts to a place of unity with the rest of the universe. They kept gnawing at my gut. They would not go away, just as the urge to breathe never goes away no matter how long we hold our breath. SIX YEAR OLD WISDOM That day, when I lay on the floor lost in Stravinsky, without realizing it I had decided that what interested me most was the beauty of art—whether it be music, words, film, stories, sculpture, buildings or what-have-you. Why? Certainly not because I had any idea that art was supposed to be valued since it was part of what grown-ups called culture. I knew nothing about either. I could not have cared less. After all, I was a kid who, when I was not entranced by what I was seeing, hearing, feeling or touching, spent the rest of my day learning card tricks, wrestling with my rough Collie, and trying (unsuccessfully) to sell packets of chewing gum my grandfather brought me to neighbors’ kids. Nope—I loved the beauty and wonder of art in all its many forms because, unlike the world around me, with which I seemed to have little in common, it had always grabbed hold of me and would not let me go. It demanded of me both a submission and an active participation in the making of it. TIMELESS REALITY What I did not know, and this took me scores of years to come to understand, is that the rabbit hole into which I had accidentally tumbled at six is described by every culture and religion in the world in one form or another. Nor had I any idea that, at any moment in time, anywhere in the world, regardless of the circumstances of our lives, it is available to each of us. To Zen Buddhists, this wordless, timeless space represents ultimate reality—that which can only be sampled through immediate experience. In Suzuki’s words, “For the sake of those crucial experiences Zen Buddhism has struck out on its own paths which, through methodical immersion in oneself, lead to one’s becoming aware, in the deepest ground of the soul, of the unnameable Groundlessness and Qualitylessness—nay more, to one’s becoming one with it.” ANNIHILATION AND RENEWAL It is a state in which nothing is thought or contrived, longed for or expected. It reaches out in no particular direction, yet it knows itself able to handle the possible as well as the impossible. Concentrated, yet so expanding is its potential, such power is both purposeless and egoless. As such, it is often called truly spiritual. Why? I suspect because it is charged with an awareness that spirit is present everywhere. The universe and all that is created is never attached to place or time. In such a state, because the cosmos is present everywhere, we too are present everywhere. We have direct experience of and access to the power that continues to create the universe itself. And, like water flowing through the river, we have full access to that power of creation to use in our own lives, in whatever way we choose. DOORWAY TO BLISS The Sufis call this state fana—the annihilation of your individual selfhood. When we experience fana, our everyday personality becomes transparent, so the larger being that we are shines through. You become fully absorbed in the all-encompassing fascination of the moment—textures, nuances... Cutting edge physicists speak of a holographic universe in which we live but seldom access because we are plagued by endless mental concepts which blind us to reality. They also blind us to the experience of Samadhi—“a non-dualistic state in which the consciousness of the subject becomes one with the experienced object.” This state of selfless absorption and total surrender is characteristic of children when left alone to follow their instincts. Yet it is available to each one of us, regardless of age. Honoring whatever brings us bliss in our own lives opens the door to it.

Freedom has always fascinated me.  I love the smell of the word.  I like its sense of possibility.  I taste freedom when I listen to the music of Aaron Copland – music that could only have been written in a country which once had vast prairies and seemingly infinite wilderness.  I feel it in my body when I run along cliffs in the rain.  I rejoice in the sense of it that comes when, after hours of shifting dead words and sentences, something suddenly comes alive and beauty spills out all over the page.   OUTER FREEDOM In an outer way, to be free means to enjoy liberty of action under a government which is not despotic and does not encroach on individual human rights.  In an inner way to be free means becoming liberated from the relentless forces of doubt, self-criticism and fear which we all inherit growing up in emotional and educational environments which split our mind from our body and teach us not to trust ourselves.  They teach us to put our faith in “experts”.  They teach us neither to honor the splendor of the individual human soul,nor do they tell us that the universe is filled with compassion which we can draw on whenever we need support and power which we can direct to create whatever we want. EXPLOITATION It makes me laugh to see the way our commercial world tries to sell the experience of freedom:  Freedom?  It means wearing a top of the range pair of Levi’s doesn’t it?  Sipping white rum on a tropical beach with a sexy lover.  Taking a 100 miles an hour ride on a Harley across the desert at sunset.  Or surfing that seventh wave.  On film these things carry the freedom buzz.  For a little while they let us imagine the real thing, even though they are only a pale facsimile of it.  These days we get offered freedom in all sorts of ‘packages’.  They range from TV ads offering telephone sex, to weekend seminars promising instant enlightenment. Some people, in their search for freedom, end up sniffing cocaine. Others dance all weekend at a festival.  A few turn to philosophy or look for freedom in ancient religious practices.  They head off to India or to California to sit at the foot of the guru and hope that somehow he will hand it to them.  All of these things—from rum and cocaine to raves and yoga—offer a taste of freedom.  Some—like drugs and alcohol—are more transitory than others.  When they wear off, so does the sense of liberation they once promised, to be replaced by a post-freedom hangover.  Others, like transpersonal psychology, or Mahayana Buddhism run deeper.  The freedom they offer is slower in the making but it lasts longer.  Every experience of freedom brings with it a sense of being released from imprisonment – of being able, even for a short time, to respond to life spontaneously with the whole of your being. Look up the verb to free in the dictionary.  It will tell you it means to release from bondage or constraint, to deliver, to disentangle from obstruction or encumbrance.  And quite right.  When we talk of freedom we often speak of it as freedom from.  Money worries for instance, or responsibility.  Sometimes we tell ourselves, ‘If only I had this or didn’t have that, then I’d be free’.  Other times we indulge in dreams of freedom—sailing across great expanses of sea with the wind in our hair, or crossing the Sahara on a camel, or building a wooden hut in the woods and living there, or partying until dawn every night.  Yet how many times have we gone on vacation to be ‘free of our worries’ only to find we packed them in the suitcase under the new underpants? FREE FROM WITHIN Like the proverbial iceberg, most of us live with the lion’s share of our potential for freedom, joy, creativity and 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, the submerged area of our being erupts in magic or horror, in surges of passion, energy and beauty.  Then for a time the mundane quality of our everyday life is replaced with a sense of expanded being.  We not only feel more alive, we wake up to find that familiar things—the tree that stands outside a bedroom window, a cat that greets us when we come home each day, the simple shell we picked up and slipped into our pocket while walking on the beach, have taken on a luminosity that we can’t explain.   Other times without warning, while listening to music or walking down a city street, we are suddenly hit with a feeling that the world is far greater than we ever imagined it to be, or a sense that all we see around us somehow is us – we are all part of the same stuff.  While the experience lasts everything seems right in the world.  Then, like the sun at the point of setting, it all fades beneath the mundane horizon leaving only the faintest wisp of color to remind us that we once stood in its glory, felt the rays of the sun upon our bodies and knew that sense of being at one with the universe which makes every struggle seem to have a meaning. SET OURSELVES FREE In the next few months I intend to explore in this blog the nature of authentic freedom, where it comes from, how we access it within ourselves and help foster it in others. Never in recorded human history have there been greater forces attempting to undermine individual human values and crush human freedom. I choose to look upon the forces that want to limit our lives, drain us of our health and our self-esteem and turn us into sheep, as worthy opponents. The burgeoning Orwellian world in which we now live can become the worthy opponent which awakens us to our deepest values and spurs us to access the strength to fulfill them. Together I believe we find our way through all this to greater freedom than we have ever known and the birth of new life. Let’s do it. Watch this space...

For generations European experts in natural medicine and top athletes have been masters at using hydrotherapy to vitalise, restore strength, regenerate and rejuvenate the body. Yet few of us anglo-saxons have been privy to their secrets. It’s time you learned about them. You’ll it once you do. Hydrotherapy is a powerful external tool for rejuvenation. The Germans are masters of it. Thanks to the electrical properties of water, using alternate hot and cold water on your body can alter the electrical charges of its molecules in the body—particularly the low-level voltages which regulate lymphatic drainage—by alternately increasing and decreasing them. In physiological terms this opens up your capillaries increasing blood flow and helping to stimulate the elimination of wastes through your blood and lymph systems. It also relaxes and tones muscles and heightens your overall vitality. Hydrotherapy - Blitz guss Hydrotherapy in one form or another is a must both for helping to prevent cellulite and for restoring cellulite-riddled tissues to normal. It enhances circulation, eliminates stored wastes, increases energy exchange on a cellular level and even heightens immunity. The best water treatment for cellulite is the traditional German Blitzguss. The classic Blitz Guss needs to be done by a professional but you can get much of the same effecta and benefits in the shower yourself at home—especially if you have a hand held shower which you can direct on different parts of your body. Here’s what to do Take a three minute hot shower so you skin is really glowing. Then turn off the hot and immediately turn on the cold water so it flows on you face and down your shoulders and arms, your chest and belly and back then down your legs but for no more than 30 seconds. Now go back to 2 to 3 minutes of hot shower followed by 30 seconds of a cold then back to hot again and so on. You repeat this process three times, always finishing off with 30 seconds of cold water. If 30 seconds seems a daunting length of time in cold water at the beginning only do 15 seconds of cold followed by 2 to 3 minutes of hot three times finishing off with cold. You’ll be surprised at how quickly you want to adapt to the full 30 seconds I suspect. When you get out of the shower, dry yourself briskly with a thick soft towel. The main reason you always finish your Blitz Guss with cold is that this stimulates warmth in your skin and whole body. It will surprise you just how warm and enlivening this experience can be. which leaves you glowing with life. How Good You Feel Once you get used to your Blitz Guss protocol you are you’re going to be surprised at how good you feel and how vital. Never do a Blitz Guss just before bed or you more likely to feel so energetic that you can’t sleep. And, of course, if you have a pacemaker or any sort of heart issue or other condition it is essential that you check with your health practitioner and get his or her OK before you try it. Be brave and give it a go. I thik you’re going to love the experience.

Your skin doesn’t age by accident or just because time passes. It loses tone and texture when the order, energy, physiological and biological integrity of your body’s living matrix becomes undermined. Many factors can cause this to happen. But none is more insidious or sinister than chronic high levels of blood sugar and insulin which now threaten the majority of the population of the developed world. Stop this from happening to your own body, and you can not only slow skin aging. You can reverse its signs. You will also help yourself avoid degenerative illnesses and prevent weight gain. WHISPERS FROM THE DEAD Sugar destroys your skin. And I don’t just mean the white stuff that sits in bowls. Most of the foods we eat these days—from pasta and bread to packaged cereals and bagels—within a few minutes of entering the body flood the bloodstream with glucose. The reasons for this are simple and genetic. Yet for almost four generations, they have continued to elude most scientists, nutritionists, government bodies such as the FDA, and doctors. Grain-based foods and sugary foods are a recent invention. For over a million years of evolution, the human body never encountered them. Because genetic adaptation is a slow process—it can take one hundred thousand years for a significant alteration in even one gene to take place—our bodies do not have the ability to deal with sugars and starches in quantity for long periods. Yet such foods form the majority of stuff that people buy and eat. Our packaged convenience foods are based on them. Most are also riddled with junk fats and chemicals. These days, even smoked salmon and luncheon meats have sugars added to them. These manufactured products make up the largest portion of most people’s diets. When the body is forced to handle them (and most governments are still trying to sell us the false notion that a high-carb diet is good for health), it rebels. What form this insurrection takes depends on our genetic vulnerabilities. For some, it can show up as adult onset Type II diabetes. Others get fat and experience energy swings, high blood pressure, distorted cholesterol issues, and/or chronic fatigue. When it comes to skin, these carbs and sugar itself fabricate wrinkles, sags, puffy faces and lackluster complexions. This produces a situation where, even when you know all of this, you can find yourself with so little energy that you wonder if you are able to do anything about it. THE WRINKLE MONSTER When it comes to carbs and sugars, the wrinkle monster is two faced. To escape his insidious attacks, you need to understand and conquer both. First there is the all-encompassing glucose-insulin battle you need to win, probably after years of living and eating the way that, for the past 60 years, we have been urged to do by the powers-that-be. The monster’s second face focuses on the way excess glucose damages the body’s proteins. It attacks skin cells and collagen fibers leading to what are known as advanced glycosylation end products or AGEs. These nasties act like terrorists, wreaking havoc within your living matrix. AGEs cause the skin’s collagen proteins to cross-link, producing wrinkles, sags and bags on your face. Defeat the first face of the wrinkle monster and the second loses a lot of its power. Your skin will respond by literally rejuvenating itself. So will your whole body, and in medically measurable ways too. ALL POWERFUL HORMONE Insulin is the most important hormone in determining how quickly or slowly your body ages. This was one of the most important discoveries made during the past half-century. It began with the work of a brilliant American endocrinologist named Gerald Reaven. In the 1980s, Reaven identified a collection of abnormalities—high blood pressure, distorted cholesterol levels, and others which physicians commonly worry about, as they are viewed as biomarkers of illness and aging. These abnormalities, which generally occur together, have now reached epidemic proportions. They are major triggers in the development of degenerative diseases from heart disease and diabetes to including the dreaded skin-wrinkling and rapid aging. Professor Reaven named this collection of abnormalities Syndrome X—insulin resistance syndrome—which is now more widely known as Metabolic Syndrome. Although this condition often remains hidden to the person who falls prey to it, Metabolic Syndrome is a life-threatening, rapidly aging, perversion of body metabolism which we bring on ourselves—in small part by a sedentary lifestyle, but, most important of all, by having lived for decades on a carbohydrate and sugar-intensive diet. What is scary is that 95 percent of the population of English speaking countries still do. WORTHY OPPONENTS In your body, insulin and sugar are antagonists. In other words, they are meant to balance each other metabolically. All carbohydrate foods—from muffins to breads, cereals and packaged convenience foods—turn into glucose when you eat them. Insulin has two jobs to perform: First, when glucose from these foods enters the bloodstream, it is supposed to control blood sugar levels. Second, it is meant to see that glucose gets turned into the energy your body needs for health. In a healthy body, where blood sugar is balanced and in control, you have a good supply of ongoing energy. You don’t suffer from energy or mood swings during the day or at certain times of the month. It is insulin secreted from the pancreas which manages this. It responds to the level of glucose present in the blood from moment to moment. The more glucose there is, the more insulin it secretes to balance it. The less glucose present, the less insulin gets shunted into your blood. MASTER OF ENERGY Insulin’s second job is equally important. It has to do with getting all this circulating sugar into your body’s cells, where little energy factories there known as mitochondria can turn it into ATP—the currency your body uses to run metabolic processes, to make hormones, to repair damage to DNA and keep the body functioning well. The way it does this is interesting. On the surface of each cell there are receptor sites specifically for insulin. They are like locks that only the “key”, namely insulin, can open, so that this important pancreatic hormone can carry out its second major task: Escorting glucose inside the cell so its mitochondria can get on with their energy-producing. It’s a great system. But it was never designed to handle the onslaught of carbs and sugar which, for three or four generations, we’ve been forcing it to handle. After years of breakfast cereals and toast, sugary sweets and treats, the pancreas is forced to produce so much insulin in an attempt to limit high levels of sugar in the blood that it becomes trigger-happy. Day after day, month after month, it secretes so much of the hormone. This continually forces blood sugar to drop too low, which causes those awful 11 AM and 3 PM blues. We get hungry, eat more carbs—trying to get back our energy—and wonder why we suffer. The pancreas can also grow weary of the task after a while and give out. HERE’S WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE When high levels of unused glucose circulate in your body, they seriously disrupt the functions of the living matrix and cause rapid aging of skin and the whole body. For when glucose cannot be turned into energy in your body, it poisons it. Habitual eating of high-carb meals and snacks shunts massive doses of glucose into your bloodstream. In an effort to maintain balance, the pancreas produces more insulin, keeping insulin levels too high for too long. This creates insulin resistance, interfering with your body’s ability to turn glucose into energy. You feel fatigued, may gain weight easily, become prone to cellulite and develop the medical abnormalities associated with Metabolic Syndrome. This also stimulates your liver to produce more triglycerides and pour them into your bloodstream. All this can produce mood swings and hormonal distortions. This distorts cholesterol levels and balance, increasing your risk of heart disease. It also bombards fat cells with extra calories they need to find a place for. If you are genetically prone to weight gain, you not only grow fat. You find it more and more difficult to shed weight. This in turn creates yet more insulin resistance, and can even start destroying the insulin-secreting cells of the pancreas. The energy, chemistry and physiology of the living matrix become disrupted. Cells no longer receive clear communications in this polluted medium. They become unable to effectively do the jobs they are meant to do. Skin shows the effects of all of this. It loses radiance, thins, sags, wrinkles and ages rapidly. Blotches appear. Spots, too, if you are genetically prone to them. You start to look tired, old beyond your years and, before long, you start to feel as bad as you look. Sorry for this long list of bad news. But it is important that you get a handle on how all this happens. The good news is you can actually reverse all of this by altering the kinds of foods you eat. DO WE NEED CARBS? A diet high in cereals, grains and sugars (the diet of 90% of the Western world) is the fastest way to ruin skin, get ill, age rapidly and get fat. Grains and sugars can undermine your immune system and make you susceptible not just to colds, but to degenerative diseases such as diabetes, cancer, arthritis, and coronary heart disease. Now, this is revolutionary stuff—as yet it’s known only to an elite few. On learning all of the above, the question most often asked is this: “Is a diet that is mostly or completely lacking in cereal-based, grain-based, sugar-based carbohydrates a healthy way of eating?” It’s little wonder that most of us don’t know this. For more than half a century, we’ve been told that we need lots of carbs for health and energy. WE DO NOT! Eating a diet that is low in convenience foods and grain-based, sugar-based, cereal-based carbohydrates but rich in low-sugar fruits and green vegetables, plus good quality proteins and good fats—coconut oil, butter from grass-fed cows and extra-virgin olive oil—ensures that you are never going to have a shortage of fuel for your body, nervous system or brain. You will not have to wrestle with insulin resistance, food cravings, blood-sugar-related health problems, weight gain or a poorly functioning immune system. What such a way of eating can do to regenerate and rejuvenate skin and slow skin wrinkling, sagging and spotting is little short of fabulous—no matter what your age.

If you want to enrich your life immeasurably, make friends with the sacred. It is everywhere. You don’t need to travel to Stonehenge or Machu Pichu to discover it. Nor do you need to swallow some consciousness-altering drug. Sacred power continually pours forth from the center of the universe. It is simultaneously here and now, while also everywhere, at any time. Trouble is, most of us have become blinded by the mechanically-oriented worldview that pervades our technologically-driven culture. So we have forgotten how to see it. Rediscovering the sacred is the simplest thing in the world. It happens through a shift of consciousness—a break in time and space, if you like, through which you can experience the sacred realms come into being. Often this takes place spontaneously. It is given by grace. But anyone can also create structures in their life which invite this to happen. Organize the space you live and work in, for instance, to make a place in your life for rituals which honor the radiance of the world around you and within you. Doing this can be a lot of fun, too. Think of it as an adventure, a game, a childlike exploration into expanded awareness. A SACRED ADVENTURE My first experience of the sacred as an adult took place when I was 18 years old—just finishing my second year at Stanford University. Five months earlier, I had fallen in love for the first time with a man three years older. Then I found myself in the unenviable position of having to leave him to live in New York. I knew it would be a long time before we met again—if ever. We had one day to spend together in San Francisco before my plane left. We went for a walk in Golden Gate Park. I had been in the park many times before, visiting the Japanese garden or the museum. But I’d never paid much attention to what was around me, except in the vague way we all appreciate being amidst trees, grass and flowers. That morning, the realm of the sacred cracked wide open for me. As he and I wandered across grass, through trees, knowing that in a few hours we would no longer be together, it felt as though death were sitting on my shoulder. I had no idea why. The love between us had arisen simultaneously a few months before. From the moment we met, both of us had experienced the sense that it was a bond that had always existed and always would. I loved this man with an intensity I had never dreamed possible. I could hardly bear the fire that burned in me when we touched, let alone the surges of power that happened when he held me in his arms. CRACK IN THE COSMOS In the park that morning, we crossed a road and stepped up on to the curb. In front of us a group of old men were bowling on the green. They were dressed in the shabby clothes the old sometimes wear—garments which, like old friends, you have lived with so long you don’t want to be parted from. None of the men paid the least attention to us, absorbed as they were in their game. All at once, the scene before me shifted from that of a pleasant ordinary morning spent in nature—nice trees, green grass, a small knoll behind the old men rising to a copse above—to something at once blissful and completely terrifying. Space expanded in all directions. A million tiny holes appeared in reality—each emitting light—so that the air and grass, the pavement we had just crossed, the bodies of the men in their shabby clothes, the clouds above us, and the trees around us trembled with a strange radiance. Time burst wide open, breaking in great waves over the lawn. I couldn’t tell if this strange experience lasted for a few moments or for hours. My heart swelled to immense proportions. I had no idea what was happening, since I had never experienced anything like this before. It seemed totally crazy—as though, at the same time, I had been wiped out and brought into being in a brand new form. When an experience of the sacred arises spontaneously—often at times of great emotional joy or loss—it is both blissful and awe-filled. In whatever guise it shows itself, the sacred is a far cry from any ‘orchestrated’ experience of pink-flowers-and-soft-music which purveyors of false freedom and all their easy answers offer us. It is an experience full of beauty and terror, fascination and majesty. In the presence of such overwhelming wonder, you find yourself standing before a mystery that is wholly other. I knew nothing about what was happening that morning in Golden Gate Park. Only that an epiphany had occurred that day, and that I wanted to live a lot of my life from this level of being in the future. MYSTERIUM TREMENDUM In 1917, Rudolf Otto published one of the most important books on spirituality ever written, Das Heilige—The Sacred. In it, he describes the awe-inspiring mystery (mysterium tremendum) which we feel in the presence of sacred energy. He characterizes it as a perfect fullness of being, a flowering which dissolves away our conditioned thinking and breaks down all the barriers to being fully present in the moment. Every time we are touched by the sacred, the experience urges each of us to live a little more of our life from the deepest levels of our being. Make room in your life for the sacred, and you can make a quantum leap towards authentic freedom and creative power. Otto characterizes the qualities of the sacred as numinous—from the Latin numen, meaning god. For they are brought about by the sudden revelation of an aspect of divine power within the paraphernalia of our day-to-day lives. Such is the nature of the sacred when it enters our life. One minute, you’re waiting for a bus or standing beneath a tree you have stood under a hundred times before. The next minute, this tree has suddenly become altogether something else. It has been transmuted in some mysterious way into an expanded, luminous reality. Of course, it is still a tree both to you and to everybody else standing there. In fact, nothing in particular may distinguish this particular tree from all the other trees on the street. Yet because, at that moment, it has chosen to reveal itself more fully to you, your immediate experience of it becomes transfigured. It feels as though the tree has revealed its secret nature to you. It has become a repository of all that is awesome—so much so that, often, experiencing the sacred makes it hard just to catch your breath. For a time, it can even make you wonder who you are and what on earth you are doing there. JOY IN THE NUMINOUS Another great philosopher of the sacred is religious philosopher Mircea Eliade. Eliade calls the manifestation of the sacred—during which the numinous realms open to reveal themselves—an hierophany. This is a great word. For it does not imply any religious or philosophical bias that would indicate you need to belong to some in-group to have a right to sacred experience. Hierophanies belong to everyone who has eyes to see and ears to hear. In early civilizations, hierophanies were common occurrences. In the tribal cultures that still remain, they are to this day—in fact, wherever people live with an awareness of the magnificence hidden within the most ordinary of things. To them, rocks are sacred, as is the wind, stars, earth, animals, the changes of the seasons, the sun and the rain, the birth of a child, the death of an elder. Wherever you discover an awareness of the sacred, you will also find rituals for celebrating it—rituals which set the stage for hierophanies to happen more often. WE FEAR THE SACRED Most of the modern world feels profoundly uneasy about such experiences. We are the only known age in history that lives almost entirely in a desacralized culture. Limited worldviews imprison us, forcing us to live an almost totally profane existence. A tree is nothing but a tree. Wind is but movement of air, caused by nothing more than mechanical shifts in currents. As far as rocks are concerned, what could possibly be more mundane? We make fun of “primitive” people and their “quaint” superstitions. We often exploit their land and force the values of our materialistic world on them. What we forget is this: Cultures for whom the sacred appears through ordinary objects know very well that a rock is a rock. They don’t venerate the rock itself, or the wind. They worship the hierophanies which appear as these things to reveal the essential spirit of each—something vast in its beauty. They know that whenever and wherever the sacred erupts into the mundane world, no matter what form it takes, a deeper, wider, richer dimension of reality is inviting them to dance with its power and celebrate its beauty. EXPAND YOUR REALITY Most of us have to relearn how. Once we do, we find our lives continually renewed, energized, and ecstatic. It is as though a wild blessing has been given – a blessing which nourishes and heals us. In The Sacred and the Profane, Eliade speaks of the basic need we as humans have, ‘to plunge periodically into this sacred and indestructible time…the eternal present.’ It is a need so deeply ingrained in our being that, when we are unable to fulfill it from time to time, we end up living in a nihilistic wasteland. Our lives become narrow, no matter how many fast cars we buy, how many drugs we take, how many lovers we have. Eating, sex, and getting up in the morning become nothing more than physiological events in a mechanical world. Reawakening an awareness of the sacred in your own life and making room for it turns these events into much more than largely mechanical actions. Each can evolve into a ‘sacrament’—the meaning of which is communion with the sacred. Once it does, our capacity for vitality, joy and creativity goes on expanding. FREEDOM’S GATEWAY Welcoming the sacred into your life is the first step in opening a door to authentic freedom. It is not hard. All of us knew how as children. Then our educational system with its emphasis on the rational, the abstract and mass conformity has taught us to forget it. It taught us to be ‘serious’, to ‘work hard’, not to ‘daydream’, not to ‘be silly.’ Luckily, like learning to ride a bicycle, you never really lose the skill. To recover your own lost ability to bring hierophanies into your life, you need only remember what you have temporarily forgotten and begin to play again. Nature is a great carrier of sacred power for us. This is because the energies of nature, in which we have lived as human beings throughout four million years, are our energies. Our bodies and our beings literally communicate through our DNA with those of plants and animals. At a cellular level, our bodies know the familiar taste of herbs and smells of the earth. It’s a knowing built right into our being. When we interact with nature, we align ourselves with her power, coming into harmony with the different directions and the energies she carries, as well as with all the elements—air, fire, water and earth. By making friends with the living world around us, whether this means going out into the fields, by the sea, into the hills, woods or mountains, the sacred opens itself to us. If you are a city dweller, learning to dialogue with any natural object in your environment—a rock, a flower, even the food you eat, opens consciousness to the sacred. The gifts this brings when we do are limitless.

The idea that stress is all bad is patent nonsense. As human beings we would be little more than vegetables without stress in our lives. Also, and most important, the more committed we are to the lives we are leading and the more right they are for us, the less likely we are to suffer the ravages of stress. Nevertheless we worry about stress, wonder about it, and wish it would go away. Yet seldom do we even stop to ask what it is. Little wonder. For stress is complicated even to define. YOU NEED STRESS TO LIVE The word stress comes from the language of engineering, meaning “any force which causes an object to change.” In engineering the specific change caused by stress is known as strain and there are four possible kinds: torsion, tensile, compression and sheering. In human terms the strain is you body's response to physical, chemical, emotional or spiritual forces, asking in some way that you adapt to them. As we learn this art, we also discover a great secret: How stress can become the spice of life, the exhilaration of challenge and excitement, the high of living with heavy demands on you and and thriving. For, like the tempering process involved in the production of a piece of good steel, once you make a friend of stress, forces which had seemed to be working against you become positive energies that define you, strengthen you and help you express your own brand of creativity and joy. This is one of the great gifts that stress has to offer. Without physical and mental challenges your body would become feeble and you would never feel the excitement and creative energy which are such an important part of wellbeing. But too much stress can be a killer since stress, or rather the inability to cope with it, is the common denominator in all disease states. It is also a strong contributing cause in almost every illness to which we are susceptible. Develop methods for neutralizing the negative effects of stress and you can begin to thrive on its positive aspects. TOSS OUT THE PILLS Drug-based therapy is not the answer: the a million tons of Valium swallowed each year, as well as sleeping pills and other tranquillizers, produce unpleasant and dangerous side-effects ranging from addiction to acute rage, withdrawal, long-term worsening of anxiety symptoms, sub-clinical vitamin and mineral deficiencies, aggressiveness and even acute psychotic episodes. New evidence indicates that taking tranquillizers may also encourage the growth of tumours, impair neuromuscular coordination and make takers more prone to road accidents. Quite apart from the detrimental effects these drugs exert on mind and body, the fact that they treat only the symptoms of overload and do absolutely nothing towards eliminating the causes, means they can never make a positive contribution to wellbeing. What’s worse, relying on pills weakens your ability to cope with life and undermines your autonomy and your self-esteem. QUICK ENERGY NOW It is actually possible to breathe in energy whenever you feel burdened with worry and fatigue. Try this for a couple of minutes: Close your eyes. Breathe slowly and deeply from your diaphragm, so your stomach (not your chest) swells with each in breath. Imagine that you are breathing in vitality from the air to fill your whole body through your solar plexus. As you breathe in, feel that your whole body is becoming more and more relaxed. Imagine it as a centre of immense light radiating outward in all directions, as though you are taking in energy through the solar plexus itself, transforming it into light and radiating it out again everywhere. YOUR FEELINGS MATTER Emotional stressors in your life can take their toll. But f most emotional hurdles can be overcome. Take a look at what continues to trigger off the stress response in your own life. Ask yourself whether it is something which prevents you from turning a lot of your energy to more constructive use. Some stressors provide challenges from which we can grow. Others are simply habitual. They lead nowhere and bring little in terms of increasing awareness or your ability to make better use of your energy. If there are any of these in your life see if you can eliminate them. For instance, take a look at the work you do and ask yourself if you find it really satisfying. Are the financial responsibilities you have taken on really necessary? Can you reduce them in any way? If so, have the courage to drop them and to accept the changes this will bring about; this too can make you stronger. We humans have a tendency to hang on to the status quo at all costs - and often the cost is in terms of lost adaptive energy - occasionally even life. Regardless of whether you learn the world's finest techniques for meditation to counteract stress, if you are in a job you hate year after year or are faced with a relationship that no longer has meaning for you, they will do little good. To make stress work you must not only face up to its demands, but also take responsibility for removing it wherever it is no longer useful and relevant to you. GET INTO JOY Each of us needs to develop our own personal ways of throwing off stress. A walk in the woods for clearing consciousness is something quite specifically ordered by Tibetan doctors to patients who suffer from rapid swings of mood and worry. Or you could try sailing, running, dancing, gardening, listening to music or some other form of hobby. I have a passion, verging on an addiction, for good movies. Explore them all. Find out what works best for you and make it an important part of your day-to-day life. By eliminating unnecessary stressors from your life, practising relaxation and exercise, and becoming more and more aware of which challenges are important to you and which you are better off without, you will develop a way of being which will keep you free from unnecessary illness. You will soon be tapping the kind of vitality and enthusiasm a child has which most adults have long forgotten. A special bonus too - you will quite automatically preserve your good looks and vitality decade after decade. THE ART OF SIGHING When you begin to unwind and let go the muscles' tension, the release is often accompanied by a very slow deep breath - in fact, a sort of sigh. You can use sighing throughout the day to calm your nerves and prevent tensions building up. Think of a stress producing situation which occurs fairly frequently at work, e.g. the telephone ringing and each time it happens, take a deep breath and let it out again, then answer the phone. Be sure to let your shoulders drop as you inhale and breathe deeply down into your belly and lower back. Let the lower ribs expand away from your spine as much behind as in front. When you exhale, don't collapse, but think of your head and spine lengthening upwards. THE BLISS OF BALANCE Stress and relaxation are like two sides of a coin. Learn to move easily from one to another and you will begin to experience your life as a satisfying and enriching challenge like the ebb and flow of the tides. Then you will never again have to worry about getting stuck in a high-stressed condition which saps your vitality, distorts your perceptions and can even lead to premature ageing and chronic illness. The secret of getting the right balance between stress and relaxation is threefold. First, take a look at the kind of stress that is part of your life, eliminate unnecessary stressors and discover new ways of working with the others. Second, learn one or more techniques for conscious relaxation and practise them until they become second nature. Finally, explore ways of expanding your mind, honouring your individuality and for creating an environment that supports both. Not only will this help your body stay in balance and increase your level of overall vitality, it can bring you a sense of control over your life that is hard to come by any other way.