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A few days on apples once in a while can eliminate retained water, revive flagging energy, make your skin look wonderful and your eyes shine. The apple fast for detox was taught to me fifty years ago by Dr Gordon Latto, a Scottish medical doctor who used nothing but food and breathing techniques and a few herbs to heal even the most complex and chronic conditions. Eating as much as you want – but only apples – in place of your regular meals, and in between too if you like, for two days cleans your body, helps clear away food sensitivities, and banishes the ravages of unnatural appetite. For two days all you have to do is to eat apples, and nothing but apples. Your body will do the rest. It’s a time to be luxuriously lazy and self-indulgent, to enjoy the process of getting rid of all those wastes you really don’t want hanging around in your system making you look and feel low. No pregnant or breast-feeding woman should do an apple fast: neither should anyone with a kidney, liver or heart complaint, for in such cases any sudden change of diet carries with it potential dangers to health. But if you are generally well, a short apple fast is a great way to clear away the cobwebs. Check with your doctor first if you have any doubts. HEALING DISCOVERY It was the apple which first led the great Swiss physician Max Bircher-Benner to develop his system of treatment based on living foods. Bircher-Benner was himself ill with a liver ailment, which made it virtually impossible for him to digest anything. One day, as he lay in his bed unable to rise or eat, his wife slipped a piece of fresh raw apple between his teeth. He tasted it, and to his surprise he found he could tolerate it. Several days – and many raw apples – later he found himself well again. He never forgot the humble apple or what it could do to detoxify the body and to help restore normal functioning to digestion, cells and the circulation. He used apples regularly in his dietary treatments of obesity and other illnesses. In fact, they formed the basis of his Bircher Muesli, which has become world famous. WEEKEND RETREAT My two day apple fast is designed to be done over a weekend is not even a fast, for you can eat as much as you like – but only apples. The reason the apple fast is done over a weekend is that the process of elimination can use up a lot of energy, so it’s a good idea to do it over two days when you are not working. The apple has long been known as a health tonic, medicine, cosmetic and bowel-regulator all wrapped up in one skin. When eaten, it stimulates the secretion of digestive juices. It contains natural substances that help prevent digestive and liver troubles. Where unsweetened apple juice is the traditional drink among country people, there tends to be no incidence of kidney stones. The simple apple is traditionally used for eliminating obesity, as well as being a folk treatment for skin problems, bladder inflammation, anemia, insomnia, intestinal parasites and bad breath. QUEEN OF CLEANSING The adage ‘an apple a day keeps the doctor away’ is not just an old wives’ tale. The apple is quite rightly known as the queen of fruits. In its natural whole state, it supplies valuable fruit sugar and vitamins in a superb balance to ensure that your body can efficiently digest and use them. The apple is our richest fruit source of vitamin E and also provides a good supply of biotin and folic acid – two B-complex vitamins important in preserving energy, emotional balance and in keeping your digestive system clean and functioning well. It is also a fine source of vitamins A and C, which are both natural antioxidants – powerful anti-agers – not to mention more than a dozen minerals including sulfur, potassium, iodine, silica, magnesium and calcium, and even essential amino acids in small quantities. Apples are low in acidity to help balance stored bodily wastes which tend to be acidic. They stimulate the flow of saliva in the mouth, and clear away debris from the teeth. Eating a raw fresh apple stimulates circulation in the gums too. Finally, apples are rich in a very special form of soluble fiber called pectin which helps to clear out the dangerous heavy metals such as lead and aluminum that we all pick up from our city air, food and water. OUT WITH THE UGLIES Heavy metals in your body are something you want to get rid of. These elements, the concentration of which has increased dramatically in our air, foods and water since the Industrial Revolution, can seriously interfere with your body’s metabolic functioning. Mercury tends to suppress the levels of white blood cells in the immune system. Cadmium displaces the essential element zinc needed for a great many of your body’s enzyme systems, and renders them inefficient and even inactive. In the West we now have a concentration of lead in our bodies some 500-1000 times that of our pre-industrial ancestors. High levels of this heavy metal age us prematurely, interfere with our mental processes, suppress immunity and contribute to depression. Aluminum, another heavy metal, detrimentally affects the central nervous system. The presence of all these elements in excessive quantities (and their concentrations in the human body appear to be increasing with each passing decade) generally interferes with your body’s metabolic processes. The ability of apples to remove heavy metals from your system is one of the best reasons for doing an apple fast, particularly if you live in a city. RADIANT FIBER The fiber that apples contain really is remarkable. In addition to cellulose (the most common kind of fiber, which binds water and increases fecal bulk), the apple is also rich in pectin – a very special kind of fiber with quite exceptional detoxification properties. So different in texture and character is pectin from other forms of fiber that it is sometimes surprising to think that they are classified in the same group. Unlike cellulose, pectin does not bind water, it is water-soluble. It has no influence on fecal bulking, but it appears to be an excellent substance for lowering cholesterol. It may also help eliminate bile acids from the intestines, thus short-circuiting the development of colon cancer and gallstones. It is also useful as a natural chelating (binding) agent which is why it is so good at mopping up unwanted heavy metals, such as aluminum, from the tissues and eliminating them from the body. This can be very important when it comes to detoxification for weight loss. READY SET GO Get yourself a big bag of the freshest apples you can find – perhaps three or four different kinds for variety. If you don’t like the look of your apples you won’t want to eat them, so be picky. Buy a box of apples if you like, your greengrocer might give you a discount. On this pre-cleanse day it is a good idea to get your system ready. Avoid tea, coffee, alcohol and soft drinks. Steer clear of bread and cooked carbohydrates such as pasta and cereals, and make your last meal of the day a large raw salad made of fresh fruits and vegetables. Don’t have anything else to eat after your salad, except perhaps a cup of herb tea before bed. This will give your body a good 12 hours head-start on the elimination process and it will thank you for it. THE APPLE FAST There’s really nothing to it. Over the two days you have chosen, tuck into your apples. Eat as many as you like at any time of the day or night. You must eat the whole apple including the peel, the seeds and the core. Don’t worry about the belief that apple seeds are poisonous. Any expert in natural medicine detox will tell you they are not only perfectly safe but an important part of the cleansing process. Chew well, until the last drop of flavor has been extracted from the fruit. The only part you throw away is the woody stem. You must eat your apples raw. You can munch them whole, or grate them and sprinkle a little cinnamon on top. You can even put them in the blender with spring water to make a drink. Eat nothing else during this two-day period, but eat them whenever you are hungry. Do not drink tea or coffee. You may have a herb tea or two such as peppermint, lemon balm or chamomile with a few drops of the best stevia if you wish. Drink lots of pure filtered water, but nothing else. BLISSFUL RELAXATION Be lazy and luxurious.  During these days indulge yourself doing whatever is pleasurable for you. Many people find their sexuality is heightened during these days. If so, enjoy it. Apples are great to munch in bed. In many ways, the most useful thing about the apple fast is the way you can call on it when you most need help to get you back on the rails again. We all slip up sometimes – we over work or over indulge and live to regret it the next day. A two day apple fast, or even just a day spent eating only apples, is an excellent ‘quick corrector’. Spend even just one day munching apples and it will help set all to rights again, so that when you awaken next morning you feel more like your old self and ready to face the day full of energy. RENEWED VITALITY Apple fasting gives you the chance to step back regularly and take a look at your lifestyle, instead of mechanically going on day after day without being aware of where your energy is going. Set aside two days, three or four times a year – a weekend is best – for an apple fast. This will spring clean your body from the inside out. Even apple fasting for one day a week is a great boost to vitality and good looks, because it helps detoxify your body of wastes accumulated as a result of drinking or eating too much, or consuming the wrong kinds of foods. It can also help calm the ravages of an over-enthusiastic appetite, which many people suffer as a result of food sensitivities or over-stimulation of the digestive system. Furthermore, it is an excellent discipline: such a practice helps you break through ingrained habit patterns, which can make us largely unaware of how we are eating.

Let we share with you my very favorite plant for soothing, healing and helping when you need it most. It is Motherwort—Leonurus cardiaca. In the Chinese pharmacopeia it’s known as Yi Mu Cao, meaning “Lion's Tail.” A herb of the heart, this humble plant grows in waste lands. Motherwort is the most comforting herb I have ever found anywhere. It brings a sense of inner security and calm strength unequalled by anything, except perhaps a love affair of the deepest order—maybe not even that.   This wonderful herb has gained its name from the ancient practice of using it to reduce anxiety during pregnancy. The plant has good sedative properties— well validated by scientific experiment. It is able to calm the nervous system while at the same time acting as a tonic to the while body. Culpepper, who believed that motherwort belonged to the goddess Venus and to the astrological sign of Leo, wrote "There is no better herb to drive melancholy vapors from the heart, to strengthen it and make the mind cheerful, blithe and merry." I think this sums up the virtues of my beloved motherwort superbly.   Its leaves are full of mind-altering natural chemicals. Studies in China have shown that these decrease the levels of blood lipids and exert a regulating action on muscles like the womb and the heart, bringing peace in their wake. This is one of the reasons why, in addition to being used by women to ease hot flushes, banish insomnia, and restore elasticity to the walls of the vagina, it is an excellent herb for the treatment of many heart conditions in men. No wonder it’s the most physically and psychologically healing plant I know. This magical plant is also rich in alkaloids. It’s bitter as an infusion. So it can be easier to take as a tincture or make into a herbal vinegar. Take 10 to 25 drops of the tincture made from the fresh plant, or 1 to 2 teaspoons of the herb vinegar as desired. A herb for all seasons, here are just a few of the gifts it can bestow upon you: Motherwort reduces fevers and is often used to treat illnesses with delirium. It is often used to treat lung issues like bronchitis and asthma, and is sometimes taken in conjunction with mullein. It calms nerves. In fact there is something so calming and balancing about motherwort that it is hard to describe if you have never experienced it. Used frequently it can relieve anxiety, uplift the nervous system, and relax tensions, while raising vitality. I often turn to it when I know I need to confront a situation that I believe is likely to be stressful. Motherwort can also minimize hot flushes and reduce their intensity, length, and frequency while helping to calm the dizziness or faintness that sometimes comes with them.  This is probably thanks to its ability to oxygenate the blood in both men and women, tonify the thyroid, liver, and heart, and invigorate circulation all round. For best results use it regularly for 12 weeks or longer. Although sometimes, 10 to 15 drops or so of the tincture in a little spring water can ease a hot flush while it’s happening. If you want to sleep peacefully and undisturbed, motherwort can be a good friend. It’s also useful if you awaken in the night with sweats and have trouble dropping off again. Take 10 to 20 drops of the tincture kept at the side of your bed with a glass of spring water and swallow some each time you wake up. It’s a natural diuretic as well. A little motherwort every few hours can reduce water retention. This is especially useful after a flight if your legs and feet have become swollen. As for clearing menstrual and uterine cramps if your menstrual flow is absent or light to moderate, I’ve never found anything more effective. Use 5 to 10 drops of the tincture in a little water every few minutes until they have gone then repeat as necessary. Prolonged use strengthens the muscles of the womb, and even makes it resistant to cramping in the future. Finally, in my own experience, this magical plant even seems to enhance women’s self esteem, would you believe? Ten to twenty drops of tincture of motherwort works wonders whenever you are feeling unsettled. Alternatively you can take 5 to 15 drops of the tincture every day for a month or two to stabilize emotions long term. It also strengthens the heart and helps you feel courageous even when the chips are down. There are a couple of important cautions in regard to using motherwort that you should know about. If you are taking blood-thinning drugs—and I sincerely hope you are not—then don’t use motherwort. Finally, if your menstrual flow is very heavy, motherwort could well make it heavier, so avoid it in this case. Meanwhile, I leave you with a wonderful Chinese belief from ancient times when there were many stories of both men and women whose water source was a stream flowing through the banks of motherwort: these people were believed to have lived 130 years or even longer.

Conventional diets for shedding unwanted depend on self-denial and willpower. They are full of complex methods for dealing with what is commonly known as cheating. Here's an example. Say you go off your diet by eating a piece of chocolate cake. Then you're supposed to tell yourself, "Never mind, tomorrow I'll skip dinner to make up for it." Except that by the time tomorrow arrives, you've developed even more cravings for even more chocolate, carby stuff and sugary drinks. Anybody trying to lose weight this way is doomed to fail. As soon as their diet ends any fat they've shed begins slowly but surely to creep back on. Then they're back where they started. Cura is different Cura is different. Let me tell you how. The secret behind Cura's life-changing success rate is hidden deep within the brain. Yes, really. Here's how it works. On any Cura program, unwanted fat is shed not as the result of strenuous effort or willpower but gently and progressively thanks to Cura's unique ability to restore healthy functioning to the control centers in your brain. Few people—this includes the majority of scientists—even know that the body's fat regulating system is located in an area of the mid-brain called the diencephalon. Probably the most sensitive and complex locus of control in the body, it houses a collection of vital structures including the thalamus, hypothalamus, and pituitary which govern emotions, stress and moods. It oversees the entire autonomic nervous system. The hypothalamus itself links directly to the nervous and endocrine systems via the pituitary. It regulates both hunger and thirst and, with the help of the other members of the diencephalon team, decides whether your body is to lay down fat or shed unwanted fat on your body. Other powerful centers in this area of the brain determine mental functions and emotional balance—even the perceptions we have about ourselves along with heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature, electrolyte balance, sexuality and our sleep cycles. Following Cura's specific food protocol and using the Essential Spray—from beginning to end—allows these control centers to function correctly. This is how natural, progressive, effective fat burning takes place without willpower or manipulation. Cura's celebrated success is both as simple and as profound as this. not your fault What few of us realize is that unwanted fat, insulin resistance and the blood sugar issues that come with them are not their fault. Nor are they some accident of fate. These things occur as a result of vital control centers of the brain not functioning as they are meant to in a healthy body. And what messes up the functioning of these control centers? This is important: For more than 70 years we have been misinformed and let astray by governments, pharmaceutical companies and multinational food corporations. We've been told that the way to stay lean and healthy is by following a low-fat high carb diet. We have eaten artificially made foods promoted by the media, multinational food manufacturers and governments. We've told to buy and eat convenience foods, chockablock with carbohydrates, sugars and chemicals. increase in degenerative diseases Doing this has resulted in the rampant increase in degenerative diseases and the widespread dependence on dangerous pharmaceuticals, used only to suppress symptoms but unable to bring true healing to the body. High carb low-fat eating is a major cause of worldwide obesity, addictions and food cravings, as well as the struggles so many experience trying to lose weight. This includes feelings of hopelessness, confusion, self-blame and fear that they will never be able to shed excess fat from our bodies, keep it off, and restore high-level health. Back in the mid-1940s, there were very few poisons sprayed on the foods we bought. They were organically grown on small farms. Today agriculture is big business in control of gigantic corporations whose only goal is fattening their bottom line. In animal farming, drugs such as antibiotics and hormones are injected to boost an animal's growth and cut down on feed requirements virtually all over the world. Residues of these drugs are as hazardous to your own health as they are to the animals that receive them. They undermine your vitality and make those of us with a tendency to gain weight get fat. The level of harm from exposure to pesticides, animal antibiotics and hormones is dose related. This means the more you consume, the greater your potential risk not only of illnesses and long-term degenerative conditions from Heart Disease and Cancer, to serious hormone disorders, depression, Alzheimer’s and distortions in the brain—in many cases from the time of birth to death. Meanwhile all this continues to increase exponentially. convenience foods The convenience foods that line the shelves of supermarkets everywhere are filled with pesticides, chemical additives and GMO. Corporations are intent on selling products that can themselves be destructive to life long term, rather than helping the public learn about the power of natural healing that is carried in the body itself. Eating these foods are responsible for insulin resistance, blood sugar issues and dangerous levels of obesity. If you want to shed excess fat from your body and restore high-level health we need to stop eating them and feeding them to our families. The goals of Cura online programs are two fold: First to guide you progressively through the natural process of shedding unwanted fat from your body. Second they show you how to build whole new ways of living and eating to set you free for to experience long term leanness and radiant health. To my knowledge, no other online program has ever been able to accomplish all this at such a scale. Do join one of our online programs and experience all this for yourself.

One of the oldest systems of natural healing in the world uses hot and cold baths and showers to increase your vitality, balance hormones, beautify skin, tone muscles, clear your mind, and vitalize your nervous system, lymphatic system, and circulation. It quickly brings you a sense of wonderful aliveness, and all the while it is dissolving, transporting, and clearing rubbish from your body and psyche. Father Sebastian Kneipp The father of all water therapies was Father Sebastian Kneipp, the Bavarian priest who first made us aware of water’s healing power. “When used appropriately,” he said, “water and herbs can cure almost every disease.” He established Bad Worishofen in Germany in 1897, a center where people all over the world came to be healed by special ice cold baths, walking barefoot in the snow, and other simple but powerful methodologies that are celebrated to this day. I first learned the secrets of water healing in my early twenties after spending many years in a state of ill health thanks to my being raised on a terrible diet. It had been based on huge bowels of breakfast cereals piled high with white sugar, horrid fast foods eaten at 5 am in truck drivers’ cafes throughout America, and a lot of other junk. No wonder I was unhealthy. However, what I learned from the generosity of some brilliant British and European doctors who practiced natural medicine turned my entire life around. This was how I came to work in, write about, and teach natural methods of healing. It is also how I came to visit Kneipp’s centers for hydrotherapy, which still continue to thrive, especially in Germany. In many ways the most important of all I learned was how powerful healing with simple water techniques can be for improving your life at any time. Let me share with you one of these techniques. Do try it and let me know how you get on. There are many more, but let’s begin with this one. Thanks to water's chemical and bioelectrical properties, and to your body's physiological and energetic responses to them, water therapy is a superb method for cleansing, energizing, and restoring great functioning to any tired or aging body. The technique of using alternating applications of hot and cold water is called “Contrast Hydros.” If you have not yet experienced the turn-on it offers, you have a real treat ahead. After a workout, athletes use hydroelectrics in the form of contrast baths and showers to strengthen the body, prevent muscular damage, and eliminate aches. Contrast hydros not only help clear wastes and vitalize but also bring nutrients and oxygen to areas of your body that need them and balance your energies, helping to protect you from stress-induced damage. Here is how Apply hot water to your whole body for three or four minutes in the form of a hot bath or shower. Follow with 30 to 60 seconds of cold water. Repeat the procedure three times. The application of cold water needs to be just long enough to make blood vessels constrict. This can take place in as little as 20 seconds. Cold water triggers your sympathetic nervous system to energize while hot water intensifies parasympathetic activity for relaxation. The combination of the two makes you feel great. It’s important that you start slowly, increasing the length of your exposure to hot and cold water gradually. If you have a separate bath and shower you can use the bath for one temperature application, the shower for the other, moving back and forth. During the summer, make your bath cold and your showers hot. During the winter, reverse this. Like any natural treatment, contrast hydros need to be followed carefully and wisely to get all the benefits they offer and to make sure no harm is done. You will probably find at first that a plunge into cold water or a cold shower is a shock to your body. Soon this will turn into an experience of total pleasure. It is always the first cold application that is the hardest. The biggest barrier to getting into cold water is a psychological one. Once you leap this hurdle you’ll find yourself eagerly looking forward to your daily treatment. Here are a few cautions: Always check with your doctor before beginning any natural treatment to make sure that it is appropriate for you. He or she may advise you not to use contrast hydros if you have any kind of heart condition, nervous disorder, high blood pressure, if you are an insulin-dependent diabetic, or suffer from hardening of the arteries. Make sure your body is warm before beginning. The room should be well heated. Don’t let your body become chilled during the treatment. If you feel yourself becoming too cold, immediately stop and get into a hot bath or shower until you warm up fully. Always begin with a hot application and end with cold. Start slowly with 2-3 minutes of hot application followed by 20 seconds of cold. As your body gets used to contrast hydros, increase the time of the cold applications up to 1 minute (even up to 2-3 minutes if you are extremely fit or an athlete). When you finish, dry your body well and dress warmly. I’d love to hear how you get on so I can share with you other hydroelectric treatments that cost virtually nothing but can be wonderfully life enhancing.

In my last post, we looked at unconscious image-making which prevents us from experiencing authentic freedom and undermines our sense of self. Now let’s flip destructive image making-on its head. It’s time to learn the art of conscious image-making It can improve health, heighten self esteem, and even forge the person whom you long to become in the future. All you need is a simple notebook in which to record your intentions, goals and experience plus 15 to 20 minutes a day to practice the art. This can be a lot of fun. POWERS OF THE MIND Creative imagery is the deliberate, repeated use of specific mental images, while in a deeply relaxed state or meditative state, to bring about change for the better. Just how creative imagery works has never been fully defined. It does, however, appear that the images one chooses to focus on when repeatedly held in the mind are able to affect one's body, emotions, and mind through the autonomic nervous system. Some of the process, at least, is explainable in biological and energetic terms. When a thought or image is kept in the mind of someone in a state of deep relaxation, his or her brain shows neuronal activity in both right and left hemispheres. Nerve fibres leading from the cerebral hemisphere through the hypothalamus can directly affect the autonomic nervous system and the pituitary gland as well as the adrenal cortex. Everyone has had experience of this image-making to some extent in day-to-day life. For instance, if you keep a frightening image in your mind's eye—say of a ghost, a fantastic monster, or a situation you want at all costs to avoid—your body will respond via the autonomic nervous system with a racing heartbeat, perspiration, dryness in the mouth, or gooseflesh. How strong your reactions are to the fearful thought depends entirely on how clear the image is. Similarly, when you hold a clear, relaxing image of perhaps a spring meadow or a person you love, your body responds with relaxed muscles, lowered heartbeat and blood pressure, and generally pleasant and passive bodily sensations. Researchers have found that through this mind-body connection we can exercise a great deal of control over our bodies and our behaviour simply by choosing images to focus on and using them regularly. In fact, this kind of deliberate visualization is the technique behind the ability yogis demonstrate in raising and lowering their bodily temperature or heartbeat at will, going for long periods of time without food, and performing extrasensory tasks. TRUST THE GAME Although the mechanism of creative imagery is highly complex, putting it to use is simple. For just as it is unnecessary for you to know how the nervous system, in conjunction with the brain and muscles, makes it possible for you to pick up an apple and take a bite out of it in order to perform the action, so it is not necessary to understand biological theories about creative imagery in order to practice it to your benefit. The imaging mechanism of your brain works automatically; all you have to do is provide it with images that are useful to you and let it do its job. Nor do you have to worry about whether or not you believe in creative imagery or whether or not you can do it well enough for it to work for you. If there is a goal that you want to achieve, you need simply to visualize it—again and again, at least twice a day; the rest is automatic, so long as your goal is something you consciously consider to be feasible. It would be absurd, for instance, to lie down for ten minutes each morning and afternoon and visualize yourself as an eagle. You might improve your imagination no end, you might also develop a great empathy for eagles, but it unlikely that you would develop wings or a beak. Nor need you worry about success or failure. As Maxwell Maltz says in his book Psycho-Cybernetics, "You must learn to trust your creative mechanism to do its work and not `jam it' by becoming too concerned or too anxious as to whether it will work or not, or by attempting to force it too much by conscious effort. You must let it work, rather than make it work. This trust is necessary because your creative mechanism operates below the level of consciousness." The only real "trust" needed for it to work is that which makes it possible for you to spend time repeatedly practising creative imagery. You do this by letting yourself go into a state of deep relaxation or meditation and then repeating your chosen image again and again over a sufficient length of time for it to take hold in your unconscious and begin producing results. You certainly don't have to trust it in the sense of believing in it for it to work. It will work whether you believe it or not. Just be consistent in using the technique regularly. PREPARE THE WAY Begin by learning to just let go. Creative imagery is an inner state of mind. To visualize effectively you need to put yourself into a calm, relaxed state in which mental images flow easily. Generally the more relaxed you are, the more successful your visualizations will be. This kind of relaxation is something that is learned gradually by practice. Even if you feel in the beginning that you are hardly relaxed at all, you will get benefits from your imaging and this will become progressively more true as you repeatedly practice visualization. Begin by lying down, or sitting in a comfortable chair, with your back well supported. Use a simple practice such as zazen or gentle, quiet deep breathing to let go of daily concerns and enter your private world. When you feel yourself quietly calm resting in your own inner space, there are several things you can do: In this space, you can examine in a new light any question that has been bothering you. You have access to the deeper layers of your mind where many answers can be found, provided you are willing to ask the questions simply and then just wait in stillness for the answer to come. This place is also where you can become aware of your belief systems and bring them to consciousness so that you can examine them in a detached, objective way and see whether they are working for you or not. You can then decide what you want to keep and what your want to leave behind. It is a place where you can learn to listen to the sound of your inner voice. The more you do this, the easier it becomes. This inner voice can guide you to where you are going next and tell you what you are about. It is a place where you can come to know yourself for who you really are, quite apart from roles and habitual assumptions you have always had about yourself. Most important of all in bringing about change, you can use this inner space to practise creative imagery. Go through your relaxation technique until you enter your inner space. Now you are ready to begin visualizing. You can do this in two ways: verbally, by simply repeating over and over a few words that describe the image, or visually, by simply seeing yourself as already having become what you want to be. For some, who at first experience difficulty in visualizing, the verbal method works better; for others, the visual method is more successful. Try them both and see which you prefer. Later on, after you are familiar with the use of creative imagery, you will probably want to use both. FOCUS YOUR DESIRE Let's say you pick as your goal the desire "I want to have more energy." Using the verbal method, turn the wish into a positive statement. It becomes "Every day I am more and more energetic and well." It is important that your goal be phrased in this way. It has to be in the present tense—not "One day I will be better" or "I hope that I will be more energetic," but Every day I am more and more energetic and well. It is happening now. Your subconscious mind, which holds the power to bring about change, does not function in terms of time and space as your conscious mind does. It understands only the simplest and most direct instructions, and when they are given it works as if they had already occurred or are occurring now. The words you have chosen become your image. You put them to work by simply repeating the words over and over again silently to yourself while you are in the deeply relaxed state in your inner space. It is the constant replaying of the message day after day twice a day that works best, not how long you do it each time you relax. One convenient way of doing it is to repeat the directions ten times in each session, moving one of your fingers with each repetition until you have been through all ten. Then you simply say to yourself the same, "I am now going to come out of my inner space...(by counting backwards from three, etc.) and open your eyes. The best time for most women to practice creative visualization is in bed at night just before they fall asleep, and then again in the morning just before they get up. But really you can do it anytime—whenever you can find ten minutes to yourself in the middle of the day, or in the middle of the night if you awaken, or during meditation. The important thing is to do it regularly twice a day every day. You needn't worry about doing it wrong, either. Because, in truth, there is no wrong way, and every supposed wrong in the way you are doing the technique will gradually put itself right with practice. WATCH IT HAPPEN If you prefer, you can use a visual way instead, or you can use a combination of both. Picking the same goal, I want to have more energy, go through your relaxation technique. When you are at the inner space, instead of repeating words let your mind play with the image of your goal as if it had actually come about already, almost like a daydream. In other words, see yourself moving through your day, relating to people, doing your work, playing games, all the while full of vitality and bounce. Watch yourself in your imagination and enjoy the ease with which you do things that once seemed difficult or tiring. Notice the glow of your skin, how well you look; see the vivacity in the way you speak and move. Watch yourself and enjoy it. The more of it you let yourself imagine and the more you enjoy your imaginings, the stronger will be the images you are creating and the more quickly they will become reality. But as with the verbal instructions, always keep your images in the present as if they are actually happening now and not as if they might happen in the future or are something you would like to see happen. You may find at some point that something or someone is interfering with your image. For instance, you might find that as you watch yourself moving about energetically through the day in your mind's eye, another figure appears—say an old woman—who speaks to you. Perhaps she says something like, "You silly girl, if you don't slow down you know you will exhaust yourself or make yourself ill." Or, "Why are you pretending to be full of energy when you know that you are really tired?" and so on. Pause for a moment and take a look at the figure. Who is she? Your mother? A friend who tends to be negative about everything you try? The voice of a belief system from inside you which, without your being aware of it, has been telling you for years that you are tired? Answer the figure back. Tell her quietly but firmly in your mind, "No, you are wrong. I am well and I have lots of energy. I also know how to use it wisely. I will rest and look after myself when I need to, I will eat well, I will enjoy what I do. I will be happy with my vitality." Then go on with your visualization. Unexpected intrusions like this while you are visualizing are often very useful, for they help make you aware of belief systems and notions that may have been unconsciously impeding your progress towards a goal. Then, when you have practised your visualization for, say, five or ten minutes, tell yourself you are going to count backwards from three and open your eyes. A FEW TRICKS TO HELP In the beginning, when you are just starting to explore the power of creative imagery, it is a good idea to pick only one goal at a time and work on it for several weeks or months until it is being progressively realized before taking on another thing you would like to change. The technique of keeping a journal is very useful in recording your progress, but even more important is keeping a record of insights and experiences you come upon while practising the deep relaxation and visualisation techniques. The information and insights they turn up for everyone are invariably rich. Many times something you record today which seems not particularly useful now will have a message of immediate importance to you three months from now. Finally, there is one very simple goal that I find particularly useful because it covers all areas of one's life and you can use it over and over again, year after year, with benefit. It is, "Every day I am more and more myself. My life grows richer and richer." “Practice makes perfect,” the saying goes. It most certainly does but never treat your practice as a chore. Let it be fun. When you do everything happens faster and with greater ease.

Almost everybody has heard of death curses: psychological literature is laced with accounts of how Aboriginal witch doctors have quite literally brought about the death of the young and healthy by cursing them. No sooner do these people learn of the fate which has been cast for them than they begin inexplicably to sicken and eventually to die. It appears that through complex biological processes, their simple belief in the curse brings about destruction of their organism. modern-day death curses In civilized society we tend to look upon such phenomena as anthropological curiosities - products of primitive superstition which simply don't touch us in our more enlightened age. What we are not aware of however is that many of us in the civilized world are also under our own brand of `death curses'. They may be subtler than those issued by witch doctors but they can be every bit as potent in bringing about the physical and mental decline which we have come to associate with aging. Common (and usually unconscious) notions such as `retirement', `middle-age', `It's all down hill after forty', and `At your age you must start taking things more easily', are widely held. They can exert a powerful effect on the process of aging by creating destructive self-fulfilling expectations about age decline. Instead of facing the future full of confidence and excitement about what lies ahead, optimism is replaced by anxiety as we are warned to `Be careful', or `Don't take chances on a new career at your age.' The list of commonly proffered `sensible' advice is a long one. Such well-meaning suggestions often lead people to make changes in their lifestyle which encourage physical decline - for instance decreasing the amount of exercise they get, altering their eating habits away from fiber-rich natural foods towards `softer' foods, and even decreasing the amount of social and intellectual stimulation they have been used to. Even worse, this kind of advice can undermine your self-image and destroy self-confidence, which in turn interferes with the proper functioning of the immune system which plays such a central role in protecting your body from aging. An essential ingredient in ageless aging is a strong awareness of just how powerfully your emotions, state of mind, and your unconscious assumptions can influence both your susceptibility to illness and the rate at which you age. Once that awareness has penetrated your consciousness then you can begin to make use of some simple and pleasant mind-bending techniques in aid of ageless aging. mind-body connections The notion that your state of mind can influence your health and the rate at which you age was once something which had to be taken on faith. Now it is not only being scientifically proven, it is even being put into effective practical use thanks to a rapidly developing scientific discipline with a tongue-twisting name: psychoneuroimmunology (PNI). PNI has discovered that your body's immune system, that bulwark of defense, is undeniably affected by your unconscious assumptions, your emotional states and your behavioral patterns. They can lead either to an increased resistance to aging or to an increased susceptibility to degeneration and illness. In simple terms the happier you are, the better you feel about yourself and the more positive are your expectations about the future, the more likely you are to age slowly and gracefully and the less likely you are to fall prey to degeneration and illness of whatever sort - from a common cold to a life-threatening disease. No area of ageless aging is more fun to explore than this one. I always think of its positive side as `Zorba the Greek' consciousness. It can make possible the most amazing physical and mental feats by quite ordinary people living quite ordinary lives. Take the man who is able to work eighteen hours a day, drink whisky by the tumblerful, dance on tables until the early hours of the morning and still live to be 110 thanks to the sheer joy of his experience of life. I have seen it too amongst saints and holy men who carry out their day-to-day activities, from writing letters to peeling potatoes, in a state of bliss - samadhi. Take a look at their superbly unlined faces. They could as easily be thirty as seventy. Psychoneuroimmunologists are working to find out why. So new is the PNI discipline (the name was only coined in 1981) that the average physician is unlikely even to have heard of it. But so profound and wide-reaching are the consequences of its findings that they threaten to revolutionize medical theory about the origins and development of degeneration. Research into psychoneuroimmunology is already describing the pathways through which mind and body are inextricably bound together. These pathways include neurological connections linking glands and organs with the brain, the antioxidant system and the blood, thanks to hormonal secretions triggered by thought patterns and emotions and - most important of all - via the immune system. PNI researchers have discovered for instance that several kinds of lymphocytes involved in your body's immune response carry receptors which recognize hormones found in the brain that alter mind and mood. They have also found that some of these neurotransmitters or peptide hormones stimulate T-cells to produce more lymphokines such as interferon while others have the opposite effect. In fact listening to leading PNI researchers talk about mind-body connections makes you realize there is probably no state of mind which is not faithfully reflected by a state of the immune system. beyond psychosomatic consciousness Western medicine has long acknowledged that emotional states such as anxiety and depression can make a limited number of illnesses worse. These include asthma, diabetes, peptic ulcer, ulcerative colitis, migraine and cardiovascular problems. But until the advent of PNI it has paid little attention to examining the nature of their psychological components nor has it explored ways and means of improving these conditions by altering a patient's mental state or behavioral patterns. Meanwhile it has almost completely ignored possible psychological components in the vast majority of other illnesses - from lung disease and cancer to rheumatism and allergic reactions - treating them instead as pure physiological occurrences little affected by whether the patient experiencing them felt good or bad in himself. This is mostly because Western medicine, bound by the Cartesian notion of a split between mind and matter, has failed to consider the people it treats as psychobiological units - total beings whose feelings, thoughts, expectations and perceptions are intimately bound to their physiology and biochemistry. Happily this is now changing in no small part thanks to a few visionary scientists who began asking some penetrating questions. Why for instance do some people who smoke forty cigarettes a day for twenty years end up with lung cancer while others following exactly the same pattern don't? The first, most obvious answer is that the former have an hereditary disposition to the disease. True, genetics are important, but these scientists found that they were by no means the whole answer. A large and very important piece of the puzzle was still missing. So they began to look at psychological factors. let go and live longer In a pioneering study carried out over twenty years ago, Scottish researcher Dr David Kissen examined more than 1000 Glaswegian industrial workers suffering from respiratory complaints. Before diagnosing them he gave each man a psychological test designed to delineate personality patterns. He came up with some quite fascinating and highly significant results. He discovered that those who were later found to have cancer showed a striking inability to express their emotions. Intrigued by Kissen's study and other similar investigations which suggested that emotional repression was an important component in the development of cancer, two doctors, R.L. Horne and R. S. Picard, at the Washington University School of Medicine in the United States, decided to carry out an in-depth study of the psychosocial risk factors in lung cancer as measured on a psychological scale developed from the findings of previous studies including Kissen's. They confirmed that emotional repression was indeed the central component of a complex personality pattern which led to the development of the disease. In fact, so important were the relationships between psychological states and the development of lung cancer which they uncovered that the two researchers found they could predict with an amazing 73 per cent accuracy which men had cancer and which men had simple lung disease, from psychological testing alone. They discovered that cancer sufferers, because of their emotional repression, tended to find great difficulty coping with life's challenges and sorrows. After losing an important relationship such as a job or a wife the cancer victims often suffered profound depression for from six to eighteen months before the discovery of the illness. These findings have been confirmed by others. mind and biochemistry Similar studies linking other psychological factors to other diseases, including infections, arthritis, allergies and premature aging, have also recently appeared. One of the best known is that done by Meyer Friedman and Ray Rosemann which demonstrated that what they called `type A behavior' - a behavior pattern characterized by a fierce and unrelenting struggle to do ever more things in less time against harsh competition - appears to cause a number of bodily changes predisposing one to coronary heart disease. They include alterations in blood-fat and blood-sugar levels, changes in circulation and increased levels of the hormone noradrenaline. And each disease is beginning to appear to have its own collection of psychological characteristics. Studies have now established that psychological factors are primary determinants in a host of illnesses while in others psychological factors appear to interact with biological ones determining whether disease tendencies, initiated either by heredity or your environment or both, will in fact turn into degeneration or whether your body will be able to fight them off. But how does it all work? Through what physiological mechanisms do emotional repression in the case of cancer, a frustrated power drive in the case of high blood pressure, and all the various other psychological and behavioral traits linked with their illnesses help create their respective illness and age decline? Perhaps even more important, once one can find these physiological mechanisms how can we make use of them first to prevent aging and even perhaps to reverse some of its processes once they have occurred? The key to both questions appears once again to lie in the immune system. mysteries of mind and immunity The immune system has two major branches, each with its own particular kind of defense cells or lymphocytes. It also includes other less important factors such as large scavenger-type cells called macrophages which gobble up antigenic material. The first branch confers on your body what is known as cell-mediated immunity and is responsible for about half of your body's resources for defense. It is centered around T-cell leucocytes - warrior cells produced in the thymus which battle the thousands of potentially lethal organisms, cancer inducing ultraviolet radiation from the sun and toxic chemicals from our highly industrialized environment. T-cells also produce a group of hormone-like substances such as interferon. They are called lymphokines and are considered the immune system's natural drugs. Some are poisonous to foreign tissue, others trigger white blood cells to keep an immune reaction going. The second branch of the immune system offers humoral-mediated immunity. It relies on what are known as B-cell lymphocytes, which produce antibodies specific to whatever invaders the body is being challenged by. B-cells are carried in the blood. They can combine with antigens in the body and neutralize them or they can coat them, making it simple for white blood cells to destroy them. The actions of both T and B cells are mediated through the thymus gland - often called the master gland of immunity. As we have seen, the rate at which you age appears to be very much influenced by the function of the thymus gland and the state of the immune system which it governs. It has also been well established that immune functions can be disrupted or depressed by such things as malnutrition, free radicals, infection and certain drugs. Recent research shows too that lymphocytes from people suffering from all kinds of stress and from grief, say after the death of a close relative, have a markedly decreased ability to rise to the occasion when challenged by antigens threatening the health of the body. What psychoneuroimmunologists are now trying to explore in experiments with animals and in studies of people are the pathways between brain and body through which this occurs - to delineate the means by which mind affects immunity both as a result of direct input from the brain and the indirect influence of hormones associated with specific emotional states and personality patterns. stress and immunity One of the questions currently being most seriously investigated by PNI researchers is how biological changes associated with stress diminish immune response and increase susceptibility to illness. Stress of any kind triggers the `fight or flight response' - a matrix of hormonal reactions designed to prepare the body for action. Adrenaline is released, for instance, and corticosteroid hormones from the adrenal glands. They in turn trigger other hormonal reactions. PNI researchers have now found that within fifteen minutes of its hitting the bloodstream even a small dose of adrenaline challenges the immune system and triggers the release of lymphocytes. It also inhibits the function of mature white blood cells needed to ward off invasion. Other studies have shown that the corticosteroids can also seriously depress immune functions and increase your susceptibility to disease. They inhibit the functions of both lymphocytes and macrophages and they undermine the ability of lymphocytes to reproduce themselves in the body. In fact if stress is prolonged enough and the levels of corticosteroids become high enough in the body they even cause a withering away of lymphoid tissue altogether. At St Luke's Medical Center in Chicago, Dr Richard Shekelle headed a research project which examined death certificates of more than 2000 men who had been tested psychologically for depression and other emotional states seventeen years before. He found that the death rate of men who had been very depressed at the time of testing was twice that of the rest. One of the most widely held theories about cancer states that each of us develops small malignancies all the time in our body but that these are rapidly destroyed in a healthy person thanks to the actions of the immune system. If, however, you have strong feelings of helplessness or depression this can result in elevated corticosteroid levels and other changes which impede your immune system from doing its proper job and rejecting the cancer cells before they can take hold. pni alters paradigms The mind-body links which PNI research is uncovering are beginning to have far-reaching consequences, consequences which ultimately will go far beyond helping people avoid life threatening diseases and slow the aging process. There is a strong resonance to be found between PNI and much of the new physics which is busily exploring the view that the observer is essential to the creation of the universe just as the universe is creator of the observer. As Nobel laureate Roger Sperry has said, `Current concepts of the mind-brain relation involve a direct break with the long-established materialist and behaviorist doctrine that has dominated neuroscience for many decades. Instead of renouncing or ignoring consciousness the new interpretation gives full recognition to the primacy of inner conscious awareness as a causal reality.' It is a causal reality that you can begin using to your advantage right now. For just as prolonged unmitigated stress, depression and anxiety can suppress immune functions, a positive frame of mind and a sense that you can cope with whatever comes your way offers potent protection against illness and age-degeneration. At Beth Israel Hospital, another researcher, Dr Stephen Locke, has used psychological tests to evaluate students' abilities to cope with the shocks and challenges of their lives. He has found that the `poor copers' - those who tend to succumb to anxiety, depression and a sense of helplessness when life difficulties arise - show suppressed immune functions, while the `good copers' - people who feel they can deal effectively with whatever comes their way - had normal immune functions even when faced with major life changes. Meanwhile in a well controlled study of women suffering from breast cancer who underwent mastectomy, British researcher Dr Steven Greer discovered that women who react to their diagnosis with a denial that they are ill or with a determination to conquer the illness are far more likely five years later to be free of the disease than those who stoically accepted the diagnosis or who felt hopeless or helpless. making immunity work for you What can you do, starting right now, in the way of using your mind as a tool for ageless aging? You can begin by exploring the benefits of mind/body techniques which can help alter your mental attitudes and emotional states from negative to positive and therefore encourage good immune functions and hence slow down the rate at which you age. There are many. Dr Herbert Benson of Harvard Medical School developed the simple meditative technique, called the relaxation response, which consists of sitting with your eyes closed for fifteen or twenty minutes morning and night and repeating a single word - say `one' or `peace' - over and over again silently. Practiced regularly it will not only counter the immunesuppressing tendencies of stress but even bring about major psychological shifts in belief systems that can gradually change a self-defeating `poor coper' into an optimistic `good coper'. Contrary to popular opinion only 2 or 3 per cent of old people are institutionalized because of psychiatric disorders. Neither do the vast majority of old people have memory defects. Most people over sixty-five continue to be interested in sex, and sexual relations continue well into the eighties between healthy men and women. Studies made of morale and happiness amongst the elderly show no difference between their enjoyment of life and that of younger people. People over sixty-five have fewer accidents per person driving than do younger drivers. They also have fewer accidents at work. The majority of old people are not set in their ways although it does take them longer to learn something new than the young. Studies show that few old people suffer from boredom. Neither are they socially isolated or lonely. More than 10 per cent of old people work and two-thirds of those who don't would like to. Finally old people are seldom irritated or angry. This has been determined by three separate studies. visualize age anew Becoming aware of false assumptions about aging is a good first step. The next is to create a new vision of what it means to have time passing. Make use of creative visualization techniques where in a state of relaxation you allow your mind to play on positive images of yourself five, ten, thirty years from now. There are some excellent books available on the subject which you can use as a guide. But really the technique is very easy. It is only a matter of letting yourself indulge in positive daydreaming. Or practice a meditation or deep-relaxation technique a couple of times a day and finish off by repeating silently to yourself Coue's formula for personal growth and healing, `Every day in every way I am getting better and better.' It is exquisitely simple yet enormously powerful when practiced daily in a deeply relaxed state so that it is your imagination rather than your will which is brought into play. affirm youth and well-being Another simple technique which has real power for altering unconscious expectations and creating new realities is that of writing out `affirmations' - seven times seventy - for a week or two. This can be something as simple as `I am well and will continue to be so as the years pass' or `I let go of past confusion and day by day make my life anew.' The mere act of writing out such words over and over for several days helps break through old thought patterns and negativity that may be hampering you from realizing your full psychobiological potentials. You might be surprised at how quickly they penetrate your consciousness and bring about positive shifts in expectations and in your reality. For they can generate positive mental states and emotions and make them your common everyday experience of reality. And, just as PNI researchers have been discovering, it is the simple positive experiences and emotions like love, hope, faith, laughter, playfulness and creativity which can not only make life worth living, they can actually keep us alive, youthful and well. As effective as massive doses of antioxidant nutrients, fresh-cell therapy and all the other biological methods of age retardation available to you? Very probably. Besides they'll cost you absolutely nothing but a smile.

Bliss feeds our soul. Experiencing it fuels our transformation on every level - body, mind and spirit. More than that, and this may well surprise you, I have come to believe that the experience of bliss - with all the joy and creativity that accompanies it - is meant to be the natural human state. It is just that most of us have not yet re-discovered our connection with it. For a long time, it has seemed to me that the human body is the finest resonator for bliss in the universe. Throughout a million years of evolution, our DNA, connective tissue, emotions, energy fields, mind, and power centres have been programmed for it. Yet, few of us have tapped our potentials to live in the moment from the innate font of bliss - I don’t know how else to describe it - that lies within us. How do you hit the higher octaves of bliss? Expand your consciousness, banish limiting beliefs, and get ready to push the envelope of what you believe possible for you. Meanwhile, I want to share with you something I am enormously excited about in relation to bliss, where it comes from within us and how we experience it. I have been working intensively with people from all over the world for the past year - mentoring them while developing my unique version of Cura Romana for permanent weight loss. (If you haven’t yet visited the website please do: www.curaromana.com)

The more I get to know flowers—living with them, healing with them, photographing them, practicing and teaching flower meditation with them—the more I sense the deep compassion and affinity they have for human beings. This affinity is carried in the energetic architecture of their form. Woven into it also is a great desire to help human kind. SOUL BEAUTY Flowers love to give of their beauty. They love to share their soul energies with our own. And the healing they bring us takes place in a highly personal way. Imagine being at a concert of expertly played classical music. Although we all hear the same music, each of us in the audience will be affected in a different way. Some will be deeply moved, others uplifted, still others calmed and quieted—depending on our individual response, and on whatever need the music fulfils for us. If the same symphony is played by another orchestra with a different conductor, the same collection of people will experience further shades of meaning. So can it be with flower essences created by different makers. There are now more than three thousand flower essences made worldwide. You need only a handful to benefit from their gifts. The most famous of all is Rescue Remedy. Not a single essence, but a mixture of five flower essences, it was created by Dr Edward Bach. Hundreds of thousands of bottles of it are sold each year. Many who use it regularly are not aware of how it is made from flowers, and have little idea how it works. They only experience its benefits. Bach’s Rescue Remedy is one of the most useful things you can give to anyone who has suffered a shock—from a skinned knee to the death of a family member. It helps restore mental, physical and emotional balance in the face of any trauma. Taking any flower essence is a gentle, yet profound, experience. Before deciding on which essence or essences are right for you at a particular moment in your life, take time to become aware both of what is going on inside you as well as whatever physical symptoms you may be experiencing. A practitioner trained in flower medicine can be a great help here—especially if you are wrestling with deep depression or chronic physical illness. He or she will take into account your history, your work, your relationships, your strengths and weaknesses, and your future goals. If you are choosing an essence for yourself, think about all of these things. Look at photographs of flowers, or better still, seek out the flowers themselves in a garden or the woods. Get to know a little of the character and the healing properties of each flower and notice any that seem relevant to you, or which attract you. WHERE ARE YOU Then take a gentle, compassionate look at what is going on with you now. There are two ways to do this. You can begin by looking through a flower essence materia medica to find out what conditions different flower essences are designed to alleviate. You may discover that some essences leap out at you as you recognize descriptions of behavioral or emotional patterns that fit. Write all this down. Then work from the list you have when making your choices. When you get to know the flower essences you are drawn to, explore each flower essence company’s lists. This is easy to do by looking them up on the internet. You really don’t need to know a lot of different essences to find the help you need. For many different essences can often help the same conditions. The other method for ‘self diagnosis’ takes a bit longer, but works even better. For a week, observe your reactions to what is going on around you day after day. Make a note of any emotional reactions that repeat in your life again and again—if you feel anxious, nervous, angry, tense, or upset, for instance. Write all this down in a notebook. Also record what seems to trigger these feelings. See if there are one or more emotional patterns or tendencies that appear more often than others. Record any keywords or phrases that come to mind. For instance, “I am often irritable. This makes me impatient. Sometimes my body gets tense, and I feel anxious. I suppose people think I’m intolerant.” You might talk to your partner or to a close friend about what you have observed and recorded. See if they agree. Ask if they have other observations about you that might be helpful. Then, armed with your description of your emotional states and traits, go through the descriptions in a flower essence material medica and match your key words and phrases with theirs. Make a list of all the essences that you think might apply to you. TRUST YOUR INSTINCT Narrow your list down to no more than 3 to 6 essences— those which best match the way you feel, or want to feel. Using your intuition, see if you can identify one or two essences which you think, more than any of the others, seem to ‘fit’ with your needs. If you have a healthfood store or pharmacy nearby that sells flower essences, it can useful to handle the bottles of essences themselves. Hold each one you think might be helpful in your hand for a moment or two, close your eyes, and see how you feel. Always trust your instincts to discover which ones most call to you. Flower essence therapy is the safest form of natural treatment in the world. It is impossible to over-dose on it. Should you happen to choose the wrong remedy, your body’s energy will simply not resonate with it and you will get no effect from it. LESS IS MORE Sometimes the best way to use flower essences is to work with one remedy at a time. But if you feel you want to use more than one, then choose a ‘theme’—remedies that deal with a single emotional state: A combination of peppermint and nasturtium, for instance, helps clear mental fatigue. Crab apple and buttercup can help build self-esteem. You can mix them together. If two quite different emotional ‘traits’ emerge from your self-examination—for example, anger and a need to release more creativity, you can deal with both issues at the same time, if you wish. In this case, take one essence or a mixture of essences for the one condition in the morning, and those for the other in the evening. With any flower essence the adage ‘less is more’ applies. Although you cannot overdose on a remedy, you are more likely to see benefits from taking smaller amounts than larger ones. Also remember that there is tremendous power even in the ritual of taking a flower essence. As you take it, focus your mind gently on the positive healing you seek. Be sure to allow plenty of time for an essence to do its work. Give it at least a month before you consider replacing it with another. You will sense its effects and know if you should continue to use it. HOW TO USE FLOWER ESSENCES Flower essences that you buy come in glass bottles containing stock concentrates. The stock concentrate or ‘stock’ has been made from the mother essence, which in turn has been made from the vibration water plus a little alcohol to preserve it. It can be a lot of fun and very rewarding to make your own flower essences. Here’s how it works. The sun impregnates water into which a flower is introduced, creating vibrational water. ½ vibrational water + ½ brandy makes the mother essence (sometimes also called mother tincture.) 7 drops of mother essence in a bottle of 20% alcohol and 60-80% pure water creates a stock concentrate of the flower. (This is what you buy in stores and make your own dosage bottles from.) 2-4 drops of one or more stock concentrates is added to a 30ml bottle filled ¾ of the way up with pure water and then topped up with brandy to make your dosage bottle. Put four drops under your tongue at intervals throughout the day or add them to a small glass of water and sip it. Carry your dosage bottle around with you. Take your essence from it four times a day. Making your own decanted bottle also enables you to use more than one essence at a time. You simply add 4 to 6 drops of each mother tincture to the dosage bottle when preparing it, thereby creating a special mixture just for you. You can also mix your stock concentrate directly into a bottle of spring or distilled water and drink this mixture throughout the day. I like to do this when using the Bach Flower Remedy Crab Apple, which is helpful for detoxifying the body. I take a liter or a liter and a half bottle of pure water, add 6 drops of stock concentrate to it and mix it up, then put it on my desk while I am working, and sip it throughout the day. (Be sure to label each blend you create.) Flower essences work best when taken regularly—say four times a day—as much as possible at around the same times (but don’t get neurotic about this if you can’t.) Whenever you can, take them as you would a homeopathic remedy, in a ‘clean mouth’—at least 20 minutes before eating, or at least a couple of hours after. Take a moment or two each time you take an essence to remember its healing qualities and to give thanks to the flowers from which it comes. This makes you more receptive to what is given. GREAT USES OF ESSENCE DROPPER BOTTLE: Fill a 30ml dropper bottle with ¾ spring water and ¼ brandy. Add 4 drops of flower essence from a stock concentrate bottle. Shake or tap the bottle against your hand several times vigorously before taking to potentize it. Place 4-6 drops of your mixture directly under your tongue. Alternatively, place these drops into a glass of spring water and drink. STOCK DIRECT: Put 4 drops of the concentrated stock essence directly under your tongue. ESSENCE WATER: Place 6 drops of one or more essences from their stock bottles directly into a large container of mineral water or distilled water and drink throughout the day. Swirl the bottle round clockwise before using each time to potentize the water. ESSENCE BATH: Add 25 drops of stock concentrate of essence directly into a warm (not hot) bath. Swish it all around for a minute or so and then soak for at least twenty minutes, topping up the bath with warm water if you start to feel chilly and topping up with cold water if you get too warm. Use this time to expand your consciousness through meditation. It’s a great way to prepare for a blissful night’s sleep. ESSENCE MASSAGE: Add 10 to 12 drops of stock flower essence to your massage oil or face or body creams and then use them as you normally would, directing your intention towards bringing healing and wholeness. You can mix an essence this way with aromatherapy treatments, combining both the vibrational aspects of a flower with the physiological benefits of an essential oil. ESSENCE MISTERS: To a clean 100ml spray bottle of pure water, add 20 drops of stock concentrate flower essence. Shake well before spraying. Spray your face, your body, the air around you while opening your awareness to the flower healing that is being offered. However you choose to use the flower essences, remember that your intention and the compassion that you have for yourself or for another while using them play an important part in receiving their vibrational healing power. Let each time you use an essence be a moment of pleasurable receptivity, where you open yourself to the grace of flower blessings and give thanks for the generosity of spirit they bring to enhance your life.

The shelves of health food stores are chock-a-block with vitamin and mineral supplements. If you want to get the very best of them for the sake of your own health and that of your family you’ll need to choose them carefully. Despite their big price tags and the sexy designs that appear on their labels, the vast majority of multi vitamin and mineral products consist of synthetically manufactured chemical lookalikes of no value to your health. You’ve got to go for feed-state multivitamins and minerals if you want health supporting benefits. More about this in a moment. WHO NEEDS VITAMINS ANYWAY? We all do, despite the fact that a myriad of medical professionals completely untrained in good nutrition continue to tell their patients that taking supplements does nothing but produce expensive urine. This is nonsense. As far back as 20 years ago impeccable research was being published in reputable scientific journals making it obvious that human beings benefit from taking the right kind of multivitamin supplement. For instance, one excellent study which appeared in The Journal of the American Medical Association showed that women who take over-the-counter multivitamin supplements in the first months of pregnancy dramatically reduce the risk of giving birth to a neurologically damaged child. Neural tube defects are amongst the most horrible and most common birth defects. They cause everything from death to paralysis in the child and they affect between 1 and 2 babies in every 1000 births. The study was carried out under the direction of Aubrey Milunsky, director of Boston University's prestigious Center for Human Genetics. It involved 23,000 women, half of whom took multivitamin pills containing folic acid (a B-group vitamin in particularly high demand during pregnancy). The results were astonishing. The incidence of neural tube defects in babies born to the women who took the multivitamin pills was only a quarter of what it was amongst those women who took no supplements. SHAKING THE FEDS So remarkable were these results that they shook United States Federal officials who have for generations claimed that taking nutritional supplements is not only unnecessary but can be damaging to an ordinary 'healthy' person's wellbeing. Nonetheless, the FDA and CODEX still insist that “nutrition is not relevant to health” and that if any vitamins and minerals are to be allowed on the market they will only be permitted in ultra-low doses. Clinically effective nutrients and doses are month-by-month being treated as “toxins” and removed from public access. How do we get around this? By taking good quality Food State Supplements instead of the run-of-the-mill chemically produced varieties. WHY YOU NEED FOOD STATE Most vitamins sold in stores and online are synthetic man-made vitamins that have been produced in the laboratory in an attempt to match the molecular structure of naturally occurring vitamins normally found in our foods. As a result they tend to contain high doses of the chemically-made nutrients in an attempt to make enough of each nutrient biologically available to the body. It is just these high dosages that the FDA and CODEX are targeting by making them illegal to be sold over-the-counter. But there is a wonderful way around this which I strongly urge you to explore—to shun chemically made vitamins (which over 90% on the market are) and go for their Food State cousins. Our bodies have been accustomed to absorbing with ease the vitamins and minerals that we get from our foods. Man-made synthetics, even though they try to match the molecular structures of vitamins and minerals, are not the same. Our bodies do not handle them as well, so you may be taking a high potency man-made synthetic that has come recommended, but you may not actually be absorbing the vitamins and minerals it contains. This is one of the reasons why I am so passionate about whole-food, natural multi-vitamins and minerals. GROWN NUTRIENTS Good manufacturers of whole-food vitamins and minerals grow the majority of the foods and botanicals that go into their formulas themselves. Then, using state-of-the-art scientific instrumentation, they test, validate and document the potencies of all the raw materials that make up the formula. This is achieved by using high performance liquid chromatography to test vitamin potency and inductively coupled plasma optimal emission spectrometers to test mineral potency. They are also very careful in how they handle the food extracts that are often added to these supplements. For instance, they use a very specific system of drying which transfers heat gently and efficiently, removing moisture from delicate foods and botanicals while preventing oxidation of the raw materials. This protects the integrity of the food and the botanicals as well as protecting against the degradation of their nutrient content, maintaining the color and the flavor. TREMENDOUS BENEFITS Because natural Food State vitamins are indeed natural and food-state, you will find that the recommended daily serving of vitamins per person is usually somewhere between six and eight tablets a day in order to be able to obtain the full benefit. In addition to the usual vitamins, i.e. vitamin A, C, D3, E, K1, folate, and so forth, there should be a good broad spectrum of minerals: calcium, iodine, magnesium, selenium, chromium, molybdenum, manganese, etc. These wonderful food-state vitamins also often contain extracts taken from other plants that are beneficial to the body, things like extract of barley grass and green papaya, extract of carrot for instance, as well as astragalus. They may also contain many of the Ayurvedic herbs or the herbs that are used in Chinese medicine—reishi and shitake mushrooms, foti and kudzu root. This is the kind of vitamin that I think you will benefit most from. BUYER BEWARE There are many vitamins on the market that claim to be whole-food vitamins but that are not of top quality. Always make sure, whatever vitamin/mineral complex you choose, that it is free of corn, soy, yeast, wheat and dairy products, and it has been formulated without the use of preservatives, artificial flavors or coloring. Here are some food-state vitamin and mineral supplements at the top of my own list. Tried and tested, they are worth every penny you pay for them. I have used all of these products personally and can’t recommend them highly enough. If you try some of them, I’d love you to let me know how you have found them yourself. MegaFood, Women's, Whole Food Multivitamin MegaFood cares about doing things the right way - they refuse to take shortcuts, and never compromise on quality or the things that matter. Since 1973, they have been going out of their way to source fresh and local foods from trusted farmers. They then make all their wholesome supplements using a one-of-a-kind process to deliver the most authentic nutrition - much more than vitamins alone. Order MegaFood Womens Whole Food Multi from iherb MegaFood, Baby & Me, California Blend, Whole Food Multivitamin Ideal for pregnant and lactating women Order Baby And Me Multi from iherb MegaFood, Men Over 40, Whole Food Multivitamin & Mineral, Iron Free Formula MegaFood cares about doing things the right way - we refuse to take shortcuts, and we never compromise on quality or the things that matter. Since 1973, we have been going out of our way to source fresh and local foods from trusted farmers. We then make our wholesome supplements using our one-of-a-kind process to deliver the most authentic nutrition - much more than vitamins alone. Order Men Over 40 Multi from iherb MegaFood, Skin, Nails & Hair, Whole Food Multivitamin MegaFood cares about doing things the right way - we refuse to take shortcuts, and we never compromise on quality or the things that matter. Since 1973, we have been going out of our way to source fresh and local foods from trusted farmers. We then make our wholesome supplements using our one-of-a-kind process to deliver the most authentic nutrition - much more than vitamins alone. Order Skin, Nails & Hair Multi from iherb