health

Seven years ago, Leslie and I launched our original Cura Romana. We started to work with men and women in countries all over the world. What we learned from these wonderful people went far beyond anything we anticipated. This was not only about how to experience lasting weight loss, but how we could help participants raise their health to levels that are life-changing. We came face to face with the fears, frustrations and addictions that some of you have long wrestled with, and we learned how to help you overcome these challenges. Since then, year by year we have put into practice an enormous number of new tools, techniques and breakthrough guidance about how making simple yet profound changes in how you eat, think and live can help keep you lean, strong and healthy for life. The response to all of this from every one of you continues to inspire our work. Let me share with you a typical description of the updated 2016 Cura experience. We received this report from Yvonne, three days ago: “Doing Cura has been the best decision of my life. I have shed stored fat effortlessly, I no longer experience joint and body pain. I sleep really well and I have more energy and greater emotional stability. This journey has been life changing for me physically, emotionally and spiritually. I am now medication free. I’ve learned to feed my body with the food it thrives on, and maintain my weight permanently. I’ve learned to love myself and my life” Our success with Cura has been no accident of fate. It’s a clear reflection of the commitment Leslie and I have brought to a world filled with hype and confusion. It is our gift to a public who deserve the very best, most reliable experience of safe, natural weight loss and wellbeing that the participants we work with tell us can be life-changing. We love working with you on a highly personal level, especially on the Inner Circle Gold. We are completely dedicated to the goals we have set so that each and every one of you can come to live with a sense of joy, freedom and ongoing self-discovery from the core of your being. You won’t find all this in Leslie’s earlier Cura Romana books. Why? Because Cura has become a rapidly evolving phenomenon. To get the very best Cura now has to offer, you will need to do one of our online programs. Meanwhile, here are a few vital snippets of information we want you to have to help you create a vital new you in the next few months: Cura 2016 has one simple weight loss goal—to restore balanced functioning to the parts of the brain that no longer function correctly in overweight people. It can only do this thanks to the combination of our Specific Food Protocol used together with our unique Essential Spray. It’s your brain that exerts centralized management over all the physiological functions in your body. It does this by generating patterns of activity in specific control centers for hormones, appetite, weight gain, weight loss, hunger, satiety, emotions, mental functions and stress. This process demands no strenuous efforts on your part. Your body itself makes all this take place naturally. It releases unwanted fat naturally as it restores good functioning to these control centers. As these changes take place in the body, other powerful gifts to mind, body and spirit begin to happen. There is literally nothing else in the world that works the way Cura does. Here is just a sampling of Cura’s benefits: Yes, Cura is a powerful way to shed unwanted fat fast. •And yes, Cura’s Consolidation shows how to avoid regain and eliminate food cravings permanently. •Yes, Cura often improves health so much that participants’ doctors report their decision to severely cut back on drugs and/or eliminate altogether medications they used to prescribe before their patients began their Cura experience. And there are so many other Cura rewards in addition to health and fat loss that I couldn’t list them all. Our people constantly tell us these include mental clarity, emotional balance, more energy, better sleep, renewed self-respect—even a new lease on life. For such transformations to become part of your own life, there are two things you will need to do: First, follow Cura’s food and Consolidation protocols to the letter. Second, you must use Cura’s Essential Spray accurately. Nothing else can bring about hunger-free fat burning while bringing mental clarity, emotional balance, increased energy, better sleep, renewed self-respect and wellbeing. It is this combo that gives Cura its power to help you transform your body and your life. In the words of Brooke in the United States, who just last week finished her Inner Circle Gold 45 program: “I encourage you to begin this amazing process that will allow something truly wonderful to happen in your life. It’s a guarantee of weightloss and incredible health, consciousness and vitality. It’s simple to do and you are NOT HUNGRY...Don’t tell yourself there’s no help for you. The money you spend will bring what seem to be miraculous results. Give yourself this gift!” Brooke shed 20 pounds working with Leslie on her online program. The physical, emotional and spiritual transformations that take place on Cura come in the form of simple functional shifts in the way your body works. Cura begins by encouraging your body to let go of toxic wastes that may have been held in its tissues for some time. This decreases a body’s toxic burden. As wastes diminish, your body’s fluid, dynamic, continuous webwork of energy, physical substances and light become vitalized. Your senses become heightened. You become transformed. The only way to experience all this for yourself is to sign up and work with us by participating in Cura’s online programs—especially Cura’s Inner Circle Gold. Have a great new year. Leslie and I look forward to working with you. If you would like to learn more visit us at curaromana.com

If you are looking for a Bio-balanced, high potency B-complex for adrenal and nervous system support, enhanced vitality, resilience and mental clarity, you can’t do better than Rainbow Light, Complete B-Complex, Food-Based Formula. I buy mine at iHerb.com, who ship fast and cheap worldwide. This formula contains absorption enhancing co-nutrients such as zinc, manganese and 500 mg of vitamin C with bioflavonoids as well as energizing foods and herbs to calm and soothe—like California poppy and orange essential oil—while supporting energy with gotu kola, American ginseng and ashwagandha; as well as immunity enhancing bee pollen, and spirulina and barley grass for vitality. This gentle-on-the-stomach formula is designed for optimal assimilation and utilization. Most important of all, this product is a top quality FOOD STATE formula. BETTER THAN SYNTHETICS 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 that are normally found in our foods. Avoid them. You see, unfortunately our bodies have been accustomed to absorbing with ease the vitamins and minerals that we get from our foods and these man-made synthetics, even though they try to match the molecular structure of a particular vitamin, are not the same—our body does not handle them the same. So you may be taking a very high potency vitamin that is highly recommended, and you actually may not be using the vitamins and minerals. This is one of the reasons why I am so passionate about FOOD-BASED natural multivitamins and minerals. BOTANICALLY GROWN Good manufacturers of whole food vitamins and minerals often grow the majority of the foods and botanicals that go into their formulas. Then, using state-of-the-art scientific instrumentation, they test, validate and document the potencies of all the raw materials that go in to the formula. This is achieved by using high performance liquid chromatography to test vitamin potency, or inductively coupled plasma optimal emission spectrometers to test mineral potency. They are also very careful in how they handle the food extracts that go into their multivitamins. 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 the nutrient content, maintaining the color and the flavor. There are many vitamins on the market that also claim to be whole food vitamins but that are not of top quality. Rainbow Light, Complete B-Complex, Food-Based Formula When looking for good quality vitamins of any kind, I highly recommend that you look for one that is a multinutrient capsule with whole food concentrates, providing vitamin and mineral complexes with antioxidants and a full range of high potency herbs. You also need to always look for a vitamin that’s free of corn, soy, yeast, wheat and dairy products and has been formulated without the use of preservatives, artificial flavors or coloring. Of course, if you are a vegetarian, you need to look for one that is suitable for your needs. You can order Rainbow Light, Complete B-Complex, Food-Based Formula from here: Order Rainbow Light, Complete B-Complex from iherb ORDERING FROM IHERB.COM: If you decide to order any products from Iherb.com, you will automatically receive $5 or $10 off your first order. Their products are the cheapest and best in the world…I use them for everything no matter where I am. Get it sent to you via DHL. It will be with you in three to four working days… iHerb.com ship all over the world very cheaply.

Phytochemicals have an important part to play in rejuvenating the body and continuing to de-age it afterwards. A diet for de-aging the body needs to be high-raw and rich in green vegetables, whole grains, fruits, beans and seeds. When you eat this way you get the very best complement of vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals for free radical protection and enzymes. And when it comes to de-aging the body enzymes move center stage. Here are a few of the most important recently discovered phytochemicals and some of their life-enhancing, antioxidant and anti-aging actions: Allicin Where Is It Found: onions, garlic, leeks, spring onions Benefits: lowers LDL (the negative) blood cholesterol, detoxifies by enhancing production of glutathione S-transferase, helps protect against breast cancer and heart disease as well as colon cancer and stomach cancer, enhances immunity Alpha Carotene Where Is It Found: seaweeds and carrots Benefits: heightens immunity, slows growth of cancer cells in animals, may help prevent cardiovascular disease and inflammation Anthocyanins Where Is It Found: cranberry juice Benefits: helps prevent and cure urinary tract infections Beta Carotene Where Is It Found: dark green vegetables, red & yellow vegetables such as carrot and marrow, peaches and apricots Benefits: decreases risk of many cancers including skin, colon, and female cancers. Also improves immune function Catechins Where Is It Found: green tea Benefits: together with polyphenol and theaflavin it lowers cholesterol, boosts fat metabolism and may boost immune functions as well as help prevent some cancers and much aging   Indoles Where Is It Found: cabbages, dark green vegetables Benefits: helps detoxify the body, protects against excessive oestrogen buildup, slows cancer growth in animals, enhances immune functions Limones Where Is It Found: citrus fruits Benefits: protects against breast cancer in animals, heightens production of enzymes involved in detoxifying the body, helps lower blood cholesterol and reduce plaque in arteries Lycopene Where Is It Found: red grapefruit, tomatoes, watermelon, apricots Benefits: protects against age-related cell damage and oxidation to proteins and fats Saponins Where Is It Found: chickpeas, lentils and other beans Benefits: help slow the rate of tumor growth in animals Sulphoraphane Where Is It Found: cauliflower, kale, turnip greens, Brussels sprouts Benefits: helps cancer fighting and age fighting enzymes detoxify cells, inhibits the development of breast cancer in animals Triterpenoids & Glycyrrhizin Where Is It Found: licorice root Benefits: enhances immune functions, has anti-tumour properties, fights gum disease and tooth decay, improves liver function by enhancing liver enzymes that help protect against excess oestrogens

“Take two jokes and call me in the morning.” It’s the prescription of physicians and psychologists who are aware that, if we want to look and feel our best, we should laugh more. Joy and laughter are fundamental to health and healing. Some of these men and women work diligently in research institutes, measuring cortisol levels while subjects watch Marx Brothers films. Others lead seminars for healers, doctors and business executives, helping them increase effectiveness and heighten pleasure by learning to see the funny side of things. Many work with cancer patients and the families of the seriously ill. This new breed of professionals comes in many sizes and shapes. You will often find little signs posted on their clinic walls saying things like: “I thought I made a mistake once, but I was mistaken” or “The Joys of Hypochondria” or "'I’m not afraid of dying. I just don't want to be there when it happens” (Woody Allen). ENTER GELOTHERAPY It is now well-known that our emotional state exerts a major influence on health and longevity. Laughing has a highly beneficial influence on the immune system. Thirty-four years ago, Normal Cousins wrote his still-famous book Anatomy of an Illness (New York: Norton). In it he describes how laughter, together with massive doses of vitamin C, brought about his complete recovery from an excruciating form of arthritis known as ankylosing spondylitis—a crippling spinal disease. Cousins was a renowned American political journalist, author, professor and world peace advocate. While dangerously ill, he discovered that 10 minutes of rich laughter watching Laurel and Hardy or old clips from Candid Camera would bring him two hours of pain-free sleeping with no side effects. When laboratory tests were carried out to measure inflammation—a serious symptom of the illness—they revealed that inflammation was greatly reduced after each bout of laughter. This validated Cousins’ subjective experience and started a revolution in gelotherapy—the word for the therapeutic use of laughter. After his illness had healed, Cousins was invited by Dean Sherman Mellinkoff, of the University of California at Los Angeles, to join the faculty as Adjunct Professor of Medical Humanities. Until this day at The Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology, a task force of high-caliber scientists continue to map the ways in which the relationship between mind and body affects health and healing—especially the vital role that humor, laughter and other positive emotions and attitudes like determination, love, purpose, hope and the will to live can both heal and lengthen lives. Cousins wrote, “It becomes necessary therefore to create a balanced perspective, one that recognizes that attitudes such as a strong will to live, high purpose, a capacity for festivity, and a reasonable degree of confidence are not an alternative to competent medical attention, but a way of enhancing the environment of treatment. The wise physician favors a spirit of responsible participation by patients in a total strategy of medical care.” LAUGHTER IS CONTAGIOUS In Europe, Britain and the United States, many hospitals provide “humor rooms” where patients go to watch videos and laugh. Organizations like John Cleese's “Video Arts Program” offer courses which make use of laughter to teach managers how to handle difficult situations more effectively through humor. American psychiatrist William Fry, M.D. is someone who has been investigating humor's beneficial effects on healing for decades. He says, "We now have laboratory evidence that mirthful laughter stimulates most of the major physiologic systems of the body.” A good belly-laugh which speeds up the heart rate, improves blood circulation and works muscles all over the body is every bit as beneficial as a bout of aerobic exercise. After the laughter is over, you feel wonderfully relaxed. It benefits the heart, increases the consumption of oxygen, reduces muscle tension, pulse and blood pressure. Fry believes that laughter is a kind of blocking agent—a buffer which helps to protect us from the damage that negative emotions (particularly those that arise during illness) do to the body. He says, “In any serious illness there's a sense of panic and helplessness that have direct psychological effects. Humor is one of the full range of positive emotions that help establish a new flux.” Fry has also discovered that laughter and humor diffuse rage—the violent emotion at the core of Type A personalities, with their high disposition to cardiovascular disease. LAUGH STRESS AWAY At Loma Linda Medical Center in the United States, Research Professor of Pathology Lee S. Berk carefully charted many of the ways in which laughter is good for you. Most of them revolve around humor’s ability to counter the ravages of the classic stress response. When we are under stress, certain hormones such as noradrenaline, cortisol and adrenaline shoot up. Adrenaline constricts blood vessels, raising heart rate and blood pressure. Over time this can lead to tachycardia, heart palpitations and hypertension. Frequent laughter significantly reduces these negative consequences. Berk finds that cortisol levels are also significantly reduced when we laugh. High cortisol levels tend to suppress the immune system, making you more susceptible to illness and premature aging. Humor lowers cortisol, modulating the immune system. DO IT YOURSELF Some wonderful organizations have grown up to help those of us who have forgotten how to laugh rediscover the art. One of the most highly respected is The Humor Project, founded by American educator Joel Goodman in Saratoga Springs New York. It acts as a clearinghouse for information and programs worldwide designed to help people find successful ways of applying humor in their lives. This was the first organization in the world to focus full-time on the positive power of humor. Right from its inception, their mission has been to make a difference to the lives of individuals, organizations and nations. They do a great job of it too. You can order books, DVDs, props and software to help you personally or professionally. They host teleseminars and international Humor and Creativity Conferences which attract health care professionals and groups of humorists from around the world, as well as ordinary people wanting to improve their health and the quality of their lives. A month ago, Scientific American published an interesting article called “How Happiness Boosts the Immune System.” It examines some of the research now taking place, not only in respect to the influence laughter has on the immune system and healing in general, but on gene expressions. Professionals working with laughter are quick to point out that laughter is not just for the ill and infirm. It is for everybody. One of the best things about humor is that it breaks through the tendency each of us has to take ourselves and our values too seriously. It breaks down the roles we play and liberates the essential being locked within. It is the tendency we humans have to identify with our own self-created image, fears, beliefs and assumptions that takes us away from the joy which is our birthright. We all need to seek out and spend time with people who make us laugh. It is high time we rediscover the art of being silly—like a child. Learn More: How Happiness Boosts the Immune System Scientific Research on Laughter at Loma Linda University The Norman Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology at UCLA The Humor Project

Your skin will not age by accident, or just because time goes by. Skin loses its tone and texture whenever the energy order—the psychological and biological integrity of the living matrix, that whole interconnectedness that is your body—is undermined. All sorts of stuff can cause this to happen. But nothing is more sinister and insidious than chronic high levels of blood sugar and insulin, which threaten most people over the age of 25 or 30. Stop them in your body, and you will not only slow skin aging. You can actually reverse its signs. THE GREAT DESTROYER Sugar actually destroys your skin. And I’m not just talking about the white stuff that sits in bowls. Most of the foods that people eat these days—from pasta and bread to packaged cereals and bagels—flood the bloodstream with glucose, within a very few minutes of entering the body. This carries serious consequences for the skin. CHECK OUT YOUR ANCESTORS The reasons for all of this are genetic, and very simple. Despite this fact, for the last 70 years, they have eluded most so-called scientists, nutritionists and medical doctors. Here’s the truth: Grain-based and sugary foods are recent interventions. For over a million years, humans never ate them. Because genetic adaptation is a slow process—it can take one hundred thousand years, believe it or not, for a significant alteration in a gene to take place—our bodies lack the ability to deal with these foods in large quantities. Yet grains and sugar-rich foods—many riddled with junk fats and chemicals to boot—make up the largest portion of most people’s diets these days. When our bodies are forced to handle them (and most governments, doctors and food-manufacturers are still trying to sell us the idea that low-fat, high-carb diets are good for our health), our skin—in fact our whole body—rebels. CUT THE CARBS What form this insurrection takes depends on just how vulnerable we are genetically. It can show up as adult-onset or type 2 diabetes; obesity; energy swings; raised HDL cholesterol; or chronic fatigue. Eating lots of these kinds of carbs and sugars can also cause—and few people or even doctors are as yet aware of this—all sorts of common degenerative diseases, from cancer to arthritis and coronary heart disease. When it comes to skin, the sugar monster gets busy fabricating wrinkles, sags, puffy faces, lackluster complexions. This creates a situation where, having learned all this, you wonder whether you have the energy to do anything about it. THE WRINKLE MONSTER Sugar—the wrinkle monster—has two faces. To escape his insidious attacks, you need to address both. First, there’s the all-encompassing glucose/insulin battle you need to win. After years of living the way most of us do—on convenience foods, fabricated from grains, cereals, and an infinite number of sugars and syrups—this undermines good genetic health. The other face of the sugar monster focuses on the damage that excess glucose does to the body’s proteins. It attacks skin cells and collagen fibers, producing what is known as advanced glycosylation end products. These nasties, conveniently known as AGEs, are like terrorists that wreak havoc within the living matrix, causing collagen fibers to lose their ability to maintain order. AGEs do this by making collagen fibers to cross link. This results in the formation of wrinkles, sags and bags on your face and elsewhere. WIN THE AGING WAR It’s not just one or two anti-aging battles you need to win to make a significant difference to your skin, regardless of your age. Cutting out the high-carb stuff from your diet needs to reduce your blood sugar and insulin levels. By doing so this counters the formation of AGEs—as well as detoxifying your skin and your body as a whole. Radical though it may sound doing this will set you on the right track both to skin rejuvenation and to whole body health and vitality. Of course, knowing this stuff is not enough. You have to take action. Every skin improvement and de-aging process is inexorably woven together with all of the other within your entire living matrix. If you want powerful anti aging skin care, you need to address the whole shebang. By altering the way you eat, live, and look after your body internally and externally, your skin not only looks younger and more beautiful. It will bring your whole being access to levels of energy, emotional balance and well-being that turn the dream of living a full and creative life into reality. This is how to create a revolution in the look and health of skin. And here’s the great news: This can also bring you beauty at the deepest level, transforming your whole experience of yourself in the process.

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.

Every one of us has more potential for health, happiness, self expression, energy and good looks than we ever make use of. Although there are many tools to help you towards self fulfillment - good food, exercise, stress control, beauty techniques, etc. - by far the most important of all is learning to use the power of your mind. you are what you think Because we create our lives from thoughts, it is important that we think constructively. Unfortunately most of us, without being aware of it, limit our possibilities for fulfillment because we continually bombard ourselves with negative thoughts. We all carry on some sort of internal conversation throughout the day. Usually if we tune in and listen, we find that it is full of negative thoughts and self doubts. Most often we are hearing the voices of our parents, or of people in authority telling us that we can't expect to be happy, that we are bound to fail, that life is suffering and that we should face the stark realities. Out of these negative thoughts arise our self-image and our sense of purpose and direction. It is clear to see, with so much criticism and so little sense of possibility, why we never dare dream of better things. The first step in changing your attitude towards yourself and your life is to stand back and listen to the voices in your head objectively and realize just how ill founded they are. Once you detach yourself from the rubbish going on in your head, you can begin on the path to self-fulfillment. love thyself Whether you feel you are too fat, too thin, too short, too tall, too selfish, too sensitive etc., in order to change, you must begin by accepting yourself right now for what you are. Try this exercise: Look at yourself in a mirror and repeat the words, "I love and accept myself completely, as I am" in your head over and over. And as you do write down any blocks that seem to keep you from accepting yourself. You may feel stupid or ridiculous or embarrassed, but stick with the exercise and you will find that it begins to ring true. positive affirmations You can learn to program your mind to bring about success and fulfillment in all areas of your life through positive affirmations. An affirmation is a phrase which can be silently thought, spoken aloud, written down or all three. The great thing is that affirmations can be done anytime and anywhere in one form or another. There are a few basic guidelines for contacting the appropriate part of your brain and evoking results. Once you understand them, you can create your own affirmations to help you become all that you can be. present tense The subconscious part of the brain only understands now - the present tense - so it is important to phrase your affirmation in the present tense. If you try the future tense, e.g. "I will be happy." your goal will remain constantly out of your reach. It may take a bit of getting used to to write or speak your dreams in the present tense, but remember that is just a formality. first person The most powerful suggestions are those made in the first person. Remember when you say "I" you are including all of you and so helping to integrate and employ your entire being in your goals. It is always better to make affirmations positive rather than negative. In other words in stead of saying, "I no longer overeat" say "Everything I eat returns me to my ideal weight of...." specific and realistic Set yourself specific goals at first, which are within your capabilities to achieve. Once you have accomplished them you will be encouraged and can set more challenging goals. If you are trying to give up smoking, for instance, begin with the affirmation that you will cut down the amount you smoke by half. Then you can cut by half again until you finally stop altogether. short and simple Keep affirmations as short and direct as possible. A concise brief affirmation will have more impact than a long wordy one. suspend disbelief Try while doing affirmations to cast aside doubts and believe in the possibility of what you are saying. If you keep experiencing negative thoughts, get them down on paper, then get rid of them and reassert your positive affirmation. personally phrased Make sure that you are happy with the wording of your affirmation. For each person, the word choice may need to be slightly different. Feel free to change any of the affirmations we suggest to suit your own requirements. all encompassing Remember that the affirmation can be used to transform any area of your life, from career and self image to your relationships with others. The Bible says: 'Ask and it shall be given you; seek and ye shall find.' Know that you have every right to be successful and happy and that your life is yours to create. Here are some favorite affirmations. Find one or two that you particularly like and repeat them to yourself often. My daughter and I both like the written affirmations, because for us they seem to solidify things. Other people prefer to repeat them silently in meditation, or even sing them. If you do write them down keep a special affirmation journal and write in it any thoughts that arise as you write. Also make a note of things that change for you for the better, and be sure to give thanks for what is given to you. We find seven a useful number to work with. Repeat the affirmations in multiples of seven at a time. some affirmations Every day in every way I am getting better and better. I have everything I need to enjoy life here and now. I create my life and it is good. I love and appreciate myself just I am. Each day my life unfolds in beautiful perfection. I enjoy to love and be loved. The more I give to others the more I have to give. My relationship with ....... is getting better and better. It is good and right for me to have everything I want. Everything I eat makes me strong and healthy. I eliminate wastes easily and completely from my system. I have an exciting, rewarding and well paid job. I have plenty of energy and I enjoy work. I communicate freely and easily with others. I have all the time I need to accomplish all I want to do. It's okay for me to enjoy myself and have fun. God's energy within me produces perfect results in everything I do. Everything that happens is working for the good in my life. I can do ........ and nothing can stop me. ....... or something better now comes to me for the total good of all concerned. I give thanks for all that I am blessed with.

A thorough, comprehensive technique for relaxation and personal transformation, autogenic training - developed in the early 1930s by the German psychiatrist Johannes H Schultz - consists of a series of simple mental exercises designed to turn off the body's `fight or flight' mechanism, and turn on the restorative rhythms and harmonizing associated with profound psychophysical relaxation. Practiced daily, it can bring results comparable to those achieved by serious Eastern meditators. Yet unlike meditation, autogenics has no cultural, religious or cosmological overtones. It demands no special clothing, unusual postures or practices. When you practice autogenics, emotional and spiritual detoxification happens in just the way physical detoxification occurs on Clean Sweep Diet, and once again the whole process is generated from within. freedom from within Johannes Schultz was a student of the clinically orientated neuro-pathologist Oskar Vogt, who at the turn of the century at the Berlin Neurological Institute was deeply involved in research on sleep and hypnosis. Vogt remarked that some of his patients who had been subjected to hypnosis developed the ability to put themselves in and out of a hypnotic state - or rather autohypnotic, since it was self-induced. These people experienced remarkable relief from tension and fatigue and also tended to lose whatever psychosomatic disorders they had been suffering from. Drawing on Vogt's observations, Schultz went on to design techniques that would enable people to induce this deep mental and psychological relaxation at will. Schultz found that when men and women enter the autohypnotic state they experience two specific physical phenomena: the first was a sensation of heaviness in their limbs and torso, and the second a feeling of diffuse warmth throughout the body. This warmth is the result of vasodilation in the peripheral arteries and the sensation of heaviness is caused by deep relaxation in the body's muscles. Schultz reasoned that if he taught people to suggest to themselves that these things were happening to their bodies, they might rapidly and simply be able to experience a state of passive concentration, which in turn would exert a positive influence over the autonomic nervous system, balancing energies of mind and body, helping a person experience a high level of relaxed vitality and freedom from premature degeneration, and gradually clearing away negative thought and behavior patterns that have been interfering with a person making full use of his or her potential. organismic abandon Schultz discovered - as have many since - that in a state of passive concentration, all activities governed by the autonomic nervous system, once believed to be out of man's control, can be influenced by the person himself. This happens not by exercising any conscious act of will but rather by learning to abandon oneself to an ongoing organismic process. This strange paradox of self-induced passivity is central to the way autogenic training works its wonders. It is a skill which Eastern yogis, famous for their ability to resist cold and heat, to change the rate of their heartbeat, levitate and perform many other extraordinary feats, have long practiced. But until the development of biofeedback and autogenic training, and the arrival of Eastern meditation techniques, this passive concentration largely remained a curiosity in the West, where active, logical, linear, verbal thinking has been encouraged to the detriment of practicing our innate ability to simply be. Many experts on the psychological processes of aging believe that it is overemphasis on the use of the conscious will in the West that makes us so prone to premature aging and stress-based illnesses in the first place. get warm and heavy To help his patients induce the autogenic state, Schultz worked with the sensations of heaviness and warmth. Later he added suggestions about regular heartbeat and gentle quiet breathing - two more natural physiological characteristics of relaxation - and then went on to suggestions of warmth in the belly and coolness of the forehead. These six physiologically-orientated directions - heaviness and warmth in the legs and arms, regulation of the heartbeat and breathing, abdominal warmth and cooling of the forehead - form the core of autogenic training. A person learning autogenics goes through each of the six steps, one by one: "My arms and legs are heavy and warm, my heartbeat is calm and regular etc" each time he or she practices. Because of the body and mind's ability with repetition to slip more and more rapidly into the deeply relaxed yet highly aware autogenic state, the formula becomes increasingly shortened until after a few weeks or months of practicing you can virtually induce a state of profound psychophysical relaxation at will. Once you have mastered the exercises, they can be practiced anywhere - even sitting on a bus. balance life energies A key principle on which autogenics is based is that the body will naturally balance its life energies, biochemically and psychologically, when allowed to repeatedly enter a relaxed state. The benefits of being able to do this are virtually endless. Some of them come immediately - such as being able to counteract acute stress and fatigue, refresh yourself and clear your mind. People with high blood pressure who learn autogenics report drops in systolic blood pressure from 11 to 25% and more, as well as 5 to 15% in diastolic pressure. Brain-wave activity also changes so that you get a better balance of right and left hemisphere, leading to improved creativity at work and a sense of being at peace with oneself. Other benefits come more slowly over the weeks and months and years that you practice. Recoveries from bronchial asthma and a whole range of other psychosomatic disorders have been reported, as well as the elimination of self-destructive behavior patterns and habits such as drug taking, compulsive eating and alcoholism. As a result, autogenic training is now given as a standard instruction in Germany and Switzerland. let's begin The basic autogenic exercises are simple. Taking up one of three optional postures - sitting slumped rather like a rag doll on a stool, lounging in an easy chair, or lying on your back with your arms at your side - make sure you are reasonably protected from noise and disturbances and that your clothes are loose and comfortable. It is easiest to learn autogenics lying flat on a floor or on a very firm bed. Once you have got the basic exercise under your belt you can do it just about any time, anywhere, sitting up or even very discretely on a bus on the way to work. If you like, you can record the autogenic exercises that follow on tape very slowly and play it to yourself in the beginning. I generally find, however, that it is better to learn it very simply from the words that are in the box below. go within Lie down on your back in bed or on the floor. Make yourself comfortable with whatever pillows or covers you need to do so. Close your eyes gently. Take a deep slow breath and pause for a moment. Now exhale fully and completely. Let yourself breathe slowly and naturally. Feel your body sinking back into the floor. Now repeat the following phrases to yourself slowly and silently letting yourself savor the sensations of heaviness and warmth as you do. The first phrase is: My left arm is heavy... my left arm is heavy... my left arm is heavy... my right arm is heavy... my right arm is heavy... my right arm is heavy... Let go of any tension in your arms as you say to yourself: My left arm is heavy... my left arm is heavy... my left arm is heavy... repeating each suggestion three times. Continue to breathe slowly and naturally, remembering to exhale fully. Say to yourself: Both arms are heavy... both arms are heavy... both arms are heavy. Let go of any tension in your arms. Then say: Both legs are heavy... both legs are heavy... both legs are heavy... As you continue to breathe slowly and naturally, say to yourself: Arms and legs heavy... arms and legs heavy... arms and legs heavy... arms and legs warm... arms and legs warm... arms and legs warm... feel it Feel the warmth flow through to your arms and legs as you say to yourself: Arms and legs warm... arms and legs warm... arms and legs warm... Continue to breathe slowly and freely while you repeat silently to yourself: My breathing calm and easy... my breathing calm and easy... my breathing calm and easy... my heartbeat calm and regular... my heartbeat calm and regular... my heartbeat calm and regular... Feel your strong, regular heartbeat as you say the words to yourself. Continue to breathe easily and say to yourself: My solar plexus is warm... my solar plexus is warm... my solar plexus is warm... Feel the muscles in your face relax as you say to yourself: My forehead is cool and clear... my forehead is cool and clear... my forehead is cool and clear... Enjoy the feeling of softness and calm throughout your body and say to yourself: I am at peace... I am at peace... I am at peace... the return When you have finished the exercise you are ready for the return. It will bring you back to normal everyday consciousness: Quickly clench both fists, take a deep breath in, flex both arms up in a stretch, then breathe out slowly and completely, returning your arms with unclenched fists to your sides. Now open your eyes. Lie for a moment with your eyes open and just allow yourself to BE HERE NOW WITH WHATEVER IS, then get up and go about your life. When first learning autogenics, you will need to repeat each suggestion three times and the entire exercise itself needs to be repeated at three different periods each day. The best time is just before you get out of bed, just before you go to sleep, and at some other moment of the day. If there is no way you can lie down during the day you can always do the exercise sitting in a chair. If you are practicing in public such as on a bus or at your desk in an office, draw your fists up to your chest by bending your elbows rather than bringing the whole arm above the head for the return. autogenic triggers Before long you will find that even the simple suggestion "my right arm is heavy" will trigger the psychophysical relaxation process in the whole body. Some people get feelings of heaviness and warmth right away. For others it can take as long as a week or two of practicing three times a day for 10 or 15 minutes at a time. To everybody it comes eventually, and with it comes a profound sense of relaxation. Canceling the training session occurs when you clench your hand into a fist and raise your arm straight above your head, or bend your arm and draw your fist to your shoulders, at the same time taking a deep breath and then stretching. This trains your body to return to normal consciousness right away. Meanwhile your temporary excursion into the realm of deep relaxation keeps working its magic. autogenic training made simple Here is an aid memoir for practice. Repeat each suggestion 3 times: MY LEFT ARM IS HEAVY... MY RIGHT ARM IS HEAVY BOTH ARMS ARE HEAVY... BOTH ARMS ARE WARM... BOTH LEGS ARE HEAVY ARMS AND LEGS HEAVY... ARMS AND LEGS WARM BREATHING IS CALM AND EASY... HEARTBEAT CALM AND REGULAR MY SOLAR PLEXUS IS WARM... MY FOREHEAD IS COOL I AM AT PEACE the return: CLENCH BOTH FISTS TAKE A DEEP BREATH FLEX BOTH ARMS UP IN A STRETCH BREATHE OUT SLOWLY RETURN ARMS UNCLENCH FISTS OPEN YOUR EYES LIE FOR A MOMENT WITH EYES OPEN BE HERE NOW WITH WHATEVER IS. Repeat each suggestion three times, repeat the exercise three times a day. discharge the blocks Although autogenic training brings about a `low-arousal' state similar to yoga and meditation, where parasympathetic activity dominates, it stems from exercises meant specifically to induce simple physical sensations leading to a state of relaxation of a purely physical nature. The benefits which come with practicing it go far beyond the physical: in addition to slowing the heartbeat, reducing blood pressure, regenerating and rejuvenating the body, autogenics triggers changes in the reticular activating system in the brain stem which can result in what are known as `autogenic discharges'. These are a spontaneous way of de-stressing and de-aging the body, eliminating old tensions and wiping away thought patterns that may have been inhibiting the full expression of your being. Autogenic discharges can manifest themselves as temporary twitching of the arms or legs - much like the twitch experienced occasionally on falling into a deep sleep - during the session itself, or increased peristaltic movement - stomach grumbles - or various transient feelings of dizziness or visual or auditory effects. These phenomena are harmless, quick to come and go, yet an important part of throwing out life-accumulated, stressful material stored in the body or psyche. cleansing reactions A few people - I among them - when they first begin autogenic training, go through two or three weeks where a lot of old stress and emotional rubbish gets released through autogenic discharge. Old feelings of discouragement or depression, laughter or anxiety can sometimes rise to the surface. It is important to be aware of this possibility and to be aware of what is happening if it does occur. It is only the psychic side of detox that will help renew, refresh, and rejuvenate you, as old stress you have been carrying about with you rises to the surface to clear permanently. Because of this discharge phenomenon, some psychologists in the English speaking world who teach autogenics like to work on a one-to-one basis with their students in order to help them gain perspective on what is coming up from their consciousness. In Germany and Switzerland this is not considered important. There, autogenic training is taught as a matter of course both to adults and school children with no such psychological back up. The important thing to remember is whatever surfaces is likely to be very old indeed, stuff you've been carrying around for a long time and which you are far better off without. three's the charm Begin your practice of autogenics on day 2 of 10 Day Rejuvenation Plan adding it to Clean Sweep Diet. It takes about ten to fifteen minutes to run through autogenics while you are learning it. Afterwards the exercises can be done much more quickly - eventually in two or three minutes if necessary. Rather like Pavlov's dog, who learned to salivate simply because the bell sounded and the food appeared together so many times, the magic of autogenics depends on your continual repetition of the exercise again and again, day after day. Once the initial period of learning is completed, you can then choose to practice the exercises once or twice a day whenever you like. In the process you will have gained a lifelong skill that is invaluable for de-aging the body and mind. Within 10 days to 2 weeks of practicing autogenics,most people feel a steady and increasing release of creative energy, and a sense that great burdens are being lifted away so that - often for the first time - they begin to feel more free to live their own life by their own values. It is rejuvenation at its very best. the zen of now There are two important aspects to making autogenic training work for you. The first is a real acceptance of your current circumstances or position - knowing that anything that you feel just now, whether it happens to be fear, anxiety, joy, frustration, inadequacy or environmental stress, is OK for the moment. It is only through acceptance of 'what is' now that we open the gateways to change. The second important thing about autogenic training is self-discipline. You need to make time to do the exercises each day and to establish a routine.

Our Western Diet is based on foods of convenience—the fast food items we buy at the local corner shop or supermarket. These products are gross distortions of the REAL foods which human beings have eaten throughout history...foods to which our bodies remain genetically adapted. Our ancestors did not have bread, sugar, junk fats and all the other nutritionally depleted pre-packaged, pre-cooked stuff that we do. They ate fresh wholesome foods. Palaeolithic man’s diet was high in wholesome fats, moderate in proteins, and rich in fiber, thanks to whatever vegetables and simple fruits they could gather. CHEAP AND NASTY The modern convenience foods on which we now feed depleted of natural fiber and filled with chemicals. They are manufactured from grain-based carbs, and altered milk products then riddled sugar and dangerous trans-fatty acids—oils which have been separated out from the foods from which they are taken, then chemically altered by solvents and heat processing. FOODS CAUSE ADDICTION Apart from the destructive power of GMO foods, which are not only destroying human health but the health of the planet, another major change has taken place: Today we also swallow a kaleidoscope of colorants, flavorings, additives and ‘enhancers’, not to mention pesticides, herbicides and fungicides, which our ancestors could never have imagined in their wildest dreams. We slurp down chemical pollutants with each sip of our diet cola, and every bite of our pre-cooked meals. Quite simply, this is the fast food diet that 95% of the Western world now lives on. And, next time you upbraid yourself for what you perceive to be your lack of willpower as you reach for yet another biscuit and feel guilty about it, let the guilt go. It does not belong to you. The denatured, degraded, food we eat bears the lion's share of blame, not only for the plague of obesity worldwide, but for food addictions and cravings that lead to illness and weight gain, the development of potentially fatal degenerative diseases, from heart disease and cancer to metabolic syndrome; Alzheimer’s disease; diabetes, and dozens more. DEGENERATION BEGINS It was Weston Price, early on in the century, who first brought the scientific community's attention to the devastating effects the rise of processed foods and the destructive ways in which they damage human health. Price, a dentist, traveled the world recording the changes in the shape of the jaw and teeth which take place slowly but inevitably as each culture discards its traditional dietary practices, based on real food, in favor of our more ‘civilized’ Western fare. Price's many studies—each of which lasted between 20 and 40 years—carefully plotted the onset of degenerative diseases. It is not surprising that, after living on a diet of simple whole plant foods rich in natural fiber and a health-giving synergy of nutrients and micro-nutrients throughout evolution, the human body continues to this day find the foods we eat now anathema to health. Our genes have been attuned to naturally grown, unprocessed foods for more than a million years. Our metabolic biochemistry as human beings is designed for it. Sir Robert McCarrison—brilliant British doctor also charted the relationship between food and health. More recently, two more British doctors, Dennis Burkitt and Hugh Trowell, carried out their own extensive studies, taking Price and McCarrison’s work a step further. They carefully documented the exact sequence of events which takes place when a people's diet changes from simple, primitive, real food to packaged fast foodstuffs. Stage One: The primitive, unprocessed diet of hunter-gatherers, complete with plenty of healthy fats, good quality proteins, plus vegetable and fruit-based carbohydrate is eaten. Degenerative diseases do not exist. Stage Two: Western diet is introduced. Obesity and diabetes become common among privileged groups able to afford foods of commerce, and degenerative diseases begin to appear. Stage Three: A culture's diet becomes “moderately Westernized”. Obesity becomes more widespread, as does constipation, haemorrhoids, varicose veins and appendicitis. Stage Four: Westernized diet is now widespread. Overweight and obesity are common in all social groups. So is heart disease, high blood pressure, diverticular disease, hiatus hernia, cancer and other Western diseases. FRAGMENTED “FOODS” Like our soils, the industrially manufactured foods we eat today—from biscuits and pasta to pre-cooked convenience meals—have quite literally been taken to pieces. High-tech food production works something like this: To create a great variety of palatable foods from raw materials, you have to reduce the foodstuffs—grains and seeds, vegetables and legumes—to simple, malleable ‘nuts and bolts’ that lend themselves to whatever manipulations you want to perform on them. Take soya beans for instance. They were once considered an excellent source of complete protein as valuable as meat or eggs—more valuable in many ways, since they are so cheap. Nowadays more than 95% of soybeans grown worldwide are genetically modified. Food manufacturers still take whole soya beans, in which 30% of each bean is protein, and process them physically and chemically to extract this protein and make it ready to accept dyes and flavorings. hen they alter its texture through more processing until eventually it becomes ersatz meat. This end product—from which soy-based foods from tofu to soya milk are made—is a long way from the natural soya bean. In the course of such manipulations the little soya bean, which, pre-GMO devastation and high processing, once offered asynergy of nutrients, complex carbohydrates, essential fatty acids and fiber. By now however it has now been turned into a highly concentrated artificial material. During the operation, vitamins and minerals are destroyed. The soya bean's proteins and natural fatty acids have been denatured and chemically altered into new forms, many of which are not usable by the body. The soya has also lost most of its fiber too—a vital part of any food's health-promoting wholeness, and something absolutely essential for protection from degenerative diseases and obesity. To this artificial “food”, manufacturers then add a lot of phoney colors and flavors. Canadian expert in food science, Ross Hume Hall, puts it rather well when he says: "The product contains the same number of calories as the original soya protein, but it now consists of a set of naked molecules completely divorced from any natural context." The same is true of the way in which cereals and grains are processed. NUTRITIONAL DESTRUCTION From milk to meat to garden peas—whatever food is involved—processing destroys nutrients. According to official government handbooks, 50-70% of vitamin B6 is lost when meats are processed. 50-90% of folic acid—a vitamin of particular importance to the functioning of nerves and the actions of hormones, especially in the female body—is shed when grains are milled, while more than 80% of the mineral magnesium disappears in the same process. The multi-national food industry covers the packaging of its products with endless ‘nutritional’ information, which would have you believe that any goodness lost in processing can be made up for by ‘enriching’. Enriching is just another chemical whereby a few cheap vitamins and minerals in synthetic form are pumped back into the now fragmented food. It is categorically impossible to restore the health-giving power of wholeness to any food which has been fragmented in this way. BIG COVER-UP Similar nutrient losses happen during other phases of food handling—artificial ripening, transport and storage. Store asparagus for a week and it loses 90% of its vitamin C. Keep grapes for the same time, and they shed 30% of their B vitamins. Freeze meats and you can lose as much as 50% of two important B vitamins— riboflavin and thiamine. These are just a few examples of nutrient losses which occur every day. They are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the ways in which modern food handling and manufacturing processes have created highly concentrated, calorie-dense foods filled with masses of sugar (more about this in future entries) which are dangerously destructive of health, and promote both weight gain and rapid degeneration of body and mind. REAL FOOD CREATES REAL HEALTH OK, so where do you go from here? It is easy to change your food-buying habits once you clear your cupboards of the manufactured rubbish we all collect. You’ll find the healthiest, freshest, and most natural foods for lasting health at the outside edges of your local supermarket. These include crunchy fresh vegetables and fruit, fresh game and meats, seafoods and eggs. Skirt the edges, steer clear of the middle, and you’ve got the secret to becoming a successful modern-day hunter-gatherer. Remember this: Natural wholesome foods are perishable. They have to be replaced often, unlike the ready-in-a-minute, pre-made stuff that you find in the inner aisles. You will be shopping “at the edge” in another way too: You’ll be looking for foods as close as possible to those that our ancestors ate—with a wide variety of crunchy, living vegetables, especially bright-colored ones. Foods with a long shelf life don’t belong in your body. Processed high-carb foods often have a very long shelf life. This makes them great sales material for food manufacturers and retailers, since they can sit on the shelves for a long time, and are cheap to produce with high profit margins. Virtually all convenience foods and fast foods have been whipped up out of processed grains and cereals, masses of sugar in all forms, junk fats, chemical additives. Avoid them for your sake, as well as the sake of your family. You’ll be able to turn your lives around in short order. Find our for yourself. Try it.