Monthly Archives: May 2011

'Ecstatic Beings - 144,000 Ways To Eternal Ecstatic Bliss' burst into my life soon after it was first released in 2009. I think that the fact that I am now reviewing it is a testament to how amazing I have found this book to me in my own quest to create a more magical reality for myself.

So, how to adequately define 'Ecstatic Beings'? A colourful explosion of photography and poetry, right next to superfood fuelled wisdom and tantalising recipes. Add to that articles that are at once hilarious, profound, informative, provocative and spiritual. The scope of subjects covered by Kate and Shazzie is amazing, ranging from parenting, urine therapy, and the importance of being present. There's also juice, yoga, reiki and a dictionary that will have you giggling away in no time. One particular highlight - "Lapdance: the little jiggle you do when you know you've got some uninterrupted time with your laptop".
One thing is certain - it's impossible to put 'Ecstatic Beings' in a box...I suppose that's the whole point!
When I first opened this book and got swept away by its beautiful craziness, I could feel things clicking together in my head and in my heart. It was like pieces of a jigsaw were falling into place, pieces that I hadn't even realised were missing. Within moments, I was inspired, excited and could not stop smiling. Reading this always makes me feel much less alone and isolated, by reminding me that there are others who think and feel as I do.
This book has made me question everything, before (lovingly) blowing up my old reality, taking me by the hand, and leading me to the doorway of ecstatic blissful living.
'Ecstatic Beings' is an invitation to be part of a revolution. A revolution that occurs when we acknowledge the power and potential that we each have to change the world. A revolution which starts with ourselves, by transforming thoughts and taking responsibility for our own realities.
My favourite piece of writing is 'The Spaceship'. It's very healing for me to read whenever I'm feeling a little bit sad, a little bit hopeless. For me, it's an utterly perfect, yet simple, explanation of the shift that we are going through, and a companion to the transitional time in which we are living.
And there's chocolate too, of course! Imagine the most magical, sparkly, transformational cake you possibly can...now, follow the recipe for Cake Away...it's BETTER than the one you were just dreaming of, trust me! Grab your cake mate (like a soul mate, but better), cup yourself a piece, and revel in ecstatic bliss!

Cake Away!

Though this is a review of a book, I suppose that it's also a review of all of the high vibrational, ecstatic foods and practices that inspired Kate and Shazzie to write it. Because 'Ecstatic Beings' is the product of a way of being and of thinking that has the potential to fill us with love, creativity, wisdom and curiosity.
If I possibly could, I would give a copy of this book to everyone that crosses my path!

Alpha Dream Angel Cream

As a woman I have spent the last 16 years buying and using moisturiser on my face.  I have gone through the younger years of buying commercial face products that are very cheap, full of chemicals and do nothing beneficial for your skin at all!  Then during my 20’s I fell into the more expensive ‘luxurious’ range.  The range which is really expensive and makes you feel, “It must be good for me,” because it is so expensive.  They tell you it has natural ingredients and it will tone, tighten, and clean your skin leaving it so soft, so radiant and ten years younger.   Unfortunately I fell for this con and spent lots of money and time with these products.

When I was pregnant with my little boy I decided not to use any chemicals at all!  In the house, in my food or on my skin.  I watched a programme which warned about how many chemicals our skin comes into contact with daily, due to the dangerous chemical content in our products etc.  This shocked me and turned my life around.

I went to the local health supermarket, Infinity foods in Brighton, and bought out the shop – much to my finances' horror!  Amongst them I bought face products.  I won’t mention the much loved brand which I bought, but it made my skin dry, and the peach kernel for the scrub got in my eye I ended up in A&E with a scratched lense!  I never used that brand again.

When Kate asked me to try out her new skin care range I was very excited.  I bought the pot into my massage course and showed my colleagues, who were all hooked instantly.  Luckily we were learning how to do facials so I had an amazing chocolately flowery ALL natural facial and massage – bliss!

Alpha Dream is a rich, dark, smooth smell with healing properties of aloe, MSM, hemp oil, cacao, coconut butter, jasmine essential oil, ylang ylang essential oil, clary sage essential oil, may chang oil and monoi de Tahiti.  All of which give relaxation and true cell regeneration.  MSM softens and heals the skin and the essential oils provide stillness of the mind.

This is a moisturiser which I will always have, I love it!

by Emma Gill

Schizandra Berry Powder

With the amount of health information we are bombarded with via television, media, and online these days, it can be confusing to know where to start with getting on the “Healthy Highway”. Should I eat more sea vegetables, should I be eating less fat, more nuts, less grains, more greens, more superfoods?! And so on.

When working with clients on their diet and helping them to transition to a cleaner greener diet, I always suggest starting off with just one new “food”. For some people it might be introducing them to an ordinary vegetable they may have never previously eaten or for someone more seasoned in raw living, we dive right in to superfoods.

One of the superfoods I love the most are algaes such as Spirulina and Chlorella. These awesome algaes have lived on planet earth longer than any other life form known to human kind. Their potential to heal the body, restore the mind and instill peace is just amazing. Most people could benefit from having more mental clarity and strengthening their connection to themselves and the earth and blue green algae is definitely the place to start.

I am so grateful for the abundance of superfoods available to us and hope to inspire others to investigate for themselves how these righteous remedies can assist them in their health and happiness. They all have different properties and affect the body’s energy system in different and wonderful ways.

One that I am most intrigued about at the moment is Schizandra. It hails from East Asia with its dried fruit, or berries being used medicinally. I had heard of it before but as I was doing my online shopping at Raw Living, something piqued my interest and I decided to read a little more . After reading about it, I then received an email from someone asking about supplements that might help them while undergoing chemotherapy for the second time.

I am a believer in synchronicity and that information is delivered to us at the right times and so with the email arriving just after having read about how Schizandra can help prevent adverse reactions from chemotherapy and radiotherapy and improve recovery post surgery, I felt that it’s my duty to share this nugget with you.

According to Raw Living, Schizandra is rich in vitamins, minerals, essential oils and phytochemicals and is used extensively in Chinese medicine. (Phytochemicals are molecules found in foods thought to protect against disease.)

In my opinion, the Chinese treat illness and disease much more intelligently as they look to heal and cure using the most natural products possible only resorting to snipping, cutting, blasting and poisoning as a last resort. (Hmmm why don’t we follow their lead? Oh yeah I know – it’s all about money. You can’t patent things that grow abundantly in the wild although they are trying!) The Chinese use Schizandra to help fight infections, boost immune and mental function as well as to help protect the liver. In Russia, Schizandra is actually a certified medicine for vision problems.

Like Maca, Schizandra is an adaptogen meaning that it “talks” to the endocrine system helping to balance the body’s response to stress. Here’s what Raw Living had to say about some of its awesomeness;

An adaptogen is a plant (such as Aloe vera, maca, suma and ashwaganda) which has a normalizing effect on the body. If you are too hyper, it will calm you down; if you are feeling a bit lethargic, it will wake you up. Adaptogens don’t have a specific effect on the body, what they do is rebalance the body and restore homeostasis. The more centred we are, the easier it is to deal with life’s ups and downs, and keep up with the 21st century pace of life.

Among schizandra’s main chemical constituents are compounds known as lignans, which are concentrated in the berries’ seeds. More than two dozen lignans have been identified with the prominent ones being schizandrin, gomisins such as gomisin A, and wuweizisu C. Lignans stimulate the immune system, protect and regenerate the liver, and increase the body’s ability to handle stress. They may also have mild sedative effects. Other chemical constituents in schizandra, such as an essential oil, acids, vitamins, and minerals, may contribute to the herb’s tonic effects by increasing cells’ ability to create and use energy and to process wastes or by delivering more oxygen to the body’s cells. They may also help to detoxify blood and tissues and provide nutrients crucial to bodily processes.

I am a big believer in taking an empowered stance - there is always something that can be done or at least attempted to improve our health situation. So if you are currently receiving or have recently received treatment for cancer then why not try some Schizandra to see whether it can lessen the negative side-effects you are experiencing. Similarly, if you are experiencing any kind of stress and feel that your adrenals are being taxed or need calming down, Schizandra could help.

I’d be interested to hear from anyone that is currently taking any. Do you think it’s the schiz?

Polly Noble is a holistic health coach, raw food coach and author of "The Cancer Journey".

Enema Bags

OK, so this is not the most glamorous subject.  The enema is not up there with celebrity gossip, football or house prices as a favourite topic of conversation.  It probably ranks somewhere between tax returns and testicular cancer but let me evangelise for a minute, because you can potentially achieve a LOT with an enema bag.

If you have explored the Raw Living shop you may have noticed that an enema kit is one of the items on offer.  In fact you may have noticed that quite a few raw food types seem to have a fixation about enemas and colonics.  There’s a good reason.  Cleansing the colon is just about the quickest and most effective detoxification tool available.  It’s also the first place I start if I or anyone I know has something like a headache or a cold or any other symptom of toxic overload.  The medical profession used to know this.  When anyone was admitted to hospital, it was common to administer an enema as the starting point of treatment.  When antibiotics came along and they found it was easier to just give the patient some pills, enemas fell out of fashion.  Colon cleansing of any kind is not just healing and cleansing but is also powerfully beautifying, though admittedly not while it’s actually in progress.  A clean colon means good skin.

An enema bag can be a vital tool to help a new raw fooder in transition from a mainstream diet stay on course.  The transition period can be difficult, mainly because all of the rubbish causes a lot of discomfort on its way out.  It can also cause cravings for the old food.  The quicker you can get it all out of you, the quicker you feel better.  So if you’re feeling headachey, nauseated, tired or gripped by cravings then grab an enema bag, retire to the bathroom and put things right before you weaken and grab the nearest doughnut instead.

So once you have your bag at the ready, what do you do?  I’ll tell you what I do, since it works very well for me.  First I put a camping mat covered with a towel on the bathroom floor so that I’m comfortable.  I fill the bag with 2 litres of lukewarm filtered water or spring water.  Don’t use cold water, it’s painful and for obvious reasons hot water won’t be much fun either.  The water needs to be roughly at bodyheat and should be filtered because the chlorine in tap water will kill some of the good bacteria in your gut.  I put Adya Clarity in my water too (15 drops per litre) just to make sure the water is the best possible quality.  It may seem daft to worry about the quality of the water considering where it’s headed, but the colon environment is delicate and anything in the water will be absorbed pretty efficiently.

The next thing I do is lubricate the nozzle with some coconut oil.  Use the smaller of the two – the larger is for vaginal douches.  I’m aware some people prefer to use the larger nozzle but if you do, don’t try to get more than 3 inches in or you’ll risk doing yourself a mischief.  I fill the bag and hook it over something handy at about waist level like a door handle.  At this point I get down on the mat, holding the nozzle up at the same height as the bag so it doesn’t start to flow because I leave the valve open at all times.  I used to close the valve and then open it when it was in situ but I always got an attack of some kind of 3D dyslexia that meant I couldn’t work out which way to turn the valve to open it.  You can’t feel the water flowing in because it’s so gentle so I’d always have to take out the nozzle and check, usually to find that yes it was flowing, all over the bathroom floor.  Eventually I found it was easier to just leave the valve open, hold the nozzle at bag level as I got down on the floor and then whip the nozzle in.  These days I barely spill a drop.

I lie on my right side as the water goes in, that way gravity helps the water flow in further.  After half a minute or so you might feel gas starting to move around a little, or there might be some peristaltic feelings.  If you get an urge to expel the water, hold on and ride it out if you can.  Don’t worry if you can’t get all of the water in for your first few tries.  I used to only get half a pint in and it seemed to take ages.  It didn’t take many practice runs before I could pop 2 litres in quick as a whistle, so it’s worth persevering.

Once all of the water is in (or as much as you’re comfortable with), roll onto your back.  If you can hold on to the water for a few minutes, so much the better.  If you can massage your stomach (counter clockwise) at the same time, better still.  Sooner or later – probably sooner – you’ll get the urge to expel the water.  Next comes the tricky bit ie getting yourself up and onto the loo without spilling a drop – hold on tight!

One thing worth remembering is that you may not release all of the water in one go.  Not having been a spectator at anyone else’s enema procedure I can’t say whether it’s the same for everyone but don’t assume prematurely that it’s all over.  You may find there’s an Act 2 or even an Act 3 several minutes after what appeared to be the final curtain, so watch out for that.  Also don’t feel like some kind of failure if you don’t release a lot of old faecal matter.  Even if the water is coming out almost clean, your enema is still working hard for you because a lot of waste comes out in the form of tiny bubbles of gas.  Plus the enema stimulates the lymph system to flush and send toxins into the newly clean colon, so it’s always a valuable thing to do.

A great thing to do after an enema or colonic is dry skin brushing, to encourage this flushing of the lymph.  After clean-up I like to dry skin brush and then get in the shower.  I come out with a great feeling of being all shiny and new inside and out.

Finally I hang my enema bag up on a hook to dry out after I’ve cleaned it up, so that it doesn’t go mildewy.

There is plenty of further information about colon cleansing out there if you want to go deeper into the subject.  Kate did a video on youtube called ‘raw food enemas for health’ and Matt Monarch’s site therawfoodworld.com has a lot of great information (click on Matt’s Articles).  There’s a good website at www.cleanse.net.  For books, I can recommend Bernard Jensen’s Guide to Better Bowel Care, and I gather Cleanse and Purify Thyself by Richard Anderson is a classic on the subject too.

Dark Chocolate Flavour Potent Extract

I’d been dying to try the Medicine Flower flavour extracts but for ages they didn’t seem to be available in the UK.  When I saw Raw Living had started stocking them I got very excited.  I tried the coconut one first and was so impressed, I immediately ordered the dark chocolate one.  When I first opened the bottle, it smelled more like Baileys than chocolate and I admit I had my doubts.  But in terms of taste, it was a revelation.  Just a few drops pack an amazing punch so a little bottle lasts a long time.  The great thing about the chocolate one in particular is that though it contains all of the chocolate flavour, it contains none of the stimulants so even those who normally find chocolate too heavy on their system can take this with no problem.  I can handle chocolate (so far) unless I get too greedy with it, so I use the drops two ways.  I can use it to limit the amount of actual chocolate needed in a recipe so I don’t overload, and I can also use it with carob for when I want to avoid the stimulants altogether.  They’re good combined with carob to flavour raw sweeties, which is good because I tend to want sweeties in the evening.  Now I can have choccie flavour goodies without jittering and jiving all night as a result.

 None of these extracts contain alcohol, they are cold-processed so they’re raw AND they’re sustainably organic.  Perfection in a bottle.  If we ask them nicely, maybe Raw Living will think about stocking the orange and the coffee flavours too?

Meanwhile here’s my recipe for a creamy raw chocolate smoothie with everything in so you can see what I mean.

Milly’s Cheery Chocolate Smoothie

1T chia seeds, soaked 2 hours (stir at half time)

1T carob powder

1T cacao powder (or omit this and use extra drops instead)

6 drops Medicine Flower dark chocolate extract

1 cup almond milk (or other nut/seed milk)

1T coconut butter

pinch of salt or white miso

sweetener of choice (eg 2 dates or 1T of agave or 1T yacon etc)

extra liquid if needed (I like to use leftover pau d’arco tea)

add your favourite goodies – just now mine are STR-12, Amla, spirulina and maca

Whizz in a high speed blender.  You could also add a banana with some extra liquid if you’re especially hungry.

Adya Clarity

There is some debate going on just now about what is the best water to drink.  Robert Young’s ideas about filtered alkaline water are being challenged by people like Daniel Vitalis and David Wolfe, who assert that only natural spring water with a low Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) count is fit to drink.  Bad news for those of us who invested big bucks in ioniser machines to filter and alkalise our water.  So if you don’t happen to have a low-calcium natural spring on your doorstep, what can you do?

While fresh spring water is doubtless always going to be the ideal, there is an answer for those of us without access to a spring.  For me, the best option is to treat all of the water I use with Adya Clarity.  The bottle says it’s a ‘paramagnetic sulphate solution’ but that doesn’t tell you very much about what it can actually do – and what it can do is beginning to stack up to a very long list of near-miraculous feats of alchemy.  For spring-less raw fooders, the first thing is that it cleans up water, precipitating out the inorganic minerals and contaminants like calcium and killing bacteria.  Water treated with Adya (15 drops per litre) stays clean and safe to drink for at least 8 months.

Fulvic acid and zeolites are familiar products that we know can help remove heavy metals and toxins from the body, and are valuable ‘bad calcium dissolvers’.  Anyone who has seen David Wolfe’s Longevity Now material will be aware of how vital such products are for reversing diseases of calcification.  I remember hearing somewhere that both of them are derived from black mica.  With an unlimited budget I’d use everything but meanwhile, I like to go straight to the motherlode  - Adya is THE black mica product.  Matthew Bakos, the president of the company that distributes Adya in the US and Europe, says research is still being done on Adya’s performance, but the research already completed is impressive.

We already know Adya takes on multi-valent inorganic minerals and converts them in the blood to organic bio-available form, and that when added to water it renders contaminants and inorganic minerals inert and harmless.  We know it oxygenates the blood, killing pathogens including candida.

In addition, it transpires that Adya removes mercury and lead from the body and that in fact a course of Supershots does this within a short period of time (a Supershot is a teaspoon of Adya in one ounce of water, followed by a long drink of normally-dosed Adya water ie 15 drops per litre).  Within five minutes of taking a Supershot and follow up drink, the blood is transformed.  This can be seen under the microscope during live blood analysis.  Your blood may show signs of stickiness or ‘rouleau’ because of lack of oxygen ie too many blood cells trying to share one electron.  A Supershot treatment will reverse this (the effect lasts many hours) so that the blood cells are bouncing around clean and clear, and the blood will show those sparks of light, the bio-photons, indicative of good blood health.  Incidentally the researchers also noticed that blood cells on a slide normally die pretty quickly but Adya blood is still alive on the slide 24 hours later.

One of my favourite uses of Adya is to put a dropperful in my green juice.  It makes the nutrients in the juice more bio-available.  Also it will remove any ‘pesky contaminants’, to quote Matthew Bakos who is careful not to make any claims they can’t back up with scientific evidence.   Greens, even organic ones, are often grown with too much nitrogen in the soil because of modern farm practices.  Too much nitrogen in the greens is potentially carcinogenic.  The titanium salts in Adya convert the nitrogen into amino acids, so excess nitrogen becomes extra nutrients that make the juice taste sweeter into the bargain!

The alchemical miracles go on.  Some dentists in the USA are recommending Adya to their patients because it prevents plaque being laid down on the teeth.  I can personally attest to the the truth of this, because my dentist could have usefully employed a road drill to get the huge amounts of scale off my teeth every six months.  She could never get it all in one sitting so it did build up.  I’ve been using Adya for about six months and there is almost no plaque on my teeth now, they feel smooth and shiny when I run my tongue over them.  This is a visible demonstration of Adya’s decalcification properties.  I like to imagine the decalcification work it’s doing in the rest of my body, the bits I can’t see.  Certainly I have noticeably less pain in my knees and ankle joints than I did six months ago.  I speculate that this is down to a combination of using Adya and a Barefoot Connections grounding sheet on my bed, since they are the only two significant changes I have made in that time.  Adya also goes into my enema and colema water, so that I can have complete confidence that I’m not introducing any chlorine or harmful organisms into my body from either end.

If you put Adya Clarity in your bath water, studies suggest it penetrates the flesh right down to the bone marrow, decontaminating and healing as it goes.  In his Raw Food World tv show, Matt Monarch (who is a HUGE fan of Adya) recites an anecdote originally told to him by Matthew Bakos.  Apparently a man who had received chemotherapy treatment for cancer two years previously, took an Adya bath.  The dead top layer of his skin just peeled off in one go like a body stocking.  I had an Adya bath myself some weeks ago.  While I was relieved not to find my skin peeling off, I did have a detox reaction.  I felt so tired that I had to crawl into bed afterwards to recover.

There is apparently research being done using Adya Clarity to help treat two of the most serious diseases on the planet with exciting results so far, from the hints I hear.  Nobody can say anything officially until the research is complete but I await the outcome with interest.  Meanwhile I continue to use the ‘alchemist in my cupboard’ on anything liquid that I drink even on my tight budget, because I consider it the hardest-working and most important product I can buy.