Equipment

Having had a Thermomix in my possession for a little over a month, I do think the name is a little misleading. I think a better name would be the Wondermix. Or maybe the Amazingomix. Because until you actually get to play with one in your own kitchen, you cannot imagine the excitement and joy that its versatility and efficiency can generate. Everyone I knew that had one verged on the evangelical when talking about it, and now I can totally understand why.

Photo shows Jesus Loves You to Gojiness,
from Raw Magic, made entirely in the Thermomix

The Thermomix is a revolutionary kitchen tool, and that's why it is so perfect for raw food cuisine, the revolutionary way of eating. With the Thermomix, making healthy, nutritious, fresh meals has never been easier. Whatever you want to do in terms of raw food cuisine, the Thermomix does it triumphantly. Smoothies, milks, salads, soups, ice cream, chocolate, cakes, nut butters, all in minutes.

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Earthing Devices

Imagine you could buy antioxidant capsules more powerful and fast-acting than anything currently on the market.  Imagine that you bought them in a bottle that magically replenished itself so that for the rest of your life, you could take as many capsules as you liked and never finish the bottle.  Imagine that these antioxidants not only reduced inflammation but also helped you relax, gave pain relief and helped normalise biological markers such as cortisol cycles and pH.  Sound good?  It’s not a fairytale – except it’s not a bottle of pills, it’s the earth’s natural electromagnetic field. When you are electrically connected to the earth’s field, either by simply being barefoot on the earth or if you’re indoors, using a piece of grounding kit, you are getting all of the benefits I just mentioned. Continue reading →

The Basic Zapper

The zapper is a clever little gadget that you wear touching your skin.  It emits a very specific frequency that kills and kicks out parasites in the body while doing no harm to the body itself.  The zapper is a little black box, small enough to wear comfortably.  You have it on continuously for the first month and then just at night thereafter, with extra time if you feel any symptoms of illness coming on.  I read that it destroys bad bacteria in the blood within a few minutes, and over longer periods of time will kill off all sorts of pathogens and parasites that are more dug in.  You may be thinking, ‘But why do I need one of these, I don’t have worms, isn't it only dogs that get them?’  If you imagine that civilised humans like us don’t get parasites, wait until you see what happens in the first 48 hours, you might be surprised.

It takes one of those small square batteries, plus you need a tiny Phillips screwdriver to open up the box if you're using the Basic Zapper.  I got some tennis wristbands to use to hold the zapper against the skin of my wrist, and for night-time against the palm of my hand.  I’d heard a lot about how effective these devices are, including stories of people finding dead worms in the toilet or even one woman who had a live one crawl out of her nipple!  I wasn’t sure how much credence to give these stories, and I certainly didn’t expect anything like that to happen to me.  So it was a shock when, just under 24 hours after starting to use the device, I actually did find a worm in the loo.  It was round bodied, dark, about 4 inches long, curled up and obviously dead.  Seeing a horrorshow like that and realising it had been living inside me caused me to freak out a little bit.  Since then, I have worn my zapper as much as possible because I want those things OUT of me.  I had doubts about mentioning the worm in this review.  I’m not sure I want to announce to the world that I have worms!  But it seems parasites are more common than I thought.

Since beginning with the zapper 3 weeks ago, I’ve had two or three waves of mild detox symptoms  - tiredness, headache, sore throat, snotty nose and aching muscles.  It doesn’t last more than a day or two each time but I know very well from my earlier experiences that these are classic signs of detox.  I’m having very lively dreams at night too, though I can’t be sure this is anything to do with the zapper.  You’ll need to move it around unless you’re very clean inside, because the process can cause discomfort on the skin where it touches the terminals if you leave the zapper too long in one place.  The only places where this doesn’t happen are the palm of the hand and the sole of the foot, so I use those places at night when I can’t move it around.  I find I wake up with green circles on my palm that take all day to fade but I consider them badges of virtue.  The zapper obviously works and it’s easy to use.  In between the detox waves,  I’m starting to feel the good effects because my mind has seemed significantly clearer and more alert.  I feel lighter on my feet and have more energy.  To me, the basic zapper is very good value for money, you get a lot of bang for your buck in terms of healing power.  I look forward to seeing what further benefits I get the longer I wear it.

I tested the basic zapper but Kate did a youtube video on the Terminator Zapper, which you can see here

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.