Now is the time when our decisions and choices in life start to catch up with us. Life is all cause and effect. Or as that famous Yogi in the Bible put it: ‘Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap.”

We see this theme of cause/effect in nearly all religions in the world, in classic Newtonian physics and now more than ever, quantum physics has proved that “life is in the eye of the beholder.”

In short, “thoughts become things” so “Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life.” (Prov. 4:23)

One of my main goals in life is to spread Awareness. I am not perfect, but I try very hard to cultivate a very intentional, powerful, creative life and through those ventures, I have discovered a great deal of knowledge available to anyone with a library card. Seeking spirit or not, we are all human so inevitably we are all graced with life’s ups and downs, all the while, revealing the human experience.

As I’ve approached this milestone marker of my fortieth birthday and looked in the mirror, I’ve been thinking about what key decisions I have made that have contributed most to my healthy state of being.

That being the case, here are 11 lifestyle choices to help inspire tomorrow with healthful and wealthful giving to thyself today, as to reap that health and wealth tomorrow. The choices fall into three main categories: Body, Mind and Spirit:

Body:

#1 – Your body is your Temple, treat it with the greatest respect

In 2003 I interviewed acclaimed jazz pianist Brian Hass for Meniscus Magazine and he told me something that turned into a piece of my existence: Haas said:

“Jesus said, your body is a temple. If you treat your body like a temple, it spreads into the rest of your life. Every aspect of your life becomes holy; everything you do is holy.

“The mind, body and soul are connected,” Haas continued. “If you don’t allow your body to operate at its full potential, how do we even know what our minds are capable of? I’m all about living like a real human and realizing my full potential..I want to be the best human I can be…We have to turn ourselves into superheroes, we have to turn ourselves into ultra-humans. We have to find our true potential.”

The best way to keep the temple clean, is to understand you have control, which leads us to step #2…

#2- Discipline the Robot

Your body is a robot and you have to make the choose whether you are going to tell it what to do, or it is going to tell you what to do.

There are terrible epidemics of obesity, cancer and heart disease in this country and much of it has to do with food addictions.

Most people are addicted to food. That few seconds of flavor from that bite of potato chip, bacon, corn bread, cup cake, doughnut, soda…all of that highly addictive junk food eventually will catch up to the body in the form of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer not to mention your body and mind will be clogged full of junk. “You are what you eat” so those who thrive on processed food will constantly be “over fed and under nourished” and will never reach their full potential.

So you have to make a choice: Am I going to let the robot control me via my tastebuds?

My choice has been to eat a macrobiotic diet consisting of vegetables, whole grains and a little fish; no meat or dairy. The stuff I eat is probably “earthy” to most people. However because I have trained my tastebuds to appreciate the nutrients and not the sugar, it is delicious. On the contrary, if I eat a Duncan Doughnut or God forbid a diet soda, all I can taste is the chemicals. I don’t taste any real food, and my body is trained to reject it.

#3 Fast and Detox your Temple

The best way to reset your control over the robot and cleanse the body is to fast. I know, this sounds crazy, “not eat for 3-6 days?! How is that possible,” you ask? “I get light headed after missing dinner for 1 hour!”

By abstaining from food for significant periods of time, your body has a chance to turn its immune attention towards breaking down toxins in the system that, if left unattended to, could manifest into any number of diseases.

As Paul Bragg explains in The Miracle of Fasting, there is a Vital Force that is used every day of your life to maintain your body’s processes. In addition to pushing blood through millions of filters in your kidneys and exchanging oxygen for carbon dioxide in your lungs, a large percentage of this energy goes towards digesting food through your 30-foot digestive tract. Once you stop eating, this Vital Force begins recharging and is freed up tove move throughout the body breaking down poisonous residues that have built up. Even after just 24 hours, the body is able to begin rebuilding Vital Force.

Aside from fasting, there are many ways to detox on a regular basis. One of my favorite, easy things to do is this: Each day upon waking, drink a pint of water in the morning with a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar or lemon juice, one hour (or as long as possible) before your coffee or breakfast. (Make sure you use a straw and brush your teeth after the mixture! The acids can be bad for your tooth enamel.)

You can also find natural, herb-based cleanses on the market like this seven-day cleanse from Arbonne.

#4 Cultivate Awareness

Now that you’ve got your body cleaned out, you’ll start to see you have a very clear mind, which brings us to the next stage in the positive cause/effect cycle: Awareness. Actually, more specifically the best place to start here is awareness of awareness.

Now that you have control of the robot you can start taking control of other rituals that may or may not be spinning your cause/effect cycle in a positive direction.

- Exercise: There is no shortage of benefits to exercise, get yourself on a schedule and train the robot to get out there at least a few times a week.
- Negative people: Who in your life is it time to step away from? Your awareness will help you see the cause/effect they have on you.
- Emotional intelligence: Knowing that we are emotional creatures, when do you need to step away from a situation before it drives you to a regrettable outburst. (I.e. An “amygdala hijacking”)
- Career navigation: Once you have this awareness, you can start to see how other people’s robots react to professional situations. If you rise above and always make your moves from a very intentional, logical place, you’ll start to see you have more professional freedom than before—to get a raise, to move companies, or to move into new industries all together.
- Helping the whole planet: The best benefit comes when we all have a greater Awareness of how our daily choices affect the planet, and therefore every one of us, especially our future generations.

The benefits of Awareness are endless, and the next step is to start to refine how you incite Action into the universe to get what you want. The gateway to this manifestation is of course, the mind.

Mind:

Einstein proved that everything is made up of energy in his famous equation E=mC2. We also know the human mind can affect energy.

As far back as the early 1800’s, Quantum physics established that the behavior of particles actually changes depending the observer.

In 1803, Thomas Young discovered what would become the cornerstone of modern quantum physics. In his double-slit experiment, he shot a single particle of light towards two slits in a plate. He was trying to determine whether light traveled as a wave or as a particle. What he found is that when he changed his hypothesis, the particle would change its path.

This experiment opened up many questions. What the quantum physics community determined since then is that the physical world of matter and energy respond to our thinking on a subatomic level.

The mind is part of the robot. Most people think their mind is them, but it is actually just another organ running in the background like your liver, kidneys and heart. Now that we have a clean temple, and the power of Awareness, we can start crafting the mind to support our positive cause/effect cycle.

#5 Work with your subconscious mind

Florence Scovel Shinn, a pioneer of the New Thought movement, stated that “The imagination has been called, ‘The Scissors of the Mind,’ and it is ever cutting, cutting, day by day, the pictures man sees there, and sooner or later he meets his own creations in his outer world.”

And to know what creations we should expect in our outer world, she reminds of us what the Greeks said: “Know Thyself.”

What we are creating in our imagination is not always a conscious decision. The subconscious mind is running in the background at all times. It is the operating system that you don’t even see. So if your operating system is running a poverty mantra, or a guilt complex, or a I-don’t-deserve-it paradigm, our power as creators will manifest that poverty, guilt and lack in our lives. However if we program our subconscious with positive mind treatments and acknowledge our place in the universe as acting with and as a part of God, then we can harness the creative power of the universe.

As Earnest Holmes said, “Whatever the mind of man can conceive, it can achieve.”

More on this topic soon, as a part of my new 40 goals, I am going to work on getting more of this information out, stay tuned.

#6 Know that God is within (and feel good about that!)

To truly bring divine power to your creative ability, know this:

There is one Divine power and presence in life. You can call It God, Infinite Intelligence, the Force, what ever you connect with. That Infinite Intelligence is operating in, around and through you. You are in a divine partnership with that Divine Intelligence and every part of your life is one with God. Embrace this Divine presence and know that the creative power of the universe is within you. Your job is to direct It’s creative potential in any way you would like. Just know that you direct that Divine Creative Power whether you are aware of that or not. So think good thoughts, and Good shall come.

I have never been all that religious. In fact, I don’t like organized religion at all. It started with good intentions many centuries ago, but now most world religions are loaded with dogma and limitation that does not serve our highest potential. That said, I do study the world religions to find the needles of wisdom among the haystack of the ages.

One of those great gems is this statement by JC, He said: “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.”

For some reason, when I bring this up in conversations with Christians, they have a lot of resistance to that idea that the Kingdom was within man. To me, it is crystal clear: God is within, so instead of praying to some entity out there in the sky, we pray with every word we speak, every day: “By your words ye are justified and by your words ye are condemned.”

As Shinn pointed out, “There is always plenty on man’s pathway: but it can only be brought into manifestation by desire, faith or the spoken word. Jesus Christ brought out clearly that man must make the first move.”

“Ask, and it shall be given you, seek, and ye shall find, knock, and it shall be opened you.” (Mat. 7:7)

#7 Meditate

So now that we know that the mind can literally affect the subatomic particles that make up everything around us, and we understand that the Infinite Divine power of creation is within, how do we clean out that subconscious mind and start churning out some positive cause/effect into our life?

One of my favorite yoga instructors, Yogi Charu, once said something that really stuck with me: “We brush our teeth, we wash our hair, but we never clean our mind.” Of all the important bodily functions, most of us do not consider our “mental hygiene.”

The only way to calm the mind down and actually see it for what it really is, is to meditate.

The most frequent response I get when talking about meditation is “I can’t do it—I can’t sit there and think about nothing for more than a few seconds.” What I would say to that is, it’s not about the result of having a clear mind, free from thoughts, it is about the practice of watching the mind in action and from there we’ll be able to start seeing the mind for what it is: another organ in our body.

We are not our mind.

The best analogy I’ve heard about meditation is to picture yourself laying on your back watching the clouds go by on a blue sky. Each cloud is a thought. Now ideally you sit down and focus on the breathe and try and just look at the blue sky, the silence, the breath. Only the breath. However as far as I know that is impossible. Inevitably there is a cloud that comes by, interrupting the azure above. That’s ok, a thought comes in, you watch it go across your purview, then it is gone, and back to blue sky.

The reason that is so powerful, is you start to realize there is something outside of your brain that is You. There is your mind and then there is You, which you start to get to know once your mind finally shuts the hell up for a moment. (Damn thing is running non-stop! Shut up brain!

In this way, there is nothing as powerful for understanding the mind than meditation.

This is such an important step in cultivating your super powers as a human being.

Spirit:

#8 Acknowledge the Spirit

The other cardinal cornerstone of the happy life is acknowledging and working with the spirit. About an arm’s length around our physical body is our spirit body. If you cleanse your body, purify your mind and spend enough time meditating, you can start to connect to the more subtle energies of the spirit realm. Ask me to define what that really means? I can’t. But I do know it is worthy of a lifetime of study.

Call it God, call it the Universe, the Force, what ever you will, it is the everything that is all, that is One, that is no thing. And if you follow Quantum Physics into it, you will see the mystics have been correct this whole time:

We are all connected by an unseen force.

Take some time each day to connect with that greater Source energy and greater synchronicity will start to unfold, allowing you to bring out the gifts that only you bring to the world.

#9 Beware of The Illusion

Now that we have Awareness of our power to control the body, purify the mind and work with the spirit, we can start to step out of the day-to-day distractions that constantly pull us back into mental chaos and drama.

There are a million things out there to distract us. Thousands of products vying for our dollars. We’ve got Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat. Drama playing through people’s emotions that have little or nothing to do with what is happening right now. News media inciting fear and prejudice on a 24-hour cycle. Doctors prescribe drugs to dull the psyche, put us to sleep, or make us “normal.” Energy vampires seeking to suck your energy and pull you down.

Through the tools we’ve discussed, you now have the ability to see through what the Hindu mystics call the Illusion, or the Maha Maya. The more you use the tools of Awareness, Meditation and harnessing of the Divine within, the more your own intuition will heighten and it is in there, that you’ll discover the gifts you have to give to the world.

Think of the illusion as the flock of sheep being led off a cliff. All of the sheep think it is the cool thing to do because they are following the sheep in front of them. And it creates a great deal of effort to turn around and go against the flow. But so long as you stay part of that flock, the only footsteps you’ll tread are ones that have already been beaten down by minds before you.

#10 Don’t do what you’re told

From the moment we are born, people have an opinion about what they think is best for us. Growing up, our parents want us to follow a certain path, go to an in-state college (because they love us :), our friends encourage us to do what’s cool, we want to be accepted, society reinforces our existing paradigms, and marketers push trends.

If you are going to find out who you really are, you can’t blindly follow what other people expect of you. Do not obey. Don not do what you’re told. Do not stay in your comfort zone. Move out of state. Travel internationally. Don’t marry “in your tribe”. Read lots of books from people you agree with and disagree with. Do not discount anyone or any thought based on what “they” think.

No one who ever did anything revolutionary followed the rules. Some of the greatest minds of our time went against the grain and dropped out of school despite everyone telling them it was a bad idea. Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Benjamin Franklin, John D. Rockefeller, Walt Disney, Richard Branson, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates all went against popular advice and dropped out of school.

Get out of conventional wisdom as much as possible and then you’ll start to welcome the insight from within, to be the best person you can be.

After all, if you do not bring your own gifts to the world, no one else will. Each one of us has something unique to bring to the planet, and no one finds that unique gift without a healthy sense of adventure and discontentment of how things are now.

#11 Love

The final, and perhaps most important trait to living a healthy, wealthy, joyus, blessed life is love. All of our decisions in life either come from a place of love or a place of fear.

My favorite Beatle Yogi said it best:

“That’s it really; it’s all love, whichever way you look at it, it’s all love. How much you can Get from each other and that’s determined by how much you’re Giving to each other… But it all starts Within our self and then it spreads to those around us, Good & Bad. But basically that’s it, I think it’s the Love that we can generate is = to the Love that we get back.
Amen”
― George Harrison, Cloud Nine

40 years, in conclusion

I have done my best to search out and follow these 11 approaches to life. I constantly work to cleanse the body, cultivate the mind and embrace the spirit and as I turn this grand milestone of 40 years old, I am enlivened by the thought of life. I want us all to be the superhumans that we were born to be.

Every birthday, just like every day, is a new opportunity to set new cause/effect into motion.
I wish you all the best of success in building a healthy, wealthy, joyous, blessed tomorrow by planting the seeds of body, mind and spirit today. I encourage you to harness your Divine partnership with the great Infinite Intelligence in the universe, to be present and live intentionally each and every day, to tap into the greater Spirit to find out who you truly are, and to give your unique gifts to the world.

God Bless and good luck!

- By Jon Heinrich

In the age of capitalism and convenience, the human animal encounters more toxicity and detrimental environmental conditions than ever. While you can break the core of survival down to four areas—food, shelter, heat and clothing—there are many more catastrophic elements to deal with now than ever. The age of profit margins has introduced nasty substances into our lifestyle, such as bovine growth hormones and DDT. Unless you either grow all your own food or buy it from an organic health food store, you consume these toxic substances everyday.

I didn’t fully realize the damaging potential of the disease until it hit close to home. John Hall, 25 year-old bass player for the band Addison Groove Project, lost his battle with cancer. He had been diagnosed with rectal cancer just 18 months prior but no one except his family and band-mates knew how bad it was. And no one at the funeral could understand how a 25 year-old could die of cancer.

I knew cancer was a problem in the nation, but John was only 25! This really is serious. John Hall’s story was the catalyst that drove me to investigate this epidemic. I’m thankful for the opportunity to share my findings with you, so we may all do our best to avoid the plague of the 21st century.

During my search for answers, I ran into Brian Haas, the esteemed piano player in the provocative jazz trio, Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey. Our paths crossed at the foot of Butternut Ski Basin among scorching sun and green grass at the Berkshire Mountain Music Festival in August of 2003. While most of the inhabitants of the festival were wrapped up in conversation about the musical lineup, Brian was deep into in a discussion on life and death.

Recently, Hass’ mom became one of 1.4 million people each year to be newly diagnosed with cancer in the United States. Fearing for her life, Mrs. Haas did what nearly everyone does, and enrolled in a regimen of chemotherapy and radiation treatment to counter the breast cancer. Her doctors emphasized that this was the best, most effective means of treatment, even though they gave her only a five percent chance of surviving the ordeal, with the “therapy”. A five percent chance of survival with the most cutting edge advances in western medicine! No wonder subconsciously she knew the MDs were wrong. “There was a ring of dishonesty in what the doctors were saying,” explained Brian Haas.

During this treatment, her body underwent high doses of chemicals and radiation that poisoned the cancer cells—along with her healthy cells. She became weaker and more emotionally destitute. There were no signs of regaining the vitality that once flowed through her body in abundance. Then she turned to Brian. After a few months of listening to his advice, she was on her way to full recovery. She had literally found the cure; it took her from deathbed, to full recovery. And that cure is available for everybody.

How do you treat your Temple?

Putting good food into your body does not end with physical benefits through healthy lifestyle. Spiritual health and physical health go hand in hand. “Like Sting said, ‘We’re just spirits in the material world,’” explains Haas. “This is the house of our spirit.” If you think of it in those terms, it makes sense. The body is the interface between your soul and the physical world. If that interface is clogged full of toxic residue, then you won’t be able to realize your full potential—neither mentally, physically, or spiritually.

Haas explains: “Jesus said your body is a temple. If you treat your body like a temple, it spreads into the rest of your life. Every aspect of your life becomes holy; everything you do is holy.”

“The mind, body and soul are connected,” Haas continues. “If you don’t allow your body to operate at its full potential, how do we even know what our minds are capable of? I’m all about living like a real human and realizing my full potential. I’m back here [on the earth] for some reason so I want to be the best human I can be. All of this is so simple.”

After hearing him behind the grand piano that night, I know why he’s here. But its even larger than spreading his consciousness expanding jazz. There is a larger purpose: All is One.

As Hass sat and talked to me before the show, eating his organic stew, he explained: “The reason we’re here right now is to help in the healing process of the earth. So, we have to turn ourselves into superheroes, we have to turn ourselves into ultra-humans. We have to find our true potential. Jesus said ‘Don’t you understand that you’re all Gods?’ Simple; we’re all Gods, we’re all creators. We create the world around us. And if we’re toxic, if we’re poisoning ourselves, we’re going to create an awful world. Look around, we made this. The way I look at it, if you only feed yourself goodness and love, you only create goodness and love.”

How diet can affect your chances

First of all, there is no black-and-white cause to cancer, it is merely an accumulation of thousands of lifestyle and environmental factors over a person’s life that contribute to the degradation of the body’s cells. Of course there are certainly things that increase your chances such as smoking cigarettes, but regardless of your lifestyle, malignant cells exist in everyone.

Western medicine currently has about four main (and expensive) treatments to counter mutating cells spreading throughout the body. The first step in slowing reproduction of malignant cells, is to slow the hormone that commands them to replicate, estrogen. The most common drugs used for this include tamoxifen and raloxifene.

Chemotherapy is the most common cancer treatment. Chemicals are introduced to the system to kill the cancer cells. Unfortunately, instead of mimicking a “smart bomb” and killing only the malignant cells, the chemicals kill thousands of healthy cells in the process. These chemicals are so harmful to the body, the New England Journal of Medicine reported that increased chance of leukemia and ovarian cancer offset the benefits with greater risks. Chemotherapy also tends to reduce the number of blood platelets in the patient, called thrombocytopenia. Theoretically it’s similar to killing Saddam Hussein by nuking all of Iraq.

Speaking of, radiation treatment is also a very common therapy where the tumor is bombarded with high energy X-rays or radioactive isotopes in order to disable the replicating mechanism in the cancer cells, the chromosomes. As most of us know from getting X-rays at the dentist, radiation is not good for the body.

The final, and most drastic treatment is a radical mastectomy. The severity of this treatment speaks for itself.

The best way to avoid being in a place where you need to consider these severe treatments of course is to avoid cancer all together. Western medicine however, is focused on curing illness rather than preventing it.

A great place to begin your prevention regimen, is a vegetarian diet. Fill your body with vibrant vegetables, that collect vitality straight from the sun. You’ll also remove the most unhealthy ingredients in your diet and instantly upgrade your chances of not becoming one of the 42% that gets cancer. “Its so simple,” Haas emphasizes.

When Brian’s mom finally decided she had enough of the western method of poison and radiation, she began listening to what Brian was saying. She began to follow not only his advice, but also her instincts. She immediately stopped taking the chemotherapy drugs and going to radiation therapy. She began to pay careful attention to what she put into her body, but more importantly, what not to put into her body.

To begin the healing process, the first thing she did was take the following four items out of her diet completely: sugar, alcohol, dairy, and factory (non-organically raised) meat. She replaced these with regular doses of juiced wheat grass, and her recovery process began. It is as simple as that.

What’s wrong with my burger?

If there is one reason to consider a vegetarian lifestyle, it is the chemical buildup found in non-organically raised meats. As a product of the food chain, the cow that your Big Mac came from consumed hundreds of meals coated in dangerous pesticides. Unfortunately, it does not pass through the animal’s digestive tract, but rather accumulates in the tissues over time. When you consume that flesh, that lifetime of toxins are passed into your body, and the struggle of breaking them down is passed to your immune system.

There are four major groups of toxins found in factory meat that you should be aware of: pesticides, antibiotics, growth hormones, and saturated fat.

The advent of pesticide use in large-scale farming was introduced just after World War II to increase productivity and drive profits. Unfortunately, no long-term studies have been conducted to determine the ramifications of such use. And unfortunately we are still using such toxins today.

One such chemical present in our food chain today is dioxin, the contaminant in Agent Orange, a defoliant in the Vietnam War that was found to cause birth defects in children of exposed parents. As far back as 1974, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) testified before congress that dioxin is “…by far the most toxic chemical known to mankind.” But this has not stopped its use even today. Just last year the EPA under the Bush administration, refused to enforce a new limit to the use of dioxin-laced sludge as a fertilizer on farms, forests, parks, and golf courses. Dioxin has been shown to cause cancer, birth defects, miscarriages, and in the worst cases, death.

This has been accumulating in your chicken wings and its only the beginning.

Antibiotics are used in factory farms, to keep the animals healthy despite their rancid conditions. The New England Journal of Medicine pointed out that farmers are using the same antibiotics that are used to treat human infections. This is a problem because bacteria are becoming resistant to antibiotics in the medical arena.

In a 1999 study on the impact of agricultural antibiotics, analysts linked a rise, from 1 percent to 10 percent, in antibiotic resistance in bacteria, to the 1995 approval of antibiotics used in poultry. Researchers at UCS estimate that roughly 24 million pounds, or 70 percent of the antibiotics in the United States are fed to healthy livestock and contribute to the antibiotic-resistance of bacteria in humans.

The next additive to your Thanksgiving turkey is hormones. One reason why the European Union hasn’t bought meat produced in the U.S. for over 14 years, is the twenty-fold increase in estrogen levels. The British Medical Journal reported harmful effects of growth hormones in meat involve developmental, neurobiological, genetoxic, and carcinogenic repercussions, and that even small residues of such hormones increase the risk of cancer.

How do you like your steak, medium or well done?

The final element in meat that increases your risk of cancer is saturated fat. There are no shortage of scientific studies that connect animal fat with cancers of the lung, colon, rectum, breast, endometrium, and prostate. One such study done in Britain over 12 years found vegetarians to have cancer rates 40 percent lower than non-vegetarians. The study tested 6,000 vegetarians against a group of meat-eaters similar in body weight, social class, and smoking patterns.

A vegetarian diet is one way of ensuring only goodness gets into your body, by minimizing the toxic chemicals entering body. However, now beyond the industrial revolution, we live a poisonous lifestyle and no matter how much we try and avoid it, toxins still wind up in the body through the air we breathe and the water we drink. Because of this, it is a good idea to consider cleaning house once and a while to allow your body’s natural processes to combat enemy free radicals and malignant cells in the body.

One of the best ways to allow your body to clean house, is by fasting. By abstaining from food for significant periods of time, your body has a chance to turn its immune attention towards breaking down toxins in the system that, if left unattended to, could manifest into any number of cancers.

The Cleansing Fast: Detox for your health

One of the best ways to allow your body to cleanse is by fasting. By abstaining from food for significant periods of time, your body has a chance to turn its immune attention towards breaking down toxins in the system that, if left unattended to, could manifest into any number of cancers.

Traditionally, fasting is viewed as a spiritual experience. By abstaining from all solid food, you are taking control of the robot that is your body, by not letting it control you. When this occurs, you begin to see through the cycles of everyday life and realize what is truly important in the world. By choosing to let the spirit guide us, and not the flesh, you break through materialism and realize the body’s addiction to food and harmful substances we consume everyday.

In the Essene Gospels, Jesus explains, “the body is the temple of the spirit, and the spirit is the temple of God. Purify, therefore, the temple, that the Lord of the temple may dwell therein and occupy a place that is worthy of him.

As Paul Bragg explains in The Miracle of Fasting, there is a Vital Force that is used every day of your life to maintain your body’s processes. In addition to pushing blood through millions of filters in your kidneys and exchanging oxygen for carbon dioxide in your lungs, a large percentage of this energy goes towards digesting food through your 30-foot digestive tract. Once you stop eating, this Vital Force begins recharging and is freed up tove move throughout the body breaking down poisonous residues that have built up. Even after just 24 hours, the body is able to begin rebuilding Vital Force.

With the aid of lots of water and a herbal laxative, fasting also allows your body to pass the remaining food that has accumulated in the colon over years. The average person on a western diet has up to eight partially digested meals residing in their digestive tract at any time. Think about that! This undigested food does exactly the same thing it would if it weren’t in your body: it rots. If you’re wondering what that would look like, try taking a bowl of freshly cooked food and instead of eating it, put it in a moist 98.6 degree environment and check on it in three days.

Fasting is certainly one option among many, that allow your natural body to take care of itself. The most important thing to realize, is that your vessel has remarkable healing capabilities. Next time your doctor prescribes a pill for a common ailment, consider that the human race has not made it this far being dependent on pharmaceuticals. The flip side of the coin however, is that we have never been bombarded by such a health-caustic environment. Drastic measures may be required for such drastic environmental conditions—like pesticides, growth hormones, antibiotics, and saturated fat.

You Choose

Think of it this way: what if every morning, instead of having a cup of coffee, I banged my head against a brick wall to wake up. I would quickly begin to experience splitting headaches, scratches on my head, and soreness in my neck. If I went to my western doctor for a solution, he would listen to my symptoms, and probably prescribe Aspirin or a stronger pain killer to deal with the pain. After the pain did not go away, I would get X-rays, maybe a MRI scan and perhaps some stitches to deal with the laceration caused by my forehead smacking against the brick each day. If I went to my eastern medicine doctor, he would tell me to stop hitting my head on the wall.

This may sound ridiculous, but when you consider what we, as Americans, put into our body, it may not be that far-fetched. Consider that each year 1.2 billion pounds of pesticides are sprayed on American crops, and we feed 24 million pounds of antibiotics to farm animals to aid in meat production. Where do you think that goes? We are constantly bombarding our body with unnatural chemicals that can trigger DNA breakage, cell deterioration, and immune system suppression.

Luckily, you have a choice. You can begin reading the labels on your food and eliminating chemical-laden flesh from your diet. Remember, the choice is yours.

- by Jon Heinrich

Originally published 11/15/2013

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- Robbins, John. Diet for a New America. Walpole, NH: Stillpoint, 1987.
- Tagilaferri, Mary, Issac Cohen and Devu Tripathy. Breast Cancer Beyond Convention.
Vogin, Gary MD. WebMD, December, 2001.
- http://my.webmd.com/content/article/9/1811_50449.htm?lastselectedguid=%7B5FE84E90-BC77-4056-A91C-9531713CA348%7D
- Watson, Rory. “EU Says Growth Hormones Pose Health Risk”. British Medical Association, British Medical Journal, May 29, 1999. v318i7196 p1442.

Meniscus: Shakti, can you tell us more about the subtle effects of going vegetarian? Why do Hindus not eat Cows and Pigs?

Shakti: Every act we do affects our consciousness, and eating is an act we do many times a day. “We are what we eat,” is very close to the truth, in that what we eat greatly affects our consciousness. We may think we can see the world clearly, but actually there is so much happening around us that we are completely blind to.

The more we eat “mode of goodness” foods the more we are open to see the world and ourselves and others clearly. And much peace and happiness comes when we have the ability to see clearly.

However when we eat meat of any kind, we are eating flesh, blood and fat of a body that once was alive and currently is dead. So we are eating dead matter, and that enhances a tamasic or “mode of ignorance” consciousness. That is the yogic perspective.

To live and enhance a level of “dead” knowledge or “dead” vision is never going to enhance happiness, much less spiritual knowledge. Eating meat sadly has the opposite affect, it reduces the chance of having spiritual sensitivity and makes spiritual knowledge harder to acquire.

In fact just from a basic logical perspective, when an animal is killed, fear is running through it’s body. And that anxiety is causing specific hormones or chemicals to run through the animals blood stream. It has been proven that animals are aware that they are going to be killed. Many try to escape, and even shed tears. They know they are about to be killed. And that fear, that pain is affecting their biochemistry. So you can imagine what that means for our consciousness as we ingest the meat that contains that fear. We are a society of enhanced fear and anxiety and in many respects ignorant of so many subtle realities.

Rising up

The practice of meditation, yoga, prayer, mindfulness and genuine searching for genuine answers all helps lift our consciousness. However, just like we go to school for many many years to earn knowledge of this material world, it takes years to cultivate spiritual knowledge. And most of us are not putting in the time, energy and dedication it takes to know deeply who we are.

Now there is an analogy I love. If a mechanic and you (or any of us who are not mechanics) look at the same engine we will see totally different things. Our eyes are I taking different visions, due to knowledge or the lack there of. In that same way we need spiritual training to see ourselves and this world for what it truly is.

Eating foods that are mentioned in the “Bhagavad Gita As It Is” that are in the mode of goodness like legumes, grains, fruits, vegetables, nuts and ahimsa milk products is the beginning of raising your own ability to see the spiritual subtlety in the world.

- by Shakti Assouline

If you are interested in what Shakti has to say, you may be interested in her Yoga Nidra training as well. Check out her site for more details: http://pureshaktiyoga.com/yoga-nidra/nidra-trainings

Divine Cows in India by Kurma Rupa

How is she still at the top of her game after all these years of success? How is she this timeless wonder still producing such modern, fashion-forward designs while maintaining her ageless physicality? I recently attended an evening event lead by the one and only Norma Kamali in her ultra clean, bright, white lacquered boutique on West 56th Street in NYC.

Surrounded by her plethora of passions including her powerful women’s clothing line, gorgeous bottles of olive oil and gourmet raw food, the picture of grace, elegance and modernity appeared. Enter Norma Kamali. She and her ultra-polite team gathered on this night, with an all female audience to discuss and interact on perhaps the most important of her passions, the end of the objectification of women.

She spoke with honesty and strength about redefining the modern woman. Norma Kamali created short film titled “Hey Baby” about the way women are treated by men as we walk down the street. She pointed out that we are so much more than our body image, the clothes we wear, our breast size and yet we are all judged by these physical aspects.

Norma shared her own stories of objectification and explained that, through sharing them with other women, we can empower ourselves. This is so huge for women, we all have these experiences and we usually keep them buried deep down inside.

Wellness and Women

As the night came to a close, I took my selfie with Norma Kamali and I realized she is far beyond a fashion icon. Norma Kamali truly is a superhero, a powerful woman who designs contemporary, gorgeous women’s clothing, who is devoted to eating healthy and most importantly, she is at the forefront leading the way for women in the face of objectification coming from our culture.

Norma Kamali is quietly breaking down this barrier in her graceful, elegant, modern way.

If you live in the New York area, keep an eye out for future events on thewellnesscafe.com so you share your experiences and share in the growing empowerment. You can also get involved at www.stopobjectification.com.

- by Judith Longo

If you pay careful attention to what you put into your body—but more importantly, what not to put into your body—your health will increase dramatically and as a bonus you’ll instantly upgrade your chances of not becoming one of the 42% Americans that gets cancer.

Its simple.

To begin the healing process, the first thing to do is take the following items out of your diet completely: sugar, alcohol, dairy, processed food and factory (non-organically raised) meat.

Let’s take a look at what meat contains that adds to your risk of cancer and other diseases.

There are four major groups of toxins found in factory meat that you should be aware of: pesticides, antibiotics, growth hormones, and saturated fat.

Pesticides

If there is one reason to consider a vegetarian lifestyle, it is the chemical buildup found in non-organically raised meats, known as bioaccumulation. Produce grown non-organically in the United States is doused with pesticides like Monsanto’s Roundup.

The advent of pesticide use in large-scale farming was introduced just after World War II to increase productivity and drive profits. Unfortunately, no long-term studies have been conducted to determine the ramifications of such use. And thanks to Monsanto, we are still using such toxins more than ever.

One such chemical present in our food chain today is dioxin. You may have heard of this chemical. It is the contaminant in Agent Orange, the defoliant used in the Vietnam War that was found to cause birth defects in children of exposed parents. As far back as 1974, a representative of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) testified before congress that dioxin is “…by far the most toxic chemical known to mankind.” But this has not stopped its use. On October 17, 2003, the Boston Globe reported that the EPA, under the Bush administration, refused to enforce a new limit to the use of dioxin-laced sludge as a fertilizer on farms, forests, parks, and golf courses. Dioxin has been shown to cause cancer, birth defects, miscarriages, and in the worst cases, death.

This has been bioaccumulating in your chicken wings and its only the beginning.

Bioaccumulation

Here is how bioaccumulation works. When you or I eat such a piece of corn, one dose of that chemical enters our body. The same goes with farm animals. As a product of the food chain, the cow that your Big Mac came from consumed hundreds of meals coated in dangerous pesticides. Unfortunately, it does not pass through the animal’s digestive tract, but rather bioaccumulates in the tissues of the animal over and over again. By the time the animal is slaughtered, it has bioaccumulated every dose of foul pollutants it has ingested.

But that’s not the end of the cycle. When you consume that flesh, that lifetime of toxins are passed into your body, and the struggle of breaking them down, is passed to your immune system.

Antibiotics

Antibiotics are used in factory farms, to keep the animals healthy despite their rancid conditions. The New England Journal of Medicine pointed out that farmers are using the same antibiotics that are used to treat human infections. This is a problem because bacteria are becoming resistant to antibiotics in the medical arena.

In a 1999 study on the impact of agricultural antibiotics, analysts linked a rise, from 1 percent to 10 percent, in antibiotic resistance in bacteria, to the 1995 approval of antibiotics used in poultry—antibiotics in the same class as Cipro. (Cipro, used to treat anthrax, would be a bad thing to be resistant to.)

Researchers at UCS estimate that roughly 24 million pounds, or 70 percent of the antibiotics in the United States are fed to healthy livestock. “‘Although the 3 million pounds [prescribed to humans] are thought to be responsible for the greater contribution to antibiotic-resistant disease, the 24 million pounds cannot be ignored,’ for reasons of sheer volume, USC’s Margaret Mellon said.”

While this, according to my research, is not tied directly to cancer, it compromises our ability to fight off bacterial infections. Such an infection only compromises the body’s immune system when it needs it most—to combat malignant cells. And malignant cells are what you’ll get from the next popular additive to your Thanksgiving turkey.

Growth hormones

In the United States it is legal to give cattle hormones such as estrogens, testosterone, progesterone, and others. Well, cancer cells are fueled by estrogen. Giving hormones directly to the animals is like adding fuel to the fire. One reason why the European Union hasn’t bought meat produced in the U.S. since January 1, 1989, is the twenty-fold increase in estrogen levels.

The British Medical Journal reported harmful effects of growth hormones in meat involve developmental, neurobiological, genetoxic, and carcinogenic repercussions, and that even small residues of such hormones increase the risk of cancer. How do you like your steak, medium or well done?

Saturated fat

The final element contained in meat that increases your risks of cancer is saturated fat. There are no shortage of scientific studies that connect animal fat with cancers of the lung, colon, rectum, breast, endometrium, and prostate.

One such study done in Britain over 12 years found vegetarians to have cancer rates 40 percent lower than non-vegetarians. The study tested 6,000 vegetarians against a group of meat-eaters similar in body weight, social class, and smoking patterns. Another study done over eleven years in Germany concluded that cancer rates were less than half among vegetarians. For those that avoided meat for over 20 years, their cancer rates were the lowest of all.

A vegetarian diet is one of the best ways of minimizing the toxic chemicals, enemy free radicals and preventing malignant cells from growing in the body.

Aside from lengthening your life, the biggest benefit is the quality of life, the clarity, the good karma, and the added sensitivity to subtle energies. We will save that for another segment. In the mean time, think about adding vibrant veggies instead of dead flesh and your body will be so so happy.

- by Jon Heinrich

Bibliography:

Gorbach, Sherwood. “Antimicrobial Use in Animal Feed—Time to Stop”. (Editorial). The New England Journal of Medicine, October 18, 2001. v345i16 p1202(2).
Haas, Brian. Interview. October 16, 2003.
Melina, Vesanto M.S., R.D. Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.Healthy Eating for Life: To Prevent and Treat Cancer. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2002.
Nixon, Daniel W. M.D. The Cancer Recovery Eating Plan: The Right Foods to Help Fuel Your Recovery. Times Books, Random House, 1994.
Pianin, Erik. “EPA Won’t Regulate Use of Dioxin-Laced Sludge as Fertilizer”.The Boston Globe, October 18, 2003.
Quillen, Patirck Ph.D., RD. CNS. Beating Cancer with Nutrition. Tulsa, Oklahoma: Nutrition Times Press, Inc., 1994.
Robbins, John. Diet for a New America. Walpole, NH: Stillpoint, 1987.
Tagilaferri, Mary, Issac Cohen and Devu Tripathy. Breast Cancer Beyond Convention.
Vogin, Gary MD. WebMD, December, 2001. http://my.webmd.com/content/article/9/1811_50449.htm?lastselectedguid=%7B5FE84E90-BC77-4056-A91C-9531713CA348%7D
Watson, Rory. “EU Says Growth Hormones Pose Health Risk”. British Medical Association, British Medical Journal, May 29, 1999. v318i7196 p1442.

Donna explains in her book Cultured Food for Life that kombucha is a secret elixir of life existing for thousands of years. It is produced by adding a kombucha culture, otherwise known as a SCOBY, a Symbiotic Colony of Bacteria and Yeast, into a sweet tea mixture and allowing it to brew for about a week. That is it! The SCOBY processes the sugar much like yeast consumes sugar when making alcohol, except instead of beer or wine, the final product is a tart, carbonated beverage with very little sugar and a lot of health benefits.

So what exactly does this health tonic contain and what does it do for the body?

Detoxification

During the process of fermentation, the SCOBY produces glucuronic acid, which is a key nutrient the body naturally produces in the liver, used to eliminate toxins through the kidneys. Kombucha assists the liver and pancreas fight off toxicity in the body.

While detoxing alone can help the body fight off terminal diseases, studies have shown that glucuronic acid alone helps prevent cancer. Of course there is no magic bullet for cancer prevention, but detoxing and alkalizing the body are a big help.

Alkalizing

Today’s American diet is full of sugar, meat, processed foods and alcohol, all very acidic foods. While not considered a disease itself, blood acidosis is the root of many prevalent diseases such as diabetes, arthritis and cancer.

Kombucha is an alkaline forming food, which brings balance back to the blood. Cancer cells can not grow in an alkaline environment so the more you balance your blood back away from acid towards basic (aka alkaline) the more resilient you’ll be against cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure and any number of health challenges seen with blood acidosis.

Digestive health and probiotics

One of the big benefits of adding kombucha to your diet is adding an army of good bacteria to your system to fight off the bad bacteria. As Donna explains in her book, when the bad bacteria start to outnumber the good bacteria, that is when disease sets in. But when you are in balance, and add probiotics to your diet, like kombucha and cultured vegetables, you will start to experience incredible health, well being, mental clarity and radiance.

One reason you’ll see celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow, Reese Witherspoon and Heather Graham drinking kombucha is because of its reputation as a “beauty elixir”. One of the well known kombucha founders GT tells the story of how his mother was known as the kombucha lady because of her “healthy glow.” But the real benefit came when she overcame an aggressive form of breast cancer, drinking kombucha to keep her strong before, during and after her cancer experience.

Immune and energy boosting

In addition to the probiotics, kombucha contains high levels of B-vitamins and amino acids, which are important building blocks for all sorts of body processes. You’ll notice a boost of energy when drinking kombucha as the B-vitamins help convert food into energy. The more energy you have, the more you’re able to fight off colds, flus and other more serious diseases.

Additional health benefits of kombucha include:

- improving eyesight and cataracts
- relieving headaches and migraines (and hangovers)
- improved digestion
- help with seasonal allergies
- appetite suppression
- helping to heal ulcers (by killing h. pylori, a bacteria that causes ulcers)
- joint health (kombucha also contains glucosamines, which help to prevent arthritis)

Making Kombucha

The first step in trying this healthy elixir is to try some store bought kombucha from a brand like GT’s, which can be found at health stores all over. If you are interested in making your own kombucha, then you really start getting the benefits. I would recommend you check out Donna’s site for the basics and she can even set you up with all the basics, including a SCOBY of your own. All it takes is:

- a 1 gallon glass jar
- breathable cloth napkin to cover the jar opening
- rubber band
- SCOBY starter
- black or green tea
- sugar (preferably raw turbinado sugar)

You will boil one gallon of filtered water, add five tea bags for 15 minutes, add 1 cup of raw sugar, let the mixture cool overnight. (Always take care to keep everything as clean and sterile as possible and avoid any exposure to the air that is not necessary. We are working with a highly nutritive mix that some mold would just love to nest on if you’re not careful.)
When the tea is cool to the touch, add it to the jar, add the SCOBY and one cup of existing kombucha, rubber band the cloth over the top and let it sit 5-10 days on the counter. You’ll have to taste it occasionally to see when it is not too sweet and not too sour. When you have a good taste, you’ll bottle up the mix in individual glass bottles and put them in the fridge to stop the fermentation process. Voila! You’ll have kombucha by the gallon!

Cheers to your health, and please visit Donna’s site before you get started to ensure a fun, successful process!

- by Jon Heinrich

Sources:
Schwenk, Donna. Cultured Food for Life, Hay House Publishing, 2013
Other sources linked directly from citation

Meniscus met them recently to ask how art help creates a new paradigm?

“Art helps to create a paradigm of non-stagnation.” Lisa explains. “Good art is synonymous with a good life. We should always ask questions and be courageous and brave enough to look at the answers. Art keeps moving and searching-root around for the truth, uncover it and make it public. Art follows no rules but that of continually striving for something better. Art and life should not take itself too seriously- laugh a lot but at the same time, know when to fight like hell. Art can teach us to love and appreciate our lives!”

We are what we eat. People should take that as literally as as it is stated. If you eat well and focus your diet around fruits, vegetables and whole grains,this is your ticket to good health and disease prevention.

“When your health is good you feel good and are happier and being happier gives you strength and energy and being stronger makes us clearer thinkers and better citizens which can change the world to be a better place.”

“But it all starts with what goes into your mouth. Americans really have to take more of a responsibility for their health because we cannot trust the medical establishment being that they are all about drugs rather than health through nutrition.”

Q: Tell me about your energetic state. When do you really feel enlivened?

“Mike and I both have tremendous amounts of energy. Yesterday a friend said that he and other acquaintances of ours, discussed our energy level and wondered perhaps if it was because we never had kids? I quickly offered the fact that we eat Mu Mu TWICE a day and maybe that was the reason!”

Mu Mu Muesli can be found in select New York Whole Foods and you can find out more about them at www.mumumuesli.com.

- By Jon Heinrich

My virgin Citibike adventure began at this station.

I definitely agree with all of these! Seriously though, if I can say one thing, PLEASE wear a helmet!

Hopping aboard my stainless steel stallion, my journey began.

Straight west down Canal Street to the West Side Highway bikepath where I could stretch my legs out.

SO much better than the city streets.

Alternatively, I could be in the subway right now.

I love the sky.

Ommmmmmmmmmmmmmm…

Growing up in Colorado, I never rode by one of these before!

And ahh, my destination at Columbus Circle just as dusk hit and the purple flowers were exploding.

At 54th street I headed east to Broadway then just up a few blocks to the final resting place (for the moment) for this trusty steed. It did well. I was clunky and heavy, but they have flashing LEDs on the front and back, a basket in front for your Mui Mui bag should you have one, and a comfortable seat. I’d highly recommend it, but obviously if you are riding your bike in Manhattan, keep your game face on and head on a swivel. Did I mention that you should always wear a helmet?

Thanks for joining me on my journey.
- Jon

Jon Heinrich Photography

But recently I was on a little road trip that had me 94 miles outside of Manhattan at 2 AM and I was getting real drowsy. Having just watched Due Date, and seeing the horrific (humorous) crash scene that happened from Zach Galifianakis’ character falling asleep at the wheel, I wanted to be sure and make sure I was awake.

So I pulled over to a dark sketchy rest stop off I-95 S and hooked up some Coke.

When I hit the substance, I immediately recognized the characteristic taste as it ran down the back of my throat. Then the effects were almost instantaneous: my heart started to race and suddenly the Buddha Bar disc I was listening to sounded more like club music. My senses perked up. My breathing got faster and shallower. And immediately I felt the chalky crust form on my teeth.

I felt really good for awhile, it got me through to Manhattan, thankfully before I crashed. Hard. The caffeine probably lasted about 4 hours, but it was the 9 tablespoons of sugar I was not used to. A can of Coca-cola has 39 grams of high fructose corn syrup which is linked to diabetes, heart disease and obesity.

New York City Mayor Bloomberg is getting a lot of flak from freedom fighters across the country saying the government should not tell you what size drink to buy. It is a case of the capitalists calling free market disruption. The law against soft drinks above 16 oz in NYC stands against an industrywide $700 million in annual advertising for a product that has no nutritional value and actually harms its users over time.

Call it what you will, but I personally find it hilarious that these people are fighting for their right to drink large amounts of something that is bad for them.

But then again, I am not addicted to coke.

- By Jon Heinrich