Friday, December 14, 2007

Juice of the Day Continued!

David on the sleigh ride to B.C.
Snow, snow, snow! (It will most likely not be snowy in B.C., only on some parts of the drive. Winter camping anyone?)
Hello All!

Well, here we are getting ready to head up to CANADA!! One more sleep, and then off we go, I am so excited to see my family and my beloved ocean.

I just wanted to drop a quick note to say that because things have been so busy around here we are extending our "Juice of the Day" contest. So, be sure to get your juice recipe into us for a chance to win a 30 Day Membership to Juice Feasting.com. For more information see "Juice of the Day" entry below, or just send your recipe to us at nutrientdense@gmail.com.

That's all I have time for right now, will let you know how our chilly, winter road trip went once we arrive in B.C.

All Love,

Katrina Rain.

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

New "Juice Feasting" Emerging as Phytonutrient-Rich Disease-Fighting Nutritional System

Leap for Joy!

Hooray! We are so excited that our friend Mike Adams loves Juice Feasting as much as we do!

Check out what he has to say about it here:


And be sure to listen to his podcast about his experience with the magic of juice. We are just listening to it right now and it is fantastic, entertaining, and very, very smart if we may say so.
Get really excited people, juice is gonna soak the place, and oh what a delicious, sticky, HEALTHY, yummy cup of bliss we will all be in together then!
OK, after another long day in Tucson, it is cuddle time. It has been snowing intermittently all day, yes, even Southern Arizona gets snow!
Juicy Love,
Katrina Rain.

Monday, December 10, 2007

Non-Fear

When a cloud is about to become rain, she is not afraid
Hello!

I have been enjoying so many wonderful and diverse blogs recently, and I just wanted to extend a heart felt thank you to ALL of you who are leading the way by being healthy, happy, and inquisitive, journeying forever towards the light.

David and I received a beautiful love note today on the Juice Feasting Forums that I wanted to share with you all:

"Today is Day 20 of my Juice Feasting, and I felt a strong desire to honor this website. I charged headlong into the most exciting adventure of my life because of the support of this portal to a new dimension. I am transforming so fast I can't keep track of it all, and that makes me very grateful. I specifically thank you David for giving me the phrase "a hero's journey". It explains precisely how I feel. I feel no temptations to "eat" right now because of that journey.

Interestingly, because I share the house with extended family, there is cooked and raw food around me constantly, and yet I am literally untouched. In fact, I love to smell it and observe the change in my response to it. Raw foods that didn't appeal are taking on a new life; I look forward to meeting up with them next year! And cooked foods that used to seem so wonderful, are setting off tiny little alarm bells; the voice of my organs can actually be heard now "Please, not that... we just can't take it anymore."

The beauty, strength, and rightness of Juice Feasting is proved to me by the amount of energy and focus I have. This despite that I commute 6 hours a day four days per week, and have a busy schedule outside of work. I have gone from 339 down to 310 in this time, but I'm not dieting. I'm not even struggling. I'm retraining. I'm cleansing. I'm being blessed with the break from "food" that I needed to reset my whole being towards harmony with the gift of food.
My contribution/tip: Once a day I try to remember to have a tablespoon of olive oil, hemp oil, borage/flax oil, or coconut oil. It's wonderful to mix in with tangerine juice. If I forget, certain foods begin to dance into my thoughts; I am beginning to recognize my need for dietary fats.

Keep up the good work David and Katrina!"

~anonymous on the Juice Feasting Forums.

Wow, this note made our day! And the truth of it is that it is all of YOU that are taking the magic of Juice Feasting and live foods out to the world, giving every one you come into contact with the amazing gift of non-fear. It is through your blogs, and day to day journeys that we are showing everyone what our potential as human beings really is! Soon, people will no longer say "WHAT! Juice for 92-Days! NO WAY!" but "Oh, of course you can drink juice for 92-Days. My friend just did it and has seen amazing results, I want to do a Juice Feast soon too!" And this is because all of you, Juice Feasting right now, are setting such an amazing example! You are teaching people they need not be afraid, that there is a magical solution, and that it is as simple as drinking juice, and then moving on to eating nutrient dense plant foods! You are all adding invaluably to the consciousness shift by being bright and shining lights! The more of us that do it, the easier and easier it will become for those more mired in things holding them back to move forward.

So, we want to say thank you to YOU! We admire all of you greatly. You are all Heroes off on an epic Hero's Journey!

Thich Nhat Hanh on non-fear:

"When a cloud is about to become rain, she is not afraid. She may even be excited. Being a cloud floating in the blue sky is wonderful, but being rain falling on the fields, the ocean, or the mountains is also wonderful. As she falls down as rain, the cloud will sing. Looking deeply, we see that birth is just a notion. Nothing is born from nothing. When we touch the cloud deeply, when we touch our grandmother deeply, we touch the nature of no birth and no death, and we are free from sorrow.

Nirvana means extinction, above all the extinction of ideas- the ideas of birth and death, existence and nonexistence, coming and going, self and other, one and many. All these ideas cause us to suffer. We are afraid of death because ignorance gives us an illusory idea about what death is.

We don't have to attain nirvana, because we ourselves are always dwelling in nirvana. The wave does not have to look for water. It already is water. We are one with the ground of our being, once we touch God or nirvana, we also receive the gift of non-fear. Non-fear is the basis of true happiness. The greatest gift we can offer others is our non-fear. Living deeply every moment of our life, touching the deepest level of our being, this is the practice of non-fear"

~ The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching by Thich Nhat Hanh

As we and many others have experienced, clearing toxic foods and thoughts from our lives gives us access to the flow of beauty that is here, waiting to join into the lives of all who welcome it in. GO FOR IT!
--------------------------------
As you can imagine, our house has become an epi-centre for citrus juice after our Tucson citrus harvest! David just wandered over to the counter and said, "yum, that orange juice was SO good this morning!" so I think it might be time to make another batch!

Don't forget to send us your favorite juice recipe and give your self the chance of winning a 30 Day Membership to Juice Feasting.com! See post below called "Juice of the Day" for more information. Oh, and by the way, if you already have a membership, please do send us your juice recipe and if you win, we will upgrade your membership for an extra 30 Days! Sound good? Then let us know your favorite juice!

So far today our house has been A Complaint Free zone! Hooray!

Love to all,

Katrina.

Sunday, December 9, 2007

Computer Angels and A Complaint Free World

A Complaint Free World

Well, I think the computer angels are finally coming back to us after three weeks of yucky computer struggles. Computer problems are SO frustrating! My baby mac is still at the doctors, we found out that the hard drive died (very unusual), so I am hoping beyond hope that they will be able to recover all of the data. I have some very special things on that computer, and it will be sad if I have to let it go....computers are an interesting experiment to be sure. The work done on a computer, or here on the Internet, is nothing like, say, growing a garden and harvesting fruits. Computer work is so detached from the earth, so dependant on temporary phenomena like electricity and cheep oil....once those things start to go, computer days will be few and far between. For us though, there is an interesting tie in for technology to the "to the land" movement, in that it is such a valuable educational tool. I love using blogs for my daily news! The things that I have learned from the Internet have helped me to transform my life in magical ways, and reminded me of the importance of eating naturally, among other things. The Internet, when used correctly, can be such an exciting, inspiring place. So, the trick is to use the amazing world of Internet and computers while we have it, and then get ready to gracefully let it go when we need to.

While we were in Tucson dealing with computers, we also got to harvest about 40lbs of fresh off the tree oranges and grapefruits from our friend's citrus garden! Wow, what a treat! I am really feeling a lack of garden time, living out here in the desert, so it was really nice to kick off my shoes and climb up into a tree and pick and pick and pick! Happy monkey girl.

We also got to harvest a load of veggie oil for Pegasus, who will be driving us up to B.C. SOON! I am so excited to be home with my family I am just quivering!

So, the day in Tucson was shaping up to be a really crabby day, after weeks of computers not working right, spending FAR too much time trying to fix them, fuses were a little short. At the beginning of the day I resigned myself to have a crabby day, and I even decided to not even try to avoid the crabbiness, it felt like too much effort to stay happy, so I was going to just let myself be crabby. BUT, it didn't work! I have reached a tipping point of positive thinking, and now the positive naturally over-rides the crabbies even when I am not trying at it! And it should have been a very easily crabby day, to discover we had to spend even MORE on computer programs, and that my mac baby has a dead hard drive, traffic was horrible and we had a terrible time finding parking and drove around for 15 minutes almost everywhere we tried to go just looking for parking, it seemed extra hard to find food that we could eat, and nothing was going smoothly.

What I found was that I couldn't avoid feeling giddy with happiness while picking oranges and grapefruits, and that pulling veggie oil was so satisfying, and that at the end of the day these happinesses out weighed the rest of the frustrating day.

And then, after the sun had set, we went into a book store (following our tradition of "may no visit to Tucson be book store visit-less), and I just couldn't help but feel so HAPPY! And I ran into a book that has passed in front of my consciousness before, in some magazine or someplace, that is a little gem of positive thinking. A Complaint Free World is a book that is taking the world by storm, and if you ever wonder at the power of positive thinking, or feel sceptical, please check out this book! The idea is simple, to go 21 days without complaining. The results are impressive, good things will happen for you in abundance if you can just leave your grumbling behind. The book's author, Will Bowen, has said that going 21 consecutive days without complaining, criticising, or gossiping, and in so doing you form a new, positive habit. By changing your words, you can change your thoughts, and then begin to create your life by design. People have shared stories with Will about relieving chronic pain, healing relationships, improving careers, and becoming an overall happier person, just by not complaining! Consciously striving to reformat your mental hard rive is not easy, but believe me, it is SO WORTH IT!

Now, I think that I have generally been a very positive person, but it is like entering a whole new planet when you begin to be very mindfully positive, and very mindfully avoid negativity. Many great teachers have taught this, the importance of mastering your thoughts. Now, here, in their footsteps is a very accessible concept: to just stop complaining!

From the book: "Complaining is talking about things you do not want rather than what you do want. When we complain, we are using our words to focus on things that are not as we would like. Our thoughts create our lives and our words indicate what we are thinking. Let me repeat that, because if you get nothing else from this book, please let this be it: OUR THOUGHTS CREATE OUR LIVES AND OUR WORDS INDICATE WHAT WE ARE THINKING. Put another way: "What you Articulate, you Demonstrate!"

Reading things like this always feels like striking gold to me, confirmation of what I know to be true! I have for so long felt the power of words, and known what a strong effect they hold on ourselves and those around us.....I lived for seven years with a chronic complainer, and yes, I loved him, and in order to relate to him I would often find myself complaining too. Every time I made an attempt to curb complaining in our house, it seemed to fizzle before my eyes, and I would be ridiculed for being "too sensitive." Perhaps I was not as skillful as I could have been...I feel I understand much better now the means by which a person can be skillful and loving in the face of anger and hurt, but I was embroiled in it at the time. Now that I have left that relationship, I understand even deeper now the importance of words and mindfulness, for living with loving, happy words, and a mindful soul mate is like night and day after living with words that so often made me feel stressed out, unhappy, at-odds, and often lead to tears.

So yes, lets all take the 21 day complaint free challenge! I'm going to give it a try. The more I focus on bringing happy thoughts into my life, the harder it is for my mental hard drive to get fried! As the book says: "To be a happy person who has mastered your thoughts and has begun creating your life by design, you need a very, very high threshold of what leads you to express grief, pain, and discontent." In other words, to get upset over mal-functioning computers is not necessary, bad traffic, ha! Happiness requires a rolling gracefully along with life through all of its ups and downs.

"You can help create a Complaint Free World. Do it for those around you. Do it for your nation. Do it because it's a powerful first step towards world peace. Do it for your children and their children yet to come. But mostly, do it for yourself.

Do this for myself? Isn't that selfish? No. There is nothing wrong with doing something so that you will benefit. As you become a happier person, you raise the overall level of happiness in the world. You will send out vibrations of optimism and hope that will resound with others of similar intent. You will create a network of expectation for a brighter future for all."

One last note on complaining: “Complaining is not to be confused with informing someone of a mistake or deficiency so that it can be put right. And to refrain from complaining doesn’t necessarily mean putting up with bad quality or behavior. There is no ego in telling the waiter your soup is cold and needs to be heated up—if you stick to the facts, which are always neutral. ‘How dare you serve me cold soup…?’ That’s complaining.”—Eckhart Tolle, “A New Earth”

So, get ye to www.AComplaintFreeWorld.org, order yourself a little purple bracelet, (or use an old elastic band and save on resources), and see if you can go 21 days without complaining, and see what magic comes in when you put out only happy words!

Here are some happy words for you: WE LOVE YOU!

Love Katrina and David Rain.

Thursday, December 6, 2007

Juice of the Day

Hello All!

Another Arizona day coming to a close....we are still experiencing computer troubles but they will (we hope) be over very soon! We contracted a virus while trying to watch the latest Harry Potter movie, and are still trying to re-sort everything out. That naughty Harry. It has really made us realize how much we value our computers, thank you for good computers!

We just had a lovely visit with Cain and Julie, who are working at the Tree right now. They drove over in their little golden bug (VW), and they borrowed the cat! Yes, that's right, our cat is in high demand, he must be the most well loved cat I have ever known. He is the only cat I have ever known to have his own human visitors (while we were in Houston we hear he had a very busy social schedule, with Tim and Michella, and Cain and Julie all coming over to our house to spend time with him.) So Seneca has gone to spend the weekend with Cain and Julie to see if he can sort out their mouse problem for them. I think he will do just fine.

In other news:

Win A 30 Day Membership to JuiceFeasting.com!

So, we are working at putting a Juice of the Day on every day of our 92-Day Program....if you have a recipe you would like to contribute to be forever eternalized in the pages of Juice Feasting, please let us know! We like juices with lovely names and little stories about the juice, how you came up with it, where you were when you first tried it, why it is your favorite juice, etc. Please email your juice recipe to nutrientdense@gmail.com with "Juice" as the subject and David and I will pick three lucky juicies to be added as members to the site. If you are already a member and would like to contribute a juice anyways, please do! We love your juicy creations, and you will be helping to create a very juicy experience for all those following you on the Juice Feasting path.

We will announce the juice winners on this blog next Friday, December the 14th, so be sure to get your entry in before then!


One of our favorite juice recipes: What-Amazing-Right-Now-Wheatgrass! Take some fresh, Hippocrates grown, (or your own seaponically grown) baby green wheatgrass and put it through the juicer. Don't bother with a cup, drink right from the spout, it really is that good! We have never had such sweet wheatgrass!

Ok, David has just made my favorite tomato/basil/garlic soup for dinner so I must go and join him at the True Home Cafe.

All my love to all you loves,

Katrina.

Wednesday, December 5, 2007

The Animal's Lawsuit



My new favorite book, The Animal's Lawsuit Against Humanity, is a story that is over 1,000 years old but still so very current. The animals in the story are given eloquent voice to communicate their feelings about the ways in which they are used and abused by mankind, including a speech from Sheep: "If you could see with your own eyes, our Lord and King, how they steal our infants and young, separating mother from child in order to drink our milk; and how they bind up the legs of our children and carry them away to be killed; how our young are beaten and left hungry and thirsty, crying and moaning in suffocating fear. If you could see how we are slaughtered and our skins stripped away and our bodies cut open...Then in their markets, there are merchants selling meat cooked in pots, meat roasted on spits, meat baked in ovens or fried in pans- why that's us! Its our bodies they're cooking and selling!"

Sounds horrible doesn't it? I am so glad that I don't eat meat while reading this book, or anytime really.

It is full of all kinds of gems, including an understanding of the perfection of each and every creature, made the way it is for very special reasons, just like each and every one of us! Mule explains, smiling, about his friend Camel: "Notice that the length of its neck corresponds to the length of its body, so that it can pick up grass from the earth yet maintain its balance. It also enables the camel to extend its mouth to every place on its body in order to scratch itself. Similarly, the trunk of the elephant compensates for the shortness of its neck. And its ears drive away flies and gnats from its eyes and especially from its mouth, which is always open because of the tusks. And the tusks were made to serve as weapons. Then again, to compensate for its being thin-skinned and tiny, the ears of the rabbit are large so that it can hear the slightest sounds around it, and thus its hearing provides an extra sensitivity to and awareness of its environment beyond all of ours. And so it is with every living creature. God made us all with the limbs and part that are most beneficial to us and that keep us safe from harm."

In one of my favorite lines, Mule is trying to get all of his friends to join him in calling to the Spirit King, a wise and noble spirit who knows the value of justice. Mule spoke to his friends "Let us call to the spirits! Let us call together in one voice! Everyone! Shout with your heart through your lips!"

And may we all call together, shouting with our hearts through our lips, to the beautiful spirits who will bring us to harmony on earth!

Enjoy your juice while loving all living things!! Oh, and don't forget to shout (lovingly) with your heart!!

Love Katrina Rain.

Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity Jog!

Houston, Texas

Shangri-La

Well, we are home again after a lovely visit to Houston, Texas.
I have to say I enjoyed Houston a lot more than I expected to, although I do believe what I was exposed to was very selectively chosen by my tour guide David. What I experienced was a city full of trees and stately old neighborhoods with children playing in the streets, bird sanctuaries, Bayous and tropical weather right into December. David's hair became twice as curly in the moist, tropical air!
It was wonderful to get to know my mother and father in-law better, and we were all sad to see our time together come to an end.
Trip highlights included:

~Not getting constipated on either flight. Hooray! In the past I have quite quickly become constipated if I sit in travel all day, but not this time. I don't think I did anything differently, my digestive system is just getting better and better the longer I eat RAW!

~Watching intense cooked food cravings come up (while eating out with the parents at an amazing smelling, cheezy, bready, old-Katrina favorite kinds of foods restaurant) and then watching them pass. I realized again the importance of protecting your senses while transitioning into raw, because that stuff is seductive! Both David and I had a beautiful spinach salad and enjoyed it fully.

~Seeing the house where David grew up, and visiting the elementary school that he attended, walking down halls that have laid eyes on his five year old self.

~Going on warm, damp walks through the neighborhood with the parents and Zoe the Dalmatian.

~Visiting with John Rose, the man who introduced David to Juice Feasting and told David he must stop cooking his food in order to get well. Thank you John!

~Decorating the Christmas Tree and seeing the family history as told by years of collected tree ornaments, from places travelled to, and years past.

~Going out for seaweed salad for David's birthday.

~Dressing up and driving down town to the Ally Theatre for a stellar performance of A Christmas Carol. It even drew some tears from my eyes! I find I am so quick to tear up with emotion since cleaning up my diet, all emotions are right there at the surface coming through strong! The wonderful part of this is that happiness is the most prominent. I even teared up in the airport watching a man eating his lunch alone. This is something that has always made my heart ache, watching people eating alone, but I don't remember ever actually tearing up over it!

~Making a giant Christmas salad to have with the parents on Sunday night.

~Togetherness.

We went a whole week without green smoothies, bee pollen, vitamineral green, spirulina, a high speed blender, or MSM and I can report that we are just fine. Although that green smoothie piled high with spirulina tasted and felt like heaven this morning!

We watched a movie called Lost Horizon while in Houston and the story it tells is very important to all of us seeking a better way. In the movie, a group of people end up in a place called Shangri-La, a heaven on earth, where people eat well and live to be hundreds of years old, no one works for money but for the good of the community, children play freely in the gardens and parks, food grows in the fields, and there is no crime because there are no haves and have nots. What do you think happened? Most of the people who had come to this place did not like it! They could not see it for what it was because they were looking to get out and go back to the world they had come from. They didn't have the vision to recognise where they were. I think this happens to many of us here on planet earth. When we have lived a life that was less than the best for ourselves, it can be very difficult to change our vision and see the Shangri-La that we inhabit, for of course we all have the option of choosing Shangri-La. I have found that raw plant foods, straight from the gardens of the earth, have a huge role in shifting visions to be more Shangri-Laish and lovely. Try it for yourself!

Try making a Shangri-La Green Smoothie, or a Shangri-La Green Juice for yourself at least once a day for a week and see how Shangri-La you feel!

Shangri-La is a fictional place described in the 1933 novel Lost Horizon by British author James Hilton. In the book, "Shangri-La" is a mystical, harmonious valley, gently guided from a lamasery, enclosed in the western end of the Kunlun Mountains. Shangri-La has become synonymous with any earthly paradise but particularly a mythical Himalayan utopia—a permanently happy land, isolated from the outside world. The word also evokes the imagery of exoticism of the Orient. The story of Shangri-La is based on the concept of Shambhala, a mystical city in Tibetan Buddhist tradition. - Wikipedia.com

With Love and Shangri-La-La-Ly kisses,

Katrina.

ps. I promise I will post elopement photos SOON. Thank you.

Sunday, November 25, 2007

Basil Juice


Nothing quite like fresh basil juice on a cold fall day. Just something about it that tastes warm and cosy. I just made 2 quarts with 2 cucumbers, 1 head of celery, 1 red bell pepper, 1 head of lettuce, 4 carrots, 3 apples, and a HUGE bunch of fresh basil. YUM! I have such good memories of harvesting basil, fingers becoming perfumed by basil, and filling my freezer with whole basil leaves to be blended into fresh pestos during the winter, maybe that is why this juice tastes so good to me. Juicy basil memories make for a tasty juice! I just read that warm basil tea is also really good for headaches and increasing blood flow, and cool basil tea is excellent for all kinds of eye problems, both as an eyewash and internal tea.
David and I are off to Houston for a while to visit with Ma and Pa Rainoshek. I'm looking forward to it, I've been to Texas but never to Houston. I think David's mom and dad have some fun things planned for all of us....so if you don't hear from us for a few days, that is where we will be...en route to Texas baby!
Enjoy your juice!
Love Katrina.

Saturday, November 24, 2007

Story Of The Year

The day of elopement, about to become Husband and Wife....
...the Elf joyfully picks up the Hobbit...
...for a big smooch!
Katrina, David, Thim and Courtney (our lovely witnesses)
Katrina, David, Thim and Courtney about to go in the Santa Cruz County Courthouse to see David and Katrina bloom into Mr and Mrs Rainoshek!
The next day it was off the the Grand Canyon for a pre-honeymoon!
David on his way down all the switch backs.
We made it all the way to the Colorado River!
Our first hike as husband and wife.
Stopped on the way home in Sedona (Cafe Raw Bliss) for some honeymoon cake.
Honeymoon cake!

Hello Everyone!

How is your Thanksgiving weekend going? Things have really cooled off here in Patagonia, and it is time for cozy sweaters and scarfs while walking outside. We just got in from a brisk, crisp walk and now are warming up with some hot tea. We had a wonderful day on Thursday, and lunch at the Tree was fabulous. I brought little chocolate cups filled with coconut chocolate cream and pomegranate. I didn't even get to try them because they disappeared so fast, but the sweet potato pie that the cafe made was delicious. Even more delish was getting to see all the Tree folk, and we had a good afternoon of visiting and soaking up sunshine. And, we were able to share with everyone our Story Of The Year, which I am about to share with you here....

The Story Of The Year! (for us anyways)

David and Katrina Elope! Yes, we did, and we are now a very happy husband and wife. So, November 15th was our marriage, and in June 2008 we are having a wedding with close family, and then sometime after that we will have a big party to celebrate. It was perfect for me, not wanting anything fancy and flowery and big, to slip down to the romantic (hehe) town of Nogales, AZ with our dear friends Courtney and Thim as witnesses and get married in the Santa Cruz County Court House! We joked that it was faster to get married than it is to go grocery shopping in Nogales!

David and I spent a very sweet, tender day with each other and then off we went to become man and wife with tears of happiness in our eyes. It has been a long journey to find each other for each of us and we both feel blessed every day to know each other....It has been very sweet to discover that many people thought we were already married! I guess that would happen when you both use the same last name!

After the wedding, we came home and Courtney and Thim had made us a beautiful raw wedding cake (you'll have to ask Thim for the recipe, I would recommend that you do!), so we made up about 3/4 of a gallon of orange/grapefruit juice and we all visited and had juice and cake (accept for Courtney who had juice).

Late on Friday afternoon we packed up the leftover wedding cake and piled some things into Pegasus the veggie oil truck and headed South for the Grand Canyon. We made it part way, and stealth camped in a park that was closed for the winter, piled under a mountain of blankets to keep out the chill. I LOVE sleeping outside!

Saturday morning found us up early and chilly, and in an hour we were at the rim of the Grand Canyon. It will never fail to take my breath away.

"It seems a gigantic statement for even nature to make..."
~John Muir

It is truly one of the most richly layered visual and spiritual places I have spent time in, allowing you to feel as though you are touching time, watching evolution, and rubbing your nerves of awe with firecrackers! And then once you descend below the rim it only gets better...

We did so on Sunday. It was my first time below the rim, and gave me a whole new respect for the canyon. Looking into and upon are very different than feeling the enormity of it with your body. We walked the Bright Angel Trail, first down to Indian Gardens. David did this hike when he was just seven years old! Then, we decided, against all warnings, to go all the way down to the Colorado River. Down, down, down we went on a trail packed with switch backs and epic views every direction you turned, as we passed through many different layers of rock and different colors of trail dust. We were elated when we reached the swift Colorado, and sat with it for a brief time and ate and took in the canyon from the very bottom. Then, up, up, up! Now, there is a reason there are warning signs the whole way down that say "Do not attempt to hike from the rim to the river and back to the rim in one day," going up on the second half of your day is a whole different story than going down, the way you would after climbing a mountain. Canyon hiking really beats you at the end of the day! I can say raw food rocks for this kind of thing though. David and I hiked for 10 hours that day, 15.4 miles, and first went down for 4,500 feet, and then hiked up 4,500 feet! All this on six oranges, four bananas, four Lara Bars, and a bag of cashews and raisins, and of course three gallons of water, EACH! I would highly recommend doing this hike at the time of year that we did, the crowds were small to none, the mule traffic was light, and the temperature was perfect. I could not have walked that in the heat of the summer, no way!

We had forgotten our MSM, so I did get a little limpy for the next two days. On previous all-day hikes I have taken loads (such as 5TBS in water) of MSM at the end of the hike, before bed, and find that this works like magic for keeping my muscles from stiffening up. Ah but stiff muscles were SO worth it, I got to sit beside the Colorado River at the bottom of the Grand Canyon with my husband!

We would love to share just one more little thought with you...about love. This is for those of you that are looking for the love of your life, or if you have found the love of your life, you can do this too. That is, if you haven't meet your love yet, you can begin sending love to your love RIGHT NOW! She or He is out there RIGHT NOW, breathing, sleeping, eating, dreaming, and you don't have to wait to meet that person in order to start loving them! You don't need to know what he or she looks like, or smells like, or how they laugh, you can send your love love! Send them love today, and then when you do met them, you can look them in the eye and say with all honesty, "I have been thinking of you and sending you love every day." This is very powerful.

Imagine if someone special told you that they had been thinking of you and sending you love, even before they knew who you were? I'm sure you would be very moved. This will also help to draw your love to you, and it will help him or her find you because they will be pulled towards your love. And, if you have found your love, be sure to send them love every day, and then when you look them in the eye you can say "I am sending you love all day, every day, you are my love" and this is very special to hear.

On that note, David and Katrina send you all love everyday and hope that things are glorious and juicy!

Love,

The Happily Married David and Katrina Rain (officially)

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Nori Roll Lunch

David and Nori Lunch (notice his cute little table of a stack of books)

Katrina and Nori Lunch at the True Home Cafe.

Most afternoons find David and I sharing a big, giant salad, but on this day we made some very special nori rolls with David's brazil nut pate. YUM! They also had avocado, carrot, red pepper and baby greens.

I keep wanting to write about the story of the year for David and I, but I'm waiting for the accompanying photos to be put onto our computers so I can add those to the story too! Check back in a few days for our exciting news and photos.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving...ah, it is so nice to live a life where I feel a deep sense of thanks every single day. My wish tonight is for everyone to realize the power of gratitude, and to indulge in it no matter what their life holds right now. I know that even in my darkest, saddest moments, as long as I could keep a spark of thanks alive for my life, joy will always flood back in. A dear friend of ours is going through a rough patch right now that is similar to a rough patch I went through as a teenager, I have been re-tracing a bit today. All I can feel despite all of it is an amazing sense of wholeness, synchronicity, and flow. Despite, or because of, our hurts we are still so amazingly ALIVE! Gratitude is powerful. You can even say thank you for this bummer of a time! By being thankful for everything, you allow much grace into your life, and with grace comes beauty.

We will be going to the Tree of Life for a big Thanksgiving feast at lunch time. They are planning on serving 300 people! We'll see how many arrive, I'll let you know. It is a potluck and we were going to bring David's Nori Crackers, but we don't have any Brazil nuts and no where in Patagonia sells them, so we will have to come up with something else tomorrow morning. I am really looking forward to seeing everyone and to eating at the TOL cafe again, it has been awhile. David and I keep meaning to go up there for brunch, but then we always seem to get too busy on the weekends and end up eating here at the True Home Cafe.
Thanks for YOU!!
With Gratitude and Love,
Katrina.

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

E3Live Kitty

This is our beautiful cat Seneca lounging in the bathroom sink. We love him. And he loves E3Live! He is smart, cuddly, active, agile, cute, has amazing huge blue eyes, and yes he likes blue green algae. Ok, enough about the cat. He deserves a whole book I'm sure, but maybe later.

Love Katrina and David and Seneca.

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

The Secret of Juice Feasting

Mike Adams and David Rain point out The Secret of Juice Feasting and show a day's worth of juice before it has been juiced!


David waxes poetic about the magic of juice.

Mike studies one of the Junk Food Face Off contestants while David explains why Twinkies are so bad.


David and Katrina and baskets of pre-juice produce. How could you not experience health if you are drinking that much fresh produce daily?!

Hello!
Well, it has been a beautiful, busy few days since I last wrote.
The event on Sunday was a big hit, and the Health Ranger not only runs an amazing website, but puts on a fantastically informative, entertaining show too! The seminar, Stop the Poison Start the Healing, began at one o'clock with Mike Adams' Junk Food Hall of Shame. This was an in-depth look at just how many crazy, toxic things are being added to our food and how important it is to eliminate them from our lives. Mike makes it clear that when you are shifting your diet towards health, you can begin with something as simple as reading labels! Just start paying attention to what you are taking into your body. Check out Mike's Honest Food Guide for more information.
This was followed by the Junk Food Face Off, a crazy competition between Mike and David to see who could come up with the worst processed food. Sadly, they both came up with infant formula as one of the top offenders. How could this be? How is it that one of the worst, unhealthy foods is being sold to us by corporations to feed our babies? The formula that they both choose was 54% straight, processed sugar, with soy protein isolates to boot, soy being one of the top ten known allergens! Now I don't hold any judgement against any mother trying to feed her baby, but I do feel a strong aversion towards any company profiting from the unethical sale of corn syrup solids masquerading as baby food. Go to Baby Milk Action for more information, and learn why 4,000 babies die every day from bottle feeding. Breast is best!

Mike generously named David the winner of the Fast Food Face Off for his Burger King mash up, in which he took a Burger King meal with a burger, fries, coke, and milkshake and dumped it all in a big, clear bowl to be mashed up. Seeing it this way makes it impossible to imagine putting all that into your poor stomach and digestive system, horrible mix of horrible food! We followed it up with a splash of Maalox, just in case the bowl got heart burn. I have to add that when David and I went to get the Burger King meal, the smell in the truck made us both feel sick! And the poor audience, I think they may have felt a little sick too, and when David asked if he should pass the mash up around for closer inspection there was a resounding NO!

After these antics, David did a presentation on Juice Feasting, which was followed up by Mike Adams sharing his favorite healing supplements. By the time Q&A was over, it was after six o'clock. I think every one left feeling very motivated to become a Health Food Super Star, and indeed the audience was filled with people with amazing transformation stories.

The Health Ranger Mike Adams also released the newly recorded Secret of Juice Feasting: A step by step guide to eliminating disease in 92 Days with nature's most powerful healing juices. This is a beautiful, 6 CD audio course in which Mike Adams and David Rain reveal the secret of Juice Feasting: What it is, how to do it, and the many ways in which this simple lifestyle change causes the body to heal itself from the inside out. It will be available to the public within a few weeks, watch for it!

Speaking of juice, I just had to brag a little bit that I made 3 1/2 quarts of green juice this morning in 30 minutes! Including clean up! So if you are in your first days of juicing and feeling like it takes an exorbitant amount of time, don't worry, you will refine your technique and get much, much faster at it. I used kale, lettuce, parsley, cucumber, celery, carrot, apple and ginger for an extra yummy juice.

Enjoy your juice and your moments!
With love and blessings,
Katrina.

Saturday, November 10, 2007

Staying, Walking, Writing, Playing.

David on an afternoon walk
David on an afternoon walk along Emily Lane.

Katrina on an afternoon walk along Emily Lane.
Katrina on an afternoon walk above Native Seed Search Fields.


David doing push ups in front of our little palace on the hill.

Well, I wanted to tell you all that after much debate, David and I have decided to stay here in Patagonia. There are many reasons behind our decision, including walking, writing, and playing.

The first reason, walking, is that we live out in the country here, and we love our morning and afternoon walks.

The second reason, writing, is that we work very well here in our quiet little house on the hill. Which, by the way, is now ours and ours alone! For 8 months we shared this little house with two lovely friends, and we had the front room, they had the back room. So we have now gone from living in one room with a sheet in the doorway to having two rooms! We felt that living in a small space was very good practice for living on a boat, which we both want to do one day soon. We managed quite well, if I may say so myself, living and working and sleeping and eating all in one room! Of course, we had the wide open Arizona sky to stretch out under, and we happen to be soul mates, so living in small quarters was really cute and lovely. And very easy to keep clean!

The third reason, playing, is that we are near to all of our dear friends at the Tree of Life here, and we like that. And, well, it is great to live in a sweet little town where you can have social hour every time you hit the post office or health food store, bumping into familiar faces at every turn. Being a small island girl, I really like that.

So what does that mean for the Global Juice Feast, headquarters in San Fransisco? Well, we are working on that one. We will live there one day, I promise myself (I love that city and the ocean calls me), but for the moment we are planning on spending the first ten days of our 92-Day Global Juice Feast in SF holding juicy workshops, and then coming back to AZ. With the Internet at our fingertips, we could really be anywhere, and so can you! We are planning on doing daily vlogging, so that we can all stay in touch. It is going to be so much fun, I can't wait!

I recently read on the blog of a young woman who is Juice Feasting up in Canada right now how she felt that she was Feasting in part as a way of cleansing her body for growing babies! AHA! David and I were both really excited to read that, because it is one of the main reasons that I want to JF, as a gift to our babies. We want them to enter the world through a door with the most life force possible, to be welcomed into the most nutrient dense embrace, and to be nourished by magically high vibrations. It really is a blessing, to be able to begin looking after my children before they have even been conceived, to be loving them with everything I eat, and everything I do. Yes, David tells me that everything I eat is an act of love for our children, and this is true. It is something we can all be doing, regardless of age, gender, status, and wealth, is to eat for the love of our world's babies. Your life affects so much more than just yourself, and it is such an expansive, healthy feeling to realize this. It also makes it much easier and more joyful to engage in something that can be challenging at times, such as eating a live food diet, or as Juice Feasting. You take it out of the personal, and engage yourself with the massive community that we are a part of, you are eating not just to feed yourself but to feed the human race. You are choosing to not eat dairy not just for yourself but for the whole world.

There is a lovely book called Me to We by two brothers who have made it their life's work to remind people that our greatest joy comes from being loved and being free to love. From their site: "The book that’s showing the world that one person can make a difference is now a New York Times Best Seller! Me to We is a philosophy, a manual, a manifesto and a movement. It's about finding meaning in our lives and our world by reaching out to others.

Authors Marc Kielburger and Craig Kielburger, founders of Free The Children, uncovered this philosophy through their work in more than 50 of the world's richest and poorest countries and with some of the greatest spiritual, political and social leaders of our time. And in this best-selling book, they make it relevant in today's modern world."

I read bits and pieces of this book about a year ago, just before I moved to AZ, and it made a big impression on me, gave me courage to act as though the whole world depended on my success (because the world depends on every single one of us), and reminded me to act as though I was a very important part of the human race. When we all position ourselves as members of the planet, wonderful, wonderful things start to happen, and we are not alone. Your failures are not yours alone, and your achievements are shared by all. I don't know about you, but I find this helps me enormously whenever something not so positive is nagging at my sub-conscious, even something as small as say, oh, a piece of pizza. We can all access a vast amount of support to make wonderful decisions for ourselves when we pause to remember that the whole world is there at our side, affected by every last little thing that we do. Oh, and also remember that the whole world is there loving you when you are doing those things that are not the best, as long as you are doing your best and making movement towards excellence. We all start walking from where we stand.
"You are here to enable the divine purpose of the universe to unfold. That is how important you are!"
-Eckhart Tolle

OK, we are getting ready for David's talk in Tucson tomorrow with Health Ranger Mike Adams! Looking forward to it, should be TOF (tons of fun, an acronym from childhood). I'll let you know how it goes. Time for me to make lunch, will be a salad, but we did have juice for breakfast just to feel connected to all you Juice Feasters out there, yes we got nice and sticky this morning and tuned into the Juicy High!

All my love,
Katrina.

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

What The World Eats



My dear sister Hezi is in Toronto right now with her man Zev. That big, grey, concrete, Canadian city where I spent a summer working on costumes for a Shakespearean Festival. A Midsummer Night's Dream was what I worked on, lots of sparkling fairy dresses, donkey ears, red coats with silver buttons, it was a high quality (Katrina's words), low budget production (a fact) so I spent lots of time re-constructing precious finds from TO thrift shops. Toronto has amazing thrift shops, and amazing fabric shops. I also got to spend lots of time in fabric shops. I got lost (on purpose) more than once in the stacks and piles of lush, colorful, soft and stiff, rolls and bolts, bins full of odds and ends, textured, plain weaves or corduroys, velvets and denims, fabric warehouses along Queen Street.

It's the weave I love so much. I get so excited about fabric sometimes I feel sick! But it's not just the fabric, it is what it represents. Sure I love the texture, the possibility, the color, the sensuality of cloth, but really it is because there in the cloth I can see in a very real and tangible metaphor: LIFE!

We are all very closely knit folks, each of us a thread, each event a yarn.

Think very closely about what kind of tapestry you are creating with everything you do, because everything you do adds to the tapestry of life baby!

So, my sister also sent me an attachment to a essay of wonderful photos of What The World Eats, from the book Hungry Planet by Peter Menzel. I've spent quite a bit of time with this book in a bookstore on 4th Street, it is on the wish list, but it was fun to get these pictures in my sister's email, reminding me of what an incredible tapestry we are.

Oh, and we are very excited to tell you that Oprah has been drinking green juice on National TV! (we don't watch TV but we do read Heidi and Justin S's blog!) Yay Oprah for bringing green juice to the tube and to the masses!

Enjoy being a juicy, green, fruity, yummy thread in the weave of it all!

Love Katrina.

Saturday, November 3, 2007

Red Mountain



The Hike Of The Day Off

Today we decided that it was a day off (sort of). So we went for a hike up Red Mountain. Now the sun has set, and no we couldn't stay away from to computer ALL day so here we are. We are trying to take at least one day a week off...it is much healthier than not having a day off ever!

David is talking to Blair right now, who is now in Spring, Texas. We got to visit with him as he was on his way across from L.A.,and he is doing great. Go say hi to him here!

It feels so good to have spent most of the day outside. I love the feeling of sunshine in my cheeks. We didn't get out of the house until around noon, and so walked for the most part in the hottest time of the day. It being November, that was OK, and we were in the shade of Red Mountain scrubby trees for much of the way too. We had a gorgeous picnic up at the top of oranges, raisins and cashews, looking out over the sea of Arizona hills.

When David and I first did that hike, we had just fallen in love... so it was really sweet to re-hike it even more in love than before!

Enjoy your juicy moments,

love Katrina.

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Golden Eyed Coyote


Beautiful Coyote

Hello Loves,

Not too many mornings ago, while David and I were going for our morning walk, I all of a sudden thought of all the beating hearts that are on the planet right now. I looked at a bird, and it hit me that it wasn't just a bird I was seeing, but that I was seeing a creature's heart in animation. Somehow this expanded my heart into an enormous space, feeling and loving every single heart that is here on Earth today. Every little mouse, rabbit, wolf, sparrow, eagle, horse, panther, dolphin, whale, person, we ALL have beating hearts! Just think of how many hearts are all beating together RIGHT NOW, and then imagine how many creatures you have seen with beating hearts, and how many you will come into contact with in the future...there are so many hearts, so much capacity for love.

Then, that afternoon, a beautiful golden eyed coyote walked across our porch, and paused in front of our french doors and looked through the window and gazed into my eyes. WOW! David and I sat in awe for quite some time after it had slid off into the bushes.

We hear the coyotes calling and singing almost every night, but they are very rarely seen, they seem to slink and slide, smoothly disappearing after you catch a glimpse of blond fur. So this was an extra special heart to heart.

In this high dessert land of cactus, mesquite trees, amaranth, agave, ocotillo, and golden grasses, we see deer, roadrunners, javalinas (a strange pig-like creature with spiked course fur that puts off a terrible smell), rattle snakes (I heard my first rattle snake ever the other day, and then saw it laying across the road), coyotes, grasshoppers, and the pecan trees along our road are filled with big black chortling ravens. Rabbits bounce off into the bushes. I opened the door to a gigantic tarantula the other night. And there are cows with wide sweeping horns that walk the arollos and graze the national park lands.

The sky is huge and at night is bursting with stars, and the air is filled with crickets. Like right now. I can hear the crickets outside.

Have you all heard of Codex? If you haven't, please check out this web page now, and visit www.healthfreedomusa.org. David and I went to a lecture on Codex last night in Tucson, and it is very important that we all get together on this one! In a nutshell, Codex is a monster wearing the mask of "consumer protection," fueled for the most part by the "illness" industry (aka the "health" industry) as a way of controlling and destroying our food quality so that we become even sicker and even more dependant on their drugs. Sound not so good?

The food we are eating is already killing us!

One thing that is important to remember is the cause of this cycle of illness and dependency on drugs, which has lead to the Pharmaceutical Industry being the most profitable, powerful, and wealthy in the world, more so than the Oil Industry, more so than War. This cause is the loss of the family farm and the industrialization of our food supply. When we lost contact with the soil that our food grew from, we lost control of our health. It is time to go to the land! Lets stop giving our money to an industry that benefits from a sick and dying population, and start paying our organic, local, friendly farmers a premium for the nutritional gems that they are growing!

You can also go and watch the woman we heard last night, Dr. Rima Laibow M.D. to see her discuss Codex and the history of this bad apple. Please watch this talk, it is excellent and Dr. Rima is very well researched and wise.

See you in the garden!

With my heart beating to yours,

Katrina.

Monday, October 29, 2007

"Dig! Dig! Dig! And Your Muscles Will Grow Big"


The Good Life Garden

Hello All,

Another fantastic thing you can do as a Subtle Activist is to grow a garden! And in lieu of that, buying locally as much as possible is wonderful. Our favorite gardeners/Subtle Activists are Helen and Scott Nearing, authors of "The Good Life" They continue to teach and inspire many, many people today, years after their deaths. One of our dreams is to go and spend a good length of time at The Good Life Centre. Helen and Scott were also so close to being raw foodists that we include them in our minds as some of our favorite raw gurus. We also love Elliot Coleman, who grows greens all year round on his farm called the Four Season Farm!

If you don't have a farm, don't worry. You can fill your yard with food. If you don't have a yard, don't worry. You can fill your windowsills with food.


Have you ever heard of John Raeburn? He was a visionary who also happened to be a agricultural economist and when Germany vowed to starve the U.K. during World War II by blocking food imports he organized the "Dig for Victory" campaign. Crops were planted by British citizens in backyards, parks, golf courses (yay!), vacant lots, schoolyards, and even the moat of the Tower of London. These urban gardens had an enormous effect, and they quickly produced twice the tonnage of food previously imported! You may have heard of the "Victory Garden" campaign in the United States, well, that was inspired by the work lead by John Raeburn.

There is today a worldwide growth of urban food production, especially in developing countries where the numbers of urban poor are multiplying. For these people, gardening on any available land provides a substantial amount of food; In Shanghai, over 600,000 garden acres are tucked into the folds of the city. In Moscow, two-thirds of families grow food for themselves. In Havana, Cuba, more than 80% of produce consumed in the city comes from urban gardens.

So, now that you are no longer watching T.V. (hint hint), you can spend that time in your garden, be it a few acres, a mound by the sidewalk, or a pot on the porch! Urban gardens not only feed people fresh, local produce, but they also serve as air filters, absorb rainfall, create tranquil green spaces, lessen the loss of land to development, help recycle waste, provide food security, teach children self-sufficiency, reduce fossil fuel usage, create jobs, and create or revitalize communities. Because cities and the sprawl around them cover 2% of the earth's surface and consume 75% of the earth's resources, creating an urban garden helps to lessen the gigantic ecological footprint of the city you live in.

Yes, besides the joy of sweet, sun ripened, deep red, juicy tomatoes of your own vine, grown with pride from a little seed, there are many good reasons to grow food.

Let us all join in with John Raeburn in crying out "Dig! Dig! Dig! And your muscles will grow big!"

If you want to learn more about city gardening go to www.cityfarmer.org or www.urbangardeninghelp.com

AND, if you want to find a local farmer's market near you, go to www.ams.usda.gov/farmersmarkets or www.localharvest.org or www.csacenter.org.

Oh, and don't let me forget the magical Findhorn Garden! One of my dearest friends came to be because her parents met and fell in love while in the Findhorn Garden, and I think she has special "Findhorn Magic" that follows her where ever she goes.

There is nothing quite as nutrient dense as your own garden grown food!

OK, time to go. We are watching an amazing Gary Null lecture at the moment. David just put it on Day 1 of the Program, go check it out! Or Google Video for Gary Null - Change Your Life. He is an amazing, powerhouse of a speaker.

With abundant love for you dear gardener (because I know you will at some point in your life have an amazing lush garden),

Katrina.

Sunday, October 28, 2007

Subtle Activism

Hello!

How are you? We have been talking all weekend about Subtle Activism, and we have thought of some really exciting things that we can all be doing to empower ourselves to live beautiful, healthy lives. None of this is new, but it does help to be reminded once in awhile of how important it is these days to do everything with thoughtfulness and love. If these ideas are new to you, then get really, really excited because there is a whole new, vibrant world awaiting you with open arms, a "world where the power of love has over come the love of power."

FYI, we just watched Zeitgeist last night, which is why we have been thinking this way. OK, here are our favorite Subtle Activism actions:

1. Eat a Live Food, Vegan diet. If you haven't yet, please watch David Rain's talk on Subtle Activisim to learn why eating this way is so powerful. When we have our health, we have our personal power, we are not dependent on a medical institution, we do not give any of our money to pharmaceutical companies, and we do not live in fear of medical bankrupcy. Sadly, this is not the reality for most North Americans. It can be for you, and by being vibrantly healthy, you are teaching others that health is possible, and you become amazingly valuable.

Another thing to note is that the meat and dairy industry creates more waste and pollution than the trucking industry. See "Livestock's Long Shadow" by the Food and Agriculture Administration of the United Nations for the complete data on this reality. This means that you can be a raw/vegan eating goji berries shipped from Peru, raw chocolate bars sent from England, and spinich trucked from California while living in Vermont and still be causing less environmental damage, pollution, and waste than a meat eater raising all their own poultry and cattle in thier own back yard.

This does not mean that shopping locally should be ignored, quite the opposite, it only goes to show the immense impact of eating raw, vegan foods. It is, we believe, the most impactful thing you can do, far more than say, getting rid of your gas fueled car.

For more on the political power of live foods, please watch David Rain's talk on Subtle Activism here:












David Rain, MA

New Activism








2. Get rid of your T.V. The television is one of the most powerful tools used to shape public opinion, and everything that comes into your conciousness has gone through the filter of corporate, money hungry America, even the news brodcasts. Not only does the T.V. tie up your valuable time, time that you could be using for beautiful, self-actualizing activities, but it uses this time to manipulate you, create false needs and desires, instill fear, and causes you to live vicariously through the actions of television programming characters. T.V. is not real life. YOU are real life! Stop giving your life away to the tube, and get out there and get really juicy with your precious time.

3. Shop with a concience. There are many of us who shop recreationally, buying on impulses often sparked by advertising agendas, giving away our money to unethical companies in trade for a short lived moment of instant gratification. New possessions are not a way to happiness, as we have learned the hard way. We consume more resources per capita than any other country on the planet, and take more anti-depresants than any other country on the planet. Don't fall into this trap! Instead take a good look at what you really need vs. what you think you want. There is always something new and flashy to get, replaced instantly by the next new and flashy thing, you can not possibly keep up! Use your money instead to feed your body the best foods possible, which will in time lead to the best health possible, which will lead to a deep, real, sustained happiness. A great place to go to learn about thoughtful shopping is www.treehugger.com. We also love second hand, thrift store shopping, re-using and re-loving things while also giving our dollars to a good cause (often thrift stores will be associated with public service work, and if not, you are supporting someone's business that is actively engaged in reducing, reusing and recycling.)

4. Avoid debt. This one is really important. Many of us have been seduced into massive debt by 0% down, low interest rates, no payment for one full year, and much more. We can end up paying more than twice the original price on a consumer item that loses 75% of its purchase value the minute we carry it out the door of the store. This means if an item is originaly $100, we can pay up to $200 through a payment plan for it, while at the same time sitting in our living room is that same item worth only $25. This is nonsense.

In 1990, the New York Times reported that the average was about $2,550 for those households that carried a balance. At the end of 2003, that balance averaged about $7,520 – an increase of nearly 200 percent!

And that's only credit cards. The average U.S. household owes mortgage debt, student loans and automobile loans, in addition to credit card debt.

When you are in debt, you are very easy to control, to be held back, and to be kept in fear, as you are stuck on the debt treadmill. We end up sevicing our debt instead of saving for our dreams, our big, beautiful dreams that are far more satisfying than getting that new car/T.V./computer/dinning set/outfit/case of pop/CD/cell phone/ or jewelry on credit. Don't allow debt to control you. It is quite easily avoided really, all you have to do is spend within your means and re-structure your value system. Learn to value your debt freeness over the value of a temorary high from buying that new pair of shoes you couldn't quite afford but what the heck, your credit card is for that type of thing. I can't believe they don't offer classes in high school about the importance of staying out of debt, or the importance of managing your money wisely. Instead, teens are offered thier own credit cards, they even offer credit cards to small children now under the same account as thier parents! Credit cards and debt are not child's play. If you are already in debt, get out of it as quickly as you can and do everything you can to keep it from growing. A nice side effect of avoiding debt is that you also become a more responsible consumer, only buying what you have carefully considered and what you truly need.

5. Have a Carectomy. My Dad just did this. I am really proud of him. He said it didn't hurt, and he didn't have any post-surgery trauma, and he actually feels a lot happier, healthier, and he truely enjoys riding his bike and walking. If you are interested in getting rid of your car, or even just becoming less dependent on it, check out www.carectomy.com. We also strongly recommend you look into alternatively fueled vehicles. In terms of fuel and energy usage, it has been said that you are more fuel and energy efficient being a vegan SUV driver than being a meat and dairy eating cyclist. Wow. Imagine how wonderfully fuel efficient you are being by travelling on foot, bycicle or public transit on a raw/vegan diet!

There are many, many more things you can do to be a subtle activist. These are just a few that carry big results. It is important to realize that we now live in a Plutocracy (society governed by money), not a Democracy. All of our politicians are bankers and businessmen, or are controlled by bankers and businessmen. In such a situation, our most powerful votes are made with our dollars. Think about this every time you use money, be it to buy food, fuel, clothing, or a movie. Your money goes to support the agendas of those who's hands it falls into.

For a very clear idea of why Subtle Activisim is so crucial now, please watch Zeitgeist. This documentary can be very frightening, or very inspiring, depending on what you know about what to DO about all of this. YOU are a very wise, and loving person, and you know the power of Subtle Activisim. YOU know what to do about all of this, and so it isn't so frightening after all. All you have to do is get supper healthy, eat amazing, beautiful foods, spend your time in enriching activities, spend more time outside travelling via foot or bicycle, find the joy and pride in wearing and using sweat-shop free, environmentally friendly, re-used clothing and products, discover the peace of living simply and within your means, enjoying the present moment and avioding the imposible catch up race of consumerism. Quite simply, all you have to do is live a beautiful, thoughtful, peaceful, loving life and you are acting as a radical activist! And isn't that what we all want anyways?

To your vibrant life and health,

Love, David and Katrina

Monday, October 22, 2007

The Power of Juice


David working hard on JuiceFeasting.com!
Hello Juiciest Juicers,

Last night I made a SMOOTH, amazing green juice for dinner that I had to tell you about. No, we are not Juice Feasting right now, but green juice still makes a lovely dinner. This was it, celery/cucumber/cilantro/parsley/carrot, yum. I drank a whole quart in about ten minutes (yes and I chewed it too), and then we went out for an evening walk. A perfect light way to end the day, with a sunset to boot.

On our morning walk today there was a cold wind blowing and it seems that warm Arizona summer days are drawing to and end. With the wind came all sorts of memories of last year's season change, my arrival here in Patagonia, and of an Island far away where lives my family. I find shifts in the season to be memory triggers, similar to smells, music, those things that pull on the subconscious where emotional memory lives. Magical. I love this fresh cool air.

Another thing I wanted to share was someone who I found out about on www.WeLikeItRaw.com. Her name is Kris Carr and she has done amazing things that you can find out about right here! I don't know much about her yet, but just a minute with her work lets you know that this person is going places, good places! There is so much light flooding on to the planet right now it blows my mind.

David is coaching Fasts again at the Tree for now, and so I went in with him this morning to say hello. I got to give Courtney a big hug and she is shinning. Well, Courtney always does shine anyways, but she is doing really well on juices. She was drinking an apple/coconut water juice when I saw her, YUMMY! Also got to visit with other happy Tree of Lifers, and I was even able to share our new children's book with some of them as we were on our way to the post office to mail them.

OK, I think that is all for now. Love to all of you and juicy juicing!

Katrina.