Global Juice Feast Eve!!

Twas the night before GJF and all through the house......

not a creature was sleeping!! not even the mouse!!

They were far too excited and had drank too much Cacao

so what happens then, well golly gee wow!!

They danced and they sang and they jumped up and down

while others cried out "why, there's no produce left in this town!"

The juicies had bought it all up for their juice,

so farmers got rich, organic greens became the golden goose!!

Doctors and pharmacy clerks ran with glee from their posts crying "juice is the cure"

and they dug their hands deep into the dirt with no fear!!

Everyone started planting seeds left and right

and all were so busy with wonderful tasks there was no time to fight!!

The next 92 Days were juicy for sure

as every last lovely felt strong, clean, and pure!!

So join us, why don't you??

It's sure to be great, as we all flow along and become what we create!!!

Hello!!

Well, tomorrow morning we will all wake up and begin this journey together.

Be sure to read A Day In The Life Of A Juice Feaster if you haven't already done so, and also carefully review Getting Juicy: Making Beautiful Juices. Make sure you watch Blind Guru making juice with a Vita Mix if this is going to be your way of making juice (our version of making juice with a Vita Mix is coming soon.) Grocery Shopping also has lots of information on the things that you will juicing, and there is a very handy shopping list for you to download at the bottom of the page.

In a nut shell, you will be waking up, feeling excited that today you are embarking on a journey of incredible depth and transformation, grateful for the space that has come into your life to allow this to manifest. (If you wake up feeling grumpy, crabby, afraid of juicing, and wondering why you ever even entertained the idea at all, that is OK too, your morning mood will shift and become brighter and brighter as you get further into your Juice Feast.)

The first thing you will do is make your morning water, one quart with half a lemon squeezed juice and 1-3 TBS of MSM. Then, you can go do an enema, skin brush, have your shower ending with hot/cool. Then you can go and make your juice!! 4 quarts and you are set for the day. You don't have to think about making food, what am I going to eat?, getting in the kitchen, doing dishes, or any of that for the rest of the day (unless you are a domestic god or goddess and are still creating food for your loved ones, in which case we salute you.) You have the rest of the day to do what ever you do!! When you are hungry, drink more juice!! If you drink all 4 quarts and are still hungry, make more juice and drink it!!

This is from our Juice Feasting Intro on how to drink your juice successfully on your Juice Feast:
Drink juice every 2 1/2 to 3 hours. Any more than that, and you are going to feel huuuungry. And that is when your physiology will send messages to your brain to find whatever food is familiar and available. Keep the wolf away from the door, and drink juices regularly.

The order of your juices between Green Vegetable Juice and Fruit Juice is important. Start your morning with a Green Vegetable Juice. Why? Several really good reasons. First, we are not used to drinking greens, or eating them, for that matter. You are getting in a Green Juice first thing in the morning, which means that you already have one done. Also, you are training your taste buds to ask for greens by making them the first thing that hits your tongue that is food. This is good training for adopting the Four Means to Get Your Greens, my real-world, raw food paradigm outlined on Day 83 of the Juice Feasting Program, which starts your day with a Green Smoothie (a fruit smoothie, really). Finally, starting your day with a Green Vegetable Juice means that you are not raising your blood sugar too high first thing in the morning, and are giving your body fuel which will last for hours. This is fuel that alkalinizes your body.

After that first juice, then you are ready for Fruit Juice as your second or third juice. The reason for this is that you have been active mentally and physically, and your body is more ready for carbohydrate, provided that fruit juice is appropriate for you on the Feast. If you are doing Fruit Juices, do make sure that you mix in Green Superfood Powders and even some bee pollen. Remember, one place that we get in trouble with food is eating high-sugar. low mineral foods. By adding in Green Superfood Powder Concentrates, you raise the mineral profile of your juices significantly.

Finally, at the end of the day, have a Green Vegetable Juice. It will satiate you for the rest of the evening, and greens and celery are calming (alkalinizing things are calming to your system) which will make you more ready to relax and fall into a deep sleep a few hours later.

SUMMARY: Your Juices schedule goes as follows:

1. Morning by 8:00 am: Green Vegetable Juice (1 Quart)

2. Mid-Morning around 10:30 am: Green Vegetable Juice or Fruit Juice (1 Quart)

3. Lunchtime: Green Vegetable Juice or Fruit Juice (1 Quart)

4. Late afternoon: Green Vegetable Juice (1 Quart)

5. Early Evening: If hungry, Green Vegetable Juice (1/2 to 1 Quart) that you made after work at home

Feeding your body juices consistently is a key factor in your success on the Juice Feast.

OK, so that wasn't really in a nut shell.

Angela Stokes has just made available a series of Juice Feasting conference calls, and here is what she has to say about them:

'O, I’m very excited to say that on the eve of this worldwide foray into feasting we’ve just managed to put up a new set of Juice Feasting Calls for download. ;) This ‘Juice Feasting Conference Call’ series, comprises 4 one-hour calls, which were recorded live in May 2007, after my own 92-day Juice Feast was completed. This is a new way to access in-depth
information about Juice Feasting - these calls go deeper into the 'knitty-gritty' than my Juice Feasters Handbook'.

You can find these calls here. We haven't listened to these calls yet, but knowing Angela we are sure they are wonderful, inspiring and informative.

And if you are still looking for inspiration to start your Juice Feast, check out this blog entry form the resplendent Carrie, who has just completed her Juice Feast:

Before I get completely swept up in the culinary wonders sweet B has in store for me, I would just like to take a moment to reflect upon this whole process.......AMAZING!!!!! One of the craziest, best things I have done for myself to date. A true culmination of so much that I have learned over the years, tidied into a brilliantly laid out, beautiful, rational package of such love, abundance and full-hearted-ness. Of everything I knew about whole foods, raw, vegan nutrition, this is absolutely the next step, the thing to take it all to the next level as a platform for life transformation. In the process of committing to and following a largely self-directed juicing protocol, I willingly crawled out of my safe cave into a community of some of the most open-hearted, generous, benevolent creatures I have ever had the good fortune to encounter. I also stepped unwittingly into a public persona that has given me tremendous pleasure and courage, self-confidence and humility.

The information matrix that is Juice Feasting, and the paradigm of nutrition and personal/global health that surrounds it resonates with me deeply to my core, and so inspires me to incorporate it on a fundamental level in my professional work with clients, whether it be bodywork, energy work, or acupuncture. Finding a teacher in David Rainoshek is the answer to a specific request I have had pending with the universe for some time now. I am ecstatically overwhelmed with all the directions I want to go in, from here, the center point that keeps madly multiplying. My joy is great, my inspiration abundantly fueled, my satisfaction fulfilled and overflowing, and my time....I want more! I think I shall never be bored again for as long as I live, and that is a wondrous thing. I have endless relationships that I would like to cultivate, new friends in several countries to visit, personal and professional dreams to manifest, and delicious, divine green food to make it all happen, with grace, serenity, and delight!

~Carrie

Carrie, we are blessed to have you in our world, you are a true gem!! We are so glad you loved your Juice Feast, rock on juicy one!

Oh, and I forgot to add a few things to our shopping list of the last blog, believe it or not there was more! We also got 4 yams, 24 lemons (the price was right) and 3 Jerusalem artichokes. We just got our new nut mylk bags in the mail from Mr. Monarch, and I treated myself to three of the Anastasia books that came as well. I look forward to reading them after hearing so much about them. I think we are all set!

We were talking with some friends who are here in Patagonia today who are going to be Juice Feasting along with us. They said that the grocer, and the produce supplier just could not believe the amount of produce that is being ordered into this little town!! Like nothing they have ever seen, they said to our friends "What is going on in this town?!!" Of course our friends replied "JUICE FEASTING!!"

And finally, the last Rainoshek supper for 92 Days!!




With love and gratitude, we are so looking forward to juicing with you all and being the change we wish to see in the world!

David and Katrina Rainoshek

Growing Pings and Poppies and Two More Sleeps!

Open wide, sweet poppies! There is a lot of sunshine coming in!
Hello!!

Good evening, how are you?

We had a great day yesterday picking up a crazy weight lifting contraption that is going to help us build some very vibrant, important MUSCLES!! We also went to pick up some produce...two grocery carts full!! Wow. For those of you curious about what David and Katrina got in preparation for their first days of Juice Feasting, here it is:

10 lbs of romaine lettuce
8 bunches of spinach (we would have got more, but the place we went to had a sad, sorry choice of spinach)
10 heads of celery
8 cucumbers
5 bunches of parsley
2 bunches of swiss chard
1 head of dandelion greens
6 bunches of kale
1 huge knob of ginger
3 heads of garlic
15 lbs of carrots
3 watermelons
6 pineapples
2 bags of apples
one box full of oranges
one box full of grapefruit

We left the grocery store with amazing looking carts! The girl in the line up behind us said "Are you guys raw foodists?" so of course we had to tell her about Juice Feasting. It is really exciting that someone would pick that up, rather than just thinking "these folks are obviously feeding a very large, produce chomping monster that lives in their basement." Raw food is getting out there!

As we packed the truck, our poetry reading, bike riding friend came over to trade some poetry for a tip, and we gave him some oranges as a poetry bonus. He told us that God had told him to come to the parking lot at that moment to see us, and that he really loves us, we said "we love you too!"

Somehow, along with the help of two coolers, we managed to fit it all in our fridge! We have a very small kitchen with a very small fridge (a little bar fridge) but lucky for us there is a full size fridge in the garage. I enjoy going out side to get my greens every morning, I think I should always keep my fridge outside, it is an unavoidable reason to go outdoors. It is much quieter too.

So is anyone feeling growing pings and poppies yet? (we used to feel growing pains, but lets not get pain mixed us with the flowering of our beautiful selves) Yes, it can feel like pain, but it is really just an expansion as you stretch to embrace the vastness and depth that is life. As our hearts open, it can feel a bit like a breaking apart. Lovely, more cracks for the light to get in!

I am feeling it, pings, poppies, openings, growing, and everything that comes with growing and opening up. It just goes on and on doesn't it?

We are getting heavy into Ken Wilber right now and just signed up for his website, www.integralinstitute.com. An AMAZING resource, check him out! He will blow your mind, plant good seeds, hand you golden life skills tools, and much much more.

My last post I mentioned that we were going to watch some Ken before going to sleep, and we did. I had some awe inspiring dreams that night that I would love to share snippets of. Dreams have always been very bright guiding lights for me. Dreams give me access to the deeper places in me that get buried under daily stuff, my sub-consciousness that is finely and deeply tuned into the world's Wisdom.

I was in an apocalyptic moment, the world as we know it was drawing to a end, and the town were I was living was warned that the water was running out and that we all needed to evacuate, get as far away from there as possible, and go find water. I, among others, decided to stay. What we discovered as time passed, was that the water did run dry. It continued to flow from the taps, clean, clear, life giving. It was a revelation! We had been lied to! There was never any danger of the water running out, we just had to believe that there would be water, and there would be water.

I have had end of the world as we know it dreams before, full of explosions, screaming and other unpleasant things. What always happens for me though, after intense discomfort and distress, is that I am overcome with an overwhelming sense of peace. I realize that I CHOOSE to be here at this time, I wanted to be here, for whatever reason, at this exact epoch in history, and it is all well, and all will be well. In this case though, it was wonderful to realize that the end was not as real as we thought it might be. I really believe this to be the case in real life as well, lets not all go around thinking the end is near, but lets believe with all our hearts that the water will keep flowing clean and abundant, the air will be clean and fresh, the forests, the oceans, the fields, the mountains, all will be well!! When we truly believe this, we also live our lives in a way that will allow for life to flourish. I liken it to any holiday, take Christmas or Ramadan or Wesak for example, if enough of us believe in it, it happens!! What if we all woke up tomorrow morning, all of us, knowing that world peace was real? I think it will happen.

David and I had somehow ended up caring for an amazingly obese baby, it was not ours, but we were responsible for it. It was so heavy that we could scarcely lift it up, and we were trying to journey by foot to a far off village. I was thinking "what are we doing, looking after this huge baby!" and yet I knew the baby was very important, very precious, and very valuable. It had to be taken care of very well. It was a struggle to carry that baby, yet I loved it. Then, as the dream went on, the baby got smaller and smaller, lighter and lighter, until I didn't even notice I was carrying it. Oh what a precious little baby! I was so happy that I had worked so hard to bring it with us!

When I told this part of the dream to David in the morning he thought about it for a while. Then he said that the baby was signifying something new and very important to me, and at first that something was just too big to be comfortable. Then, as time passed, it became lighter and easier to carry. This is how I feel about new things often, especially important, life shifting ones. I felt this way about raw foods as well when I first started out, and now I barely notice that I eat in a radically different way than before (accept of course, I feel radically different and am in a life radically different.) This is how I feel about the information that Ken brings to the table right now, it is so huge and important I don't quite know how to take it all. So lets all carry our precious, heavy babies with love, knowing they will become easier and easier to carry as our hearts and minds grow to meet them!

The third dream snippet I wanted to share was one from David's dream:

I was here on Earth, and I couldn't find you anywhere. Then I found you, but it was just your image, and I could somehow talk to you through that image. You told me that you didn't know where you where, but that you had left your image behind!

This was really mind blowing to me because just before going to sleep I had read a bit from Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth, and had been reading all about the world of form and non-form! He talks about the importance of releasing our perceived notions of importance of form in order to end ego, to end suffering, and I had gone to sleep meditating on the release of form. I didn't even mention this to David!!

I look forward to some even more amazing dreaming while Juice Feasting!

I am so glad that we are all here together, it brings tears of happiness to our eyes at least once a day.

Only two more sleeps!

With Love,

Katrina and David

Four more days!!!

Have you seen this in your town yet? Special thanks to Heidi for creating the virtual billboard of our dreams!

Hello!

David and I went grocery shopping yesterday, with the thought in mind : We are only going to be eating for five more days!! What an amazing thought! When I think back to how I felt about going without solid food for even one day, long before I knew about Juice Feasting, it is amazing how much my perception has shifted. I was familiar with the concept of water fasting, knew about Master Cleanser, and juice fasting, but did they appeal to me? No way!

I considered doing a juice fast two years ago when I first went raw, but it felt far to overwhelming to me, and I could not afford to take the time off of work that fasting requires. It seemed so extreme to me, taking a whole week off to cleanse, lie around, drink a bit of juice, feel weak, get headaches, feel faint, and all the other things that fasting brings about. Not very open minded of me I know. Today I feel much differently about it all.

My experience to date is one day of water fasting, and ten contiguous days of Juice Feasting. I attempted to water fast about five years ago and it was a disaster! The day that I actually fasted I was fine, it was a Sunday, and I took it easy for the most part. The disaster happened on Monday, when I went back to work. I ate breakfast in the morning, and then rode my bike about 30 minutes to where I was working, and I just could not keep it to together! I felt so weak, dizzy, faint, sick to my stomach, and foggy headed that I had to sit down and eat something right away. I decided that it was not a good idea for me to go with out food, even for a day!! Who would want to feel that way?

Now, on top of my 10 Day Juice Feast, I have also Juice Feasted many one day periods as well. The first of these attempts was almost a disaster as well! I was here in Patagonia with my sister Heather, and we had heard all about the wonders of Juice Feasting from David, and from Angela Stokes' blog, so we decided to try it for a day. It sounded so amazing! I can remember my apprehension even that day...I said that I would try it for at least the morning, but if I started to feel weak or dizzy, forget it! I was going to eat! Remember that I was dealing with blood sugar issues, and my hypoglycemia was such that if I didn't eat every four hours or so, CRASH, on would come the anxiety, the weakness, the feeling that I had to eat something RIGHT NOW!!. So off I went with my sister, very bravely, to begin my day without solid food.

It began very well, a beautiful sunny day, we collected our greens from the TOL cafe, and took them to the kitchen in the student dorm where we were staying, both as apprentices at the Tree of Life to juice them up with some apples, carrots, ginger, and other stuff. We made about two quarts each, and took our first quart out to the arrollo to sit in the sand and drink our green juice in the sunshine. I felt so happy! My sister's smile and voice, the sun on my face, a glowing quart of green liquid sunshine, the knowledge that I was doing something very loving for my body, and such an excitement at the idea that perhaps with this new idea "Juice Feasting" I could go a whole day without solid food and not die (well, I knew I wouldn't die, but I also really disliked sugar crashes with a passion.)

So around rolls 3:00ish, finding Heather and I in our dorm room, piled under blankets on our beds, feeling cold, tired, and like we can't do anything but lie there and read or write in our journals. WHAT!!!??? Heather and I are saying to each other with our glazed over glaces. You aren't supposed to feel like this on a Juice Feast!! About that same time, David finished working with Gabriel, and shows up in his yellow scarf at our door. We report feeling cold and lazy and tired. "How much juice have you had?" is his first question. "Well, about two quarts each, of mostly green juice" we report. "You need more juice!" is the simple answer. "Let's go make more juice!"

But oh no! Tragedy strikes! We did not realize just how much beautiful produce we would need to make 4 quarts (8, with two sisters juicing) of juice! Ill~prepared, under~produced, Juice Feasting neophytes, that is what we were. So, after a lag of time (we were so out of it at this point that we couldn't decide what to do, despite David's helpful suggestions), off we went to the Patagonia Market (Red Mountain was closed for the day) to get two huge bags of oranges, some lemons, a bag of carrots, and ginger. Then we went up to the cafe where dinner was being served, to collect some more greens and to juice some wheat grass. Quick! back to the dorm kitchen to make some juice!! These sisters are about to fall over!!

We made some orange juice first. I so very clearly remember handing a glass of it to my sister, who was so alkaline from the days green juice, wheat grass juice, and not enough juice, that it was like she was hidden behind a soft cloud of fuzz, not really there with her usual spark. On top of that, I was looking through a fuzz myself. She put her lips to the glass, and in went the orange juice, and I watched, like watching the needle on your gas tank go up, as she drank down the juice, up came her spark. She began drinking with her head and eyes cast down, shoulders slightly hunched, tired, slumped, and as that first gulp went down, up came the head, the eyes, she stood up straight, and went "MMMMMMmmmmmm!!!!" and looked at me with bright happy eyes. It is like that with juice, it makes you feel so much better!

The idea with Juice Feasting, as you all know, is that if you are hungry, drink more juice!!

Wonderfully, when we all begin the Global Juice Feast, it will be a Saturday so most of us will not be working, and so if you have the same problem Heather and I did our first day of Juice Feasting, go get more produce!! Make more juice!!

I am so happy to report that the day after my first day of Juice Feasting I felt wonderful, and was able to work all day on my feet in the TOL cafe with no crazy sugar imbalance. Also, I made it the whole day with out solid food, and I did not die!

And now I feel fully confidant to waltz off into our up-coming juicy journey, it is more exciting than Christmas Eve was to four year old Katrina! It is as exciting as setting out on a sailboat, the wide blue sea welcoming and loving you with thousands of sparkles in the sun, the wind blowing thorough your hair, making your lungs feel alive and fresh. The depth of the possibilities that Juice Feasting holds for us as a planet in healing is more exciting than I ever dreamed possible.

GlobalJuiceFeast.com is becoming more and more active, with many beautiful people coming together to share in this magical journey we are all about to embark on together! We now have 225 folks!

I Skyped a beloved friend last night who is planning on joining us from Montreal...which reminds me, have you started a Skype account for yourself yet? I LOVE Skype!! I feel like I have actually spent time with people, laid eyes on their dear faces, seen their sweet physical idiosynchrocies, how they tilt their heads, wave their hands, bat their eyes, and nod their heads. Of course you don't get the whole personal experience, but for a girl living in Southern Arizona with friends and family in Canada, it is a great gift.

You can go to www.skype.com and create an account for yourself for free! If you already have a camera on your computer you are set, if not, you can get one for about $50 or less. Everyone is doing such a wonderful job at supporting each other so far through blogs, the Juice Feasting Enthusiasts Group, and Global Juice Feast, and we feel that this is an amazing additional tool for personal support while Juice Feasting. Check it out! (It might seem a little weird at first, as it did to me, to see someone you love on your computer screen in real time animation, but you will get used to it.)

Another very powerful form of emotional support while Juice Feasting, or at any other time in life, is journaling!! It can be an amazingly cathartic, healing, and clearing process to get those words out of your mind and onto paper. It can help the whole process along by solidifying emotions, transforming mental formations, clarifying your thoughts, and it is a wonderful record of your journey to look back upon in years to come. Once you begin to feel really wonderful, on top of the world, light, blissful, happy, and truly YOU, it is easy to forget where you have come from. I have looked back in my journal several times to be shocked to read what used to go on in my body and mind! Especially on days when you are not feeling so inspired to go on with Juice Feasting (or raw foods) it can be invaluable to look back and see just how far you have come! "Ah Ha, all this juice (or raw food) IS worth it" you can say to yourself! "Keep on trucking, my darling!" Your journals will become rich little landscapes!

Blogs are great. We love blogs, and we are deeply grateful to all those who have been sharing their Juice Feasting experiences with the world, helping to inspire and transform the lives of many people. We don't read the news any more, we read blogs. Some of the most exciting, up lifting, inspiring, hopeful news ever can be found in blogs. Now that's what I call a good thing. (Don't worry about falling behind the times, loosing touch, or any other such non-sense. The news as we know it is a construct of a very dysfunctional system, feeding off of and feeding into our collective "Pain Body," and for a better understanding of that term please please check out Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth.) As you can tell, we use www.blogger.com.

If you do not feel like public journaling is for you, or if you want to go both public and private, get yourself a journal that you love, because you will be spending a lot of intimate time with it. Make sure you enjoy the shape, size, texture, spine, fold, paper weight, smell, and feel of your journal and you will be more likely to use it. I also like having a really nice pen that makes lovely letters on the page.

An amazing book on the art of writing (journaling) is Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg. If you are one of those people who gets stuck writing anything, even a private journal, for fear of writing something silly, un-intelligent, or embarrassing, Natalie is your girl. Get her book, dive in, and watch the poetry (or literature nightmare) flow out of you. Natalie makes it clear that you do not need to create genius when you write, you simply must write, as often as possible, and in your expansive sea of words will shine priceless jewels of wisdom!! You will discover the writer in you if you just use your writing muscles. Another great book by Natalie Goldberg is Wild Mind, Living The Writers Life.
We are going up to Phoenix tomorrow, so will post again on Thursday. We filmed a whole video today on how we make juice in our Vita Mix today, only to discover that iMovie '08 does not have a slow motion or double speed feature, and well we kind of wanted to double speed the part where I am chopping all the produce so you don't have to be bored to death. So, we are going to have to figure something else out and get a different video editing software. I love apple, but honestly, how silly to leave out such a basic feature! Or is a clever marketing plan?

By the time this is posted it will be four sleeps, and only three days till GJF!!

I Skyped with my mom today, and she has made definite plans (plane ticket and all) to come and visit us in May and Juice Feast with us!!! Happy happy joy joy!!! She will also be Juice Feasting starting in March, but will be going on a trip with her husband and so will break out for that, and then start up again once she is home. I am so blessed to have such a juicy mom.

I will leave you with these words from other juicies about preparing for a Juice Feast:

I just completed my first ever 30day JF on the 1st Feb 2008; and it was a truly amazing experience for me.Right now I'm also gearing up to start March 1st!! its so exciting right?Extra supplements that I took were (bee-pollen) I thoroughly enjoyed the chewing action! Aloe vera + garlic. I may have missed a few out!? My pre-JF Intentions were:

1) To take each day as it comes-

2) To be non-judgemental about myself and others

3) To step up my yoga practice if (I felt inclined to do so)

4) To take some time out each day to check in with myself

5) To rest when my needs to and to continue with my self-care routine.

6) To notify some people of what I was doing and to ask for support from friends and family members.

Above all- My intentions were and still are to nurture my body, mind, soul and spirit.

Be Well

~Rawchi

Thank you for your wise words Rawchi!

And this from AJ:

Apprehension ripples through my thoughts as I try to face this daunting "calling" to a lifestyle I'm not sure can keep up with...

Yet, I feel this prompting I have come to recognize as God's voice pursuing me like Jonah who tried to get away from what God called him to, and then ended up being fish-food!

I'm also running in the opposite direction, eating everything I think I will miss.I come with no experience, no taste for healthy food, grossed out by the color green, and not much personal discipline. I guess I'm really counting on the grace of God to help me through this!

But I say YES!I get out of my boat and dive into the unknown!Here I come! Catch me....

And another one from AJ that I absolutely love:

I woke up this morning with the intense feeling of being loved!

Yes, I do have a wonderful husband,but not even he can crawl in to the innermost parts of me and pour his love into the depths of my being the way I experienced it this morning.

This morning I experienced the very arms of God around me...

The most amazing part of it was that I was being known for who I am-all my flaws, all my fears, ALL my failures...and it didn't matter one little bit.

I was ready to shame myself into good behavior:"Look what a mess I have made of my life and my health!I know better!"

But Love came this morning and said:I know all about you! Every single little thing...and I love you just the way you are!

I will hold your hand and we'll do this together...Someone once said that a lover will out-serve a server any day,and I feel like I can say something similar today: Love can draw me to go where guilt and shame can never drive me to!

Thank you for Your Love!

AJ, your words are a gift to all of us, thank you!!

That is all for tonight!! We are off to listen to some Ken (as in Wilber, who says amazing things such as "you are beautiful as a gift and the pleasure it brings to all sentient beings....") and sleep sweet sleep.

LOVE!!

Katrina and David Rainoshek

View sapaho's map

Taken in a place with no name (See more photos here)

Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart.
~Kahlil Gibran

Happy Sunday!

I'm going to abandon the format for JFP today....and have a real lazy Sunday. David has been away for the weekend (I've been writing for both of us, pretending in blog land that he is here because, well, he is) and will home tonight.

The lovely Courtney Pool is coming over shortly with sprouts and greens for lunch, we both had a by-ourselves weekend with our partners off and away, so now it is time for a girl visit.

I did mostly juice all day Friday, and Saturday (with some apples, and a tomato soup) and feel absolutely wonderful....don't worry, I won't start Juice Feasting with out you, I can't wait until we all have that first sip together on Saturday morning!

Yes, I have been feeling so swollen, bursting, popping!!! with love that I have to go and streeeeeeetch NOW!!, oh such a good feeling.

With love to you,

Katrina

If you can't have a flower shower, have a contrast shower!
DAY 7 JFP:
Introduction
Hello! I hope your Saturday was lovely.

Another short blog for tonight, as it is time to get off the computer.

New Life Practice
Hot/Cool Showers, AKA Contrast Showers. This is an excellent practice on any cleansing programme, such as a Juice Fast or Juice Feast. It is critical that we support the organs and processes of elimination, and using hot/cold treatment is an excellent and accessible, no-cost way to move lymphatic fluid and blood.

To use hydrotherapy on a Juice Feast, take a hot shower, and at the point in your shower when it is feeling like it is time to get out, begin cranking the water back toward cool, and leave it there for about a minute. Then slowly crank it back toward warm/hot for a minute, then back toward cool for a minute, and so on:

HOT shower 5-7 minutes
COOL 1 minute
HOT 1 minute
COOL 1 minute
HOT 1 minute
COOL 1 minute
HOT 1 minute
COOL 1 minute and out


Then get out of the shower, ending on cool, which is stimulating. When we do a Juice Feast or other cleanse, we usually do this with each shower as a matter of course, and have noticed that it is invigorating and is a valuable part of our cleansing reaction/healing crisis minimization, making life much more pleasant on a cleanse.

Also, make sure that you are filtering out the chlorine from your shower water, if necessary. Carbon filters are available online and at your local Whole Foods/Wild Oats. Exposing yourself to chlorine is less than the best idea, as you will learn on Day 33: Safe and Healthy Public Water.

Kitchen, Bath, and Body
Oral hygeine is really important to keep in mind not only in the morning, but throughout the day. Even your Green Vegetable Juices are a about 60% carbohydrate, so you can get a coating of plaque in your mouth if you do not rinse after drinking juice.

After you leave the shower, use a tongue scraper. During any cleanse, you will often find a yellow or white coating on your tongue, which many cleansing professionals over the years consider a reflection of your bowel toxicity. You may want to take your tongue scraper with you to work if that coating returns during the day.

Dr. Richard Anderson, in his excellent book Cleanse and Purify Thyself, has this to say about the tongue during a cleanse:

Many people notice that as they cleanse, their tongues turn whitish-gray and filmy, and the breath becomes more and more foul. This reflects what is happening in the digestive canal. As they drink fresh juice, mucoid layers will soften, and so they may notice that the abdomen swells. As more and more mucoid layers are removed, the swelling goes down, the tongue gradually becomes clearer, and the breath improves. This is a good gauge as to how clean a person is becoming, for when you are totally clean, the tongue will be shiny red (just like a newborn baby's). It will be free of all whiteness or film, and the breath will be sweet (unless we eat onions or garlic).

For more on oral hygeine and Biological Dentistry, including a discussion of Root Canals, Mercury Fillings, and Fluoride, see Day 44: Biological Dentistry and Teeth in the 92-Day Juice Feasting Program.
Exercise
Today was closet cleaning day for us. What a lovely feeling! Tomorrow I think I will attack (with love) the windows.

What’s Ahead
Sunday rest and relaxation, darling, that's what!

Love David and Katrina

Who wouldn't love a coconut tree?
DAY 8 JFP: Releasing Old News, Our Favorite Oil, Friday Night Movies.

Introduction
Hello again! As you know, we got a day behind on our JFP, so this one is going to be short and sweet due to the double whammy blog writing day. Luckily for us, we have just recently written about the subject of the day, so we will very humbly refer you back to the previous posts.

New Life Practice
Here we send you back to read our previous posts. First one. Second one.

Kitchen, Bath, and Body
Enema Kit! Have you got your enema kit yet? If not, you will probably want to start looking for one! You can get one from The Raw Food World, where you have an excellent choice of three different kinds of kits, or you might try your local Walgreens. We have not had such good luck recently finding a proper enema kit at the local drug store, all they seem to have are the useless little Fleet kits (don’t get this kind!), but you never know, your drugstore may be more enlightened than ours!

Coconut Oil
Here is the skinny on this fabulous fat:
For use as a skin moisturizer, nothing compares to coconut oil. It not only makes you smell and taste good, like a tropical beach, but it prevents stretch marks, heals existing ones, has antiseptic elements that keep the skin young and healthy, and relatively free from infections. We also use it as a lip balm if our lips get parched and cracked from too much sun and dry heat, or cold and icy wind. It will make your lips very yummy and inviting! It makes a great erotic oil as well, provided you do not put it on latex. Thinking of giving or receiving a massage? Bring out the coconut oil!

I (Katrina) have used coconut oil several times to aid in the rapid healing of some epic scrapes and cuts. I can't imagine being with out coconut oil now. It is a multi-purpose wonder oil.

Coconut oil has been used as a food and a medicine since the dawn of history. Ayurveda (the medicine of India) has long advocated its therapeutic and cosmetic properties.

As you can see, on a Juice Feast, coconut oil has several uses:

1. for the skin; 2. for eating (up to 1 Tablespoon per day); 3. for use in lubricating the enema kit and yourself during an enema. Reasons number 1 and 2 are explained below. Reason three is because coconut oil acts as an antimicrobial, antibacterial, anti fungal agent, and is very resistant to rancidity, as opposed to olive oil or sesame oil, which are commonly used for enemas, but tend to photoxidize and go rancid. Stick with coconut for your enemas. You don’t want rancid oil down there!

(Sorry to be talking about enemas, eating, and skin care all at the same time here, but it really is the Renaissance Oil of all the oils!)

NUTRITIONAL VALUE: Unlike the high-calorie, cholesterol-soaked, long-chain saturated animal fats found in meat and dairy products, coconut oil is a raw saturated fat containing mostly medium-chain fatty acids (MCFA’s) which the body can metabolize efficiently and convert to energy quickly. By weight, coconut oil has less calories than any other fat source.

Lauric acid, the major fatty acid from the fat of the coconut, has long been recognized for the unique properties that it lends to nonfood uses in the soaps and cosmetics industry. More recently, lauric acid has been recognized for its unique properties in food use, which are related to its antiviral, antibacterial, and antiprotozoal functions. Now, capric acid, another of coconut’s fatty acids has been added to the list of coconut’s antimicrobial components. These fatty acids are found in the largest amounts only in traditional lauric fats, especially from coconut. Also, recently published research has shown that natural coconut fat in the diet leads to a normalization of body lipids, protects against alcohol damage to the liver, and improves the immune system’s anti-inflammatory response.
Easy on the Liver/Gallbladder
The shorter MCFA chains require less energy and fewer enzymes to digest. Coconut oil can be emulsified in digestion without burdening the liver or gallbladder. Thus, coconut oil provides more energy, more quickly. Anyone who suffers from poor digestion—and especially liver or gallbladder trouble—would benefit from eating coconut oil.

On the Juice Feast: Up to 1 Tablespoon per day, eaten plain. As needed for your skin, all aglow.

We were lucky enough to spend some time with a friend who grew up in India last night, and he had fabulous tales of growing up in a neighborhood where every family had a backyard coconut tree. It was a personal kitchen industry to create coconut oil for the families use until the tropical oils were condemned for being saturated fats, and were replaced by canola oil. We now know that coconut oil is FAR superior in many ways, and according to our friend, families in India are working hard to re-implement the kitchen coconut trees.

Supplements and Superfoods
Why not try some coconut oil? It is sweet, smooth, and yummy.

Multimedia
I don’t know about you, but it is Friday night so we are going to watch an oldie but a goodie (perhaps Saturday Night Fever? The Gods Must Be Crazy?)

What’s Ahead
Amazingly, the March 1 start date for the Global Juice Feast falls on a Saturday. This is perfect for those of us working Monday-Friday type jobs, as it gives us the ease of the weekend to move into Juice Feasting, without rushing out the door to go to work. This weekend we are going to encourage you to take some TLC energy and put it into your living environment; perhaps washing windows, cleaning out that old closet, the cupboard under the bathroom sink, clearing your kitchen of the foods of yesteryear, all in preparation for the birth of the new YOU!!! Remember, many of us find ourselves cleaning up our homes as we cleanse, reflecting on the outside what is going on inside!

Have a beautiful night! With peaceful steps, David and Katrina

The Ultimate in feeling Groovy: Sunshine
DAY 9 JFP: How To Be A Clever Raw Vegan

Introduction
Hello! How is everyone today? How is your blood sugar? Making you want to Juice Feast? David's has been perfect every morning, well below 85. Mine, well, I have come a long way, let's say that. When I took my FBS for 10 days almost a year ago, I was hitting between 95 and 110, and as I've mentioned before one of the many reasons I went raw was blood sugar. I never knew to take my FBS during my days of dizzy spells and sugar crashes, so I don't know what it was then but I imagine it was a little higher than I'd like to imagine! Now, in the past four mornings we have been doing it, I am between 92 and 85! This morning it was 85, perfect, wonderful, a reason to celebrate! Even though my blood sugar stabilized as soon as I went raw, you can see this raw path creates constant, never ending improvements! I really do feel it emotionally too, when your blood sugar is stable, it is so much easier for emotions to be stable.

Little Side Note: Please do not worry if your blood sugar has been higher than you want to see it. Instead, be very excited and grateful that you are doing wonderful things to create a blood sugar reality that will create optimal health for you, long term!

So sorry to be a day late with this post, but let us put it up anyhow. Today we are going to talk about one of our favorite things: Sunshine! On the topic of sunshine, we will also look at the importance of Vitamin D, which has been at the forefront of some very important and exciting vitamin discoveries of late. And while we’re at it, lets find out the best way that we have discovered to store your juices, and make sure that we have a nice big bowl for juicing into. We are going to be drinking a lot of juice, and that juice has to go somewhere before it goes into us!

We mentioned yesterday that we would be talking about talking about Juice Feasting with friends and loved ones, but this topic is so important that we are going to work on it for a few more days before we put out our thoughts on it. Also please remember, this whole Juice Feasting Prep is a work in progress, soon to be published properly, so thanks for being our guinea pigs dear readers!

New Life Practice
“Separation from sunlight will result in disease, just as surely as will separation from fresh air, food, and water.”
–Dr. Zane Kime

Have you ever craved sunlight the same way that you crave a nutrient or food? Most likely you have, and there is good reason for it! Sunlight causes our bodies to produce vitamin D, which we will see in the supplements section, is a very important vitamin!

Studies show that it is important to get a healthy amount of sunlight each day for ocular, skin, mental, and bone health. In Heliotherapy: The Principles and Practice of Sunbathing by John Fielder, we discover that the sun is a healing agent on many levels that has been known about for millennia. Only recently with the advent of processed foods and the resulting skin cancers has the sun been demonized to such an extent.

Sunlight and Sunbathing
Steve Arlin, in Raw Power! writes: A common myth is that the sun causes skin cancer. The sun doesn’t cause skin cancer, the sun causes all life on Earth! Skin cancer is caused by toxicity within the body. When this toxicity is detoxified through the skin (our largest eliminative organ), it is sometimes “baked” onto the skin, bringing forth a cancer condition. Blaming the sun for skin cancer is like blaming fresh air for lung cancer.

You must have internal protection from the sun’s rays in the form of proper, natural, raw-food nutrition. External “protection” like sunscreen is an abomination. The same internal mechanism that keeps a plant from burning up under the hot sun can keep you from sunburning. A plant is in direct sunlight for hours upon hours every day of its existence. A plant dries up and dies when it no longer has the internal protection that it requires. The second best protection from sunburn is knowing when to retreat to shade for a rest.

There are many, many benefits to getting sunlight on your skin, including lower blood sugar, increased digestive strength, improved eyesight, regulated hormones, reduced funguses, increased healing of surface wounds, and of course, a happier disposition.

I’m sure we’ve all felt the emotional shift that occurs when the sun comes out! There is a reason for the common metaphor of brightened mood being “the clouds clearing” or “it was as though the sun came out!”

Brian Swimme calls the sun the “cosmic giveaway.” The beautiful, massive star we call the sun is constantly, radiantly, giving away energy. It is energy that we depend on in every aspect of our lives, and without the gift of such energy we would quickly wither away.

Besides sunbathing, which we strongly encourage you to do, another powerful way in which to absorb the energy of the sun is to eat the foods closest to the source of sun energy- raw foods! During this Juice Feast, you are going to be putting so much sunlight into your body through the fresh raw juices you are drinking that you will literally begin to glow like the sun! The green of your leafy greens, chlorophyll, is liquid sunshine in plant form! Yum!

Enjoy the sun, and your JUICES--all-important elements in your Juice Feasting and nutrient-dense diet. Here's to living without fear of the sun!

Kitchen, Bath, and Body

Quart Sized Mason Jars: Wide Mouth.
When Juice Feasting, these jars are excellent for measuring the amount of juice you are drinking, and for taking juice on the go without concern for spillage. Since they are made out of glass, you will not find the taste and health quality of your juices affected by storage in plastic. Mason jars store easily in a cooler, which you may want to use if your juices are going to be a while between juicing and a refrigerator at work. They are also great for mixing in any supportive elements of the fast, such as Green SuperfoodMSM, and so on. The lids seal up tight, so that you won't find your juices spilling all over the place as you take them with you.

When you pick these up at the grocery store or big box store (if necessary) make sure you get a set of wide mouthed mason jars, so that you can fit your hand inside to get them clean. We also suggest that you purchase a case of 12, so that you can always have enough to carry your juice, some are in the sink or dishwasher, and if a few get broken, not big deal. A case should cost around $12, and these are great for taking your smoothies, etc. on the go with you after the Juice Feast.

David and I also use our quart sized jars for our morning quart of water with lemon and MSM. The Mason Jar has become the un-official mascot of Juice Feasting, and I have to say, what a sexy mascot!!

Finally, if you have a Food Saver device, there is an attachment that will allow you to vacuum seal these jars completely. If you can do that, great. It will remove more of the oxygen and keep your juices more vibrant.

Big Bowl or Jug.
If you are going to be of the blending/squeezing juice making type (rather than the juicer juice making type) you are going to need a wide mouthed bowl or jug to squeeze your juice into. We find that something with a opening big enough to surround both your hands while you squeeze works the best, is the least messy, and is the most time efficient. We use our big salad bowl, and squeeze up to four Vita-Mixer full of juice into at once. Then, we pour it into our quart sized mason jars, cap it off, put it in the fridge, and clean up!


Katrina and her Dad making juice the blending/squeezing way.

Supplements and Superfoods

Vitamin D
One question raw vegans are often asked is about their calcium levels and vitamin D. A recent study was done on raw vegans, and the results on vitamin D levels surprised Dr. Fontana, who headed the study. He wrote:

The [raw vegans] also lacked other biological markers that would signal osteoporosis in other populations. "These people are clever enough to expose themselves to sunlight to increase their concentrations of vitamin D," speculated Dr. Fontana. "I thought vitamin D might have been a problem for them, but it was not."

Those clever vegans! Imagine, getting out in the sunshine for their vitamin D!

Recent Research has shown that adequate Vitamin D Levels reduce the risk of developing cancer of the breast, prostate, colon, and lung by a staggering 77%!

Here is how to do it: If you are light-skinned, 20 minutes of full-body exposure each day will do it. If you are dark skinned, your absorption of Vitamin D is not as good. This is okay if you live in a climate where you are in the sun much of the day, but if you are not, then supplementation with Vitamin D is of the utmost importance. On the days/months that you are not able to get adequate sun exposure, you can take 1,000 - 3,000 IU of Vitamin D each day.

More detailed information on Vitamin D can be found in my file on D that I have for you to download on Day 67, containing excellent information from The China Study by T. Colin Campbell, Ph.D., Conscious Eating by Gabriel Cousens, M.D., and much more

Exercise
Oh the ease of sunbathing! (Yes, we can call this an exercise!) Such a wonderful exercise, anyone will enjoy doing it. You can also rebound, walk, skip, do yoga, run, lift weights, dance, nap, read, lay in a hammock, and drink your juice in the sunshine for a double whammy excellence.

Multimedia
Have you checked out Mike Adam’s site yet? If not, you are in for a treat. Go to www.naturalnews.com and search around, and why not look around for more info on vitamin D? There is a lot of excellent information there!

What’s Ahead
Tomorrow we will re-visit the enema kit! Have you practiced with yours yet? We will also look at our favorite oil, from the beautiful nut called Coco. Coconut oil is wonderful in many ways, you will see!

That’s all for now, check back later today for Day 8 JFP (I’m going to go work on it right now!)

Blessings,

David and Katrina Rainoshek

PS. Today I made amaZING juice with a very LARGE piece of ginger, and WOW what a ZING! 1 cucumber, 1 head of celery, 1 big piece of ginger (2” fat piece), 6 carrots, 1 lb mixed greens, 4 leaves kale, 5 oranges, and ½ cup of water to get the blend going. Makes just over 2 quarts of ZINGerful juice. Enjoy!

DAY 10 JFP: Know Thyself, Thyjuices

(c) 2008 David and Katrina Rainoshek

Introduction
You should have tested your Fasting Blood Sugar this morning. If not, get that monitor out (or out of the grocery store) and get set to do it tomorrow. Today we will discuss what those numbers mean for you.

Also, you are shifting into a new life for yourself, and some cherished patterns that you have lived are perhaps kicking and whining a little bit as they are not going to be part of your future. At times, you may feel like running back to old haunts, be they physical or mental or relational, that are not conducive to meeting your health challenges and goals. We are going to honor your desire to run as we talk about Positive Diversions.

Those positive diversions are going to help you meet your goals. One of the goal masters out there, David Wolfe, is going to talk about the importance of writing your goals down.

New Life Practice
You have tested your FBS this morning, and the average you arrive at over the next 10 days is really important. Chronically high blood sugar can lead to a host of health challenges, including heart disease, kidney disease, alzheimer’s, diabetes, stroke, hypertension, migraine headaches, dementia, candida yeast syndrome, fibromyalgia, arthritis, overweight, chronic fatigue syndrome, retinopathy… the list goes on. High blood sugar is damaging to almost every tissue and organ in the human body. If you find your levels are outside of a healthy range, you are in luck. By drinking appropriate juices on a Juice Feast, many students have achieved normal blood sugar levels, and have healed some, if not all, of the damage created by hyperglycemia. Let’s look at what these numbers mean in the realm of Juice Feasting and your health.

There is a lot of debate out there in nutritional circles about how much fruit we should be eating, what kinds of fruit, when to eat it, etc., etc. Fruit is a wonderful food. It is hydrating, loaded with antioxidants and phytonutrients, people of all ages enjoy it, and by and large it juices very well. On the Juice Feast, it is very important to know how much fruit juice is appropriate for YOU. When you juice the fruits, the glycemic index of that juice is quite high, meaning that the sugar is going to get into your bloodstream very quickly. If your cells are ready for the sugar, this is not so much of a problem, but for those of us who have health challenges that are aggravated by fruit juices, we need to be prudent.

Those who should minimize or eliminate fruit juices from a Juice Feast can be persons with: high blood sugar (prediabetes or diabetes), hypoglycemia, the yeast overgrowth of candida known as candidiasis, and those with precancerous or cancerous conditions. Again, everyone should consult their health professionals before beginning a Juice Feast. A person who understands juicing and your particular health challenges can advise you on whether fruit juice is appropriate for you.

The way we determine this for our clients on a Juice Feast is by taking an average Fasting Blood Sugar using a blood sugar monitor. These devices sell for $10-20 at most drug stores, and come with 10 free testing strips. With these strips, you can test your Fasting Blood Sugar (FBS) each morning for 10 days before the Feast. Write the number down each morning, and take a 10-Day Average. This will tell you if you are having challenges with high blood sugar. Here is how the averages break down in terms of your health, and how much fruit juice, from this perspective, is appropriate for you.

Average Fasting Blood Sugar over 10 Days
What This Means for Your Health and Juices

85 or less
You have no problem with blood sugar.
Juice Feast: 1 quart of fruit juice each day is a-okay, unless another health challenge mentioned above suggests otherwise

85 – 100
We will call this pre pre-diabetic. Your blood sugar is a little high, which is placing an extra burden on your pancreas, and could lead to a compromise of vital organs such as your brain, kidneys, pancreas, and heart in later life which could be prevented by lowering your blood sugar.
Juice Feast: 1 quart of fruit juice each day is possible, but mix in green superfood powders, and drink mid-day.

100 - 115
Pre-Diabetic. This may be a surprise to you. However, close to 100 million Americans are pre-diabetic. This means that your cells are not taking up sugar efficiently, probably because they are toxic. This level needs to come down or you could develop diabetes within 10 years, according to the American Diabetes Association. This is possible.

Juice Feast: All Green Vegetable Juices with a little carrot, apple, and lemon. You need exercise!

126 and over
Diabetic. Please see a health professional knowledgeable in the reversal of diabetes with Plant-Based Nutrition, such as Dr. Gabriel Cousens, M.D. at the Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center or Brian Clement at Hippocrates Health Institute. Do not attempt a Juice Feast on your own, and only begin once you have professional guidance.

Juice Feast: All Green Vegetable Juices without carrot, and apple, and lemon in moderation. Supervised by a health professional. Do not attempt to come off blood sugar medications without professional guidance. Please read There is a Cure for Diabetes with Gabriel Cousens, M.D. with David Rainoshek, M.A.


Kitchen, Bath, and Body
Install Shower Filter. Did you install your shower filter today? If you are needing some more encouragement on the chlorine issue, check this [1] out:

According to Dr. Joseph M. Price, MD, in Moseby's Medical Dictionary:

"Chlorine is the greatest crippler and killer of modern times. It is an insidious poison.".

In a 1992 study that made front-page headlines, and was reported on in the July issue of the American Journal of Public Health researchers at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee found that people who regularly drink tap water containing high levels of chlorine by-products have a greater risk of developing bladder and rectal cancers than people who drink unchlorinated water. The study estimates that about 9 percent of all bladder cancer and 18 percent of all rectal cancer cases are associated with long-term consumption of these by-products. This amounts to over 20,000 new cases each year.

Morris, with epidemiologist Thomas C. Chalmers and his colleagues at Harvard, used a new technique called meta-analysis to combine the results from the 10 best studies, yielding the new findings. They report that people drinking chlorinated water over long periods have a 21% increase in the risk of contracting bladder cancer and a 38% increase in the risk of rectal cancer. "I am quite convinced, based on this study, that there is an association between cancer and chlorinated water.", says Robert D. Morris of the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, who directed the new study.

About 90% of the population is drinking water which may contain hundreds of these Disinfection By-products (DBPs), also known as Trihalomethanes. The Environmental Protection Agency lowered the Maximum Contaminant Level for Disinfection By-products but it will be years before the new standard goes into effect.

In his book, Coronaries/Cholesterol/Chlorine, Joseph M. Price, MD presents startling evidence that trihalomethanes, are the "prime causative agents of artherosclerosis and its inevitable result, the heart attack or stroke." These trihalomethanes are created when the chlorine that is added to the municipal water supply reacts with organic matter such as leaves, twigs, or chemicals from agricultural runoff.


Here's What The Experts Have To Say:
The drinking of chlorinated water has finally been officially linked to an increased incidence of colon cancer. An epidemiologist at Oak Ridge Associated Universities completed a study of colon cancer victims and non-cancer patients and concluded that the drinking of chlorinated water for 15 years or more was conducive to a high rate of colon cancer." Health Freedom News, January/February 1987

"Long-term drinking of chlorinated water appears to increase a person's risk of developing bladder cancer as much as 80%," according to a study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Some 45,000 Americans are diagnosed every year with bladder cancer. St. Paul Dispatch & Pioneer Press, December 17, 1987


Exercise
We can and do get chaotic energy as our bodies heal and we shift our diet. Many times running feels like the best option, and often that means running back to things which do not get us where we want to go. We say RUN, but to the best things ever - new and exciting things which still help us run, but forward. We call these things Positive Diversions.

Protect Your Senses With Positive Diversions:
As you chart your course through this program, protect your senses whenever possible--and reinforce great thoughts through reading and re-reading, avoiding media when possible (TV is programming, and often not in the best interest of your solidity and positive thinking), and maintaining a regular and concerted practice of drinking the best food your body can access. I have provided the Positive Diversions aspect of this program, because of our natural - and encouraged - tendency to RUN when our great potential is opening up, or when we are met with temporary difficulties. Soren Kierkegaard once said, "Our greatest fear is knowing our own true potential." The Positive Diversions list is included to honor your desire to run, but here is the kicker:

When you feel like running, RUN - but run to the best thing possible.

Generally, when we feel like running, we run to what we have been pre-programmed to run to: television, bars, restaurants, unhealthy relationships, food, etc. We now have the opportunity to re-program ourselves, not to avoid running, but to run to things that advance our capacities, not diminish them. This is a truly worthwhile and honorable path, and will pay off immensely.

One positive diversion is watching GREAT stuff, and to that end, I have two great possibilities for you. One, I have included well over 250 hand-picked videos on JuiceFeasting.com for you to watch--all of which will satisfy the desire to kick back and watch TV, all engaging and life-changing, without commercials. Two, watch The Secret.

We encourage you to create you own list of Positive Diversions. Do it now, so that when you are feeling low in the shifting terrain of your healing process, you can refer to your beautiful list.

Some Positive Diversions from our list include: meditation, walking, yoga, reading, deep breathing, journaling, gardening, letter writing, create a beautiful juice and drink it in a beautiful place, draw, dance, play your guitar, listen to something from David Wolfe, write down some fantastic goals, go for a bike ride, and love!

Other great resources for overcoming emotional blockages that we enjoy are Byron Katie’s Loving What Is, Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth, Anthony Robbin’s Awaken The Giant Within, Ken Wilber’s Integral Vision or Integral Operating System (which has books, cds, and dvds) any thing by Thich Nhat Hanh, and of course YOU! You are your own best guiding light, and you will be able to draw in the best teachers for yourself as you need them.

Shazzie says “ Picture that all your emotions are locked away in your cells, and as your cells start to release toxins, they also release emotions. At any appropriate time, seek counseling or other emotional therapeutic assistance if you feel uncomfortable with the amount of emotions being released.

Emotional therapeutic assistance will look different for each and every one of us, so create a vibrant list of options for yourself in your Positive Diversions. As Joseph Campbell says “Find a place inside where there’s joy, and the joy will burn out the pain.”

Remember also the value of sitting with your emotions. Allow them to be there with you, meditate on them, and watch them evaporate and move through you like waves move through the ocean.

One of our favorite Positive Diversions is Love! Dr. Dean Ornish says about the healing power of love and intimacy: “I am not aware of any other factor in medicine – that has a greater impact on our quality of life, incidence of illness, and premature death from all causes.”

So, love yourself! What you are about to do (or have already begun) is a great act of self love and love for all things. This is important to remember when you are going through those un-comfortable moments, and we find it helps greatly to focus on the mantra of “love.” Take even ten seconds and focus your mind on the word love, repeating it with each in and out breath. Replace un-pleasant thoughts with the word love! It is not always necessary to take every thought to completion, and often thoughts will serve only to drag us deeper in to their own drama. You can quite safely exit the cycle of your un-happy thoughts and begin instead to meditate on love, no matter where you are during your day!

“The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.” ~ Joseph Campbell


Multimedia
The goals we have in mind often drive us beyond what we believe we are capable of, and goals written down are even more powerful. Consider this famous goal study Anthony Robbins cites in his book Unlimited Power:

A study of the 1953 graduates of Yale University clearly demonstrates the power of goals. The graduates interviewed were asked if they had a clear, specific set of goals written down with a plan for achieving those goals. Only three percent had written such goals. Twenty years later, in 1973, the researchers went back and interviewed the surviving members of the 1953 graduating class. They discovered that the three percent with written specific goals were worth more in financial terms than the entire other 97 percent put together…The interviewers also discovered that the less measurable or more subjective measures, such as level of happiness and joy that the graduates felt, also seemed to be superior in the three percent with written goals.


Goals of David Rainoshek. For three years I (David Rainoshek) was terribly sick with the complications of toxemia, dehydration, and malnourishment even though I ate an organic cooked vegetarian diet. I had hypoglycemia, acid reflux disease, and arthritic pain all through my body. At the very beginning of that period I wrote down my goals, one of which was to be well before I moved out of Houston. Almost three years later, just six weeks before moving out of the city to the mountains, I discovered Live Food Nutrition, and within three weeks of the move I was symptom-free. Now that is the power of the practice of writing down goals. Don't wait, and refuse to limit yourself!

Goals by David Wolfe. One of my favorite people on goal writing and visioning your life is David Wolfe from whom I have learned a lot on this important Life Practice. Watch this video by David on goals. If you have his book The Sunfood Diet Success System, take some time to read his chapter on Goals, and write down yours for this time of cleansing, one year ahead, and three years ahead. Not only is this a time capsule, but you will consciously and subconsciously work in your life towards the things you write down. This is very powerful information available for you to use right now!


What’s Ahead
Getting into the sun. We are also going to have a very important conversation about talking with your family and friends about your Juice Feast. There are so many books out there on fasting and cleansing, but few even address the issue of how to lovingly involve your family and elicit their support without causing them worry, fear, or discomfort about their own dietary and lifestyle choices. We will get right into it.

[1] “Health Effects of Chlorine in Drinking Water.” GAIA Int. Water Treatment Technologies Edthofer & Petr OEG Bahnstrasse 31, A-3061 Ollersbach Tel.: 0699/ 110 32 006, 0699/ 123 02 449 Fax: 02772/ 55 200, e-mail: gaia2001@europe.com

Love Letters to Juice Feasting

Put on your happy boots!

Our dear friend Juice Feasting gets love letters. Here is one that we would love to share with you.

Dear Juice Feasting (c/o David and Katrina),

I am on day 30 of my juice feast.

In the last 30 days I have seen such dramatic changes in my body and my brain that I wanted to share. I have almost no armpit odor. I wasn't particularly stinky before, but I no longer need to wear any deodorant. I just don't emit much odor.

I have not had any heart burn for 30 days, which is huge. My dreams have become vivid and in them I am recalling events of my past. It's like the physical detox is working backward in time with my brain. My memory is strengthened both short term & long term. I am recalling all manner of names, places, songs & events that had just been lost in my mind. I feel like I am time traveling within my body! How crazy is that?! My cognitive functions are simply improved.

My energy is out of this world. I am running up and down stairs to do laundry, and feeling good about it instead of winded and tired. Phlegm and mucous is greatly reduced, and my chronic urinary tract infections are totally gone, as is my IBS.

My skin! My skin is unlike it ever has been. I am virtually free of acne, and my cheeks have a healthy glow - something I've always envied in others! I have naturally pink cheeks & lips! I don't need to fake it with makeup. My hair is also curlier - don't know why - but it is. Just another change.

The big one - the really huge change, is that I am currently experiencing my second consecutive period in eight years. My husband and I have been unable to conceive since the birth of our first child, as I was diagnosed with PCOS shortly after, and stopped menstruating altogether, except for 3-4 times a year when I was prescribed hormones to generate a period. Awesome!

I come to this as a morbidly obese woman, diagnosed with PCOS & insulin resistance, who does not want to have gastric bypass surgery. Prior to the birth of my daughter, I was physically active and strong, but pregnancy changed something in my body. My weight went up and up and up. My doctor recommended I read The China Study. That reoriented my focus from "weight loss to achieve health" to "weight loss as a side affect of health"

After 6 months of dedicated whole foods consumption, directed at weight loss, longevity and fertility, I went vegan January 1st 2008, and started the Feast on January 11th. I actually started with the idea of trying it out for a weekend to see if it was something I could do. It felt so good that I kept it up. While I have struggled with cravings and the natural mental battle, my physical being has felt better on the whole.

I have lost weight, yes, but believe it or not the weight loss is overshadowed by the pink in my cheeks and the fact that suddenly, I don't need 10 hours sleep per night.I have had bad days, I even had to do this without running water & (oh my!) internet for a week. I am seeing food as medicine, nutrition, for the first time in my life. I am so excited about this journey!

~Michelle B.

We say: Thank you for sharing Michelle! We are excited about your journey too!

Eight Days later Michelle writes back:

I'm on day 38 now! Weight loss has slowed to a crawl and I'm just fine with that for this period in my transformation. As it was so quick in the first 3 weeks, my body is shrinking around me regardless of the scale. I have to say I am having a blast - I really am. It seems that the first 30 days are a challenge, but the last 8 have been comparably smooth. I'm used to the process of juicing as well as the time involved in doing so, carry my bottles around un self-consciously, and my cravings are greatly diminished.

Best wishes & happy feasting!

~Michelle B.

Celebrating each and every one of you Juice Feasting fans,

David and Katrina