Tuesday, February 19, 2008

DAY 11 JFP: Loving Reading Your Skin
(c) 2008 David and Katrina Rainoshek

Introduction
Hello Juicy Folks! Today we are going to light a fire under you to read – and in a different way than you were taught in school. We will also re-visit the power of skin brushing, add in a wonderful shower filter, tell you about our favorite soap, and introduce you to one of nature’s most amazing skin foods. Finally, we will look at a new development in the world of cleansing: Weight Training.


New Life Practices
Reading. Reading may or may not be a new Life Practice for you. You might be like we are, and you have been reading like a maniac since the age of five, but it never hurts to water your best seeds! It is so important to have reading as part of your toolbox of life practices, as part of your spiritual cross-training. Tony Robbins has been saying for years, “Readers are leaders.” Quite right.

To begin with you may want to go and read our previous reading post if you haven’t already. Follow this link!

“I totally concede that the gift of juice feasting is a wonderful opportunity to reflect upon and consume knowledge in tune with your needs. I do not usually have the time or energy to read so much so it is such a pleasure to develop this now. Love, Poppy”


"When you sell someone a book, you don't sell them 12 ounces of paper and ink and glue - you sell him a whole new life." - Christopher Morley

I (David) have chosen two important commentaries on reading today: Malcolm X and David Wolfe, as each have very important things to say on being inspired to read, and reading itself. In The Autobiography of Malcolm X, one of the experiences that most impressed upon me in undergraduate school was Malcolm's burning desire to read and educate himself above the so-called education (read: indoctrination) he received from public schooling and living on the street. A few excerpts:

Anyone who has read a great deal can imagine the new world that opened. Let me tell you something: from then until I left that prison, in every free moment I had, if I was not reading in the library, I was reading on my bunk. You couldn't have gotten me out of books with a wedge.

Fortunately, right outside my door was a corridor light that cast a glow into my room. The glow was enough to read by, once my eyes adjusted to it. So when “lights out” came, I would sit on the floor where I could continue reading in that glow.

At one-hour intervals the night guards paced past every room. Each time I heard the approaching footsteps, I jumped into bed and feigned sleep. And as soon as the guard passed, I got back out of bed onto the floor area of that light-glow, where I would read for another fifty-eight minutes-until the guard approached again. That went on until three or four every morning. Three or four hours of sleep a night was enough for me. Often in the years in. the streets I had slept less than that.

I have often reflected upon the new vistas that reading opened to me. I knew right there in prison that reading had changed forever the course of my life. As I see it today, the ability to read awoke inside me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive. I certainly wasn't seeking any degree, the way a college confers a status symbol upon its students. My homemade education gave me, with every additional book that I read, a little bit more sensitivity to the deafness, dumb–ness, and blindness that was afflicting the black race in America. Not long ago, an English writer telephoned me from London,' asking questions. One was, "What's your alma mater?" I told him, "Books."

You will never catch me with a free fifteen minutes in which I'm not studying something I feel might be able to help the black man.

This is the natural result of the inspiration we experience when we finally understand a way out of the miserable situation we are in, individually and collectively. Speaking for myself, David Rainoshek, you will not find me wasting time... What you are going to learn about in this course has the potential to impact over 3 Trillion dollars in the U.S. economy each year, and save literally millions and millions of lives. . .

Once you are inspired to read and know that there are so many, many things you want to know about, the key is how to assimilate the information and knowledge in an effective manner. There are two main keys to this: activating your conscious mind, and your subconscious. Let’s start with the conscious mind.

This book Triple Your Reading Speed by Wade Cutler is the best I have encountered for adjusting your conscious mind to seeing words and groups of words as pictures. I have reviewed many books on speed reading over the last three years, and this one is the best for training yourself. This technique alone will revolutionize your life but cutting down on your reading time and enabling you to access a wider range of material.

Photo Reading by Paul Scheele will address your subconscious ability, and don’t knock the subconscious! A recent study was done in which participants were shown a group of several dozen pictures in quick succession. They were invited back a couple of days later, and were asked to pick out, among a group of photos they did and did not see the first time, which ones were shown in their first visit. Participants chose the right pictures 95% of the time, and did so even when 10,000 photos were shown in the first visit. The subconscious mind is so very powerful. Photo Reading is based on this ability to pick up information and store it, even when the conscious mind could not possibly be engaged enough to grasp it all. So check out this technology in concert with Triple Your Reading Speed.


Kitchen, Bath, and Body
It is skin time. Juice Feasting is amazing for the skin, as your skin is an outer reflection of what is going on inside. After you have been Feasting for a few weeks, your skin will begin to clear, become less puffy, and many Feasters find comments coming their way along the lines of being radiant, and “loooookin’ gooood.” So we are going to take care of your skin by cleaning from the inside out, by taking care of it for its own sake, and by doing some practices that support the skin’s eliminative abilities.

Skin Brushing. That is, dry skin brushing. If you have not done this before, it may sound a little weird. However, there is nothing better before a shower to loosen up the 2.5 lbs of matter released through your skin in the last 24 hours, open up your pores, and stimulate the flow of lymphatic fluid. Your lymph does not have a heart to pump it, so skin brushing, rebounding, walking, yoga, and hot/cool showers are very important for ensuring your lymph flows and drains, keeping you from develping a cleansing reaction during your Juice Feast.

The time to dry skin brush is right before you shower. You can start doing this as soon as you have a Yerba Prima dry skin brush, or equivalent. It will be scratchy at first, but keep doing it for 2-5 minutes before each shower, and after 3-4 days you will start to crave it – it will feel good. Once you are Juice Feasting, this Life Practice will happen after your enema, and before you step into the shower in the morning.

Shower Filter. Chlorine is a very harmful element to your skin, lungs, hair, eyes, nostrils, etc. Chances are, the local water company is putting it in your water. Get it out with a carbon filter. The carbon in the filter acts like a magnet and grabs onto chlorine. These filters are about 40 bucks in the U.S., and install on your shower head in minutes. Another benefit to having one of these is that you can fill up your enema kit with warm water out of the shower head, sans the chlorine in your water.

Dr. Bronner’s Soap. Thank goodness for this hemp oil based soap. It is completely non-toxic, and if you use the peppermint variety during your Juice Feast, it will help you smell like a fresh candycane instead of detoxification, thus eliminating your need for toxic underarm deodorant, which should also go in the waste bin today if you have it. Deodorants are loaded with heavy metals and carcinogens, and antiperspirants are, as well. You are putting this right on an area of release, and where lymph flows. These toxic body products contribute to breast cancer in women by blocking the flow of toxins from the pores in one’s armpits. Once you have Juice Feasted, you won’t need deodorant anymore, particularly with the peppermint Bronner’s soap.

Aloe Vera. Loaded with sulfur, one of your main beauty minerals. It is also great for shaving the face, underarms, and legs, in place of soap. If you nick yourself, the aloe is right there to soothe and aid in healing! Give it a try!


Supplements and Superfoods
Bee Pollen. Go out and get some of this amazing superfood today. This is our number one favorite superfood. You cannot beat it, dollars per nutrient.

There are several reasons we include pollen as part of the Juice Feast:

ONE: NUTRITION: Pollen is said to contain all the elements necessary for the sustenance of human life. The San Francisco Medical Research Foundation estimates that pollen has more than 5000 different enzymes and co-enzymes, which is more than any other food in existence. The high amount of enzymes, such as catalase, amylase, and pectin-splitting enzymes, make pollen and aid to digestion. Some research suggests that pollen is absorbed directly from the stomach into the bloodstream. Pollen is a vegetarian source of human-active B12, most of the B vitamins, vitamins A, C, D, and E, rutin, all the essential amino acids, the essential fatty acid called linoleic acid, fats, complex carbohydrates, simple sugars, RNA and DNA, steroid hormone substances, a plant hormone similar to a secretion of the human pituitary called gonadotrpin, 15% lecithin, and many other unknown factors. According to research by doctors from France, Italy, and the former USSR, pollen is the richest source of protein in nature. Gram for gram, pollen contains an estimated 5-7 times more protein than meat, eggs, or cheese. The protein in pollen is in a predigested form and therefore easy to assimilate. Pollen is also abundant in trace minerals, such as calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, iron, manganese, potassium, copper, silicon, sulphur choline, titanium, and sodium. These minerals are highly assimilable because they are bound organically from plant metabolism.

TWO: COMPASSION: We miss chewing anything on a Juice Feast. This is one thing that you can chew on for the entire Feast, whether it is 7 days or 92.

THREE: LIFE PRACTICE: This is a major longevity food. By eating about 1 Tablespoon per day, you will develop a strong positive bond with this food that will last for a lifetime.

When buying pollen, get it from a reputable source, organic, and preferably from a refrigerator. It should cost no more than $12-15 a pound, and can cost as little as $6-7 when bought from the beekeeper.

On the Juice Feast: 1 Tablespoon per day, maximum. Everyone who is new to bee pollen should start by placing 1 pollen granule under the tongue, to check for an allergic reaction. About 1/2 of 1 percent of the population is allergic to pollen as a food, but please check. If you are in doubt, please consult an allergist. Many people using pollen who have allergies during pollen season find a partial or complete resolution of their allergies by combining a plant-based diet and eating bee pollen as a life practice.


Exercise
Strength Training. This information is incredible:

You can weight train on a Juice Feast.


This is incredible news, because water fasting and traditional juice fasting do not provide the sustenance necessary for weight training: there is not enough food to energize and build muscle tissue. But the Juice Feast provides all the carbohydrates, fats, and protein and calories for you to be able to weight train, if you drink a sufficient quantity of juice - approximately 2000 - 2500 calories per day. There is a caveat, however.

For the first 30-45 days of the Feast, your body is in more of a breaking-down-old-tissue, cleansing mode, and much less in a rebuilding mode, although that is going on. For the first 30-45 days, it is less than advisable to do weight training, because you want your body to stay focused more on cleansing and reorganizing, not building. I have placed this file at this point in the Program so that you have two weeks before the middle of the Feast to locate a health club or some weight equipment so that you can begin weight training at that time.

Around Day 60 you can start turning all that green juice into some hard, strong, sexy muscle! One of my (Katrina) favorite muscle building books for women is Smart Girls Do Dumbells by Judith Sherman-Wolin. It is not a raw/vegan muscle building book, so as soon as one of you writes one, let us know! You can also check out Storm, who is a raw/vegan body builder. Also check out Robbie Hazeley. There are many more inspiring raw vegans out there for any one who is feeling skeptical about strong raw vegans, just google "raw vegan body builders!" It is not necessary to become muscle bound, and indeed you won't unless you try very very hard, but muscle is the tissue of youth, and will create a healthy hormonal balance in your body among many other things. Anywhere between fifteen to forty five minutes of weights a day is perfect.

Any exercise you do will require more juice, so be aware of that. You are looking at a minimum of 1.5 gallons of juice each day to weight train on a Juice Feast, and you should consult your health practitioner first! Do not overextend yourself at any point in the Feast - the body is always doing a lot of new work, so be aware of that and exercise accordingly under the guidance of a professional.

Live Food Nutrition provides the best building blocks possible. If you watch the 2008 Global Juice Feast, you are going to see me (David Rainoshek) build muscle on juice during a Juice Feast. This will create a paradigm shift in the world of cleansing.

So where is the information that we can weight train and build muscle on a raw, plant-based diet? A fantastic example is Peter Ragnar of http://www.roaringlionpublishing.com/, and his free! e-book: How to Build Muscle on a Raw Food Diet.


Multimedia
We have a video on Day 15: Persistence that I would like for you to watch now. It is Anthony Robbins talking about Sly Stallone and producing his blockbuster film Rocky. It is so important to water your seeds of persistence and determination now, before you Juice Feast. Perhaps you have been working with a health challenge for years, and if you are like I (David) was, persistence and faith in my ability to find the answers, to heal myself, were most important in my eventual transformation. This talk by Robbins on Sly Stallone will water these seeds in you to know your outcome and keep moving towards it.


What’s Ahead
Tomorrow you will test your Fasting Blood Sugar (FBS) for the first of a ten-day period. Place your blood sugar monitor by your bedside tonight so that you remember it in the morning. You are going to add in some of the skin care elements we discussed today, and we are going to talk about Positive Diversions.

Monday, February 18, 2008

DAY 12 Juice Feasting Preparation: Rest Easy
(c) 2008 by David and Katrina Rainoshek

Introduction
Hello! Were you able to get yourself a nice sharp knife and bamboo cutting board? Or did you dust off the ol’ knife and board and now they are sharp and shiny out on the counter just waiting for their exciting new job helping you Juice Feast? How about your Vita-Mix and nut mylk bags? Are they on their way yet?

Sleep in on the menu in today’s JFP, and you are going to love what you are about to hear! Also, you will start watering the seed in you that really just wants to bounce happily through life, on a rebounder! Hey, we encourage it!

Today David and I went to get ourselves a Blood Sugar Monitor at Walgreens because starting on the morning of Day 10 JFP We will be taking our FBS every morning until we begin the Global Juice Feast on March 1!

New Life Practice
Getting a Good Night’s Sleep is very, very important to health, healing and happiness. If you are sleeping well already, hooray! Then you will want to read this part for re-enforcement purposes only. If you are not sleeping as well, or as long, as you know you should be, read on!

Your body is able to do an incredible amount of wonderful things now that you are no longer dumping toxic foods into it. Instead, you are feeding every cell in your body some of the most amazing nutrition on the planet.

You can assist it in taking full advantage of this opportunity by getting adequate rest and sleep. While you are resting or sleeping, you free up energy so that your body can get to work at flushing out that old red dye #40 from your liver where it has been storing it because it was just too busy trying to keep up with all the MSG and other toxic things coming at it. Also while you are resting your body can safely remove that layer of mucus lining your intestine and bowel, that worked to protect you from the over 3,000 synthetic chemicals that are regularly added to food products (among other things) but has also (sadly) been preventing you from assimilating and absorbing valuable nutrients from your food. Remember: you absorb 90% of your nutrition through the wall of the small intestine. If that wall is lined with uneliminated waste matter, you will become malnourished. Thankfully this old matter will release and get flushed out by the Green Vegetable Juices and Intestinal Drawing Formula on the Feast.

Rest is not a waste of time! Imagine if you left your bathroom light on all the time. No matter what type of bulb it was, it would only last half as long or less than if you turned it off when you were not in the bathroom. You are like a lightbulb, and you need rest too, and not only do you not burn out as fast, but you actually re-energize yourself so that you may burn even brighter when you are on! Make use of resting in a peaceful spot during the day, sitting on a park bench, getting hugs, meditiation, deep breathing, going for a sauna, sunbathing, going to bed early, or yoga. You will find over time that your rest is very restful, and that your "on" time is very energetic and bright!

Sleep is not a waste of time! The sleeping brain and body do many important things, including regulating gastrointestinal, cardiovascular, and immune functions. Adequate sleep is especially important to hormone regulation. Lack of sleep creates hormonal imbalances that equate to metabolic disasters. It has even been shown in a ground-breaking study that after only a week of sleep deprivation, healthy, young men with no risk factor reached a pre-diabetic state. Why? Because without sleep, the central nervous system becomes more active, which inhibits the pancreas from producing enough insulin - an essential hormone that works to digest glucose, thus creating pre-diabetic blood sugar levels. Had the study's participants' sleep deprivation continued, as it does for so many people, these young men could well have turned diabetic, as so many young people currently are. So you can see, hormonal balance is very sensitive and very important, and it is extremely dependent on adequate sleep. To learn more about the importance of sleep, you can go to Day 30, Sleep and Insomnia.

Don't feel bad if you find you need more sleep than usual during the first part of your Juice Feast. You are only giving your body more time and energy to clean and repair house.

According to Sam Graci in his book The Food Connection, North America is the nation of the Great Un-Slept, being kept awake longer and longer by TV, telephones, electrical lights, the Internet, and e-mail.

Don't let this happen to you! Give yourself the gift of sleep and rest, and honor this amazing body you have been given! And remember, although sleep experts recommend eight and half hours of sleep per night, in the 1920's the average adult got nine to ten hours a night. And our ancient ancestors, following the rhythms of the sun and moon, got between ten and twelve hours of sleep. Again, don't feel bad if you are sleeping long hours; feel proud that you are doing something for your body that it desperately needs, especially if you are making up for years of inadequate sleep.

We recommend going to bed around the same time every night so that you can develop a healthy regular sleeping pattern. This will better ensure that you wake up at a regular time as well, probably without the use of an alarm clock (though make sure you do get up early enough to make your Juices!). Also, daily exercise is important to getting a good night's sleep. If you haven't yet, scroll back up this page and read the section on exercise. Make sure that you are sleeping in a completely dark room, as even the red light on an alarm clock will affect the delicate light-sensitive cells in our skin and thus our neurotransmitters that switch hormones "on" or "off." In nature, these light-sensitive cells would trigger the daytime hormones to be switched on during the light of day, and the night time hormones to be switched on during the dark of night. You do not want daytime hormones running around your body at night, thinking that there is still a bit of daylight because the red light on your alarm clock is keeping them activated. One easy solution for this is to throw a shirt over your clock. It is a good idea to turn off any electronics that share your sleeping space with you. For more, see
Day 30: Sleep and Insomnia.

Remember, if you are hungry right before bed time and have another juice, make sure it is a green juice, not fruit juice, as the sugar in the fruit juice will keep you awake. The green juice will quiet you though, and send you into a nice peaceful sleep.

Sweet Dreams! You are going to love how deeply you sleep as the Juice Feast goes on!

Pssstt!! If it is midnight and you are still up reading this, time for bed!

Kitchen, Bath, and Body
Blood Sugar Monitors are one of the most empowering tools that we have access to in terms of self-diagnosis. After writing the recently released There is a Cure for Diabetes with Dr. Gabriel Cousens, David became acutely aware of just how important it is to keep one’s blood sugar at a healthy level. Chronically high blood sugar, even when it doesn’t develop into diabetes, causes all kinds of health challenges for people in their later years. It is now generally recognized that alzheimer’s disease, among other health complications, is due largely in part to high blood sugar levels.

There is no longer any reason to feel fear about high blood sugar, we know exactly how to get it down to normal levels with a low-glycemic, low-fat plant based diet. Also, on your Juice Feast, you are going to create the health habits necessary for a life time of healthy blood sugar. So, today or tomorrow, go out and get yourself a blood sugar monitor! They are very en-expensive, in fact today David and I saw one that was FREE after mailing in a rebate form. If you do not have the free option in your local drug store, you won’t have to spend more than $10-20 on a monitor with 10 test strips, which is all you need for our purposes. Where the company really makes money is by selling you more test strips, which are about $1 each!

When we test our blood sugar, we are going to be learning what amount of fruit juice will be most healing for us to add into our Juice Feast. If you are someone with a high FBS, for example, you will want to keep your fruit juice intake to a minimum. For someone with a normal FBS, you can drink up to two quarts of fruit juice per day.

Exercise
Looking for exercise that is not only tons of fun, but also very effective? Add in Rebounding! Who doesn't love jumping on a trampoline? Well, rebounding is just that accept you get your own personal mini trampoline. According to Nasa "Rebound exercise is the most efficient and effective form of exercise yet devised by man" That being said, it is the perfect "busy person" exercise, and according to rebounder manufacturers, 10 minutes of rebounding produces the same results as 30 minutes of jogging! I (Katrina) find it hard to bounce for only 10 minutes though, and have been known to jump around for over an hour. Our favorite rebounder is by far the Bellicon Rebounder, found here
http://www.qibounding.com, but any rebounder will do the trick.

For a little video on how to properly rebound, see Sylvia’s “Pronating/Supinating”
info and video clip.

You can bounce, jump, run on the spot, dance, do jumping jacks, wave your arms around, what ever you like really! All the while you will be improving your lymphatic flow, bone density, coordination, joint flexibility, muscle tone, vascular strength, and much more. Shazzie says about rebounding "As rebounding affects every single cell, muscle and organ all at the same time, your body quickly undergoes noticeable positive changes." Hooray. Like yoga and walking, rebounding can be implemented in the early days of your Feast, just be sure to listen to your body and give it the intensity of bouncing that it is happy with.

For a fun, old-school rebounding video follow
this link and this one.


What’s Ahead

Tomorrow we will speak a little more about the importance of reading. We will also address skin brushing, shower filters, soap, and aloe vera gel. And we'll throw some strength training in there too!

Sunday, February 17, 2008

DAY 13 JFP: Walking on Water
(c) 2008 by David and Katrina Rainoshek

Introduction
Today we are going to add in a very valuable Life Practice that will continue to benefit you for years and years! By beginning to add in water to your day, especially your morning, your body is already becoming more vibrant! We are also going to look at getting a few more things for the kitchen…a bamboo cutting board and a really sharp, excellent knife. Good tools make the job so much more enjoyable! You will also be encouraged to try a wonderful treat, the Goji berry, as well as join some excellent online communities of people and create the essential element of support that goes along with any successful life transformation.

New Life Practice
Morning Water with Lemon. Once your feet hit the floor, the first thing you should be looking for (other than the toilet if you need to pee) is WATER.

Start every day with one quart of water with 1/2 lemon squeezed in, and between 1/2 tsp and 2 Tablespoons of MSM powder, depending on what your tolerance is (the way to know is by taste and whether you get the runs... MSM has no toxicity level (called an LD-50) that is the same as water itself.

Why water? We are 90% water when we are born, and by the time most of us die, we are about 50-60% water. As we dehydrate, our tissues become toxic and stiffen. Nutrients are not properly assimilated, and toxic matter does not leave our cells and lymphatic fluid in a timely manner. Our blood thickens. Brain function is compromised. Do you know what a hangover is? Dehydration. Most westerners are dehydrated every day of their lives, waking up agitated and groggy, and thinking that another dehydrating agent, coffee, is going to get them going. It will only kick you further down. Water is your best energizer in the morning, and that is why we are training you now to develop as a life practice drinking 1 quart of water each morning. Drinking water will wake up your mind, hydrate your tissues (reducing chronic pain), and some water will go down to your bowel to help you eliminate the waste matter accumulated during the night, so that you do not carry it around during the day and re-assimilate old fecal material back into your system, thus reducing cleansing reactions!

By the way, water is something you will learn much more about on Day 33 and Day 34 of the Juice Feasting Program, and if this topic interests you start pre-loading some of that information now.

Now, in that quart of water you are adding another hydrator, lemon juice. Citrus is a hydrogen concentrator, and the element hydrogen hydrates. Lemon is also fairly high in Vitamin C, and vitamin C and MSM work synergistically together.

MSM is a sulfur compound, and sulfur is the third most prevalent mineral in the body. We have derived a lot of knowledge about MSM from Dr. Stanley Jacob, who wrote The Miracle of MSM, a book that you will find an indispensable addition to your library. It just so happens that MSM breaks up scar tissue, reduces inflammation better than any anti-inflammatory drug out there, and has no side effects (other than the runs if you take more than your body knows how to use). A therapeutic amount of MSM is 2-3 Tablespoons a day (and more), but for most of us, the body will need to learn how to use MSM before we can reach that amount.

BENEFITS OF MSM
Dr. Stanley Jacob, author of The Miracle of MSM considers the following to be MSM's most significant actions:

· It is an analgesic. It relieves pain.
· It reduces inflammation.
· It passes through cellular membranes of the body, including the skin.
· It dilates blood vessels (vasodilation) and increases blood flow.
· It is a cholinesterase inhibitor. Cholinsterase is an enzyme that stops excessive passage of nerve impulses from one nerve cell to another. I have seen MSM provide swift relief of constipation associated with aging. By blocking the action of cholinesterase, MSM helps restore normal bowel activity (peristalsis).
· It reduces muscle spasm. Injury or inflammation commonly causes spasm in a muscle or group of muscles. Spasm involves a sudden contraction, which is followed by pain and interference with function. Spasm can be felt by a physician's touch or measured with electromyography. If you apply an MSM gel or cream to an affected area and then feel the muscle again later, or measure it electrically, the muscle is looser, the area less tender. MSM taken orally produces a muscle-relaxing effect.
· It alters the crosslinking process in collagen, thus reducing scar tissue. Crosslinking is the process in which new structural proteins are knitted to existing healthy tissue at the sites of surgical incisions or traumatic damage in the body.
· It has antiparasitic properties, particularly for giardia, a protozoan parasite that causes diarrhea.
It has an immune normalizing effect, as observed in some autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, and scleroderma.


MSM is potentiated, or made more bioavailable (and therefore effective) in your body, when combined with Vitamin C. Also, the lemon in your water will soften the taste of the MSM, which will take a few days to get accustomed to. Just start with a low amount as mentioned above, and move up as your body and taste buds adjust.

This is a Life Practice that you are developing: 1 Quart of water, 1/2 Lemon, and 1 Tablespoon of MSM.

So, tomorrow morning what is the first thing you are going to do? Drink water! Give those beautiful organs of yours a wonderful clean bath, and re-hydrate all of your cells!

Kitchen, Bath, and Body
Sharp Chef’s Knife. If you already have one of these in your kitchen, excellent! If not, why not treat yourself to one? Or at least a knife sharpener? Having a good sharp knife can make things much smoother and efficient when chopping carrots, celery, apples, etc before they are juiced. You may also want to consider getting a cleaver for opening young coconuts. You will learn more about young coconuts and how to open them during the Program on Day 18. On the Juice Feast, you can drink coconut water in place of some fruit juice, if drinking these high-glycemic juices is appropriate for you. If you do, you will want a suitable cleaver.

Most Asian Markets carry cleavers. Make sure you get a cleaver that has a full metal handle, not the wooden covered ones. The wood will eventually loosen and render the knife useless.

Bamboo Cutting Board. Of course any cutting board will work, but we highly recommend a bamboo one. Bamboo is a beautiful grass that grows to a harvestable height and width between 3 - 5 years. Some species grow up to 2 feet per day! After harvesting, bamboo does not require replanting, it has an extensive root system that continually sends up new shoots, naturally replenishing itself, making it one of the most ren ewable resources known. It is an ecologically renewable alternative to hard woods, and is 16% harder than maple wood, and 1/3 lighter in weight than oak. It can also be as strong as steel. Bamboo holds the promise of a sustainable, cost effective, and ecologically responsible alternative to the widespread clearcutting of our old growth forests. Why not begin with a bamboo cutting board, who knows, maybe one day you'll build a beautiful bamboo house! Because bamboo is so hard and dense, it absorbs very little, making it a very sanitary kitchen cutting board. We like to take our bamboo board with us when ever we travel. That way we can have a little counter top/table no mater where we are!

Oil your cutting boards with coconut oil. It is extremely resistant to rancidity, and is an antimicrobial, antibacterial, antifungal agent. Perfect for your boards!

Supplements and Superfoods
Goji Berries. Have you tried out the infamous Goji Berry yet? If not, lets try them out today! Although they will not be a big part of your Juice Feast, you will want to add them into your diet after you have broken your Feast so lets give them a whirl now. Goji berries contain up to 21 trace minerals and are the richest source of carotenoids of all known foods on earth! They contain 500 times the amount of Vitamin C, by weight, than oranges, making them second only to camu camu berries as the richest vitamin C source. They are also high in vitamins B1, B2, B6, and E.

Goji Berries also contain polysaccharides which fortify the immune system. One polysaccharide found in this fruit has been found to be a powerful secretagogue (a substance that stimulates the secretion of rejuvenative human growth hormone by the pituitary gland). Goji berries have been traditionally regarded as a longevity, strength-building, and sexual potency food of the highest order.

You can also make a juice that we call Arizona Sunrise that is made by blending some soaked goji berries in to your freshly made orange juice, then squeezing out the goji pulp with your nut mylk bag. For an extra special juice, add in MSM too. The color is amazing, and it is SO yummy! For more information on the magic of goji berries (and other berries) see Day 70: Berries on the 92 Day Program!


Exercise
Also begin Walking! Walking is our favorite daily form of exercise. It gets you outside, moving through the fresh outside air, and often brings you in contact with nature. Even in the city there are parks where you can go and commune with the trees. For most people, a brisk walk for little more than half an hour per day will meet their exercise requirements. This form of exercise also generates a nearly 70% reduction in the occurrence of breast cancer in women! Use your stomach muscles as you are walking to flatten your tummy and strengthen your back, and take deep breaths. Lack of oxygen is behind many symptoms of illness, especially a dull mind. If you want to invigorate your mind, step outside and take at least ten long, deep, mindful breaths.

Walking also gets the lymph moving, which is very important to optimal health and is vital for a successful cleanse.

You don’t need to go for a long walk to benefit your body, 10-30 minutes is excellent. 10-30 minutes twice a day is also wonderful! For more on walking see Day 16!

For a short video on walking yoga with Rodney Yee, follow this link.

So, tomorrow morning, after you have your quart of morning water, why not go outside for a walk? Or when you get home from work for the evening, why not go for a walk? Even just around the block will feel good….

Multimedia/Internet
http://www.giveittomeraw.com/
http://www.globaljuicefeast.com/
JuiceFeasting.Blogspot.com


What’s Ahead
Tomorrow we will talk about the importance of sleep, and we are going to go shopping for the very important Blood Sugar Monitor that will help us to determine our level of fruit juice intake over the course of the Juice Feast. We will start taking our FBS (Fasting Blood Sugar) on the morning of Day 10 JFP. We will also get into some really bouncy exercise, fun, fun, fun!

Saturday, February 16, 2008

14 Days till GJF!

DAY 14 JFP: More Power to You

Introduction
Today you will gently begin, or continue, to wake up to your own potential. Be happy, you have an amazing community of people supporting you! Today we are going to add some happiness to your life that will be a source of strength to you the rest of your decades!

Purchases will be made today. Please know that the life shifts that you make now are going to bring abundance into your life swiftly. Supplies for your Juice Feast – some of them will be used by you for years. They will make other appliances, health challenges, and emotional patterns relics of the past. As you acquire items for your journey, breathe and smile. Rest in the knowing that your life, and that of those whom you will positively change for the rest of their lives, will benefit from the actions you are taking now.

New Life Practices
Smiling in the Morning. I don’t know about you, but every morning of my (David Rain) life (until I cut out the processed foods) I was agitated for the first 30 minutes or so. And agitation could quickly lead to anger. Family and roommates kept quiet, and maintained their distance a bit. I was dehydrated and toxic from the foods I had eaten the day before, and the quality of my sleep was less than good, hence the agitation. Two weeks after eating all plant-based live foods, I woke up one morning feeling happy, right from the start. I realized that I could brighten someone else’s day immediately. It was a miracle! I became one of those happy morning people you see cartoons about. One of our Juice Feasting students recently experienced this and wrote about it:

I also want to mention how I had… to be at work for 7am. Despite not getting a lot of sleep (I don't know why, I stayed up late watching TV LOL), I got up at 4am and made my juices, skin brushed, contrast showered, got pretty and ran out the door. On my way to work I realized... that in my pre-JF days, I would have been utterly knackered; zombie-like, groggy, bitchy and ready to stab anyone that stood between me and a venti soy latte........ This is how much energy you have while juice feasting! It's unreal! And I just thought I wasn't a morning person!
Ben Kaelan, Day 15 Juice Feast on A Juicy Conspiracy

But not only is the food going to help you have a better morning – you are going to decide to water your best seeds and set a deep intention for the day before getting out of bed:

Waking up this morning, I smile.
Twenty-four brand new hours are before me.
I vow to live fully in each moment,
And look on all beings with eyes of compassion.


This beautiful morning poem by Zen Master and poet Thich Nhat Hanh is something you can write down and lay next to your bed until it becomes part of your memory, and your morning automatically. You might try saying this with your partner before the two of you get out of bed, which, over a few days and weeks, will have a subtle but significant effect on the quality of your mornings together.

Calligraphy by Thich Nhat Hanh

Finally, know that beautiful things await you every day of your Juice Feast. Because of the great intention with which you heal yourself, and the purity of the foods you are taking in, you become a vortex for wonderful things to come into your life. Synchronicities will happen, and even the events which do not look initially positive will turn out to be very good. You may not believe us right now, but just remember that we mentioned synchronicities and Juice Feasting, and you will experience this for yourself.

Morning Green Smoothie. It took me almost three years of eating live foods before I could look at a Green Vegetable Juice and not see it as Oscar the Grouch in a Can. We have been socialized to like anything but greens, and when we do eat them, many are of the pale, substandard Cobb Salad variety, dressed in dairy just to get them down. I have been there. Greens have taken it hard by the processed food culture.

But greens are making a comeback, thanks in large part to Victoria Boutenko and her book Green for Life, which set the Green Smoothie (blending fruit, leafy greens, vegetables, and superfoods together) on the world stage. Why would someone make such a drink?

Visit Day 8: Greens, Chlorophyll, and Health

We know that leafy greens are the most nutrient-dense foods on the planet. Nutrient density is defined as a ratio of nutrient content (in grams) to the total energy content (in kilocalories or joules). Nutrient-dense food is opposite to energy-dense food (also called "empty calorie" food). According to the Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2005, nutrient-dense foods are those foods that provide substantial amounts of vitamins and minerals and relatively few calories. For example, fruit and vegetables are considered nutrient-dense food, while products containing added sugars, saturated fats, and alcohol are considered nutrient-poor food.

Nutrient density is also understood as the ratio of the nutrient composition of a given food to the nutrient requirements of the human body. Therefore, a nutrient-dense food is the food that delivers a complete nutritional package.

One of the major reasons for eating greens is that they are the most Nutrient Dense Foods available to us. David Wolfe, in his landmark book The Sunfood Diet Success System, notes:

Green-leafed vegetables are overall the best source of iron; parsley and spinach are particularly high in iron. Greens heal anemia. (Other sources of iron include red-colored fruits, such as watermelon, berries, pome­granate, and red-flesh figs).

Green-leafed vegetables often do not taste as wonderful as fruits. But eating them nonetheless breaks associations of pleasure with eating, therefore decreasing the possibility of overeating. Green-leafed vegeta­bles diminish the enjoyment in eating and act as a natural stop for us in the eating cycle.

Where does the cow get its calcium for its milk? From green grass, of course. Now we are not grass eaters, but this analogy is instructive because it demonstrates that all the minerals a cow is constructed from are present in grass - in simple green grass!

Green-leafed vegetables are always the best source of heavy minerals: calcium, magnesium, etc. The alkaline minerals in greens balance the acid-forming minerals (sulfur, chlorine, and phosphorus) found in avoca­dos, nuts, seeds, onions, garlic, etc.

Green-leafy vegetation is also an excellent detoxifier of the liver, especially wild green vegetation. Deep green and wild green vegetation binds with heavy metals and chemicals from recreational drugs and allows the body to wash them out as salts through the urine.

Below is a nutrient-density chart by Dr. Joel Fuhrman, MD, author of Eat to Live, another excellent book you will be hearing about again. You will notice above are all the items highlighted in blue that we are accessing on a Juice Feast. By using 12-15 lbs of these nutrient dense foods each day, taking alkalizing and rebuilding all the way. To your health!



The chlorophyll-hemoglobin graphic below is also important. Plant blood is very similar to human blood hemoglobin, with one notable exception—the element magnesium is at the center of the chlorophyll molecule, and the element iron is at the center of our blood hemoglobin.


Why is magnesium important for our health? It is 17 times more prevalent in our heart muscle than in any other tissue in our body. That means that eating leafy greens is feeding your heart! This is undoubtedly behind the high rates of heart disease in the westernized world that eats few plant foods.

Visit Day 43: Heart Disease

Want scientific data to back that up? Below is a chart from Eat to Live by Dr. Joel Fuhrman, MD, showing the rates of cancer and heart disease versus the amount of plant-based foods eaten in a given society.

The bottom line is getting greens in is crucial, and one of the primary ways to do this is to make Green Smoothies. These are easy, delicious, and portable! Below is a basic Green Smoothie Recipe.

In your blender, mix:

¼ cucumber
3 stalks celery
½ lb leafy greens
10-16 oz fruit – preferably low glycemic fruit such as berries
1 T Green Superfood Powder Concentrate (Vitamineral Green, Pure Synergy, etc)
1T Blue Green Algae (Spirulina, Chlorella, or E3Live)
½ cup water

Blend in your High Speed Blender for 30 seconds, pour and enjoy! You can also add bee pollen! Drink a quart of Green Smoothie (or more) every morning. Katrina and I eat this way almost every day of our lives. This is an excellent way to get greens into your life, and to train your physiology, taste buds, and your own habit energy to ask for greens, even before you start Juice Feasting. As we mentioned in an earlier post, adding in Green Smoothies now will do two very important things: one, it will begin to train your body to like and ask for greens, and two, it will lighten the load on your digestion which will make the beginning of your Juice Feast much easier.

Finally, watch the Green Smoothie Queen herself, Victoria Boutenko on a six-minute video demo with host Adrienne Martin of Abundant Living. This is the best video we have seen yet on making Green Smoothies.


Kitchen, Bath, and Body

Things to be ordering over the next few days:

Vitamix (or other High Speed Blender) and/or Juicer. A common question is “What is the best juicer?” The answer is, “The one that is used.” Whatever you make juice with is your most important appliance on a Feast. In order for the Program to work, you need to extract vibrant, living juices from your produce with no pulp left over. Some produce is difficult to juice, such as leafy greens, because each cell wall must be broken open to extract the juice. Some juicers do not have this capacity, such as centrifugal juicers like the Juiceman (still an good little juicer for fruits and root crops, however. The best orange juice we have ever had comes out of our Juiceman.)

To be clear, you can use either a blender or a juicer to make juice on a Feast, or a combination of the two. Historically, we have used both a juicer and a blender to make juices, and we will cover in detail how each appliance can be used to make great tasting, vibrant juice. What do we want in a juicer? Mainly:

Excellent extraction of juice from produce
Ease of use and cleaning
Enzyme Retention (i.e. juice that lasts after being made)
Affordability

We want this Juice Feast to be effective, and yet as efficient as possible for you. Your easiest way to make juice on a Feast is with a Vitamix, straining the juice from the pulp with a nut mylk bag, so let's start there. You can make all of your juice for the day in about an hour first thing in the morning with a Vitamix, and clean-up takes seconds. Let's look at the Vitamix.

A Vitamix will be your most useful and used live foods kitchen appliance, without question. We know, it is just a blender, right? It makes smoothies, soups, salad dressings, sorbet, pâtés, and, most important in Juice Feasting, your green vegetable juices for straining through a nut mylk bag (see below).

Most of us do not have much time to make juices. You can make every juice on the Feast using this appliance. You may have a version of the Bass O'Matic seen in this video. If you do, please trade that blender in for this. Bass O'Matics and other honorable blenders even found at stores like Target and JC Penny are not going to break open the cell walls of your greens enough to be able to expose the juice inside.

After the Feast, you will want this baby to do the Four Means to Get Your Greens, which you can read more about under Current Projects or on Day 83 of the 92-Day Juice Feasting Program.

Get this blender even if you have to sell your oven and microwave and coffeemaker to get it. We are not kidding.

For more information on blenders, see the VitaMix/BlendTec showdown, and download the High Speed Blenders Comparison File we have created for you free on JuiceFeasting.com.


Nut Mylk Bags. These bags are for use in straining juices (mainly Green Vegetable Juices) made in the blender. Also useful for making nut and seed mylks when not Juice Feasting.

When you order these, order FOUR NUT MYLK BAGS. The reason is that these will get holes in them during your Juice Feast, and they are essential for making your juices. Make sure that you have enough of these.

A Juicy Tip is that when you get a hole in a bag, don't throw it out. Save it, and when the next one gets a hole, you can put the two together and keep right on juicing with them.

Also: clean your nut mylk bags in 3 percent hydrogen peroxide every week. The best way to do this is put a cup of hydrogen peroxide in a glass, and submerse your nut mylk bag in it with a spoon on top to hold it down. Just leave it like this while you are away at work, and rinse when you get home!

Note: An old t-shirt, a pillow case, or a lady’s knee-high nylon stocking can serve the same function until a nut mylk bag arrives.


Supplements and Superfoods

If you are ordering supplements and superfoods online, today and tomorrow are the days to do this if you want these items before the Juice Feast begins. That being said, if you do wait a little longer to order because you are just learning about these elements of the Feast, know that having them right away is not crucial. The most important thing you are doing is drinking GVJ and supporting your organs of elimination through the practices on the Day in the Life of a Juice Feaster. However, adding some of these in even while you are Getting Your Juices Flowing can be excellent. For example, you can add in MSM to your Morning Water with Lemon, add Green Superfood Powders and Blue Green Algae to your Green Smoothies, and explore our favorite superfood, bee pollen granules (check out Day 17: Bee Pollen).

Detailed information about these supplements and superfoods is available in the free Juice Feasting Introduction on Juice Feasting.com in two main places:
Supplements and Superfoods
Juice Feasting Timeline

You will see these popping up again as you are Getting Your Juices Flowing, as well.

Exercise

YOGA! We encourage you to begin a yoga practice. This and walking are your two easiest forms of exercise – and yoga can be done indoors even when it is not so nice outside. If you have never practiced yoga before, go to your local organic foods market or bookstore, and pick up some copies of some yoga magazines, such as Yoga Journal. Just begin to expose your mind to the poses, the information, and get inspired. Cut out beautiful people in various positions and put them on your fridge, or leave them laying around. These are archetypes that you can pre-load in your mind. You are going to find your archetypal self – your authentic yoga practice, and it may or may not look like those photos, but it will be you. These images are to help you develop a feeling inside yourself – they look the way you have the capacity to feel doing yoga: that is the point. Rodney Yee expresses this experience in a Gaiam video called “Love Your Body.” The days of looking at magazine covers and models and all that garbage and wishing you looked like them is over. Juice Feasting is designed to help you feel and be beautiful from the very depths of your being, and when you access that, then your true beauty will shine forth and everyone will see it, including you.

Right off the bat, a stellar online resource for yoga is created by long-time yoga practitioner and teacher, Rodney Yee. Check out his store: http://rodneyyeeyogastore.com There you will find books, mats, DVDs, CDs, and more. Another excellent online store is Gaiam.
Yoga video resources
Videos by Rodney Yee
Free Online: 10 Essential Yoga Poses with Rodney Yee

Yoga book resources
Moving Toward Balance: 8 Weeks of Yoga with Rodney Yee
Yoga for 50+: Modified Poses and Techniques by Richard Rosen
B.K.S. Iyengar Yoga
Bikram’s Beginning Yoga Class by Bikram Choudhury
Yoga: The Poetry of the Body with Rodney Yee
Yoga Mind, Body, Spirit by Donna Farhi
Yoga from the Heart by Yogananth Andiappan


Next, get a yoga mat and make sure you like it – no, love it. There are some great eco-friendly yoga mats made out of jute and rubber you may be able to find.

Find some music to practice yoga by at home. We LOVE Yoga Rhythms by Shiva Rae. You can get a taste for that CD here.

Finally, see about joining a class in your local area. The place you want to go to find a class in your area is: YogaJournal.com/directory.

What you will find as you progress in your yoga practice is that you do not do yoga or practice yoga anymore; you are yoga, as this is a deeply unifying practice. Shazzie writes in her book Detox Your World:

Despite the many types of yoga, there really is one common aim: to create unity. This is done by cleansing and purifying the mind, body, and spirit simultaneously. It’s a great way to achieve equilibrium, so if you feel unbalanced in any way at all, yoga will be of great relief to you. As well as detoxing you on a physical level, by promoting your lymph to move, yoga detoxes your emotions. The great thing about yoga is that it works on everything simultaneously.

To say that yoga is complementary to Juice Feasting is an understatement. We are so pleased that this exercise has been made so accessible now that we can water this seed in you as you prepare for your hero’s journey.


Multimedia/Internet
JuiceFeasting.com Peruse the Juice Feasting Intro. We have created this Introduction to be a source of consistent information about Juice Feasting, free and available to everyone. Refer to it often, as it augments this Guide.
Green for Life by Victoria Boutenko at www.rawfamily.com
Video: Victoria Boutenko Making Green Smoothies


What’s Ahead
Tomorrow morning, we are going to add in a new Life Practice – Morning Water. You are also going to improve your kitchen some more with a new implement or two, and join an online community of people who are on a similar hero’s journey to the one you are on now.
GETTING YOUR JUICES FLOWING
14 DAYS OF JUICE FEASTING PREPARATION
By David and Katrina Rainoshek © February 2008
www.juicefeasting.com
www.globaljuicefeast.com
www.JuiceFeasting.Blogspot.com


In the Hero’s Journey of Juice Feasting, your aim in the beginning is to re-establish health, but upon completion you recognize that Juice Feasting is more than a means to physical renewal—it is the actualization and realization of your highest potential as a human being. The Journey is Awakening itself. You become a modern hero – not in an ego-centered way, but as an individual who, with great compassion born of experience through the trials, transformations, and insights from your own Journey, hears the cries of the world, and offers a way out simply by the virtue of your deep, vibrant, and conscious daily life nourished by food eaten as an Act of Love.
– David Rainoshek, M.A.


INTRODUCTION
IT IS NOT OFTEN IN LIFE that one receives a Call to Adventure as strong as Juice Feasting. Few adventures in modern life contain the possibility of such a substantial, positive, long-lasting reorganization of one’s being – physically, dietarily, spiritually, mentally, emotionally, socially… Particularly outside the confines of any one of the major world religious traditions, a round-the-world sailing trip, thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail, having a child, or any of the many other life-transforming experiences in which we may partake.

This moment – this time – is very important in your life, and the decisions that you make now are to dramatically effect not only your present moment, but your future and that of people you have not yet encountered.

By taking up the Call to Adventure to Juice Feast, heal yourself, find your archetypal self, and discover the limitless possibilities lying dormant in your being, you become one of the most important people on this good earth at a potent hour in our history.

You are aware of our challenges: overweight/obesity at near 75% in the U.S.; millions die each year from heart disease – entirely preventable by diet; one out of three children born today will develop diabetes; hypertension and high cholesterol pharmaceuticals top the list of most prescribed drugs. The diet and lifestyle that has created these, and a multitude of other preventable and reversible conditions, is also leading to the destruction of our finite resources: arable land, clean air and water, and with these losses go flora and fauna.

Juice Feasting, as discovered by John Rose, and developed by David and Katrina Rainoshek of
www.juicefeasting.com, is designed to be THE DOOR through which we can walk to address all of these challenges in one beautiful synergy, without guilt or shame, while cultivating the greatest potential in ourselves as individuals and as a society.

“Juice Feasting is an Act of Love.” – David Rainoshek, MA

For any adventure, it is important to be well-prepared, and a competent guide can help you with the initial exciting weeks of discovery. I (David) have been practiced periodic fasting over the last 12 years, and have been Juice Feasting since 2003 when I met the discoverer of Juice Feasting, John Rose. To date, I have Juice Feasted on three major occasions, my longest Feasts being 65 and 92 Days. Over the last 5 years I have educated thousands in the practice, and have personally coached hundreds of individuals in their own personal Feasts.

What Katrina and I are finding is that as we have developed the preparation side of our 92-Day Juice Feasting Program (which includes the aspects we will discuss below), our students have, understandably, been far, far more successful in transforming their health challenges, meeting and exceeding their goals, and with a joy and enthusiasm that we have the great privilege of hearing about on a daily basis.

Getting Your Juices Flowing is designed to augment the free Juice Feasting Intro on JuiceFeasting.com into a daily, progressive format. We are going to give you some priceless ideas, and water seeds in you that will support this beautiful transformation you have drawn into your life. Never before has answering the Juice Feasting Call to Adventure been such an abundant, exciting, understandable, and engaging direction to take one’s life.

Time. You have two weeks that we have created for you to prepare for your Juice Feast. You may be new to all this information, and it is crucial to understand that you do not need to take everything in all at once with perfect recall. This ain’t high school or graduate school. Establish now the practice of returning to information in a relaxed and open manner multiple times to help your conscious and subconscious mind assimilate what you need. We have made this preparation fun, and engaging. You are going to make new friends, and learn things that most people do not know – but should. We, as your coaches, understand how personal food and health is to you, and how deeply the feelings about these things can be. Juice Feasting is a beginning anew for many of our students in this regard. We are creating time for you, for this to happen peacefully and from a place of strength.

Space, Peace, Stillness, Quiet, Pondering. This is a non-violent process. Remember that the life you have been living is a form of seed watering, like taking care of plants in a garden. A good gardener is mindful to water and nurture the plants that he or she wants to maintain; to allow the plants that no longer serve to die back, and to ever and always plant and cultivate new things. Establish peace around the shifts and new things you are inviting in, and honor – not regret, bemoan, or feel guilty about any seeds you have watered or cultivated in the past. Everything in your life has had a reason, which has brought you to this beautiful moment now, to create the amazing future you are establishing in the present. We will offer you some practices to – with peace – honor and release so that new things, experiences, people, and synchronicities can flow into your life.

An Invitation to be Outdoors. When you begin to feel better emotionally, when your hair is lit on fire by the new ideas and people in your life, and your body begins to perk up from eliminating toxins and drawing in the most nutrient-dense life-affirming foods possible, you are going to want to go outside! Walking, biking, rebounding, Frisbee, golf, tennis, kite-flying, etc. We are meant to move and breathe clean air. What is more, the sun is a healing element, and once you read the data on sunlight, Vitamin D, and reduced rates of breast and prostate cancer, the outdoors will be calling you, and you can just ease on in – or out!

Information. There are over 350 files on nutrition, food, and life transformation that we have for you as part of our 92-Day Program, along with hundreds of videos and websites. We will be referring to just some of these while you are getting your juices flowing, so that when you return to them during the Feast, your mind will have already pre-loaded some of the information and will be ready to absorb it at a new level.

Community. Five years ago, you could not find a community of Juice Feasters. In fact, the online community of Feasters did not make a significant leap until late 2007, after we alerted many of the top live foods bloggers about Juice Feasting, and invited them to take JuiceFeasting.com for a spin. They started talking – and blogging – and Feasting – and as of March 2008 there are over 30 well-known successful Juice Feasting Blogs available, making it the most blogged about Raw Food subtopic at this point. There are discussion groups and forums with hundreds (and soon to be thousands) of Feasters. What this means to you is that a loving, authentic, knowledgeable community of people from all over the world are available to you who have been, or are on, the same Hero’s Journey as you are on now. They have taken up the call, learned about themselves, and eat and live as an act of love. I do not think there is one of us out there who is not grateful for this beautiful community of people. We are going to link you in.

Non-Fear. All of this is designed to give you the gift of non-fear – to cultivate solidity in you. This is one of the greatest gifts anyone can offer another. Know that you are not alone. The answers that you have been seeking: they are found through the door you face now. A loving and knowledgeable community awaits you. Joseph Campbell said it best:

We have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heroes of all time have gone before us; the labyrinth is thoroughly known; we have only to follow the thread of the hero path. And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence; where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.
– Joseph Campbell, The Hero With a Thousand Faces



Consultation. In addition to the aide of this guide, please consider contacting a Certified Juice Feasting Consultant at JuiceFeasting.com We have established a stellar crew of some of the most switched on, authentic, genuinely compassionate individuals to guide you through the entire Juice Feasting journey from start to finish. These Consultants have trained for years in the practice of nutrient-dense nutrition, life transformation, are avid learners and adventurers themselves. Working with any member of our team will add significantly to the efforts you are making now.


What Each Day of Feasting Prep Provides

Introduction. Read your new introduction every morning, and this will help you pre-load (read: vision) in your mind with how you are going to create your day.[1] Our 92-Day Juice Feasting Program has been designed to keep you engaged in exciting new information, experiences, and opportunities, and now we have expanded our Program to include these beautiful and important days leading up to your Feast. By deciding to Juice Feast and draw in abundant nutrition and life practices, you have consciously chosen to be a self-directed, self-actualizing person in a dynamic new way. Use each day’s introduction to help establish the Life Practice of visualizing your day – of watering the best seeds possible in yourself so that you can realize your potential in every moment of your life.

New Life Practices. We adopted the term “Life Practice” from Ken Wilber’s Integral Institute, in which students are taught about integrating practices that engage them in every aspect of human life.

“Our most successful Juice Feasters do not view physical health transformation as something that can happen in a vacuum, but is best experienced in the context of a greater life shift.”
– David and Katrina Rainoshek


They practice what Integral Philosopher Ken Wilber calls “spiritual cross-training,” in which consistent practices of self-development that are seemingly unrelated work synergistically to improve performance of one another. Research has found that people who want to excel in one particular area do better if they incorporate practices that build their abilities in other areas of the human experience. In other words, you will be a better writer if you spend less time writing, and more time also adding in meaningful exercise, spiritual practices, cultural activities, nutrition, and so on.


People like to joke that there are so many wonderful things we can engage in to realize our potential that we can give ourselves what he calls a metaphysical hernia. So we want to be gentle about this process, and incorporate Life Practices over time, as a natural, organic, enjoyable flow.

As a Juice Feaster and one who is looking to eat a nutrient-dense, plant-based live food cuisine, you will be more successful in this endeavor if you also draw in abundance and seek your potential in other avenues, such as reading, conversations, your career, sports, your relationships… In Getting Your Juices Flowing and into the 92-Day Juice Feasting Program, we will be introducing skillful Life Practices so that you can cross-train, and not find yourself trying to access live foods and physical transformation in isolation, with the rest of your life in some form of stagnation or unsupportive role.

The way you eat – how you Juice Feast, is an indication of the level at which you are looking to actualize your life, and this is supported by skillfully cross-training. In that interest, we will gently introduce you to Life Practices that will help you open to your potential.

Through cross-training and not just hyper-focusing on our diet as part of our personal evolution, we recognize that shifting to a diet of nutrient-dense plant foods is not an act that exists by itself, but part and parcel of a larger determination to acknowledge who you are at a fundamental level and to live your authenticity to the best of your ability. In 1984, George Orwell coined the word doublethink to describe the act of knowing one thing and doing something else. When it comes to something as fundamental as your foods source, shifting to a non-toxic, life-affirming, worldcentric diet of nutrient-dense live foods encouraged by Juice Feasting will inform and support your choices in every avenue of your life. Those who are most successful at this draw in with purpose the best persons, information, events, environments, and experiences possible – and this makes the challenge of moving into live foods easier, as it is just one aspect of a greater life transformation. While live foods may be your first shift towards the amazing life that your deepest inclinations compel you, please view it – and make it – part of a larger Act of Love for yourself and all beings.

Kitchen, Bath, and Body. Everyone loves getting new kitchen appliances, and updating their kitchen, bath, and body comfort. In your JFP, you are going to give yourself some wonderful gifts whose benefit will be limitless. After years of research and personal experience and coaching, we are bringing you tried and true elements in this area that will find you happy for years to come, and will benefit you and your family immensely.

The elements in your kitchen, bath, and what goes into your body has a dramatic effect on your being. For many of us in western society, this has not been an entirely positive reality. There are over 65,000 different industrial and agrochemical toxins in the environment, and a fair number of them can come in before you go to work! Randall Fitzgerald writes in his well-researched book The Hundred Year Lie: How Food and Medicine are Destroying Your Health:

Over the past three decades, chemical companies have provided the EPA with health data for only about 15 percent of the tens of thousands of new synthetic chemicals that have been introduced to the marketplace, according to a 2005 report by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of the U.S. Congress. “EPA does not routinely assess existing chemicals, has limited information on their health and environmental risks, and has issued few regulations controlling such chemicals,” the report charged.

When it comes to chemicals added to cosmetics and many other personal-care products, the FDA knows about as much about their safety as you do. Under FDA regulations neither cosmetic products nor cosmetic ingredients are reviewed or approved by the FDA before they are sold to the public. Every consumer uses an average of nine personal-care products containing 126 separate ingredients each day, Estimates the Environmental Working Group, and at least one-third of these ingredients has been identified as causing cancer or other serious health problem.[2]


There is a lot to be concerned about out there, but we are not going to water that seed of fear in you, because that is not what Juice Feasting is about. Instead, we are going to create awareness that knows no fear, because an educated and self-empowered person, instead of reacting in fear, knows how to respond from a place of understanding and solidity.

Therefore, we are going to educate you in how to move out the things from your kitchen and bath that are less than helpful to your health challenges and goals, and move elements into your life that are life-affirming.

Supplements and Superfoods. The most important thing you are doing on a Juice Feast is drinking 3-4 or more quarts of fresh juice each day, and supporting your organs of elimination through enemas, exercise, skin brushing, hot/cool showers, and adequate rest.

Supplements are add-ins. Some are very powerful, effective add-ins, but they are still additions. We are not supplements fanatics. Supplements are useful, particularly for re-establishing balance when less than the best diet and lifestyle has been practiced for some years.

But supplements can be pharmaceuticalized.

What we mean by that is that many, many people use supplements like they use pharmaceutical drugs: to mask symptoms or to make up for poor diet and lifestyle. There is no substitute for a healthy diet and life. We are going to teach you through the 92-Day Juice Feasting Program how to access the most abundant life possible, that does not require heavy supplementation but creates well-being through drawing in the best foods, thoughts, conversations, and experiences.

That being said, we have very carefully chosen some very specific and powerful supplements and (super)foods to add into your Juice Feast to help your body more effectively CLEANSE - REBUILD - REHYDRATE - ALKALIZE. Some of these items will break up scar tissue, others reduce inflammation, or pull agrochemicals and industrial toxins from every cell in your body, and a few are just extremely mineral dense to make up for deficiencies established over the years.

We are going to review what these goodies are, and the potential benefits to you. We will cover what professionals suggest as a recommended amount for these supplements and (super)foods, and the amounts that we use when Juice Feasting.

Exercise. We are meant to move. However, your health challenges may make it difficult or painful for you to exercise. After being in terrible pain with the complications of dehydration, over-acidity, acid reflux disease, toxicity, high blood sugar, and inflammation, the only exercise I (David) could access besides slow walking was yoga. We are going to start there, and move on to walking, rebounding, and weight training. Your mobility, stability, strength, and energy is going to improve during your Juice Feast – in many cases, dramatically.

Multimedia/Internet. Wow there is a lot available to us now. Nietzsche said that we live in the age of comparisons – that the wisdom of all the ages is available to us. Ken Wilber writes in The Integral Vision “Knowledge itself is now global. This means that, for the first time the sum total of human knowledge is available to us—the knowledge, experience, wisdom, and reflection of all major human civilizations are open to study by anyone.” Katrina and I are readers, and we scour multiple resources and have many colleagues and friends who keep us well informed about the latest happenings in the world of health and personal transformation. We are making this knowledge available to you, through this Guide and far more in depth on our 92-Day Program on JuiceFeasting.com (some of the links in this Guide are only available to members of JuiceFeasting.com). Expect to learn multiple new things every day, to be entertained, inspired, and transformed in a joyful and engaging way. You are never going to be bored again, let’s put it that way.

What’s Ahead. We will say a few words about what lies ahead for you in various aspects of your preparations for the Juice Feast, to help you pre-load and prepare.

And with that, we bid you a goodnight! More to come tomorrow!! We will more than likely repeat some of what has been said in most recent blogs, but this Juice Feast Preparation file is currently a work in progress, so bear with us and eat your greens!!

Many blessings,

David and Katrina Rainoshek


[1] For more on creating your day/visioning your life, check out The Secret movie, and the excellent – perhaps superior – precursor to that film, Neville Goddard’s The Power of Awareness.
[2] Fitzgerald, Randall. The Hundred Year Lie. Penguin Putnam, London: 2006. Pg 23. You can visit Fitzgerald’s website at http://www.hundredyearlie.com/

New Photos!

UPDATE!

I have finally, as I promised, posted some photos for the "The Story Of The Year" Post (the elopement of David and Katrina.) Check them out here.

Also, 14 Day Global Juice Feast Count Down post coming SOON! Tonight!!

Love Katrina and David

Friday, February 15, 2008

Read, read, read, and your brain will exceed! (your previous expectations) (15 Days till GJF)

Julia reading under the nut mylk tree. Illustration by Katrina Rain.

Hello!

I hope you all had a wonderful Valentine's Day, and that the love of this day melts and mingles with all 365 days of your year! David and I sheltered out a storm here yesterday, winds buffeting the house all day long, delivering a snow storm for today! We invented a Valentine's Day game to play while we were in the bath, a simple, lovely game, where you take turns telling the other things you love and appreciate about them....little things and big things, we got giddy with love and decided it should become a V day tradition.

With only 15 Days left untill the Global Juice Feast, lets set ourselves up with a library of excellence!

I have always loved reading, but I have not always felt so good and empowered in my love of reading as I do now. Not the fault of my parents, who always encouraged me to read as much as I wanted, but more as a result of living in a TV culture where only 1 out of 10 books that get purchaced are actually read! Give yourself the gift of reading and feel strong and proud for doing so! Book Worms are a thing of the past, you now have permission to become a Book Butterfly! Become a Book King, or Book Queen!

David Wolfe is a reader extraordinaire, and he says:

A commitment to life-long learning is an essential part of health. Positive information is to the mind what Sunfood is to the body. A malnourished body cannot thrive. Neither can a malnourised mind. A body fed by the negative energy of unconscious "hit-or-miss" food becomes ill. A mind fed by negative energy and wrong thought becomes ill. A diet based on raw food is necessary to health, but if the mind is not also given pure food the body will suffer. A mind fed evil, unkind, thoughts of destructive criticism, condemnation, hate, jealousy, fear and doubt will reproduce such emotions in the physical body, leading to illness.

Thinking of thoughts and information as nutrition for the mind is very useful. It helps us to become more aware of what we are feeding our minds, as we are also becoming more aware of what we are feeding our bodies. We can choose to feed our minds the most beautiful food ever, and you WILL be able to watch the most beautiful thoughts begin to flourish there.

When I read the following from David Wolfe, I felt like I had been handed a golden key! Explicit permission to read! All I wanted!!

"If you want to get good at something, read a book on it. Read many books on it. More is better.

The successful individual with a purpose in life makes it a business, a responsibility and an exciting and fun use of time to read books relating to that purpose. In that way, important knowledge is acquired which comes from the experiences of others who have gone before.

An idividual's reading program should be as carefully chosen as the daily diet. Reading is food, without which mental growth will stagnate.

Business philosopher Jim Rohn says, "Miss a meal, but don't miss your reading." What excellent advice! Reading a book written by a person you admire puts you in a mental and emotional state similar to theirs. Those with a purpose devour books like paradisical fruits.

We intuitively know that readers are achievers. Leaders read. Feed your mind with good reading."

So, where would you like to start? We recommend checking out the Primary Resources on Juicefeasting.com for a list of excellent books.

We also highly recommend a membership to JuiceFeasting.com where you will find hours and hours of reading pleasure, enough stuff to saturate you in everything you need to know to create the best Juice Feast possible for yourself. It includes not only readings on nutrition, but on life transformation, personal excellence, spiritual growth, and more. We even have a day dedicated to alternative fuels! As David always says, we are not going to get the best results possible if we change our diet in a vacuume...so we encourage health and growth in all areas of life. We have chosen what we feel is the cream of the crop from the cream of the crop, in other words, the best bits from the best books!

Another jem to read of course is Miss Angela's A Juice Feaster's Handbook, and also check out the other juicy books she has listed in her Juice Feaster's Epicenter.

For a very personal read, blogs are a wonderful source of information and inspiration. We can all learn from eachother's experiences and support each other along as we inter-dependantly c0-arise! You can find a list of Juice Feasting blogs on the right of this blog.

"Properly, we should read for power. Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one's hand." ~ Ezra Pound

Another thing to start thinking about is juicing gear...have you ordered your Vita Mix yet? Nut Mylk Bags? Have you got your skin brush? David and I are working on a very succinct Getting Your Juices Flowing, 14 Days of Juice Feast Preparation for your Juice Feast, and we will begin to post that tomorrow. Forgive us if we end up repeating stuff we have already posted over the past few days.

Enjoy your reading dear butterfly! (Nutbutterfly! Coconutbutterfly!)

Love Katrina and David

ps. I personally know many wise people who do not, or cannot read and I will never forget the importance of experience! But for me, books added to experience make a magical combination, and I feel that books have the energy in them to fast forward you in your personal growth in ways that you cannot even forsee! Books are like magical conduits into some of the most beautiful minds and visions, allowing your own mind a rich firtilization.


"Reading furnishes the mind only with material for knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours." ~ John Locke


SPECIAL EXTRA: David's recent interview with Kevin Gianni is up and available! Listen in for some great information on Juice Feasting. David did this interview at 8 am after arriving home in Patagonia at 3:30 am, after driving ALL day (and much of the night) on our way home from B.C. He must be a raw food superhero, I say! Go to this link, scroll down the page, and click on the MP3 attatchment.