Colonics-The trip I never thought I would take!

Okay, so I finally went and did my first colonics treatment! OMG! Is all I can say.............


So here is how it went-I drove about an hour and fifteen minutes to get to there. I parked the car and actually set there for a second and said to self- "Whoa are you ready, here you go"!.... I pretty much knew
what to expect. I know people that have been through the treatment, and they had shared their experiences with me. Also, I had watched the procedure on YouTube that morning before I went-didn’t want any surprises, if you know what I mean! Don’t laugh; you will probably do the same thing.

I entered the front door and was greeted by the owner. She made me feel very comfortable and handed me a clip board with papers to fill out. After we talked, she took me into a room with a colonics table and began to tell me about what to expect. Pretty much I was told to take everything off from the waist down and handed a beach towel to use, then she showed me the sterile plastic tube that would be inserted in me, don’t freak out , only a couple of inches. Totally painless. I laid down on the table, and instead of me trying to explain what the table and setup look like, just google colonics or hydro-colon therapy and watch a video on youtube.

After the introduction speech, she walked out of the room and I did my own insertion of the tube, ( by the way, my experience was totally private and uninterrupted). When she returned she turned on the water from a cabinet on the wall above my head, she showed me the doorbell to push in case I needed her, turned on some music, pushed a cart of magazines over to me, (like I was going to read magazines while this was going on!)… It took less than a minute for the water to fill up the large intestine, and so the process began!! It’s an hour of filling up and eliminating. Everything runs down through these clear pipes and is taken to a waste dump. You lay there and watch all that comes though the tubes. I was honestly shocked at how much debris came out of my body. I had clear water with just bubbles for the first 5 or 6 minutes, then matter began to be dislodged and move through the tubes. There was nothing painful or uncomfortable about the procedure, really just amazement at what had accumulated and stuck to the inside of my body over all these years. Before I went raw, I considered myself a fairly clean eater, vegetarian for the good part of the last 15 years. But as I clearly” "saw", this procedure is extremely necessary, I believe it’s for everyone. In fact it will become part of my health regiment for the rest of my life. The instant physical results are astonishing. My skin looked younger, vibrant and glowing, the whites of my eyes were extremely white, toxins had been removed and I lost 3 pounds, all in one hour! Read up on it, Google it, YouTube it, then schedule an appointment and go do it!!

Hannah's Real Raw Groove

It was a magical evening in early May of this year, I had just finished teaching my Wednesday night Kundalini Yoga class, I was feeling amazing, full of gratitude, blissed out and high from all of the good vibrations when when my husband called, he needed his specific soy creamer for his coffee that can only be found at our local Whole Foods. This is where it all began........
Let me back up a little and tell you a bit about my self, I have a wonderful Yoga studio in Memphis Tn and I have been teaching yoga since 2004. I am am married with a kick ass husband and two unbelievable children. I often think that it has to be weird to be married to me (we are like Dharma and Greg), and my children are too young, but when they get older they will either think I am the coolest mom in the world or they will be totally embaresed and wish they had a "normal mom"
So it was of no surprise to my family when I came home from Whole foods that night with Natalia Rose's book "Raw food detox Diet". I had heard of raw foodies before but it all sounded way to extreme for me, I had been extreme in my diet plenty of times in the past and had never been interested in going back to anything that felt like deprivation....I was at a point in my life where I did not need to loose weight and I did not want any restrictions laid on me, but there was something about this book , I do not know why, but when I saw it I did not even think twice, I just put it in my cart.....something in me knew.
For three years following my daughters birth my body had been in daily pain. I had never known pain in my body before and I had no idea what it was about......I tried everything from massages to different yoga techniques, hot tubs and saunas....nothing worked, my body was always hurting. The main places were in between my shoulder blades and in my low back. I think these are very common places for many people to feel pain in our modern world but it did not make sense to me because I spend very little time in front of a computer, I don't sit at a desk and I am pretty physically fit...it was driving me crazy.
The night I took home Natalia Rose's book I read the whole thing in one night and I knew this would be a part of my life. Although the more I think back on it, I have to admit that there must have been some part of me that was subconsciously remembering the Playboy edition that I saw of Carol Alt who has been a raw foodie for 13 years and looked like a freakin million dollars in her mid life. I know there was some vanity involved.
Anyway, I started the next day. I will not lie, the first two weeks were rough, the detox was intense and everything in my body felt different.....good different........ Here is the mamma jamma reason that I stuck with it, after only one week, going 90 percent raw, the pain in my body was gone....ALL OF IT. I mean it, three years of nonstop pain, Gone.
It is almost six months later and the pain has never come back, and all of the other transitions in my life have been amazing. I experience so much more clarity, my skin is clearer and more vibrant than it has ever been, and my energy levels are off the charts. This way of eating enhances every level of my life and has been a real blessing. There is a lot to understand about it, and there are shadow sides as well. With everything we do in life we must know ourselves, nothing is separate, everything is connected and if we have imbalances within us they will play out in every aspect of our lives including our relationship with our food. I feel that eating raw foods paired with either yoga or some kind of practice of awareness grants you the chance to live your greatest life, the ability to see and let go of all that does not serve you. It offers grace....... grace is realizing that are lives are full of endless possibilities, we CAN experience freedom while living and we can dance through our lives on a higher frequency......this is just the beginning, and this is my real raw groove.

A few of Jan's Thanksgiving recipes

Before I went RAW, two of my favorite dishes at Thanksgiving were dressing and pumpkin pie. So I decided that I wasn't going to let a little thing like going raw keep me from enjoying them this year .... After much research I have come across a couple of recipes that I will be making this year and wanted to pass them on......

Raw Pumpkin Pie

Crust
2 cups pecans or walnut
1/2 cup of soaked dates
dash of seasalt

Blend the ingredients in food processor of high speed blender, then evenly distribute in the bottom of a pie plate.


Pumpkin Pie Filling
2 cups shredded pumpkin, butternut squash, or sweet potato flesh

1 cup soaked dates
2 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. freshly diced ginger
1 tsp. nutmeg
1 tsp. coconut oil
Dash of vanilla
•1/4 cup almond milk or water to help blend


If you donʼt feel like shredding the pumpkin by hand, simply cube and place in a high speed blender or food processor until itʼs nicely chopped, then add rest of ingredients and blend till smooth/ might need a little more liquid-pour into pie crust and chill for 30 min.

(this recipe came from Raw Food Witch)

Thanksgiving Raw Dressing

2 cups golden raisins
1 cup apple juice
3 cups chopped apple
1&1/2 cupps chopped nuts
1&1/2 cups finely chopped sunflower seeds
1/2 tea cinnamon
1/4 tea nutmeg
pinch of sage
pinch of thyme

Soak raisins in apple juice for an hour....Mix with remaining ingredients... chill for several hrs.
(I always use organic friuts and vegtables)

Give these a try and let me know how they turned out!!
Wishing all of you Happy Holidays!!!

The Incredible Juicer

If you choose to go down the raw food path, or you are getting very serious about your health, there will be a necessary piece of equipment that you will have to purchase, the incredible Juicer.............. I actually purchased a juicer years ago, spent alot of money, only to replace it with my current juicer. The juicer that I now use is one that I would totally recommend to anyone. I have a Breville juicer, which can be bought at William Sonoma,  or Macy's or online. It is die-cast stainless steel, with titanium plated cutting disk, 1000 watts of power, 13,000 rpm at high speed. Model 800JEXL.

I juice the bulk of what I eat!...Yes, that is what I said. When I first started juicing, I wasn't even sure why I wanted to do it; I just thought it was a healthy thing to do. I wasn't a person that ate alot of fresh vegetables. I ate salads off and on, but always with blue cheese dressing. Probably more blue cheese than lettuce! But now that I eat an all raw diet I juice because I understand the concept behind detoxing my cells, and taking in live enzymes through fresh green leafy vegetables and friuts.

Fresh green vegetables and fresh fruit contain live enzymes. Enzymes are substances that make LIFE possible. They are needed for every chemical reaction that takes place in the human body. No mineral, vitamin, or hormone can do any work without enzymes. Our bodies, all our organs, tissues, and cells are run by metabolic enzymes.-Dr. Howell, Enzyme Nutrition

Face it, most of us have spent our lives consuming a lot of trash food devoid of live enzymes. That would be boxed food with chemicals and preservatives, chips, pizzas, French fries, cakes, pies cookies, ice cream; the list goes on and on. We have spent years poisoning our cells.

But we can reverse the effects of bad eating and begin to heal our bodies through juicing. When you juice, you feed your body live enzymes. When you cook your food over 118 degrees, you destroy them. We must be responsible and help our bodies out with digestion. If the food you are taking in is not being digested properly through the help of live enzymes, it ends up as incrusted mucus in the lining of our large intestines with no way to be eliminated. (Waste) This undigested food provides an arena for bad bacteria, sickness and disease. I love what Natalia Rose says,............waste=weight

Waste matter in the body creates both disease and excess weight. If you are overweight and trying to lose it, don't kid yourself into thinking that your extra weight is not directly connected to the waste material that has overburdened your body’s cells and tissues, It is!"

Here is my juice recipe that I drink once or twice a day religiously.

Green or red kale 8-10 stalks

2 apples (usually fugi or gala)

1 lemon

red or golden beet

1/2 head romaine lettuce

1/2 inch fresh ginger



I switch up the greens sometimes with other greens and I use spinach. You don't have to peel the fruit, just quarter the apples and throw everything in!! I didn't start off with organic produce...but now it is a must.

So what is holding you back? Begin to detox your body, feel better, look better, act better! Read about it, Google it, talk to a friend, and then go ahead and get started!

Some Quick Raw Recipe Favorites

Banana OMG
2 Organic Bananas
Organic Raw Agave
Half of an Organic Lemon
2-3 tsp Organic Raw Chocolate Nibs
Cut the banana into small bite size pieces, drizzle lemon juice, agave, and nibs…enjoy!



Hot Chocolate

1 Cup of Organic Almond
1-2 tablespoons Ground Organic Raw Chocolate Nibs
Grind nibs into powder and stir into heated almond milk. Enjoy the small chunks of chocolate.


Celery and Almond Butter

3 sticks of celery
1 Scoop of Raw Organic Almond butter
1 Scoop of Raw OrganicTahini
Blend the almond butter and tahini together, dip with celery stick


Keep it Raw!

Picking Friut

Have you ever wondered why you are drawn to and pick the fruits you do when you are at the grocery?

The other day I was having a conversation with my daughter Melissa, and we were discussing the type of fruit that we had eaten that morning. Both of us start our day off with a fresh bowl of fruit. She told me that she has been eating a lot of red fruit lately-strawberries, red grapes and so forth and I said that I have been eating a lot of yellow fruit-bananas, fresh pineapples, and mangos.

She believes that the fruits we are drawn to and eat correlate with the color of our chakras. So if someone needs a little more grounding or rooting you would gravitate to the red fruits, which represent the 1st chakra, located at the base of the spine. The function of the first chakra is foundation, survival and grounding. When the first chakra is in balance you feel secure, physically healthy, and a deep connection to nature.

And in my case, I am drawn to eating yellow fruit which identifies with the 3rd chakra, located in the mid section, the solar plexus. The function of this chakra is self definition, and when it is in balance you feel self confident, a clear sense of purpose, calm and a balance in relationships and life. Now when I cut up my morning bowl of fruit and sit down to enjoy it I have a little more to think about, and the experience is all the more luscious .

So the next time you go to the grocery store, take a minute to notice what fruits you are drawn to, don’t just go for the fruits you always buy, but stop and be present and buy from your intuition, your chakras could be telling you something!

To learn more about our chakra system check out http://www.chakraenergy.com/