The Guide

How to Be Happy, Healthy, and Overcome Addictions Naturally

© Sri Ananda Sarvasri, April 2017, Version 1.01

About The Guide

We are in the midst of a crisis of addiction. The opioid crisis is just the latest and most severe manifestation of a trend that has been developing for decades. The cause is quite simple. As a nation, as a culture, we have never been taught how to take care of our inner space, our mind and emotions. We seek instant gratification and we try to numb ourselves from feeling our pain. Plus, major industries have chosen to take advantage of our lack of knowledge and promote addictive behavior because it is highly profitable. Now is the time for us to address our educational deficiencies. We simply must learn to take care of ourselves with greater knowledge, intelligence, and compassion. The Guide was written to address this need.

The Guide is available online to be read in any browser and as a free ebook so you can put it on all your devices. Any EPUB reader will work. You may want to form study groups with family and friends. Everyone can have a copy. You may want to practice the methods together. The Guide is not long, but it’s full of proven techniques and methods that should be practiced and understood. So you will want to keep the complete text handy as a companion guide. Hence the name.

Please Note: The Guide is free, but copyrighted, and may not be copied. You wouldn’t want to anyway, because it is constantly evolving and being updated as questions and comments arise. Also, it is lacking images and other design elements. But the need is so great for information on how to overcome addictions, we felt it necessary to release The Guide without further delay. Visit The Guide every couple of weeks for the current edition. As usual with copyrighted material, you are free to quote excerpts for commentary, blogs, or social media. Please include the url of this site, http://RebuildHealth.com/guide

Ebook Link - The Guide Ebook

How to Use This Guide

This guide is the product of 45 years of research into how to be happy, healthy, and avoid major problems in life, especially those caused by addictive behavior. There’s a lot of information here, but don’t let it overwhelm you. Take it step by step. Just keep moving forward consistently. You might make only one big change a week. That’s OK. Do what you can. The main thing is to begin, daily, doing some of the most important things. Your life will get better and easier. This isn’t just a text to read, it’s a workbook. It’s a do-it-yourself guide. Knowledge itself is useless if not put into action. So this knowledge requires action.

This Guide is for families, but it’s also a training manual for parole officers, police officers, social workers, EMS, medical doctors, and other professionals and caregivers who have been searching for solutions to the crises of addiction, violence, depression, suicide, learning disabilities, bullying, and other behavioral problems that plague our society. The methods in this Guide are derived from the fields of nutrition, naturopathic medicine, and little known teachings from the ancient past, primarily from the field of yoga psychology. Though not widely practiced for the past few centuries, these ancient methods were used for thousands of years to create the most socially advanced civilizations worldwide. Let’s get started.

First decide on a day or days to read. This is a mini-version of my book “Extraordinary Healthcare,” which is a 300 page book. I discovered that most people are so busy or overwhelmed, that they don’t have time to read books. So I distilled the book down to this essence that you can read in one evening. Of course, the book has a lot more information, but here you’ll get enough of the essentials to reverse addictive behavior and make your life great. Perhaps later you can read the whole book. It’s good to read this Guide straight through and put at least some of the suggestions into practice. Then I recommend that you read it again with friends and family. Have informal study groups. Discuss it. Research it. I purposely condensed it and left out all the scientific research. If you need that, you can research any topic that interests you on the Internet, though you may find lots of conflicting information to sort out. I spent many years sorting all that out.

Most importantly, be open to new information. Try things out. See that it works. Enjoy discovering more about yourself, who you really are and who you can become. You were not meant to suffer so much. Suffering is not necessary to become wise. Just be a blank slate, childlike and curious. Learn and practice. Knowledge is power, but only if properly understood and acted upon.

Introduction

What Do We Want?
No one wants to be miserable. We all want to be happy and healthy. Right? We all want to feel wonderful, and we all want to avoid pain and suffering. So why is it that so many of us are not happy and that most of us experience so much physical, mental, and emotional pain? According to a recent Harris Poll, only 31% of people claim to be very happy. They may not actually be happy, but they claim to be. They may not even know what true happiness is. The divorce rate is 46%. Two thirds of us are unhappy with our work. Two thirds of us are overweight or obese. Diabetes, heart disease, and cancer are epidemic. Apparently, most of us are not very successful at finding the happiness or health that we seek.

What’s the secret to being happy and healthy? Surprisingly, the answer is biochemistry and neurochemistry. It’s also free. It’s just a matter of choices. We’re always making choices anyway – choices about what to think, what to do, what to eat. We can simply make different choices that will naturally improve our biochemistry and neurochemistry.

We don’t really live in the outer world as we think, we live more in the inner world of our own thoughts and emotions. How we manage our inner space, our thoughts and emotions, determines virtually everything about our life, including the choices that determine how happy and healthy we are. See the quick-fix example to experience how you can quickly change your inner space.

Quick Fix†
Right now, do you feel distraught, angry, upset, obsessive, compulsive, overwhelmed, or depressed? Then do this quick fix. (This is something you can do anytime day or night. It only takes a couple of minutes. (Write the steps on a card to keep with you. Soon, you’ll have them memorized.)
1. Close your eyes. Take a deep breath and give a big long sigh. It’s very difficult to get into trouble when your eyes are closed. As long as you keep them closed, you’re safe. Continue with the steps, don’t open your eyes until the episode you are experiencing has passed and you feel better.
2. Continue Sigh Breathing (Repeatedly, take deep breaths and every time you breathe out, give a deep long sigh.) Spend a few seconds in the empty space at the end of the out-breath (while your breath is suspended). Continue for 2-5 minutes with eyes closed.
3. Feel what you feel, without any resistance, simply observe. Don’t resist anything. Just be intensely present, aware, and observe your feelings, whether pain, pressure, or any other physical sensations. Focus more on physical sensations, rather than your psychological thoughts or emotional pain.
4. Don’t make any decisions. Don’t move. Don’t take any action. Don’t draw any conclusions.
Do this for at least two full minutes. Keep your eyes closed. Feel what you feel without any resistance. Especially focus on physical pain, sensations, or pressure, though you may also experience emotional pain or mental anguish. Observe without judgment, resistance, or interpretation. Make no decisions. Don’t move. Don’t get up until you feel better, until you feel balanced. Just continue sigh breathing. Don’t hold your breath, just suspend it at the end of the exhale. It usually takes 2 to 5 minutes to feel balanced, collected, and peaceful, 10 minutes at most, generally. Then come back and continue reading.

Explanation
As soon as you close your eyes, there is an immediate expansion of consciousness that is nourishing and healing. It has tremendous healing power. Feeling what you feel, directs this healing power of consciousness to whatever is going on. The symptoms you feel, whether physical, mental, or emotional, may increase for a short time before they dissipate. Your mental and emotional distress is stored in your body physically and biochemically. At times you may even have physical movements or jerks, as muscles let go of stress (as happens sometimes, just before sleep). Keep your eyes closed until everything passes and you feel balanced. Don’t move or take any action. That will only distract you and interrupt the process. Don’t make any decisions. When you feel bad, your decisions will always be bad decisions. Don’t draw any conclusions or make any assumptions. This sigh-breath meditation changes your neurochemistry, creating serotonin and other good brain chemistry. Serotonin is a natural pain reliever. We’ll delve into this process a little deeper later on, in the section, Using Attention, Intention, and Consciousness to Heal Addictions.

If you want a little something extra, listen for 20 minutes with closed eyes to the alpha binaural beats audio referenced below. Science reveals that alpha frequencies increase the production of serotonin and reduce pain (there are many natural feel-good chemicals that affect your mind and body and create peace and happiness.) If you are epileptic or prone to seizures, check with your doctor first. (You need to listen with earbuds or headphones for the best binaural effect.) You could use acoustic brainwave entrainment 3 times per week, perhaps even daily.

Pure Alpha 12 Hz https://youtu.be/7cHjaJRl1Qo

Getting Organized

This Guide is a mini-summary of my book “Extraordinary Healthcare.” One of the first things I recommend in the book, and also here, is to get organized for making changes in your life. This will make a huge difference. We all have good intentions. We all make resolutions to change our life – maybe to lose weight, read an important book, or call someone for help. But these decisions are easily forgotten. To make real changes, you need a system. You need periodic reminders and schedules. All successful people learn that if it doesn’t get on a To-Do List, Reminder List, or Calendar, it usually doesn’t happen. Memory can be quite fickle and good ideas can be quickly lost. Great inventors and successful people always carry a small Notepad or Digital Device (smartphone or tablet) with them to capture inspirational ideas before they get lost. You only have about 15 seconds to capture your next great idea or inspiration before you become distracted and lose the thought.

So right now, before you continue with this Guide, grab a piece of paper and a pencil and make a note to get organized. Whether you use a paper system or a digital system, you need five things: 1) a to-do list, 2) a reminder list, 3) a notepad, 4) a calendar, and 5) a contacts list (addresses & phone numbers). For a paper system, any stationary store will have a life planner for a few dollars. Find something to start with. You’ll discover what works best for you as you go along. For a digital system, since I use Apple products, I use Apple’s Contacts, Notes, Reminders, and Calendar, because they sync between all my devices. For a to-do list, I use Cloud Outliner Pro, because it also automatically syncs between all devices. If you use Windows or Linux, you’ll need to discover what works best for you. Some people like an integrated product like Wunderlist. Even if you use a digital system, it’s worth having pen and paper with you at all times. It’s faster to jot a quick note.

I use an outliner for all my to-do lists, because I can make hierarchical lists with headings and subheadings. I can quickly reorder items by dragging them around, according to what needs to be done first. I set up multiple lists – a goals list, a list for each project, a household list, and a shopping list. Then I add To Do’s under each. Whatever you use, begin first by setting goals. You can set annual, monthly, weekly, and daily goals. You don’t have to do it all at once. Just do something to get started. It will evolve. You’ll be looking at your list every morning and updating it every evening. Set a reminder to do that, so you build the habit.

1) Set goals for different areas of your life – Self Image Improvements (Mind, Emotions, Body), Business/Career, Finances, Relationships, Social, Spiritual. Add to this lists as you see fit, you might set artistic goals, practical skills, languages, etc. Just decide WHO you want to be and WHAT you want in your life, your GOALS (your aspirations), WHY you want it (your inspirations and motivations), and HOW you’re going to get there (your projects and actions – to do’s, reminders, calendar).
2) Create projects to reach your goals. A project list is nothing more than a list of to do’s related to that project.
3) Use your Calendar to schedule items that are date and time sensitive.
4) Then set up a few reminders. Use reminders to create new habits by having them repeat daily, weekly, or even monthly. For instance, if you want to develop the habit of meditating regularly, set an automatic reminder to meditate at dawn and/or dusk every day. After morning meditation, the first thing to do is to look at your system. Review your Goals, Projects, To Do’s, and Calendar. You might review a larger set of goals weekly.

Some people avoid making goals and lists because they think they want to be free, spontaneous, and unencumbered. But it doesn’t work that way. Being scattered, just drifting and reacting, is not freedom. There are two ways to have a simple life. Do nothing, just drift aimlessly, be a street bum (not very satisfying), or be organized and use daily routines to simplify your life. Plus, you don’t have to be a slave to your system. You can change it anytime you want. The main thing is that you know what you want, why your want it, and decide on some steps to get there. If you didn’t do it yet, make a note to get organized. It’s a project. You can research on the internet many different ways and software apps to get organized. Start simple. Improve as you go. This is your most important life skill. This decides your whole life.

Example Daily Routine
Routines keeps us on track so we don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Have a set of routines for your life. Here’s a example weekday routine. Arise > Drink Water > Gentle Exercises (tense/release, dynamic tension, lymphatic exercise, cardio exercise, stretching, acupressure) > Shower > Get Dressed > Morning Meditation > Breakfast > Daily Agenda (Mail, Calendar, Reminders, Todo’s) > Check Social Media (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) > Work (at something you care about, enjoyable for you) > Healthy Lunch > Afternoon Work > Afternoon Meditation (Dissolve Work Stress) > Afternoon Walk > Dinner > Time with Family/Friends > Daily Review > Tomorrow’s Agenda > Sleep.
Weekends, holidays, and vacations would be different. You decide what you want to do. Just make a list and schedule it.

Who Are You?

What are you made of? Who are you? You need to understand how “you” are constructed and how all the pieces fit together. You are made of different parts: body, senses, mind, emotions, memory, intellect, ego, and consciousness. Each of these parts, except the last, is constructed from our environment and our reactions to it. For instance, your body is made from food that comes from the environment. The quality of your digestion is your reaction to it. If you grew up with the best quality food, with all essential minerals, enzymes, vitamins, proteins, fats, and carbohydrates, and if you digested it properly, then you would have the best possible body your DNA is capable of. Every cell in your body is replaced every year, so there is always the possibility of a continuous upgrade to improve your cellular structure.

Your mind is the product of your environmental experiences from your senses. How well you digested those experiences and how you stored them as memories determines the environment in which you think. If you got the best education and lived in the best environment, and you utilized it properly, you would have the best mind that you are capable of. Your mind is not a thing actually, it is a series of thoughts that are created from your memories combined with reactions to your environment. You mind does not generally produce logical or coherent thoughts as you might believe. It’s called a stream of consciousness, but most often it’s a stream of unconsciousness. Prove it to yourself. Sit for five or 10 minutes and write down every thought that comes without any censorship. You will see that your mind is a chaotic mess, jumping from one thing to another. It is not the logical instrument you think it is.

Your emotions, your heart, is the product of your emotional environment. Your emotions are your driving force, your inspiration for action. If you received a loving nurturing upbringing, and internalized it properly, you would be the most compassionate, purpose-driven being possible. Your actions would be uplifting for yourself and others. Your memories are the storehouse of everything you have experienced, good or bad. Your intellect is the power of discrimination, the ability to distinguish between what is useful and what is not, the ability to decide. Your intellect chooses which of the many thoughts to pursue. This power to choose is the most significant power that you have in life. Your intellect can save you from your default future, the future you would otherwise have if you didn’t choose to change it consciously, willingly. Intuition is a refined form of intellect. It is a knowingness that computes everything at once rather than linearly, like the logic of the intellect. Your ego is your self identity. It is the sum total of your self image. Your self image is the context for all of your behavior. When you upgrade your self image, your life changes. Your consciousness is the never changing part of you, the part that has observed you from childhood up until now. Your consciousness can have different states, waking, dreaming, sleeping, transcendent, and superconscious. This guide will help you to upgrade all these parts of you, so that you can become the best possible you!

We Could All Use a Little Help
I recently attended meetings in my county dealing with addictions (Stokes County, NC). At the moment, there is a growing heroin addiction that is reaching epidemic proportions. This is happening not only in the rural county where I live, it’s pervasive throughout the nation. It has become a serious problem and is taking the lives of both young and old. It is wrecking families. With addictions at epidemic proportions, it’s time to look into the thoughts and emotions that feed our addictive culture and learn all about addictions and how to overcome them. It’s time to learn how to manage our inner space and learn how to be happy and healthy, naturally. We obviously live in a highly addicted culture. Everyone is trying to feel better through something external, whether sugar, coffee, sodas, candy bars, drugs, sex, movies – anything that can, at least temporarily, give us that feel-good feeling, that excitement, that elusive high. Or at least numb us from the pains we feel.

The truth is, we all want to live in a high, ecstatic, peaceful, beautifully uplifted state — an intense emotional high. To put it plainly, we all want bliss. We want peace, joy, happiness, intelligence, excitement, engagement, beautiful relationships, and more – all the best things of life. This desire for fulfillment is natural and is the driving force behind everything we do. Every thought we think, every choice we make is driven by this one desire, to have it all. If we could, we would want our joy to be infinite. The problem is, the choices we are making and the things we’re doing that we think will bring us happiness, aren’t making us happy.

The problem is that we have never been taught how to be happy and healthy naturally. We don’t know how to sustain a state of inner peace, joy, and bliss, while retaining our capacity for intelligent thought and action. It’s been said that our natural state IS bliss. When it eludes us, we try to find it outside of ourselves, especially when we’re feeling emotional pain, frustration, depression, confusion, anger, or other negative and destructive emotions. Then we compulsively reach out for it. We reach for something that will give us immediate satisfaction, even if temporary. It may be a drug, a candy bar, a soda or anything that makes us feel better. Essentially, we’re trying to change our neurochemistry, because our existing neurochemistry is not giving us what we want. This is the essential cause of all addictions and ultimately, the cause of all our pain and suffering. We need to know how to change our neurochemistry without resorting to anything external. That’s the purpose of this Guide.

The Only Practical Solution
This Guide arose out of the need to address the problems of addiction in my county. When you do the math, the addiction problem is enormous and unsolvable by any conventional means. According to the CDC, 10.2% of the population is addicted to some substance. We could never hire enough therapist to help them (even if they could). Most counseling only has a 10% success rate. Residential treatment programs cost a minimum of $10,000 per month (upscale facilities can cost $185,000 per month). Three-month residential programs only have about a 50% success rate. Incarcerating drug dealers is unbelievably expensive, and there is another drug dealer just around the corner to take his place. The only practical solution is to reduce addictive behavior by turning every affected household into a natural healthcare treatment center. Simply train all the members of the household how to be happy, healthy, and overcome addictive behavior. Family members can help each other. That’s the purpose of this Guide.

How We Lost Our Natural State of Fulfillment
There are many ways to become distracted, compulsive, obsessive, and addicted, and lose our inner wholeness. The primary addictions are food, drugs, sex, egotism, alcoholism, nicotine, caffeine, gambling, and adrenaline. Our whole entertainment industry is based on drama, excitement, which stimulates adrenaline. The gaming industry is an adrenaline addiction industry, as are the coffee and soda industries that push caffeine (which triggers adrenaline). Gambling is an adrenaline addiction. Excitement of winning, fear of losing in sports, power, greed, and fame are ego and adrenaline addictions. The other listed addictions are obvious. The packaged food industry is based on addiction to sugar and simple starches (that rapidly convert to sugar).

In fact, our primary national addiction is sugar, which science discovered to be eight times more addictive than crack cocaine. Our addictions start in childhood. This is when we began to lose our inner balance. Children start on a sugar addiction through advertising that pervades their morning cartoons on television. Sugary cereals and sugary treats of all kinds are highly promoted. When children don’t get their sugar, they throw a tantrum. That’s our first reaction to losing a sugar high. No wonder that over 50% of the population is diabetic or prediabetic. Packaged foods are laced with sugar to feed this addiction. The average consumption of sugar, including hidden sugar in packaged foods, now approaches 185 pounds per person per year. 500 to 600 cans of soda are produced per person, per year! Sugary, acidic, caffeinated beverages are the number one grocery expenditure of all families, rich and poor. Our whole nation is addicted to sugar and caffeine.

From an early age, our culture is conditioned for addiction. It’s highly profitable. This is how it starts. Sugar is the original gateway drug. Not only sugar, but the packaged food industry includes every kind of addictive, taste-enhancing chemical they can dream up. They have a name for it: Craveability. The packaged food and fast food industries shoot for the highest Craveability Index. Right now, the doughnut industry is the winner. So you see, addictions are everywhere. They pervade our culture. For a few days, watch the nightly national news shows on TV. See how they push drugs to solve all our problems. It would seem that the nightly news is just a way to push drugs, to push addictions. Advertising prescription drugs on television is banned in every country of the world, except the USA and New Zealand. These junk-food and drug industries are destroying our nation with false promises. Ultimately, they make us unhappy, unhealthy, and addicted.

We have never been taught how to deal with addictions. Addictions are much too profitable. The problem is, they are killing us by the millions. All of our degenerative diseases such as cancer, heart disease, and diabetes are primarily the result of our junk-food lifestyle, based on sugar, non-nutritional empty calories. These diseases hardly existed 100 years ago. It’s becoming well-known that our junk-food lifestyle is responsible for the extreme cost of healthcare. In fact, decades ago, Dr. C. Everett Koop, the famous Surgeon General, claimed that 76% of all disease was due to lifestyle factors. 68.8% of us are overweight or obese. It’s a junk-food lifestyle disaster. The solution to addiction is also the solution to the high cost of healthcare. In fact, the primary cause of degenerative disease, birth defects, learning disabilities, crime, violence, and other social problems is distorted biochemistry and neurochemistry, caused directly by our junk-food lifestyle, which is driven by addictions. Although there are other causative factors, the primary driving force is our addictive lifestyle. So let’s look at addiction and its many solutions. Yes, there are MANY solutions.

What Is Addiction?

Addiction is the intense desire to increase pleasure or avoid pain. Ultimately, it is based on neurochemistry. Pleasure and pain receptors in the brain condition us to pursue whatever will give us pleasure or help us to avoid pain. It’s reinforced by past experiences, our memories. It overpowers logic. The memory of pleasure compels us to repeat the cause of pleasure. The memory of pain compels us to avoid the cause of pain. Strong attachments and aversions. These are the two causes of addiction.

The Failure of Morality
People with a strong religious or moral background try to get us to stop our addictions through moralizing. They would say, “You know that sugar is bad for you, just stop it.” The problem is, moral arguments don’t work – for a very interesting reason. The more we try to suppress an addiction, the more it festers inside us. It becomes like a volcano, ready to explode. The addiction is temporarily covered over by suppression, but not healed. This is why you see the problem with Catholic priests addicted to sex. They are supposed to be celibate, which they try to attain through suppression, only to have it explode into indulgence. Suppression eventually leads to indulgence. Indulgence leads to guilt and shame, which leads to more suppression, and then explodes into more indulgence. It’s an endless vicious cycle, spiraling into a very dark abyss. This is how an original sugar addiction eventually becomes an addiction to heroin. Addictions can never be overcome by moralizing, logic, reasoning, resolutions, willpower, or by either suppression or indulgence. But as we will see, they can be easily overcome by changing our biochemistry and neurochemistry.

Just to give you a quick insight into how this works, let’s look at losing weight. Everybody realizes that losing weight can be extremely difficult – trying to do it the old way. The problem is, when eating the wrong diet you can become completely full, but not satisfied. So your body craves more. What your body is really looking for is not more food, but the right biochemistry. High sugar foods strip your body of B vitamins. Empty, high-calorie foods in the typical American diet are deficient in minerals, enzymes, vitamins, bioflavonoids, phytonutrients and trace minerals. When you eat whole foods, high-quality foods, your body is satisfied and doesn’t demand more. This is the secret to losing weight. Your biochemistry and neurochemistry is actually improved, changed (more on diet and nutrition later).

The Purpose of Addiction
From one perspective, everything has a purpose. The purpose of addiction, ultimately, is self-discovery. When we are faced with behavior that we cannot control by our logic, willpower, or self-discipline, it forces us to learn more about ourselves. We are forced to learn the things that we were never taught in school, church, or family, while growing up. We must learn how to take care of ourselves on an entirely new level. How our mind works, how our emotions work, what controls our behavior and seems to force us to do things that are destructive and that we don’t really want. We are forced to confront the mystery of life, the forces of nature, and how they operate within us and around us. The laws of nature are continuously operating. We can try to fight with them or we can learn to work with them. Fighting with nature is a lost cause. The only solution is to understand the laws of nature, the laws of the mind, the laws of our emotions, the laws of awareness and consciousness. Addiction has many solutions. Let’s look at a few of them. As time permits, I’ll expand this Guide and include charts, graphics, and perhaps some scientific references. But for now, I just want to get right to the core of the solutions, so that you have something to work with. You need practical methods.

Using Attention, Intention, and Consciousness to Heal Addictions

Whenever you’re faced with an addiction, you always feel that you have only two options, either suppression or indulgence. There is a third option. Observation without action. It’s possible to simply observe the craving or aversion without taking any action. At first this may seem superficial, but it isn’t. Active observation is extremely powerful, because it is the focus of your own consciousness. Your consciousness is far more powerful than you imagine, and far more powerful than any addiction. It’s actually an automatic healing process in itself. This one process is powerful enough to heal all addictions. Just watch, just feel what is going on without taking action. The focus of your attention, along with the intention not to take action, causes the power of consciousness to flood your mind-body complex with healing energy. Don’t resist feeling, don’t resist observing what it going on. The focus of your awareness, your consciousness, is like an all-consuming flame that burns out the addiction. Just as you observe your feelings, also observe your thoughts. Your thoughts feed your addiction as much, or more, than your feelings. All addictions are an unconscious process. When you make all of your feelings and thoughts totally conscious, any addiction will peak and then subside. As you observe your thoughts, you will see how they feed your emotions which then fuel the addiction. Healing addictions won’t happen all at once, and it won’t be complete in just one session. It takes repetition, just like creating the addiction did, except that healing addictions is much faster. This process is the basis of the “Quick Fix” I described early on. I’ll elaborate more on it later.

Addictions and Fantasies
Addictions are always driven by fantasies. Fantasies are projections of the fulfillment of desires or avoidance of fears, pains, and regrets. When you are gripped by an addiction, you create fantasy movies in your mind that fuel your addiction. Observe how your mind plays with you, how it tries to take you on imaginary trips complete with fantasy dialog and inner movies. Everyone wants to avoid pain and suffering and live in a state of continuous ecstatic joy or bliss. The fantasy is that we can find this ideal state outside of ourselves. It IS possible to live in a continuous state of peace, bliss, and joy internally, a high baseline state of fulfillment, but it can never arise from anything external. As we’ll learn later, the natural state of bliss and joy exists at our deepest core. You may have observed a giggling baby in a state of inner bliss, experiencing such joy for no reason. We can also have this natural causeless joy, but it can only be realized by self-discovery. Nothing external can create it. In fact, there is no need to create it. It is already there. It only needs to be rediscovered.

Changing Your Thoughts
When you become aware of your thoughts, you can change them. You are not a slave to them. It is the wild ride of unconscious thinking that fuels addiction. It is really a state of mental and emotional slavery. When you consciously recognize the kind of thoughts you’re thinking, you have options. You can simply recognize the thoughts that fuel your addiction and consciously shift to another thought. You can just decide to have a glass of water or go for a walk, and you are on to a different train of thought. Thoughts are instantly switchable. We can choose any thought we want. When you switch thoughts, you switch emotions also. Make all of your feelings and all of your thoughts fully conscious by observing them intensely. The intensity of your consciousness heals you and gives you the option to choose new thoughts, which create different feelings, which lead to different actions – to not indulge in the addiction, but to make another choice. You become free from mental and emotional slavery.

Addictions are healed by recognizing that they can never be fulfilled through fantasies or indulgence and then deciding to live in this present reality without fantasies, consciously choosing new thoughts, pursuing real goals and real life. Reality can be far more beautiful and blissful than any addiction. As William Blake wrote, “To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour.” Or “If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.” There is astounding beauty all around us and an infinity of joy within us. One starting point, is to learn the art of switching thoughts. Switching thoughts gives rise to different emotions. But due to habit, of course, the old thoughts that are feeding the addiction return. Then just switch again. Repetition works. It will work better when we use additional tools to heal our past memories. We’ll look at memories a little later.

Handling Pain
Pain is often the strongest element in addictions. The tendency is to run away from pain. But you will notice something interesting. The more you try to run away from pain, the more it looms over you. It looms ever larger and more menacing the more you run away from it. Also, the more you try to fight with it, the weaker you become, as it saps your energy. Neither fight nor flight will work. It’s like facing a menacing dog on the street. You know you can’t fight the dog, and you know that if you run, the dog is going to chase you. You may have learned the solution was to simply stand your ground and stare at the dog. Soon the confused dog runs away. The same is true with your addictions, with your pain. Face your pain with intense observation. Feel all the feelings as they swell and then progressively subside. It will take time and repetition for a thorough healing. Pain and remission will come in cycles.

Observe your reactions to the feelings of pleasure or pain without taking action. Observe your thoughts and how they fuel your emotions. Oftentimes, your thoughts will be thoughts of powerlessness. The focus of your consciousness is one elixir for all addictions. Observe and wait, and notice how the addiction peaks and then subsides, usually within 10 minutes or less. With practice, you’ll get really good at it. In the early stages, you might experience a few failures. No problem. Success will come as you learn the process of focusing your full awareness on the physical sensations. Once you get a little experience of 1) observing a feeling as it becomes more intense, 2) ultimately peaking in intensity, then 3) progressively subsiding, and 4) finally disappearing, you will begin to feel the power of your own consciousness. You will be tremendously encouraged at the power you possess to heal yourself of any addiction. Remember, don’t fight, don’t run away, don’t suppress, and don’t indulge. Just observe with intensity of awareness. In the end, choose new thoughts and new beliefs to move your life in a different direction. Later, I’ll provide other powerful methods of dealing with pain. First let’s look at the purpose of pain.

The Purpose of Pain
Whether physical, mental, or emotional, pain is an indicator that something is wrong. We are taught in our culture that pain is bad. We are conditioned to take pain killers or any measures to reduce or eliminate pain. The problem is that this approach doesn’t work. You have pain for one reason, to get your attention. As described above, your focus of attention, the focus of your own consciousness, is a powerful healer. The purpose of pain is to draw your attention because that’s how you heal. If you run away from pain, what has to happen? The pain has to become stronger to get your attention. Every time you try to avoid pain, it grows stronger in order get your attention. If you persist, eventually the pain becomes hidden or suppressed as your system finally gives up trying to capture your attention.

The solution is the opposite. As soon as you consciously and willingly flood the area of pain with your attention, your body recognizes that it has succeeded in getting your attention and reduces the need to send out such intense pain signals. Your body is crying out and it requires your attention. It’s just like a baby crying out. Ignoring the cries doesn’t help the child. What we need to do is go into our pain, just like a loving mother goes to a crying child, with loving compassion. Conscious attention with loving compassion is the most rapid cure for pain. It is also the most rapid cure for cravings and addictions. Just observe any pain or craving with the loving compassion of a mother. Just observe compassionately. Compassionate attention heals. Mental and emotional pain always has a physical counterpart. You can feel it in your body, usually in your belly, heart, or throat. Wherever you feel it, flood it with compassionate loving attention. Keep your eyes closed as you do this. That expands your consciousness and gives you more power. It also keeps you out of trouble! Later, we’ll look at other ways to handle mental and emotional pain.

How a Change in Diet Can Heal Our Addictions

Overcome Your Addictions with Nutrition

I mentioned earlier that from a biochemical point of view, all addictions are fueled by unnatural neurochemistry. The mind and body are not so separate as we imagine. Whatever affects the body affects our mind and emotions also. It should be plainly obvious. Every time you drink a soft drink or eat a candy bar you are fueling an addiction. You can feel the rush – which is why you do it. You do it to change your neurochemistry. The problem is, you are losing valuable nutrition by consuming empty calories. Eventually it takes its toll as it strips your body of B vitamins, antioxidants, enzymes, minerals, and many essential nutrients, known and unknown. It’s well established that our junk-food diet is responsible for over 76% of all disease. What is less well known is that it’s responsible for our mental and emotional addictions, aberrations, even violence and crime – all caused by destructive decisions fueled by distorted neurochemistry. It is ultimately a failure of the intellect, which is a higher order brain function that completely shuts down due to chemically induced addiction. Wrong neurochemistry is responsible for so much misery.

Most Americans are completely unaware of how much junk food they consume. Of the money we spend at the supermarket, 81-86% of expenditures are for junk foods or what I like to call fake foods. The packaged food industry loves you. They are making a fortune off of you and they want you to be as addicted as possible. This is why practically all packaged foods are loaded with sugar and simple starches that rapidly convert to sugar. They feed your sugar addiction. They stimulate unnatural neurochemistry. You were never taught to defend yourself from corporate greed, so you happily give them your money to feed your addiction. Never mind that it’s going to kill you from a disease like diabetes, where progressively, doctors will amputate each of your limbs one by one. As you go blind, doctors will tell you there is no cure for diabetes. The medical system knows that every diabetic will bring in an income of $500,000 over the course of the disease. Only a few properly educated doctors will tell you that diabetes is easily cured.

Practically all of our medical problems are not medical in nature. They are caused by our junk-food lifestyle. Go into any supermarket and look around. Virtually all the food you see is packaged food, displayed in colorful wrappings, and conveniently placed to make it easy to drop into your cart. Almost none of it is real food. It is highly processed and stripped of nutrients that could make it spoil. It is ladened with chemicals to increase shelf life, provide false color, increase craveability, or add useless bulk to make it appear more desirable. Mineral deficient, vitamin deficient, enzyme deficient, chemically contaminated junk food is the primary cause of birth defects, now occurring in about 1 of every 33 births. The veterinary industry wouldn’t stand for it. With scientifically balanced animal feed, tailored to the type of animal to provide complete nutrition, they achieve one birth defect in every 500,000 animals. We should have veterinarians stocking the shelves of our food stores with food designed for human health!

Instead, we happily feed our children and grandchildren highly advertised junk food that will only lead to more pain, disease, and suffering. The same junk-food lifestyle that is responsible for our insane levels of birth defects is responsible for the vast majority of our degenerative diseases. It is also responsible for our mental and emotional instability, our social problems like crime and family violence. All of our mental and emotional aberrations are created through distorted neurochemistry. This is not to say that stress and trauma are not also causative, but the materials we put in our body have far reaching consequences for physical, mental, and emotional health. It’s all about biochemistry and neurochemistry. Without essential nutrients and with the heavy burden of unnatural, even poisonous chemicals in our foods, it’s virtually impossible to maintain normal behavior and normal biology.

Success Stories

A Complete High School Makeover
There was a school in Appleton, Wisconsin that had a serious problem with behavior and violence. There were fights and altercations every day. There were weapons. The dropout rate was 90%. They had a high suicide rate. Nothing that the school board tried had any positive effect. A local natural bread company suggested that the problem was with the diet and they would fund a new dietary program for the school if the school board agreed. The school board had no other options, so they agreed. The first thing they did was to take out all the soda machines and all the candy machines. All the junk food had to go. Then they introduced a completely organic diet with a large salad bar and very well prepared meals. Within just weeks, all the violence stopped. Within a few months everything turned around. The dropout rate went from 90% to zero. Suicides went to zero. The students got interested in learning again. This all happened because a diet, complete with full nutrition, restored natural biochemistry and natural neurochemistry in the students.

The Transformation of a Prison
There was a prison in California, just north of LA. Recidivism was 95%, unbelievably high. As with most prison populations, drug abuse and violence is the norm. The prison manager wanted to try a new approach. He believed that a high quality plant-based diet, organic if possible, would make a huge difference. He was a Seventh-Day Adventist (they promote a vegetarian diet). For some inmates, as needed, he also funded innovative rehabilitation programs like removal of tattoos, dental care, and job search programs, but the unique approach for half the inmates of this prison was a plant-based diet. The other half, as a control, received the typical prison diet. His success with the diet was remarkable. Again, healthy nutrition made a huge difference. With the prisoners who received the healthy plant-based diet, recidivism dropped from 95% to about 3%.

Massive Drop in Recidivism with Parolees
In Ohio, a parole officer took it upon herself to educate her parolees about the dangers of junk food and the benefits of an organic plant-based diet. Recidivism in the area hovered around 85%. As with most prison populations, recidivism is extremely high because of drug use and typically poor diets. Just the simple education about the benefits of a plant-based organic diet and the dangers of the typical junk food diet, with its high sugar content, was enough to reduce recidivism from 85% to about 11%.

These success stories are unprecedented. There has been nothing tried with prison populations or violent offenders that has had any success. But this one intervention – absolutely no junk food and providing complete, high quality nutrition, full of vitamins, minerals, and other essential nutrients, completely changed the neurochemistry of the participants. This had a huge impact on their well-being. They were able to think more clearly, and many physical ailments were reversed. They were able to live normal lives without drugs and without behavioral issues. Many junk foods like soft drinks and candy bars seem so innocuous, so harmless, but in fact, they are the opposite. Junk food is one of the greatest dangers to our civilization, not only because it destroys physiology, but because it deteriorates neurochemistry, often shutting down higher brain functions as the low-sugar reaction (hypoglycemia) returns.

Foods to Avoid
As a general rule, with very few exceptions, if it comes in a package, a can, a plastic wrapper, a plastic bag, a cardboard box, a plastic bottle, a carton, a glass bottle, or any other kind of packaging, don’t buy it. It is not food. Practically all packaged foods are highly processed and laced with unnatural chemicals. Just read the labels. You’ll see. You won’t even understand half the words. The food that you buy should look like a vegetable, a fruit, nuts (like pecans or walnuts), whole grains (like rice or millet), and whole legumes (like navy beans, lentils, or garbanzo beans). If you can’t recognize it as it comes from nature, don’t consider it to be food. Only eat whole, natural, organic, plant-based foods that you could have bought or grown centuries ago.

Also, don’t eat prepared foods at restaurants (we’ll show how to manage that later). The vast majority of restaurant foods come from packaged foods. In most parts of the country there are very few restaurants that prepare meals from scratch using whole, natural, organic ingredients fresh from the garden. This list may seem excessively restrictive. Actually, the thing that is totally abnormal is the current state of our available food supply. Our food supply has been tampered with extensively, and doesn’t come close to healthy, natural food as it grows in nature. It is difficult to find the kind of foods that humans traditionally used for thousands of years, unless you go to a farmers market, a natural food store, an Asian market, or grow it yourself. Also, avoid all animal products like meat, meat byproducts (deli products), dairy, and eggs. Here’s why.

Our Natural Diet
For many years, humans have been taught to believe that we are omnivores, that it’s natural for us to eat plants and animals. Nothing could be farther from the truth, which you can quickly recognize in a few minutes with a simple thought experiment. Think for a moment how a carnivore lives, the lifestyle of a carnivore. Now try to imagine yourself living like a carnivore. Can you see yourself sneaking up on an animal, pouncing on it, biting it through the neck or throat to kill it, ripping open the warm underbelly with your teeth and fingernails, devouring the innards, tearing off the skin with your teeth, and gnawing the muscles and blood off of the bones? Does this sound enticing to you? I didn’t think so.

How we were ever convinced as children that meat is a natural food for humans is truly unbelievable. It’s also inconceivable to see ourselves sucking milk from the udders of cows. It’s unreasonable to see ourselves climbing out on a tree limb to rob the eggs from a bird’s nest and crunch them in our mouth. Can you see yourself swimming in the ocean and sticking fish into your mouth? So you see? We were never meant to live as carnivores. It’s completely unnatural. There is a whole host of scientific reasons, such as the length of our colon, the shape of our stomach, the shape of our teeth, the chemistry of our digestion, and much more. You can research it scientifically if you have an interest. Suffice it to say that the natural human diet is a plant-based diet of fruits, berries, melons, vegetables, nuts, seeds, grains, and legumes (beans & peas). There are also hundreds of herbs and spices to make our meals delicious and healthy. In fact, once you learn how to create super delicious meals using basic natural foods, along with herbs and spices, you will never want to go back to your old crummy diet. We’ll cover how to do that in a few minutes.

What NOT to Eat, Reason Why, & What to Substitute

Avoid	Reason Why	Substitute
Meat & Seafood	Highly polluting, extremely cruel industry. Low quality protein. Causes acidification & putrefaction, poisons the body – accumulates pesticides, herbicides, antibiotics, and other toxins.	Grains & Legumes, 2:1 ratio for highest quality and quantity of useable protein.
Eggs	Same as meat. When cooked, proteins coagulate into a rubber-like substance.	Use grains & legumes, Egg Replacer, or Soaked and blended Chia or Flax seeds.
Dairy Products – Milk, butter, or cheese. 65-90% of people are lactose intolerant as adults.	Highly polluting, cruel industry. Major source of hamburger meat. Casomorphin is mildly addictive. Lactose intolerance. No mammal consumes milk after weaning.	Use nut and seed milks, like almond milk. Under-weight people may tolerate pure organic dairy products. No rBGH or rBST (GMO) growth hormones.
White Sugar – All white sugar products (GMO). Totally Avoid high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) and all sugar substitutes.	Highly addictive. Stripped of nutrients. Spikes insulin, causing weight gain, diabetes, hypoglycemia. Feeds cancer. NO sugars, fruits, fruit juices, or sweets if you have candida yeast.	Unrefined, organic, natural cane sugar. 3-4 tsp/day. Use Sucanat, Rapadura (freeze-dried), jaggery, or whole natural syrups (molasses) Honey is OK. Avoid pasteurized fruit juices.
Table Salt	Stripped of natural minerals.	Whole sea salt is good and supplies trace minerals, pink Himalayan salt is also good.
White flour & white flour products, avoid all “vitamin enriched” products.	Refined flours are like sugar. (See white sugar above) Stripped of minerals and other nutrients.	Coarse-ground whole grain or whole legume flours. Or use whole grains and legumes.
Alcohol – None of any kind, in any amount.	Red grapes, not wine, has nutrients. Alcohol has no beneficial use in the human body. Often addictive.	Eat grapes, berries, or other natural fruits. Use nut or seed beverages, natural herbal teas.
Nicotine – NO smoking whatsoever, no chewing tobacco.	Pollutes lungs, 2nd hand smoke poisons children. Highly addictive.	Get more sleep at night. Practice meditation.
Caffeine – NO coffee, colas, or black tea	Addictive. Depletes adrenals, creates caffeine headaches and thereby addiction.	For a quick pick-me-up, eat an orange.
NO Soft Drinks (no exceptions), even diet varieties,	Extremely high in sugar. Highly acidic, Causes pH & mineral imbalances, destroys enzymes, dissolves teeth.	Drink water to quench thirst.
NO Frozen Foods	They are devitalized.	Minimal use is OK, if not on a healing regimen.
NO Microwaved Foods or Water	Chemically changes foods. Devitalizes, denatures, and distorts structure.	Heat foods on a stove or convection oven.
NO Hydrogenated Oils (denatures)	Fats and oils can be addictive. Cause clogging of the veins and arteries. Heart problems. Obesity.	Primarily use olive / coconut. Minimal walnut, sesame, safflower, sunflower, & flax are OK.
NO Additives such as artificial flavors, artificial colors, artificial sweeteners, or preservatives.	Food additives cause mental and emotional disturbances and imbalances. They have no nutritive value for human life.	Eat only real foods, not fake foods.
NO Tap Water	Chlorinated, Fluoridated - Unsafe, Poisoned.	Use ozonated water. Drink spring or filtered water. Also, bathe in filtered water if possible.
Hot Spicy Foods	Fiery foods increase fiery emotions like anger, rage, & violence. Makes managing your emotional life more difficult.	Eat simple foods in their natural state. Use savory herbs and spices.
Avoid onions and garlic	– except medicinally. They are steroidal.	Use savory herbs and spices.
Avoid mushrooms	They have a dulling effect.	Use fermented foods. Miso, tempeh, sauerkraut. Use savory herbs and spices for flavor.

Spiritual Reason to Change Your Diet
There is also a spiritual reason for adopting a plant-based diet. As we have all heard, “As you sow, so shall you reap.” The meat, dairy, and egg products industries are unbelievably cruel and violent. Most male animals are quickly slaughtered soon after birth. All animals are slaughtered as soon as they achieve the desired weight. When you consume these products, you take part in that violence. To avoid receiving violence, we must become non-violent. Don’t consume the flesh, blood, and products of animals. For your own self protection, avoid violence. This is also the single most positive thing you can do for the environment. Meat production is the greatest cause of environmental destruction.

What to Drink?
The only thing that really quenches our thirst is water. Soft drinks and other sugary, acidic, caffeinated, and chemical-laden artificially-flavored and colored beverages won’t do it. Herbal teas can be useful and provide some variety. When it comes to water, drink pure water. In most American cities, water is tainted with chlorine and fluoride. Chlorine is a poison. In more enlightened countries, in Europe for instance, they use ozonation rather than chlorine (ozone, O3, is O2 with an extra oxygen). Ozone disinfection is far more effective against bacteria and viruses compared to chlorine.

Putting fluoride in our water is pure insanity. According to a Harvard study, fluoride lowers IQ. It’s a neurotoxin and correlated with bone cancer. It can’t be easily filtered or removed. There are at least 50 reasons why we should not put fluoride in our water. This is a case of fake science, junk science, promoted out of corporate greed and desire to find some way to cheaply dispose of a toxic pollutant. You can research it on your own. Suffice it to say, never drink fluoridated water if you can possibly avoid it. We don’t need hydrofluoric acid in our body. Fluoride is the active toxin in rat poison and cockroach powder. You will have to do your own vetting in your area to find a source of pure water. Even bottled water is not necessarily safe. Do your best. Get your city to remove fluoride, chlorine (and/or chloramine) from your water and use ozonation instead.

Getting Rid of Heavy Metal Toxins

We live in a highly contaminated environment. The two worst heavy-metal toxins are mercury and lead. Mercury comes from dental amalgam fillings, vaccinations (thimerosal / Merthiolate), coal-fired power plants, and in the past, externally, from Mercurochrome / merbromin, and other sources (research if you like). Lead comes from many sources. There are a couple of natural ways to completely remove toxic heavy metals. Organic apple cider vinegar, and organic parsley and cilantro (aka Chinese parsley / coriander). Lethal levels of mercury have been removed by consuming a handful of cilantro and a handful of parsley every third day for a month, 10 treatments. Blend it in a blender with lemon juice and natural sugar or mix it with any food, like salsa. It’s important to use organic products from pure soil because these plants can also draw contaminants from the soil. If the plants taste metallic, don’t use them. Organic apple cider vinegar is another heavy-metal chelator. Use it regularly with your meals. Also, all green foods, high in magnesium and calcium help to reduce toxic heavy metals. Beans also help to clear the body of toxic metals.

If anyone you know has violent behavior patterns, definitely have them do the cilantro/parsley cleanse. It’s been researched that the vast majority of violent criminals were contaminated with heavy metal poisoning. Mad hatters syndrome was an occupational disease when hat makers used Mercury as part of the felting process. They went insane, for which we have the expression, “Mad Hatters.” Lead poisoning from lead paint (older buildings), industrial processes, highway bridge paints (still lead-based), imported products, and many other sources contribute to the destruction of mental and physical health. Children exposed to lead contamination often have a lower IQ, behavioral and learning problems, hyperactivity, slowed growth, hearing problems, and anemia. Today, we are the most toxic civilization to exist on Earth. We’re poisoning ourselves with a vast array of chemicals, hundreds of which are known to be carcinogenic, and vast numbers are untested, especially in combination. This is why when you watch the evening news, you see so much insanity. Children are much more susceptible than adults. It’s important that all children be kept on an organic diet. Do not allow dentists to use amalgam fillings. There are much better alternatives today, including regenerating the teeth naturally.

How to Prepare Healthy Food, Faster Than Fast Food
Families purchase packaged foods and meals from so-called fast food restaurants because they think it’s more convenient and faster. Yet, it can be even faster to prepare wholesome foods at home from scratch, if you know how. I once cooked for a community of 20-30 people every day. I did it in less than 8 minutes. Here’s how I did it.

For thousands of years, the two principal foods which fueled civilization were grains and legumes. Corn and beans, rice and beans, wheat and beans. These can take a long time to cook, but the prep time is measured in seconds. There are dozens of grains available and hundreds of peas and bean varieties available – low cost, dried, buy in bulk.

Don’t buy any corn, wheat, oats, or other grain products unless you know they’re organic. They are often sprayed with glyphosate (Roundup) to kill the plants for early harvest (Could this be the real cause of wheat allergies?). Don’t buy any GMO products. Glyphosate has been proven carcinogenic. Buy no white sugar. Use freeze-dried natural sugar, or jaggery. In general, don’t eat any foods that were not available a hundred years ago.

Early civilizations learned how to properly prepare grains, legumes, nuts, and seeds. They all contain anti-nutrients such as lectins, phytates, tannins, and other chemicals to discourage disintegration by mold and rot, or consumption by insects or animals. They require pre-processing. Although a forgotten art today, our ancestors learned to soak, sprout, ferment, or cook them to get rid of these chemicals. It’s essential to remove these natural defense chemicals. Raw, un-soaked, uncooked dried beans, such as kidney beans, are poisonous. Do this with all grains, legumes, nuts, and seeds: Soak them at room temperature until plump. Drain, wash, and refill a couple of times over 24 hours, and then store underwater in the fridge or set to cook. This takes less than 5 minutes. Soaked nuts and seeds will last a week or two in the fridge underwater and won’t mold or go bad. Once they’ve been soaked, the skins of almonds will easily slip off. Grains and legumes you can cook on the stove. Set a timer to avoid burning. Even better, use a crockpot.

To feed 20-30 people, I used crockpots connected to light or appliance timers. You can use more than one crockpot or use the same crockpot on successive days. It took me less than a minute to load a crockpot with grains or beans and soak water. The next evening (24+ hours) I would drain, wash & refill, add savory herbs, and plug the crockpot into a timer. Again, less than a minute. The following day at the appointed time, the meal would be cooked. We just showed up and the food was ready. For a family, you could make a pot of grains and a pot of beans twice a week. Extra food can be kept in the fridge. 3-5 minutes on the stove can warm it up. (Don’t use microwave ovens, research shows it chemically damages foods.) In general, shoot for two thirds grains and one third legumes on average weekly. I also cooked vegetables the same way. I would add root vegetables to the beans, and softer vegetables to the grains or use a separate crockpot on a shorter timer. Sometimes, we would do a stir fry. At one time, I had four crockpots all on separate timers. But that was for 20 to 30 people. You have it much easier. Some newer crockpots even come with built-in timers, but I’ve seen separate lamp or appliance timers recently for 2 to 3 dollars apiece. Today, there are hundreds of recipes for vegan crockpot meals. Search the Internet and you will find them. Learn the proportions of how they design their recipes: grains, legumes, vegetables, herbs and spices. Then just cook by feel, without recipes. That way, you can see what you have on hand and make up your own delicious recipe in less than a minute.

For salads, several of us would gather together for 5 to 10 minutes and cut vegetables to make a large salad. Or cut up fruits to make a fruit salad. I make all kinds of fruit toppings and salad dressings using an inexpensive Oster blender. These blenders can use an ordinary pint or half pint jar as a blending jar. For fruit toppings I use fruits, soaked nuts and seeds, a little coconut oil, a pinch of sea salt, and spices such as Chinese five spice, cinnamon, ginger, plus some natural freeze-dried sugar, or jaggery. For salad dressings, I use soaked nuts and seeds, a little olive oil, apple cider vinegar or lemon juice, sea salt, and herbs and spices. This is how I make gourmet toppings and dressings. I can do it in about three minutes or less, and these taste better than I’ve had in any restaurant. With the food already cooked and seasoned, and with sea salt, herbs, and spices handy, we would have a meal together in less time than it takes to drive to a fast food restaurant and stand in line or wait in a drive up. Or even to call and wait for take out. For oils, use mostly olive and coconut. Occasionally, we use sesame or sunflower.

To have food for lunch, set your timers so everything is ready in the morning. Put your lunch (using a few containers) in a brown bag, or use a decorative lunch bag, or lunchbox. Use a wide mouth thermos for soups. To avoid plastic, use an eco-friendly stainless steel tiffin carrier. Pack a salad, snacks, and hot foods in separate containers. Lunch is ready faster than you can walk or drive to eat. You can even have a picnic at an outdoor table or at a park nearby. Encourage your workmates to picnic with you. Spend a little time outdoors in good weather. It’s healthy. For sandwiches, I can make a large stovetop quick bread in about 10 minutes. The bottom line is that you can have wonderful, delicious, organic meals for much less than you spend going out to eat. All you have to do is set one reminder to presoak and another to start your crockpot. Daily hot meals in a few minutes. A few extra minutes for salad and snacks and you’re done.

Avoid commercial cereals. Unless they are organic, assume they have been sprayed with toxic Roundup herbicide (~ 70%). Most of them have also been laced with GMO sugar. You can buy organic flaked grains in bulk. Add organic almond milk, organic sugar, cinnamon, and some berries or fruit if desired. No need to soak them. They were pre-soaked in order to flatten them into flakes. They are ready to eat without cooking, but if you like, you can cook them on the stove or simply add boiling water. Very fast. Less than eight minutes.

You can also make very quick meals with organic pasta or soba noodles. Top with stir-fried vegetables. Takes about 20 minutes. Make whole wheat quick breads in a cast iron skillet in 10 minutes with whole wheat flour, salt, baking powder, and baking soda. Lots of possible additions. Quick breads can be made sweet or savory. Examples: http://dish.allrecipes.com/baking-quick-breads/ (But use healthier ingredients and substitute soaked, blended, flax/chia seeds for eggs.)

Green smoothies are a very quick breakfast. Put 2-3 fruits, lots of mild leafy greens, some soaked nuts and seeds, cinnamon and ginger powder, add sufficient water, and blend. Or instead of using water, juice vegetables and the tougher greens like kale and collards if you have a juicer. Lookup “green smoothie” recipes online. Also, look into savory raw green soups.

This rapid, healthy, plant-based meal system using flaked breakfast cereals, whole grain quick breads, crockpot meals with salads, stir-fry vegetables with organic pasta or noodles, and green smoothies can keep you going for a few weeks or months until you develop your culinary skills. It may not be flashy, but it is far healthier than practically every other choice. It takes very little time and costs a fraction of what you now spend.

Whoever creates meals is totally in charge of the family’s health by the food choices, purchases, and meals they prepare. Take healthy nutrition to heart and take care of yourself and your family with real food nutrition.

Develop Your Culinary Skills with Herbs and Spices
These 17 herbs and spices are delicious and have anti-cancer properties: Allspice, Basil, Caraway, Cardamom, Cayenne, Cinnamon, Clove, Coriander, Cumin, Dill, Fennel, Ginger, Oregano, Rosemary, Saffron, Thyme, and Turmeric. A little black pepper can make turmeric 20 times more effective. (See my blog for an anti-inflammatory formula.) Be careful with the use of onions and garlic. They are steroidal. I don’t use them. They can also excite emotional and hormonal instability. Yet they do have a place medicinally.

Herbs and spices can be blended together as a mixture so you don’t have to mix them one at a time. This is what curries and Indian masalas are. Chaat masala is a good example. You can get them at Indian grocers prepackaged or make them up yourself. Read up on the spices that are used in various countries to learn more. Taste each herb or spice so you know what it’s like. Begin by using small but equal amounts of herbs and spices, except for the very hot or unusually strong herbs or spices. In fact, the only mistake you can make is not tasting and adding too much of a strong herb or spice. Gradually add more of what you like until you get the taste you want. Soon you will be able to mix spices and herbs just by eye, without even measuring.

Where to Shop
Many people today are on a budget. You will be happy to know that you can reduce your food budget by at least half or more by judicious shopping and home preparation. Also, you’ll be getting real, nutritious, healthy food instead of fake, chemical-laden junk food. Grab your to do list. Make an entry to search for “natural foods,” “organic foods,” “farmers markets,” “Asian grocery,” and “Indian grocery,” plus the name of your city. Put an entry into your calendar to visit these markets and learn about them. Natural food stores often will give you a tour of how to use their bulk food section (which is where you buy bulk grains, legumes, and seeds). On a budget, you can buy brown rice and beans in the dry goods section of any supermarket. Indian grocers will have the best selection of herbs and spices at reasonable costs. Natural food stores will often carry Frontier Herbs, a source of organic herbs. For fruits and vegetables, farmers markets are the best value in season. Some things you really must buy organic because conventional sources are so laden with pesticides. Visit http://EWG.org to learn about the “dirty dozen” and the “clean fifteen.” You must also buy organic wheat, oats, and barley because stupid farmers are spraying these non-GMO crops with Roundup, a proven carcinogen, to kill them for early harvest. Don’t buy any soybeans unless they are organic. Even so, I wouldn’t bother. They require much more processing, such as fermentation, than other alternatives.

Food Summary
This food section is a little bit long, but it’s really essential to change your diet. It’s the only way to substantially change your biochemistry and neurochemistry. It’s the easiest way to lose weight and stabilize your weight. It’s not only best for you, it’s the single best thing you can do for the environment. It’s amazing how powerful a change in diet can be. As mentioned previously in the success stories, removing junk foods and adopting an organic plant-based diet can create miracle transformations in schools, prisons, and with parolees. It can create miracles in your life. It’s that amazing. Use your to do list and reminder system to remind you to get what you need. You don’t need much. A crockpot or two, a blender, some kitchen knives, a cutting board, and a bowl. You probably have almost everything. In a pinch, with a crockpot, or portable cooktop or hotplate, you can even do this without a full kitchen. I’ve done it many times when I needed to cook in rural retreat settings or where no kitchen was available.

Can you make the switch to a healthy diet? Surprisingly, many people find it easier to make a complete change overnight. When you know you can’t do anything the old way, you just do it. Other people find that they can start with just two days a week, say Tuesdays and Thursdays. Then every week add one more day until you’re up to seven days a week. Make an adventure of it. Have fun learning to shop in new places and experimenting with new recipes. This can add 10 to 20 years to your life and you can be happier and healthier than you have ever been.

Change Biochemistry and Neurochemistry Physiologically

Physiological methods can be used to change biochemistry and neurochemistry. If you’ve ever had a deep therapeutic massage, you know how great it can make you feel. It works out the stress on a physical level. One third of our stress is stored as muscle tension and as biochemical imbalances in other tissues. Deep tissue massage and acupressure are very powerful for healing because they 1) relieve tension in the muscles, 2) flush the body of toxins (through the lymph system), and 3) remove blockages in the acupuncture meridian system. Acupressure is simply acupuncture without needles, using pressure instead. If you’ve ever looked into Chinese medicine, you may have discovered acupuncture or acupressure. In China, they even use acupuncture to anesthetize patients for major surgery. Acupressure is much simpler than acupuncture. You can use a powerful DIY system that requires no training. It’s really easy.

In 1972, I spent some months at a meditation retreat on the Atlantic coast of Spain, south of Portugal. We spent long hours in meditation, often 12 hours per day. It was extremely powerful, but some of the participants had used drugs in the past. Due to their past drug use, some of them would flip out as these drug experiences were purged from their system. Essentially, they were detoxing on a physical, psychological, and emotional level. When they became mentally and emotionally unstable, the solution we used was acupressure. I have also worked with psychotic people. When you can’t rationally communicate with people, physiological or energetic methods work best. Using only acupressure and simple breathing techniques, I have been able to stabilize totally psychotic people within 15-20 minutes, though it takes repeated sessions to bring them fully back to normal.

There are 72,000 nerves that end in the hands and feet. This is also where most of the acupressure meridians begin. These nerves and meridians reflex to different parts of the body, and applying pressure to these areas causes corrections to other parts of the body. This includes our endocrine system which controls our biochemistry and neurochemistry. There are charts or maps of the body that indicate how these reflexes work. There are maps all over your body: Feet, hands, ears, scalp, face. even the lips and tongue all have reflex points. The whole body is covered with meridians and acupressure points. You can download acupuncture charts and reflexology charts (search those terms). Some of the nicest plastic-coated reflexology charts are made by Inner Light Resources.

Our own body is always trying to communicate with us. In this case, it tells us where we need help by pressure sensitivity. You can easily see how this works by experimenting right now. If you press on different parts of your arm, you will find certain places that are more sensitive. Those places are where the meridians are blocked. Move an inch or two and you don’t feel the same sensitivity. If you apply pressure or massage those sensitive points, which are acupuncture points, you’ll notice that you feel better. This is why deep tissue massage is so effective at reducing stress. If you were to locate all of these sensitive places on your body and massage them, you would feel great. As a DIY therapy, I often suggest that people find all their most sensitive points and mark them on a simple “gingerbread man” map of their body (front and back). Then work on those points. This is a very easy method of full-body acupressure that can balance the functions of your body very powerfully.

Using Acupressure and Massage Tools
When working on yourself and others, after a while, your fingers may become tired of pressing. For this reason, many kinds of tools have been created for working deeper into the tissues and acupressure points. Any kind of blunt instrument will work. You can find these kinds of acupressure/massage tools in bath and beauty shops at the mall, at massage stores, or search online for “massage tools” (search for images). I have often used smooth, polished river stones for this purpose. In Spain, we used polished sea shells found on the beach. Rock shops often sell polished massage tools made from semiprecious stones. They can be quite beautiful. There are even tools that you can use to work on your own back, neck, and shoulders. These are large S-curve shaped tools. Search “Backnobber” (There are other brands). I have used the original long, narrow, S-curve (metal version) for 35 years or more. It will never break or wear out.

To make it easier to work on large areas, like the legs and back, there are electrically-powered, handheld deep-tissue percussive massage devices. These make it faster and easier to massage all points on the expansive areas of the body. They’re not as useful for hands and feet and they don’t go as deep (or as targeted) as some hand tools, but they are amazing for large coverage. The best ones use two alternating massage “hammers” spaced appropriately to work up and down the spine on both sides. Shiatsu massage therapist particularly work with the acupressure points on each side of the spine. Manual massage tools and powered massagers can give you a wonderful deep massage and percussive acupressure session while fully clothed. In 15 minutes you will feel like a new person, like you had a 90 minute therapeutic massage session. You can often find percussive massagers at the mall in shops like Sharper Image, or Brookstone, or search online for “percussive massager.” Two recommended devices are Dr Franklyn’s Deep Tissue Hammer Massager (United Yoram Distributors) and the professional (more expensive) Thumper Mini Pro 2. Powerful units work better.

Since both the hands and feet contain full maps of the body, you can work on the whole body by just working on the hands or feet with smaller massage tools. This form of acupressure is known as reflexology. You can find reflexology charts that show the reflex points in detail, or you can simply massage your hands and feet, top and bottom. The fingers and toes correspond to the head area; the heel corresponds to the lower body. The middle of the hands or feet corresponds to the mid body and all the internal organs. For the purpose of mental and emotional stability (as during our meditation retreat), we would work on the fingers and toes, especially the toes, which correspond to the head and brain area. The acupressure meridians start just behind the toenails and fingernails. It was also useful to massage all the endocrine points in order to balance the chemistry of the body. It’s best to find a partner and work on each other’s feet. You will be amazed at how quickly this can stabilize you, make you feel better, and settle you down. Whenever you’re at your wits’ end, this is a great thing to do. Acupressure can relieve a tremendous load of stress. Make a reminder to get some acupressure/massage tools.

Acoustic Brainwave Synchronization

The brain operates in different frequency ranges. The frequencies range from 0.5 Hz up to 200 Hz (Hertz = cycles per second). Most of the activity is in the lower ranges, generally up to about 40 Hz. Different frequency ranges have been identified and given names. They’re associated with different states of consciousness, experiences, and activities.

• Epsilon waves, (below 0.5 Hz), Deep advanced states of meditation, ecstatic states of consciousness, high inspiration & creativity, spiritual insight.
• Delta waves, (0.5-3.9 Hz), Deep sleep, loss of outer awareness, and deep physical relaxation and regeneration.
• Theta waves, (4-7.9 Hz), Deep meditation, intuition, learning and memory, high creativity, flashes of insight, inspiration, spontaneous healing.
• Alpha waves, (8-13.9 Hz), Relaxed focus and good health, mental coordination, long-term memory, creativity and visualization, meditation.
• Beta waves, (14-30 Hz), linear, externally-directed left-brain thinking, stress, anxiety and fear, unsynchronized waves, short-term memory and routine jobs.
• Gamma waves, (40-200 Hz), genius brain waves, superconscious states, mystical experiences, hyper concentration & focus, Self-awareness & insight.

Research has shown that these brainwave states can be induced acoustically through acoustic sound pulses in the desired frequency range. This is one way we can improve our mental and emotional environment and associated biochemistry and neurochemistry. It can also relieve a lot of stress.

Tremendous Potential
The extraordinary impact of this knowledge is that people can now help themselves at home, school, or work. They can enhance their own neurochemistry and biology simply by listening to a soundtrack on any computer, mp3 player, or smart phone using a set of headphones or earbuds, just like listening to music. Each of these brainwave states has an associated biochemistry and neurochemistry. Simply listening to an audio of these pulsed sounds has been clinically shown to eliminate depression and addictive behavior. The most useful ranges for this purpose are the alpha, and theta ranges. For instance, the alpha state, 8-13.9 Hz, produces serotonin and endorphins and increases feelings of relaxation and happiness. It’s extremely useful for accelerated learning. Students in the alpha state can learn as much as five times the amount of information in less time, and with greater long-term retention!

Theta waves, 4-7.9 Hz, release catecholamines. They are essential for learning and memory and dramatically increase communication between the left and right hemispheres of the brain, improving cognitive function. Most classical, harp, and piano music shifts the brain into the alpha and theta states. (Most metal, hard rock, and similar music shifts the brain into the high-beta, stressful state.)

Eliminating Addiction with Binaural and Iso-chronic Audio
Alpha and theta frequencies have been proven to eliminate addiction. This is in high contrast to past failures of the medical and counseling professions to deal with addictions successfully. Neither medical drugs nor counseling therapies have produced significant impacts on our addictive culture. Scientific experiments have proven the superiority of brainwave entrainment over such therapies. For example, at the University of Southern Colorado an experiment was conducted with two paired groups of alcoholics. One group received the standard 12-step Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) program. The other group received no counseling, but was given 15 20-minute sessions of alpha and theta binaural beats listening. Thirteen months later, the AA group had no change in levels of depression (Beck’s Depression Inventory) and an 80% relapse into alcoholism. Other studies of AA have shown as much as a 95% relapse after 13 months. On the other hand, the binaural beats listening group only relapsed 20% and depression levels improved to equal a non-alcoholic control group. This is an amazing achievement with only 15 sessions. These experiences reinforce my contention that the best way to create a happy, healthy population is to change biochemistry and neurochemistry.

There are free video/audio programs on YouTube as mentioned earlier in the Quick Fix section, as well as specialized apps for computers, portable computing devices, and smartphones. Here are a few examples.

Change Biochemistry and Neurochemistry with Binaural Beats
Binaural Listening (You need to use headphones or earbuds since the sound for each ear is different.)
Pure Theta 4.5 Hz
https://youtu.be/9PNC4S5XxS0
Pure Theta 7 Hz
https://youtu.be/66tq9xji0xA
Pure Alpha 12 Hz
https://youtu.be/7cHjaJRl1Qo
Relaxing Study Music
https://youtu.be/Txcxcmp-n_s
Online Binaural Beats Machine
https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/binauralBrainwaveGenerator.php

There’s a lot of ongoing research, particularly with regard to Phi-ratio combinations and brainwave coherence. Begin by listening to alpha and theta audios. Try out some of the software for smart phones. Search “binaural,” “isochronic,” and “brainwave.” As additional research and software becomes available, I’ll post it here.

Bio-Energy Healthcare

Bio-energy healthcare is one of the most promising “new” modalities available to us today. It is simply the administration of bio-energy or life-force energy to any part of the body. This methodology is detailed in chapter 9 of my book, “Extraordinary Healthcare.” It has profound and extremely valuable uses in balancing biochemistry, relieving stress, eliminating pain, restoring normal functions, and accelerating healing. It can be easily learned by anyone and is especially valuable for parents in caring for their children. Five to twenty minutes of practice can dramatically reduce pain, and more. In the next few minutes, you will learn the technique.

The Power of Bio-Energy Healthcare
Every so often, a breakthrough happens that should be on the front page of every newspaper, but no one knows about it. In this case, the story is about a child named Teddy, who was born to a crack cocaine, alcohol addicted mother. He was born 13 weeks premature with fetal alcohol syndrome. The child had severe facial dysmorphology and a prognosis for severe mental retardation and institutionalization. He had a projected IQ of perhaps 50-60. Because the mother was addicted, the child was also in withdrawal and cried incessantly. The social worker handling the case could not find a foster family to take the child and decided to take the child home to his own family.

Fortunately, everyone in the family knew how to utilize bio-energy. They would flood the child with bio-energy and the child would stop crying and settle down. With excellent nutrition and daily bio-energy sessions, the child began to improve substantially. Over the next year, a miraculous transformation took place. He was medically tested and showed no facial dysmorphology, average height and weight, no sign of addiction, and performing 100% developmentally, with above average intelligence. By the age of two, he was a bio-energy healer in his own right. He would heal the children at daycare, and spontaneously heal family members by visually locating their pain and flooding the area with bio-energy to eliminate the pain. By three years of age, he could see the bio-energy as light. Teddy is now over 10 years old, with far above normal intelligence and super sensory perception.

If such a transformation can happen in this worst-case scenario, imagine the developmental possibilities of a normal child when exposed to daily bio-energy sessions and a highly nutritious organic diet. Perhaps we can make every child a genius! Just flood the head and body with bio-energy and nurture the child with fresh organic foods from the garden. Also, imagine the possibilities for the rest of humanity, especially those who have been caught in addictive behaviors. Bio-energy could help stabilize and normalize their neurochemistry and could free them from their addictions.

I mentioned it before, America is in trouble. Currently, there is a birth defect in every 33 children. This health disaster is primarily due to the nutritional deficiencies of the standard American (junk food) diet (SAD), but also due the impact of alcohol and drugs. Perhaps with bio-energy healthcare and organic nutrition, we could reverse this damage. Even later in life, dramatic transformations can happen, but with severe abnormalities at birth, early treatment is vital, while the child is still in development. Later, it may not be possible to reverse birth defects. If it can happen, as it has, it can happen to others.

The important take away is that bio-energy was able to calm the effects of drug withdrawal and restore normalcy. I have used this technique for many years to eliminate pain within minutes, to clear headaches in seconds, to align the body in a few minutes, to reverse scoliosis, to repair degenerated joints, to prevent people in accidents from going into shock, to heal life-threatening diseases in both people and animals, and more. Bio-energy is a true panacea because it is the energy of life. Life-force energy organizes and maintains every aspect of our living processes. Without life energy, bio-energy, we are dead. With more of it, we are more alive and have more capacity for self-healing. Life energy goes by over 76 different names throughout the world. In China it is called Chi, in Japan, Ki, and in India, prana. The Indians of North and South America also used it. It is universal and available everywhere.

How Bio-Energy Healthcare Came to Be
I have studied with different teachers and healers throughout the world. I was taught by a friend who was taught by a teacher who originally cognized the technique. It turns out that the ability to heal ourselves and to heal others is natural and quite easy to learn. No belief or faith is required because bio-energy, life force energy, is a real energy that is easily moved from one place to another. Although invisible to most of us, like air, some people with more sensitive eyes can see it. We can all learn to feel it over time. You may feel it as various sensations, as warm, cool, pressure, or electrical tingling. Different people have different feeling sensitivities.

At this time in history there is a huge need for simple, effective, no-cost methods to restore our physical, mental, and emotional health. Currently, there is an epidemic of addiction. There are not enough therapist or practitioners of any kind to help them, even if they could. The only solution is to turn every affected household into a healthcare treatment center, with family members themselves doing the therapeutic work. Bio-energy will be one of their most powerful tools, among others listed in this Guide.

How to Practice Bio-Energy Healthcare
Although practitioners may spend many years learning different techniques of healing using bio-energy, the basics can be learned in a few paragraphs of reading. You just need to practice it and try it out whenever there is an opportunity. It actually doesn’t need “practice” in the usual since. You already have the ability. Practice only builds your confidence that it is real. Here’s how to do it.

1. Placing your attention. With your eyes open or closed, if I tell you to place your attention on your right knee you can do that. Right? If I tell you to put your attention on your left elbow you can do that too, easily. We can place our attention anywhere instantly. For a few moments, practice placing your attention at different locations in your body. We do this automatically when we have a small injury, our attention immediately goes to the pain, to some part of our body. It’s totally easy and totally natural.
2. Now we’re going to practice moving our attention in a sequence, a flow. Place your attention just below your feet. Now, we’re going to gradually move to the top of the head. From below your feet, move into your feet, ankles, shins, knees, thighs, hips, up through the torso, up through the neck, to the top of the head. You may feel a tingling or warmth in different parts of your body as you do this. But it’s not necessary that you feel anything. Don’t skip over any location. It should be continuous flow. Repeat this flow of attention a few times until it feels easy and natural. If you find yourself jumping over a location, go back and practice moving through that area until it becomes a smooth flow of attention.
3. Now, from the top of the head, practice moving your attention down through the head and neck, across the shoulders, down the arms to your hands, and then out the palms of your hands. Energy flows where your attention goes. This is the basis of the other healing modalities that we’ve used already. Wherever you place your attention, there is healing energy. It’s a part of all of us.
4. Now practice the previous two steps together. Flow your attention from below your feet up to the top of your head, encompassing all the tissues of your body with your awareness, from the bones to a few inches outside the skin, as you move up. It’s like a ball of light moving up through, and around, your body. Then flow your attention from the top of your head down your arms and out your palms. Practice this complete flow of attention several times until it feels comfortable and natural.
5. Now, were going to synchronize the flow of attention, awareness, with your breath. As you breathe in, flow your awareness to the top of your head, as you breathe out, flow your awareness down and out the palm of your hands. We can move our attention as fast as we want to. With a little practice, it’s easy to move from below our feet to the top of our head with one deep in-breath. On the out-breath, it’s not unusual to take two, three, or even four times as long to continuously flow energy out of the palms of our hands. An abundance of bio-energy accumulates at our hands. If you were to place your hands 6 or 8 inches apart and practice this technique, you may feel a ball of energy as a light pressure between your hands. But it isn’t necessary to feel it for it to work. Now, all that remains is to put whatever you want healed between your hands. Usually, we try to sandwich the area that needs healing between our hands. If we can’t do that, then we place our hands side-by-side. If the area that we want to treat is very small, we can flow the energy out of the tips of our fingers, just by our intention and visualization to do that.

OK, let’s say you want to help someone who is troubled by addictive behavior. You could sit on the floor or on a bed and have that person lie down with their head in your lap, face up, eyes closed. Then place your hands on each side of the head and stream the energy out of your palms. Bioenergy would accumulate within their cranium and their own body would use this energy to heal itself. In reality no one heals anyone else. All healing is self-healing. We are just helping their body to heal itself by providing extra life energy which we draw from outside of ourselves, from below our feet. As practitioners, we also get healed as the energy flows through our own body.

Often we work with our own eyes closed, because there is an expansion of consciousness. In this process, we are only concerned with flowing energy through our own body, then allowing the energy to exit our palms and accumulate there. Whatever we place between our hands receives the bio-energy. Even if we visualize or imagine some part of another person, or a whole person between our hands, they would receive the energy. This is because bio-energy does not dissipate with distance as light or sound does. Ordinary energies obey the inverse square law and dissipate with the square of the distance. Whereas this kind of energy goes directly where attention and intention dictate.

It’s possible to improve the process by establishing ourselves in a positive emotion as we work. Two of the best emotions are gratitude and compassion. For instance, allow the energy to flow just like a loving mother goes to a crying child, with nurturing, loving compassion. Feel the feeling of loving compassion. This adds a beautiful quality to the process. Any high, uplifting emotional state helps the process by removing any resistance within ourselves. The process works best when we’re free of resistance and tension. When you get familiar with the technique as described, you can add another boost by sending bio-energy from your heart center along with your hands. Just visualize it happening. Also, breathe deeply as you work. Bio-energy also comes in with the air. Breathe twice your normal depth of breathing.

This is an active technique. And it requires your full attention the whole time you’re doing it. At first, you may only be able to practice for 5 or 10 minutes before losing your ability to focus. With more practice, you can build up to 15 or 20 minutes, or even longer. Rarely would you need longer sessions. Begin using this technique your with friends and family. If someone has some pain or headache just try some experiments. You’ll be surprised how quickly, easily, and powerfully it works. Just sandwich the area of pain and do the process. It does NOT require any belief on their part or on your part, and you can do no harm.

Usually, we begin by asking them to rate their discomfort on a scale of 1 to 10. 10 being the worst. Then we check with them later to see how much reduction has happened. If anyone in your family is troubled by addictive behavior, begin daily sessions working on their head and brain to change their neurochemistry and biochemistry. Whatever the addiction, they will require less of it daily and can gradually withdraw from it with the minimum of repercussions. It would be wise to consult a doctor to learn how to gradually withdraw from the use of any substance. This is not to say it will easy for everyone, but it will be much easier and doable. It still requires feeling some of the effects of withdrawal, but it can be much more manageable when flooded with life energy. Combine this method with the other methods in this Guide. Taken together they can produce amazing results. Whenever withdrawal becomes intensified, which it can do periodically, just flood the head and body with life force energy. Symptoms of withdrawal usually come in cycles of waves that peak and then dissipate.

Bio-energy can also be used as a self-care treatment. You can use the same techniques to work on yourself. Of course, it’s nice to have the support of another person. When this is not available, you can work on yourself. To work on areas that you can’t reach, simply visualize those areas between your hands and bio-energy will be directed to that location.

Exercises to Remove Drugs and Toxins

Lymphatic Exercise
The lymph system is the drainage and cleanup system for the body. It’s huge, about 4 to 5 times as large as the circulatory system with all its arteries and veins. But it doesn’t have its own pump like the circulatory system does. It requires differential pressure. Essentially, the lymph system is a series of one-way valves. In order to work, it needs pressure and release. The most efficient way of cleaning up the body is to pump the lymph system through exercise. The best exercise is bouncing up and down. Jogging in place, jumping rope, even simply jostling the body up and down will work. The single best way, however, is with a rebounder, essentially a small trampoline about 4 feet in diameter.

A rebounder makes it easy to alternate zero gravity with double gravity which has a profound effect in pumping the lymph system. Five minutes on a rebounder, four times per day, can do wonders to clean up the body. There have been many reports of this technique even curing serious diseases, like multiple sclerosis, by draining the body of toxins and poisons and improving oxygen and nutrients getting to the cells. You will notice that after a few minutes of rebounding, you will feel a certain lightness and happiness come over you. Your body rewards you when you do the right things.

Any form of exercise will help because exercise creates endorphins and has a cleansing effect on the body. However, exercises that tire you out also create toxic products of metabolism that must be cleared. Ayurveda recommends exercising to 50% of capacity. If you get too tired, you may reduce your blood sugar too low. Then higher brain functions shut down and you are prone to making bad decisions. If you want to build stamina, it’s better to exercise moderately but more frequently. With any exercise, breathe deeply enough that you do not starve for oxygen. Breathe before you need it, rather than running out of breath.

Different Types of Exercise for Different Purposes
You accomplish different purposes with different types of exercise. As mentioned, lymphatic exercise is ideal for cleaning up the body. Here are some other modes of exercise to practice. Make exercise part of your daily routine. Set aside 15-20 minutes a day to do something. Here are some other options. The Internet is a good source for getting the details.

• Aerobic Exercise, for stamina
• Body Weight Exercise, for strength
• Stretching Exercise and Yoga, for flexibility and coordination
• Tense and Release Exercise, for toning, strength, & cleansing
• Dynamic Tension Exercise, for muscle building
• Walking in Fresh Air, for heart health

Meditation for Health, Happiness, and Intelligence

Deep Inner Stillness and Silence

By now, everyone has heard about the benefits of meditation, of taking some quiet time to reduce mental chaos and stressful emotions. The technique that I recommend is universally applicable. We know from all the scientific research that meditation reduces stress and increases serotonin and other natural neurochemicals that support a balanced healthy lifestyle. Here’s a meditation that anyone can practice.

Meditation is the process of expanding awareness and refining the functioning of your mind, emotions, senses, and body. There are hundreds of meditations and combinations of meditation practices. This meditation is a refinement of the popular mindfulness meditation. There are many aspects to it and many choices to enhance it. Mindfulness is the present moment awareness of body, senses, breath, emotions, mental activity, and suspended stillness and silence (quietness beyond all activity). Nothing should pass through your system of which you are not aware. There is no encouragement or rejection of anything. Just awareness of it. This means you keep awareness active in the present moment on what is going on. You know what is happening with your body (aches, pains, pressures, sensations, movements). You are aware of your senses (sight, touch, tastes, sounds, smells). You are aware of your emotions and every thought (words and images). You recognize every thought you are thinking without analysis, just observing. Mindfulness is about being totally conscious, totally aware, without any judgment, without favoring or rejecting. Awareness itself heals. It is automatically corrective. No judgment or action is required.

Mindfulness can be practiced both in and out of formal meditation. Used as a meditative practice, we move to progressively subtler levels of mindfulness or mental activity until all mental activity subsides (for awhile) and we arrive at pure inner stillness.

Meditation is different from contemplation. In meditation we are not concerned at all with the meaning of thoughts, only with the presence of thoughts and the frequency of thoughts. All meditation practices ultimately move to lesser quantities of thoughts and finally to no thoughts at all, pure conscious silence, stillness. Meditation moves from high activity, to lesser activity, to non-activity – a suspension of the activities of the body, mind, emotions, and senses. Then you are immersed in pure stillness, inner peace, and silence, the field of pure consciousness. Meditation cannot be forced. It must be effortless. No amount of effort is useful. All effort is counterproductive. Meditation is the process of allowing the activities of the senses and mind to subside. It’s actually very easy.

Preparation for Meditation

Success with meditation depends on the preparation we do before meditation that puts us in the mode of allowing all activity to subside. We can prepare physically, energetically, emotionally, and mentally. It only takes a few minutes to set the stage for meditation. During meditation we progressively move from high activity to non-activity, keeping awareness lively at every stage.

Physical Prep
First begin with a few minutes of physical culture such as yoga or other light exercise. Even just tensing and releasing helps to let tense muscles relax. Dynamic Tension and Body Weight exercises are both quite good, followed by consciously relaxing tense muscles. The next preparations can all be done when seated for meditation. Sit comfortably in any posture, with your back comfortably straight, so that your body is not an issue. Lying down is not recommended, because you tend to fall asleep. Meditate twice a day for 20 to 30 minutes, or more if you like.

Active Breathing Prep (1-5 minutes each)
Once seated, start with breath. Breathing techniques remove superficial stresses and promote efficient meditation. We move from active breathing to very subtle breathing. It’s okay to become slightly lightheaded when doing some of the active breathing techniques, but don’t overdo it or you may pass out.

Retain some awareness of body, sensations, senses, mind, and emotions as you do these breathing techniques. Remember, when your body is charged with oxygen and bio-energy, the energy goes to any place in the body that you focus on. It creates a healing effect. Choose any one or more of these active breathing techniques. Active breathing saturates your body with oxygen and life force energy. It quickly dissolves any superficial levels of stress and paves the way for deeper meditation.

• Long, Loud, Deep Humming – mmmmm – This is not a breathing technique, but it can substitute for active breathing - Make the humming sound with closed lips. Make it as long, loud, and deep as you can. This long, loud humming sound brings a calming effect to mind and body.
• Fire Breath - Rapid deep breathing with open mouth and open throat (like an opera singer) Do only 5-10 breaths. This can be used every few minutes if necessary to rapidly infuse your body with oxygen and life-force energy. Don’t overdo this or you may pass out. The rest of the breathing techniques below are done through the nose.
• Chaotic Breathing - Deep, but rapid, moderate, and slow breathing. Constantly break up the rhythm (no rhythmic patterns). Non-rhythmic breathing causes the mind to let go of its usual unrelenting production of incessant thoughts.
• Deep Belly Breathing - Breathe at twice your normal rate (bhastrika pranayama from the Yoga system). Oxygenates and increases prana, bio-energy.
• Explosive Exhale - Let inhale take care of itself (kapalabhati pranayama from the Yoga system). Reduces aging, heals internal organs by creating a powerful lymphatic pressure wave to cleanse internal organs.

Mental and Emotional Prep
Mental Preparation: Decide to let go of the outer world for a while. Be without expectations. Be without judgement, analysis, effort, rejection, desires, or any conditions or limitations. Be with a simple mind, like a child. Postpone any decisions, conclusions, analysis, etc. During meditation, these mental gyrations just get in the way. In meditation, as contrasted with contemplation, we are not concerned with the meaning of thoughts. Thoughts may come and go, but we do not pursue them or engage with them in any way. We are disengaging from all thoughts during meditation. It’s the opposite of using the mind as we do in active life, where we are developing ideas and making decisions. In meditation we are retiring from active mental mode.

Emotional Preparation: In active life, we are active, willful, and use emotions as a driving force for accomplishment. In meditation, we use emotions to rest from being constantly driven. Meditation is passive, relaxing, non-active. Any emotion that is gentle, soothing, and opens us up to allowing ourselves to settle deeper, will work. For instance, feel loving compassion as a flowing river of energy coming into your head and body from above you. You could visualize it as a golden light, but it’s the feeling of loving compassion that’s important, like a loving mother caring for her child. A soothing caring feeling is helpful. Be accepting of whatever comes during meditation. Just feel that you are being cared for.

Subtle Breath Meditation Technique

All the subtle breathing meditation techniques are done while breathing through the nose.

• Sigh Breathing (extended exhalation) (3-5 minutes) - You have done this many times when you were exasperated. You just give up with a big sigh. Here, we do it consciously. Every time you breathe out, give a long, deep sigh. Drop everything. Let go of all the ways that you hold on – physically, mentally, and emotionally. Stay awhile in the empty space at the end of the out-breath. After you breathe out all of the air, enjoy the space of suspended animation. In this gap of suspended breath, there is great healing. Don’t resist anything. Enjoy the stillness and the silence. Your mind slows down as your breath slows down.
• Deep Slow Breathing (3-5 minutes) - Now, give equal weight to the in-breath and out-breath. Take several seconds to breathe in and also to breathe out. Become mindful of the breath. Observe your breath at your nostrils as it comes in and goes out. Your attention on your breath keeps you in the present moment. There is great power in the present moment. You will still retain some awareness of body, sensations, senses, mind, and emotions. Awareness (attention) directs bio-energy and heals. Don’t resist or encourage anything. Just observe. Be non-active, passive. Progressively allow your breath to slow down, which it naturally does.
• Imperceptible Breathing (15-20 minutes, This is the longest and deepest part of meditation)
  Breathe in and out so slowly as to be almost imperceptible. Especially observe the two gaps where your breath turns around – at the end of the in-breath (before breathing out), and at the end of the out-breath (before breathing in). In those two places where no air moving, be aware. Spend extra time in these two places. At the end of a long sigh, when your breath is out, empty, you receive consciousness and intelligence, masculine qualities. When your breath is in, full, you receive energy, nurturing, and healing, feminine qualities. (We all need both qualities since we come from both parents.) Be in these two places of stillness. It’s natural to drop into these two turn-around gaps, places of suspended animation. The time within the gaps may extend to several seconds. When you exhale, just drop everything. When you inhale, be without expectations. Enjoy the stillness. No need to control or react. Be the observer, without any active engagement.

Mental Meditation Technique

Awareness of Thoughts and Gaps of No Thoughts
Just as you have gaps between breaths, you also have gaps between thoughts. Be aware of your thoughts and the gaps between your thoughts. Notice you can only have one thought at a time and between every thought there is a gap of silence, stillness. Observe your thoughts and the gaps between them. It doesn’t matter what thoughts you have, just observe them. Like bubbles rising in water, every thought is separate. Just as there is a space between the bubbles, there is a gap between thoughts. As you go deeper, the gaps get longer. Thoughts become less frequent. You may find yourself resting in pure silence, no breath, no thoughts. This experience also leads to stillness of mind just as the breath meditation does. When your breath slows to a near stop, so do your thoughts. When you observe the gaps between your thoughts, the thought process also slows to a near stop, and at times, completely stops.

In both cases, when breath slows down, thoughts also slow down, and when observing the gaps between thoughts and mental activity becomes suspended, your breath also slows down. In both cases you reach the state of imperceptible breath, deep stillness and silence, no activity, no thoughts, no emotions, no sensory activity, and no body awareness. Just tremendous inner peace and stillness. This is a tremendously healing state.

Release of Stress During Meditation

All meditations have two phases, still and active. There are times when you settle extremely deep and you experience being perfectly still and saturated with inner peace. This is what we usually think of as meditation. However, we have all accumulated stresses from our past which have been stored in our system. The deep rest and stillness of meditation causes these deep inner stresses and traumas to be released, purged from your system. This has the effect of physical, mental, and emotional activity. During these times of release, you may feel as if you have been kicked out of the deep state of meditation. If you don’t understand this release process, you may conclude that you failed in meditating properly. You did not. The release process is expected. It is the positive result of deep meditation clearing your past traumas. Though it can sometimes feel uncomfortable. It’s just the active, release-phase of meditation. As you gain experience, you will notice that even this active release-phase is happening at a very deep level. You will hardly be breathing. Release of stress causes the following reactions:

• Physical: Movements or jerks (similar to what happens sometimes when going to sleep), sensations of pressure, heat, cold, pain that was previously hidden, or other physical sensations. These are all normal, though sometimes disconcerting, because the quiet phase of meditation feels so much better. However, this release of stress is highly beneficial, although it doesn’t feel so good. Just recognizing what is happening is quite helpful, knowing that you are being purged of your stresses is reassuring. Once you thoroughly understand the two phases of meditation, you can accept both of the phases as they come. The release process is natural and unavoidable. Still it’s better to not encourage any symptoms of release, thinking that it will enhance release. It will not. We don’t want any more symptoms of release than necessary. Naturally, we would all prefer that every meditation be deep and silent. But the reality is, the traumas we have accumulated need to be released. Fortunately, in the deep state of meditation huge amounts of release take place with very minimal physical, mental, or emotional intensity. We are protected by our huge expansion of consciousness during the practice. Huge traumas are small in comparison and are released with little impact.
• Mental: You may become gripped by thoughts for a while without realizing it. You become inadvertently absorbed in thoughts, dominated by thoughts as releases in your body are taking place. Only after the release is complete do you recognize you have been gripped by thoughts. At these times, we often wonder if we have made a mistake with our meditation and done something wrong. Nothing is wrong and you could not have changed it. It is the nature of release that your mind grabs onto thoughts to express the release. The thoughts you have are not necessarily related to the stress that caused them. Many stresses are released at once and the mental thoughts you have are a byproduct of the stress release coming out of your system. Let them go.
• Emotional: Just as we may become gripped by thoughts, we can also become gripped by emotions. Depending upon the predominant emotions getting released, you may feel anger, frustration, sadness, or any other emotion. Just as with thoughts, you may become gripped by these emotions for a little while as the emotional stress is released. It’s all good, but it doesn’t feel so good. There’s nothing we can do about it because during the releases, you lose any volition, any opportunity of choice, to do anything. You are simply absorbed or gripped by the release process for a few seconds or a few minutes. When the stress is released, all of these emotions subside. Let them go, also. Return to the process of meditation.

When this active release-phase of meditation dominates, you are gripped by the process of release until it is spent and complete. During this phase, you are easily distracted by thoughts, noise, or distractions in the environment. You may find yourself unconsciously making shopping lists. You don’t even catch yourself doing it. Otherwise, during the silent-phase, nothing could pull you out, you are so absorbed in a deep inner stillness. But during the release-phase, we are easily gripped by thoughts or distractions. Only after the release is complete does volition return and you have a choice about what to do next. We may think that analyzing or contemplating these thoughts, emotions, and sensations of release could be useful. But it is not. The stress has already been released and to pursue any activity of contemplation about it would only take you out of meditation.

There is no need to rehash these experiences of stress release. If the release-phase of meditation is overly dominating, it can be useful for 30 seconds to a minute to pause the process of meditation and with eyes still closed, do some of the active breathing techniques to facilitate the release. Then come back to the meditation process and you will find it easier to settle deep again. Whenever you are gripped by release or distracted, then as soon as you recognize that you could come back to the conscious process of meditation, immediately return to the passive process of meditation. Let go, be aware. Observe your breath, the gaps between breaths, and the gaps between thoughts. Allow yourself to settle deeper.

These two phases of meditation will go on until all stress is released from your system. As your stress load reduces, more time will be spent in the deep silent phase of meditation. Be patient with the active phase of release during meditation. If the active phase of meditation substantially dominates your experience of meditation, then do more of the activities outside of meditation to facilitate the release, such as acupressure/percussive massage, reflexology, exercise, better diet, active breathing techniques, stretching, walking in natural settings, and taking warm soothing showers. All of these help to remove the residual stress from your system.

Coming Out of Meditation
Come out of meditation very slowly. Coming out too fast can shock your system. Begin breathing more. Stretch. Move. Massage your hands. If you feel any urgency or anxiety to come out quickly, stay longer. Sensations will subside. Meditation can cause the release of tensions, traumas, and anxieties. You may have physical, mental, or emotional symptoms of release, as described. It’s all okay. Just breathe more and allow the release-phase to subside. Wait to open your eyes. Peek and test if it’s okay. Open a little longer, a little wider. Take 3-5 minutes to come out. Wait until you feel completely settled, like you don’t even want to get up. Then it’s okay to get up. You experience the benefits of meditation after meditation, not during meditation. Of course, the deep, silent phase of meditation feels good, but the value comes after meditation as your life is renewed and healed. Your baseline level of happiness will grow. Ups and downs will be less frequent, and addictive tendencies will subside.

Deconditioning Memories - Purifying Mind and Emotions

Have you ever wondered why you are driven to do the things that you don’t want to do? Why you say mean things to the people you love? Why you make the same mistakes over and over? Why you end up with the wrong kinds of friends, bosses, or workmates? There is a reason for all this madness: Your life is controlled by conditioning from your past, your embedded stress, your traumatic memories.

Our Experiences Define Us
Our experiences define who we are. Our education, the language we speak, the values we have, our beliefs about life, our customs, what we believe to be true and real. All these things come from our experiences from birth until now. If you were born in China you would speak Chinese and have Chinese values. If you were born in Italy you would speak Italian and have Italian customs. All of us are the product of our experiences. We become what we are taught to be. We are defined by our experiences and our reactions to them. Experiences and reactions create our memories. Memories define our self-image.

Not all of our experiences were positive. Many were traumatic or we reacted traumatically. When you were a child, if you were yelled at, or beaten, or put down, or denied the things you wanted, it left a mark on you. Many memories not only contain the details of an incident, but carry an emotional charge as well. When you remember certain memories, you may feel angry, sad, dejected, frustrated, and many other negative emotions. If a memory has a charge on it, it is controlling you. It is causing you to act against your will and better judgement. You are a slave to it. This is what causes us to act against our better interests and to make the same mistakes over and over.

Past emotional traumas continue to affect behavior because they are embedded at a deep psychological and emotional level. Hidden emotional traumas continue to affect us. They destroy our self-image. Emotionally charged memories continue to affect us long after we have forgotten about them, because they have created the self image we live with every day. We always act consistent with our self image. If we were brought up harshly and believe we are a victim or a hoodlum, then we will act that part. If we were brought up with love and wisdom and believe that we are a saint, then we will live a saintly life. We always live up to what we believe we are. This means that if we want to change our behavior we have to change our self image. To change our poor self image, we have to resolve the memories that created it. There are simple techniques to eliminate the effects of past emotional traumas.

Eliminating Emotional Traumas
Here’s the technique. Remember any traumatic event from your past. When you remember it, it will be emotionally charged. Now comes the technique. Not only remember it, but go back in time and re-live it as you were at that age in the same context that you originally experienced it. Re-experience, re-live it, wearing the same clothes, having the same mind, the same feelings, the same emotions, in the same context. You are not looking back on it from the present as a past memory, you are re-living as if it is happening now all over again.

The first time you do this, the emotional aspect may be intense. It’s something that you never got over. So relive it from beginning to end, over and over. The first few times it can be a bit difficult, but then something interesting happens. The emotional charge begins to dissipate. After reliving it four or five times, perhaps more, the emotional charge will disappear and only the memory remains, the actual event. People who experienced severe abuse or PTSD are already unwittingly re-experiencing traumatic events. It is a natural part of the healing process, but they often resist it, trying to avoid it or mask it. They will be more successful if they willingly allow themselves to feel what they feel repeatedly until the emotion dissipates and subsides, which it will do when consciously processed.

Not all emotional events from the past are traumatic in the negative sense. Any overload of emotion, pleasurable or painful, leaves a deep impression that causes us to either try to mask it, or indulge in it. In both cases, we become trapped in an addictive behavior. Intensely pleasurable experiences, like a drug induced high, also overload our system and need to be released. They can be released through the same process. What we are after is not the roller coaster of highs and lows, pleasures and pains, but the increase in our baseline level of fulfillment that will ultimately take us into a higher, more blissful state than we could ever achieve through any addiction. The end result will be a state of peace, inner joy, and fascination with life. This can only happen when the controlling impressions have been released.

When the emotional charge is gone, you may realize that things did not happen as you thought they did. You will be able to see it in a different light. If you were to talk with someone else who was there, they might tell a very different story. In any case, forgiveness can never be complete as long as you retain an emotional charge connected with an experience. To be free of any incident, the emotional charge you carry must be released.

Having completed that event, now you may also remember another incident that led up to this incident, an earlier incident. It is also emotionally charged. Do the same re-living process for that event. Like this, re-live every event in your life that is emotionally charged and keep re-living them until the emotional charge disappears and only the simple memories remain. This is a very powerful way to clear the emotional baggage that controls your life. This is an ongoing process and will take time and sincere work, for some people a lot of work. Even seemingly minor events that you feel may not, or should not be traumatic, like not getting some candy when you were three or four years old, actually produced a very traumatic reaction in you. Do this technique with eyes closed; larger traumas can be released more efficiently.

It turns out, as you release the emotional charge on a few major events, you actually release the emotional charge on many successive events. Altogether, there may be only 10-20 major events that control your life. You may be able to clear most of your emotional baggage within a few weeks.

Healing Mental Decisions
Whenever we go through intense emotional experiences, we always make judgments, interpretations, decisions about ourselves, about life, about others, and about the world we live in. These decisions will always be bad decisions, influenced by the atmosphere of our intense emotion. These decisions also need to be corrected. This is a lot easier than correcting the emotional impact. There are only three simple steps: 1) Review the emotional incident that you have just cleared by the re-living process, and recognize each decision, judgement, interpretation, or conclusion that you made during that timeframe (write them down), 2) cancel each of these ideas and decisions, 3) replace each of them with a good and positive choice. If you simply cancel a decision, judgement, or conclusion, you will leave a vacuum and the tendency will be for the old habit of thought to return. By introducing a positive thought, a positive decision or choice, we fill that vacuum with something beneficial. Cancelling only requires the decision to do so. Recognize and decide you no longer want that decision in your life. Then replace it.

For those people caught in addictive behaviors, you may remember some point in time when you chose to pursue the addictive behavior you are currently trapped in. You decided to try some new drug, or you chose some behavior to try to cover up a negative feeling. Maybe you decided to load up on beer, sodas, sex, or chocolate. Whatever addictive behavior you chose, now it is not serving you. Addictive behaviors are chosen in an attempt to mask feelings we don’t want to feel or to indulge in pleasures. For short time they actually succeed and serve their purpose. But it’s only temporary. The underlying controlling impression is not healed. Once we recognize that the decision is no longer serving us, we can cancel it, and replace it. This will be effective if we have also cleared the emotionally charged impressions that caused us to take that decision in the first place.

Look back at your life, there were junctures where you made bad decisions and those bad decisions have now become a part of you. You made them during times of emotional intensity. As a result, you have controlling memories that are destroying your possibilities for a better life. The only thing to do now is to go back in time and relieve the emotions and make new decisions. When you do this, you will be upgrading your self image, reinventing yourself. As you progressively reinvent yourself, your life takes on new meaning, new appreciation, more gratitude, more fulfillment, and more successes. Through this technique of releasing past emotions and decisions, you will be changing your neurochemistry and biochemistry. Your old life will gradually disappear. You will find new, higher-quality friends and associates to be with, people who now match your reinvented self image. You will be able to set new and better goals and pursue a higher quality life.

Deep Self Suggestion

This technique, like some of the other techniques in The Guide, comes from the tradition of Yoga psychology. I learned this technique from two masters of the Yoga tradition. It’s very simple and very powerful, but also very subtle. This technique is known as samyamah in the Yoga tradition. It will be easier to do after you have had some experience with the meditation technique described earlier.

During deep meditation, at times, we experience a state of silence or stillness. In the state of silence, there is no mental activity or other activity. It is the cessation or suspension of all activity, although we remain consciously aware. We are not asleep. It is pure stillness, pure silence, pure consciousness, not mixed with thoughts or sensory activity. It is a fourth state of consciousness different from waking, dreaming, and deep sleep. In this state, there is only oneness, universal consciousness.

This field of consciousness is supportive. Whatever idea we introduce into it expands and grows. We can apply this aspect of consciousness to support our transformation to a happier and more fulfilled life. All we have to do is to properly insert or release an idea into this field of consciousness. This field of consciousness is the aspect of you that is always observing, conscious. It is always with you and has always been with you as the essential “You” which is unchanging. We are going to use the technique to drop some ideas into your consciousness.

Words and Ideas
Generally speaking, ideas come in the form of images and words. In this case, we begin with words, and in our case, we use the English language. But the word is not the idea itself, only a representation. If I say the word “bliss” then we have the idea of a very happy, wonderful, blissful state. Even if I only think the word, without saying it out loud, we still have the same idea. But if I was French or Italian I would use another word in my native language to express the same idea. So this same idea could be expressed with a another word from any language. The words are different, but the idea is the same.

In this technique, we initially use a word to remind us of the idea. During the technique, we will return to the idea again and again, but we don’t have to return to it as pronunciation of the word, even a mental pronunciation. If we use the actual word repeatedly, it would take more effort because it would be happening at a greater “distance” from our consciousness. It would make the technique less efficient. Instead, we can return to the recognition of the idea which is much subtler than the pronunciation of a word in any language.

Now, the technique. With eyes closed, in a relaxed state, perhaps after you have finished meditation, you begin the technique. From your present state of quietness, think the word “happiness.” Then let go, retire from all activity, even mental activity, for just a moment. This is what you do when you give a deep sigh. You just drop everything and be still. As we retire into consciousness itself, this last idea that we entertained comes with us. We enter into stillness with the idea. We may only be there for a moment, but that is enough. The idea is absorbed into consciousness like a seed planted in the ground. Within a few moments, it begins to grow and you feel a little upliftment of happiness. After 5, 10, or even 15 seconds, return to the idea again as a faint idea, subtle impression, a subtle remembrance, and then drop back into stillness, letting go again. Repeat again and again for 5 to 10 minutes. Gradually a feeling of happiness and lightness will grow stronger and stronger. Over time, it can become really ecstatic, intense joy, or bliss. This will change your biochemistry and neurochemistry.

There are five ideas that we can work with. You can work with all of them in one session or pick a few to focus on. These ideas are: 1) Gratitude, 2) Happiness (bliss), 3) Friendliness, 4) Compassion, and 5) Peace. Every day, for at least 10 minutes practice this deep self suggestion technique. You can also take a few seconds out of the day at any time to close your eyes and reestablish yourself in any of these ideas, according to your need. Just remember the idea and drop into stillness for a moment. Your consciousness is always present and available.

If you are in a lot of pain, you can use the idea “Anesthesia” to reduce the pain. It may take a little time to apply this idea when you are in pain, but it can be done. Once, I was with a friend who accidentally cut his finger badly in the kitchen. We took him to the hospital to get it stitched up. While in the emergency waiting room, I taught him this technique. Within 5 minutes or so, he was completely free of pain and was able to get sutures without any pain. He was an experienced meditator, so he took to the technique easily.

The Religious Approach

It is with a bit of trepidation that I tackle this subject, it is such a sensitive issue. Yet, it must be addressed, so I have saved it for last. People with a religious background and a devotion to their religion often wonder if there is a religious solution. They wonder if prayer will work and if God will intercede on our behalf. Obviously, most people in dire circumstances will have prayed a lot for help and most often, at least on the surface, it seems that their prayers go unanswered. Actually, there is something much deeper going on.

When you look into the scientific research on prayer and faith-based counseling, such as Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous, we see a dismal success rate of about 5% at 13 months after the sessions have ended. There’s a very interesting reason why this is happening – We don’t get what we pray for and we don’t get what we want. We get what we believe is possible for us and we get what we deserve, based on divine laws. Our beliefs are controlled by our self image and our self image is controlled by our accumulation of experiences, especially traumatic and negative experiences. Unless we can let go of our old belief system, that is, what we believe to be true and believe to be real, it’s very difficult to have success. What we want, what we deserve, and what our underlying belief system will allow have to match. That usually requires change on our part. When we change, we deserve something better. When we upgrade our belief system, we allow something better.

In one sense, we don’t need to pray for help. We are always being guided moment to moment. The problem is that we are not listening to that still, quiet voice of intuition. The divine is always trying to intercede on our behalf, is always with us, and is always guiding us. But our stress, beliefs, and our prejudices get in the way of listening. Even if God sends a messenger, a friend to confront us with the truth, we refuse to listen. We become fanatical and obstinate in our beliefs. Beliefs can have a powerful negative effect.

One of the worst blows to religion in the Western world was to tell people that they are sinners. People incorporate that into their belief system, and once they believe it, their self-image becomes that of a sinner. From then on, all of their behavior will match their belief system and they will live a lower-quality life. This is in contrast to the actual teaching that we are made in the image of God, that we are divine beings at our core. Christ said, “Know not that ye are gods?” If we were to cultivate a belief, a self image of ourselves as divine beings, life would change dramatically. If we could all cultivate the belief system that we are saints, divine expressions of a divine existence, then life on this planet would change almost overnight.

Yet, many people today have abandoned religion because they perceive it has failed them. Others hold on with tenacity and become fanatics, trying to get others on their religious bandwagon. The world is in deep trouble because of religious fanaticism. It is tearing this world apart. It has been going on for centuries. During the Crusades so-called Christians slaughtered millions of people who would not convert to their religion. The Christian Cathars in southern France had a slightly different version of Christianity based on the Gnostic Gospels. They were beautiful people of high spiritual character. The Pope didn’t like their belief system and sent an army to slaughter them. That army wiped out the civilization and killed about 1 million people in total. When the Muslims invaded India, they beheaded 80 million Hindus who would not convert to Islam. This is one of the worst holocausts to ever happen on planet Earth, yet it is not even known by most people.

The bottom line is that if we want to bring religion into the picture of creating health, happiness, and avoiding addictive behavior, we will have to study and broaden our approach to spirituality. Every religion is unique. Every religion has something great to offer, and every religion should be studied for what it can add to humanity. There are beautiful Christian sects, beautiful Islamic sects such as Sufism, beautiful Buddhist and Hindu sects. Yet, my personal belief is that there is no religion yet that can point to any country, region, or even a single town following their religion, where all the people are happy, healthy, free of addictions, free of violence, and who live in love and peace with everyone around them. No religion yet has proven itself to be a panacea. No religion has created a living community utopia. It is time for religions to stop fighting and stop trying to convert each other. Until there is a spiritual Renaissance that can demonstrate a successful set of beliefs, methods, and knowledge that can create spiritual utopias, we should not be fighting or trying to convert others to our chosen religion. We should simply seek to expand our spiritual knowledge in every way possible.

Where Do We Go From Here?

In this Guide, I have included numerous techniques drawn from different areas of study that can help us all to become happy, healthy, and free of addictive behaviors. My hope is that this guide will be circulated widely and that it will help thousands or even millions of people. My quest, that I started over 45 years ago was to discover why we suffer so much and how we could become happier and healthier. My goal was to not only relieve the suffering for myself, but for others as well. I collected all that information and wrote my first book, “Extraordinary Healthcare,” in the hope that it would become a resource to help people. In this Guide, I have condensed many of the ideas, concepts, and techniques from the book into a freely available guide that anyone can study and put to use.

Has This Guide Helped You or Your Family?
If you find this Guide useful, I would appreciate it if you would support my work. There are five ways you can do that.

1. Circulate this guide to all your friends and family. It’s theoretically possible to eliminate the scourge of drug addiction and other addictions in any community within 90 days if these methods are put to use. Plus, it will dramatically improve the physical, mental, and emotional health of any family or community. Point them to http://RebuildHealth.com/guide
2. Purchase my book and use it to continue your studies. See links below.
3. If you need personal guidance, make an appointment for a natural healthcare consultation. I consult with people all over the world by video conference. It’s like you are right in my office with me. http://RebuildHealth.com/appointments
4. Take an online course with me in a group setting, as they become available.
5. Make a donation (See My Plans below) You can make a donation by clicking the donation button below (may not visible in some browsers or ebook readers) or visit http://RebuildHealth.com/appointments and scrol to the bottom of the page.

My Development Plans:
There are two other areas where I want to contribute in which additional funds would speed progress. First is to develop ultra low-cost housing that is mortgage-free, beautiful, self-sufficient, and comfortable, so that everyone in the world can have a reasonable and healthy place to live. It can’t be done using conventional materials. All the forests would disappear. I studied engineering physics in college and I want to apply high engineering principles using simple low-cost materials. I am doing material trials now. As I progress with materials testing and designs, I will make those designs and methods freely available to be utilized around the world. Local building cooperatives could create beautiful communities that are mortgage free.

Another area that I am pursuing is non-toxic, probiotic gardening and agriculture that continuously regenerates the soil, so that everyone can have healthy organic food. There are ancient systems from the East and South America that maintained highly fertile soil for hundreds of years at no cost. I have already designed a new gardening system and I am doing trials now. Any donations that you make will go to refine this Guide and fund these other two areas of research and development.

There is an ebook version of The Guide. I am still learning the technologies to develop it. In the meantime, you can 1) Bookmark the page, 2) Keep it up in a browser tab, or 3) Add it to your browser reading list. As an ebook, you can have it available on all your devices such as computers, iPods, smartphones, and tablets. Most of all tell your friends and others who are suffering any kind of maladies that there are natural methods to restore their health and well being. Send them to The Guide – http://RebuildHealth.com/guide

Book Links:
Amazon — http://www.amazon.com/Extraordinary-Healthcare-Sri-Ananda-Sarvasri/dp/09...11?ie=UTF8&qid=1452830644&sr=8-1&keywords=extraordinary+healthcare
Barnes & Noble — http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/extraordinary-healthcare-sri-ananda-sarv...

† Disclaimer: Ananda Center for Life and Spirit (ACLS) shares information and events that promote natural self care for spiritual, physical, mental, emotional, and personal transformation. ACLS does not take responsibility for the accuracy of information provided nor the scheduling or outcome of any particular event presented. For details on any particular news or event, please click on the designated link or contact ACLS directly. Nothing written, explained, shared or promoted by ACLS should be considered or construed as medical advice or a substitute for medical care. Any instructions, teachings, and suggestions contained in ACLS communications are purely educational and provided in a spirit of sharing and are not intended to be any sort of guarantee or definitive statement about one’s health or one’s past, present, or future. Our belief is that everyone is responsible for themselves and that we all have inner guidance to make our own decisions that are appropriate for our own life.