Boondockin'

Oohh its getting hot here... Today it's supposed to get up to 95 degrees... I dearly hope this area remains cool enough to inhabit...

I left out a VERY important ingredient in the 'porridge' that Gabriel recommends - coconut oil!! Mix with flax to convert into long chains!!

It's finally happened... I've gotten myself into the habit of early to bed, early to rise! For the last 10 months or so I've gone to bed at midnight and woke up about 7, and now I'm asleep by 10pm and waking up about 5:30. It feels sooooooo good :D

In addition, I've been waking up and running every morning, which is something that has taken me a long time to cultivate, because, in truth, I've always despised running. However, since I'm not really able to swim as my form of exercise, I have to find something. My bike is always another alternative.

A friend of mine has some property in Patagonia with a gorgeous pond on it. Complete with reeds, huge trees all around, fish, big chunks of algae and a broken down old dock, it is quite charming. As it gets hotter here, I am more frequenting this pond, which has fantastic water quality, due to the way the water filters in and out, and the source from which it comes.

Yesterday we made another raw cheesecake, and it was by far the best we've made. I must say that I may possibly be one of the best crust makers ever to have lived...

;)

HAPPY FULL MOON!

Photo above of Red Mountain in Patoochi (our nickname for Patagonia).

Gabriel on the News

Woo! Gabriel on the news!!

Scenes from the Road

Hello again, I write you as the wind HOWLS outside... it has dropped down into the upper 60's/lower 70's today... frigid... ;)

Ok, so here I promised to recap what Dr. Cousens suggested for his new morning drink designed to cleanse the lymph, get the neurotransmitters going in the brain, mineralize the body...

This is also, it seems, what Dr. Cousens personally does every morning. He starts out with some tea (I use water), in which he mixes:

1 oz. Liquid Aloe Vera
1/2 tsp. Pomegranate Concentrate (Premier Research Labs)
3-5 drops Iosol
1 tsp Polar Mins (water from the south pole, SUPER minerals - Premier Research Labs)

The breakfast he is recommending and personally has a sort of porridge consisting of:

Flax seed
Bee pollen
Gogi berries
Coconut oil
Mix with a bit of water... voila

He also suggested mixing in hemp and/or spirulina.

Thim has been experimenting a bit with this concoction and has found it is particularly yummy to do all the above, plus add in a little bit of cacao nibs, a dollop of honey, and, rather than using water to mix it, makes hemp milk with warm water and uses that instead. And then he mixes in some cordycep powder or whatever other medicinal mushroom he has. And it is GOOD.

He gave a fantastic explanation of WHY these ingredients and why in combination that they are so powerful.... I promise I'll let you know where to find this episode of 'Alive with Gabriel' when I know where it is... I think it will likely be on the new website upcoming...

Lastly, how about we bring in some of these ORIGINAL PICTURES!!! YAY!! The return of original pictures! The one at the top of the blog, as well as these, are pictures taken in Patagonia!

Serotonin & Women's Health

A HAPPY SUNDAY TO YOU!!

OOPS. Gabriel's Birthday is this Wednesday, it wasn't Friday... that's a little embarrassing.... :P

First matter of importance (to you? Probably not. To me? Absotively posolutely)... WEATHER UPDATE. Sunny? Check. Gorgeous? Check. And getting hot... 90 degrees today!!!

Ahh I actually managed to be able to sit long enough (back still aching) to go to Shabbat on Friday, which I so love - the longest meditation I usually do - 45 min consecutively and also many short stints of meditation, probably totaling somewhere around an hour and a half.

Speaking of meditation, Thim and I both are being draw more to it. We go to the group meditations held at the Tree several nights per week, and we've started meditating before bed almost every night as well. I'm an early to rise person and am also feeling drawn to meditate in the mornings. I find it such an interesting feeling - that I am being drawn to it - I'm not really choosing it... its more... choosing me? This winter, I wasn't drawn to meditate much at all, and I didn't fight that feeling. Now, I want to, I look forward to it.

Yesterday Thim and I made a fantaaaaaastic smoothie:

Aloe
Mango
Gogi
White Gold Honey

Yesterday was this month's 'Alive With Gabriel.' For those who are not familiar, this is a live teleconference done once per month. It runs about an hour and a half, with the first half about nutrition/health, where Gabriel talks about a chosen subject for a while, and then finishes with questions, and the second half spiritual matters, usually just Q&A (satsang). They are always fantastic, and this one was as well. I'd love it if they posted all of them on youtube (don't worry, I'm continually advocating for it), but somehow it just doesn't always happen, so I will do my best to summarize some of the key things:

In honor of Mother's Day, Gabriel began talking about serotonin and how it relates to women's health. Namely, it seems that the majority of women are serotonin deficient. In fact, Gabriel did a study this March on all the women who attended our 'Sacred Relationships' course, and found that 90% of the women were serotonin deficient. There are many physical implications of serotonin deficiency, particularly fatigue, but what stood out to me (and many of the women there), was the emotional implications. Dr. Cousens explained that there are emotions we typically see from women who are serotonin deficient:

Over caring
Over loving
Not taking care of oneself
Neediness
Seeking love and approval from the outside
Excessive talking (no kidding, he actually said that there's a difference in this!)
Feelings of sadness and depression
Feelings of overwhelm
Feelings of being unloved and alone

The majority of people on depression meds are women. Gabriel explained that when women are not serotonin deficient, they are much more 'go with the flow', happy, and lighthearted. So, if we are serotonin deficient (which, as it seems, is likely), some of the measures suggested are:

Making sure we're asleep between 10pm and 2am
Tryptophan (if needed, 500 mg in the morning and before bed)
Exercise, particularly in the morning, both for overall health and in order to allow tryptophan to enter muscles (optimally, pair tryptophan in water with some pomegranate concentrate from Premier Research Labs).
Eating a good breakfast!!
Omega 3's - particularly flax and hemp
General loving relationships and healthy lifestyle
Stress reduction


This blog is a getting long, so I think I'll tease you a little - the next post, I'll write about Gabriel's personal morning drink and what he's found to be the best breakfast ever!

Cowabunga,

Courtney

Spaaaaaaarctacular

Yesterday was our GRAND SPA OPENING!! The Tree has had a spa for some years now, but this year has done huge upgrades in the landscape, rooms, etc etc.... and it looks gorgeous, so it seemed it was high time for an official opening. I love events like this one, outside in the warm sun, happy people mingling and kids running around. One of my best friends and one of the most fantastic people I know, Brandi Miller, a local musician and Tree of Life community member, serenaded us as we munched on the yummy snacks and 'punch' prepared by the Tree of Life Cafe (all raw stuff, of course).

I continue to wake up really early. I am definitely finding it curious that it took so long for me - other than perhaps a little bit less sleep needed per night, I've not noticed much change in my sleep since going all raw. Now though, my body distinctly asks me to hit the sack around 10pm and wakes up rarin' to go around 6am and often earlier.

A friend of mine and employee here at the Tree of Life did a live blood cell analysis here a few days ago. She's been almost all raw for 6 months or so now, and was surprised to find that her blood, apparently, was in quite bad shape. Among other things, she has candida to the moon, so it will be phase 1 for her for the next three months.

It has piqued my curiosity about what MY blood looks like, having been all raw for almost a year and a half now... I wonder how it looks?

We shall see....

Squeemin' for the Creamin'

OOOOOOOOh I'm a SLACKIN' on the bloggin'! I apologize, lovelies...

This weekend we made our first RAW ICE CREAM.... primarily with coconuts, but also threw in some cacao, carob, lucuma, coconut cream, coconut oil, and a few other things....

It's so easy! We just used an ice cream maker, whipped up our ingredients in the blender... voila! Top with some gogi berries and cacao nibs, perfect!!

Still going on the liver cleanse... haven't felt much different thus far, but we shall see. The point is that the whole thing is gradual. I'll be starting coffee enemas and castor oil packs soon, which will be... exciting... I suppose ;)

What else has been going down? Well, my back still hurts like EVA but I'm working with it - It's been a month and a half since the trampoline incidence (TRAMPOLINES, NEVER AGAIN WILL YOU EXTEND YOUR WRATH TO ME), and the pain still comes and goes. But when it comes... I can't really... walk. The trouble is that I'm trying to allow it to heal, so I've not been as active as I like to be...

Yikes.

But, I'm stretching, taking Vitalzym and MSM, and rubbing DMSO, silica and tiger balm into it. Great fun.

Keep a lookout for a fantastic new website/community/awesome-online-creation coming from the Tree of Life, which hopes to spread these teachings worldwide... And I'll be doing a once per week blog on this new site, which will be solely about what's going on here at the Tree of Life! No worries, I'll still be blogging here as usual :)

Lastly, Thim (king of product testing), has recently gotten some of the White Gold Honey from Premier Research Labs and HOLY guacamole, it is the best honey I have ever tasted in my life, if I do say so myself (which, I do). It's a quite good price as well... check it out!

Progression of Purity

My mother, who has been using NCD Zeolite for about 3.5 months now, sent me this text message:

"Damn zeolite! I have another freaking headache!"

What is she talking about? Well... the past month or so, she's found that her body has become sensitive enough that she can't eat too much sugar anymore - she gets headaches after too many M&M's or too much (sugary) coffee! She's always looooooooved her sweet treats (she is by no means vegetarian, organic, raw, anything) and she's finding she actually isn't reacting well to them anymore. This makes sense, since zeolite clears the toxins and minimizes the buffer that inhibits sensitivity to chemicals, conventional white sugar, and other adverse substances.

The next text message she sent was:

"How do I live without sugar? My coffee? Chocolate chip cookies? Peanut butter M&M's?"

Now, if you knew my mom, you'd see she's actually mostly teasing and kidding with me - she's always wanted to be more healthy but always has such cravings for food like this and has had such a hard time trying to minimize those cravings... and now its happening! She's a wonderful, very conscious person and so she's open to change... and she's definitely amazed that she is having a hard time eating all the sugar and junk that she's used to (although you'd never know, she actually does some modeling and people think we're sisters all the time). I've just reassured her that all she has to do is find new favorites! Get excited about finding things that taste good AND are good for her! By not eating junk, she can look great for her age even longer! She's not aging herself!

Yes, rather egocentric ideas to entice her, but the truth is that some people have to get hooked on a healthful lifestyle for reasons of looking good - not everyone goes on it simply because it saves the planet. And you know what? I personally think that it's so important that people start eating and living in a way that is sustainable and loving, that I don't really care WHY they start doing it. Just do it.

Tonight I had a LOVELY rooftop dinner with some dear friends - a friend is housesitting this gorgeous house on The Mesa - the part of Patagonia way high up on the hills, where there are many houses with gorgeous 360 degree views of the mountains, which are likely all at least a million dollars in value. This particular stucco/adobe house had architecture resembling an arabian castle. A few ladders on roofs brought us on to the flat stucco roof of the house, where we dined under the stars in the warm night.

Romantic, yes?