Interviews

Take the Step, The Bridge Will be There.

Interview with Grace Cirocco

Grace is an outstanding communicator, leader and intuitive healer, whose mission is to empower minds, inspire spirits and heal hearts. She encourages us to live life in an authentic way - with passion and lots of courage. She inspires us to quote:

"Reach for the luminous places not only within ourselves, but also in others, so that, together, we can create a better world."

Grace is the author of Take the Step, The Bridge Will be There. She is also speaker, philosopher - and mentor.

Grace how are you?

Hi and thank you, Nancy.

Nancy: If you would first share with us your passions - the things that mean the most to you in your life - and tell us: How have they led to the work you are doing today?

Grace: Well, passion is my middle name. I am very passionate. I'm intense. I'm Italian - I'm passionate about food, and books and ideas and people of course. I think ever since I was a little girl I was helping people with their emotional problems. I grew up on a fruit farm in Niagara on the lake, and even back then friends would come to me for help. I even had adults asking me for advice. So I think I was propelled into this role of helper, mentor, leader, you know, helping people with life issues. I guess that has been my passion my whole life and, how it's led to the work I do today... I think it's not an accident - the work that I'm doing today. I am totally passionate about helping people achieve their potential, and heal what is blocked in their heart and soul. I always tell my kids that passion leads to purpose and as long as you follow your passion, you will be doing the work that you were meant to do in this world.

Our work is very sacred. Many people think retirement is just relaxing and having pina coladas on some beach. Research now shows that people have to feel that they belong, that they're making a difference, and many of us make a difference through our livelihood and the work that we do, our careers. So I guess for me it comes full circle: as a little girl I loved helping people with their problems. In university, I was the go-to girl for boyfriend problems.

Some nights I'd be up until 3 or 4 in the four morning counselling my friends on love. So I find it fascinating when you see little children in the playground and you see a child on the swing or a child gravitating towards the sandbox, building things. What is it - that gift that's been planted in each one of us? Will that child have the blessing and the good garden to grow in so that he/she can figure out who exactly they are and what their sacred purpose is. I think I was one of the lucky ones because I am doing exactly what I was meant to do.

Nancy: Grace, I often have women telling me they're in a rut, both in their personal relationships and in their professional lives. What advice can you offer that would help them move forward? And how, to quote you, can they learn to "cultivate the leader within"?

Grace: Yes I hear that too. The first step is awareness: They must know there is something missing,their soul is asking for something more. Or they must know that their potential is beyond the bridge somewhere and they're just in a rut or giving mediocre output in life. The next step is to figure out how they want to matter. The 21st Century is about meaning. The 20th Century was about making it. Even our parents and our grandparents - it was about making it. But today, people want to make a difference. They want to matter. They want to contribute and feel fulfilled at the end of a day. And 3rd: she should get out there and talk to people. Read and join groups of kindred spirits. Clarity has power in it. When she has the clarity, she will take the step. There is a spiritual awakening out there on all fronts.

If I can digress, I will share a personal example. For years I have had this idea, and this might be very controversial but I bring it up only to show you how there is a spiritual awakening, and things that we may have thought "underground" or "alternative" are now finding their place in mainstream media. I have always been a seeker of truth and knowledge. Ever since I lost my friend to cancer 8 years ago, I have had this really uncomfortable feeling when people talk about cancer research and say, "Yes, we're going to find a cure." People have good intentions. They run for the cure and they give to the cure. And one day I had this image in my mind of a huge collander with holes in it. We're dumping billions of dollars into this container to find a cure, but the cure is eluding us. You see, the image I have is that this collader has leaks in it and no one is aware. 

That leak is all the products we use everyday that have harmful cancer causing ingredients. People are unconscious. They think that the cure for cancer will be found in some laboratory--some magic pill, but we are being poisoned everyday because we don't know any better. We need to stop using microwaves, and cell phones, and weed and feed for our grass. Even most sunscreen is bad for you because of a certain ingredient that the FDA has just found to have cancer and has banned.

So for years, I felt alone with my ideas...I mean I am a speaker but I was never comfortable sharing this with my audiences because cancer is a very touchy subject. But just recently, I found out that at the University of Pittsburgh, there is a woman by the name of Dr Devra Davis, who is studying environmental oncology. I urge you to Google it:www.environmentaloncology.com. You can also google her, Devra Davis.  What is environmental oncology? Yes, cancer is in the air, in our environment and her studies and research are about finding the cure but eliminating what causes cancer at the source!! She is working at a university doing mainstream research.  And she was recently invited by the University of Toronto to speak at OISE on her findings!! I encourage you to read her book. The Secret Behind the War on Cancer. Everyone needs to read this book and get informed and wake up. The time for this global wake up is now. it's a very exciting time to be alive.

Have you heard of harmonic convergence? For those of you who don't know, the idea is that when an idea comes to its ripeness, when it's time for that idea to be contained in our collective consciousness, then it will sprout up in different pockets of the world, even if people have never shared that idea with one another. That is what is happening now with this environmental oncology.

Nancy: I've often heard people approaching retirement wonder: "What am I going to do for the rest of my life?" What would you tell them?

Grace: Well, baby boomers have worked very, very hard. The Industrial Revolution has been on their backs. Now that they're coming close to retirement, I think part of the problem is that they're feeling like they're being put on the shelf and that they're no longer useful. One of the things I tell my clients is to start to create a list of the 100 things that you want to do, be, or have before you die. I mean everything: whimsical things, traveling things, educational adventure things. Anything that you want to do, be or have. That can become your compass, so that when you retire from one job or from a line of work as a professional, you can start looking at this list and see what is still undone. What do I want to accomplish? What do I want to do with my life?

I'll tell you a really neat story. One of my clients did this retreat that I run every summer in Niagara on the Lake. It's called Bridges to Success, and it's all about visioning, manifesting mentally and emotionally and creating the life you've always wanted. One woman last year did this beautiful vision board and had it in her studio for about 6 or 7 months. On that vision board was a motorcycle, and every time her husband or a friend brought it up, she'd say, "Well, I put it on my vision board but it's so unrealistic. I don't think I will ever do that but it would be nice. Last weekend her husband showed up with two motorcycles, one for her and one for him. They don't have their license but they have the motorcycles. She called me up and she was so excited! This is a woman who is over 50 is going to make one of her dreams come true. It's never too late, not even for those who are approaching retirement. Retirement can be a time to create amazing miracles.

So the list is very helpful. Keep it in your pocket. Keep it in the car. When you hear an interview on the radio, or your hear a song, or you do something, or you're flipping through a magazine at the doctor's office and you see an island called Bora Bora, and you think, "Wow! I'd like to see that emerald blue before I die." Bingo! That goes on your list! It's a way of dialoguing with your heart because dreams come from the heart and the heart is of the spirit. It's a part of us that while we've been productive in the left brain, making money, paying mortgages and doing, doing, doing, some of us, not all of us, forget that we can dream.

Nancy: What do we do when our partner just won't respond? What if he's content to sit around watching TV all day? Has no ambition or goals? Should we stay with someone who sees no joy in life? Someone who doesn't appreciate our efforts?

Grace: You can have couple dreams but you also need individual dreams for yourself. You can't force anyone to do something they don't want. Take the metaphor of popcorn. You put the kernels in the microwave all at the same time, yet some of them pop first and there's always the 20 lazy kernels that have never popped. If you're living with somebody who has not popped, who has not seized the day, has not gone out there and done what it is that they were meant to do, don't let their mediocrity bring you down. It is not an excuse. It is not an excuse to blame them either. You've got to find a way to do your own thing. Some people say, "Well, I think we need to part ways." I don't think it's always necessary. My opinion is that we break up and we have divorces prematurely, way too often maybe we could have saved something.

Couples who sign up for my Relationship Renewal Retreat have to complete a questionnaire for me so that I can better understand what they want and what their issues are. They will confess to me, "We need a miracle this weekend. This is the last thing we're trying. We've tried counseling with no results so what do we want? We want a miracle." So even in those cases when the relationship can go either way, some do reach out for alternatives which my retreat is, and they end up healing their marriage. But for other couples, it's very easy to say: "You don't do it for me anymore. I'm out of here."

To answer your question, if someone you are living with is depressed or does not want to do what you want to do, then you've got to find a way to do it yourself. I take groups to Italy every year and I get couples, but sometimes I get women who say: "My husband has no interest so I am doing it alone." Good for them, I say.  You can't stop living just because you're married to someone who doesn't want to live the same way you want to live. You can't change him or her so go out there and BE the change that you want to see. That really is the essence of leadership.

Nancy: What exercises do you do in your couples retreat that would help couples who are listening to this?

Grace: Two exercises that really connect you heart to heart, especially after a long week when you've been traveling and you haven't really seen each other or you've been like two ships in the night.... I call it Pillow Talk and you do it sitting down next to one another, cuddled up, or in bed looking at one another, just relaxing and resting because it's finally bedtime. I call it Pillow Talk because it's an opportunity for you to tell that person one thing that you appreciate about them. One thing that you admire about them. One thing that you respect about them. For example, "I've always admired that when you say you're going to do something, you actually do it and you're a real inspiration for me." And then the other person's going to say something to you about something that they admire and they love about you. So it goes back and forth for 2, 3 or 4 times and it just opens up the heart. People feel loved, they feel nurtured, they feel relaxed, and it's a wonderful exercise.

Another exercise is choose your favourite song but not a sad song. Choose your favorite song and just hug through the song, the whole 4 minutes, and hold each other in a heart-to-heart hug. So those are two exercises that I do at my couples' retreats and people love them. I find couples don't touch enough. Life is too fast. We're running all the time and we don't stop to hug for a little bit of time, to really hold each other.

Nancy: If a couple is just starting out in a new relationship - and they want to build balance at the start - so one partner later on doesn't feel they're doing all the work and being taken for granted, what is the one thing you would advise them to do?

Grace: It's to talk. Keep talking! To not let the days go by without sharing your day. Empty out the container called your day, but share your feelings about your day. Share your fears and what makes you angry and yes, of course, your dreams and goals too. Also write each other letters, and cards and emails. Don't forget the small stuff that we take for granted. It's the little stuff that really leaves special memories inside our brain, in our heart, so for young couples that's very, very important.

Also I recommend that they need to go away, turn off the cell phone and turn off the email, and really just relate to one another. When they are having dinner, to turn off the cell phone and make it a sacred time. Lighting a candle, having a special drink, maybe some wine. Something special to make it like a ceremony. We're sitting down and we're going to break bread together and eat. I was born in Italy and in Italy we know how to eat and relate with one another. We linger over our meals because it is a social event--"slow food" was born in Italy and restuarants pride themselves on serving slow food. Here, we're all about fast food...and running. We're addicted to speeed and multi tasking. We're juggling a hundred things and eating on the run. This is very bad for our emotional, spiritual, mental and physical well being, and it's bad for our relationships.

Yes, birthdays matter. Buy that person a card. Say your special words. Don't forget anniversaries. Those little things are what I find that after many, many years, when you talk to someone who's been married for 40 or 50 years, they get all tearful and say, "He never forgot an anniversary" or "She used to bake me a cake for my birthday." It's the little things. You look at these people and they're 60, 70 years old and they've got tears in their eyes and you realize it's the little things where our souls come out and we tell the other person who we really are and what they mean to us.

Nancy: We've all had times when our job has us stressed to the max. And we all know that's not good for our health! You have some great suggestions for dealing with that. Can you share some tips on how to balance work and personal wellness?

Grace: First of all, I think that everyone needs a personal calendar or agenda or personal time organizer. Whether it's Outlook or your Blackberry. I'm still traditional. I have my hard copy calendar. I would recommend that planning is very, very important. If you want balance, you have got to plan. You've got to look ahead. Not just the week before, but months ahead. What are you doing this summer for vacation? You have to plan. If you want to see special people, you have to plan. It's not like it was 20, 30 years ago. I grew up and my parents' friends, they had lots of friends, and the friends would just phone up and say, "We're coming for a visit today." And so you'd have to get all ready because that person was honouring you with this special visit. It doesn't work like that anymore. We don't go to people's houses uninvited. Everybody is stressed out. They're too busy. They have to put you in their little black book, otherwise it doesn't happen. I think you can be very caught up in the details and the stress of not balancing home and work if you don't plan ahead.

Number two: draw four circles: Mind, Heart, Soul, Body. Write down everyday one thing you've done for those four parts of you. One thing you did for your heart - OK, I had lunch with a girlfriend and I got to do some socializing. One thing you did for your body - I took the dog for a walk. One thing you did for your spirit - well this morning I did 30 minutes of meditation. One thing you did for your mind - well, I was reading all about the ewg.org website today and I learned a lot; I feel enriched by this website and I feel like I have more information now that I can pass on to my children and to people that I meet. So that's another way. Some people find it very difficult to balance work and home and so I tell them to do those four circles and every day do one thing that's going to balance you in that one area. Go for your yearly checkup. Go for a coaching session. Go visit your Mom and Dad. We live such isolated lives and I'm sure you know this as much as I do, but we need other people, we need socialization, we need to feel good, we need to feel happy. And I know that when we're with other people, most of us feel good. The number one ailment that I hear is loneliness. People are lonely and it's quite a problem today. I think that's why these electronic dating sites do so well. We've got this technology connecting us but we're really disconnected.

I run a women's group once a month in Oakville. I call it the Goddess Club, and those nights when I drive back home to Niagara, I am elated, joyous, happy. My heart is always full after one of my Goddess circle evenings. It's an amazing feeling and I know it's because I've been around women, exchanging ideas and feelings. It's very important that you have a strong community of friends, family, people that you love and can be around. I think that is why some people go to church..because of that feeling of community and belonging to something.

A very famous study, found that in this one town in Pennsylvania there is no heart disease. Researchers at Harvard thought, "We have to go to this town and monitor the people, see what they're doing, what they're drinking, what they're eating because maybe we can make the rest of America more healthy." So they went there and they found that the people had terrible habits. They were eating fatty foods and they were smoking and drinking coffee and alcoholbut everybody knew everyone else and cared about everyone else. It was a very tight knit community, an immigrant town of Italians and they were all very connected. It was almost like a buffer against stress and disease. The "Roseto study" was written up about in journals all over the world. The conclusion: You don't want to get heart disease; you must feel connected and loved and supported by people. We are social animals.

In the end...for our health, we must feel happy. It sounds like a really trite, simple formula but I think that The Secret and the popularity of the Secret... when The Secret came out, I was interviewed and it came out in dialogue that The Secret, the Law of Attraction has been around since the beginning of time. "As a man thinketh, so shall we become." It's in the Bible. It's written in Buddhist literature. It's written in the Talmud. It's everywhere. We know now that you've got to be happy.

When you're happy, your own immune system functions ten times more efficiently and effectively than when you're not. Part of the problem is that many of us don't know what is going to make us happy. When I say to them, "Finish the sentence: I will be happy when...." Most of them think it's money. Most think they need to win the lotto and then they will be free and we know that that is not true because books that have been published about people who have been lotto winners, within 12 months they are bankrupt, they have no friends and many times they have some kind of disease because of the year of stress that this money has caused them.

Happiness has been skewed. What is going to make us happy is to make a difference, to matter. If you find a way to matter to this world, I think you can have a really good shot at being happy but you cannot do it alone. You've got to matter but you've got to matter to people. It's about people. If you're surrounded by good people that make you smile and make you laugh, and they tickle your funny bone and that you're doing work where you feel like you're making a difference to someone. That's the recipe right there for health, longevity, success, happiness.

Nancy : Of course, relationships change over the years, even with a good start. People drift apart. They have different interests. And with the kids gone, the gulf can seem wider than ever. And that can make the future look pretty scary! Grace, could you talk about your relationship renewal and upcoming couples retreats?

Grace: I have one at the end of the month, April 25-27th and another one in May and one in June. They're in Niagara on the Lake at a beautiful 5 star property. I try to create a very wonderful, beautiful environment for them. It starts at 8 o'clock on Friday night and we go until 6pm on Sunday. It's intense. I now have marriage counselors and therapists who I don't even know, are sending couples to my Relationship Renewal Retreat. My approach is more from the heart rather than the head. I think a lot of therapy doesn't work because it's head only and we need to go into the emotional brain and heal the past, heal the hurts, heal the betrayals, heal the infidelities, heal the broken trust, the broken promises, all those things and have a real shift emotionally before anything you tell them about communication, which is mostly a cognitive exercise, will go in and make a difference.

I get amazing testimonials - many of them are on my website, and I'm just floored by the miracles I witness--couples who are on the brink of divorce heal and come together again. It's  difficult emotional work, but when they do it, they feel closer than they have ever felt, and they feel free. They have a deeper understanding of one another. They save their marriage, not only for their kids but for their own happiness.

I created a program for couples that I myself wanted to go to. I searched and searched and could not find a healing retreat for couples that focuses on feelings rather than traditional cognitive tools. I mean how are we supposed to use all the knowledge if my heart is full of hurt? So my program empties the hurt in a non threatening way and then gives you the tools for lasting love. Everyone feels supported, nurtured and all the exercises are done between the spouses or partners. So even though you're in a group, your issues remain private.

Nancy: What is your secret for a lasting marriage?

Grace: I've been married for almost 28 years. I have gone through my ups and downs. My secret is that my husband is my best friend, he is my soul mate. You can have friendship that will last a lifetime or you can have that lust or sexual attraction that doesn't last. For me and my husband, we are best friends. We're family and we look out for each other. That doesn't change. We have a lot of harmony between us. We're very different people. He's a mathematics professor and physicist. He's very calm. He's my rock. He's a Taurus and he is very grounded. I'm an intense Aries ram that has idea after idea and wants to squeeze every last bit of goodness from my life and wants to learn it all. I'm passionate. I get excited and I'm emotional. So we're very different and I think we balance each other. When you're married to your best friend, I don't think that ego gets involved, but sometimes it does, and we just ride out the wave.

I write a column in my Touch of Grace newsletter and I just sent one out in April, and I wrote about reaction and the way we react to people. I cannot tell you how many people have sent me emails about this particular column. I guess it struck a chord. We do react. We do not take time to qualify and ask questions and really understand before we jump the gun with our assumptions. We just let people push our buttons and then we say things or do things that we regret later. That's not a great way to live. Unfortunately this reaction business has ruined many marriages and relationships in general.

Nancy : Where can people find your books?

They're available at any bookstore in Canada. Or you can go to www.chapters.com. You can also go to www.amazon.ca. You can also get them from my site. www.gracecirocco.com

And don't forget to check out Grace's website at www.gracecirocco.com

Grace, it's been a pleasure. Thank you for sharing your expertise and insights with us today. You've been an inspiration.

Well, that's all for this week. I hope you've enjoyed our teleclass.

Until next time, don't be afraid to take that step!

Nancy Desjardins R.N.C.P.
Registered Nutritional Consultant Practitioner
www.womenshealthacademy.com

Miracle of Juicing " Interview with Walter "Shantree" Kacera

Interview with Walter "Shantree" Kacera

Hello, and welcome to the Women's Health Academy. I'm Nancy Desjardins, and I'll be your host this evening, with our special guest, Walter "Shantree" Kacera. And we'll be talking about The Miracle of Juicing.

This is a topic you’ll be hearing a lot about throughout the month of April, when I'll be making a series of posts on juicing and spring cleansing.

I am very passionate about juicing — people who know me can attest to that! I have been juicing for over 20 years now, and have learned a lot in the process. I first became interested in juicing when my father-in-law gave me the Champion Juicer as a gift when I was 18. I’ve been juicing ever since!

And I believe that drinking the juices from fresh organic produce has helped my health in many ways.

I started out much like everyone does: juicing lots of carrots. But we all know now that juices with large amounts of carrots, or fruit, contain too much sugar for daily consumption.

Now, I focus primarily on green juices, with smaller amounts of high-sugar produce. An example of ingredients for a green juice would be cucumber, kale and celery, with small amounts of parsley or spinach. I sometimes add one carrot or apple for sweetness.

Juicing really can do miraculous things for your health. And that’s why we’re here this evening with Shantree. Before we get the discussion under way, I’d like to introduce our special guest to those who may not be familiar with him.

Shantree is an internationally recognized author. Among his books is “Ayurvedic Tongue Diagnosis,” and he is the co-author, with wife Lorenna, of the “Conscious Living: The Sevenfold Path to Peace” manual. He is currently writing “The Healing Tastes,” which is a workbook and exploration of the healing essence of tastes on body, mind and emotions. Also under construction is “Elemental Medicine: Living on Life-Force.”

He also offers courses in constitutional Ayurvedic medicine, living nutrition, practical, therapeutic and shamanic herbalism, and the Sevenfold Path to Peace.

He co-facilitates workshops and retreats with Lorenna at numerous centres in Canada, the U.S. and Costa Rica. They offer private and group consultations, retreats and training intensives.

We’ll be drawing on his more than three decades of experience this evening. So let’s get started.

Welcome, Shantree!

Nancy:  Shantree, you are a naturopath, you have your PhD in therapeutic herbalism and Ayurvedic medicine and, for more than 30 years, you’ve been exploring the effect of food and herbs on our physical, mental and emotional health. What inspired you to become a healer in so many areas?

Shantree: It’s in my blood. I think from my great-grandmother, my grandmother, my parents. When I was growing up, we never used chemicals. Everything was organic. Everything was natural. And I loved being in the garden. I always loved working with plants even when I was just four or five all the way through my teenage years. Actually I didn’t really know I was going to become a healer. It was more that I wanted to work with plants. My bedroom was always full of plants – it was like a jungle. When I was fifteen years old I just knew I wanted to live in the country. We grew up in London, Ontario and I wanted to live in the country. One thing led to another and I started studying and learning along the way, going to different colleges and healing centres to learn about this.
So like I said, it’s in my blood. I started very, very young. I couldn’t imagine doing anything else.

Nancy: You said in one of your articles: One of the main reasons people are overweight these days is due to the fact that they have changed their feelings toward their food and nutrition needs, and only think in terms of what is "right, wrong, good" or "bad."

Let’s talk about that.

The words “right” and “wrong”, “good” and “bad.” I’ve seen them come into the holistic language and I find that very sad because it’s such a judgment thing. It’s like money. Is money good or is money bad? We should be asking, “Is this life-enhancing or is it life-reducing?” A lot of times people approach fasting or juicing or getting into a healthy way of eating on a physical level, but it’s important to broaden it to the psychological. To bring in the psychological aspect is so important for people because when we go into patterns, it’s not the physical that breaks the pattern, it’s the psychological or the mindset: if someone’s bored or just wanting some stimulation. So that’s why that part is very important and why I shared that in the article.

Nancy: How can someone break a destructive eating cycle?

Shantree: One of the theories I love to work with is to never push something away because to resist is to persist. If you keep pushing something away, it comes back and it comes back stronger. Something I learned a long time ago, back in the early 80s is something called “The Three As.” The first is being aware – aware of what mood you’re in, what’s going on. That can be difficult sometimes when someone is dealing with anxiety. If you can catch yourself, you can think, “OK, I’m aware of this.” Number two ends up being the hardest, and that is accepting, accepting the pattern that is coming. When I use the word acceptance, that really means loving yourself. Now acceptance doesn’t mean you’re never going to change. A lot of times people think it means you’re going to stay in that place all the time, but all it means is that you’re pausing and witnessing what is happening. If you push it away, it won’t go away. You need to be able to see it, face on. It’s like looking into a mirror and saying, “OK, I see you. I see this pattern” and really being present with it. Once you do that, the third ends up being very easy. An adjustment happens. Something shifts. So those are “The Three As” and I find them to be useful in anything, not just eating cycles. Aware. Acceptance. Adjustment. The second one is the hardest. If you can just get to that and stick with it, the third one happens on its own.

And could you give us a few simple and easy steps that people can follow when they are upset?

That’s really where you can bring those “Three As” into anything.

Nancy : You have a great article on your website titled “Drink Your Troubles Away”, which I am happy to say was posted on my website last year. But if someone new to juicing decided to take your advice, what are some of the pitfalls?

I’m in 100% agreement with what you said earlier about your passion for juicing. We’ve been juicing for a long time as well. One pitfall is going into high sugars. People get into that because of apple juice, orange juice, mango juice. They get into fruits and the sugary vegetables and that is one of the biggest pitfalls because you think this is great, you’ve got lots of energy, you’re juicing, but what happens is that you are supporting one part of your body but throwing off another part of your body. That is one of the biggest pitfalls I see: the sugar content that’s in fruit and vegetables now that wasn’t there twenty years ago.

And could you explore this avenue for weight loss! What would be the benefit of juicing for someone trying to lose weight?

One of the things that’s key is the greens. Greens will really help someone to lose weight because you’re helping the alkalines in the blood, you’re helping your nervous system, really supporting the liver. So the greens are doing a lot and that can really make a difference. That way you won’t have the highs and lows that come with the sugary juices.

The other thing I’d really recommend is not to overdo the amount of juice you’re drinking. When we do a fasting retreat at our place or in Costa Rica, sometimes I’ll see people. If you give them a quart they’ll drink a quart. Give them two quarts, they’ll drink two quarts in one sitting. It’s really important just to have small amounts and to really chew your juice. Try to get into the pattern of chewing and you can chew when you’re fasting and having juice. A lot of people have the habit of eating very quickly and that’s one of the main things I believe that causes weight to go up.

Nancy: How would you recommend someone start juicing, and how long should their juice fast last?

Shantree: That’s a complicated question because my approach to juicing or to fasting is an Ayurvedic approach: looking at a person’s constitution to see if they’re vata, pitta or kapha. So that’s one aspect. One of the things I did for years and years back in the 70s is to just fast one day a week. I think I did that for about three years. I never missed one. Every seventh day I would just have juices and that’s so simple. It’s just missing three meals. Not eating and having your juices. That is one of the healthiest and best things I think of: breaking the pattern before it gets going. If you just keep eating and eating and eating, after a few months or years, you’ve got a pattern there. But if you have that pause, that one day a week, a new pattern develops.

The second part of your question was how long should they fast. If someone’s beginning, one day a week is great, but one of the things that has happened for me in the last two years is that I’m really starting to believe in longer fasts. I never thought that would ever happen. I just did a long fast in January and February that was 40 days and last year I did 45 days. Both of these fasts were in Canada, last year in November into December, and then this year January into February. We’ve had numerous people come to Costa Rica with us for fasting retreats there and they’ve become our most popular retreats. Part of me is a little surprised because if you’re going to go to the tropics, you might as well enjoy the food there. So anyway, I do believe in longer fasts now and I just have more and more energy. That’s the part that really surprised me. I’m into my second week and I have more energy, my third week and even more energy, a month and even more and I wondered how much higher can my energy keep going? 

Nancy : What supplements or superfoods would you suggest adding to juice drinks?

I actually have a hard time with the term “superfood.” Everything that is natural, I think of as a superfood. If I go out and get some red clover or greens that are growing in the field, that’s a superfood. Nettles are a superfood. Dandelions are a superfood. In other words, they’re packed full and they’re still in their natural package. And I think the word superfood is starting to become a little overused and it takes it away from things that grow right here in our own areas right here in Canada. We have hundreds of superfoods right here in Canada; they don’t have to come from the ocean or from faraway places. We can have our own superfoods in our own backyards or in our window boxes. Superfoods are high density, packed full of goodness and a lot of those things do come from the ocean and other places.

There are so many things on the shelves nowadays that we didn’t have years ago, like hemp protein, which is one of my very favourites. The ones that become my favourites are actually the ones that grow the closest to us, closest to our own locale and our own bioregion: bee pollen, hemp, numerous herbs that you can buy dried, like nettles which you can buy by the pound. If you are going to go further away, I would go to the algaes and of course the grasses. Those are the two main things that I would bring in. Make sure they’re alkalizing. When I think of superfoods, I ask if this is going to alkalize me. Most of them on the market do as long as they’re fresh so make sure you check that label to see when the expiry date is or when it was prepared.

Nancy: Of course, juicing is easier with the right tools. For me, the best juicer is the one you never put away. How about you? Which juicer would you suggest to invest in?

The nice thing is that now there are lots of choices out there. The ones that I’ve used or had a lot of experience with are the ones that I promote and sell here. During the 70s or early 80s when I started the centre here, the Champion was the champion. There was nothing better than the Champion. The only other one was close to $10,000. The Champion was affordable so it was what we used but it couldn’t juice everything. It could only juice certain types of things. The one that I use and that I have here is the one called Green Power, which I believe is called the Green Star now. It’s got the twin gears, and the beautiful thing with that one is that it can juice anything: any leaf, any twig, any bark, any berry. It can do all kinds of things and the way that I make my herbal medicine here is as juices. I go out into the fields and the garden, harvest them, juice them and they’re available as a medicine that way.

Question from clients: Shantree did answer those questions

Q: What way is the best way to get your juice fresh if you cannot make it on the spot and drink it right away. Is it better to freeze it the night before or refrigerate or neither? Time is always a factor for me... and I have no excuse really... no kids... no stress... no nothing... but I always rush in the morning. I can't imagine people with 2 kids even with a job. I want to know what are the 2 best choices for getting the most nutrient possible from your juice. I do enjoy juicing but sometime wonder if no juice is better than "next day juice"!

Shantree: Part of it will depend on the juicer. If you have a really good juicer like the ones we talked about, they don’t oxidize the nutrients as fast, so if you take the juice and put it into a jar with very little air in there, in other words the jar is almost full, and you put it in the fridge, those juices will keep for a full 24 hours. Some say 48 hours but I usually don’t like to leave it that long; I like to drink it the next day. If you have that kind of good quality juicer, in the fridge is fine, and that would be my choice, especially if it’s made later in the evening, then it’s ready for you the next day. The air in a container is what will deteriorate it, and also the temperatures.

Freezing is fine as long as it’s frozen in glass or some kind of container that’s really going to hold the nutrients. Part of it will depend on how long it’s frozen for, and then when you thaw it, how long it’s thawing for. If it takes you eight hours to thaw it our, you’re losing nutrients during those eight hours. But I really believe in glass, not plastic, so keep it in a mason jar and make sure there’s room for the liquid to expand when it freezes. Don’t have it sitting in the freezer for days and days, or weeks and months.

Q: I do have digestion problem which I want to correct because of the feeling of "something brewing inside all the time"; anyways I want to know what kind of alkaline juice can I make in the morning that would be tasteful and not taste like grass mixed with weeds. I know that would probably be good for you but what would be a sweeter fruit beside apples and beets that would make my juice taste good?

Shantree: I’m a firm believer in juicing herbs that have an aroma. Anything that has an aroma has something called carminatives. So anything that has an aroma, basil, garlic, ginger, fennel, all the different spices that you can think of, and when I say herb or spice it doesn’t have to be a seed, it can be a leafy thing but it has an aroma. Things with aroma really help digestion. They really help the whole digestive process and make the juice that much more tasty so that you enjoy it. There are at least 100 different herbs and spices that we have growing in our own gardens or that we can buy at the grocery store or in farmers’ markets. Just take those and juice them. Anything with an aroma is really going to activate the digestion.

Basil is my number one herb. I don’t know anyone who can get depressed if they have enough basil. In Ayurvedic medicine in India, basil is the number one antidepressant herb. It’s not St. John’s Wort, it’s basil. It’s an incredible herb, one of the highest antioxidants we have. Rosemary, there’s another really good one. The nice thing with rosemary is that it has the aroma but it also has oil.

Q:I understand the concept of juicing which provides the live enzymes and nutrients from fresh produce in an easy to digest liquid form but aren't you depriving your body of the natural process of chewing whole food in order to stimulate and produce the digestive enzymes necessary to break it down? To get a glass of juice aren't you are using much more food than you could possibly eat if you were chewing it? I believe in doing things as simple and natural as possible therefore I'm not sure I understand how juicing food (in a highly complex and expensive juicer) is more beneficial than good old fashioned chewing. Isn't
that what teeth are for?

Shantree: Excellent question. To me juicing is a therapy; it helps us to get from point A to point B, so if you want a boost, or you want to help heal or enhance your body…. Juice means your digestive system doesn’t have to work as hard. 70% of our energy goes to digesting food. That’s why if you have a big meal in the evening, when you wake up in the morning you won’t have as much energy, so there’s a lot of energy that goes into digestion. Once you’re having juices, it’s right there. Now that energy is not being used for digestion, so it’s going elsewhere, for healing. The other thing is to make sure you chew your juice. Don’t just gulp it down. Chew it. The more we chew, or the more slowly we take in fluid, the more it gets absorbed in the cells, and the more fluid is absorbed in the cells, the more useful we stay. Lots of people are drinking lots of liquids but it’s going right through them. There’s something called an ancient tea ceremony. It could be called an ancient juice ceremony. What you’re doing is drinking a tiny bit at a time, so you take a tiny ounce, put it in your mouth and you chew it. The more saliva that’s with that juice the more you’re going to absorb it right in your mouth. It doesn’t even have to go through your digestive system. You’re going to be getting a lot of benefits, and the way you can actually tell that absorption is happening is that you won’t have to urinate. If you drink a glass or two and within half an hour you have to urinate, you know you didn’t absorb that.

Another thing is we live in a very artificial world. If we were living closer to the land, without as much electromagnetic energy, I don’t think we would need juicers. It’s a way of getting high quality nutrients in our body without having to buy supplements in a bottle. It’s a preventative tool.

To be healthy in today’s world we have to be smart. When we think of how much a supplement costs, compared to going and supporting an organic farmer, think of how much produce you can get for that. I’d rather get it from a whole food that’s in juice form so it’s easy for me to digest than from something made in a factory and in plastic.

One more thing, fruits stir up acid in the body. Vegetables flush it out; they have a downward cleansing action. They stimulate the liver. It helps to move the acid out of the body. With fruit, you’re cleansing but you’re just moving the acids around. Vegetables have a lot more minerals.

Nancy : Before we wrap up, let us know more about what you’re you up to these days.

Spring is here! Last week was the grand opening of our 25th year of running the centre. It was very exciting because it was spring, the equinox, full moon and Easter. That also means our apprentices are arriving. We have an apprenticeship program where people come here and live with us for 10 or 18 weeks. What we’re focusing on now is education and people can come for an evening, for a weekend or they can come for a whole week.

Nancy: Shantree, it's been such a pleasure. It's a real honour to have had the opportunity to interview you today, and have you share your insights with our listeners. You're incredible, man! Send my love to Lorenna!

You can visit Shantree’s website at www.thelivingcentre.com.

Well, that's all for this week. I hope you've enjoyed our teleclass.

Until next time, a green toast to your good health and happiness!

Bye for now.

www.womenshealthacademy.com

The Important of Colon Care "Interview with Joey Varone of the Body Care Clinic"

Interview with Joey Varone of the Body Care Clinic

I had the honour of interviewing Joey Varone, a colon hydro therapist from Body Care Clinic in Toronto, for a whole hour! We talked about his unique and challenging professional and personal lifestyle. He's a musician, wheat grass and sunflower sprouts grower and colon hydro therapist.

How does he do it all?

Hello, and welcome to the Women’s Health Academy,  the source for women over 40 to conquer food addiction, to lose weight and take  control of your eating habits broadcast.   So my name is Nancy Desjardins and this week we are going talk about the  colon care.  So to make the most out of a  cleansing health program, I recommend a colonic during and after the  program.  I’m sure you know how much I  love talking about the most import organ in our body, so here’s a reminder of  why this is of such importance.  I know  you probably have lots of questions about what a colonic involves and why we  can benefit from the procedure.

So it’s been part of my lifestyle for the last 12 years.  As the seasons change I usually do a 7 to 12  day body cleanse, like four times a year and go for a few colonics, which  really speeds up the process.  The colon  is one of the most important but, unfortunately, least talked about organ in  our body.  So when a healthy colon  operates normally toxic waste gets eliminated; instead of backing up into the  system and even spending time and effort on dieting or exercise is often not  enough.  The toxicity affects the way we  feel, both emotionally and physically.

Okay, so I won’t get too graphic because I’ll let somebody else  describe the procedure.  So my special  guest today is Joey from the Body Care Clinic from Toronto, who is a colon hydrotherapist.

Nancy:  Joey, you are  amazingly healthy.  You live and eat very  well we can tell by the way you look,  you look younger than your  age.  Could you  tell us about your background and how you got interested in this lifestyle.

Joey:  It all started  with me years back when I was about 13.   I was already in a touring act that was going right across North America and pretty much, being thrown into that at  a young age, you end up getting involved in things that you shouldn’t be doing.  Meaning -- the partying and that whole lifestyle and it didn’t take long before  that whole lifestyle pretty much put me in a bad way with my health.

Nancy: We had a chance  to talk about your background and you said “touring”.  I think that would be interesting to know  with whom?

Joey: I used to be the  lead singer of a trauma act by the name of The Dice and basically at that time  - this is back in the very early 80s and they were already touring.  They had a record contract and were  affiliated with The Rolling Stones at that time. They had seen me in one of my  performances in a club show and they liked what they saw, so they asked me to  join with them and I did. Once I got involved with all of that it didn’t take  long before, you know, hanging out with the wrong crowd and partying with  people and that, you end up in a bad way and then you have to figure out how to  reverse things.

Nancy: You were only  13 years old at the time?

Joey: Yeah, I was 13 and  I actually ended up with The Dice by the time I was about - in between 13 to 16  years of age.  I started off in a trauma  band called Hot Rocks, which a lot of people might know, which was a “Stones  clone” band at the time. Then I ended up with The Dice and pretty much have  been on the road on and off, even up until this point.

Nancy:  So, what happened?

Joey: A lot of partying  and that’s what got me into trouble, a lot of partying, and what happened was I  ended up with a condition that today we’re very familiar with - an irritable  bowel. Back then, they weren’t that up to speed with that type of a  condition.  So it really put me in a bad  way.  I was having to cancel shows and  wasn’t able to function on a daily basis, so going from specialist to specialist  and nobody could give me any answers or help me.

More than anything, I had to figure, all right, what do I do  now?  It’s like is this where it all  ends?  So I started reading books and I  came across some books from Dr Herbert Shelton, which a lot of people are  obviously aware of, Arnold Ehret, Dr Carey Reams, Bernard Jensen, Norman Walker  and pretty much everybody talked about at some point the raw food diet.

So at this  point, when this actually had me at my worst, I was about 17 and I was looking  at this raw food diet.  Everybody is  talking about these raw foods in some way.   Herbert Shelton was really big on it, right.  So I thought, okay, let me implement this in  my life and see what happens.  What have  I got to lose?  And I did and already right  at that point, within a matter of a month, I saw huge difference and then after  that I started to do a lot more research, started to do a lot more  investigating in things such as the colon irrigation itself and I ended up  finding a place down in Toronto, the Wolfe Clinic that I ended up going to to  do a serious detox with.  Went there, had  it done and, once I had it done, it was like my life changed right there, like  with the raw food diet, doing a really good cleanse with the colonics.  I completely turned into a different  person.  Everybody noticed it.  Right away people were like, “What are you  doing?  You look so different.”

Nancy: we’re going back 25 years ago?

Joey: Yeah, easy.

Nancy:  The raw food  movement and colonic was not well known at the time, so you were very  lucky.

Joey: Yeah, and if you  even mentioned it people looked at you weird, right.

Nancy:  Absolutely :)  I can relate to that.

Joey:  Yeah, so it was a  big step for me, but I knew I had to get healthy.  I really wanted to get back on track for many  different reasons, (a) because I didn’t want to be sick.  Of course, nobody wants to be and (b) with my  career and that, I thought, well, if I don’t get healthy I don’t have a career,  right, with the music industry, that’s for sure and that’s always been my  dream, to be involved in music.  So once  I addressed all that and then I corrected my problem, then I thought, you know  what, I really like what this is all about and I wanted to get involved in it  myself and I did and the rest is history and it worked on thousands of people  in between that period of time.

Nancy: Before we get into that, could  you talk a little about your relationship with Mick Jagger and his diet?  Not a lot of people know about his lifestyle.

Joey: Mick Jagger, a lot  of people obviously are in awe of Mick Jagger because we see this very big  persona and he’s probably the most incredible performer that we’ve ever had in  the entertainment field. A lot of people think that Mick Jagger is the crazed  drug-induced person that he was 25 years ago. The truth is completely opposite  to that.  Mick Jagger, from what I  understand, has all his food blended.   He’s very very big on the raw foods.   I’m not 100% sure if he’s totally raw, but I’d like to think that he’s  probably as close as it can be to that.   He’s up at 6.30.  He works out  every single day. His workouts consist of working out with weights and  running.  He does all types of dance  exercises and things like that as well.   He also does a lot of vocal exercises.   So the next time that anyone sees Mick Jagger and they see how  incredible he is, it’s because of all the hard work that he does and, let’s not  forget, he’s 64 years old, right.

Nancy: you are  the younger version of Mick Jagger.  You look so much  like him.

Joey: That’s what a lot  of people say.  A lot of people always  related me to being a cross between Mick Jagger, Jim Morrison and Steven Tyler  which is pretty funny because, growing up, I was always a very very big Elvis  Presley fan and it was my dad that was a big fan of The Rolling Stones and The  Animals and all the other bands and the Beatles and that, but for me it was  always Elvis.  That’s what inspired me as  far as wanting to sing and then later on in my life, once I was about 11 or 12  years old, I was already listening to a lot of rhythm and blues and that.  I was already playing harmonica.

I was already light years ahead of everybody else with music that  way and I would sit in front of my record player and I would listen to all  these old cats playing and really trying to pick everything up and, of course,  going through a lot of the Elvis material and I got an opportunity to play  with, which ended up being the Hot Rocks band and I went down to audition with  them and I remember the audition until this day.  I went down and the asked me if I knew -  pretty much what they asked was, “What material do you know”, and I said,  “Well, I now a lot of blues”, and they said, “Well, do you know any Rolling  Stones?”  I said, “Sure”, and they tried  to see where I was at, whether or not I was real or if I was just trying to put  them on and they said, “Well, do you know Stray Cat Blues”, which is an obscure  song from The Stones.  I said,  “Yeah.”  I said, “Which version would you  like to do, the live version or the studio version?”  Their guitar player started to laugh.  He laughed at me because they were all much  older than me.

So anyway we did the song and we did a few more and we took a break  and they said to me, “Well.”  They made  up a list and they gave me the list and it was all a bunch of songs.  It was all Stones’ songs and he said, “Well,  anybody ever tell you that you look like a cross between a young Steven Tyler  and Mick Jagger”, and I said, “Well, yeah, I’ve heard that”, right.  So he gave me all these Stones’ songs.  So he says, “Go home, learn this and then  we’ll get together the following week and we’ll see where this all goes.”  So I did that, learned all the songs, came  back.  We rehearsed everything.  Six months after that we were playing at huge  venues right across North America and that’s  where it all started.

Nancy: Joey, You’re one of the few people  I know that  look definitely younger than your age.

Joey:  I’m a firm believer that diet is definitely  the biggest part of it, but then always keeping a really good attitude is the  other part of it too, right.  It’s too  easy to let things get you down or get you upset, so you’ve got to really try  to have a handle on that because you can produce just as much, if not more,  acidity with your thoughts and your feelings than you can by the food you’re  eating.  So you’ve got to be careful of  that, right.

I’ve got 1500 square feet in my basement that  I converted into a growing area for the sprouts and the wheatgrass and the  difference between what we’re doing here with the Ocean Water is that normal  grown wheatgrass or sprouts already - I mean if you’re doing that, you’re  already light years ahead of everyone else.   The only difference with the introduction of the sea water is that the  sea water is in perfect balance and it contains all the nutrients that the  plants need in order to deliver all the nutrition that we need to us and we do  it at about 2000 parts per million.  I  mean we could do it higher than that, but there’s no need for it.  We’ve gotten results with the grass and  sprouts as far as, let’s say, taste goes, as far as having shelf life in the  refrigerator goes, much longer.  I’ve had  sprouts last in the fridge for over 14 days and they still look really good.

Nancy:  It’s so easy to  grow them and fun too.

Joey:  Yeah.  Well, the reason that we ended up doing  those, Gino came to me when he decided that him and his uncle wanted to get  involved with ocean grown and he came to me and he said, “Well, you’ve got  experience with growing”, because my growing experience goes way back with  Colleen Allison, which was a very good friend of mine and everybody might  remember Colleen Allison as the woman who opened up Super Sprouts.

Nancy:  I remember Colleen! A Wonderful lady.

Joey:  She was good  friend of mine and pretty much when Colleen came back from The Hippocrates Health Institute, I  had an opportunity to learn with her how to do it the right way.  So this is going way back and Gino said,  “Well, you’ve got this expertise because you’ve been growing them for so many  years, like you know the difference.”  I  said, “Oh yeah, I’ll know the difference.”   So he brought me a sample of the Ocean Water and I grew a couple of  trays of grass and a couple trays of sunflower greens with it and there was no  comparison whatsoever.  I was totally  blown away, the taste, the texture.  You  would do a shot of the wheatgrass and you could just feel it go through your  body.  It was crazy.

So I called up  Gino.  I said, “Gino, there’s no  comparison.  We have to grow this food  this way.”  The thing is now what Gino is  trying to do is he’s trying to get the farmers to grow all our food with  it.  That’s what we’re really pushing for  because if we get all our food grown with the Ocean Water, we’re going to be in  a really good place as far as our health goes, every one of us.

Joey, before we  get to the colonic procedure, could you describe your diet?

Joey:  I blend a lot of  my food and it’s funny because people ask me, “What do you eat all day long”,  and I always think back to the question, “Well, I don’t eat that much.”  I know it sounds crazy, but me and Gino laugh  about it all the time.  If I sit down and  I’m in company and I want to eat, then we can go through a couple of big bowls  of salad no problem, but my normal week day, getting up in the morning and  between me leaving my house, coming to work, going through my whole day, I’ll  start off my morning, as soon as I get up I’ll have my 6 to 8 ounces of  wheatgrass juice.  Then I’ll blend up a  shake, so that I can have it for later on and that will consist of the sprouts,  maybe some organic broccoli, avocados, coconut butter.  I’ll throw some enzymes in there.  Sometimes I’ll put some hemp seed oil or hemp  protein in there.  What else?

Nancy:  That’s very  nourishing.

Joey:  Yeah, sometimes  some spinach.

I’ll blend that  all up and I’ll just take that in a container and I’ll drink that obviously  till I finish it and then I don’t have anything, other than maybe sometimes  I’ll have like a couple of handfuls of almonds throughout the day and then I  won’t have anything till my day’s done and I’ll have, let’s say, a bit salad in  and around 7 o'clock, 7.30, something like that and that’s not all the time  because if I’m running up to the studio and that I don’t want to eat and sing  after because it doesn’t sit right.

Joey:  Yeah, that’s the  way I pretty much - that’s my every day eating schedule.  When I first got into the raw food, going  back, I mean it takes time.  Once you  become so balanced because of the all nutrition that is in the wheatgrass and  the sunflower greens, your body doesn’t need as much food.  So you find yourself eating less and less as  time goes on and, like I said, if I want to and I’m in company and you’re  sitting, of course, you like to talk and you sit and you share a big salad  together and you can end up going through a couple of bowls, but other than  that...

Nancy:  Joey, you’ve been doing this for  more than 25 years.  So it took some time  to get your body to where you’re at.

Joey:  Yeah, it is so  important.

Nancy:  What is a  colonic?

Joey:  A colonic is it’s  pretty much a glorified enema.  Everybody  understands the concept of an enema, which is using purified water to gently  cleanse out the large intestine.  What  generally happens is a person comes and we take them into the room and they  have towel that they’re able to cover themselves up with.  There’s an abdominal massage that’s  administered during the session all the way through.  The reason why we do this is to gently help  to get things moving and just to give me, as a practitioner, an idea of what’s  going on with a person and, once we’ve got the water flowing and everything is  pretty much moving, you just lie there comfortably, or as comfortably as you  can possibly be, and every once in a while we’re going to tie off the larger  tubing because there’s two tubes, one that’s coming out from the actual  inverted tank itself and the other one that’s going out to the sewage system.

Now we close of the larger tube so that the person’s bowel will fill  up with the water and then, once you feel that you’re full, you just give us  the cue in order to release.  Whatever  has to come out is going to come out and I always tell people it’s slightly  uncomfortable because obviously it’s not a procedure that we want to have done,  okay, but it should not hurt.  So you’ve  got 45 minutes to an hour that you’re on that bed and pretty much I yet have to  see a person get off and not be shocked by what they see being expelled.

Nancy: Could you explain the difference between Colonic machines?

Joey: Absolutely.  Well, there’s units out there that look  great.  When you walk in there it all  looks really high tech and they tell you that it’s controlled pressure.  Well, the only controlled pressure that you  want is the downward flow of the water flowing downward through gravity.  You don’t want a unit that has a compressor  attached to it that they can regulate the amount of pressure that the water is  travelling into the bowel under.  Anytime  that you do that you’re basically encouraging things to move a lot quicker and  you’re putting pressure in the bowel itself.   Most people that have had it done that have come to have the gravity fed  method done me have said it was a horrible experience.  Now if you don’t know any better, you just  think that that’s the way it’s done and you don’t know, but then you have  something like this done and say, “Gee, why is this so easy?”  It’s not totally 100% comfortable, but it’s  nowhere in comparison to that.

Joey: The difference is that because the water is going in nice and easy, at about one  and half litres to two litres per minute, and if your bowel were to constrict  it could literally stop the flow on its own.   So you don’t really feel anything, unless I’m pinching of the larger  tube, which is allowing the water to fill up inside you, but now allowing it to  escape.  Then you feel pressure, but I  mean at that point you just say, “Joey, release it.”  I will let go of the tube.  Whatever it is that wants to come out is  going to be expelled, but the difference is like night and day.  It really is.   You’ve had it done the other way, right, Nancy?

Nancy: Yes!

Joey:  Yeah, when it’s  done with this method it really is - put it this way, you’ll go back and you’ll  continue to have it done when it’s done the right way.  When you have an experience like that, I’m  sure it’s scared a lot of people off, for sure.

Nancy: How often would you recommend a colonic?

Joey:  I say that if  you’re on your journey to cleansing yourself out, I tell everybody, “Do some  type of a detoxification program.  I know  that you educate a lot of people on doing that and I’ve seen a lot of people  because of you and I encourage that everybody, once you’ve got the body  cleansed out properly, the main question is how many colonics does it take in  order to clean out the bowel?  Well, I’m  at that point where now, worst case scenarios, I usually can have most people  cleaned out within a series of about 10 of them.  Sometimes I can do it inside five, depending  on how bad the person is.  Once the bowel  is cleaned out, then it’s up to you.  You  can pretty much have it whenever you’d like to have it; you want to have it  once a month, once every two months.  If  you’re really taking care of yourself, you’re eating raw foods, you’re doing  all the great things that you should be doing then you’re fine.  It really is up to you.  You have people like Dr Norman Walker that  were doing two a day.  He would do one in  the morning and one in the evening before going to bed.

Nancy:  Really?

Joey:  Yeah, and a lot of  people are not aware of that, but I had an opportunity to meet a lot of people  that were very close to Dr Norman Walker and Dr Bernard Jensen and they told me  first hand that this is what he was doing.

Nancy: I  have his book in my office.

Joey:  What I typically  do with people is I’ll have them come in twice a week.  I’ll have them come in once at the beginning  of the week and once at the end of the week.   I find that over the years of me being involved as a practitioner and  just my research and working on thousands of people, I’ve found that that’s the  way people respond the best because what happens is that the first one is  pre-soaking.  So you’ve got 40 gallons of  water that just went through them on a Monday.   Now you’ve got them back on, let’s say, a Friday and now you’re putting  another 40 gallons through.  The bowel  hasn’t had enough time to dry up again, so all that mucous is not going to get  all hard in there because it just doesn’t have enough time.  So now we’re bombarding the bowel with that  much more water, so we tend to really get things moving.

Nancy:  And what could you  do to prepare yourself prior to the colonic, beside drinking a lot of fluid.

Joey: Eating a lot of  greens because you want to make sure that you’re driving all the acidity out of  you body.  So you want to really get a  lot of greens going through your system so it starts to sweep everything  downward and, like you said, a lot of water.   Then on the actual day of the colonic, two hours prior to having it  done, the best thing to do is have nothing to drink and nothing to eat and you  should get your best results at that point.

Nancy: what is the difference between drinking  coffee or having the coffee as an implant?

Joey: drinking it, it  has the same effect as putting it in as an implant.  Reason why is it’s a toxin to the body.  It’s a poison.  So the body, the liver, does not like  it.  It wants to right away get rid of  it.  So this is why when people drink  coffee they say, “Well, I’ve got to have my morning coffee because it helps me  go to the bathroom.”  Well, yes, it does  do that, but in the same token it turns your pH totally acidic as well too,  which is very corrosive to your organs.   Using it as an implant, we just let the coffee go in as a trigger.  It triggers the liver to let go because we  have what’s called a portal vein in the large intestine.  So some of that coffee gets pulled up into  the blood stream, carried to the liver and then the liver doesn’t like and  starts to go spastic and pushing all the toxins out.  It’s also starts the peristaltic action of  the bowel in motion as well too.  Now  having this done this way, you don’t have all the ramifications that you have  when you drink it.

Joey: This was one of  the main things that Dr Max Gerson used, the coffee enema in his therapy with  cancer and a lot of other ailments. You might want to go and check it out on  the internet as well.

Joey: Dr Max Gerson said  there was not a stronger liver detoxifier than doing a coffee enema and once I  heard him speak about that, actually I should say when I actually heard his  daughter, Charlotte speak about it, and read it in his literature, in his  books, it just made sense to me.  So in  implementing it with the clients, I saw the results with my own eyes.  So it was something that I totally believed  in and that I wanted to continue to use with everyone and also same thing with  the wheatgrass as well too, nothing better than an ocean grown wheatgrass  implant.

Nancy: Wheat Grass Implant! Okay… that is so cool☺

Joey: It’s part of  it.  Sometimes people are a little  sceptical because they don’t know what to expect and, if it’s all new to them,  they may not want to do it, but you try to convince everybody that it’s the  right thing to do and by having a wheatgrass implant you’re helping feed the  good bacteria in the system.  You’re  helping to remove all the acidity and bring pH back into the bowel.  You’re driving nutrients into the blood stream.  You’re helping to purge the liver as well  with the grass.  So between the grass and  the coffee you’re doing a lot of good.

Nancy:  What would be the  one book that you would recommend for colon care?

Joey:  There’s two  books.  There’s Dr Norman Walker’s book, Colon  Health, and Dr Bernard Jensen’s book, Dr.  Jensen's Guide to Better Bowel Care. One of the two, because they’re,  as far as I’m concerned, they’re definitely my mentors in the field and there’s  Dr Bernard Jensen’s book, Tissue  Cleansing Through Bowel Movement - I can’t remember exactly what the name  of the book is.  Any one of them will do.

Like you said  earlier on, that as far as all the organs in our body, that the colon itself is  definitely by far the most important organ.   It’s the first organ that’s developed in the fetus.  It’s the most important organ in every way in  the sense that whatever you’re putting into your mouth is going to get  delivered to the rest of you body via the colon and if the colon itself is not  able to function the way it’s supposed to function, every day, if you’re not  able to go to the bathroom, you’re constipated and you’re backing these toxins  up into your system, then you’re setting the stage for disease.  So it is so important that people educate  themselves about this particular organ.

Nancy:  There’s no excuse.  With our technology and information available for us.

Joey can be reached at BodyCareClinic.com.  That’s the website.  You’ll find the  address of the clinic and they can call you 416.740.0049

Joey, it's been such a pleasure. It's a real honour to have had the opportunity to interview you today, and have you share your insights with our listeners.

Well, that is  all for this week and I hope you enjoyed the interview and go ahead and get  yourself a colonic.  So have a great  week.