6 Essential Steps to Beauty, Peace & Vitality

- by Eliza Ceci

“Your body is the harp of your soul. It is yours to bring forth sweet music or confused sounds.” – Kahlil Gibran

As a woman it is instinctual to want to feel beautiful, desired and magnificent. Over thousands of years of evolution and change women have remained the constant to the ebb and flow of life. Feminine energy remains the yin to the masculine yang balancing the abrasive edge of the ‘man’s world’ with intelligence, beauty, grace and creativity.

With the day to day stresses of the modern woman’s life it is no wonder women are feeling disempowered, unfulfilled or lacking when it comes time to evaluate their health, happiness and overall vitality. We are running the show, wearing multiple hats and overextending ourselves by staying late at the office, volunteering or saying yes, yes and again yes to obligations inevitably to be accepted and appreciated. This overextension of our time and energy creates stress and often dis-ease in the form of headaches, digestive issues, PMS and complications with our menstrual cycles, adrenal fatigue and even emotional eating and bingeing.

We all know nutrition plays a key role in the way we look and feel (but what about our internal state?) Why do we sabotage our opportunity for vibrant, fabulous skin, hair and bodies on a regular basis? Read more »

Postpartum Healing & Natural Vitamin K

by Ruth
There are many traditional therapeutic treatments around the world, specifically designed to heal a woman’s body after she gives birth. A lot of them are in contrast to more modern western medical approaches.

Most ancient healing systems see placing anything cold (an ice pack for example) around the reproductive organs a really bad idea.  If you happen to tear or graze a little, then the ideal solution is to use RAW, fresh honeycomb spread liberally over a sanitary pad, changed a couple of times a day ideally along with some sunshine on your ‘bits’ everyday.

My other favorite tip is something called a ‘java wrap’.  In Indonesian culture its customary to wrap a new mother’s abdomen tightly in cloth after massaging it with special oils. Its such a lovely thing to do for yourself for at least half and hour each day:

? Find a long sash in some nice natural breathable fabric

? Mix together equal parts of ground pumice and red clay, store this in a jar

? Mix together 10 drops of geranium, 5 drops of eucalyptus and 5 drops of peppermint essential oil into 50mls of your favorite cold pressed unrefined carrier oil

? When you have a spare moment, mix together equal parts of the clay and oil blend

? Massage your belly with this mix in a clockwise direction, focusing on firming up the skin

? Take the length of fabric and wrap it over the bare skin on top of the massage mix

? When you’re done, shower off or just wipe any excess clay of with the fabric. I guarantee you’ll feel so revitalized and uplifted and your belly will be well on its way to regaining its former shape.

Increase your Vitamin K Levels Ready for Birth Through Nutrition

The issue of whether or not to administer vitamin K to your newborn is entirely a personal choice and one well worth researching.  No matter how you approach this, increasing vitamin K levels in your own body will still be of great benefit.

The top 2 sources of vitamin K happen to be dried alfalfa and sauerkraut.

The alfalfa is best made into a tea, I like to brew mine in a glass jar in the sun along with nettles and red raspberry leaf for the last month of pregnancy.  The nettles supply Iron and the raspberry leaf tones the muscles of the uterus.

Increasing your vitamin K stores is such a good excuse to chow down on some fermented cabbage, yum!

Yoga – Keep Your Body Supple and Mind Relaxed

by Ruth

Lots of women wonder what exercise they should be doing during pregnancy. Swimming and walking are great – but sometimes lethargy can take over.

Its good to remember that stretching your body in a gentle yet powerful way is great to build core strength and ensure proper physical alignment. If we are out of line, we can create knee, hip and back problems later on. You carry your baby for 9 months within you, and then a good few years on the outside! Love your body.

The practice of Yoga helps you centre yourself, connect with your breath, gently tone your body, find peace and joy in the wonder of life unfolding inside your womb, prepare mentally and physically for a beautiful birth.

? Viparita Karani (legs up the wall) is great gentle inversion for relieving fluid retention and swelling in the ankles, and also helps regulate blood pressure.

? Virabhadrasana II (warrior 2) for building energy within the body when fatigue hits.

? Squatting with feet pointing forward, hands together in prayer position with elbows against inner thighs, this helps prepare and open the body for labor, however it is contraindicated after 36 weeks if the baby is not in the most optimal birthing position (ie. posterior or breech)
? Tree Any balance poses are of great help. Its good to cultivate balance throughout the change and flux of pregnancy.

For all you experienced yoginis it is wise to be aware that Nauli Kriya is considered a contraceptive activity and would be best left out of your daily practice if you are trying to conceive.

No Stretch Marks – Ruth’s Belly Balm

by Ruth

Love Your Skin

Help it thrive during pregnancy, here’s how:

? Take MSM daily in water with a squeeze of lemon juice.

? Avoid eating trans fatty acids and hydrogenated oils and excess omega 6′s. Not only is it bad for the baby, it will lessen your body’s ability to expand without scarring.

? Make unrefined raw coconut oil a part of your diet

Ruth’s Belly Balm

? Melt 3 tablespoons of shea butter, 1 tablespoon of cacao butter 10mls hemp seed oil with  teaspoon of beeswax

? In a separate pot mix a teaspoon of honey, a spoonful of MSM crystals dissolved in a spoonful of water, pinch of salt and 10 drops of grapefruit seed extract.

? Once both pots at same temp, slowly pour the water mix into the oil mix. Stirring gently. Remove from heat and continue to stir very gently every few minutes.

? When partially cooled, stir in 1-3 drops mandarin essential oil and 1-3 drops of jasmine essential oil.

Enjoy the daily ritual of massaging yourself with this heavenly cream. Don’t forget put the cream on your breasts too.

If you did get stretch marks during pregnancy try tamanu oil on the scars daily to help them heal and fade.

Read Ruth’s Beautiful birth story:

Finding the Bliss: The Birth of Kirra Calgary Hofer

B12 – Where Do You Get Yours?

by Fiona Hollis

Are you unsure about B12?

There’s a lot of talk about it – and I think we have all feared whether we are getting enough at various points of our raw food journey.

We created a wisdom nugget with some suggestions, and had some great feed back from YOU.

Here’s a few things to consider…

Reasons to Supplement a Raw Vegan diet with B12

- Modern soils, due to intensive and unsustainable agricultural practices, are depleted of nutrients, and it is thought that vitamin B12 is now largely absent from most soils. Rawmom Joanna Steven

- Animals in the wild, herbivore, omnivore or carnivore, eat bugs along with their greens. Our produce is very clean, and I am not about to start adding the tiny spiders living on my backyard garden greens to my smoothies! Rawmom Joanna Steven

- While our gut does produce some vitamin B12, Dr Gabriel Cousens explained that it happens in an area of the gut that is too low to be reabsorbed, and this B12 production does not have an impact on our B12 levels. Rawmom Joanna Steven

- Use B12 patches – B12 is absorbed better through the skin vs orally. Dr.Ritamarie

Can we Thrive Without Supplements?

Emma writes:

Here in Europe (as well as in Australia and New Zealand) vegetarians and vegans can get their B12 and other B vitamins, such as folic acid, from yeast extract products. The most common one in the UK is Marmite but the German company Essential makes a much more tasty (if expensive) organic yeast extract.

I was away traveling for the three months before I became pregnant and so dutifully took my folic acid tablets every day but once I had returned home my body inexplicably started refusing to take them, which at the time I felt guilty about. I since found out that I have been getting plenty of folic acid from my morning toast with yeast extract and my body was cleverly telling me I didn’t need to take the extras any more.

Raw health expert Dr Flora writes:

I’ve never been deficient. Never known anyone to be. I eat seaweed which is rich in B-12. I don’t take antibiotics, which would kill my Bs, including B12. I also eat homemade sauerkraut, which is rich in B complex and B12. I lick my fingers! (hygiene? I have to lick my fingers when I scrape out my blender after making almond cream with figs in it! And, that apparently helps keep the minimum up. I drink fresh coconut water, rich in bifidus, which keeps everything high. Don’t mess with deficiencies. Get a blood test to find out where you are. There are so many types of supplements, but they are all not needed if you have sufficient. Test twice.

In her book Creating Healthy Children, Karen Ranzi dedicates a chapter to the issue of B12.

Jinjee and Storm (www.thegardendiet.com) have raised a healthy family on a non supplemented raw diet – and have been living it for over 30 years. Jinjee claims celery juice is a nerve-cell re-builder, so understanding food as thy medicine opens a whole new dimension to raw food as a provider and a healer.

Karen Dolan wrote in with this really great  information on celery juice:

Celery juice is highly nutritious and very hydrating. Because it is incredibly alkalizing, it equalizes the body’s PH, which is essential for good health. All parts of celery are packed with minerals, vitamins and nutrients. Celery leaves are high in vitamin A, whilst the stems are an excellent source of vitamins B1, B2, B6 and C and dense in potassium, folic acid, calcium, magnesium, iron, phosphorus, sodium and essential amino acids.

This super food also contains important concentrations of plant hormones and healing essential oils that give celery its characteristic smell. These oils help to regulate the nervous system, and are very calming.

It helps calm the nervous system but does not help with many other things that you need B12 for.

Interview: Alisha Deschene, Raw Mom with 7 Raw Children

By Joanna Steven

Today, I am interviewing Alisha Deschene who isn’t just any raw mom, she is the mother of 7 children ranging from age 13 to less than a year old. She has experienced both hospital births and home births, and tell us more about her experience. We also discuss time management when you have a large family, and how she manages to feed a husband and 7 children who do not all follow the same diet. You can read more about Alisha on her blog, http://eatrawtolive.blogspot.com/.

JS: Alisha, you are the raw mom of 7 beautiful children, some born in the hospital and some born at home. Let’s start first with what you call the natural beauty of childbirth. As you undoubtedly learned more with every birth, did anything really strike you as being invaluable to having a better birthing experience? Did you do anything to help prepare for the day of delivery so everything would go more smoothly (diet, exercise, task delegations etc)?

Alisha: One thing that I would say is that knowledge is power. I have learned so much with every one of my births and they have all been quite different. No two births are the same, even with the same woman. It is so important to have a strong grasp of what you want for your birth and a strong support group to help you. My very first birth was a nightmare. I was very young and was treated very badly by the hospital staff. People questioned my desire to have more children after the horrible first birth that I had and my response was that it couldn’t possibly get any worse with another one. Read more »

Nettles – The Holistic Health Hero of Our Wastelands

by Fiona  Hollis

Nettles, nettles everywhere! ‘Ouchy’ weeds that grow in and on anything. Resilient and persistent, nettles grow tall and proud in almost any location. This mysterious plant has some of the best security systems in place, designed to protect their precious leaves with millions of tiny syringes loaded with poison. A veritable electric fence of defense surrounds this plant.  Who would have thought this needle wielding warrior could be such a holistic health hero!

Aside from being a super plant – vitamin and mineral packed with many, many healing and therapeutic values – nettles are used to make paper, dye, rope, linen like fabric, and insect repellent. A green that serves many a need.

In England, there is an annual nettle eating competition at a pub called, The Bottle Inn. I called and asked them about the art of eating raw nettles – it seems that as the sting is only on the upper side of the leaf – the trick is to  fold the sides of the nettle in, and then roll the nettle up – so there is no upper side exposed to the mouth. I was a little confused, “Doesn’t the sting escape when chewed?” I asked… “Yes, sometimes  - your mouth goes kind of numb,” was the reply. If that option sounds a little unnecessarily traumatic, – why not make a smoothie, juice or tea? Read more »

The Green Parent: Celebrating the Journey of Pregnancy

by Lucy Corkhill

My Heart Flies

My heart is so joyous,

My heart flies in singing.

Under the trees of the forest,

The forest, our home, our mother.

In my net I have caught

A little bird,

A very little bird,

And my heart is caught

In the net with the little bird.

Pregnancy song of the Efe peoples

Cast your mind back through time, to a place in history when the Great Mother was revered and honored in rituals and ceremonies. A time when as a pregnant woman, you would be the focus of joyful celebration and deep respect. You would spend your pregnancy intuitively listening and communicating with the new life growing inside you. Your community would surround you with love and protection and help you celebrate your journey. You would have midwives attending your needs and your mother, grandmothers, aunts and sisters would be there to teach you all you needed to know. Your birth would be rejoiced in as a transition for you and your partner into parenthood and your baby’s auspicious day, and there would be feasts, rituals and ceremonies in all of your honor. Read more »

Love Affair with a CSA…

by Eliza Ceci

Did you know New Jersey is called ‘The Garden State’?

People who are only familiar with the stereotypes of big hair, tanning and Sopranos lifestyles can’t believe it when they travel through our beautiful state and see miles and miles of beautiful and lush farmland. Some of my best memories as a kid were picking berries or peaches with the juice dribbling down my chin or the familiar yummy taste of sweet corn at summer dinnertime.

Seeing the lazy sheep in the fields always got me dreaming of having my own one day – that particular memory makes my husband very nervous, mostly I think in anxiety that I will ask him to move with me to a farm in the middle of nowhere! (He is not the type to live outside the comfortable pleasures of his favorite Italian deli two blocks away).

There is nothing like fresh-from-the-garden produce. Joining my local CSA has taught me Read more »

How to Create the Ultimate Self-Indulgent Home Spa with Nadine Artemis

As some of you know, we’ll be hosting a Raw Spa retreat in mid August! I’m really excited about this event and wish we could host hundreds of people in the little house we’ve rented for the weekend, but in the spirit of making the Spa experience accessible to everyone, and also partly because I simply crave opportunities to listen to Nadine share about all her delicious natural beauty knowledge, I’ve decided to create a Home Version of our Raw Spa Retreat.

We won’t be able to whisk all of you off to the mountains with us, but we will be able to help you create an aromatic escape and a fabulously empowering experience of self-pampering at its very best. Here’s how it’s going to work:

While I can’t sweep you away to the mountains, I can invite you to attend a fabulous teleseminar interview this coming Thursday evening with Nadine Artemis. If you don’t know who this delicious diva is, then you can read all about her here and catch our previous call about Natural Sun Protection for Summer. We’ve invited her to join us this Thursday to give us a head-to-toe beauty lesson, and give you the chance to ask her your questions about what to do and include in the ultimate home spa mini-retreat!

Let’s face it! It’s not that easy or affordable for everyone to just escape to the spa for the weekend. And given the size of most women’s to do lists, sometimes taking a bath and flossing our teeth can feel like pampering. It’s important and empowering for us to take the time to nurture our curves, soften our skin and bask in that princess self-pampering vibe.

You can not take care of your body and feel bad.

It’s impossible to surround yourself with beautiful scents and nourish your skin, your hair, your little toes and still feel grumpy about life and the problems that come up.

So, Nadine is coming to empower and inspire us to do some good things for ourselves. And while 15 of us will be soaking up sun by the waterfalls, those of you who will not be able to join us will still be able to create a fabulous opportunity for self-pampering in your own home. (And THAT’s where we most need to put pampering in place! You shouldn’t have to escape before you finally take time for yourself. A home spa is ideal since it helps you put in healthy habits where you need them the most!)

Here are a few of the things that Nadine and I will be covering on this call, though you’re welcome to send in your thoughts and questions for us ahead of time by, just click this link and submit your questions in the box:

For it is in the dew of little things that the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.

- Kahlil Gibran

• The best tips for healthy hair, what to put on the hair and what to avoid.
• Natural tips to prevent split ends and frizzy hair!
• Tips, tricks and techniques to bring out the best in your skin.
• Which foods to eat to enhance beauty and which to avoid completely.
• The best aromas to use on different parts of the body and why.
• Why Nadine has chosen some of the special ingredients in her beauty care products.
• How to handle acne and skin blemishes naturally.
• Guaranteed ways to get the glow without spending a fortune at the cosmetics counter!!
• The best ingredients to use around the eyes and how to avoid those heavy “bags”.
• Why oral care is KEY to staying beautiful and what to do to keep your teeth gorgeous and healthy your whole life!
• Why your left over produce may be your best beauty secret waiting to happen!!
• Budget-friendly beauty tips for EVERYONE!

I really hope you’ll join us for this call. I’m thrilled that we’ve getting the chance to take the time to pamper ourselves and get the word out there.

–>TO ATTEND THIS CALL, SIMPLY CLICK THIS LINK ON THURSDAY, JULY 29 AT 9:00PM EASTERN

You can click the teleseminar link at any time to send in your questions. IF YOU ARE NOT ABLE TO ATTEND THE LIVE CALL, you can come back at any time to listen to the replay of this call. You don’t need to sign up or give your email to listen to this call, so please feel free to spread it around and invite others to take advantage of some well-deserved self-pampering!

I asked Nadine to put together a deluxe beauty bundle of her products for the ladies that will be joining me at the spa in August, and so she’ll be telling us a bit more about this, but we’re also going to be making it available to everyone, even those who are not able to join us for the spa.

Now, for those of you who are feeling the constraints of a tight purse string, she’s also going to be providing beauty tips for ANY budget, so even if you can’t splurge on her intoxicating blends, you’ll still have plenty of suggestions for what you can do on a tight budget.

Personally, I know that if I don’t buy the blends, I’ll just never get around to doing it for myself, and a little dose of self-pampering goes a very long way for me, so I absolutely ADORE being able to splurge on myself. Given the number of hours I spend at the computer or chasing about with the kids, it’s a luxury I can’t afford not to afford myself.

Now, the way our little home spa retreat is going to work, is that during the days that 15 of us will be self-indulging near the mountains, I will arrange to post daily blogs that will inspire all of us to put ourselves first. Using the tips and suggestions in this call with Nadine, we’ll go through a weekend of pampering ourselves.

The Raw Spa Retreat is happening on August 12-15th, so on those days we’ll have self pampering tips posted here for everyone to follow along with. And those of you who would like to order the Beauty Bundle that we’ll be using at the spa, will have an opportunity to do that on the call!

I looooove how we’ll all be connected for a self-pampering extravaganza no matter where we are, no matter what budget we’re on!

Hope to speak to you on Thursday!!

Basking in all things beautiful,

Tera

p.s.

As soon as the spa finishes, we’ll be kicking off our Believe in Green project, with a 10-day green smoothie challenge! Make sure you’re there to join us and you’ll be finishing off your summer looking and feeling rested, relaxed and better than ever!!!!