5 Glorious Green Smoothie Detox Success Stories!

- by Stacey Terry

Spring is slowly working its way into bloom here in Winnipeg.  The first hints of green are finally painting the grass and the trees here on the prairies.  All we need is a gentle cleansing rain to bring on the growth of the new season!

We are still very much in the season of rejuvenation and renewal here at GSQ.  We’ve just enjoyed another successful 21-Day Green Smoothie Detox with our dear friend, Victoria Boutenko.  We’ve so appreciated your stories of success and your green smoothie testimonials from this program, so today I thought I’d share a few green smoothie detox success stories.

If you’re considering our next live, Full-Support program in May with Robyn Openshaw, I hope you find the encouragement in these words to choose green smoothies as your gentle opportunity for self-love and spring renewal!

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A Glowing Green Smoothie Aloha from Hawaii!

We received so much amazing feedback from our last 21-Day Green Smoothie Detox that we’ve been saving a few of the loveliest letters from participants for you!

With WISH, The Women’s International Summit for Health, just around the bend on March 8th, 2011, we thought we’d share a letter from our new friend, Lisa Barros, from Hawaii.  Like many who discover and become fans of  our programs, she found that one good thing led to another!

Enjoy her touching words and beautiful spirit!

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The Green Smoothie Girl and The Green Smoothie Queen UNITE!

- by Stacey Terry

We’re as giddy as cheerleaders on chard here at The Green Smoothie Queen.  We received confirmation over the weekend that Robyn Openshaw, The Green Smoothie Girl, will be joining us in January for the upcoming Full Support 21-Day Green Smoothie Detox!

WOW!

If you’re a fan at all of green, leafy, and chuggable, this is like asking Santa for a bike for Christmas and getting a  Harley in your stocking.   Vroom! Vroom Baby!!  Read more »

Raw Mom Cooked Dad Day 3: Robyn Openshaw, Dr. Ritamarie Loscalzo & Dr. Ariel Policano

WOW!! What fun! This is SO exciting! Thanks a tonne for your friendly comments on the blog. It’s thrilling to see that you’re enjoying the interviews and feeling inspired and motivated to make great things happen!

A few orders of business before we announce the calls for the day!

David’s Best Elixir Ever Recipe and the Heart Leaf Salad Miracle Photo

This is the picture Avocado sent me immediately after our phone call. Epic. Trippy. Classic. Total Alien Intervention, Dude! I LOOOVE IT!

Here is the SUPERHERO drink recipe:
Brew 1.5 liters of Tea for 1+ hours containing the following ingredients (do not boil):
Spring Water
Chaga
Reishi
Echinacea Flowers
Horsetail
Nettles
Goji Berries
Vanilla

In the blender, add the following ingredients:
1-2 tablespoons raw Cacao beans or nibs
1 tablespoon of raw Maca powder
10 500 mg capsules of Fo-Ti
1 tablespoon Phycocyanin (blue pigments of AFA algae)
2 tablespoons of local Honey
2 tablespoons of local Bee Pollen
2 tablespoons of raw Sacred Chocolate Coconut Butter (www.SacredChocolate.com offers the best raw nut butters ever).
2 tablespoons of Chlorella

Pour the warm-to-hot tea into the blender containing all the ingredients. Cap and blend immediately. After 10 seconds, stop the blender, and pour the hot beverage through a strainer (stainless steel mesh strainer) into your drinking mug. Taste and enjoy!
Add almond milk to the beverage as desired if you like more creaminess.

Love!
Avocado

(I left that little “Love! Avocado” part in, so you know he’s sending the love YOUR way, Angelface!

Ron’s Blueberry Pancake Recipe

While I was going to keep the blueberry pancake recipe as a special gift for Relax Pack subscribers, the lovely Nadine herself popped into the blog and left the famous recipe! So with BIG thanks to Nadine and the Pancake Prince himself, here’s your recipe, but just so you know, it’s also available in Nadine and Ron’s FREE e-book “Imbibe” available on their website Living Libations!

Nadine’s Favorite Blueberry Pancake recipe:
1 pound of wild blueberries (peaches, strawberries, plums are good too)
1 cup chia
1 cup tocotrienals (rice bran solubles)
blend in a food processor and spread on to dehydrator sheets on low overnight

Best
Nadine

Day 2′s Blog Comment Winner is Janis Phelps!

Janis, if you’re out there, send us an email and we’ll set you up with a copy of our Raw Mom’s Healthy Lunchbox Book! Be sure to let us know what you think of our next set of calls, too! The fun is just getting started. If you comment on the blog about today’s calls, you could win a copy of our fully-loaded dessert book, “Have Your Cake & Eat it, Too!”

Now, my Sweet! It’s time to move on to our guest speakers for Day 3.

We’ve got some amazing ladies in the house!

Robyn Openshaw

This frisky, friendly creature is one of my heroines! I love what she’s managed to pull off as the single mother of 3 and a half teenagers. Between soccer practice and family time, she’s running the Green Smoothie Girl website and Robyn has fabulous advice for families who are choosing a middle path to health. She’s got such smarts and is doing fabulous things out there!  I’ll be one of the guest presenters (along with Dr. Ritamarie Loscalzo) at her conference in April! SUPER excited about that!

Dr. Ritamarie Loscalzo

This is a woman who is a huge part of what I do on The Raw Divas’ website, and just yesterday I spent two hours planning an entire curriculum of programs for women starting off in January 2011. Her wisdom and down-to-Earth approach is so refreshing. Dr. Ritamarie inspires me to really UNDERSTAND health and nutrition. This was a fabulous call about healthy nutrition for kids and it so inspired me to want to dive into more full time study to truly understand the choices I make and take even more responsibility for the health of my little ones!

Dr. Ariel Policano

What a beautiful woman and what a great call! I loved getting to the nitty gritty on women’s nutritional needs with Dr. Ariel. She’s so passionate about women’s health, hearing their stories and helping them find solutions to their health problems. As multi-tasking women, we spend so much time worrying about our hubbies and our kids and the laundry and the dog, etc. This call is going to give you the goods on some of the deficiencies to watch for yourself, and how best to succeed on the raw food diet for the long haul.

Okay, so that’s the scoop for these calls. I hope you find them helpful. They’re a bit more “technical” and educational, but these whipper-snapper women know what it takes to thrive and to help their families thrive, too! Pull out your pens and paper and take notes that will serve you for a lifetime!

p.s.

Remember, if you’re concerned about missing the calls, you can always upgrade to the Multi-tasking Mama’s Relax Pack HERE! And remember to look for the fine print on that page, because we don’t turn anyone away because they can’t afford it!

Meet BiG Thinkers Robyn Openshaw, Majora Carter and Angela Stokes-Monarch

I want to just take a few moments to acknowledge the different participants we had on the Believe in Green event.  Green Smoothie Girl, Robyn Openshaw. We picked her to help us kick off this event, because she knows how to keep it real. Some of our guests are known for their extremist points of view, but depending on where you’re coming from, these ideas can be a bit overwhelming.

Robyn knows how to speak to anyone and help create a comfortable gradient with objectives that feel realistic. She also is the single mom of 4 children (3 of which are teenagers) and so she knows how to shop on a budget, multitask, run a business and still make time for healthy living. You can sign up to access her interview here:

I am delighted to present Majora Carter.

Major was so busy we had to reschedule this interview about 4 times!  That’s probably part of the reason that when the interview started, she thought I was just another annoying journalist.   Jimmy the web wonder worker actually forgot to edit the part where Majora told me to look online for the answers to the questions I was asking!!

*gasp!* She thought it was a print interview.

I’ve never felt THIS worried that I’d be met with one word answers during an interview. She was a tough nut to crack, but once I managed to speak a few of the words that resonate with her, she actually ended the interview by calling me “sweetheart.” I received a lot of great feedback about this call. Majora was the first person to help create a public park in the South Bronx in over 60 years!!

If she was a tough nut to crack, it’s only because that’s what it takes to make things happen where she lives. The thing you need to know about Majora is that she’s seen a lot. She grew up in places you and I have never really known and she CHOOSES to live there still because she’s committed to making things better. I suggest you sign up to catch this interview and for more information about her, visit her website or catch her super-inspiring TED talk!

The next si-star to grace our BiG stage with her presence was the lovely Angela Stokes-Monarch! What a treat to connect with her again. She’s come along way from being 160 pounds overweight and while in the beginning her motivations were to lose weight and improve her personal health, she’s now inspired by her ability to touch the lives of tens of thousands of other women and men around the world.

I invited her to take the BiG stage because she’s invested a lot of time recently in learning more about sustainable living, and she’s nearly achieved that ideal for herself. When you sign up to catch this interview you’ll get to hear about some of her favorite resources for growing your own food and sustainable living, and you’ll also find out what she wanted to be when she was a little girl and how, in a certain way, that’s exactly what she ended up doing!!

You can sign up to access these calls for FREE at any time, but I suggest you fork our the ten smackeroos that will go to helping the Girls’ Club, too.
Thanks again for your support!

In Honor of International Green Smoothie Day We’re Thinking BiG: “Believe in Green”

Ooooh eeee!

Yesterday was officially International Green Smoothie Day and I am delighted to report that our Believe in Green program has lifted off.

We’re starting the event with a fabulous interview with the “creator” of green smoothies, Victoria Boutenko. I love Victoria (who doesn’t?!) and it’s been a pleasure to watch her skyrocket to success over the last few years with the popularity of “green smoothies.” We felt it important to pay special tribute to her work and so she was the key speaker for our preparatory day.

In that interview with me she shared some of her unusual personal habits, which I absolutely love, and if I could adopt them myself I would. Unfortunately skinny dipping isn’t looked favorably upon in downtown Montreal. I’ve had the pleasure of connecting with Victoria on many occasions and this was really a special treat!

You can still access this interview at any time by signing up for Believe in Green.

We set a target of $10,000 in donations, and we’ve nearly reached the $6000 mark by now. It’s exciting, encouraging and inspiring to watch the numbers rise! Thank you so much for all those who are helping to spread the word and make this happen.

Last night at around 6pm Eastern, Robyn Openshaw, also known as: Green Smoothie Girl, came to the stage to share her helpful information on how to get the kids on board healthy eating, and how to get the whole family started on a healthier path to whole foods no matter where you’re starting from.

Robyn is a single mom of 4 kids (3 of them are teenagers, so I TOTALLY take my hat off to this woman!) and she’s self-employed. In the moments when I think I’m crazy to be doing the things I do, I think of her and remember there are crazier.

All kidding aside, I LOVE Robyn’s work and think her get-real approach to raw food is the perfect message for so many people who struggle with a 100% ideal.

I need to give BIG thanks to Blendtec who is sponsoring this event with a fancy, shmancy, brand new Blendter to the winner of our Ripple Maker award. Every year for International Green Smoothie Day we award one (sometimes two) lucky participants with a new blender. All they have to do is host a green smoothie event or do something to get the word out about green smoothies. The person who touches the most lives with their event will win the blender!

It’s not the easiest task in the world, but for a prize like this, we want to honor it with a worthy endeavor to make a difference out there. It’s a thrill to know that seniors’ centers, and elementary schools in Mexico have become the stompin’ grounds for green smoothies because of this event.

If you’ve not yet signed up, you can still access ALL the interviews when you come onboard. We set a target of $10,000 in donations and until we reach our goal, we’re going to keep the gates open! We busted the $6000 mark, so all we need is 400 more people to join us for this green smoothie event and we’ll be home free.

Thanks so much for your support of this event!

Love and leafy greens,

Tera

p.s.

Oh my! I didn’t even mention that 100% of the money we generate for this event goes to the Lower East Side Girls’ Club!

Today, The World Suddenly Got Alot Smaller

To all the multi-tasking mamas who are the peacemakers, the boo-boo kissers, the tear wipers, the lull-a-bye singers, the grocery shoppers and menu makers, the domestic engineers and working Wonderwomen, the visionaries who see the best in our children and work tirelessly, invisibly…the list of our titles and duties goes on and on…

TODAY is International Woman’s Day! And I invite you to join with me and about 10,000 other women around the world, in a celebration of our womanhood! We are gathering like women have done since time immemorial to tell our stories, share our collective wisdom and concerns, offer support and solutions, and have communion- united communication in the spirit of building community.

Tera and I have been excitedly working together to produce the biggest, most world-class event of its kind to celebrate Women’s Day. It’s called WISH Women’s International Summit for Health.

If you enjoyed the raw Mom Summit you are going to love this!

We have included over 40 of the world’s most sought after speakers for this, in and outside of the raw community including Marianne Williamson, Dr Mercola, David Wolfe, Janet Attwood, Tonya Zavasta, Marci Shimoff, Victoria Boutenko, and many, many more!

We discuss all the things on the minds of modern women today: Finances, Health, Beauty, Relationships, Self-Worth, Parenting, Sustainability, Spirituality etc etc and yes, it is available for FREE over the next 10 days.

WISH Women’s International Summit for Health

They say it takes a village to raise a child, well, the global village just got smaller because we are bringing a stellar line up of world speakers right to you. With this online banquet of delicious topics and speakers, all made with love for you to be lavished with and enjoy, my hope is that you feel as I do, that the world is getting smaller and that women are getting closer. Our connection regardless of our physical proximity is enhanced when we can come together in the spirit of celebration and empowerment, and that is what WISH is all about.

These people I interviewed and their contributions just opened my world to so many things, it is truly a gift that will keep on giving as I continue to assimilate everything I learned. For example, I’ll leave you with this teaser which came from one of the calls that just blew me away that will be made available as a BONUS~

One of the key distinctions I became aware of just this week which has actually CHANGED MY LIFE came as I interviewed Christine Arylo who wrote the book Choosing Me Before We- It is that Self-Esteem is NOT the same thing as Self-Love…Do YOU know the difference? Overwhelm and exhaustion are sure signs you may not…Please post your answers below.

Happy Women’s Day!

xoShakaya

YOU ARE A DREAM… A WISHED FOR DREAM.

My mom used to whisper sweet things in our ear when we were young, and I love to do this too whenever my boys are falling asleep or heading out the door…One day I must share with you our night time ritual which is just so special…Even though my boys are getting bigger at 10 and 12, they still ask for it and says it helps them fall asleep.

In the meantime, let’s talk about wishes…Cinderella says a wish is a dream you have kept in your heart. Every mother has a dream in her heart for her children. These dreams are our guiding light to give us strength when we need it, to brighten our lives when we lose hope, and to sweeten our steps of this overwhelmingly intense journey we find ourselves on.

Have you ever written out what you wish for? What you dream of? Have you given any loving attention to your rich inner world? Women have the power to birth life and build communities; we are naturally imbued with a sacred heart. If we do not take time to center ourselves there, the inheritance of our ancestors cannot prevent that power from being leaked and drained away from us.

I recently had the honour of interviewing Marianne Williamson for WISH which I’d like to share about. WISH is a world-wide empowerment party for women and you are all invited! Tera had a dream in her heart to build community and empower women for many years and has actively been engaging herself in that mission.

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What is the Optimal Diet for Your Family?

Judgement is like an eclipse of the sun…It blocks the light. ~ Marianne Williamson

Have you noticed there seems to be a movement sweeping through the raw community..? Many people are discussing it, many are doing it, and some are advocating it. I’m talking about the idea of widening our conception of what in fact is the healthiest diet. Let me ask you something, do YOU know what the optimal diet is? Most of us here would say a raw diet. Buuuuut, what exactly is a raw diet? How raw are you supposed to be to be considered raw? Is it all or nothing, or how important is the percentages of raw to cooked ratio for health? Does being raw mean being vegan? How healthy is the struggle of striving for a particular ideal, only to fail time and time again? How about when you desire certain goals, but the stress of striving for them outweigh the results? What about if there is judgement from other people or YOURSELF? Are there issues that lie underneath that aren’t being addressed through diet alone? Is focusing solely on diet as the means of obtaining health balanced? Or can it become toxic? What about the kids?? What does all the hyper-focus on the food mean to them? Is being raw a rawligion? What does it really mean to YOU?

There are truly amazing people in the raw movement who seem to be quite adept in their ability to trust their instincts and do due diligence with their research- using both hemispheres of the brain to ascertain what is right for them on their health journey- and we have learned much from them and been so inspired. However, it was always what worked for THEM that they did and eventually espoused. Of course, when anyone has the clarity and passionate beliefs and acts upon them with conviction, the innate strength and rightness of being which one is imbued with naturally shines a light outwards- not only guiding them onwards, but also attracting others.

Many people noticed this light in these particular individuals, and started to investigate this idea of becoming Raw for themselves. And for a decade now, many of us have been raw. The effects of changing our diet, our personal standards about not only food and nutrition, but also the ethos and ethics of our choices, and the consequences socially- for many of us have been profound. Some have found their purpose. Some have regained their health. Some have been released of the burden of excess weight or addictions. Some have reversed disease. The list goes on and on of the Read more »

GODDESSES IN EVERY WOMAN

Even though I have been running rawmom for quite a while behind the scenes already, now that I am officially the owner, it feels like a thrilling but daring adventure, and I feel excited and nervous! I do not consider myself a business woman. I identify with one role, my calling, being a mom. However, I’ve have heard that people born under my sign in both the Western and Chinese horoscopes make good leaders and can lead successful enterprises, and as my children are growing up, it’s the perfect time for me to gradually transition back out into the world…I’d like to believe I can learn what I need to, and attract people to help me. If am to grow to the corners of my potential as a fully realised woman, as well as facilitate my mission to make a difference, I must have courage. I feel alot of changes coming…it started with changing my name from Shannon to Shakaya, and even endowing myself with a second name, one of the elements, Breeze. I didn’t consciously choose these names, they seemed to just find me.

The archetypal images of the Goddess come to mind. When I interviewed Susun Weed for WISH, I asked her which Goddess archetype she most identified with and she said for a long time it was Artemis, autonomous Goddess of the Hunt, Nature, Birth, a protector plants and animals and a Super Sexy Virgin who never bowed to the rule of any man. Powerful! I have always been fascinated by Goddess archetypes since reading ‘Goddesses in Every Woman’ when I was in my 20’s and later work by Caroline Myss. Here are some of the archetypes as described by Myss whom I have identified with- perhaps you will see yourself in some of these- and some others whom I feel the desire to connect more deeply with so as to draw from their well for my growth and expansion that I feel is needed now:

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