Once the Herbs Hit the Bloodstream

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On a particularly rotten day from work I came home knowing I needed to shake myself out of a funk. I was too lethargic to meditate and I refused to fall into the numbing sensations of food, television for entertainment or calling in quits and climbing into bed. So I talked myself into exploring other actions.

I reminded myself I've been successfully rebuilding my energy with herbs and the day was a temporary setback. As I explored possibilities I dug out another health tool I purchased in my heyday of discovering my body can heal itself. Upon initial purchase I enjoyed this product even though I didn't know all of its possibilities. And I have not been using it regularly for the past three years. Still, it was one of those tools I couldn't seem to part with.

I set the machine for 15 minutes and felt my lower half guided into perfect figure eights--the same technique which comes at the end of an Asian-style body massage.  At the end of the stimulation I felt a delicious tingling (chi) throughout my body. I held still and allowed the stimulated chi to realign the energy in my body. I relaxed into this position without moving for as long as I could or until my feet started to fall asleep.

After this re-discovery I decided to use the machine more regularly--to keep me from settling into any energetic funks and I've incorporated my healing herbs into the process. When I can, I take the herbs and wait for about 20 minutes until they enter my blood stream and then I use the chi machine as the messenger of healing and let the herbal messages land where they are needed most. This is my intention, it's a little more difficult to say what actually happens. However I always feel better.

Not All Products are Equal (Part 2: Jing City)

I am grateful for this product. It's true I will most likely not consume it while I am Juice Feasting. In my pre-Juice Feast days I am trying to rebuild my reserves. So far I have consumed 2 bottles and I ordered 3 more. The first bottle left me dazed but not confused. It made me feel so delicious. It was an elevation that caused me to have to lay down and enjoy the new energy.

After nearly 2 years of working full time and going to graduate school, I was starting to wear out. Although I have recently been much more mindful of my eating habits, whole vegan and raw vegan foods were not replenishing me quick enough. Nor, I confess, am I being disciplined enough for this sole approach to work at the level I desire it.

So I found the need to experiment. The Longevity Warehouse website describes the re-charge experience as: "Initially Jing City is calming. It stops all stress, allowing the jing to download and replenish; an hour later you can start to feel the inner-power... much as if you have had several hours sleep and are fully charged to take on life!" Through the first two bottles I didn't get beyond the inner-power generator. I craved to get home after work to make this elixir. I felt fantastic after the tea but I could not sustain this feeling.


On his website Ron Teeguarden says: "A tonic herb must help balance our emotional and psychic energy so as to help improve one's state of spiritual and emotional well being and happiness."  This statement made no sense to me until I started drinking Jing City, a masterfully formulated tonic elixir. Now as I work on bottle 3, I feel calmer, more adaptable and my meditation practice is stronger. It is one of the most powerful tools I have come across to re-capture my energy--and sustain it.

Schizandra Warrior Juice

One of the great things I am discovering post the 30 day challenge of consuming niacin, jumping on the rebounder then sweating out entrenched toxins is that it is so much easier to listen to what my body needs. At first I thought the benefit of the challenge may lay primarily in external appearances and resolution of health issues, but I've found the real benefit is my unclogged body can tell me what it needs. Since I've embarked on 100 days of Schizandra I'm also noticing new insights. After the first week I seem to look different. However this difference is so subtle it's hard to define other than an instinctual knowing.

Recently I've spent more time learning from the wisdom of Ron Teeguarden. His book is fabulous, however his website is also highly informative and easy to follow. I recommend a thorough reading of  Herbalism and Philosophy on his website. From it I was able to comprehend I may have a yin deficiency. This is a topic I hope to further understand with more study.

Another great thing I have discovered is that I have had to take the plants and herbs to understand them. After consuming tonic herbs in a clean body I am being led to greater insights. My choices and thoughts are aligning with a higher source of energy and information. I could not grasp this level of knowledge before I absorbed the herbs into my being. It is a fascinating process.

From this process I have uncovered a new drink for myself. It is a kombucha replacement drink. I am trying to cut down drastically on sugar. I have made slow progress, but some is better than none. My new drink is called Schizandra Warrior Juice because initially I felt I had to be a warrior to drink it. As I have consumed more I find it to be medicinally delicious and I sip on it throughout the day with enjoyment.

Here's the recipe for Schizandra Warrior Juice:

• 1  25.3 ounce bottle of sparkling mineral water (bottled at source)
• 1 ounce organic fruit juice concentrate (I've used--cranberry, mangosteen, sea buckthorn, noni, tart cherry)
• 1 ounce liquid probiotics (I use Grainfields lemon and ginger) 
• 1 packet Schizandra tea (I use Ron Teeguarden's tea)

This drink is clearly one I could consume on a Juice Feast in addition to my four quarts of daily juice. It is nice to have this other healthy option lined up as some days on a Juice Feast I seek different tastes.

Rebuilding: 100 Days of Schizandra

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In this health-is-wealth and powerful book "The Ancient Wisdom of the Chinese Tonic Herbs" Ron Teeguarden shares with us an ancient tool to realign us with the "primary energies of life." Specifically "Schizandra generates vitality and radiant beauty when used regularly for sometime....If used for one hundred days successively, Schizandra is said to purify the blood, sharpen the mind, improve memory, rejuvenate the Kidney energy...and cause the skin to become radiantly beautiful. " Furthermore, his website elaborates: " People who start taking Schizandra regularly all change for the better. Their skin virtually glows and becomes clear and fine after several months."

So, I have accepted the 100 day challenge. Today is day 2. I decided to start with Dragon Herbs because I became an admirer of Ron Teeguarden through his presentations at the Longevity Now  Conferences. He strikes me not only as knowledgeable in Chinese herbalism, but someone who bears the responsibility of that knowledge with integrity and grace. In one presentation he said he had made a vow to love everything. I'm hooked!

From Dragon Herbs

I will freely admit I have had this book for years and I am still uneducated on the ways of Chinese herbalism. Each entry in the book is written in loving and glowing terms and it can be difficult to not fall for these plants yourself! I am fairly certain I will not use encapsulated herbs during the Juice Feast, however I am seeking to start the Juice Feast at a higher level of health and explore where the Feast may take me. For today, I am starting with Schizandra to strengthen and rebuild. Let's see where that takes me.

Completed: 30 Days Niacin, Rebounder, FAR Infrared Sauna

I gave myself another challenge and I completed that challenge. For 30 treatments (as consecutive as I could make it) I sweated out a lot of toxins. Often this program dominated my evening so in that sense it felt a little draining. If I ate dinner I had to factor in my digestive  needs before exercising and sometimes I got hung up on the mundane aspects of the repetitive elements of it all. However, in the end it was completely worth it.

It felt similar to fasting. The first three days showed dramatic results in my external appearances. It's my understanding the first few days of a fast are when I release the bulk of the toxins and each day thereafter I go more deeply into older debris, injuries and toxin stock piles.

I will continue to experiment with smaller bursts of this powerful treatment as I move closer to my Juice Feast. I think it would be a powerful prelude (the three days prior) to my Juice Feast. A modified version of it (read: no niacin!) might also be appropriate during the Juice Feast.

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In the most pressing thought of the today I feel it's the post-treatment that is the most important. This is perhaps the greatest lesson I need to learn. How can I rebuild and not slide back into unhealthy choices? Obviously I now know I can sweat it out. When I follow the sweat with activated charcoal the desire is simply gone. But now I must experiment and discover what it is my body needs to rebuild.

My new philosophy from this is that I have discovered pursuing my ultimate health should not be about resolving an issue which upsets me but living up to who I can truly be. With this approach I simply release and allow the issues to resolve themselves.

70 Hours: A Far Infrared Sauna Experiment

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When I was in undergrad I lived in an apartment complex that had a dry sauna. I was in the sauna three times a week and I always had the sauna to myself. I even wrote a poem about the swirling caramel strands in the wood. I would bring an enormous bottle of water and that was the extent of my chugging in college.  Even so when I returned to my apartment I had steam trailing above and behind me.


My experience has changed with my Far Infrared.  The time in the FAR Infrared is hot, but it is more gentle than the dry sauna. I keep a large jar of water at my side and finish it while sweating. As I lay there resting I usually practice mental exercises and otherwise try to keep my cool. After a sauna session I immediately shower to avoid reabsorbing toxins.  Through these 70 hours I have learned a few things.

Perhaps my greatest find in all of this is to learn my FAR Infrared experience has allowed me to shed excessive skin. When I started using the sauna I had rough, dry skin. The type of skin that does not really absorb oil or lotion. So it's been wonderful to find a treatment other than sunbathing that releases this excessive skin. When I finish the sauna I immediately drop the towels in the washer and head for the shower. After a sauna session I always wash my hair. Sometimes I scrub my body with zeolites, sometimes with salt and oils and other times with castile or herbal soap.  When I scrub with soap I will sometimes finish with a dousing in organic raw apple cider vinegar from the neck down. I will then carefully dab small amounts on my face.  Vinegar can be aggravating to the eyes so it's important to be gentle when using it on the face.  All of these techniques do wonderful things so I vary them according to how much energy I have.

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I have also found using the sauna requires I stay on top of my liquids. This may mean I can more easily break out sweating outside my sauna time but I have learned to appreciate this for the long term benefits of having open detox pathways. Sweating is healthy!

Finally I completed a sauna session at the end of a fast to test out how I feel and it felt like I had squeezed the sponge out. It felt great in terms of releasing toxins and my energy level was not depleted. I think small increments during a Juice Feast are possible for me.

Niacin, Rebounder, Far Infrared Sauna

Another good thing about this blog is that it keeps me vigilant to new cleansing opportunities. Although I am a person of integrity, there is more on the line when I write down a practice rather than let it float around in my head.  In other words, if it is a good idea and worth trying my mind feasts on it and I sometimes spontaneously try the new idea and other times I will spend great amounts of time preparing myself for the challenge. In the past I fooled myself by thinking I would remember a tip or technique without writing it down. So this blog is a cohesive and focused approach to my second Juice Feast. This approach has yielded many surprising wisdom nuggets because my attention has been on daily training rather than waiting until the last minute and jumping off a cliff into the unknown.



The niacin, rebounder and FIR sauna was one such spontaneous quest.  I had heard of a version of it before and there it sat. The lightning bugs are out this time of year, so perhaps the rapid glow and bright lights in my back yard turned on a thing or two in my mind. I decided to start it the day I heard again of it. That was Tuesday and I have just completed my 6th treatment. I started on the new moon and I sweated out on the Summer Solstice. These are powerful times to clean and release toxins.

I also decided to take activated charcoal after I finished the sauna. My protocol has been to eat when I get home from work, take a niacin tablet with it, relax for a short period of time, do 20 minutes on the rebounder followed by at least 40 minutes in the sauna. It is fairly common for me to test my limits, so it was no surprise to me when I took too much niacin and flushed red all over my body. My skin itched and I felt heat in my skin, but otherwise it was not unpleasant. It passed quickly. Then I followed up with an immediate shower. Most nights I just want to scrub and go to bed, but one night I managed to scrub with zeolite powder. I thought it would be a good idea to rub zeolite into my scalp, but it wasn't. The type of zeolite I used is actually for my garden and it's in small little balls. These little balls embedded in my scalp! They came out the next day, but I think a better choice is to use liquid zeolites or at least strain the little balls out.

The protocol is recommended for 30 days. That is my goal. It has been an interesting few days. I felt the most clean on the first 3 days, now I don't feel much different after the sessions.