Since writing my two books, Beautiful On Raw: UnCooked Creations and Your Right to Be Beautiful: How to Halt the Train of Aging and Meet the Most Beautiful You, about my exploration and acceptance of the raw food lifestyle, I have added another important dimension to my health regimen. Hatha Yoga. I firmly believe that Hatha yoga practice has to be an integrated part of the raw food lifestyle.
I discovered and converted to the raw lifestyle in an effort to gain the peak of health, endurance and healing that I needed to ensure that I would be able to maximize the results of my upcoming surgical ordeal.
I was born in Russia with congenital hip problems that could not be corrected. For 45 years, I lived with one leg shorter than the other. I looked and felt like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. After immigrating to the United States, I prepared for the surgery that would ultimately replace my hips and allow me to walk without a limp. I was so accustomed to my tilt that when I was at last straight, I felt as though I were going to topple over at anytime.
I was thrilled with the results of the surgery and felt that much of my ability to heal from such massive trauma was from being on the raw food diet. I had to take private yoga lessons that worked with my limitations but I have improved tremendously and would not give it up anymore than I would go back to eating cooked food.
Yoga and the raw food diet offer many similarities in the ways they benefit the body. Yoga books describe the same euphoric experiences I have found in the raw food diet. Both purify and heal the body. Both offer powerful therapeutic effects in dealing with physical and psychological problems. Both promote radiant health.
Yoga is a systematic program whose sole purpose is spiritual. However the unhealthy condition of the average human body is a major obstacle to spiritual practices such as meditation, prayer and self-realization.
Running, swimming and weight lifting are great for muscle building but do little for connective tissue. It is the flexibility of the joints and of the connective tissues that gives us the feeling of ease and lightness in the body.
Think about that thin film running under the skin when you peel back chicken skin. It is called fascia. Humans have it, too. It runs under the skin throughout the body and even envelopes each individual cell. All major systems of the body—the circulatory and nervous systems, the muscular-skeletal system, and the various organs are cocooned in connective tissue. Tensions carried through the connective tissues are responsible for all the movements of the body.
Now imagine a young plant. It is pliable and limber when it’s young, but becomes hard, dry, and brittle with age. So with the human body, which tends to stiffen and tighten as we age. The body becomes choked in a net of shrunken and rigid connective tissues like constrictive body armor that is not only solidifying but shrinking by the minute. Every system of the body, every organ, every cell is being subjected to internal strangulation.
Connective tissues are tough and fibrous. Your connective tissue doesn’t respond to brief, repetitious stretches the way muscles do. They stretch best when pulled with steady tension like rubber band. Holding postures for a few minutes with moderate stress will cause the body to develop longer and thicker tissues.
Asanas increase your strength, stamina, and flexibility. Combined with raw food nourishment, yoga postures release tension and relieves pain even more effectively. You’ll find startling the resulting enhancement in your looks, improvement in your posture, and your better skin and muscle tone. You’ll feel your vitality brought by Asanas to a new lofty height.
I owe all of my health-my transformation from distortion to harmony-to a combination of the raw food diet and Hatha yoga. I can now practice 90 minutes of serious stretching everyday. My ability to recover and heal is the result of my raw food diet. I am stretching the scar tissue and since it is stronger and more resistant than regular tissue, I would never be able to practice yoga daily without the miraculous benefits of raw foods.
Yoga postures and the raw food diet make you more alive. Each practice complements the other, bringing many of the same physical and mental benefits. Asanas and the raw food diet are alike liberating, energizing, and exhilarating. As I practice the raw food lifestyle with regular Hatha yoga, my sense of feeling clean, good, and pure gradually becomes so prevailing that it permeates every part of my life. My emotions undergo a deep cleansing and healing paralleling similar changes in my body.
Yoga postures gently stretch the connective tissues that encase our joints, renewing our physical elasticity. Asanas lubricates the body, increasing circulation and flexibility. Stretching, twisting, bending forwards and backwards, vigorously massages various organs. Holding poses combined with proper breathing move stagnated blood that improve the flow of fresh nutrients and drains away impurities. It relaxes tense, pained areas of your body and strengthens weak areas.
Both practices—asanas and the raw food lifestyle—have their limits. For example, if the ligaments or other fibrous connective tissues are shortened as a result of injury or inactivity, raw food will definitely make stretching easier. But your food won’t do your stretching for you. On the other hand, there are many people who practice asanas regularly yet still struggle to achieve their optimal weight. Adopting the raw food diet will make a world of difference in that situation. Great as are the benefits of each, they’re finite benefits. For the best possible results, use them in tandem.
Raw food will make your constriction less rigid, but it is Hatha yoga that will stretch your tissue. Raw food furnishes the body with the best material for optimal health. Hatha yoga helps the body to make the most of it.
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Raw Foods For Dogs
Hi, everyone, this is Kevin Gianni, and I'd like to welcome you to a very special Raw Summit Teleseminar, which can be found online at http://www.rawsummitarchives.com. The purpose of the Raw Summit is to pass along cutting edge information about raw and living food technologies for you to reach optimal health, wellness, and success. Today, I have a special guest who has been a 100% raw for over 7 years and is the author of Raw Spirit, a book on transitioning and thriving with the raw food lifestyle. So Matt Monarch, I want to welcome you to the Raw Summit.
Raw Summit Excerpt with Matt Monarch, a raw food specialist and author of Raw Spirit.
Kevin: This is going to be an awesome interview; I know it already and let's start just by telling everyone how you got to where you are right now.
Matt: Alright. Seven years ago I was actually living in New York City. I had an ideal job at MTV Networks working in Times Square. So here I am, on the Standard American Diet. One day, I was in my office and this man handed me a book and it is called ?Become Younger? by Dr. Norman Walker, who supposedly lived well over 100 years old. I opened that book and I couldn't believe what I was reading, like what certain foods were actually doing to my system and how they were damaging me. I didn't even know raw food diet existed at that time. I thought I had the healthiest diet anyone could eat. So I finished that book overnight, and the next day I went 100% raw, 7 years ago and I've never looked back since.
Kevin: Wow! When you are reading that book what sort of things came upon you as you were looking through this at night?
Matt: Well, I'm sitting there reading what certain foods that I was continually eating were doing to me, such as refined sugar and processed starches, and I just couldn't believe it. I thought I've discovered something huge. I thought I've discovered gold.
Kevin: Okay, and when you made the transition, did you just start 100% raw?
Matt: Yes. I went 100% raw overnight.
Kevin: Okay. Let's talk about how did feel when you went 100% raw?
Matt: Well, I wasn't really sure what was going to be happening. When made the decision, it was a done deal, there was no turning back. So went 100% raw. I went through detoxification and I was a little
confused. You know you're not used to that full feeling anymore. When you eat cooked food you got that full feeling and when you only eat raw food you don't get that full satiating warm feeling in your stomach anymore. So, I was confused and when I would eat raw food, I would eat too much and I wouldn't have energy and certain things like that. But I assisted my detoxification with something called colon hydrotherapy, Colonic Irrigation.
Kevin: Yes.
Matt: And that was tremendously beneficial for me.
Kevin: Let's talk about eating the things you were eating and then going 100% raw and then getting into colon hydrotherapy, all these probably in very short period of time. How did you get into it and what were the benefits that you received from it?
Matt: Okay. Actually when I was sitting there at work, I would get all sorts tons of crazy gas on my system. I would go in the bathroom nonstop and actually the person that told me about the raw food diet, his older brother was a colon therapist.
Kevin: Okay.
Matt: So I actually did one session before I went 100% raw and so what I did was every time I started get going through detox and it was just too much to handle I would do a Colonic Irrigation and that transported me right back to feeling in complete bliss. I get so spiritually high when I do one of those. Pretty crazy, being clean is a very important aspect to this type of lifestyle.
Kevin: Sure. One of the first chapters of your book is, I Belong in Another Planet, can we talk about that?
Matt: Yes. So when you become 100% raw, you go through a complete transformation, not only physical, I literally lost 20 pounds in probably 2 or 3 weeks, but you go through a spiritual transformation, emotional and much more. So here I am 20 pounds lighter. I was living in New York
City, and you know when people see that you lose 20 pounds, they think you look emaciated. Society puts these ideals on us. Continually, over and over again the most beautiful people at my lectures are coming up to me and saying, ?Oh my family thinks I'm emaciated.? And I'm just looking at them, at their beauty thinking that they're absolutely not. Society puts these ideals on us, when in actuality people are really much beautiful than they were before.
Additionally, when I became raw, I wasn't used to this empty feeling in my stomach anymore. You do not cook food to medicate yourself; there are psychological, emotional issues that rise to the surface.
Gas was coming out of my system, I would overeat, I just didn't know what was going on. I never had a food issue my entire life. You know, that's one of the reasons why I wrote my book. Raw Spirit, it talks about my story in this aspect. But I also talk about the most positive; you know part of it all which is the spiritual dimension, the number one reason why I stay raw today.
Kevin: So that is the number one reason?
Matt: Yes.
Kevin: And tell me about that.
Matt: So I was 100% raw for six months now and I decided to do something called Psylium Bentonite cleanse. Psylium is a strong fiber husk, Bentonite is a volcanic clay, and you know for anybody who's ever tried one of these drinks, you know it's pretty tough on the system. Well, I did the most extreme Psylium Bentonite cleanses that you can possibly do. For seven days, you eat no food whatsoever, and every single day you are supposed to do a Psylium Bentonite drink five times a day for seven
days. Additionally, to keep this moving through your system, you're supposed to do a colonic irrigation or Colema board which is in that home system in the morning and in the evening of every day of this
cleanse. You can get away without doing the colon hydrotherapy as long as you're eliminating, but you're not going to evolve as far as if you would do something like that.
Kevin: Okay.
Matt: So here I am, a young guy, six months being raw. I was doing colon hydrotherapy more than once a month and do you think a young guy like me would be completely cleaned out from all this waste?
Kevin: Sure.
Matt: Well, my colon therapist couldn't believe what was coming out of my system, just gobs of mucoid plaque and all sorts of crazy things. And something happened to me for the first time in my life after I got that last colonic in the left with the Psylium and Bentonite out of me. I started to get a vibration and it was right in my forehead and I had no idea what it was. The 100% raw food diet threw me into spirituality, I was never into this thing. I was president of my fraternity in college, and I'm talking like the number one partying fraternity. So here I am experiencing this, my mainstream of friends and my brother just think I'm absolutely nuts when I talk about this thing, the steps. So I went to the bookstore, I'm buying all these books on spirituality, I'm reading what different religions were saying, I started learning about meridians and energy fields, and I started learning about the chakra system, and so this really sent out to me. I felt like this might have been the third eye chakra, and I thought I had something but (my friends and my family) just think that's all hocus pocus. Then later, I came across another book by Norman Walker, ?The Natural Way to Vibrant Health,? and he actually gave a scientific explanation of what the third eye actually is doing and what it is. He says that the pineal gland which is located right in that area is the organ that receives that cosmic energy and he said that if the thalamus didn't buffer it, it would completely disintegrate because of how powerful that energy is. But then the thalamus buffers all that energy. It goes to the hypothalamus and is distributed throughout our body to do whatever we want.
Kevin: Wow!
Matt: Yes, it's pretty amazing and you know this guy was doing everything that I was doing. He was a 100% raw. He did the cleansing and you know I didn't think that was crazy anymore.
Kevin: I imagine that is some of the stuff that a lot of people go through; dealing with family, dealing with the strange feeling that your body is feeling. What is some of the advice that you can give
someone who's going through some this?
Matt: Well said. It's not easy to become 100% raw. Okay let me put forth an example real quick to help explain all these. There are a lot of diets out there today and I'm sure you've heard many of them
like the zone diet, the macrobiotics diet, the south beach diet, and I don't like to knock any of these diets because I've actually seen people healed from the degenerative diseases, adhering to diets like this and there's one common denominator on why they all succeed. They all eat certain food, out of their diet completely without any exception whatsoever and the reason why their raw food diet is the best diet in the world because you're leaving everything out and only keeping in the good.
To read the rest of this transcript as well as access 14 different raw food experts just like Matt Monarch, please visit http://www.RawSummitArchives.com
Both Tonya Zavasta & Kevin Gianni are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
Tonya Zavasta has sinced written about articles on various topics from Yoga Practice, Women and Beauty Tips. Tonya Zavasta is the raw food lifestyle expert, the author of the books Beautiful On Raw: UnCooked Creations and Your Right to Be Beautiful: How to Halt the Train of Aging and Meet the Most Beautiful You, named a 2004 Health Book of the Year Award finali. Tonya Zavasta's top article generates over 480 views. to your Favourites.
Kevin Gianni has sinced written about articles on various topics from Affiliate Programs, Lose Weight and Fitness. To read the rest of this transcript as well as access 14 more just like Matt Monarch's, please Kevin Gianni is an internationally recognized health advo. Kevin Gianni's top article generates over 135000 views. to your Favourites.
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