Neti Pots: Nasal Irrigation to Smog-Proof Your Sinuses
How is your sinus hygiene?
After 14 years of using a neti pot on a regular, almost daily basis – I must admit, I am amazed how overlooked this basic bit of personal hygiene is.
Most of us brush our teeth and we usually expect the same of others. In fact, when someone neglects this important bit of personal cleanliness, the rest of us can be easily turned off.
How about bathing? What if you knew someone hadn’t showered or bathed in months, years, or worse still, never at all… How would you feel about getting… um, close to them?
Well, how about our sinuses? Each day we are all breathing the many stow-away particles (read: pollutants) that free float amongst what was once, some pretty fresh air here on planet earth. Today our air is loaded with everything from dust (which is mostly dead skin cells) to heavy metals, from car exhaust to radioactive isoptopes. These particles are constantly lodging in and congesting our upper respiratory tract, creating an environment for infection and/or being drawn still deeper into our lower respiratory tract (our lungs). The neti pot gives us the ability to clean our upper respiratory tract, in much the same way that a toothbrush cleans our mouth or a shower washes our skin, before these particles can accumulate or be drawn deeper.
Otherwise, we simply carry this debris around, haphazardly sneezing or blowing it out, or letting it drain back into our throats… Blah!
Want to see what a truly clean upper respiratory tract feels like? Try using a neti pot!
After a few days, to a few weeks, of implementing this practice it will become immediately clear why I am recommending it. My experience has been that you can only truly feel the chronic congestion after you have cleared it. It is the open, clear, and relaxed sense of breathing; the ability to fully utilize your respiration that makes you conscious of its importance. In other words, once you have tried it and felt what clean and clear sinus cavities feel like, you won’t want to go back.
As for the technique and specifics, I will let this video explain the rest.
My company SurThrival recently started carrying what we feel are the most beautiful and durable ceramic neti pots available anywhere, and you can get one for yourself right here on our newly designed website (we are pretty excited about this)! We were sure to get them in several different colors so that you can choose one thats right for you. These are made right here in the State of Maine (where we are based out of) and I have personally tested them now for almost a decade and a half, so I can honestly tell you they are the best around. Watch the video above where I compare some of the features against other design-styles.
If your looking to smog proof your sinuses, help to prevent sinus issues in general, and improve your respiratory health, give the neti pot a try. Better yet, take some time to develop mastery of this skill by making it a regular practice!
My hope is that our community will immediately see the value of this handy little device and add it to the tool-belt of practices and skills that are helping us to thrive in, and adapt to our modern environment. I promise if you give it just one week of consistent practice, not only will you easily master this skill, but you will have a life long practice that will contribute to your health and personal detoxification strategy.
I have used this strategy, along side others, such as regular sauna use (check out Clearlight Saunas, it is the brand of infrared sauna that I have in my home), a clean whole food diet containing lots of wild foods and herbs, drinking natural spring water, implimenting regular functional exercise, all combined with and tied together with time spent in nature. The goal is to create a kind of Invincible Health that allows us to thrive in this mad, mad, world!
To your health and adaptation!
ReWild Yourself!
~D
P.S. Though saline water is what people usually put in their neti pots, I have heard of many other solutions. Quick question: What is the most exotic thing you have ever put in a neti pot? Go ahead and leave a comment below, and please… Don’t be shy 
Sovereign Dental Health, a 6 Part Strategy
Hello Friends,
Welcome (or welcome back) and thanks again for stopping by. My last few videos have been focused on sharing some Sovereign Self-Healthcare strategies that I have been developing and employing for some time now. It has been really exciting to share these with you all, and for me it feels like a timely message, given the considerable distrust and dissatisfaction so many of us have been feeling for mainstream “medicine” in recent years.
Many of us have taken our diets and nutrition into our own hands, though when it comes to personal health care, few of us have really stepped out and away from the entrenched medical system’s doctor/dentist treatment, and the role we play in it as “patient” (from the Latin meaning “suffering”).
This current video is a 6 part dental health and maintenance strategy that has replaced the role of dentistry in my life. It has been many years since I have seen a dentist (I was 12 the last time I can remember having an appointment with one), and as it is with so many aspects of living, I have found it far more rewarding to take care of myself, rather than turning my health over to others. Especially those “quacks” – originally a term reserved for dentists who employed mercury amalgam fillings – with less than shiny-white histories (e.g. fluoride, mercury, etc).
The world of “modern medicine”, to include modern dentistry, seems far less interested in our health than it does in furthering its quasi-scientific agendas, human experiemention, and profit driven procedures. For this reason I will continue to promote Sovereign Self-health Care Strategies here at DanielVitalis.com.
ReWild Yourself! This doesn’t refer to behaving wildly, or giving up your standards of personal conduct, rather it means “Shed your Domesticator“!
This video is for all of you who celebrate being grown-ups, and are unafraid to raise yourselves up and out of the near ubiquitous neoteny that is now standard in the epi-genome in our “modernized” population.
This video comes on the heels of the last video we released, which details how to make the toothpaste that is used in this dental care strategy. Please keep in mind that this toothpaste, in addition to providing the mild abrasive qualities we have become accustomed to in our commercially available toothpaste preparations, is designed to pull toxic cations out of the body, and to be an aid in our overall radio-protection strategy (protection from radioactive isotopes).
For those of you who are interested in going deeper, I would highly recommend an e-book by my good friend Nadine Artemis called “Successful Self-Dentistry, how to avoid the dentist without ignoring your teeth”. This e-book is very comprehensive, and empowers us to take our dental health into our own hands for a lifetime.
We are now getting ready for Ancestral Ignition, a workshop that myself and some good friends are hosting here at my home in Maine, September 16th – 18th, 2011. The main focus of this retreat is to share the ancient and ancestral skill of aboriginal friction fire with all of those who attend. We really believe that stewardship of this ancient fire-craft is valuable for many reasons, not the least of which is the carrying on of what is one of our most ancient and fundamental human technologies.
Our ability to generate and maintain fire is a powerful thing indeed, so it is our intention to pass on not just the skill, but the ethics of stewardship as well.
We also feel privileged to share the basics of fire-craft with our friends and clients because so many of us were never taught how to properly or efficiently build or maintain a fire. I certainly wasn’t, growing up in the 1980’s American Dream. In fact, learning to properly construct and burn a fire has meant far more to me than just having another survival skill. It has connected me with one of the essential practices that makes us human.
This workshop will be fully catered with organic, local food, prepared by Chef Frank Giglio, who is one of my best friends and a truly culinary mentor of mine.
Check out the video below to hear more about Ancestral Ignition, and to see acclaimed botanist, author, and my foraging and aboriginal skills guide and all around friend, Arthur Haines, make a fire with a primitive tool known as the bow drill.
If you are interested in joining us, or learning more about Ancestral Ignition please contact us at info@danielvitalis.com.
As always, we would love to hear from you, so please let us know what you think of this recent post, video upload, and what you would like to see in the future by commenting below.
Your readership is truly appreciated,
~Daniel
How to make your own Detoxifying Toothpaste, and details on my annual trip to Peru
Greetings Friends, thanks for stopping by.
Would you like to make your own toothpaste for self-dentistry and detoxification?
The video below is an installment in dental health sovereignty. It has been working very well for me, and it just might work for you too.
For years I have been looking for the right toothpaste for my home self-dentistry, and have experimented with a great many things. From “organic” store-bought toothpaste brands, to tooth soaps and powders, and even aboriginal “chew sticks” – Nothing has been the right fit for my self-dentistry needs.
I have now arrived at a strategy that is really working wonders for me, and I feel could really work for you too. This video is the first part of that strategy, the rest of which I am eager to share with you in full over the next few weeks.
How I arrived at this…
As I began experimenting with tissue detoxification using Zeolites and Clay, it dawned on me that these, when rendered into a fine flour-like powder, have just the right amount of abrasiveness to take the place of the toothpaste I had grown up with.
This video details how you can make your own, and at a very low price at that. In fact, if you know where to look, you could get everything you would need for making all the toothpaste you would use for the rest of your life for probably under $100!
Best of all, you can swallow this toothpaste, which yields all of the amazing health benefits of these detoxifying earth compounds. In particular I am referring to zeolites ability to perform cation exchange - CEC or Cation Exchange Capacity is the term used in physics- which is its ability to electrically bind positively charged ions (heavy metals, radio-isotopes, etc) whilst trading out (in exchange) beneficial cations like potassium or calcium. The toxic cations are then transported out of our bodies, along with the zeolite powder in our bowel movement. The case with clay is very similar, though the phenomena in this case is referred to as adsorption, which is also an electrical binding, but in this case to the surface of the clay particle and without the accompanying exchange of a cation.
Keep in mind that this practice, consuming clay and other earth compounds, is perhaps one of the oldest of all human behaviors. It has been practiced around the world and is present in virtually all pre-industrial populations. Evidence for this has been found in archeological sites that predated our current human form, and anthropological surveys have found that it lives on in societies around the world today. Actually, it is common to nearly all mammals, and in particular to broad ranging herbivores. The behavior is termed “geophagy”, and is unquestionably part of the species-specific diet of human beings. From my perspective, it appears that a diet that lacks the geophagy pattern could not be called a “natural diet” at all, as it would essentially be deficient in these all-important compounds. Below is a link to one of the best books I have read on the subject.
Most of us were taught to spit our toothpaste out, which, given the host of less-than-beneficial ingredients (particularly fluoride) is pretty sound advice. With this home-made clay or zeolite toothpaste, the goal is indeed to swallow it, moving it into the intestine where it can go to work mopping up industrial and nuclear debris that has bioaccumulated in our tissues.
When this clay or zeolite consumption is combined with sauna therapy (this dual approach is the subject of my last video), we arrive at a very effective life-long detoxification strategy that really works, and is easy to implement.
This second video is about my August 4th, 11 day tour of Peru, for which I have just a few openings left.
If you are looking for a riveting adventure, are interested in Peruvian shamanism, amazonian biology, visiting Machu Pichu, or just wanting to soak in a rain forest hotspring, this trip might be for you. We are less than a month away, so if you would like to join us – by us I mean the very amazing and interesting group of people who have assembled for this trip – contact Jeannette at info@rawflora.com, and check out the 11 day 10 night itinerary here. It is exciting to see who takes the plunge and comes along!
Please let us know what you thought about the video above, and if there are any subjects you would like to see covered in the future.
Until then, please know that your readership is appreciated.
Enjoy the summer sunshine!
~Daniel
Looking for Some Inexpensive Radiation Detoxification?
Greetings and thanks for visiting!
Your time here is very appreciated. The video that accompanies this blog post is a two part strategy breaking down how you can inexpensively and easily begin protecting yourself from the long-lived radio isotopes, which have now become a regular part of our habitat. This began 65 years ago, and has become particularly disconcerting in the last few months since the damage to the Japanese facility at Fukushima.
I am also including here the two links that I mention in the video. The first is an amazing visualization that shows all of the nuclear detonations that have happened on Earth since 1946. Hint… its over 2000!
The second is a documentary called Trinity, and it shows with nothing less than truly epic footage, the history of these tests. This, if you have time, is a must see! Very disturbing, but strangely entrancing… I guess that is the nature of this technology.
The reason I share these videos and information is to demonstrate that the issues with radiation did not begin Fukushima, or even with Chernobyl, but with the “silent” nuclear war that has already happened on Earth.
So what do we do? This video is about the strategies that I have been employing since the Japan disaster earlier this year. Knowing what I know now, I wish I had started the day I came into this world. Regardless, taking actions like these has put me at considerable ease about the radio-isotopes in our environment. This allows me to operate without fear, but remain in a dominant emotion of confidence.
Also, on another note, my opening evening talk at the Longevity Now Conference last April is now available for purchase in DVD format, in an 18-DVD set which includes the lectures from each of the other health educators who spoke at the Conference! The DVD set is a compilation of hours, upon hours, of live footage from the weekend long event and includes tons of the latest health information and inspiration. Click here to see a 15 minute clip of the my main lecture from the event, titled “Habitat, Living the Life of Our Biological Design” which I feel came out wonderfully! To learn more about this excellent DVD offer or to purchase your copy today, follow this link.
Thats all for now, though I eagerly await your comments, so please let me know what you would like to see future videos on!
Thank You for taking the time. Keep SurThriving!
~D
SurThrival into the 21st Century
Adaptation: the process by which an organism becomes better suited to its environment. 
And now its more important than ever!
I believe we are standing on the edge of a truly profound event horizon, one that holds within its grasp the seed of the greatest human evolutionary renaissance since our species first emerged into the world some 200,000 years ago.
More than ever before, every choice we make, each and every action we take is leading us onward to thrive or downward to our own demise.
Our environment is changing faster than our minds can keep pace with, and this change is pressuring our biology to adapt at what are now nearly break neck speeds.
Oil in the seas, nuclear fallout spreading across the globe, shortages of food, genetic and degenerative disease, antibiotic resistant infectious agents, mass extinctions, epidemic infertility, genetic modification, electro-smog, etc, ad infinitum.
Can any of us adapt fast enough? I believe some can, and whats more, that some will.
The question remains, what will separate those who go on to inherit the Earth from those who’s genes will fade into the recess of geologic history.
Those who remain will have to be more than survivors, they will be SurThrivalists.
The SurThriver understands the health challenges inherent in our modern world, and yet chooses to Thrive despite them. He or She has the ability to witness events like those that recently struck Japan, and while maintaining a sense of empathy and compassion, takes the necessary steps to protect themselves, their health, and that of those they love.
The SurThrivalist differs from the Survivalist in that they operate from a place of love and recognition of the inherent bounty of the natural world. The SurThriver believes in and aligns themselves with Life. The survivalist too often operates from a place of fear and uncertainty. Survival is bare minimum, SurThrival is abundant, and even opulent.
Make no mistake, we stand before the greatest evolutionary event our species has ever known. Now is the time – our time – to seize this opportunity and sail it into the future!
In full honesty, I don’t believe that most of – or even many of – the human beings alive today will carry forth their genetic material into the future. In fact, it seems to me that the only humans who will be able to inhabit this planet soon will be those who have developed and implemented strategies to thrive in this brave new polluted planetary ecology. In other words, those who can keep their bodies clean and detoxified, nourished and healthy, no matter what the level of contamination.
What does all this mean? It seems to be some kind of natural (or perhaps unnatural) selection.
Natural Selection is a simple enough concept. Those individuals who are more adapted to a particular environment will be healthier and will produce more offspring than those less suited to an environment. In the environment we now live in, with its extremes of climate, toxic foods, petro-chemicals, pharmaceuticals, polluted air and water, etc, only those who have developed strong, wise, and strategic methods for thriving will be able to carry forth their genetic material and live through this phase of history to populate the new and coming world.
I believe in us, I believe in our ability as a species to make it through even the most challenging times. We are up against something so much more powerful than any natural disaster, we are up against our selves. We have created a world so very far outside of the balances of natural law and it is now time that each one of us reestablishes a new equilibrium within ourselves. It might not be easy, though that doesn’t mean it can’t be exciting – and yes… maybe even fun.
I will be teaching a three day workshop at the Kripalu institute in western Massachusetts May 20-22nd of 2011, called Invincible Health, the intention of which is to develop in each participant a strong desire to Thrive combined with the knowledge necessary to take their health into their own hands with poise and grace. You can find the details of that event here.
We will be covering a very comprehensive lifestyle approach that can – and I believe will – give one the confidence to step into the world each day with a sense of abundant growth, rather and fear and uncertainty.
Food, Water, Air, and Sunlight, are the critical elements for nourishing our bodies, and we will be covering these topics in depth. Chemical and Radiation exposure, EMF’s, xeno-estrogens, fluoride, pharmaceuticals, and a host of other health pitfalls will also be addressed to ensure that each participant can protect and detoxify themselves from these safely and adequately. We will literally cover healthful living from conception to the grave and beyond. I promise a profound and moving experience in this workshop.
This workshop is the three days long, just enough time to share an entire, coherent, and well organized method for insuring your SurThrival into the 21st century, and I am feeling very honored for the opportunity to do so. Please consider joining me there next month. We have priced this event very resonably, and I look forward to sharing a message of empowerment, resolve, wisdom, and health with all who attend.
Keep SurThriving, the world is your inheritance.
~Daniel
Coconut Water in Maine??? The First Wild Food of the Season!
Ok, so of course Maine hasn’t got any coconuts, but we do have something that tastes just as good – maybe better – and is just as nutritious.
Its the sap of the Maple tree.
There are not many wild foods that taste particularly sweet here in New England, but Maple Syrup is certainly the exception. Whats more, the flowing sap of the maple tree is the first wild food to emerge after a long and cold snow covered New England winter.
This video is a quick peek into my spring cleansing strategy which is most welcomed after a lengthy season of living indoors. The fresh Maple sap is so refreshing, so hydrating, and tastes so good that it is almost shocking that more people aren’t taking advantage of this delicious, abundant, and free late winter/early spring drink! In the second half of the video I’ve included a recipe that I have been making with fresh maple water, chaga, and a bit of cream. I wish there was some way to convey flavor through the internet! Is there an app for that yet?
To compliment and expand on my video, I have also included a video with botanist Arthur Haines detailing how he taps his maples, and prepares his maple syrup. With childlike enthusiasm, we have been texting back and forth each day to see how much sap the others trees have produced!
The experience of procuring food directly from wild nature is truly, for me at least, one of the great joys of living! As each season goes by and my skills in this area increase, not only have I developed a strong sense of food security, my direct relationship to the Earth as an abundant and loving provider continues to increases. To say that I am grateful would hardly do justice to this exuberant emotion.
For those of you who are interested in developing more wild food identification, harvesting, and processing skills, please consider joining Arthur and I for our Ancestral Plants workshop here in Maine, May 6th – 8th, 2011. Be sure to contact us soon, as the class size is very limited. We have chosen the intimate class size to ensure that each of you gets the close personal attention you need, and to ensure that we don’t trample our wild foraging grounds. The class has been filling up rather quickly these last few weeks, and we are getting very excited for the spring foraging to begin!
I have a few more days of maple sap harvesting before heading of to Los Angeles for the Longevity Now Conference, April 1st -3rd. I have just finished preparing my presentation, called “Habitat, Your Guide to Intentional Lifestyle Design” which will focus on specific strategies for more than just vigorous health, but epi-genetic wealth. In other words, we can use our environment and lifestyle to activate our genetic potential for a more robust experience of life on Earth! The newly emerging scientific field of “epigenetics” is rapidly confirming the obvious fact, our habitat and lifestyle choices, from what we eat and breath to what we wear and think not only impacts our health but actually influences our gene expression! Many of you are already planning on being there, and those who would like to join can get your tickets here. If you can’t make it to the event, but would like to watch the video stream, here is the link where you can sign up to watch at home.
I am so enthusiastic about this upcoming foraging and touring season. I have events planned around the US, Canada, and even in Peru. Keep checking my current events for more details, and I hope to meet you somewhere out there soon!
Keep ReWilding,
~Daniel
David Wolfe, Matt Monarch, and Daniel Vitalis Make a Smoothie Spoof!
Whats the World’s Best Kept Health Secret???
Being able to laugh at yourself! Let me explain…
This week has been full of just that kind of laughter! For the last couple of weeks myself and several good friends and great acquaintances have been working together diligently to get the word out about the 16 DVD set that was filmed last September at the Longevity Now Conference in Costa Mesa, CA. There has been a friendly rivalry going on, and a few of us decided to take it as far as we had to in order to bring the most attention to these DVD’s. It sort of turned into an informal contest, and I was determined to win…
It all started last week with my team and I brainstorming about how we could get peoples attention. I needed to do something out of the ordinary, something bold and hilarious. This is what I came up with, and if you haven’t seen it yet, I would love to hear your opinion.
My girlfriend Ali, my operations manager and brother Kaleb, and my Best Friend and Business Partner LeighLon and I then spent several hours posting this video to everyone we could think of in our social networks. It was a huge hit, and got a few thousand views in its first 24 hours! People were loving it, but the competition was swarming and before we knew what to do, several other videos popped up. It was our friends and colleagues trying to out-do us (special thanks to Jason Wrobel and Ron Obadia) with videos of their own!
We went back to the drawing board.
I needed something fresh, something bold, something that would send ripples coursing throughout the health-minded community… I had an idea, but would this be going to far? Was what I was about to do; was I crossing the boundary? Did I even dare?
No… I couldn’t, I didn’t. I was going to back down. I was defeated.
Then, suddenly I was flooded by a deluge of emails. It was my friends from the Longevity Now Conference. They wanted to know if I, Daniel Vitalis, was the kind of person to retreat into shadow, to fall sullenly into obscurity, or would I rise like the proverbial Phoenix from the ashes of video doldrums to deliver the masterpiece that the world had been waiting for?
Text messages from my close friends David Wolfe and Chef Frank Giglio started rolling in. They told me that I had until midnight to get something onto youtube, if I was to regain my honor. It was 9 p.m., and time was running out. I had just a mere three hours to make some magic.
The few hours that followed are little more than a blur, and if it wasn’t for the record kept in the footage I am about to share with you, I would’t have believed that it even happened. None the less, it will now be immortalized forever.
What follows is a spoof of myself, David Wolfe, and Matt Monarch all hanging out in my kitchen making the “Longevity Now Conference 16 DVD Set Superfood Tonic Elixir Smoothie”…
I play all of the parts, and keep in mind that this was made on an extreme time budget. Each character had to be filmed separately and I had to shave between each filming session. I can hardly believe this is real….
So, what’s the message here? Is there a message?
Please allow me to summerize. For years now the three of have worked seperately and together in the same general arena and field. Each of the three of us represent extrememly driven and productive individuals. Each of us has spent countless hours employing personal development strategies to fulfill the blueprints for who we truly are and what we want to share with the world. Though each of us is very different, there is a common theme that we all agree on, and that is wanting to see a healthier, more peaceful, and more beautiful world for everyone.
As public speakers and figures, there is a tremendous amount of pressure placed on us from all directions, as this is the nature of the work that we do. It can be so easy to find and focus on the differences in what each of us is teaching and if we are not careful, to allow ourselves to be divided by it. It is easy to lose sight of the obvious; that we are all friends and working together toward a common goal. The differences between us are beautiful and healthy, and ultimately what make this whole ride so much fun.
I think of it like this, imagine that David Wolfe, Matt Monarch, and I all walked into a restraunt together (ok, what restraunt would that be? I guess this is hypothetical). Each of us orders something different from the menu, something that is suited our own unique taste, preference, whim, and health goals. The fact that we ordered different dishes does not mean we are in nutritional opposition to one another. It does not mean we are contending with one another, and certainly doesn’t affect our friendship or support of eachother. None of us would be wrong for what we ordered, it is just a menu after all. We can each enjoy our meal together over laughter and appreciation for each others company.
A second message I have embedded into this video is the following: Don’t take life or yourself too seriously. Ever.
All three of us are so focused on creating the life that we desire, each of us so good at what we do, that we have all become characters as archetypical as those found in the pages of a comic book. This deserves to be laughed at sometimes… Its funny.
David the globetrotting shamanic mad scientist, Matt the California beach boy turned South American land owner, Me the elven borreal forest primitive locavore. This is the stuff comedy is born of! Each of us is simply bringing forward the health strategy that has fueled our unique missions and passions, and each of us does this in our own unique style. Our work is the distillation of years of study and practice, and we could be celebrating the diversity that this has created.
There are times when we all come together for work and play, and when we do, all of these apparent differences are set aside. We are friends first and foremost, and we know the value of love and laughter.
You the reader may have encountered some of the harassing internet trolling that each of us has had to endure. There are those online who do take this far too seriously and are constantly leveling accusations, and cruel and harsh words against us. They take our work and contort it in an attempt to make a mockery of us. What is funny to me, is the way that these people seem to do this as a near full time job! They are so obsessed, and take it all so seriously that they have committed their lives to displaying hatred and spewing vitriol, claiming that their way, their method, their diet, is the only viable truth. This video is a message to those people. It says “You can never make fun of us better than we can of ourselves!”, and that living without humor in your life is more than ugly, it is unhealthy and violates one of realities prime directives. Honestly, I feel sorry for people like that, people who are too closed down in their hearts to display the lightness of being that initiates human bonding. It seems like a cold way to live, and very, very lonely.
Though people may at time level criticisms against us, I ask that you imagine this. Imagine the fearlessness it takes to put yourself out there to the world. Imagine what it takes to make videos, write books, travel the world getting in front of hundreds and thousands of people to share a message of hope and healing in a world so full of suffering and destruction. It takes a lot, and it is not always easy.
To those who have supported us all these years, THANK YOU.
Oh, and one other thing, a message to the haters… I am making a joke about the sales of this DVD for this reason alone. I don’t understand why there are people who are critical of me or anyone in my field for being a business person. How would I be able to do what I do if I otherwise had a full time career doing something else? Also, I feel the need to point out the obvious here: People buy products from myself or my colleagues because we carry extremely good products, products that help people. People choose to purchase these products because they add value to their lives and health, and because they feel good about putting their money back into the economic networks that support what they believe in.
We exist as businesses because we carry things that people want. That should be obvious, though there are those that detract from this. Perhaps it is because they make their money in ways they are not so proud of.
The businesses that each of us run are beautiful, thriving, life promoting operations and each of them is working to support the vision that each of us share for the world. My company, SurThrival, is my contribution to peoples health and healing and is my way of operating economically in a world that demands this of me. I am proud of the work that I do there, and of the people that this business supports. David Wolfe and his Longevity Warehouse exists to support peoples health and developement, and is critical to keeping the message alive and available. I am proud to work with him. Matt Monarch has ceaslessly brought more and more products to us at his Raw Food World, and runs one of the tightest ships I have ever seen. I am proud to work with him.
In closing, I want to say this. The Longevity Now Conference DVD’s are amazing. I feel very good about sharing these with you because I know how much quality information they contain, and how diverse that information is. Each speaker is very different from the others, and holds a piece of information that could be the piece that you are looking for. These DVD’s are not for the dogmatic; they are for the open minded and adaptable! One of those DVD’s is dedicated to the talks that I gave at the conference, and is the information that is most on my heart and mind now. I truly hope that you get the chance to watch these, as this is why I do what I do. I believe in their value.
If you would like to get yourself a set, click here now!
Also, I will be at the Longevity Now Conference in April (1st-3rd), and will be making tickets for the upcoming conference available soon… So… Stay tuned, I might just be forced to top this last video!
~Daniel
Sauerkraut Fermentation At Home
For those of us who are developing or returning to our ancestral health through traditional and indigenous nutritional practices, few food preparation skills are as valuable to possess as lacto-fermentation.
Imagine for a moment living without a fossil fuel driven infrastructure to deliver us our “fresh” veggies in January and an electrically powered refrigerator to store them in, and its importance and relevance becomes clear. Storing vegetables for the winter is a critical skill, and lacto-fermentation has some advantages that are hard to beat.
For instance, Lacto-Fermentaion actually increases the amount of nutrition that was present in the vegetable alone (by converting sugars into protein rich bacterial bodies, B vitamins, and omega 3 fatty acids), increase the bio-availability of the existing nutrition (by breaking down cell walls by predigesting the vegetables cellulose, and removing anti-nutrients) and all the while preserving the inherent nutrition better than freezing, canning, or drying!
Lacto-fermentation, the kind of vegetable fermentation that produces foods like sauerkraut (as well as kimchee and brined pickles), preserves our food in lactic acid, and was one of the dominant preservation techniques used by our ancestors before sugar and preservatives became the norm. The primary fermentative organism present in these kinds of preserves is lactobacillus acidophilus (who’s name means “acid loving milk bacteria”) one of our bodies primary microbial symbionts.
Not only does lactobacillus acidophilus allow us to preserve and even increase the amount of nutrition in our vegetables, but it also aids in digestion and increases our immunity too! Lactobacillus takes up residence in our small intestine, creating a kind of probiotic bio-shield in the gut, where it aggressively out-competes other dys-biotic organisms that can cause us to fall ill.
Ok, so forgive me here, but I am going to interject a few definitions and a quick mathmatical formula. Trust me, it will help.
Prebiotic + Probiotic = Synbiotic. Easy right? Here is what it means.
The thing we intend to ferment is known as a “prebiotic” (I am using this term loosely, don’t tell the scientists), this is the food source (sugars) for the organisms that will be converting the food into a fermented-food (in our case cabbage). We add to that the “probiotic” organism (these are healthy, symbiotic micro-organisms) that will be performing the fermentation (here it will be lactobacillus). Ok, a little caveat, we might not actually add the probiotic, but rather let it colonize itself, in what is called a “wild fermentation”, as is the case here with sauerkraut. Organisms native to the area where you are fermenting, or – as is the case with cabbage – are indigenous to the food itself. Through the alchemy of the fermentative process something new will be created, and that new thing is known as the “synbiotic”. I want to emphasize, the synbiotic is a new food, not the sum of the original parts, this is why sauerkraut is not “cabbage”, and wine is not “grape juice”.
Synbiotics like sauerkraut have long been used by those before us to fortify their immune systems, assist in digestion (their acidity helps to lower the pH of the stomach increasing the effectiveness of our hydrochloric acid), and to maintain healthy levels of the probiotic organisms that colonize our digestive lumen. While many people use probiotic supplements in an attempt to achieve these ends, most often lacto-fermented foods perform these tasks better, can be made at home from whole, fresh, local foods, are inexpensive, and add a considerable amount of quality nutrition in the form of highly absorbable predigested, living food. Oh, and they taste great too!
For me, lacto-ferments like sauerkraut are one of my primary ways of preserving and consuming local vegetables through out the long Maine winters. Aside from the occasional Whole Foods splurge, I don’t suspect I will be eating very many fresh green vegetables until the wild spring shoots emerge after the thaw. Aside from the vegetables that keep in my cellar (onions, squashes, garlic) and the vegetables I have frozen (wild fiddle heads, japanese knotweed) lacto-ferments are my main source of “living” vegetation.
If you have never made a fermentation like this at home, take heart! It is easy to do, and requires very little work or know how. Simply follow the steps in the video below, and in a couple of weeks you will have your first batch ready to eat!
For those who would like a deeper look into the biological processes that take place in the fermentation of cabbage into sauerkraut, check out this link!
I love to hear from you, so please leave me comment below to let me know what you think of this post, the website, and what you would like to see next!
~Daniel
Wild Fermented Hard Cider
Did you know that fermented beverages, specifically ethanol containing beverages were a crucial componant of most indigenous and traditional health strategies? Or that those who drink a moderate amount of ethanol live longer than those who drink heavily or don’t drink at all?
Of course the beverages fermented by native peoples and by our traditional cultural forebearers were much healthier and nutritionally viable than those of today, created with local ingredients and wild yeasts, and were not filtered and pasturized like the ones that most of us were raised around. Turning simple sugars into ethanol, amino acids, and B complex vitamins, not to mention a culturally and ritually significant inebriant is a nearly ubiquitous human behavior, and part of what holds the fabric of traditional societies together.
Earlier in the year I had the culturally enriching experience of imbibing some of the traditional fermented beverages of South America, specifically Chicha (from Maize) and Masatao (from Cassava), both traditional ferments of the people of Peru. These wonderful drinks were both relatively low in alcohol, with probably just a bit less than a modern beer, and loaded with nutrition and calories, making them as much a food as a drink. I was immediately impressed with the way that these were built into the nutritional and spiritual systems of the area. They were not viewed as guilt laden pleasures or sources of immoral behavior and debauchery, but rather as sacred and vitally health supportive. And while we use the term “intoxicant” to refer to drinks that contain alcohol, these people didn’t associate their sacred beverages with “toxicity” at all.
It was my desire to begin wild fermenting a local sugar of low to moderate alcohol content that could be drank unfiltered and unpasteruized. I wanted to recreate this often undiscussed and overlooked aspect of traditional human diets and bring it into my home and my life. While I have also been fermenting honey with some success (a beverage called Mead), I wanted to brew something with a milder effect (mead has the alcohol content of wine, upwards of 16 % or more) that could be done with very little labor or input, just the way our ancestors had done it.
Through this quest I have become enamoured by Cider, which is the proper name for the fermented alcoholic draught made from the fresh pressed juice from apples. Today we often refer to “Hard Cider” as the fully fermented version, and “Cider” as the unfermented, unfiltered juice of apples, which is a departure from the traditional meaning. Cider is usually defined as having an alcohol content of 2 – 8.5 % or higher, though my experience is that it tastes great and is incredibly refreshing even during initial fermentation when the alcohol content is negligible like that of Kombucha.
You can imagine that prior to the widespread use of refrigeration, areas of the world with large apple yields would have had quite a bit of Cider on hand, as the juice of fresh apples ferments quite readily. Perhaps you have bought fresh apple juice from a local orchard before and had it begin to ferment on you!
The apple juice I have worked with begins to ferment almost immediately after it reaches room temperature, and in truth gets better each and every day that it sits. The initial fermentation stage is wonderful, as the Cider develops its sparkling effervescence. I love drinking it this way throughout the day, and like saving the older, dryer, and “harder” Cider for the evenings with dinner and after.
Fermentation can seem a bit intimidating when you haven’t tried it before, and that is why I am posting this video. Cider is so easy to produce at home a cave man could do it!
I hope you enjoy this two part “Wild Fermented Hard Cider” video. Please give us your feedback by leaving a comment below!
~Daniel
P.S. Your probably wondering what “a moderate amount of alcohol” is. Studies indicate that 1 – 3 drinks ethanol drinks per day seems to extend lifespans! Here is a review from the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology showing the effects of alcohol on life span!
P.P.S. I understand the many detrimental effects that alcoholism and alcohol related accidents have had on us as individuals and as a civilization. I have personally been witness to it in my own life amongst people that I love dearly. This blog is in no way supporting reckless or irreverent use of ethanol. Alcohol consumption goes further into antiquity than can be accounted for, in other words it is part of the human story. Each one of us must determine how we will responsibly relate to it as a substance, and how we will steward it with health and safety in mind.
Wild Ricing in Maine!
(The actual video of harvesting wild rice is at the bottom of this blog post!)
I have had the opportuntiy to forage wild foods for a few years now, with each season yielding greater and greater amounts of food. No harvest yet has supplied me with the amount of food energy that I was able to gather this September when I learned the ancient art of “Ricing”.
Most of the wild plants that I have been learning to use are incredibly nutritious (as well as delicious) but a bit low in calories. Many wild foraged plants are eaten like vegetables (stinging nettle come to mind) but lack the energy density that we get from meats, grains, oils, concentrated sugars. This means that as a forager I am still largely dependent on my local agricultural system to provide me with calories that I need to live out my daily life.
Wild rice however, is a complex carbohydrate (macro-nutrient), and unlike the mono-cropped and refined carbohydrates of the average American diet, is a rich whole food grain loaded with vitamins and minerals (micronutrients) as well.
Today, most of the worlds citizens are living with an inverse relationship between micronutrients (vitamins, minerals, etc) and macronutrients (calories). We have become overfed and under nourished. Our ancestors ate extremely micronutrient dense diets when compared against our own. Their constant quest instead was securing the macronutrient (carbohydrate, lipid, and protein calories) that they required for their huge daily energy expenditures.
Of course today it is nearly the opposite, where most of the (over) developed world has calorie rich diet composed of overly processed and refined food – think white sugar, white flour, high fructose corn syrup, etc – that is deeply lacking in micro-nutrition. Most Americans are deficient in micronutrients even to the RDA standard (recommended daily allowances of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences) which is surprisingly low when compared against the nutrient intakes of so called “primitive peoples”.
Now that I am moving away from “novelty foraging” toward a subsistence that includes Wild Foods, I am acutely aware of this nutritional crux. There are plenty of micronutrients in the foods that I forage from my ecosystem, but most of my actual caloric needs still come from my local farm.
That is all changing for me now that I have learned to forage a few key items, perhaps the greatest and most important, of which is Wild Rice.
Zizania palustris is an aquatic grain occurring widely throughout the Eastern United States (like Maine where I live) and Canada. It inhabits the shallow waters of lakes, ponds, and slow moving rivers. There is a long and rich historical record of its harvest by native peoples of this continent and is to this day still harvested by existing native populations of North America, and in particular the Great Lakes region.
Though today much of the Wild Rice sold in the market place is cultivated in rice paddies, this highly nutritious grain is still available to the forager for the price of his or her labor.
Before trying truly wild rice, I was familiar only with the store bought, paddy cultivated wild rice which, though wonderful in flavor and rich in nutrition, just simply pales in comparison. Hand harvested, sundried, fire parched, foot treaded, and wind winnowed wild rice is so soft and delicate in flavor that it simply has to be tasted to be understood. The softness is like that of the most perfectly cooked white rice but with all the nutritious nutty flavors of a wild intact grain. This is because of a curing process used with commercially prepared “wild rice” that causes the grains to become very hard and locks in some of the unpleasantly strong flavors.
In contrast to many wild foraged plants, wild rice requires a more considerable amount of know how and equipment to locate, access, harvest, and process, so to show this in its entirety is simply outside the scope of a blog post. Instead I have prepared this short video to highlight the experiences I had ricing this season.
I am hoping that in the future some of you will have the opportunity to come to Maine to learn the art in person.
What a wonderful feeling to know that this winter I will be eating more of my calories from foods that were sustainably harvested from my local landscape.
I am grateful to the abundant Earth.
~Daniel
Nettle Root Tincturing and Male Health
This video below is part 2 of the Stinging Nettle Root harvesting video that I put up a couple of weeks back.
I put this up to demonstrate how simple it is to produce your own wild nettle root tincture for use as an herbal medicine.
Stinging Nettle (Urtica dioica) is an herbaceous perennial flowering plant known by many of us for the painful stinging hairs (they are actually called “trichomes”) that inject histamine into our skin like micro hypodermic needles.
Despite this, and even because of it, Nettle has been used as food and medicine by many cultures and is an important species for those of us who practice foraging, herbalism, or primitive outdoor skills.
While the aerial parts of the plant (the parts that grow above the ground) are most commonly eaten as a pot herb (cooked) or made into infusions (teas), it is the roots from which we can extract its potent androgenic substances. If you are woman reading this pay close attention. While you may not need Nettle root as a medicine for yourself, its highly likely you know a man who does. Be sure to read on.
Nettle root supports male health in a few different ways. There is a globulin in human blood called Sex Hormone Binding Globulin (SHBG) which binds to testosterone, rendering it unavailable to the our cells. Nettle root contains compunds that bind to SHBG taking the place of testosterone and thereby keeping free testosterone in the blood.
More than this, it also prevents the conversion of testosterone into a metabolite known as dihydrotestosterone, which has been implicated in benign prostate hyperplasia and even male pattern baldness.
If this wasn’t enough, phyto-chemicals in Nettle root further work to prevent Benign Prostate Hyperplasia (BPH) by stopping the binding of DHT to the prostate membrane.
Since the prostrate is the endocrine gland thats responsible for male orgasm, taking care of it for a lifetime is probably a good idea!
Nettle Root is an herbal ally that seems almost designed to ensure the good health of a mans reproductive system into longevity (wives and girlfriends may want to take note).
Making your own Nettle Root tinctures at home can be easy, and only takes few minutes.
I encourage you to give it a try, and to get out into your local ecosystem to commune with your landscape. This is truest expression of environmentalism I can think of!
If this post (or any other) has inspired you, please leave a comment below!
~Daniel
Wild Foods and Medicines! Harvesting Nettle Rhizomes
Greetings Everyone!
What an amazing Autumn it has been!
This has been, by far, my most prolific year of harvesting wild food and medicine. While I know it is an ambitious goal, it is my personal desire to hunt and gather. Spending time with Arthur Haines has propelled my wild nutrition path forward in ways I am so grateful for. In this video Arthur and I go into the wilds in search of wild stinging nettle roots for our personal homemade medicine stashes!
Now that I am just weeks away from SurThrival’s launch of its new Pine Pollen extracts, I wanted to share a video that is yet one more piece of my natural hormone maintnance strategy.
I hope this motivates you to get out and harvest some food or medicine for yourself. Stay tuned for events that Arthur and I will be putting on where you can learn to harvest your own foods and medicines!
And don’t forget to check out the mead making workshop that I have coming up next week. You can see the details here.
Thanks for watching, and please let me know what you think.
~D
Eden Hot Springs! October 6th-10th, 2010
Epic Eden Hot Springs Retreat! October 6th through the 10th, 2010
This is by far the most exciting event of the year for me! There is no other place on Earth that leaves me feeling so connected to the Land and to the Elements!
For many years now I have visited this oasis of the Sonoran desert, and it has been (by far) the most trans-formative location of my life.
Up until now these retreats have been a collaborative effort of my teachers and mentors David Wolfe and Kerri “Dancing Butterfly” . They have facilitated the transformation of the countless people who have attended (myself included!).
This is in fact where my very first YouTube video was recorded, and the place where I began my career.
Now a new generation is taking up the call of stewarding this unique piece of Earth. Joy Light and Rebecca Astara are putting on this year’s event, Epic Eden HotSprings! I will be leading a tour of the Sacred grounds of Eden, visiting along the tour the six geo-thermal hot springs that spot the land. I am honored to share my knowledge and experience of my many years of visiting this land, with all of the retreaters!
This Oasis is beyond description, but let me attempt!
When standing on the hill, the high point of the property, surrounded by the 360 degrees of Arizona Mountains, looking down at the valley, the magick of this place becomes clear. The Sonoran desert is one of the harshest, driest environments on the planet. Yet, this oasis is green and lush, surrounded by inhospitable gravel-strewn desert.
It all begins with a small pool known as “The Source”. This sacred spring spills over and runs into the “Guitar Pool”, which is, as you may have guessed, shaped like a guitar! It is also known as the “Goddess Pool”, because the pool imitates the curvy shape of a Woman’s body. This is my favorite pool for soaking, as it is the quietest and most… sanctified. All around it salt crystals grow right up out of the ground, dusting the area like a fresh snow!
This water runs down past a pool known as the “Emerald Pool” which is much hotter than the guitar pool. This pool is brilliantly green with exotic flora, and feeds down into the most popular pool, “Geronimo”! This pool is named after the Apache Warrior who led the final free indigenous natives in the war against the early US!
And yes, he and his warriors really used this spring for healing and rejuvenation!
It is his, and the Apache spirit that is felt so strongly here!
This pool feeds down into the “Goddess Pool”, a hot spring pool the size of an Olympic swimming pool! Swimming, bathing, or even just floating here is a truly unique and indescribable experience! It is less hot and more like tepid bathwater… I enjoy this pool for exercise and play!
This will be a time of powerful healing and lifelong transformation for all who attend. There will be many amazing work/play shop facilitators, body workers, and many new and old friends… Morning Yoga, Sun Gazing, Spring Water…. It is a chance to immerse yourself in the Temple of the Elemental!
Oh, and did I mention the food? The wonderful Chocolatree Cafe, based out of Sedona, will be preparing the food and overseeing the kitchen! Business partners Jen Warr of Chocolatree Cafe and Kelly Johnson of Sedona Superfoods, in combination come together to provide for us at the retreat this fall. They are a business of high integrity, bringing us the most top notch organic vegetarian cuisine! Each meal they serve up is delicious, nutritious, and uniquely prepared. Their cafe in Sedona is definitely the hot spot of the area and is a must visit while going through that town!
The experience of Eden is always hot, sunny, fiery energy… Burning off the old to make room for the new. The springs are so deeply nourishing, and there is always a view of the stars like few have ever seen. Soaking in these waters in the cold desert night looking deep into space is a gift that few ever give themselves!
Visit here to find out more about the retreat, and here to learn about all of the amazing facilitators for this epic retreat!
For me it is a place where I shed yet another layer of domestication and re-member what it means to be human.
And so my Road takes me West….
You coming?
~ Daniel
Join us ~ October 6th-10th, 2010 for this Epic Experience of a Lifetime!
The Longevity Now Conference!
September 24th-26th, 2010
I am honored and excited to share that I will be speaking at the upcoming Longevity Now Conference! This health seminar unlike any other. That is because this seminar has the worlds leading health authorities, all gathered in one place for a whole weekend, to share their unique knowledge around health and longevity. The Longevity Now Conference is held at the Orange County Hilton in Costa Mesa, CA. The Longevity Now Conference is by far, the most original, comprehensive, and exhilarating healing and longevity seminar I have ever seen.
Aside from myself speaking, we will be graced with the presence of many other amazing health experts such as David Wolfe, Dr. Joseph Mercola, Frank Giglio, Donna Gates, Truth Caulkins, Nadine Artemis, and several others! Each presenter brings to us their unique skillset and education around optimal health and longevity. We are blessed to receive such a wide range of knowledge and experience to learn from! I can’t wait to see what everyone brings to the stage!
My lecture will revolve around Eugenics and what “natural foods” really are, in this day and age. I recently did an interview with Len Foley of the Longevity Now team, in preparation for the event which you can listen to here, and get a taste of what I will be speaking about at the conference!
Another aspect that makes this seminar unlike any other, is that each individual participant will be “grounded” (using the latest cutting-edge technology provided to us by Earthing) throughout the event in its entirety! This is exciting to me, because I am a huge advocate for maximizing the amount of time we spend outdoors, with our barefeet connected to the ground. However, in this day and age, most of us are unable to spend all of our time outdoors ~ That is where the grounding technology comes in. We can use these advances to ground us while we are spending time indoors, working away by keeping our feet on a ground pad, or wearing one of their grounding bands. In addition, each participant will receive a complimentary $40 Earthing Kit so that they will experience the healing effects of being grounded even while in their hotel room.
There will be over $10,000 in prizes given out throughout the event as well! Truth Caulkins, one of the speakers, brings us a world-class Longevity Tonic Bar which will be open all weekend long! The tonic bar team will be providing us with the most powerful, delicious healing drinks only available through this wonderful crew. The drinks served are scrumptious healing blends of herbs and superfoods, to help heal and optimize any individuals condition. They are a group of “ElixirCraft Masters“, for sure!
We are also excited to have a booth in the exhibition area for my company, SurThrival, all weekend long at the event! The whole SurThrival team with be present for the weekend, posted up at the booth, ready to share and connect with all of the participants! We will have our full product line up for sale at our booth, along with some surprises we are waiting to reveal for the first time at the conference! We are can’t wait to share our latest excitement with all of you there!
One last piece I would like announce, is that I will be one of the featured speakers in the extended workshop taking place the Monday after the conference concludes! This workshop is being called “The Masters Workshop”, and it will be a comprehensive lecture between myself, David Wolfe, and Truth Caulkins where we will go in depth about ElixirCrafting, the art of tonic alchemy, the secrets to abundant health, complete cell rejuvenation, and longevity. There will also be a 90-minute panel, where the audience members can ask us all of their burning question!
I highly encourage you to join us in September at this event. Not only will you discover the latest advances in longevity technology that aren’t available anywhere else, but this event will be nothing short of one of the most uplifting, educational, and inspirational weekends of your life.
Three full days of major downloads of advanced information is priced at a mere $297! This is a huge deal considering the amount of knowledge, connections, goodies, and community you will leave with after the weekend!
“Hunter Safety?” ~ Why I am not a Vegan
“How have I come to be here” I asked myself as a late March Saturday slips by, the 3rd and final day of the Maine Hunter Safety class. What a long and unlikely story it is, and as I reflect over all that has transpired, I feel deeply honored to be here. Let me explain…
I grew up in a little college town in Southern New Hampshire and no one ever exposed me to hunting. It would be more appropriate to say no one ever exposed me to food. I grew up in a strange distortion of the cookie cut mold of the lower middle class of New England. We ate “food” from the supermarket, and did what our doctors told us to.
Our dinners were Kraft macaroni and cheese and Hamburger Helper. Brands of foods but not really types of food. After all, they were really just made of a few things… ultimately corn and soy. Or animals raised on corn and soy. Or animals raised on corn soy and each other.
We ate these animals and drank their milk too. Homogenized and Pasteurized, two words I grew up with but couldn’t have defined. We drank the chemical digestive aids, called sodas, cans of phosphoric acid to “wash down” the industrial age food that we had eaten. Antibiotics were administered regularly to prevent the outbreak of plague within the confines of our over-populated school.
I, like so much of my generation, was a factory farmed human in turn of the century America.
But this was all to change….
My first experience with Vegetarianism took place when I was just a boy, probably age 10 or 11… It didn’t last long, maybe a week or so, but I was deeply drawn to it. There was something about the concept, and of what it communicated, that spoke to me. It was something about taking a stand for the value of life, something about caring… I was then too young to articulate it but I could sense the importance of my food choices and how they are about so much more than just feeding ourselves. I came to know that our food choices are about who we are and how we live, together, on this planet.
By age 15 I had developed the independence necessary to make my own dietary choices. A friend and role model had re-introduced me to vegetarianism, tofu (it was still a ‘health’ food then) and juicing… I was heavily influenced but not totally changed.
Another year goes by and I got my first real job working at Wendy’s manning the grill. I had gotten pretty overweight, and was living on fast food. Literally. Little did I know then that my entire body was being constructed of corn, soybean, and potato, either as fries, buns and oil, or as factory farmed animals that form the meat portion of the menu… There was an all-you-can eat salad bar there too… Consisting of mostly iceberg lettuce and dressings made from the oils of corn, soy, or canola (which means Canadian Oil, and is a trade name for rape seed) oils.
But just then came the light of revelation! Partly exotic pharmacology (I will let you guess), partly a teenage crush ( I was really self conscious about my weight), and partly destiny… I was ready for change! I bought a membership to a gym, and overnight I become a vegetarian…. or more appropriately a “Nutritional Vegetarian”. My choices were based solely on the belief that this was the nutritionally superior diet and nothing more. Well maybe a little more, as my ego liked it too!
It felt good to be doing something different, something against the grain. It felt evolved and honorable and even monastic.
Those first few years were confusing… it was the days of fat free and high carb. It was the days of soy ‘milk’ and… well… soy everything (even the so called soy ‘cheese’ and fake ‘meat’). I used to go to the Health Food store which was really just a grain depot with lots of cereals, dried fruits and vitamins. I trusted that everything there was good for my health.
Ooops!
By age 18 I was getting hungry, really hungry, and wasn’t sure what to eat… And so I decided, rather hesitantly, to begin reintegrating some meats. This lasted just a week or so and I was feeling guilty, like I had gone back on my vows. Just then someone handed me a book by the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (strange stuff indeed!) and there was a little section in there about their dietary rules. It said that they abstained from meat. This was the confirmation I had been waiting for, so I set out to research more.
These was the early days of the internet, back when you had to listen to that high pitched squeal as you ‘dialed-up’ with a phone line. I visited the library to use what was then an exotic and uncommon technology. I began researching the Krishna’s which led me to information about Animal Rights and Veganism. To say I was shocked would be an understatement. Strangely, after years as a vegetarian, I had never really considered the plight of the animals nor had I thought about the conditions that they were raised in. I had never seen a or even heard of a factory farm. The videos of animal slaughter and the cruelty of the farming conditions revolted me. I vowed then and there to never to participated in this profane carnage again.
To be honest I felt dirty… contaminated. I wanted to be absolved and cleansed from the sins of my culture. And I knew that I would dedicate my life to unraveling this secret to reveal the truth of where our food was coming from.
And so now I was a Vegan. A “Moral Vegetarian”.
I started spending each and every day at the library, starting with the squeal of the internet dialing, and ending with the “Sir, your time is up” when my hour had gone by. I discovered ‘Raw Foodism’ and felt immediately connected to it, like it was what I had been looking for. It felt perfect, a combination of ethics and nutrition. Its Mythos closely mirrored the Christian one I grew up with. It is the story of a fall from grace.
The Raw Food Vegan diet says that we once lived in a paradise where there was very little sickness or disease. That it was cooking that led to our banishment from this Utopia. Cooking was the proverbial “forbidden fruit” of good and evil that led to our fall from health. The idea was that cooking not only “killed” our food but rendered it toxic with denatured and deranged molecules and deactivated enzymes.
Over the years this toxicity increases (or bio-accumulates) making people sick, and this “toxemia” can only be cleansed by water fasting, juicing, and eating Raw Foods. With enough cleansing you can be restored to the state of health enjoyed by the human of the golden age, and be free of all that is vile about life. Ultimately we can wash our hands of death altogether, living in a state of purity and moral righteousness, where nothing ever dies to sustain our lives (perhaps plants are not alive?).
I aspired to eat a Frutarian Diet, where not even a plant would die for me to live, where only the fruits and seed of plants would feed me, and I would escape the wheel of Karma to which I had been born a slave. I felt a renewed sense of purpose and set out upon a new adventure. I was taking the Road Less Traveled and it was the moral high road, the nutritional high road, and yes, even the world-saving political high road too.
Cooked food was dead food… and you are what you eat. Therefore eating “Living Food” must lead to more Life Force, and so I would now eat my food as whole and intact as possible. I wanted to be cleansed, and so cleansed I was. The first three days were like nothing I had ever experienced before. It was almost psychedelic. The experience of eating so few calories and eating such light and easily digested food allowed my body to mobilize energy to cleanse itself of industrial, pharmacological and chemical bio accumulated waste.
Many of the old injuries and nagging pains that I had lived with quickly subsided, as my body, with its new surplus of energy, could now focus on some much needed repairs. In what felt like an instant I was changed from a 175 lb muscly athlete (Thanks to that gym membership! I am 5′5″ so that was a bit stocky) to 145 in just a few weeks, my body burned off tissue, shed water and salt, and cleaned house in ways I never knew possible. My eyes glistened, I felt light and easy in my body and mind. It was like my need for sleep diminished and I awoke each morning with a kind of excitement and zest for life that I had never known before!
What looked like a bizarre if not dangerous dietary experiment had deeply troubled my friends and family, and really isolated me socially, but it was worth it! It was like a religion… like a Raw-ligion!
Today I look back in amusement. I was a radical and even militant raw foodist. It was the only thing that mattered to me for years. We were a movement, and the internet was our rallying point! We marched with the mantra constantly at our lips… “Cooked food is poison!”
Fast forward just over half of a decade… That shiny, energetic feeling had faded and had been fading for years. My teeth ached and I had recurrent fungal problems. I was chronically hungry (actually the correct term here is “starving”), and powerfully addicted to fruit sugar. The more I “learned” about the dangers of food the more foods I cut out of my diet. There was so little left that I “could” eat. At this time I didn’t eat oils or salt, I didn’t use herbs or spices, just fruits and vegetables… seeds and nuts… and oh, so many nuts!
Just getting enough calories to stay alive was a struggle. My digestion was poor and getting worse. No matter how bad I felt the experts, books and websites of the Raw Food gurus assured me that these were just symptoms of “toxicity”, that soon I would be fully cleansed and would experience the heavenly health that was my birthright. I believed them.
Then, enter the Superfood movement.
The term isn’t new, but rather a re-emergence of a term from earlier in the 1900’s. This renewed version was born out of “health food” marketing, and strongly influenced by the Raw Food movement. I, like so many Raw Food eaters had hit the wall. We knew there was something missing, we just couldn’t determine what it was.
After all, we were so sure that this was the perfect diet of humanity. That it was the original diet of our species. It was perfect in both practice and philosophy. What else could there be.
The Superfoods came into our community with some suspicion. Many Fundamentalist Raw Food eaters viewed them as a weakening of our dietary values, and as toxic and even poisonous. Still, they took hold and spread through our community like a wild fire. Is poisonous a bad thing? Check this DVD to hear more about the connection between “poison” and “medicine”
With them came a renewed interest in Herbalism. This was in direct opposition to the earlier raw foodist beliefs of the 19th and 20th century (then called “Natural Hygiene”), which said that all herbs and spices were toxins (read “sinful”) and exited the appetite as they overstimulated the nervous system. This created a rift in the RawFood community that split it into factions….
Ha! It really does read like a cult, right?
I chose to go the way of Superfoods and Herbalism. It was much more fun, exciting, and far more sustainable. Actually, for years it was like a party! With foods like oils (especially coconut oil), and sweeteners (like agave), I now was getting enough calories to sustain a healthy body weight (wanna lose weight fast? try living on celery. apples, carrots, and almonds), and with herbs I could begin addressing the health concerns that the more rigid Raw Food dogma always blamed on toxicity (this is your fault and you must be cleansed (repent) of your toxicity (sins).
Now, here is a twist in the tale… Towards the end of my 20’s I had been handed a book by Dr. Weston Price called “Nutrition and Physical Degeneration” (Get it free online here!). This book had a profound influence on me, and proved to me beyond a shadow of a doubt that there was in fact a need for animal food in the human diet. This was very challenging to embrace, as I had literally crafted my entire identity out of the things that I didn’t eat!
…But the evidence was irrefutable…
Dr. Price had studied the teeth and dental arches of 12 cultures around the world, comparing the teeth of those who had eaten the traditional diets of their people to those who were raised on the modern diet of the West. We are blessed that this research was done, as today it would be nearly impossible to repeat. He had shown that our species was degenerating quickly on our modern food, and for reasons that I hadn’t expected. Not because of toxins, and not because of cooked foods. In fact, it was because of the inclusion of the poorly grown and highly refined products of agriculture (primarily refined carbohydrates), and the lack of high quality wild or pastured (grass fed) animal foods!
Remember that teeth are modified bones, and the condition of the teeth and dental arch are a window into the skeletal structure itself, as well as the health of the rest of the body.
This, by the way, is where we get the saying “don’t look a gift horse in the mouth”… which essentially means that it is rude to examine something closely to see if its good enough when it is a gift freely given. But I digress….
This research was conducted at a time when many of the indigenous and traditional cultures of the world were being rapidly assimilated into our Western mono-culture. These pictures (of which there are many) show us a comparison of one generation to the next. Please imagine what the mouths of “modern developed” people here in the West would look like without the use of braces to disguise the reality. I know it challenges the political correctness of our day, but Weston Price called this “Degeneration”, and with this I must agree.
What an inner turmoil this created for me. I wanted to act on this new information, but I was so indoctrinated into the beliefs of the Raw Food movement. I had spent years meeting others, who like me ate Raw Foods. I had attended workshops and retreats, read every book that I could, and even organized local potlucks.
It was a very difficult thing for me to incorporate. I began eating raw cheeses and sometimes eggs. I did this for years though I barely allowed into my awareness. It was something that I was hiding, not from others, but from myself… There was a dissonance, two opposing views held within my mind….. I just couldn’t fully accept it…
I carried on, over the course of a few years, sometimes eating cheeses, then slowly eggs, and eventually even fish. All the while I still lived amongst and traveled within the Raw Food community… I was not alone, as many others were doing this as well.
Strangely we all just sort of hid it. It was treated like a weakness or an indulgence.
Slowly I began to awaken to what was happening. I began to study chemistry and anthropology. I began to study wild foods and to harvest medicines from nature. Over the course of time I was making peace with my need for animal food.
About a year and a half ago I was introduced to the “Primal Diet”… a diet based heavily on raw meats, as well as the idea of “Traditional Diets” which includes unpasteurized grass fed dairy products… For the first time I gave myself permission to really begin exploring this.
The premise is that we are a product of the ice age. It is a diet that is based on anthropology rather than on a Garden of Eden tale of our ancestral diet. After all, when we look at cave paintings of our ancestors it is images of the hunt that we see. When we visit the still living “primitives” of today, our window into the past, we find diets largely based on animal foods. The plants that we grow today are a product of an agricultural lifestyle that is a mere 10,000 years old! Before this our entire species was hunting and gathering for its subsistence!
It was as if this way of thinking provided the much needed balance to the extreme end of the nutritional spectrum to which I had swung. By incorporating this information I was able to find an equilibrium, and was able to restore my health.
And so I began to open my worldview, and release the dissonance…. I began to eat animals, and I began to eat them without guilt.
This was a world of difference from the animals I had seen tortured on factory farms that I had seen all those years ago. These were animals I could meet. Farmers I could talk to. Pieces of land that I could visit.
What struck me immediately was that I could actually go to the farms to get my calories. I live in New England, so my Raw and Superfood Vegan diet had been based almost exclusively on exotic foods shipped all over from distant lands. There were foods that I could get locally, some fruits and vegetables, but my calories, the stuff that really sustained me, seemed always to come from distant lands! This was a less than comforting conclusion to reach, and one that most who eat a Raw Food diet are shy about looking at!
Now I could consume calories raised here where I live, sustainably. This brought me a peace of mind that comforted me almost maternally. It felt like I had been plugged back into the source, into the Mother Earth herself.
Now I could eat fats and protein that took me out of the blood sugar roller-coaster that I had been trapped in cyclically for so many years. I could finally have the lean body mass that I used too, and maintain the activity level that I knew I was capable of. And finally, I was releasing the food Raw-ligion that I had bowed to for more than a decade and a half!
Actually, it was like coming back to life. I don’t mean like waking up, I mean like coming back to the Life-Cycle. Like leaving a virtual reality and coming back into Nature. My days of eating the Raw Vegan diet was like living in a fantasy world. I was totally ignorant of the scheme of life and to my place within it.
Where, after all, was my Raw Vegan food really coming from? What fertilized the soils for my “organic” produce if not the manure of farm animals? And if I wanted a truly vegan world, what then would fertilize the soils for my food? Synthetic NPK derived ultimately from fossil fuels and natural gas… What pollinated these Organic Vegan produce if not Factory Farmed Bees? Where did I think my food was coming from? I guess I had not really considered it honestly.
During those last few years I had become very invested in Wild Food and Wild Water. Through my studies of Herbalism I had created ElixirCraft, and began wild crafting herbs and mushrooms. I had also become deeply passionate about Wild Spring Water and created Find a Spring.
With the inclusion of meats in my diet it just made sense… I wanted to eat Wild Meat. I began to receive gifts of Wild Meat from hunters, and fishermen. Many of the Fishes alvailable in markets are still wild as well, so these became staples.
I had come to the understanding that the bones and teeth of “primitive” Hunter/Gatherer societies are far more sturdy and dense than those of agriculturalists. And that dental cavities were largely unknown to these so called “savages”. That the “Natural Foods” we eat today are anything but. That we are really eating hybrid foods, whether plants or animals, foods bred over the course of centuries, many of which cannot be found in nature anywhere today!
Just this year I was truly moved by the book The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability
The most powerful conclusion of her book is this… That the beginning of Adult Wisdom lays in accepting that something must Die for you to Live. This is universally true for all humans… We may put many layers of middle-men, of industry, of smoke and mirrors between us and this fact but eventually, to truly mature, we must embrace it.
With this Wisdom I was resolved to hunt my own meat, and to develop the relationship with the animals that this requires. To see them face to face, from start to finish.
And so, I find myself on a Saturday in Maine, sitting in a Hunter Safety class. Something I never expected, but I must admit, feels so good. It is not the romanticized Hunters Initiation I would have dreamed of. But it is something. It is a start. It is the beginning of true food soverinty and relationship to the web of food and cycle of life.
I am grateful to be here, and grateful to those who came before me. Mostly I am grateful to the animals in body and spirit who give their lives to sustain the ecosystem and those of us who dwell within it.
I am humbled by the many years it took for me to arrive at this place, and the circuitous path I took to get here. And…. I am excited for the ancient Rite of the Hunt.
After the many years I invested as a Raw Food Vegan I cannot deny that I have gained much that is of value. I learned, what I feel, is one of the true secrets of cleansing, and no doubt an important part of a healing path. It offered me a path of transformation that I will cherish eternally.
Today I see it as a fast, as a cleanse. I see it as something to do short term.
And I see it as something beautiful too… But for me its just not a diet to live on.
How about you? ~Daniel
Blessed Solstice!
Today is the Day! The True NewYear. The Day the Sun is Born!
The Winter Solstice is effectively the longest night of the Year, and from here on out the days are increasing in length as the dominance of night decreases. For me this is the most significant day of the Solar Cycle, and a time to set my intentions for the new, coming Cycle.
As the Light, Heat, and therefore Energy of the Sun grows with each day, so to does the Subconscious Power of Intention. This next Three Months (moon-ths) from the Winter Solstice to the Vernal Equinox is like the Incubation of a Seed. It is a chance to lay our Plans, to prepare for what we will do when the Sun is High and the weather is Warm. Today is a Day to Set Your Intentions
And yet… the Solstice is so much more…
At 12:47 pm EST the sun crosses the Celestial Tropic of Capricorn, and at that moment is the Winter Solstice! This is Yule, and it is more than just a holiday, it is a precise geometric alignment that happens once a year.
The Earth and its relationship to the Sun is the primary Calendar, and what we call Astrology is actually a very advanced method of keeping time. Your “Horoscope” (from Hour + Scope, to see the hour) is really a snapshot of the sky (actually of the Ecliptic ) and the planets positions relative to one another and to the Earth at the exact moment you emerged from the womb. This by the way is based on where you are (your exact Latitude and Longitude), and is essentially unrepeatable. Each of us is totally unique.
It seems that the societies of the ancients were primarily concerned with the study, calculation, prediction, recording, observation, and mythologizing of the events of the heavens.
The study of this Ancient Science is now called Archaeoastronomy, and though ancient, can till be employed today. In fact, it is employed today, and the very method worked out to study the heaves by our GeoCentric (Earth at the center) ancestors is still used by our Heliocenntric (sun at the center) Astronomers today (the Celestial Sphere used in Astronomy is a Geocentric model) The understanding of the Solstices and Equinoxes is the beginning of understanding the calendar itself. This involves more than simply knowing what day these fall on, but rather, how the geometries work.
I taught myself years ago with some Books, Toy Globes and a Night Sky Map.
Check out these Amazon links below if you would like to get started too.
The Stars book by H. A. Rey is written by the same author who wrote the ‘Curious George’ child’s book series. I love it when technical material is dealt with in a simple and clear way (Idiots Guide style), and this book makes it easy.
The Great Atlas of the Stars is a profound work. It is primarily full page images of the sky with clear page overlays that show the constellations. What is so amazing about this book is that the sky photos are designed to be the same size as what your eye sees in the sky when you hold it out at arms length. This was instrumental for me in being sure I was identifying the constellations correctly.
The Map of the Sky I used to place a small globe on to understand the turning of the Earth and the Earths trip around the Sun and how this affects which stars are in the sky at which times.
The Petzl headlamp is great because it has a red light function and this keeps your night vision intact. If you are using a white light to look at your Star Atlas, then look down back up to see the stars you are identifying, your night vision will be temporarily thwarted…
These are enough to get you started… there are few things in life as timeless and rewarding!
I will continue to post things like this on the Solstices, Equinoxes, and if you like, the cross-quarters too.
Enjoy this day, the most Sacred Day of the Year. The Day the Sun is Born!
~Daniel
Plastic Balls in the LA Drinking Water?!!!
Is this really real? Are they Serious? This is an article in the NY Times about LA’s completely ridiculous SCI-FI band-aid fix to their continuing Water supply contamination issues! You have got to see this to believe it! This is the level it has gone too!
Last I checked, doesn’t plastic “photo-degrade”?
For a few years now I have been Extremely Devoted to sharing a unique message about our drinking Water. It is my belief after much experience and research that Water, like food, is best when it has not been “processed”.
To many this seems like a strange idea at first, and this is because we have been predominantly taught a chemical (chemistry) understanding of Water (H2O) rather than the Geological/Biological and Crystallographical of Water. Today many of us are waking up to the fact that there is a difference between water Chemical “Purity” and it overall “Quality”.
For this reason Myself and so many Friends and Allies have taken up a Quest, the Quest for Living Spring Water! We have been collecting all of our Drinking Water directly from the aquifers of healthy eco-system via clean, pure, high-quality uncontaminated Springs! Click here to visit my user built Spring Water DataBase to find spring sources in your area! Big shout out to Heidi and Justing Ohlander for their epic work in putting that sight together! The sites data base is built by you, so if you know a spring in your area, click submit and post it there!
Check out the Video section here on my website (and search “Daniel Vitalis” on YouTube) to see what I have to share about Water, and here is a great documentary, called “Water, the Great Mystery”, detailing much of what I am saying regarding the difference between Water “Purity” and Water “Quality”.
Most exciting to me is the project I am launching with Bryan Pullen of Summit Spring in Harrison, Maine! We will be the first in Modern History to bring Raw, Unprocessed, Unfiltered, Pure and Sustainably Harvest Free~Flow Spring Water to the Market Place! We are very close to launching so stay tuned! I fully believe that Raw Water will reshape the way the world sees Water!
The point I would most like to make is this… It is time to have a secure and reliable Drinking Water Strategy in place. The Water that most Humans are drinking today is not fit for Life~Forms. When cities have to start filling their resevoirs with black plastic balls to block sunlight from making the water carcinegenic, it is time to wake up!
I have offered two solutions. One, locate and use the local Spring Water Sources around you. This is the purpose of www.findaspring.com. Second, by supplying the market place with the first unprocessed Raw Living Spring Water, it is my intention to bring awareness to an issue that has been all but swept aside.
It is time to be made out of Clean Healthy Water. Our very SurThrival on planet Earth depends on it! It is time to have a secure drinking Water supply for you and your loved ones! It is time for a Strategy!
What do you think/feel?
~Daniel Vitalis
Prima Materia
Water is the principle feminine Element…
The molecular pattern that alone
gives rise to terrestrial life,
And beyond, even unto the stars themselves.
The Hexagonal Repligram that is
the Connective Communication Matrice.
That enigma that supported
the feet of the Christ.
That is the river Euphrates, that is the river Nile,
the Amazon, the Mississippi, Colorado…
That is Niagra Falls.
That is the Blood of Gaia, that is 7 seas, 5 oceans…
That is the Polar ice caps…
That is the source.
The fluid of every cell… Every living cell..
Plant… Animal… Fungal…
Every single Insect….every bacterium.
That is the stuff of every comet.
That is now known to exist in stars
and even interstellar space.
That is in every square inch of atmosphere.
That floats within it in billowing cloud forms.
That is and has been present in every thought,
every instinct and drama.
That was exhaled in every word that has ever
been spoken… And that has been every tear.
That is and has always been…
All connected, and storing in-formation,
the Liquid Crystal.
Like an infinite hard drive…
Though not “hard” at all.
Soft and flowing…
She is the Akasha.
She is the Mother of Mothers.
Prima Materia…
AquaeMysteria… everandeverandever
~Daniel Vitalis
Mastering the Elements!
What is the true source of the Invincible Health we seek?
True health is sourced from integration into all of the Elements of Nature. Not the Elements of the periodic table, but rather the True and Timeless Elements that form Nature…
Earth, Water, Air, and Fire
All peoples throughout time have understood, and organized their lives and societies around these living forces! They were, in fact, an intimate part of every human’s daily existence!
Only recently have humans found a way to live isolated from them, hiding indoors and unsustainably controlling the climate and environment they experience.
Today we even hear of people dying of “exposure to the Elements”… What a strange idea indeed.
Are you interested in greater Health, Longevity, Abundance, and Harmony? Ready to move beyond diet alone? Are you ready for a path whose unfolding Wisdom and Fulfillment knows no end?
Then I propose to you a “Quest”! A Quest for Invincible Health!
To become a Master of the Elements!!!
This Mastery does not imply control over the Elements, but rather a deep relationship with, and an ability to integrate into them. It is the degree of our Integration with these Elements that determines our levels of Invincibility!
These Four Elements are the real “Four Food Groups”!
EARTH ~ More than stones and dirt, the Earth Element is the soil and the foods that come from it! Mastery of the Earth Element implies mastery of our Nutritional Strategy!
WATER ~ This is the Water we drink, the LifeBlood of the planet, and the substance of all life forms! Mastery of the Water Element is developing a strong and well-crafted drinking Water Strategy!
AIR ~ The gaseous Atmosphere that we breathe! Every breath is a gift of the ocean of Air! Mastery of the Element of Air is mastery of Breath; it is a conscious respiration strategy!
FIRE ~ The Light we receive from the Sun! The great Fire that is the source for all of the life of our planet! Mastery of Fire is developing a powerful sunlight strategy!
This Blog will be an exploration of Elemental Mastery!
It is tips, Lessons, and reflections on integrating with, and deepening our relationship to the Living Forces we call “The Elements”!
Are you called to take up this Quest? Are you ready to develop your true potential?
Stay tuned as we explore Elemental Mastery!
~Daniel
