Caroline Myss

Following is an excerpt from renowned teacher and author Caroline Myss’s 2-CD set Channeling Grace. I transcribed this short section because it’s a crucial point for us all to remember on our healing journeys:

“What is healing? I’ve said before and I will say a thousand million times – healing cannot be done through the mind. The mind is an inadequate tool for healing. And in our culture, because we are so married to our mind and so enamored with our intellects, we actually believe that we can outrun a disease with the arrogance in our mind, when our mind is incapable of letting go of the smallest little slight from thirty-five years ago!

And you think you can take on cancer? You think you can take on leukemia? [You think you can take on MS?] I think not.

Not only that. You hear guidance and the guidance says something like “You want your health back? Don’t eat that.”  You don’t care, you eat it. Guidance says “Get off your tuckus and walk, you’re overweight.” You don’t care.

And you think you can take on an illness with your mind? When your mind doesn’t have the power to say “Get up and walk!”

Your mind lies to you all the time, makes up “I’ll start tomorrow.” No you won’t and you know it. You’re lying to yourself and you know you’re lying and you let yourself get away with it. That’s what the mind does.

So don’t ever think the mind’s an instrument for healing because it’s not and it never will be – it’s incapable. The mind’s an instrument of deceit and a fact archive. That’s all it is.

Healing is a mystical experience. A mystery. It is fully the province of the soul. Totally and fully the province of the soul.”

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The basic rules of the diet are no sugar, no gluten, no wheat, no dairy, no soy, no alcohol, and nothing fermented. Instead, the goal is to focus on eating 60% vegetables, 20% protein, 10% carbs, and 10% good fats.

That said, it’s not an easy diet to adhere to in our sugar and flour-laden culture and there are many potential potholes to fall into for those who try. I should know, I’ve fallen into most of them since I started this diet in 2007. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if some were actually named after me.

A few weeks ago I began offering private coaching sessions to help people implement the diet, and what I found is that the major mistakes people make seem to be universal. Which is why I thought it would behoove (love that word!) us all to call them out, so that if any of these sound all too familiar, you can climb out of that pothole and get back on the road to recovery immediately.

1. Swapping Pastas:

Pasta is yummy. When you decided to go on the Candida diet and therefore gluten-free, you were probably thrilled to discover that you could substitute regular pasta for rice pasta. It’s not quite as good but once you get used to it, it still does wonders to scratch the itch for a bowl full o’ carbs. It’s easy and quick to make and it feels familiar, so if you are anything like I was when I started this diet, you probably started cooking it every night, or every other. This diet thing ain’t so bad, you’re thinking as you scarf down the spaghetti or the penne or those squiggly ones whose name I forget. However, you are headed down the wrong road.

Rice pasta, though gluten-free and “legal” for this diet, is stripped of all nutrients. It’s also still just a carb, and a bowl of it will spike your blood sugar like nobody’s business, especially if you don’t eat it alongside a protein. In other words, party time for the Candida. Eating rice pasta frequently will seriously slow down your healing, so keep it to no more than once a week max and always eat a bit of animal protein with it to slow down the spike.

2. The “I Love Sugar” Reality Distortion Field (AKA Selective Label Reading or The Carob Chip Debacle):

I am a sweet-tooth. When I first started this diet, my sugar cravings were intense. Like, fetal position I-woulda-eaten-my-own-arm-if-it-were-made-of-sugar intense. As such, I was constantly on the hunt for “legal” options that could satiate me. In the first edition of Ann Boroch’s book Healing MS, she included a recipe for carob-chip cookies that called for unsweetened carob chips (in later editions she eliminated this). So I bought them, and found that they were actually quite delicious straight up, without the cookie. So I started eating them right out of the bag as a snack.

Sure, I read the ingredients on the back. I read that they contained nonfat milk (illegal!), whey powder (illegal!) and that they contained 7 grams of sugar per serving. But hey, if you look at the front, it says “unsweetened”. Therefore, I concluded, the amount of sugar listed on the back must have been incorrect. They must have been referring to some other sort of sugar, some sort that wouldn’t effect me at all. I thought, eh, what’s 7 grams anyway, that’s nothing! And I purposely ignored the serving size, which was 2 tablespoons. “I’ll only eat a few anyway” I said to myself.

However, since I seem to be confessing my ugliest moments here, you should know that I typically ate half the bag in one sitting. So let’s do a little math. There are 18 servings per container. 7 grams of sugar per serving. That’s 126 grams of sugar in the entire bag, so in one sitting I was eating 63 grams of sugar. 63 grams. Do you know how many grams of sugar one should be eating on this diet? 5 grams per day max! Hey, no biggie, I was only eating 12 times more sugar than I should have been. Never mind the fact that I was eating the other half of the bag later in the evening…

So what’s the moral of the story here? No matter how healthy you think something is for you, always read the grams of sugar on the back, and remember to multiply it by the serving size. Reality distortion is not useful in this context. Better to spend a few days in the fetal position and push through the sugar withdrawal than to do what I did and fall prey to supposedly “unsweetened” carob chips, or some other such false god…

3. Indulging in High-sugar Fruits and Veggies:

Just because something doesn’t have a label on it, doesn’t mean you can delude yourself into thinking it’s low in sugar. Well, you could, but that would be dumb. I should know, I’ve been dumb a lot in the past 5 years (see above). Here are some common culprits that novice Candida dieters tend to indulge in, convincing themselves that they are fine because they are nature’s own – sweet potatoes, potatoes, butternut squash, carrots, bananas, coconuts, dates, figs, sweet apples (like Fuji and Gala), pineapple, honeydew, strawberries, cherries, or any of these in the dried fruit varieties (for exact grams of sugar per fruit or veggie, go to www.dietfacts.com). At least in the first three months of the diet, you should stick to low-sugar fruits like organic berries and green apples, lemons and limes, and stay away from the high-carb veggies, choosing green veggies instead. And whatever you do, avoid dried fruits where the sugar content is significantly higher and many include sulfur dioxide, which is bad.

4. Vegetables Shmegetables:

Speaking of veggies, the Candida diet is so restrictive that it’s easy to put all your attention on what you can’t eat and very little on what you can and should. But this diet is not meant as a short-term fad-diet plan but rather a comprehensive revision of your eating habits. A lifestyle revision. As such, it’s crucial to not just take away what you can’t have but add in what you need more of. In other word, veggies. Yes, veggies. Your diet should consist of 60% vegetables. Your cells will be so thankful, they’ll do a little dance and sing your name. And when you do eat your veggies, remember that they are best eaten raw, then lightly steamed or sauteed, then frozen, and last (and best avoided) canned. Throw some organic kale (nature’s ultimate superfood) or organic baby spinach into a smoothie, make a salad, sautee some greens with onions and garlic and a bit of olive oil, make a curry sauce with a coconut milk base, or my favorite, make a soup! I eat tons of veggies in my soups, and you should too. Soups are fast, easy, delicious, and a great way to get lots of veggies in the winter months when salads are too cooling. Pick yourself up a soup book and get started, but remember to buy organic fruits and veggies if you can and substitute heavy cream for canned coconut milk and cow’s milk for unsweetened almond milk (or hemp or coconut).

5. Nut Butter Mania (and other severe quantity distortions):

In 1999, before I knew I had MS, all I knew was that something was very wrong, and in my search for an answer, I happened upon Dr. Crook’s book The Yeast Connection. I did my best to go on the diet then, but in hindsight, it might be more accurate to say I went on an unsweetened almond butter diet instead. The beauty of almond butter (or any of the “legal” nut butters like unsweetened sunflower butter) is that they are primarily fat, so they fill you up quickly, solving the what do I eat problem quite well. And, spreading them on a rice cracker with some stevia or xylitol sprinkled on top is a great way to satiate a sugar craving, as well as making for a really yummy and addictive snack. The problem, however, is that your diet should consist of no more than 10% of this kind of good fat. Too much and you’re sludging up your system and way overdosing on saturated fat. Mine was more like 90%. So eat your nut butter in moderation (as in, no more than two tablespoons a day) like all your foods. Moderation is key. Speaking of which…

6. Getting Caught in a Rut:

Because this diet is so limiting, it’s easy to find a few meals and snacks that work and stick with them. That’s good. It’s impossible to maintain this diet without enjoying what you eat, so finding dishes that work for both your taste buds and the diet is great. However, variation is essential. Most people with MS and other autoimmune diseases have food sensitivities, and eating the same thing every day is a recipe for developing more. Additionally, switching things up will limit the effects of whatever mistakes you may make, like eating veggies that are too high in sugar. If you combine a less-than-excellent food choice with extreme repetition, you’ll end up with a diet that’s not helping you heal at all, and you’ll wonder what the problem is. Plus, when you vary your food you vary the nutrients your cells receive, and that’s always good. Variety, as they say, is the spice of life.

7. Don’t let your partner go on the diet with you:

Seriously. They mean well, of course. They want to show solidarity. And that’s beautiful. However, what most people don’t realize is that sugar is a drug. A really intense drug. And the withdrawal from it will transform your loving partner into a bad, bad person. An irritable person. A cranky person. A person that cannot lovingly support you, because instead they want to join you in the fetal position and cry for brownies. So politely decline their offer, ask them to eat their treats when not in your presence, and accept their calm and still-sugar-addicted love and support. Then, once you’ve mastered the diet, if they’re still interested, you can gracefully show them how it’s done and bring them delicious sugar-free smoothies while they jones, silently thanking yourself for having already made it to the other side.

8. Going out to eat is not synonymous with “Let’s Binge!”:

Even in a restaurant, it’s possible to make sound choices that are within the bounds of your diet. You will probably not be the beneficiary of an entirely organic meal, however, in most restaurants you can eat wisely and not throw yourself far off course. Get a piece of roast chicken. A piece of fish. In a Thai or Chinese place, go for steamed veggies with brown rice. When ordering a dish with sauce, always make sure it’s gluten-free. Lucky for us all, g-free is in full effect these days, so yours will likely not be the first request they’ve had (remember that soy sauce has gluten in it). Make sure your sauce or salad dressing is not dairy based. Whatever you do, don’t order a bowl full of pasta or a heaping pile of cheese on your meal, just because you can. You’ll eat the meal in a few minutes, but regret it for days. Trust me. I speak the truth.

9. One Drink to Take the Edge Off:

No. Don’t drink alcohol ever. If you have MS, alcohol is like pouring acid on your nerves. Even if you’re doing everything else right, one glass of wine or beer or hard liquor can and will set you back significantly. It is multiple sclerosis’s #1 enemy. And incidentally, a close and well-loved friend of Candida, since most alcohol is also high in sugar and beer is just a cup full o’ yeast. In fact, some recovering alcoholics discover that their alcoholism was in part a severe craving caused by systemic Candida overgrowth. So don’t be seduced, no matter how tempting. And if you find yourself at a bar, ask for a glass of water with lemon or lime and think about how relieved your myelin sheath is that you made the right choice and spared it mass destruction.

10. Just One Piece Won’t Hurt, and Anyway I Feel Fine…:

NOOOO!!! Don’t do it!!! It’s essential to remember that when you’re not symptomatic, that’s when it’s most important to remain on the diet, because that’s when your body has the chance to do the deepest healing work. That’s when it has the chance to begin reversing your illness. I know how challenging it is to be so consistently disciplined with your diet. I know you “deserve” a piece of chocolate cake. So do I. In fact, by now I’d say I deserve a visit to Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, but hey we all know what happened to Augustus Gloop because he couldn’t resist, remember? Do you want to end up getting sucked into the inner plumbing of that wacko’s factory? No you don’t. So let’s stop talking about that right now.

But one more thing…if you go for the treat every time you feel symptom-free, you’ll never reach that next level. So next time you witness your arm reaching for that cookie, do a little intentional hallucination and watch as it turns into repulsive little Candida critters and fungi and oversized parasite cells with evil brows and drool coming out of their mouth because they’re so happy you’re finally going to feed them! See them and remind yourself that you’re not in the business of furnishing their apartment in your gut. No you are not. Now put the cookie down. Slowly. Very good. And to avoid this in the future, order yourself some sugar-free gluten-free muffin and cookie mix from Namaste Foods so you’re not without options next time a craving should strike.

Do you want to be a Goddess (or God) of diet as well? Click here to get the details on booking a private coaching session with me to help you implement the diet with grace and ease and get on the road to health now!

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Every culture and subculture has a story about what it means to be sick. Most of the time, we take on those meanings without questioning them or recognizing that it’s just one story, one reality, and that what illness means differs greatly from subculture to subculture.

In Ken Wilber’s touching and tragic book Grace and Grit, about he and his wife Treya’s battle with her cancer, he breaks down the various stories that subcultures have about illness.

I hope that in reading this simple and poignant description of the various meanings and beliefs of each subculture, you recognize which story you’ve been operating from and decide if, in fact, it’s in line with your core beliefs. If it’s not, you can simply pick one that makes more sense to you and is more useful on your healing journey. The hard part is recognizing it, the easy part is switching it.

What does illness mean? Illness is…

1. Christian – The fundamentalist message: Illness is basically a punishment from God for some sort of sin. The worse the illness, the more unspeakable the sin.

2. New Age – Illness is a lesson. You are giving yourself this disease because there is something important you have to learn from it in order to continue your spiritual growth and evolution. Mind alone causes illness and mind alone can cure it. A yuppified postmodern version of Christian Science.

3. Medical – Illness is fundamentally a biophysical disorder, caused by biophysical factors (from viruses to trauma to genetic predisposition to environmental triggering agents). You needn’t worry about psychological or spiritual treatments for most illnesses, because such alternative treatments are usually ineffectual and may actually prevent you from getting the proper medical attention.

4. Karma – Illness is the result of negative karma; that is, some nonvirtuous past actions are now coming to fruition in the form of a disease. The disease is “bad” in the sense that it represents past nonvirtue; but it is “good” in the sense that the disease process itself represents the burning up and the purifying of the past misdeed; it’s a purgation, a cleansing.

5. Psychological – As Woody Allen put it, “I don’t get angry; I grow tumors instead.” The idea is that, at least in pop psychology, repressed emotions cause illness. The extreme form: Illness as death wish.

6. Gnostic – Illness is an illusion. The entire manifest universe is a dream, a shadow, and one is free of illness only when one is free from illusory manifestation altogether, only when one awakens from the dream and discovers instead the One reality beyond the manifest universe. Spirit is the only reality, and in Spirit there is no illness. An extreme and somewhat off-centered version of mysticism.

7. Existential – Illness itself is without meaning. Accordingly it can take any meaning I choose to give it, and I am solely responsible for these choices. Men and women are finite and mortal, and the authentic response is to accept illness as part of one’s finitude even while imbuing it with personal meaning.

8. Holistic – Illness is a product of physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual factors, none of which can be isolated from the others, none of which can be ignored. Treatment must involve all of these dimensions (although in practice this often translates into an eschewal of orthodox treatments, even when they might help).

9. Magical – Illness is retribution. “I deserve this because I wished So-and so would die.” Or “I better not excel too much, something bad will happen to me.” Or, “If too many good things happen to me, something bad has to happen.” And so on.

10. Buddhist – Illness is an inescapable part of the manifest world; asking why there is illness is like asking why there is air. Birth, old age, sickness, and death – these are the marks of this world, all of whose phenomena are characterized by impermanence, suffering, and selflessness. Only in enlightenment, in the pure awareness of nirvana, is illness finally transcended, because then the entire phenomenal world is transcended as well.

11. Scientific – Whatever the illness is, it has a specific cause or cluster of causes. Some of these causes are determined, others are simply random or due to pure chance. Either way, there is no “meaning” to illness, there is only chance or necessity.

The above list was reprinted directly from Ken Wilber’s Grace and Grit.

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“What do I eat?” is the single most popular question that I hear. Want to eat to heal but don’t know how? Get a private coaching session with Karen now and find out exactly what to eat to begin healing your illness now.

This is a disturbing but essential piece of education by Robyn O’Brien at TedX Austin (2011) for anyone living in the United States and especially those with a chronic illness. Please watch it.

Photo by Pshab, Flickr

This is an intense time of year. Intensely great for some. Intensely lonely for others. However it’s showing up for you, the holiday season most definitely amplifies the challenging contours of our lives.

Despite the fact that I like to think of myself as unique, I’m actually a cliche holiday emotional mess these days (because as many of you know this year has been, for me, um, challenging, all the way up until the last few days, it seems), and so as Christmas, Hannukah, and the New Year approach, I find myself experiencing mounting pressure to understand and process the events of 2011 and consider how to make 2012 better.

A few poignant thoughts from Ann Boroch in the Autoimmune Warrior Bootcamp we recently presented are proving helpful in this endeavor, so I want to share them with you.

“The emotional, mental, psychological, spiritual layers of us are the key in turning around a chronic health condition, and it certainly was in my case.  I find the longer that I do my own practice, I realize that sometimes this is literally the answer that people, when they look for the magic fix – and I’m not saying this happens quickly – but this could be the angle that really unlocks and gets the body and cellular memory to start changing…

Stress and fear are the number one body breakers. By far, this will outweigh how bad your diet is, and if you’re not on a detoxification program, etc. I find that this is why when people are doing all that they need to be doing, they’re good soldiers, as I say, and they’re doing a Candida diet and they’re taking the supplements and they’re exercising,  they may not see enough shift in moving forward because they’re not tackling the stress in their life, the toxic relationships and/or the fears that are consuming them.”

Ann’s thoughts here get at the heart of what many of us (myself included) may sometimes forget as we obsess about the details of our recovery plans. Which mayo can I eat, how many milligrams of vitamin D should I take, can I get away with eating five potato chips, etc. We miss the forest for the trees, as the saying goes (I thought I could throw that in there, since I’m busy being cliche anyway) and we forget the larger, deeper scope of issues that need addressing.

Murky Waters

The emotional stuff is messy. I find it a lot more challenging to implement change in this realm than in my diet and supplements. That’s the easy stuff. But revising how my 9-year-old inner child sees the world? Those are the murky waters. That’s the sticky, grimy, ugly, messy, damn-I-don’t-really-want-to-navigate-this stuff. But alas, the tough stuff seems to always be where the magic is to be found. And I’ve heard rumors that the holiday season is all about magic. So maybe getting it right (or at least seeing some improvement) in 2012 is gonna be about spending more time with the grime.

So I’ll put the questions to you…

How has this year measured up for you?

What were your successes?

Where are you seeing progress?

Where have you experienced setbacks?

What can you do about them?

And most importantly…

What is the elephant in the room that you haven’t been willing to look at? Does it fall into the bin of “body breakers” Ann referred to in her quote? And if so, I’m gonna be so bold as to say that maybe you should in fact eat a bag of chips while you draw up the nerve to go visit that elephant, and maybe even jump on his back, take a ride, and see what he has to show you.

P.S. I love Michael Buble and his cover of All I Want for Christmas is my holiday anthem this year, so I’m including it here just because it’s beautiful and I feel like it.

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Yesterday we opened up access to purchase the Bootcamp as a complete pre-recorded set. The product contains 14 hours of original content, plus a full-transcript of the entire program and all the presentations in printable format. It’s got everything the live version had, but you’ll benefit from being able to instantly download the entire course so you can watch it at whatever pace suits you best.

If you choose to purchase the Bootcamp by Friday at noon, use the coupon code AWB25off to get $25 off the purchase price.

Click here for more details or to purchase the Autoimmune Warrior Bootcamp

Click here for more details or to purchase the Autoimmune Warrior Bootcamp

On a side note, nobody paid me for that plug I gave the iPhone in this clip. It really does do everything! But apparently I should be in the market for an old-fashioned alarm clock instead of sleeping with my iPhone resting “peacefully” by my head.

Enjoy the clip and stay tuned for deets on the release of the Bootcamp as a full 7-week pre-recorded set. It should be available next week.

UPDATE: Click here for details or to purchase the Autoimmune Warrior Bootcamp

Click here for more details or to purchase the Autoimmune Warrior Bootcamp

Of course, if you are living with a chronic illness the stakes are always higher, and if you’re anything like me you loathe this time of year because it forces your willpower into overdrive. Which is why it is at this precise time that I must push my creativity. I must challenge myself to find small but significant ways to feel like I am treating myself, so I don’t fall off the wagon and into a chocolate pecan pie.

This week’s answer: Cocoa Cream of Quinoa. It’s a delicious breakfast or late night treat that approximates the feeling of drinking hot chocolate, but instead of a cup full of sugar and dairy it’s very healthy, very delicious, and 100% sugar and dairy free. This is actually a new, more indulgent version of a recipe I shared in the Autoimmune Warrior Bootcamp, spruced up for the holidays. To me, it feels decadent. If you are used to eating sugar and chocolate and cake, your taste buds will most likely disagree and you will think I’m a deprived and sad creature. But the fact is, it keeps me away from the pie.

One of the benefits of cutting sugar out of your diet is that it takes a lot less to satisfy that sweet tooth. Which is a good thing, so don’t judge me. One woman’s blech is another woman’s yum.

So I want to share this quick and delicious recipe with you in the hopes that it might help you stay on track with your healthy eating commitments as well, and help us all stay symptom-free and vibrant throughout the holiday season.

Cocoa Cream of Quinoa

Ingredients:

1/3 cup Ancient Harvest Quinoa Flakes (available in most health food stores and online)

1 cup unsweetened almond milk (Blue Diamond or Pacific)

1 teaspoon raw cacao powder (available at Whole Foods and online)

2 droplets full NuNaturals Liquid Stevia (available online and in some health food stores)

Directions:

Pour almond milk in saucepan, cover, and heat on high until boiling. Quickly add quinoa flakes (before the milk overflows). Reduce heat to medium and stir frequently for 90 seconds. Turn off heat, add stevia and cacao powder and mix well. Serve and enjoy! And play with the amounts of stevia and cacao powder until it’s exactly how you like it.

Did you make it? Did you like it? Share your thoughts in the comments section.

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Now that the course is complete, I want to share some of my favorite excerpts with you. The video below is from last week’s class. While the majority of the course focused on issues such as diet, detox, and supplements, this final class was all about the emotional/pscyhological/spiritual component of healing.

This particular section is about how to get through those moments where we are just “hanging by a thread.” While Ann is specifically addressing that intense rock-bottom space that many of us have experienced at some point, what she says here is relevant and useful even if you’re feeling great and even if you don’t have an illness at all. Which is why I chose it. I hope you find it as interesting and valuable as I did.

Next week we’ll be releasing the entire 14-hour bootcamp for purchase. More on that in the next few days but for now, enjoy the video!

Update: Click here for more details or to purchase the Autoimmune Warrior Bootcamp

Click here for more details or to purchase the Autoimmune Warrior Bootcamp

As a result of the emails I received, Devon and I spent some time discussing what we could give all y’all to help manage fear when it creeps in. We agreed that his 6 minute and 20 second “Life Altering Relaxation” audio (that he created and released on his website last year) would be perfect, since it was met with much praise for being an extremely effective and valuable tool.

“One of the most important things in the world is your ability to relax,” said Devon. If you’re harangued by fear, anxiety, stress, bad beliefs, negative self talk, self-doubt, all of that stuff is held and run in your muscles … This audio will help take you very deep, very quickly … You’ll come back and feel incredibly relaxed and able to release fear.”

Check out the short video below in which Devon and I discuss this audio and why we think it’ll be so valuable for you. And then, follow the link below the video to go get the free audio for yourself!

CLICK HERE to get your FREE Life-Altering Relaxation Audio from Devon White.