Uncooking: An Interview with Gabriel Cousens, M.D.

Dr. Cousens is a best selling author of many books, including Spiritual Nutrition , Conscious Eating , Rainbow Green Live-Food Cuisine , Sevenfold Peace , Depression-Free for Life , and Tachyon Energy: A New Paradigm in Holistic Healing, co-authored with David Wagner.  Gabriel's next anticipated book is Spiritual Fasting .  He is the host of the radio programs, Physician of the Soul and Creating Peace by Being Peace, and he facilitates the spiritual, nutritional, and lifestyle support tele-seminars, "Alive With Gabriel."  Dr. Cousens is recognized through his books, media, worldwide role as a teacher, transformative programs at the Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center, and as the leading medical authority in the world on live-food nutrition.

1) What is a raw food diet?

Food in its alive state is a raw food diet. This food's subtle organizing energy field (SOEF), its bio-photon energy, and its life force continue to flow through the living cells of this food as we eat it. It gives our body and mind the charge of life as it integrates into our systems.

The optimal live food diet is authentic, meaning, in-tune with the seasons and from the local geography, organic (authentic organic food is beyond what some companies are increasingly managing to pass as “organic”), low-glycemic, highly mineralized, well-hydrated, and grown and prepared with love.

2) What happens to the nutrient quality of food when it is cooked?

a) Water is lost. Water is one of the essential solvents that keeps food full of life force.

b) Enzymes, which are the catalysts for digestion, absorption, and metabolism, and biological reactions throughout the body, are de-natured, which means they are forced out of their living structure. In the sense that enzymes are alive when they serve the purpose of life at living temperatures, when they are de-natured, they are killed. Without living enzymes in food, the body is forced to tap its own enzyme stores, diverting energy away from body maintenance into the energy needed to digest food instead.

c) Vitamins and phyto-nutrients are destructured and some turned into toxins.

d) Bio-photon vibrations are heated away from the organized harmony that is characteristic of life, and made disordered and chaotic. What our body tissues couldn't withstand and survive, neither can our nutrition. Details about this are in Spiritual Nutrition .

3) What are the benefits of eating a primarily raw diet?

An individualized, balanced live food diet helps prepare the body and mind to fulfill the purpose of your life. Lasting joy, independent of life's temporary, external circumstances, in life is supported by the live-food diet's way of helping you feel connected with life. The body and mind are cleansed of toxins. Minerals give your body flexibility and your consciousness added perceptivity. Your overall calorie intake will drop, which eases the strain and drain of the digestive system. Caloric intake will drop because the nutritional richness in live food signals to your brain that you have taken sufficient nutrition with less actual mass of food.

4) Is 100% raw healthy? Are there tips to make sure you get enough protein and energy from a primarily raw diet?

100% raw and vegan is healthy for many, many people, perhaps 99% of the people on earth. Fewer than that will choose it, however. Even in choosing all raw food, though, it is important to individualize your diet according to your genetic constitution, current health, and lifestyle committed to communion with life. Again, ways to make more certain of the healthfulness of your live-food diet is to choose, low glycemic, mineral-rich, organic food, and an individualized diet to your constitution and physiology.

5) What are the staples of a raw food diet? What kind of kitchen equipment is needed?

To make a point, a Tree of Life teacher is currently writing a book that includes the following (and I paraphrase): “Steps to a live food diet: Go to organic grocery or farmer's market. Buy vegetables, seeds, fruits, and nuts. Eat. Refrigerate the rest. For example: Buy avocado. Cut in half. Scoop with spoon, and eat.”

Of course, a refrigerator is necessary unless you live in a grocery store. Next, a sprout tray allows you to grow sprouts right at home that are so fresh, alive, and healthy, it's unbelievable. A simple food processor allows you to make pates from nuts and seeds. A blender or juicer is good for making juices, smoothies, and “mylks” out of seeds, nuts, fruits, and seasonings.

6) Can you explain why organic is such an important choice in one's diet?

Organic food is grown with soil made rich and balanced by natural composting processes. In comparison, non-organic food uses petroleum fertilizer which has only 3 of the 72 natural minerals, pesticides (which are neurotoxins for humans as well as insects), and increasingly often, genetic engineering. Therefore, one should select organic food because minerals and nutrient content are higher—and the taste is better—and the body relates to it on a deeper level. Produce genetically modified to be seedless, for convenience, simply doesn't have life vibration that an organic crop, full of seeds and life force, has. Because the organic standards are increasingly being watered down by large corporations trying to mass produce organic produce, an enthusiast of organic food will also look for local, authentic, organic food. Many times you need only ask a local organic grocer to purchase from local organic farms, which benefits everyone in your community, keeps the food from having to be shipped long-distance (and thereby, lose its freshness and begin to go rancid) and reduces the need for trucks to travel long distances instead of more efficient, local use of resources. It takes 1000 years for the earth to produce on inch of natural topsoil; authentic organic farming protects and, in proper cultivation, rebuilds, the topsoil.

7) Is having a raw food diet time consuming? Is it feasible for someone with a full-time job and 2 children? What is the time commitment?

A raw food diet is not time consuming, and it is entirely feasible for someone with a full time job and children, but it does require clear decisions.

This is why we teach the hands-on courses including Conscious Eating and Arizona Live, as well as the Spiritual Live-Food Apprenticeship Program at the Tree of Life.

8) Does one need to give up their social life in order to become raw? Can they still frequent restaurants and social engagements?

Each person has their own way of adjusting to this dimension of live food. For some it's a very personal change that doesn't require a lot of social adjustment at all; they eat for themselves and the change hardly effects their social life. Other's are actively creative in designing ways to keep their social life and their raw food; they discover a local live-food restaurant, or they invite friends over for a live-food banquet. Still others have a change of social life, in which the live-food community becomes a social scene of its own.

9) What advice would you give someone contemplating a raw food diet? Can you share some tips for those thinking about a raw food diet, or raw food newbies?

Remember the purpose in every moment: to connect with life; to feel the energy of the planet and the nourishing sun; to become a superconductor of that energy in order to live as our optimal path and become the living peace we visualize on the planet. We eat to internalize the blessings our heart wishes to give.

10) What inspired you to become raw in diet? Were you formally trained?

Gabriel has an M.D. from Columbia University, and is an Arizona-Licensed Homeopathic Physician. He earned a Diplomate of Ayurveda (meaning a specialty in the ancient science of food-energy balancing that developed in India, and is a certified member of the Board of Holistic Physicans.

In medical school, he realized that to realize his life-long dream of being a healer, he would have to learn about spiritual, mental, and physical health. In contrast, at Columbia he was being taught about pathology. He realized he would have to look elsewhere to learn how to support and sustain optimal health. He was led to the raw food diet when a strong, clear intuition instructed him to “learn to eat and live to support human awakening.”

11) What is a typical day's diet for you?

This is shared in the recipes in the book, Rainbow Green Live-Food Cuisine (Cousens, MD).

12) What are some of your favorite raw foods?

Sprouts, avocado, tomato, Himalayan salt or Celtic Sea salt. Living, natural, charged water (see Spiritual Nutrition about charging water).

13) What are your feelings about the popular Atkins diet?

First one has to set, or really get familiar with, their purpose in choosing food. To feel more connected with the purpose of humanity, being to uplift the world into a more peaceful, respectful, enlightened period of history, one eventually must choose whether animal death and abuse is something they want to participate in and make part of their body-brain system. There is wisdom in Genesis 1:29, which says that the food we were designed for is the vegetable kingdom. I am glad people are open to alternatives, and am glad to see that this openness expanding even further today and into the future.

14) Can you share some information about the healing qualities of food as medicine? Do you feel that a raw food diet helps to remedy colds, fevers, headaches, body pains, allergies, etc? Do you feel that raw foods calm the mind?

Many food allergies are actually our bodies responses to foods when our digestive system has become too clogged or tired to digest them. The liver and gall bladder are two digestive organs that store toxins. As toxins build up in them, they compromise these organs' digestive functions, such as the release of enzymes. Then, undigested food remains in the intestines, which not only decay and release harmful “allergy”-causing toxins, but also block absorption of necessary nutrients through the intestinal wall. So not only are some of what we think of as allergies really the result of our clogged digestive system's impaired ability to digest, but also some infectious sicknesses, painful inflammations, and chronic degenerative states themselves are caused by the toxins of undigested, decaying food in the intestines.

Gabriel's M.D. is in Psychiatry, and he has also explored the mind deeply in meditation practice. We know that one's state of mind is impacted by the biological terrain of the brain and nervous system. The Bio-Brain Balance is a test that shows the addictions of the brains, which contribute to over-attachments, compulsions, obsessions, irritability, and despair. A balanced brain biology supports the cultivation of a state of spiritual at-oneness, in which the mind is a tool of pure consciousness, rather than the mind's chaotic patterns overwhelming consciousness.

15) Do you feel that diet is related to environmental issues, and if so, how?

Nutrition provides the energy to raise human consciousness. The closer our food to the Earth, the more consciousness we bring to each choice throughout the day and our whole lives. These conscious choices ripples out in bigger ways than we are aware off. Just as many religions say that “saving one person saves the whole world,” so to, as our consciousness expands, so does the effect of our lives on the living planet.

Food is a love note from God and Mother Earth. Unfortunately, many of us, on a daily basis, read an out of date, processed, cooked, and bleached love note. This causes a human's and a culture's consciousness to become out of sync with the planet. Being in sync makes us more aware of where and how we build, what resources we consume, how we travel, what products we use, who we vote for, and what example we set for others. The best ways to get in sync are the Six Foundations from Spiritual Nutrition . Alongside meditating, community involvement, service, exercise, time in nature, studying great inspirational works, and having a spiritual teacher, an optimal live-food diet and spiritual green-juice fasting is a crucial aspect of the Six Foundations that help our whole being be one with the living planet.

Humans in dire need to sustain their own bodies, which number about a billion people—with over 40,000,000 per year dying from malnutrition, including 15,000,000 children—comprise the majority of some entire nations who are not able to give their light to the environmental cause, because of malnourishment. These same billion people, if food were available for them, are a billion people who know the importance of the living planet.

Now, if only 10% of the meat-eating world became vegetarian, there would be the amount of food required to feed these people freed up from cattle land. Even less land is use by being a live-food vegan because live food packs more nutrition, and less volume of food is needed for nutrition. Furthermore, the more we are living on the light energy in living plant food, the more our natural emotions come out, which is to receive in order to share, and to feel a non-causal joy and to delight in the well-being of the whole as one.

Rainforests : On live-food, we tend to experience the need to reverse the destruction of the rainforests as more than an abstraction. As our spirits reawaken we realize that destroying the rainforests for grazing land is a crime against us all that is perpetuated by global, social unconsciousness.

Soil Erosion: It takes 1000 years for one inch of natural soil to be formed. Because of totally unnatural, petroleum-based fertilizer farming in the plains and valleys of the U.S., erosion of nutrients has decimated the topsoil. Authentic organic farming, working in symphony with the seasonal cycles, especially with activated microorganisms assisting in the composting, actually helps stop the depletion of the soil and begins to regenerate topsoil.

Toxins in synthetic fertilizers and pesticides not only throw the natural ecosystem out of balance, but also effect health. It is strongly recommended for a mother to do a juice-fast detoxification program before getting pregnant and to stay on an all organic, optimal living-food diet during pregnancy and breastfeeding. Toxins in the human reproductive systems are compromising the health of our babies. The dramatic rise in autism, ADD, ADHD, and more are directly linked to toxins in food. Animal offspring defects are also increasing.

By being vegan, even more so than consuming organic meat, we decrease the consumption of toxins because animals bio-accumulate toxins. This is because many toxins are soluble in fat tissue, which plants do not have but animals do.

By being hydrated by the living, structured water of optimal live food, and blessing this food before, as, and after we eat it, we are actually healing, according quantum physics, all the water on the planet. Because the biosphere is composed of water in the solid, liquid, and gaseous state, the energy we put into water gets carried by vibration to all the water on Earth. By reviving the water in this energetic way, fish and microorganisms in natural water are more able to thrive and recover from the damage we have done.

Emotions : As people with dogs know, the animal and plant world responds to our emotions. We literally help the ecosystem thrive by being joyful. Live-food turns on the biochemistry that supports joy, caring, and love.

Basically, live-food teaches us to be “efficient” with our bodies, giving us the foundation for being efficient and fair in what we take away from the planet. Taking in optimal nutrition saves the body unneeded digestive and eliminative work costs; it honors the body. This is also how to honor the living planet, by living in a way in which we naturally delight in taking only as much as what the planet offers in that moment.

16) Can you imagine a world do you think we'd see if everybody ate raw? What would change?

This is a common question, and I must say I truly don't think about a world (in my lifetime or later) where everyone eats raw. I think everyone eating vegan is a more accurate place to envision. Those who will eat raw in our day or the near future will do so out of recognizing their special opportunity, that they live in a situation where abundant, organic, fresh live food is available. They will use this privilege to help uplift humanity from a time of ignorance, greed, and cruelty to a time of knowing the Divine and receiving in order to share.

There would be enough food to feed the world seven times over if the whole world were vegan. The reduction in cattle grazing lands would help restore the rich soil, savannas, and forests. The eradication of animal death for unnecessary human consumption would shift the current consciousness of death and taking to one of life and sharing.

17) What advice would you give to someone with cancer or another serious illness that is eating a typical American diet with meat, dairy, caffeine, sugar and processed foods?

Challenges, as is attested by many people who struggle with a disease or who have healed, are often a very powerful experience that make one awaken to his or her true identity. Often they come to realize the purpose of being is to know the blissful Divine Kiss and to carry out one's sacred design, and realize that fulfilling this purpose is compromised by sickness. By taking one sincere step towards connecting with your Divine walk, you might see that living and eating in a way that is most compassionate and most supportive for joyful abundant health, is also the original and continuing cosmic blueprint for humanity.

18) Why do you think this type of diet isn't promoted more within our society if it is known to have such healing qualities?

For some it hurts to feel closer to who we really are. The layers of mistaken identity (“ klipot” in Kabbalistic terminology), in our society are deep; many think they are what the media tells them they are—consumers, subjects, machines, victims, their jobs, their grudges, etc. However, we are making progress towards a mass awakening to the pure consciousness that is the truth of who we are. Eating from the earth, the farmer's market, or the authentic organic produce bin brings people into contact with the life of nature. This challenges the tendency to remain in the mistaken identity of a sterile, packaged, processed, and artificially grown illusion. As we become more spiritually ready, the spiritual nutrition diet becomes more well known.

19) Where do you see the raw food movement heading?

The movement is heading towards global awakening to the Divine Mystery and appreciation for all that is. This is spoken of in ancient scriptures, and remains the ultimate vision today. The live-food movement creates the biological terrain, climate, and internal ecology in people that allows consciousness to enter and expand, leading to peace with the body, mind, family, community, all cultures, the living planet, and the Divine.

20) Tell us about your work at The Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center? What classes and retreats are available?

Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center (please see http://www.treeoflife.nu ) , an Oasis for Awakening and Spiritual Inspiration, is a place of physical, emotional, mental and spiritual rejuvenation.  Explore our powerful, healing and transformational programs including workshops, educational programs, holistic medical support and spa services.  Our distinctive whole person healing promises to bring renewal and guidance in a thorough health screen.  You may come to the Tree of Life 365 days a year for a meal, a day or even a three-month renewal on every level.  You may purchase the best products personally selected by Dr Cousens in our Awakened Living Shoppe online or in person.  This site is your doorway to a world of the finest information on nutrition, rejuvenation, and healing for spiritual nutrition.

Daily inspiration any day of the year: Live Food Cafe, Yoga, Evening Meditations and Spiritual Q&A, Hot Tubs, Sauna, Food Prep Classes, Spiritual and Nutritional Q&A..

The energetic matrix that holds the Tree of Life together is our Spiritual Foundation . The purpose of the foundation and everything we do here is to provide the space for people to awaken to their spiritual truth. We honor the dharma of each individual and through cleansing and purifying mind, body and spirit we are better able to see our individual divine blueprint.

Once we create peace within we then begin to create peace in the world. We live as an example integrating all the elements and forces: fresh air, pure water, organic food and supportive spiritual community. All aspects of the Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center incorporate this spiritual foundation to bring light and peace to all seven levels of Peace: peace with body, peace with mind, peace with family, peace with Humanity, Peace with Culture, Peace with Earthly Mother and Peace with Heavenly Father.

We deeply incorporate the teachings of the ancients which is integrated and discussed in Gabriel's latest book Spiritual Nutrition, The Six Foundations for Spiritual Life and Awakening of Kundalini. The six foundations are:

1. Spiritual Nutrition
2. Building prana (life force)
3. Service (sheirut) and charity (tzedaka)
4. Spiritual Guidance and Inspiration
5. Silence
6. Kundalini Awakening: Shaktipat initiation (S'micha le'shefa/Haniha)

Rainbow Green Live-Food Cuisine is an evolutionary rejuvenative diet of 100% organic, vegan-vegetarian, Kosher, gourmet, international, low-glycemic, live-food cuisine prepared to support your healing on all levels. Enjoy this vibrant cuisine in the beautiful, natural setting of the Tree of Life Café. We provide 2-3 meals a day during your stay .

Conscious Living Food Preparation - We offer food 5 preparation classes each week to support you in bringing Rainbow Green Live-Food Cuisine home with you. These include: crackers, nut mylk, granola, brownies, challah and sprouting . For more in depth food prep skills please consider the Conscious Eating Intensive

Kali Ray TriYoga® is a systematic method which includes the full spectrum of traditional Yoga practices. TriYoga's methodology, “TriYoga Flows,” is the union of postures, breath, and focus (asana, pranayama, and mudra) allowing the inherent Flow to emerge. By the nature of its origin, this trinity practice is deeply meditative, promoting relaxation and inner peace. The method is as therapeutic and gentle or as challenging as desired because the flows are systematized by level. Students may progress from basic to advanced levels increasing their flexibility, strength, endurance, and knowledge of the flows. Yoga classes are taught by Shanti GoldsCousens, Senior Instructor of TriYoga, and the Tree of Life's certified Yoga instructors.

Sunset Fire Ceremonies help one attune with the cycle of the day, move into the yin part of the evening, and deeply connect with the living Earth.

Evening Meditations - Conscious living is a balance of body, mind, and spirit in our daily lives. As we enter the yin cycle of the day, meditation moves us into the Divine Presence of who we are, reminding us of this essential truth that we often have forgotten during the day. In this 40 minute meditation we collectively create world peace by being peace. (Please see the Peace Every Day Initiative founded by Gabriel for more information on this practice of creating peace by being peace.) Three nights per week, the Evening Meditation program includes Satsang, a time for spiritual questions and answers with Gabriel and Shanti.

Spiritual Gardening – We offer the opportunity (upon request) to experience getting in touch with the Earth through our Spiritual Gardening and Sacred Landscaping (Nature Farming) lead by Chip Fieberg. Chip is an expert on “EM” (effective microorganisms) gardening and technology and organic Nature Farming.

Labyrinth - Enjoy the primordial spiritual experience of the world's largest Chartres Labyrinth as it helps to guide you to the mystery of your inner world.

Hot Tubs – Receive the healing benefits of soaking in our chlorine-free, therapeutic EM ("effective microorganisms") infused hot tubs. Watch for shooting stars under clear Arizona skies.

Infra Red Sauna offers the benefits of heat, and most importantly the powers of infra-red. Because of resonant absorption properties of infra-red, the water in the cells is energized at a frequency that increases the cells ability to detoxify. The benefits, according to research, include: release of heavy metals, pesticides and herbicides, the reduction of cellulite, benefits to the skin, improvement of the cardiovascular system, and strengthening of the immune system.

Weekly Offerings

Homa (fire ceremony) (Monday Evening)—Chanting an ancient sanscrit mantra around a sacred fire creates a powerful vibration that assists us to purify the mind and burn up that which no longer serves us. Followed by Shaktipat/Smicha le'shefa Meditation with Gabriel.

Shaktipat/Smicha le'shefa Meditation (Monday Evening) is a profound opportunity to awaken the Kundalini energy which is also the ancient Kabalistic-Essene prophetic energy (This energy is the inherrant spiritualizing force within each of us that often lies dormant until awakened.) Gabriel has been instructed and empowered by his spiritual teachers to be a vehicle for this potentially life changing initiation and transmission of energy.

Conscious Living Question and Answer Session (Tuesday & Thursday Afternoons) - To assist with the integration of your experiences during your program, we include two question and answer sessions each week, with Gabriel Cousens, M.D., M.D.(H), Dip. Ayurveda, or in his absense, one of our senior staff members.

Yogic Chanting (Wednesday Evening) lead by members of the Tree of Life's Simcha band. Devotional singing opens our hearts to the Divine.

Shamanic Essene-Kabalistic Shabbat Celebration (Friday Evening) is a mystical enlivening of this ancient profound invocation of the feminine aspect of he Divine (Shekinah). The ceremony is accompanied by ritual, spiritual stories, music, song, and dance with the Simcha band. The ceremony is lead by Gabriel, who received rabbinical initiation by Rabbi Gerson Winkler as a spiritual teacher in the Living Jewish Way.

Havdalah Meditation and Ceremony (Saturday Evening) marks the end of Shabbat and the beginning of the week. It is a way of setting the intention to live in awakened consciousness throughout the week.

Moon & Sun Cycle Offerings

New Moon Sweat Lodge (Inipi) – A Native American spiritual purification experience in the Lakota tradition lead by “Yellow Horse” (Gabriel's Lakota name).

Women's Circle (new moon) As women, we gather to honor and invoke the sacred feminine energy (Shekinah) through ritual, poetry, stories, dance, song and sharing of our hearts. Lead by Shanti.

Peace 21 (World Peace Meditation) held on each equinox and solstice around the globe.

Yearly Cycle of Jewish Sacred Celebrations

Note : As part of their purpose in the world, Gabriel and Shanti often travel offering teachings world-wide. While they are away from the Tree, spiritual programs (with the exception of Satsang and Shaktipat) are facilitated by Gabriel's Senior Spiritual Students.

A Sample Day during your Tree of Life Experience

* Times of the Evening Program vary with the setting of the sun

Experience the Tree of Life 365 days a year

The "Tree of Life Experience" is our ongoing program for cultivating personal harmony and rejuvenation. These programs are available to everyone staying at the center whatever your type of stay. You will find inspiration and wonder in the high desert enhanced by our lifestyle approach to whole person awakening. During your Tree of Life Experience you will cultivate the valuable skills and new perspectives that will empower you to return home and continue living in a way that supports a life of joy and inner peace. The spiritual energy is very powerful and as you heal you may feel the heat of spiritual renewal, which can at times be uncomfortable. : )

For more information about a raw food diet and Dr. Gabriel Cousens, visit the Tree of Life website at: http://www.treeoflife.nu

Published Link: Coming Soon!

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