While I don't regularly drink coffee, my more recent times drinking it has shown me that it can be used as an accelerator for spiritual connectedness and creative insights.

It can connect you to the moment in a powerful way.. It seems to turn the headlights on of consciousness.. Allowing focus to be directed inward.

Coffee can momentarily get you in "the zone" where you are naturally more in the moment.  When there, it can be easier to notice the love that always was.. As long as you attune your mind to it.  Coffee may amplify the signal of awareness but it is up to you how you use that experience.

Nutritionist David Wolfe does have some great insights about how to more effectively use coffee.. With an anti-stimulant herb or sea salt.  These can help to lessen the effect of coffee on the adrenals and promote a more balanced effect.  Reishi Mushroom and He Shou Wu are two such herbs.  You can get these in our online store.

Still, coffee is not for everyone. When I have it, it is usually in an out of the blue fashion and I am interested in the effect it has.. Knowing it may have a vitality sapping effect in the long term.

Meditation happens naturally when we stop trying to impose our thoughts on the moment.  Our beliefs can shield us from experiencing the calm energy of NOW.  To get beyond them in order to experience the AMAZEMENT of your soul and beyond you just need to LET GO of the feelings behind the beliefs and thoughts.

This practice instantly moves you into a higher state.. Toward effortless meditation.

You develop a more focused, yet adaptable mindset.

This CARRIES you into DEEP meditation.  The type that leaves you feeling as if you transcended your own form.

You can access these states of power just by letting go.  It really is that easy.  The key is actually letting go of the feelings that are keeping down.  Pretending that you let something go just keeps it suppressed.

The more you let go, the more you are free.

When you clear enough of the clutter, you'll be able to consciously connect to that higher state without having to let go to get there.  Continuous letting go will definitely bring you further and further but you can also choose to focus on your sense of spirit within and be drawn up into a "high state".  Increasing will power can help with this quality of direct focus. 

Superfoods and tonic herbs can bring in that sense of increased focus ability, allowing you to direct your energy toward transcendence.

You can get various high quality superfoods and herbs in our online store by clicking on the store page.

I'd suggest Reishi Mushroom extract as a wonderful herb for increased senses of spiritual transcendence.. Drawing you up higher into your true self.  From there, you can just notice a sense of contentment that exists within you underneath your emotions.  That noticing of something higher within you is meditation.

This is a true Shen (spirit) herb.
 The Shen Stabilizers like Bupleurum and Dragon Bone can further help by grounding and calming the mind.. Allowing Shen (spirit) to grow.

Pearl powder does this beautifully as well.. If you want to relax into the moment, check it out!

Meditation Tip: Direct your mind inward toward your heart or "third eye" with a sense of love each day and take one or more tonic herbs or superfoods that increase your spiritual abilities and focus.  You'll find a profound awakening occurring that shines a light on each moment.

Eventually, you can notice a sense of expansion beyond your physical form.  As you focus during meditation, you can connect to this.

Please check out our store to learn about or buy some of the products mentioned in this article.  They can really promote meditation ability (as long as you can safely take them).

You're on your way! Keep up the amazing work and notice the beauty within you.

Have you found yourself unable to complete a task that you've set out to do?  What can you do in that situation?  In my experience, there are 3 main options: 

1. Distract yourself with something more pleasurable.

2. Try to work harder and use more effort.

3. Strategically work "stronger" by letting your motivation rise, which will radically increase your power and output without a sense of depletion due to overwork.

I choose the third choice because it more allows you to tap into your true potential. Trying to push yourself up a mountain, especially a boring mountain that tires you out from the start, can be very unsatisfying to the spirit.  That's not to say, though, that you shouldn't do things you don't initially love doing such as work tasks etc. but that you can upgrade your experience and creative output, allowing the experience to seem more effortless.

When we're in the flow, work is less work and more of a harmonious series of actions.  You don't have to be bound by the monotonous aspect of the task, pulling you into feelings of boredom and low energy.  You can choose to rise higher and feel a good about it.

Here's how:

Think of something that instantly draws your attention to a higher energy state. This is especially powerful if it's something you want to attain and you feel inspired about. Then add in a potent superfood or herb that you feel works well with you well on an energetic level.  This can help to amplify those feelings of enthusiasm so that you can sustain them for longer periods of time.  Many of them naturally encourage subtle increases in feel-good neurotransmitters that allow us to access creative states of mind more easily.  This can PROPEL you into a state of utter flow.... Where the moment appears to be more of a clean slate and opportunities seem to be in view.  From there, just the notion of a sense of possible progress toward your creative envision can be enough to fuel your work day as long as you remember to actively keep your vibe up and direct that energy toward your task.

Meditation is an incredible experience.  Not only can it ease you of stress by connecting you to the moment, but it can transform your entire experience as you notice your true inner connection to life.  There are many ways to practice this, luckily, and each will probably be better suited to different people.  If you'd like to experience a natural state of intense meditation fairly quickly, however, and you are not yet adept at the practice of meditation, I'll share with you some of my favorite and most powerful ways I know.  Without having to practice meditation for long periods of time, you can re awaken your natural state of deep connection.  All it takes is letting go and then noticing your inner state blossoming into something higher.  From there, while you are in that natural state of contentment, meditation is just a choice or a point of focus.

The Sedona Method is a technique that I highly recommend for learning how to let go.  Still, the following ideas can help you with this and promote the ability to meditate.

If you can just notice the stress that is keeping you from experiencing contentment in this moment, you can choose to allow it to release by reversing your resistance toward it.  By fully feeling it and letting it be there for the moment instead of trying to push it away, you can allow it to move up and out.  The result, often, is a feeling of contentment and relief.  You might notice a sense of something higher in yourself.  If you can tune into or connect with that, you will naturally be in a meditative state that is essentially free of thoughts.  From there, you can deepen that by noticing any sense of energy flow within you and a greater inner connection to the world around you.

I'd also suggest considering taking any tonic herb that you feel suits you.  These, especially Reishi Mushroom, are well known to promote inner contentment and the awakening of spirituality.  You can find these products at our online store which offers fast, inexpensive shipping on all orders.

Additionally, as noted in other articles, cacao can be very helpful for generating a state of mind conducive to letting go and meditation.  While high quality raw cacao is usually the best option, dark chocolate can also do wonders.  Its love imparting qualities can often promote the ability to surrender to the moment and leave you with a lasting understanding of being in the The Now.  For some though, chocolate might not be the right option and a green smoothie or green juice might fit your nutritional needs better and help you to enter a state of relaxation.  Find what works for you.  Again, though, these foods and herbs are aids that can help point you in the direction of meditation.  They are not necessary for everyone and meditation is essentially connecting with your deeper awareness, which goes well beyond what you eat.  Still, diet can play a role in allowing you to more easily access states of being conducive to meditation.

Letting go is a profound way to experience greater levels of well being.  Here are 5 ways that it can increase the quality of your life:

1. Increased energy - letting go naturally releases the energy that is often kept in place by our inner blocks.  When we let go, this energy become available to us and naturally circulates, creating an increase in vitality.

2. Increased clarity - letting go allows us to remove the inner obstacles to higher knowing and understanding.

3. Increased abundance - Often times, letting go leads to greater external abundance in some way since we can more easily feel ready to receive abundance or opportunities for greater abundance.

4. Increased sense of spirituality - letting go releases more and more of our attachment to our ego's needs and desires.  Spirituality flourishes when our energy flow is not obstructed by these feelings and attachments.

5. Increased overall health - letting go naturally increases overall well-being and vitality which promotes the expansion of greater health.

Becoming who you truly want to be is one of the most satisfying things you can do.  So when you are in need of a little hope or motivation, picture the most empowering vision you can set for yourself and realize that it is attainable with persistence and letting go.  As those into intention manifestation know, there is power to our goals and creativity.  Focusing on what we want to be and where we want to go, with pure enthusiasm and a sense of aliveness and creativity, can seem to draw out our untapped resources to attain our goal.  The inspiration generated from even a moment of the belief in the possibility of receiving our intention can set a new directions for us.  Inspiration is the fuel that propels us into "the flow", where creativity and innovation exist in abundance.  When you feel more flowing, you'll likely notice more ideas to bring your desire into reality.

Furthering this idea, you can get more connected to the moment by letting go of your attachments and aversions to the goal.  This is something featured in The Sedona Method and can allow you to release the inner blocks to feeling ready to act on or receive your goals and desires.  You can also release any doubt that you notice about your ability to have or be whatever your goal is.

Furthermore, tonic herbs and super foods can help to take your vitality and creativity level to a place where you feel more ready act on you goals.  Many of them also help you to feel more "in the moment" and inspired.  Not every one will necessarily work well for every person but many people can benefit from taking them.

You can buy high quality tonic herbal extracts at our online store.

Chris Kendall is a holistic nutritionist who is passionate about the raw food diet, particularly the 80 10 10 style of raw veganism.  We spoke with him about fruit, the 80 10 10 diet, being in the moment and other related topics.  If you're considering going on a fruit-based diet, this interview is for you.

Q.  What led you to start eating a raw vegan diet?

A.  Really I got into raw veganism because it simply made sense on all levels and I could tell it was what I was looking for. By the time I went raw, I had been transitioning to a high raw low fat vegan already, had been studying and applying health principals for 5 years, and was half way through my schooling to become an RHN, registered holistic nutritionist. Initially I got into "health" for athleticism.

Q.  What is your personal approach to eating raw?

A.  Simple as simple can be. I eat the whole fresh raw ripe fruits and veggies that I love the absolute most with no restriction. I enjoy mono meals, as well as simple recipes, such as in my "101 Frickin' Rawsome Recipes" ebook by donation, or slightly more "transitional," as in my upcoming "TRA Retreat Treats" recipe book. In general I get my calories from fruit, enjoy lots of greens and fruit veggies and smaller amounts of fatty fruits, nuts and seeds. 80/10/10 :)

Q.  What were some of the initial and long term benefits that you've experienced since eating raw?

A.  As I had already been clearing out for awhile, I felt a instant burst of energy and a much deeper connection to self, others and divine, knowing all was really one. As time went on, joint pains, depression, candida, body odor, rough skin, lethargy all dissipated and left! 

Q.  Do you feel that there is a connection between diet, especially a raw vegan diet, and practices like meditation, yoga, and tai chi?

A.  I do feel that a simple low fat raw vegan diet is the highest vibrational and sustainable food based diet one can thrive on. As such it allows one to tune in and become mindful of various levels of vibrations within and without, potentially having a huge impact on any energetic, mindful practice or art. 

Q.  How do you feel about frozen fruit?  Do you think it can be an adaquate source of nutrition for those who cannot easily access, or afford to eat, ripe, non-frozen fruit?

A.  While I personally would prefer to have the vast majority of my fruit fresh, I recognize that freezing food is the best method of preservation with the least nutrient damage possible. Since raw fruit and tender young greens make up our most nutritious food sources per calorie by far, frozen fruit would be number two. I use frozen foods from time to time, usually blended into fresh, being mindful to chew and swallow when at body temperature. Swallowing cold foods/drink is hard on digestion, as well as some beneficial bacteria in our GI. 

Q.  What are some of the foods that you find yourself, or your coaching clients, eating the most?

A.  Sweet juicy fruit!!! Bananas, mangos, melons, grapes, tomatoes, dates, mmm sooo much, all flowing with personal preference and the seasons :)

Q.  How do you feel about blended foods?  What is a favorite recipe of yours?

A.  I go through days, weeks and months blending often or not at all, preference fruit availability and in the moment needs come into play. Whole food has many benefits, blending foods has benefits too! Hmmm… one of my favorite simple recipes is orange creamsicle, equal parts honeydew and orange juice, otherwise my "presto sun dried tomato pesto," both in my "101 Frickin' Rawsome Recipes".

Q.  What are some of the areas that you focus on with your coaching clients besides diet?

A.  While diet is often a subject talked on, the emotional, social, and spiritual side of improving ones lifestyle more often than not comes up. I really feel the raw diet is a vortex of positive change, a precursor to true mind, body, spirit holistic awakening and growth.

Q.  What are some effective ways that you've found to be helpful for dealing with emotional eating?

A.  To learn to eat for nourishment, to learn to feel emotions instead of numbing them with food. Simple mindfulness, breath work, exercise, a change of perspective to see all as a gift, creating loving acceptance of what is, knowing that it shall pass and be released more assuredly, and with ease if loved and accepted. 

Q.  Do you have any advice for someone who wants to feel more connected to the moment and experience greater levels of inspiration and contentment?

A.  Breathe. Love with every breath, feel it come in and move out with every cell. Intentional conscious breathing, especially from/with love/heart space brings such ease, connection and inner joy. My mantra many a time has been "breathe love," "breathe" on the in and "love" on the out.

Q. Where can people get in contact with you?

A.  Blessed to share years of fun, information and inspiration at http://TheRawAdvantage.com :) Loads of free information, 2 free ebooks just for joining my mailing list, books, ebooks, t-shirts kitchen tools, retreats, consultations by donation and much more!

Have you questioned any of your negative thoughts lately?  Without having to "tell yourself" that they shouldn't be there and trying to push them away, you can just check whether they appear to be completely true.  This leads to letting them fall away on their own.  When you question your thoughts, especially the one's that create a feeling of limitation and discontentment in you, you'll find that they do not have that much substance and truth.  In my experience, this is much more powerful in practice than it is in philosophy.  By really questioning and adding any amount of doubt to your beliefs, you'll find their sense of firmness weakening and eventually being replaced by either tranquil awareness or a new, more accurate and empowering belief.

This understanding and idea comes mostly from Bryon Katie and her amazing tool for awakening called The Work.  It is essentially 4 questions that lead you to discovering within yourself that the seemingly solid beliefs we have are not as true as they might seem.  Until we question them, however, they are as real as we make them and they can have a huge influence on our lives.  While just "pretending" to yourself that they don't really exist or that they're false does not really change anything in the way you feel overall, looking truthfully at the thoughts and beliefs you have and questioning their validity can have remarkable effects.

For those who want to get started on learning this FREE technique, here is the link to the how-to on the official site. http://www.thework.com/thework-4questions.php

When you really question your thoughts, you'll find your mind freeing up in a way that gives you a new perception of your life.  You might even find a sense of contentment beyond what any object can really give you.  This expanded way of living is true inner freedom and you can access it at any time.  It (you) lies just beneath your thoughts and feelings.

There are many personal development strategies that CAN actually help you to develop into the kind of person that you want to be and shift your life direction toward something more favorable to you.  Still, many people have difficulty ACTUALLY putting a lot of these nice-to-hear approaches into practice.  This is not to say that the practices and techniques don’t work or that they are just to make you feel good about not being where you want to be, but that an inner movement is also an essential aspect of any new development.  This “inner movement” I’m referring to is a real profound shift in your awareness to where you are moved to a new level inside.  This article will detail one powerful way to do this, utilizing only natural foods and herbs as well as empowering strategies that you can act on right now.

The Cacao/Empowerment Connection

Many times, the single attribute that brings inspiration and real productivity is empowerment.  When you feel utterly empowered and ready to create what you want in your life, you’ll more than likely receive new insights about how to further your success and you’ll be in more of a position to take action on them because empowerment brings motivation.  This is often what many of us are striving for in our search for self-help insights.  How do we increase this sense of empowerment quickly and easily?

My answer to this might surprise you if you have not read other articles that I’ve written:  Cacao, or dark chocolate.

Dark Chocolate, or even better in most cases, raw cacao, is one of the most powerful foods for increasing feelings of empowerment.  It contains so much magnesium, compared to other foods, that it can help to “fill in the gaps” regarding our need for replenishing this important stress lowering mineral.  Just by introducing high quality raw cacao, or dark chocolate, into your diet you can begin to obtain more of this calming, centering, mineral that helps to offset excess stress.  This is key for those who want to feel more uplifted, more often.

In addition, cacao contains the endorphin Anandamide, which is what we release during excersize.  It also contains PEA, which is a component we naturally produce in high amounts when we are in a state of love.  This has been shown to increase contentment and concentration.  Furthermore, cacao contains MAO inhibitors which help us to have the “feel-good” dopamine neurotransmitter circulating for longer periods of time.

With these attributes, cacao is definitely a love food.  As a result, in can help you to connect more to your true self, which might be covered at times by fear and other emotions.  As you can probably agree, love is a powerful antidote to fear.  In this way, cacao can help you to transcend limiting emotions that might be holding you back.  While you can certainly cultivate these qualities of empowerment and love without cacao, it can be a very helpful tool and potentially make it easier.  Of course, like other foods and herbs, you likely don’t want to consume very high amounts of it every day, as that might be a little imbalancing to some people.  A good idea is to see how well you feel eating and eat it whenever you truly want it, which could be essentially everyday for periods of time.

Eating Cacao With A Purpose:

While it is always good to eat foods that inspire and uplift you, it is something else to eat them with an intention.  The intention here would be to empower yourself and use that increased sense of courageousness and creativity to notice insights and inspired ideas for you to act on.

Here is a useful equation that I’ve found to be helpful for this:

Uplifting food + directing your thoughts toward creative ideas regarding your goal or overall desire= improved ability to define and act on the steps needed to obtain or reach that goal.

This means that cacao or other foods that you find to be helpful to you, including tonic herbs, can give you that extra natural lift in order for you to see your objective with greater illumination and creative insight.  By feeling more capable of reaching your goal, which cacao and other feel-good foods can promote, you’ll naturally notice more applicable steps for you to take toward it, many of which you'll actually feel inspired about.

It is a way to more easily get into the flow and use your creativity to power your ability to take that first step.  By noticing an abundance of choices, through feeling empowered and directing your thoughts toward solutions, you can decide on one small action to take.  If you’re in a real flow and feel utterly inspired, you might want to write down your plan and list how you are going to get to where you want, along with a few steps that you can take NOW.  If you are having any issue with procrastination, a powerful key is to choose just one small aspect of the first step and decide to do just that, allowing yourself to stop right after that one small step if you want to.  Very likely, that little step, no matter how small it is, will give you the motivation needed to do the next step.

In essence, by eating cacao with the intent on being entirely productive and moving forward on an area of your life, you can likely “tune into” more creative ideas and intuitive nudges about steps for you to take.

A small note about cacao is to choose high quality cacao if you can.  This is usually raw cacao nibs or powder that has more of a deep, rich taste along with its natural bitterness rather than a very off taste.  Also, if you do not feel well after eating cacao it’s likely either an indication that the type or brand of cacao doesn’t work well with you or cacao itself doesn’t work well with you right now.  For some people, cacao increases feelings of well-being without being too stimulating.  It provides a sense of satiety, nutritionally, that outshines many other foods but without any notion of “side effects”.  If you do not have this beneficial experience with cacao, you might not want to eat very much of it.

Dark chocolate is a good second choice, especially for short term productivity improvements and creativity sessions, though it might be slightly too stimulating for some people to eat on an ongoing basis.  You can usually tell whether it appears to work well with you by how you feel hours after eating it.  If you feel overly tired, as if you drank too much coffee earlier in the day, it might be too stimulating for your adrenals.  If that's the case, just eat it infrequently if you choose to eat it at all.  High quality raw chocolate, for many people, does not have nearly the same level of stimulation, yet is very uplifting and nutritionally dense.  Choose what works for you.

Many of us have had issues with emotional eating before.  We may think that we are just eating mindlessly when we do it, but a lot of the time it is because of unresolved emotions.  By eating, we feel more in control of "stuffing" our emotions down and suppressing them.  A constant, pleasurable action that we can often-times easily act upon can be difficult to avoid when we are going through stress.  Here's how to do it, though, in a way that is utterly empowering.

1.  Turn around your desire for emotional eating.  By viewing the "why" for emotional eating and really looking at it truthfully, you can see how unhelpful it is in the long term.  Even in the short term, it is likely keeping you from true action.  To turn this around, simply find compelling reasons to focus more of your attention on other more empowering actions.  If you feel stuck and only feel able to cope with your stress through distraction, realize that there is ALWAYS some small empowering action to take in the direction of courageousness and truth.  Eating excessively is a way to escape our inner desire for change.  This desire is always with some kind of applicable choice for us to take in the moment.  It may be to confront the emotion directly or to start a project that you've been putting off.  Either way, there is the ability to make powerful progress in the same moment that you could be eating.  Just one step forward, when you've been avoiding something altogether, can move mountains and bring you closer to your true potential.  Remember, the things we feel to be the most difficult are sometimes magnified in our minds in a way that we feel "sure" about it's difficulty and truthfulness.  Remove those inner limitations today, or whenever you choose to be right for yourself, by just taking that one step forward.




2. Amplify your reasons for moving forward by considering how good you'd feel during and after. Imagine how exhilerated and empowered you'll feel if you do move forward on something you've been worrying about and suppressing through emotional eating.  How much greater will that feeling be than the "excitement" of eating to numb yourself.  Even if you take all appropriate action, at least from your understanding, but you don't get the "goal" or the solution that you felt you needed, you'll be much more in a position to truly let it go and naturally dissolve emotional eating.  When you've already made the choices you've been putting off and overeating to avoid, how many reasons are there for you to still turn to emotional eating?  That's not to say that you won't feel stress if it doesn't work out in your favor but it will likely propel you to step 3, which is still empowering.




3.  Reshape your perception and viewpoint of the issue.  Try to see a more well-rounded view toward your stressful situation.  Do you know for a fact that you're interpretation and level of importance you're attributing to it is completely accurate?  If not, why act as if you do.  A wonderful technique for releasing our hold on our beliefs, which can potentially turn around your need to emotionally eat, is The Work by Byron Katie.  It is a set of questions that can have miraculous effects when answered truthfully.

In addition, The Sedona Method is a wonderful way to quickly release any negative emotion you're carrying about the issue.  You can literally free yourself from a lifetime of stress related "programs" that have been influencing you to over-eat etc. by learning and practicing this technique.  If you try learning the three questions, and cannot seem to do it correctly, you can try just noticing the feeling and saying "yes" to it.  This is a technique from The Release Technique, which is very similar to the Sedona Method but taught in a somewhat different style.  By saying yes to your feelings and actually feeling them fully, you are essentially giving them more room to release, which can result in you letting them go.

If you feel up to the task and want to feel truly empowered, jumping straight to letting go and taking inspired action toward dealing with the issue you are suppressing with eating, which often takes courage in the beginning, can propel you from emotional eating to the amazing potential you have within you.

Additionally, you can take tonic herbs and superfoods.  While I've suggested this in numerous blog posts, their effects are applicable in many situations and are likely one of the most powerful tools for anyone to really change their way of thinking.

Many times, people emotionally eat because they feel stuck.  According to well-known herbalist Ron Teeguarden, this can be do to liver issues, as the liver/gallbladder is associated with empowering qualities like decisiveness.  When we start taking tonic herbs associated with liver health, like Schizandra and Reishi, this can begin to shift and decisiveness and clarity can re-emerge.  In addition, both of these herbs have powerful Shen, or spirit, qualities and help to promote higher awareness.  This quality alone can make it easier to see beyond your own stressful way of thinking if you are dealing with emotional eating.  Reishi, for example, is even suggested to help release suppressed emotions.  Because of that, I feel that they are two important and powerful herbs for most people dealing with emotional eating, though everyone is different.  We offer both of these herbs in extract form at our online store and ship them quickly and inexpensively.

Whether you take tonic herbs or not, you have the ability to move past emotional eating and into empowerment.