a mouthful.
“Between the sun and the food and the people, I just feel… I feel so…” I struggled to find the right words to describe my experience thus far in Maui to my new friend. “I just… I FEEL.”
Tomorrow begins day one of the Liquid Love Juice Feast. Over the past week, I have been working with Tarah to make her vision of sharing this guided juice feast with about forty yogis and yoginis across the country possible and … welp, here it goes!
This feast (or fast, if you must) is about letting go, healing, and having a new set point from which to move forward from. It is a very conscious decision to nourish my body in a new way and thus make space for so much more. After a week of eating raw foods and soaking up sunshine, I am ecstatic. My eyes are bright, my skin is clear, my body feels GOOD in a way that I can barely put into words. I am happy, I am healthy, I am whole – that mantra keeps playing in my head and heart and it feels GOOD.
Anyone who has known me prior to 2007 would be shocked to hear the things I am eating and that there is no more steak or potatoes. Not that there is a damn thing wrong with meat or cheese or sweet, sweet beer… this is a chance to experience a change in my diet and thus feel more deeply than I have ever felt before. I took a bite of an apple today at the beach after a dozen dropbacks and some frolicking in the waves and the sharp, crisp taste was so incredibly potent in a way I have never experienced from an apple.
I have for too long fought a difficult battle with food, feeling it was cumbersome and troublesome to have to pause and eat. That to eat meant to shove food in my face, get that tell-tale heavy feeling in my belly and move forward from there. But nourishment is so much more than that… and that is what I am learning. You can throw yourself into a backbend or crank your leg into a complicated yoga pose, but it will only serve you and your body for so long until it starts to damage you, injure you, or make it impossible to live in that way. The exact same is true of eating – if you take the time to really feel your way from step to step in the best possible alignment, then you end up at the feast and have savored every flavor along the way.
Trust that I will be keeping you in the loop of how I feel over the course of the next few days. The feast goes for up to seven days, but I am committed to four since it is my first feast. And please do not confuse this for a fast – hence my use of the word “feast.” I am going to be divulging in tons of fresh juices empowered by Superfoods as well as other raw soups. This is coming from a place of abundance and prosperity, not scarcity or lack. I will not be starving myself – my body will actually be getting more nutrients than it has been getting on my day-to-day diet when I am left to feed myself. This is going to be good. This is going to be hard. This is going to be… well, it’s gonna be something.
I should probably eat another piece of raw love pie (cherry/blueberry/cacao filling on a raw mac nut/date crust) before bed. Gonna be the last thing I chew for the next four days.