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To Sharon—my mother, teacher, and friend, who led me to this rainbowed path
CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1 The Vibration of Food and the Spirit of Eating
CHAPTER 3 Discovering Your Chakra Issues
CHAPTER 4 Foods for Grounding and Protection: Feeding the Root Chakra
CHAPTER 5 Foods for Feelings and Flow: Feeding the Sacral Chakra
CHAPTER 6 Foods for Power and Transformation: Feeding the Solar Plexus Chakra
CHAPTER 7 Foods for Love and Compassion: Feeding the Heart Chakra
CHAPTER 8 Foods for Communication and Truth: Feeding the Throat Chakra
CHAPTER 9 Foods for Intuition and Imagination: Feeding the Third Eye Chakra
CHAPTER 10 Foods for Purification and Clarification: Feeding the Crown Chakra
Appendix A List of Foods, Substances, and Processes that Deplete the Chakras
Appendix B List of Foods and Their Activating and Balancing Effects on the Chakras
Appendix C Chakras and Corresponding Foods
Appendix D Health Conditions and Corresponding Chakras
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Giving thanks is one of the best parts of writing a book. You don't do anything alone in life, and it's so rewarding to step back and admire the web you are intimately enmeshed in. Writing these acknowledgments gives me this opportunity.
Above all, my deepest, most soul-full, heart-full gratitude goes to Spirit . . . for the inspiration, knowledge, and seamless thread of words that were gifted to me and flowed from my fingers to the keyboard.
I often tell others that I wouldn't be speaking or writing about this material if it weren't for my mother. Not just because she gave birth to me, but also because her epiphany when I was nine years old fueled so much of what my life is about now: food and spirituality. I admire her grace, strength, and dedication to her true path. She set an example for me to live my life to the fullest. I am grateful to the rest of my family: Dad, for instilling the genes of passion within me; Brenda, for her sharp-mindedness and humor; and Ian, for his bountiful creativity.
My (spiritual) teachers, Patrice Connelly, Cyndi Dale, Char Sundust, Caroline Myss, Louise Hay, Jeffrey Bland, and Paramahansa Yogananda, have imparted gracious gifts of wisdom, insight, and love—all of which have made a profound difference in my life.
I give heartfelt thanks to all of the participants who took part in Nutrition for the Soul classes and workshops, especially those who helped me get them started in the summer of 2007. Without all of your continuing requests for this book, I may not have had the same drive to get this material into book form. Therefore, I write this for all of you. You've helped me to implement what I was inspired to create.
My heart extends those who have helped me in the publishing process: my agent, Krista Goering, for passionately believing in this text and being able to take it to the next level, and my remarkable editor at Red Wheel, Caroline Pincus.
And finally . . . I bow to my teacher, my support, my love . . . Mark.
PREFACE
Perhaps you've been working on small pieces of yourself—like your diet, or becoming more aware of your body, or maybe you've been exploring your spirituality. I have noticed that many people are hungry for a spiritual connection with something greater than themselves. Their souls wander a path of longing and questioning. Similarly, others struggle with the needs of their physical bodies. They are in continual search for the ultimate understanding of why they remain unsatisfied with their appearance or why they have numbing pain. Still others are confused about how to eat. Their minds are swirling in all the diet information that bombards us on a daily basis. And most of us, if presented with the choice, would want to have it all: how to bring our bodies and souls to a higher, more contented spot and park there indefinitely.
Of course, we cannot live without the body or the soul, as both are wrapped into
