Excerpt from the China Study
“Introduction”
by T. Collin Campbell, PhD

The public’s hunger for nutrition information never ceases to amaze me, even after devoting my entire working life to conducting experimental research into nutrition and health. I want to give you a new framework for understanding nutrition and health, a framework that eliminates confusion, prevents and treats disease and allows you to live a more fulfilling life.

These findings demonstrate that a good diet is the most powerful weapon we have against disease and sickness. An understanding of this scientific evidence is not only important for improving health; it also has profound implications for our entire society. We must know why misinformation dominates our society and why we are grossly mistaken in how we investigate diet and disease, how we promote health and how we treat illness.

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Enzyme Nutrition:  The Food Enzyme Concept
by Dr. Edward Howell
Executive Book Summary by Nicholas Calvino, DC

This book attempts to bring into the light the most important nutritional discovery since vitamins, minerals, and trace elements, and perhaps the only solution to our present health crisis – food enzymes.

Dr. Howe’s conclusion is that many, if not all, degenerative diseases that humans suffer from are caused by excessive use of enzyme deficient foods. Aging and enzyme depletion go hand in hand, and by restoring vital enzymes, Howe proposes we can liver longer and healthier lives. Howe proposed that enzymes are the “life force” present in every biological system.

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Resolving the Coronary Artery Disease Epidemic through Plant-Based Nutrition
by Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr., MD

The world's advanced countries have easy access to plentiful high fat food; ironically, it is this rich diet that produces atherosclerosis. In the world's poorer nations, many people subsist on a primarily plant-based diet, which is far healthier, especially in terms of heart disease.

To treat coronary heart disease, a century of scientific investigation has produced a device-driven, risk factor-oriented strategy. Nevertheless, many patients treated with this approach experience progressive disability and death. This strategy is a rear-guard defensive.

In contrast, compelling data from nutritional studies, population surveys, and interventional studies supports the effectiveness of a plant-based diet and aggressive lipid-lowering to arrest, prevent, and selectively reverse heart disease.

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An American Indian Model of the Universe
by Benjamin Lee Whorf

I find it gratuitous to assume that a Hopi who knows only the Hopi language and the cultural ideas of his own society has the same notions, often supposed to be intuitions, of time and space that we have, and that are generally assumed to be universal.

The Hopi language is seen to contain no words, grammatical forms, constructions or expressions that refer directly to what we call time, or to past, present, or future. But this language and culture conceals a metaphysics, such as our so-called naive view of space and time does, or as the relativity theory does, yet a different metaphysics than either.

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Aho Mitakuye Oyasin
by Silver Wolf Walks Alone

Aho Mitakuye Oyasin is a simple yet profound statement. It comes from the Lakota Nation and means all my relations. It is spoken during prayer and ceremony to invite and acknowledge all relatives to the moment. To most of us today, relative means a blood relation or another human in the family lineage. We have not been taught that an entity, other than human, could be a relative.

Understanding this simple statement and contemplating it, could change your outlook on life forever.

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Ceremony of the Inipi
by Black Elk (Excerpted from The Sacred Pipe)

The rite of Inipi utilizes all the Powers of the universe: earth and the things that grow from the earth, water, fire, and air.

When we use the water in the sweat lodge we should think of Wakan Tanka who is always flowing, giving His power and life to everything. We should even be as water which is lower than all things, yet stronger even than the rocks.

When we leave the sweat lodge we are as the souls which are kept, and which return to Wakan Tanka after they have been purified.

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Shamanic Offerings
translated by Sara Ñusta

This is an offering that we make to the Sea from the Kogi tradition. They are a native American Indian group that lives in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in northern Colombia. It is said that the sea reminds us of our origin, where we came from, and where we will return. She is the great aboriginal mother that was here in the beginning, when there was no beginning yet.  These Indian people walk down from the mountains to the sea, just to remember and to honor what she represents for humanity. She is The Great Lake, the aboriginal creator of everything.

We make this offering by wrapping a piece of cotton around the quartz crystal and throwing it into the sea.  Holding an intention within our heart, we must let it be free in the moment we throw it to the sea. We do not turn back to look where our offering has landed.

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Gayatri Mantra
by Ralph Miller

I was introduced to the Gayatri mantra by my dear friend Laszlo from Budapest, Hungary in 2006.  Laszlo had joined our staff that year for our Heart of the Initiate workshops in Brazil. 

He had explained to me that he first heard about the mantra from a friend of his who described the mantra as the most important Vedic mantra containing all the wisdom of all the books he had ever read.

The force of the mantra simply put, is contained both in the words and their meanings as well as the creation of a rhythm that propels your consciousness towards stillness and devotion. Sung together with a group, the energy builds and can produce a mild to strong ecstatic trance state.

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Agniprasana (Breath of Fire)
author unknown

A cleansing & energizing breath, powered by abdominal contractions. Breath of Fire will entirely charge the nervous system, causing the glands to secrete and purify the blood. When it is done with certain postures and movements, which are meant to put contracting (drawing in) or expanding (releasing) pressure in nerve plexuses and glandular centers, those areas are made to fire and become completely charged.

Little by little, outward tendencies of the mind towards the physical and mental begin to fade, and one abides in one's satvic presence, where "I AM" is the single Truth.

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