Who knew that a diet of just water, orange juice, and grapefruit juice could restart the entire digestive system? I'm not even pouring the pulp of the fresh-squeezed juices into the glass. But it's true. After over a week of drinking nothing but lemon juice, maple syrup, and cayenne pepper, and not passing a solid thing from my colon the entire time, this morning and again this afternoon, I had small, solid bowel movements.

And who knew that after 10 days of eating nothing and drinking only the spicy lemonade, my body could subsist happily for two days on just juice? More than subsist, I felt like I was banquetting royally when I was drinking exactly four 8 oz glasses of juice per day.

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And then tonight happened. Everything changed. Day 12 is the day of the soup, and Daimian and I bought vegetables, marvelous, colorful, health-giving, health-creating, blessed, gift-from-God vegetables. We drooled over them (see photos), then cooked them into a soup according to the official recipe.

Finally, we dished ourselves tiny portions into mugs and sat down for the feast. The smell was the first delicacy, the aroma of the cooked vegetables mingling together -- the onions and the potatoes and the red chard and the tomatoes and the kale and the celery and the beans and the salt and cayenne pepper. A few sips of the broth was all we needed and we sipped slowly. With each spoonful, we picked out one flavor. First, we tasted the potatoes, commenting on them, noticing them, then with the next sip we tasted the onions, then the celery, and so on, in the order we had added the marvelous fruits to the pot.

And we went on. The mugs soon seemed like bottomless bowls. We took two rye wafers apiece as well, but neither of us finished these pieces of flatbread that contain only rye flour and sea salt.

We even chewed and swallowed some of the greens and then some potatoes. The teeth engaged. The tongue worked. It's hard to put into words the physical feeling as the messages of health sped to each and every molecule in my body. "It's a rush," said Daimian, grinning and sitting back for a moment. It felt like the most sublime drug was rushing through our veins.

And we haven't even really eaten yet.

Tomorrow we leave bright and early for our retreat in the sacred valley of the Green Gulch Farm Zen Center. The day begins with more orange and grapefruit juice. We'll hike the area a bit, and then for lunch take more of the soup. Dinner will be vegetables, salad, or fruit, depending on what the culinary maestros in the Green Gulch kitchen prepare.

And then saturday will be the coup de grace, the celebration. For breakfast we will return to the spicy lemonade again -- for the last time. And then for lunch, oh splendid lunch, we will eat as we like, however we like, whatever we like.

Food, my friends, is an incomparable blessing. You don't need to hear this from me, but you are. Live and love your body and your nourishment, for it is how we physically create ourselves every day.

With love and gratitude.

--tony

Comments

we are so proud of you both!

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