Deanna M. Minich PhD. - Chakra Foods for Optimum Health: a Guide to the Foods That Can Improve Your Energy, Inspire Creative Changes, Open Your Heart, and Heal Body, Mind, and Spirit

Chakra Foods is loaded with wisdom, joy, and practicality. Reading through this book provided me with many ah ha! experiences. Chakra Foods is full of unusual and uplifting insights that one can apply to their life instantly.

Christiane Northrup, M.D., author of The Secret Pleasures of Menopause and Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom

An original and outstanding work of art and science. Dr. Minich's refreshing approach to energetic and nutritional health reminds us that the food we eat must be viewed with timeless, universal eyes, swallowed with more than just our throats, and assimilated with and into our entire being.

Kenneth Fine, M.D., founder and director of the Intestinal Health Institute and EnteroLab.com Reference Laboratory

Anyone looking for a holistic and practical means through which to connect your spirit and well-being to your food must look no further; Minich clearly and simply provides an individualized healing guide to nurture your body's physiology as well as its essence.

Allison Imel Hamza, nutritional therapy practitioner

Dr. Minich believes that body and soul are intimately connected to the food we eat. How profound to discover how food nourishes much more than just our bodies. If you are searching for a deeper connection between your body, mind, and spirit, and are striving for a greater sense of contentment, then this is the next on your must-read list! After reading Chakra Foods for Optimum Health you will discover what foods will nurture both body and soul and look at food in a deeper, more complex way.

Barb Schiltz, M.S., R.N., nutritionist

Chakra Foods for Optimum Health shifts the standard diet book paradigm. Instead of offering a superficial or disconnected plan to override unhealthy eating habits, Minich serves a delicious regime of foods and philosophy designed to connect to divine wisdom, inspiration, and joy. Successfully weaving together hard science, ancient spirituality, real life case studies, and mouth watering recipes, Chakra Foods couldn't be more innovative or down to earth. Definitely destined to become a classic.

Elise Marie Collins, author of Chakra Tonics

Chakra Foods for Optimal Health is a must-read for anyone seeking to understand their issues around food. Minich creates a nice balance between science and the spiritual. Her left and right brain approach to health is engaging, inspiring, and informative. It will give everyone who reads it lots to chew on.

Donna Landry, PAC

Dr. Minich's book fills a long-time need for a practical approach to foodone that heals and comforts, empowers and emboldens, and invites food to occupy the center of our table in a loving rather than guilt-driven way. This chakra-based method for diagnosing our problems and healing ourselves through food will not only work, but invite brilliance into our lives and world.

Cyndi Dale, author of New Chakra Healing and The Subtle Body: an Encyclopedia of Your Energetic Anatomy

This is a shining work of nourishing wisdom. It carries gifts of clarity for anyone who cares deeply for the soul, body, and mind. And it is a sacred text of action for seeing our bodies as treasures of the living earth.

Char Sundust, Sundust Oracle Institute

For years, Americans have had a serious love/hate relationship with food which focuses on avoidance and guilt. Chakra Foods artfully guides the reader away from the path of love/hate to a place of love/love.... [The] consumption of fast foods is slowly becoming a thing of the past. Chakra Foods for Optimum Health is a dietary door to the future.

Adam Banning, lecturer, radio personality, functional medicine consultant, and author of Seeing the Angel in the Mirror

In this monumental work, Minich has uniquely intertwined the power of our everyday interaction with food to the interconnected dynamic of our intuitive energetic key that locks or unlocks our ability to heal. She... guides you through the information in a way that is like nothing else you have experienced. This work will be beneficial for patients and professional medical practitioners alike.

Barbara Maddoux, R.N., D.O.M.

Chakra Foods for Optimum Health is a roll up your sleeve self-help book. Filled with that's me! case histories, it skillfully weaves science, physiology, psychology, energy medicine, and ancient medical wisdom into an accessible framework that will help you chart your journey back to health, creativity, and love.

It is beautifully and poetically written and will resonate with your mind, your heart, and your soul.

Jacob Kornberg, M.D., F.A.C.S.

First published in 2009 by Conari Press,

an imprint of Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC

With offices at:

500 Third Street, Suite 230

San Francisco, CA 94107

www.redwheelweiser.com

Copyright 2009 by Deanna M. Minich, Ph.D., C.N. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC. Reviewers may quote brief passages.

ISBN: 978-1-57324-373-5

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Minich, Deanna.

Chakra foods for optimum health : a guide to the foods that can improve your energy, inspire creative changes, open your heart, and heal body, mind, and spirit / Deanna Minich.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-57324-373-5 (alk. paper)

1. Chakras. 2. Food--Miscellanea. I. Title.

BF1442.C53M56 2009

613.2--dc22

2008041150

Cover design by Maxine Ressler

Text design by Donna Linden

Typeset in Perpetua, Priori Sans, and RuseX000HG

Cover photographs: Water David Joyner/iStockphoto.com, Blackberries Elena Asenova/iStockphoto.com, Kiwi Drew Hadley/iStockphoto.com, Avocado Raychel Deppe/iStockphoto.com, Corn Sandra Caldwell/iStockphoto.com, Orange Klaudia Steiner/iStockphoto.com, Red onion Massimiliano Pieraccini

Interior illustration, page 16 Song Speckles/iStockphoto.com

Printed in the United States of America

MV

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1992 (R1997).

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To Sharonmy mother, teacher, and friend, who led me to this rainbowed path

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.