Yogi Cameron Alborzian - The One Plan: A Week-by-Week Guide to Restoring Your Natural Health and Happiness

the one plan

A Week-by-Week Guide
to

RESTORING YOUR
NATURAL HEALTH
and HAPPINESS

YOGI CAMERON
ALBORZIAN

contents

I FIRST MET MARIA MENOUNOS IN 2009, WHEN SHE DID A STORY ON MY WORK with Ayurveda and Yoga for the Today show. We became good friends, but we never talked in greater detail about my work on the Yogic path. That is, until about a year later.

At the end of 2010, Maria was suffering from a rash that consumed her entire body. Though this would be bad in any situation, she was slated to cover the Emmy Awards for Access Hollywood, and the dress she was planning to wear would leave much of her skin exposed. And while it was unsightly, more than anything she was in pain. The heat of the season only made matters worse. It was only a week and a half until the awards show. None of the medicines she had been prescribed were helping. When she called me, she needed help and fast.

I started treating her to shift her lifestyle using therapeutics based on the ancient systems of Yoga and Ayurveda. After examining her and asking about her recent activities, I determined that she had poor digestion, which in turn led to toxic buildup on her skin. These digestive issues, along with constant work and travel, created too much heat in her body. I advised her to reduce the amount of food she was eating, take cooling herbs to curb the heat and other imbalances, and apply herbal remedies topically to reverse the dry itchy symptoms. Because of her commitment to her health, Maria adhered to this regimen. A week and a half later, she appeared at the Emmys free of rashes.

This story might seem like a nice advertisement for how an intense program can bring better health in very little time, but my purpose in sharing Marias story has little to do with her work in preparing for the Emmys. When Maria realized how much more effective these methods were than all the medications she had used, she wanted to know everything she could about Ayurveda, Yoga, and the many ways this path could help her live a better life. Now that she enjoyed clear skin and had even lost a bit of weight, she wanted more.

Through our consultations, I found that Maria was inclined to suppress emotions that came up during her day. She pushed through to get things done instead of working out why she was reacting to whatever challenged her. This tendency, along with not breathing properly, was exacerbating the symptoms we had worked to resolve. To help her overcome these situations, we started integrating Yoga postures, breathing techniques, and other practices associated with the Yogic path. She began drinking hot water in the morning, eating only when hungry, and simplifying her life. Little by little, she went from using her asthma inhaler several times a day to not needing it at all. Her skin problems never came back. She lost ten pounds without even trying. In the first year that we worked together, not only did she improve her health, but her entire world began to shift. Her first book was a New York Times bestseller many times over, and she left her job as a correspondent at Access Hollywood to become a host of Extra. But more importantly, rather than allowing herself to repress the adverse emotions she felt throughout the day, Maria now had the tools to help her respond to those situations with a sense of groundedness and purpose. In one years time, Maria was approaching her life in a completely different way.

The Potential

Weve all encountered those books that promise a completely different life in no time. Lose three dress sizes in thirty days! Find true happiness in two weeks! But even though such programs are trendy today, it doesnt mean that theyre helpful in the long term. These programs dont provide us with an effective way to stick with the changes weve implemented in that short amount of time. They promise us unrealistic results. Sure, we might succeed in getting a flatter tummy for a wedding or a trip to the beach, but what happens the following week? Do we maintain our health and happiness, or do we fall back into old patterns until theres another wedding to attend?

Most of us, of course, know the answer to these questions. We do fall back into those old patterns; health and happiness go away as quickly as our waistlines. To create real, lasting change throughout our lives, we must leave behind the thirty-day quick-fix solutions that let us down year after year and instead focus on one plan that will deliver lasting, life-changing results. We must embrace the possibility of a better life for ourselves. The One Plan is a full one-year program designed to provide a different approach to your life.

In 1501, a twenty-six-year-old Michelangelo petitioned members of the Florentine Office of Works for the opportunity to work on a sculpture. The job was to transform a nineteen-foot-tall block of marble known as the Giant into a sculpture commemorating the citys recent liberation from the book-burning rule of Girolamo Savonarola. Two sculptors had attempted to work on this immense marble over the course of the nearly hundred years since it was extracted. It had been poorly blocked with a huge gaping hole, and had been left exposed to the elements for decades. Despite the damage, Michelangelo saw the marbles potential. He used a steady hand to gradually strip the block of its nonessential pieces untilalmost three years laterhe revealed the Hebrew youth who had always been underneath. The result would be a source of joy to the world for many centuries to come, for the statue is what we now know as the David. This came to be because Michelangelo had a vision and allowed the statue to emerge in its own time.

What if you could uncover your greatest potential despite whatever damage youve endured over the years, and reveal your own masterpiece within? Wouldnt you want to find this reality for yourself?

And, most important, isnt your life worth more than thirty days?

The Problem

In the early part of my life, I worked as a fashion model. I participated in some of the most prominent campaigns of the 1980s and 1990s, including being the star of a three-season Guess Jeans campaign and the face of well-known labels like Versace. I even starred in Madonnas Express Yourself video. The life of a fashion model was just what you might imagine: I lived a life of travel, prestigious parties, shooting and filming in all the major cities of the world, enjoying late nights, and sleeping in until I fancied getting up. And while it might sound enjoyably luxurious, it wasnt allowing me to live a more purposeful life.

Early in this chapter of my life, I met a man named Ron. He had been a model back in the 1960s but had adopted a natural, simple life after being diagnosed with HIV. Under his guidance, I took my first Yoga workshops, read a stack of spiritual books, and began to consider that life could be more than runways and photo shoots.

Ron taught me the value of a life of purpose and spiritual growth. When he passed away in 2000, he didnt die in pain and sadness, like many who succumbed to AIDS; he had found contentment and peace. When he was no longer with me, I realized that he had been my mentor. I realized that a life of weight lifting, late-night indulgence, and constant luxury wasnt helping me find my purpose.

Since leaving my career in fashion, Ive learned how to live healthier through the principles and methods of Ayurveda. Ive learned that Yoga isnt simply an assortment of pretzel-like postures for gaining flexibility; it is an ancient, dynamic system of spiritual growth and personal development. Ive devoted my life to practicing these ancient disciplines and helping others discover their full potential. Most of us lead almost entirely unnatural lives. We run on a treadmill instead of through fields. Instead of drinking water, we consume soft drinks sweetened with processed corn grown by giant corporations that genetically modify their crops. We use synthetic medications in an attempt to resolve our ailments, much like Maria did without success. We spend years in front of computer, TV, and smartphone screens.