Dana Childs - Chakras, Food, and You: Tap Your Individual Energy System for Health, Healing, and Harmonious Weight

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To all those who have fed us

Tired of trying every diet system and supplement on the shelf and still not getting results? Feeling discouraged, guilty, or overwhelmed because the foods on the most recent trendy plan dont appeal to you? Worse, are you sick of eating all the so-called healthy foods, only to gain weight while your friend chomps pizza and friesand remains slim? Or the reverseeating all the foods you can fit in your mouth to put weight on with no luck?

Weve been there. In fact, we grew so weary of chasing health and losing the battle with weight, that we combined our collective experience and expertise to create an innovative approach to health and wellness. Its unlike anything else youve seen. Its been working for us and our clients. And its just too good to not share. The secret? Its based on chakras.

This unique process synchronizes your choices with your chakrasyour single most important chakra, to be exactso you can reshape your body and, therefore, your entire well-being. In fact, we believe that by customizing your food and supplementation choices to your most vital chakra you can achieve optimum health. In this way, you encourage healing from issues impacting your wellness. If you need a weight change, youll notice the differencenot because youre dieting, but because youre feeding your true self. In turn, youll be happier. And happier people often eat healthier. Plus, once you identify your strongest chakra, itll be easier to figure out more ways to best care for yourself through the many lifestyle decisions youll make day to day.

Okay, so you may be wondering what a chakra is. Hang in there for the technical explanation. Well make it quick.

Chakras are subtle energy centers in and around your body. Throughout time and across cultures, spiritual teachers and healers have known that chakras manage every facet of life: all things physical, psychological, and spiritual. They do this by regulating the two types of energy: physical, or visible, and subtle, or invisible. We define energy as that stuff that makes up everything. That means your chakras are in charge of everything about you, the physical and the subtle.

We believe that most of reality, including much of your body, is fundamentally made of subtle energies. Actually, so do a lot of scientists. Developmental biologist Bruce Lipton penned his bestselling book The Biology of Belief about this exact concept. More than that, your subtle energies determine what occurs in your body. They actually serve as a blueprint upon which your physical cells organize and build. So if you make decisions that ensure your subtle energies are in good shape, your body and emotions will be too. In other words, if you support your chakrasthe brains of your entire selfyou create, bolster, and sustain your vitality.

Though every chakra is important, your true self, or soul, is embodied in one chakra more than the others. Well talk more about that in chapter 1. What this means is that when you nurture your primary chakra, which requires consuming a specific set of foods and supplements, youll find yourself automatically following a personalized eating programone that will work. You can also use the knowledge about your primary, or most important, chakra to make all sorts of other lifestyle decisions, such as selecting the best forms of exercise or meditation. Though well emphasize your food-related choices in this book, well also provide chakra bonus tips to cover additional lifestyle categories, including grocery shopping and dining out. To make it fun, well help you uncover the special intuitive ability that lies in your strongest chakra and show you how to apply it to health decisions.

Excited yet?

Ultimately, our book boils down to this: Weve all been told, You are what you eat. Our motto flips that around: What you eat should be based on who you really are.

Were giving you more than a framework for eating with this book. Were offering a brand-new way to know yourself. Why not embrace your uniqueness and nurture your soul, as well as your body? No more comparing yourself to other people. No more worrying if your weight is slightly higher or lower than what it should be. (PS: our plan will help you achieve the most harmonious weight for you, which means the pounds on the scale will align with whether you have enough energy for the important thingsor not.) No more feeling guilty about making food and other lifestyle choices that differ from the latest fad or your loved ones choices. You know what were talking about, right?

You watch your partner follow a diet thats full of lean poultry and grains, but when you try to give up red meat or add more grains, you feel sluggish or lack energy. Or you go for the latest fad and remove all carbohydrates from your diet. And thenyou cant focus! No more of that. This plan lets you customize eating based on your chakra type.

Instead of the typical seven-chakra layout you may be familiar with, we work with the twelve-chakra system Cyndi developed decades ago. A natural intuitive since childhood, she has always been able to perceive chakras, auric fields, and additional subtle energies and beings. Learning about the seven-chakra system when she was in her twenties confirmed what she intuitively perceived, but she could also see five additional distinct balls of light. She spent years investigating cross-cultural chakra systems and conducting her own research in order to identify and label these chakras. And now you get the benefit of her hard work! Using Cyndis groundbreaking approach affords a deeper, more revealing, and more precise personality profiling of your energy, which in turn, instructs you how best to nurture your personal energetic makeup.

Okay, well stop. You might be gasping. We know that some of you are still insisting there are only seven chakras. So its time to fill you in on a couple of skeletons in the chakra closet.

Most Westerners believe there are only seven chakras because, about a century ago, Sir John Woodroffe, under the pseudonym Arthur Avalon, wrote a book called The Serpent Power. His book became the source for most Western yogic chakra systems. Based on his work, nearly everyone decided that there could only be seven chakras.

However, even Woodroffe stated that the worlds ancestors touted many chakra systems, with as few as two and as many as dozens of chakras. Plus, Woodroffe never actually said there were seven chakras. Rather, he offered up only six! Know that you can more precisely analyze your essential self when you have more, rather than fewer choices. Youll be glad were this precise.

So you know what to expect in this book, heres a quick breakdown.

• In part I, youll learn all about chakras and the twelve-chakra system. Well also talk about what we mean by health, healing, and harmonious weight, the three buzzwords in our tagline. Youll then take a quiz to figure out