Know Any Literary Animal Lovers?

Hi there PureJeevan readers! We wanted to let you know that Jim's new novel CHROO is available on Amazon. It's a crazy adventure involving a billionaire heiress, her Chihuahua BFF ("Chroo") and a host of human and animal characters. Find out more on Amazon! Here are some links:




A few weeks ago, we hosted a Diabetes Awareness week here at Pure Jeevan. This was our contribution to the larger Reversing Diabetes Naturally movement that we blogged about. We wanted to let you know that the package of bonus materials offered to people who purchase the Simply Raw DVD is quite amazing! (See this post for details.) We reviewed all of the materials ourselves, and it's just a ton of great information.

The original deadline for receiving the free bonus materials was the end of April. However, the deadline has been extended through Friday, May 8. So, if you know anyone who has diabetes who could benefit from either the ?Simply Raw? documentary and/or the companion film, ?The Ultimate Enyclopedia of the Raw Food Listyle," simply point them to http://tinyurl.com/pj-diabetes.

Jim here with another installment of Weird Wednesday...

Throughout the year, I go through various phases of fruit preferences. Right now, it's citrus. I eat probably four large grapefruits per day (dark reds). The darker the red the better, IMHO. I can get quite disappointed when the grapefruits are listed as "ruby red" but turn out to be just regular pink ones. I've noticed that the ones I like the most have an orangish tint to them, as though they've been left to ripen on the bush a little too long. Also, the best ones I've had this year have been from Texas. So, find yourself some burnt-looking Texan grapefruits & enjoy the blood-red bitter-sweetness!

Here's an update from Wendi. I think this can be considered, with 99% confidence, the big announcement:

Of course, there's that 1% chance that something unexpected will happen. But, Portland feels right. It always has for us; we nearly moved there in the late 1990s. We had books on Portland back then, and I was buying their newspaper each week to hunt for jobs. It just never panned out, though. I suppose we were meant to live in Pittsburgh for a spell. It would be easy for me to list many reasons why Pittsburgh served a purpose for us. But, yeah, I think we're Portlanders at heart. So much about that city resonates with us. It'll be a homecoming, for sure! I want to reiterate a few things that I'd written in comments recently, slightly clarified in places.

Jim here (again!) A little over a month ago, we couldn t contain our excitement about an online contest to win the best job EVER ? living as caretaker of a tropical island in Queensland, Australia, on the Great Barrier Reef for 6 months (and being paid $100k for the task!).

The deadline has come for this and, as we promised, we BOTH applied. You saw my video, below. Here's Wendi's application. Once again, we hope you'll view the video & rate her a 5!!! You can click the screenshot above, or go there directly via this link. (As I said below, I ve heard that the rating system can get a little screwy on that site ? that you need to wait for it to load and maybe mouse over the rating part first. But, a 5-star rating would really help, as would the traffic, even if you don t watch the entire video.)

***** DISCLAIMER: As with all of our posts here at Pure Jeevan, and particularly those tagged with a new term, "Nadi Balance," please refer to the disclaimer that runs at the bottom of all Pure Jeevan pages. Wendi and Jim are health researchers, educators, and extreme self-experimenters, not doctors. ******

There are four parts to blood: red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets, and plasma. Using a specialized microscope, one can easily view these parts of the blood. Red blood cells deliver oxygen to, and carbon dioxide from, the body. White blood cells, also known as leukocytes, help defend the body against disease and anything that they see as unnatural or foreign. Platelets help form clots to prevent bleeding. Plasma, comprised of about 90% water, is the fluid that transports all of the above.

Following up on yesterday's post, today we're going to take a look at the "Clean 15." These are the 15 produce items that, according to research done by the Environmental Working Group, contain the least amount of residual pesticides (even though they're still grown using pesticides).

What this boils down to is: IF you're going to eat conventionally grown produce, these items will harm you much less than those we covered yesterday. So, here's the list, and then we'll try to come up with a sentence to help you (and us) remember everything:

It's been an interesting week for us here. We've looked at a handful of ways that people may either become obese, or sustain an obese body -- all largely for reasons outside of dietary intake. The three situations we looked at included maintaining weight as a defense mechanism (Tuesday), becoming obese through worrying about becoming obese (Wednesday), and obesity as basically a physical manifestation of a non-physical longing (Thursday).

Without a doubt, these are just three out of hundreds of possible non-physical contributors to poor health. The idea was merely to start a thread on these things, opening people's minds to possibilities that perhaps they'd never seriously considered.

Did you know that, among the handful of programs I continually have running, there is always a dictionary program active on my laptop Oh, sure, there are tons of great web sites out there for looking up words -- and I do use those regularly. But, I just like my handy-dandy dictionary program. It's instant (no waiting for pages to load, etc.), it's ad-free, and it and has a great? -- no, scratch that, a tantalizing! -- thesaurus as well.

Anyway, here's what my trusty friend, the American Heritage Dictionary, has to say about the phrase "will power":

We had a wonderful weekend that started with a raw food potluck in our home (through the Pittsburgh Raw Food Meetup group). There were about twenty people and so many lovely raw food dishes! I haven't checked the camera, yet, but I hope someone remembered to capture some pictures of the food and guests. It was all very yummy, including the beet pasta I made with a cream sauce. I also made some carob peppermint sweets that KDcat formed into bite-sized balls and arranged them on a platter. A friend of mine told me that the people who show up for raw food potlucks tend to be genuinely nice people, and she was right. It was a pleasure meeting everyone and I look forward to next month's meetup.

The rest of our weekend was spent with our guest, Devaki, who just left a few minutes ago to return to the ashram. She played some beautiful music on the harmonium and she and some other lovely guests filled our home with the beauty and energy of Kirtan chanting. Some of the chants were in English, too. I thought I wouldn't like them as much, but they were just as beautiful as the Indian ones. One of my close friends who was here for the Kirtan told me that I was glowing after the chanting! I love the blissful feeling that comes from chanting and meditation.

in-tu-i-tion n. 1.a. The act or faculty of knowing or sensing without the use of rational processes; immediate cognition. b. Knowledge gained by the use of this faculty; a perceptive insight. 2. A sense of something not evident or deducible; an impression.

FASCINATING!? While out to dinner with our friend Debbie, she brought up the topic of intuitive food preparation. This is really amazing, groundbreaking stuff that probably few people have ever seriously attempted. Now, Wendi has discussed intuitive eating many times here on the blog in the past. Intuitive eating is basically when you get in touch with those "perceptive insights" mentioned above -- a kind of communication with your own body in which you just "know" that you should eat a certain food. Ever, say, walk past a large display of apples and simply know that eating one would make you feel good? That's intuition.

I'm still sticking with my mono meal eating for Navratri. It's not as easy as I thought it would be, probably because I thought I wouldn't have any problems at all. Anyway, I'm sticking to it and we'll see if it makes me feel more energetic and healthy after the nine days are completed.

April 11, 2008