How Fruit, a Shaman and Reiki Saved My Life

I declared January 2014 as my true rock bottom. I thought I had already hit it, dozens of times prior, but that was me lying to myself. Everyone says you’ll know it when you hit it and they were right; I had unequivocally reached it.

It was the most defining point in my life. I had just experienced the most gut-wrenching heartbreak, I was starting to develop all sorts of new physical ailments and the crushing depression I had been carrying around for years (that was always seemingly a source of comfort), was no longer serving its purpose. The only thing I felt that was good in my life was my job; I was very lucky. But, my days consisted of going to work, crying on the way home and curling up into a ball for hours on end, crying.

I will never forget the day I woke up and heard a little voice inside my head tell me this: You can choose to live or die.

I know, it sounds so morbid, yet simple. But in my mind, I truly felt those were my only options and sadly, I was prepared to carry out the dying. But, I made the resounding choice to say YES and finally mean it. One way or another I was going to seek the help that would once and for all admonish or at least quiet the intrusive demons inside of my head. I was finally ready to live and not just exist in this world because merely existing, can make you feel like you are living a slow death…

I was fortunate enough to go see Tony Robbins at this time. It truly was a life-changing experience but I knew deep down I wasn’t capable of implementing what I learned. I wanted to change more than anything but I didn’t know HOW and I didn’t know what was stopping me. Here I was presented with the most amazing opportunity and I couldn’t make the most out of it–beyond frustrating.  I became an overnight vegan, well vegetarian if you count the milk chocolate chips that were keeping me company on the daily. But no meat, fish, eggs or other dairy and it has been one of the best decisions of my life. I ended up becoming a full-fledged vegan a year later and haven’t looked back since.

Enter David and Heather, founders of Zen Rose Garden: My reiki healers, life coaches, energy healers, hypnotherapists and life SAVIORS. Truly, I would not be writing this article today without their love, kindness, support and incredible wealth of knowledge. One might say serendipity led me to them, pure luck.

But no, when you finally make a decision, a genuine decision that the universe is able to recognize as you FINALLY ready to overcome your own BS once and for all, it will align you with exactly what you need to catapult you to your next level.

As the trite saying goes,

“When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”

I’m not going to sugarcoat it, my commencement of my spiritual and emotional journey with them has been the most difficult yet most rewarding process of my life. Your body remembers EVERYTHING. So yes, everything you stuffed down emotionally as a child, teenager, young adult, it’s still there waiting to be dealt with. When you bring those emotions to the surface, you have to relive the pain once again in order to free it, there is no other way.

So I embarked on an incredible emotional rollercoaster, experiencing painful emotions I didn’t realize I was still carrying around. As a child, teenager and young adult, I suffered greatly with numerous physical ailments: arthritis, debilitating intestinal issues, female problems and extreme nausea. And yep, all these ailments surfaced, relentlessly (fortunately on and off) throughout the process.  Physical pain and emotional pain are not separate entities; in order to heal one, I had to heal the other.

BUT…let me tell you, I am in a place now that I only dreamed of. No matter how much physical or emotional pain I experienced in my life, I always, ALWAYS, kept the slightest bit of faith I would figure out how to obtain my happiness. Apparently, my soul knew something I didn’t, thank God.

So where does the shaman tie into this? Let me preface by saying, there are a lot of self-proclaimed shamans out there, however, I was fortunate enough to find a legitimate one. There were two times throughout my work with Zen Rose Garden where I felt compelled to go even deeper into the journey and seeing a shaman just felt like the right move. And wow, it was INTENSE, mind-blowingly intense. I have no idea what transpired in those sessions with him. All I know is that my mind and body purged what was no longer needed deep in the crevices of my soul.

And for the next 3 weeks after those sessions, I experienced even more intense purging but I also felt unbelievably amazing.

Everything is energy: thoughts, feeling, emotions.  You typically don’t realize the weight of the burden until it’s released, that I know for sure.  

And the fruit, we can’t forget about the fruit! Very often, when you embark on your spiritual journey, your need for the heavy food you once consumed disappears. And why is that?  Because very often we are eating food to numb ourselves, not to nourish. And there were many times I slipped up and tried numbing myself out and eating the foods that once comforted me. But I found after a certain point the food numbing didn’t serve it’s purpose like it used too; I had come too far, in a good way. I began craving lighter and lighter foods, and fruit, in my opinion, is the lightest, most life-giving and cleanest food one can eat. It’s extremely cleansing for the mind and body and your body doesn’t have to work too hard to digest it.

I used to be the world’s biggest chocoholic. I used to keep a bar of chocolate by my bedside and consume it first thing in the morning, yep, it was that bad. I don’t crave sweets anymore, not in the slightest. I crave fruit! I know, I know, everyone thinks fruit makes you fat, causes candida, etc. Two of my favorite mentors to dispel these theories are Dr. Robert Morse and Anthony William. I can only speak from my experience and implore you to do your own research on how fruit could potentially change your life.

So is my healing journey over? I would say the dirty work is over so-to-speak; I’ve deep-cleaned the nooks and crannies. But I still constantly do touch-ups. I am always learning, growing and experiencing new situations in life.

The difference now is I am equipped with the proper tools to navigate through foreseeable difficulties.

In fact, the universe recently tested me after I came back with such a high from another Tony Robbins seminar. What would have typically knocked me on my feet has only managed to sway me. I am still working through the lesson(s) I needed from this experience and I still feel sadness, but if there is one thing I know for sure, it’s that I have always possessed far…FAR more strength than I ever gave myself credit for. And if you’re reading this, you have more strength than you realize too.  One of the most beautiful gifts in this life is the power of choice. At any given moment, we all have the choice to say enough is enough, dammit, I’m not living like this anymore.
Only you can decide when your breaking point is.

Health and love to everyone who took the time to read this.  I am telling you, whatever dream life you envision in your mind is one you can have.  There is a reason you have held onto that dream for this long. Yes, you will have to go through some growing pains first but it’s better than living in a perpetual holding pattern the rest of your life…