BRIAN CLEMENT WORKSHOP - NOTES


The following was posted to the veg-raw mailing list in 1996. I have updated
it to include some new information, and to revise my comments.

Brian Clement, head of the Hippocrates Health Institute in West Palm Beach,
Florida, gave a 2 hour workshop titled "Living Foods and Health" at the San
Francisco Whole Life Expo, Explorations in Natural Healing, on Saturday, 21
October, 1995. Below are my notes from the workshop.  Contact addresses and my
comments are given after the notes.

Notes:

We don't talk about nutrition - vitamins, or even the most important area -
enzymes and oxygen. Today we speak about hormones, as they relate to the
function of the entire body, and the mind-cell connection. Today we are seeing
more young people coming to our programs with disease.

To illustrate the importance of hormones: 20 years ago, young women began
menstruating at about 12.5 years of age; today it begins at 9.5 years! He then
discussed the link between eating meat and prostate cancer. He reports that
nearly all men (~80%) will get prostate cancer if they live long enough (over
70 years).

Your great grandparents ate food from their own gardens; these foods were
hormonally rich. The new most important element in food is hormone content.
Hormones in food? Lots!  There are hormones in meat and dairy. These are
all female hormones, which is bad for both men and women.

Chemicals in the environment. These chemicals create estrogens when assimilated
in the body. Synthetic fabrics, carpets, etc. do this as well. Living foods help
the body remove excess hormones. You can stop eating bad food, but our polluted
technological environment still creates estrogens.

Abundant lifestyle. You must connect your self to the "primal cell" or the
planet to overcome the problems of our technological society and lifestyle.
In terms of their overall importance,  we have:
nutrition < {enzymes, oxygen} < hormones
and hormones control the physical body, mind, and spirit.

Nutrition. We want foods with the most energy in them. Enzymes are the manifest
form of energy. The only source of energy is to eat raw food. To have enzymes,
food must be heated below 115 degrees F. You can heat raw, living foods if you
find it comfortable.

Consumption of living foods is on a weight basis. We suggest 80% raw, 20%
cooked, by weight  (not by volume or caloric value). An illustration. If you
drink 2, 16-ounce glasses of raw veg/sprout juice per day, and eat 2 large
salads per day (0.25-0.5 pounds per salad), you can eat 0.25-0.5 pounds of
cooked food at each meal.

If you have a disease that challenges your physiology, 95-100% raw is suggested,
for 18 months. It's OK then to eat a very small amount of cooked food, on
occasion.

Oxygen factor. If you eat the food right off the plant, you get all the oxygen.
If it sits or gets juiced, you lose the oxygen. Juice must be fresh - made
immediately before drinking (no refrigerated juice). Freshness is important
with hormones also. Hormones are the "mind" or "memory" of the plant.

Brian's diet is 50% by weight sprouts. The interpersonal relationship that you
conduct with your food is most important. You can see this with sprouts, as
they won't grow for negative people.

What is spirit? Does it need to be anything? Spirit it believing. Learn to
surrender. We live in a matter based society, with racism and sexism, other
negatives. For this we live in a state of disbelief. To avoid this, you must
learn to surrender, to believe. Develop consciousness, to find yourself.
We don't understand our birthright; we can achieve the un-achievable.

Questions:

Q: Do you drink the foam on your juices?
A: Yes; it's oxidized a bit but OK.

Q: What to do about type I diabetes?  [Type I = insulin dependent]
A: Living foods are very effective against type II [non insulin dependent].
In type I, the pancreas is destroyed. You must work with sprouts, green foods,
to eventually reduce, in rare cases eliminate, insulin. Try a mono-diet for
30-60 days.

Q: What about hydroponic vegetables?
A: Most are grown with chemicals. It's OK if they are grown with liquified
seaweed.  Wheatgrass, buckwheat greens grown that way are OK, nearly as good
as those grown on soil.

Q: Difficulty in digesting raw foods? What about cooked brown rice
(macrobiotics)?
A: Different diets reflect differences in consciousness. Cooked brown rice
is OK for people into macrobiotics.  Digestion is a major problem with raw
foods. As children we did not have a proper diet and hence did not develop
the correct internal muscle structure (for digestion). However you cannot
digest cooked food. Take enzymes, lacto-bacteria; exercise, use castor oil
packs for digestive help.

Q: What is the distribution of visitors to Hippocrates?
A: 50% sick, 50% well seeking to learn. We have many foreign visitors, a nice
spa, and a Health Educator program.

Q: How long can you keep food in the refrigerator?
A: Depends on the food. Root veggies can be kept for months, sprouts a week or
two.

Q: What about fruit juices?
A: They are a small part of the program. Modern hybrid fruit is too high in
sugar. Also, beet, carrot juices are too high in sugar. Use green vegetables,
sprouts for juices; the ones that taste the worst are the best for you.

Q: Wheatgrass juice?
A: An important part of the program. Greens year-round are emphasized in the
program.

Q: Cost of visiting Hippocrates?
A: $200-300 per day, for a 21 day program.

Brian has a new book (published in 1996), also a series of videos Several small
books are available at present, including "Hippocrates Health Program", and
books on belief, exercise, relationships, and children. The latter books are all
paperback, and low priced ($6 full price).

The remainder of the program was a food preparation demo by Sheila (last
name?) from the Garden Taste Restaurant in Del Mar, California (San Diego
area). They are a vegan restaurant that serves raw food dishes in  addition
to the standard cooked fare. She prepared two large salads using sprouts and
red sauerkraut. I didn't write the recipes down, sorry!



Contact addresses:

Hippocrates Health Institute
1443 Palmdale Court
West Palm Beach, Florida  33411
Phone: 407-471-8876

Hippocrates Publications
- same address/phone as above

Comments:

1. Hormones and the mind are inter-related but hormones don't always control
the mind. The example of your mind/body producing adrenalin in a fear/shock
situation illustrates this point well. In that case the thought (fear) came
first, and the body produces the hormone (adrenalin) after.

2. "Spirit is believing." Belief is a mental process, and spirit is another
dimension, beyond the mental. Belief is necessary for interface with the
spirit, but it is not the same as the spirit.

3. Clarification on the pancreas in Type I diabetes. In Type I, the beta cells
in the islet of langerhans, in the pancreas, stop functioning and may even be
dead. These cells constitute about 1% of the pancreas. The remainder of the
pancreas may be functional.

4. Green juices - are great! Try celery mixed with lemon/lime, or grapefruit.
For an intense juice, try celery mixed with cilantro juice (and lemon/lime).
Celery mixed with the juice of any of these: dandelion, endive, escarole,
and/or Chinese/Indian bitter melon (Latin name Momordica charantia, grows
wild in Florida), can serve as a raw herbal bitter (liver cleanse). Cucumbers
can be juiced, but you might find it flat compared to celery. Mustard green
juice can be very pungent, while fennel bulb/green juice is fragrant and
very soothing.

5. "The only source of energy is raw food" is a direct quote and I disagree with
this. Food is the source of only a small part of your energy.  Most of your
energy comes from the air you breathe; it's referred to as prana in yoga and
Ayurveda. If all your energy came from food you could simply eat when tired, you
wouldn't need rest or sleep! By the way cooked food has some energy in it, but
much less than raw food. Cooking also can derange what energy is left behind...

After writing the above, the thought came to me that someone might say, "if all
your energy came from air you could simply breathe when tired, you wouldn't
need to eat". This deserves some clarification.  First, there are a few, very
rare people who are known as breatharians, who don't eat, they only breathe.
There are descriptions of some of these people in Viktoras' "Survival" book, and
also in Yogananda's book, "Autobiography of a Yogi" (see also "Aghora: At the
Left Hand of God", by Robert Svoboda).

Second, although becoming a breatharian is not feasible for most of us, one
thing is clear: if you practice certain yoga deep breathing exercises known
as pranayama, you can significantly reduce the amount of food and sleep you
require. A pranayama practice is more practical for most of us, than trying
to become breatharians. The specific practices that reduce need for food are:
sitali and sitkari pranayama (other types are helpful also). In order to reduce
your food requirement, you must practice regularly, and for a long time each
day. Further it takes some time (months) for the reduced needs to manifest.

There are other yoga practices that reduce the need for sleep. Savasana, or
deep relaxation, and yoga nidra, the yogic sleep, can sharply reduce the need
for sleep. A regular meditation practice can reduce stress and improve the
quality of your sleep (thereby reducing quantity required).


In summary, a regular pranayama practice, coupled with deep relaxation, can
sharply reduce both your food and sleep requirements. Of course a raw food
diet, to a certain extent, can convey similar benefits.


Brian Clement is an excellent speaker, and is worth hearing if you have the
opportunity. His positive, honest approach to raw/living foods is a refreshing
change from the narrow dogmatism that is so common in the movement.

Tom Billings