>Hi Kirt! >I'm curious about cassia. What is it? What does it taste like? >I've been a member of the NH M2M since it began and have loved every issue, >have met several fellow M2Mers here in CA and also in Florida. If anyone is >interested in the address, let me know. >>Smiles, >Sandy I'm surprised there wasn't a discussion there about it. Anyway... Cassia is a black pod-like fruit of the a tree known as the "golden shower tree" because of its incredible display of cascading yellow flowers. The fruits are around two feet long or more, cylindrical, with a diameter btwn one half inch and an inch. The whole look is very much the same as a long hand-rolled cigar. (Imagine long black candles hanging amoung the blossoms and you have a _very_ remarkable tree.) The casing is woody and cracks along the stem end to blossom end axis on opposite sides (with the careful cajoling of a nut cracker) to reveal seed compartments. Each compartment is about a quarter inch length defined by circular woody disks which form cross sections. These disks are coated with a black honey-like goo which is what is eaten--usually sucked off the disk while in the mouth, and then the disk is discarded. It tastes like chocolate, licorice, mint, honey, and a million other flavors depending on...well, depending on how it tastes! The taste-change which indicates you've eaten enough is often a biting/burning one not unlike light honeys (at least for me), though this too varies per person and per instance. It supposedly increases the permeability of all cell walls enabling better molecular exchanges (read detox and rebuilding work) and increases the deposition of toxins from the lymph and blood into the colon. In other words, you get the shits big time. You will be in no doubt that you are indeed detoxing when you experience cassia. There isn't much sense to eating it if you consume cooked food; you'd just be on the toilet all the time. Some people get fairly severe cramping at first. It is touted as essential/mandatory for those starting to eat exclusively instincto, especially for those with visible pathologies. If my next door neighbor wanted to start instincto, I would advise that the first thing to do is get some cassia. My experience with it is that testing it every morning keeps raw foods tasting great. The colon discomfort falls off as you become less toxic. When we lived in Thailand (for 4 years) it was easily gatherable for free from trees and even just picking up pods off the ground around trees. Since it was free for me, I tested it most every morning, eating varying amounts according to pleasure. (If using it for the first time you might want to only eat two or three disks which is often enough to stir up things for beginners.) The lighter side of cassia: My principal (I was a 5th grade teacher) in Bangkok was a strange fellow and always on about a new something or other (coffee enemas, singing self-wrote C&W theme songs for the elementary school, etc). He was real curious about cassia and was always asking me about getting him some and finally I gave him a couple pods to shut him up, telling him to be careful about using it since it was so powerful, generally considered poisonous (to cooked food folk). He pooh-poohed me telling how he was all detoxified years ago and such (he ate as many donuts as the next guy from what I could see). I told him maybe he should try it on a weekend morning just to be sure. Again, he claimed it wasn't going to do much for him since he was so "pure" already. Well, you can guess the rest. He was pretty much out of commission the next day at school, back and forth to the toilet and looking grim according to the secretaries. Even at 3pm (I was in some BS meeting with him) he was having trouble. He said he ate about five disks before going to bed and was up since three o'clock in the morning. I've also heard that the active ingredient in Exlax-type products is from the bark of the cassia tree though I've never confirmed that. Anyone who is serious about detoxing and recovering their native health would find cassia useful. The best part is that your taste can control the "dose" so that you will be able to handle whatever happens. I could imagine testing it before a fast, or breaking a fast with it. I ate some after a week of a 20 day fast (so I guess it wasn't a fast, eh?) and had a BM which seemed to make the rest of the fast more pleasant. Still, it is a fruit, not a medicine. BTW, my wife doesn't like that cassia is so important to instincto. She doesn't deny that it is important, just that instincto seems more like a cult when one is always supposed to test cassia in the morning first thing. It's a far cry from grape kool-aide, but I do know what she means a little bit. Then again, she hates to detox, whereas I'm stupid enough to welcome it... Cheers, Kirt