G.O.A.T.S.
Trees are teachers. Dogs are teachers. Books are teachers. Life experiences are teachers. I’m alive and learning from just about everything, everywhere, but there are three people who I credit with elevating my consciousness: Cat Hedberg, Dr. Gabriel Cousens, and Anthony William, a.k.a., the “Medical Medium.” All of them are controversial. All of them are renegades. All of them rocked my world in the best way.
And I had (and have) a lot to learn. As a child of suburban American, I was ignorant and very inside-the-box. I was eating only processed foods and feeding my mind with mainstream television programing. I attended school - college and graduate school too - but life began for me when I took the road less traveled, which opened my heart and mind to non-mainstream things.
Cat is from Sweden. She started The Ashram, a barebones yoga and hiking bootcamp, in California in the 1970s. Today, the Ashram is no longer in California. Now, it take hikers to the Canary Islands, Iceland, Japan and other places around the world. I met Cat in the mid-nineties, and from her I learned a myriad of things like, the body, mind and spirit can completely transform in one week, the body can handle A LOT, like 18mile hikes and having only a small un-dressed salad for breakfast, the body was meant to move and that not moving is detrimental, and rigor is an absolute privilege and actually induces joy.
In 2008, I met Dr. Gabriel Cousens in the Arizona desert. His book, Spiritual Nutrition, blew me away a few years before that and I just had to figure out a way to study with him. I’ve learned so much from Gabriel about lifestyle medicine, but the #1 lesson which has so many layers is, “There are no shortcuts to the divine.” If we want to feel the glorious, we’ve gotta eat/sleep/move/pray/live the right way - which is not found in a pill, potion or spell, sorry to report.
In 2015, I read Medical Medium, the first book by Anthony William. It resonated. It preaches the “food is medicine” protocol. Do I drink celery juice? Yes, and I think it is a mini-miracle in a glass, but the #1 lesson I internalized from Anthony is I work for God. Whatever I do, I work for God. That’s my mantra everyday, I work for God. It helps me live with integrity, and try to do the right thing. Anthony teaches so many “micro” things like the power of pomegranates, but it’s this “macro” notion that has really stuck.
At first glance, Cat, Gabriel & Anthony are health gurus. The three of them are about healing the sick or improving physical health & fitness, and I can attest, they have healed people many times over. However, they are spiritual teachers. If I were to sum up their collective message, it’d a well-known, universal one - “As above, so below.” The body is where the spirit plays itself out, so tending to your health is a spiritual act.
The spirit and the body are one.
Cat, Gabriel & Anthony all walk their talk. When I’ve been in their presence, I can feel and see for myself that they are vibrantly healthy, bursting with inspiration and compassion. They are aging with power and confidence. They have stayed extremely mentally sharp, and have maintained the highest levels of physical and mental endurance. They work 18 hour days y’all! (They all have great skin, teeth, and posture too!)
I’m grateful to be alive at the same time as these living legends, and to have actually met them in person. Perhaps one hundred years from now, Cat, Gabriel and Anthony will be like Edgar Cayce, Nikola Tesla, and Rudolph Steiner. They’ll be the subjects of books, and educational centers will be built around their teachings and philosophies.
Check out my G.O.A.T.S. if they call to you, but definitely pay attention to your intuition when someone thrilling appears, via book or otherwise. A book might be a breadcrumb leading you to another book and then to a real life person. We all need teachers. Find some that resonate. 🤗