The Cleanse Wrap up

We have just completed our first cleanse of 2011 and it was suggested that I compose an email for all our current active evolution clients and provide a bit of a wrap up of the past 10 days.

For those who participated - May it strengthen what you have learned.

For those who have not done it - You will get another two opportunities this year. Alternately you might be totally inspired to go and do it right now, in which case all the information you need is on the evolution website.

The cleanse is about two things

1/ Eating with awareness and paying attention to what you are putting into your body

2/ Learning that things that control you are called addictions (and they are not your friends)

From eating with awareness and putting whole foods into your system you get to feel a complete shift in energy. What surprises most people is how little needs to change for them to feel vastly different. By day 4 once the caffeine headache has receded and the grumpiness is gone they start to feel lighter, clearer and more in tune. Bloating and heaviness diminish and by day 10 they feel positively great.

From learning to let go of an addiction comes a whole new lesson. For most it is coffee, alcohol or sugar. Those are the three demons. And for the smokers amongst us there is also the good old cigarettes.

And in the letting go of addiction lies the profound lesson of the cleanse.

The evolutionaries (trainers) know how much I love my gadgets and my reading so for my birthday they bought me my first Kindle - which I am loving. last night i download a book called the Slap.

Here's a quote from the book " he and Aisha had a graceful morning of slow delightful sex, and he'd wrapped his arms around her and whispered, you are my greatest commitment. She'd turned around with a sardonic smile and replied, No I'm not, cigarettes are your true love, cigarettes are your true commitment........she had wounded him, shattered his pride. and he was mortified to realize that it was only his feverish sucking on cigarettes that allowed him any measure of self control in the argument"

Such a poignant reflection on the insidious nature of addiction. Addiction can be a subtle little monster because it parades itself as our friend but always it contains both the high and the low and that is why the cleanse can be such a powerful tool to start to reclaim your own power, step by step, slowly slowly.

And here you were thinking that evolution was just about getting your butt kicked by a trainer by 6am.

And that is the beauty of doing the cleanse as a group. Sharing the victories and disappointments and feeding off each other as we take one step after another on the road to leading an optimal and meaningful life.

What was great about the cleanse this year was that all the evolutionaries took on doing it (that is an evolution first) and from that they started to make a difference in their lives and the lives of their evolutionites (you)

Tomorrow you will wake up and relish that you can have that first coffee. Relish it I say, enjoy it, enjoy the ritual and the aroma but do not let it be your crutch or your sustenance.

Do not let sugar or alcohol be that. Do not let cigarettes be that.

Take your sustenance from laughter with friends and family, the sun rising over the horizon, a shared moment with your partner as you pour every ounce of yourself into an exercise, a private victory as you climb to the top of a hill for the first time, a beautiful book, a great movie, shared intimacy and vulnerability.

Those are things that will fill your cup. I hope the cleanse has been another brick in that wall

Onward and upward

Mike and the evo team