My world is a friendly place.

You know more and more it is being confirmed to me that the pronoia concept i.e. the world is a friendly place or the universe is conspiring to do me good is one of the most powerful, beneficial and useful belief systems or philosophical foundations that a person wanting to tap into a more magical life experience can cultivate. Smile and the world smiles back. This was shown to me a just over two years ago in a very demonstrable way. Mysteriously I fell into the clutches of US homeland security while boarding a domestic flight from San Diego to San Francisco as a result of my tea tree oil being flagged as ‘suspicious’. Anyway this article is not about politics or terrorism but the point I am trying to make is that those corporate/federal agents were actually doing me a favour when they politely asked me to buy a plane ticket back to my country of birth even though it is really cold in the UK in mid-January. After the cultural shock of coming back to England was done I went to stay with my friend Love Sky Dancer who is a raw food shaman. Sky has been drinking 100% spring water for 16 years. I can actually verify this fact because I’ve known him for around the same amount of time. When I was living in the US I was drinking some spring water but never really found a consistent source. Thus I usually ended up with filtered water. Little did I know how much of a difference it would make. I heard David Wolfe speak the summer before last at Cafe Gratitude and in his talk one thing he said that really stood out that night was “you heard about the benefits of wild food but what about wild water?”. A few days later I was driving up to Oregon with my friend Jared and we stopped at Mount Shasta to fill up. I was still thinking about what David said that night and I proceeded to drink about half a gallon. Let’s just say that it created a very different response in my body than water usually does! From that point on during the rest of my stay in California my body was wanting this experience. Subconsciously I think this is what helped catapult me back into my present state of dominion in the UK. As a result of hanging out with my shaman/druid friend I managed to become a 100% spring water drinker and within about 2 weeks of being back in the UK noticed a huge physiological difference, I think mostly because of the water. Also I think the soil in the UK is more densely mineralised than it is in California. Intuitively I was eating mostly kale in my salads which grows all year round in this climate. My body felt like it was generally more fortified than it had been for a long time. We gather water from quite a few springs, some from the village of Doulting which is about 10 miles from Glastonbury, also from the Wye Valley. My friend Laxmi who started on the raw food path about the same time as me and Sky, probably about 14 years ago has a beautiful cottage in this area which has some of the best water in the country gushing out of the ground in his garden. Its amazing to me how easy it is to drink large amounts of spring water of this calibre! My body feels like it completely opens up when I drink, even in a cold climate like this one! There are definitely some minus’s comparing the UK to America but when you start to look for the plus’s they are there too. In spring time all the amazing wild food starts to proliferate in the fields and woods in the beautiful Somerset countryside, one of the most prominent being the stinging nettle and also the less common white nettle. Nettles are really high in chlorophyll and can contain up to 10mg of vitamin C per 100g, they contain glucocinins which can aid in lowering high blood sugar levels. Nettle roots are extremely good for issues of the prostate. I clearly remember my daughter’s Mom and her practice of drinking nettle tea while pregnant with Eden. The midwives were astounded at the amazingly high levels of iron in her blood. Another wild green I have been consuming is wild garlic (allium ursicum). When I ate these for the first time I was surprised to notice that there was not so much odour apparently as is usually the case with our traditional agricultural grade allium sativum garlic bulbs Upon further investigation I discovered via my trustworthy friend google that the sulphur compounds in wild garlic leaves more readily bind to proteins where as in common garlic there is a more free form of sulphur and so the odour tends to linger more ( I actually am not offended by the smell of garlic on people. But I know some folks are and thus might find this to be useful information). Wild garlic also has a greater concentration of minerals than common garlic, one of them being magnesium. This is why it is sometimes referred to as the ‘magnesium king’. Magnesium is fantastic for opening up avenues of detoxification in our bodies. But also it is anti-stress medicine strengthening our heart and our whole circulatory system. There are 1700mg of magnesium per kilo of allium ursinum leaves. As we get deeper into the wild food season’s proliferation here in the UK in spring we progressively decrease the amount of store bought organic produce while at the same time increasing our wild food intake. For instance in our juices we do less celery and apple and more and more of the amazing herb clivers. This plant is also known as ‘sticky willy’ and has an amazing ability to cling onto other plants so it can grow taller. Clivers is a great substitute for celery/apple/carrot as it tends to yield a lot of water - this i why we feel less need for the traditional organic ‘fillers’ for our juices. Clivers is diuretic, anti-inflammatory, and also an excellent tonic herb. In regards to our lymphatic system it can change the body at a cellular level allowing for the renewal of tissue so as to carry out its workings more efficiently. Some of the maladies it has positive impact on include skin disease, eczema, finger nail ulcer, water stowages, cystitus, kidney stones, bladder stones and obesity to name but a few. These are just a few of the wild food discoveries I have made after being immersed in the UK raw food lifestyle and in particular in northern latitudes. Another very fun, very medicinal and nourishing part of our regimen has been the medicinal herb tea/ superfood cacao beverage we have been creating. In a land where a lot of the resistance to raw food is because of the cold climate I have been trying to show people that you do not have to cook food in order to consume it warm. One of my favourite recipes is this: First prepare nut milk: soak 1 cup of raw cashews, almonds or pumpkin seeds overnight, discard the soak water, rinse, blend with spring water and strain. You want your blender about a third full - if you are using a vitamix, which is recommended it will be about 20-24 oz of spring water that you will use to make your nut milk. Then take the following superfoods: 3 heaped teaspoons of raw carob powder, 1 tablespoon maca powder, 1/4 teaspoon cayenne powder, 1 heaped tablespoon lucuma, the insides of 2 vanilla beans, a couple of pinches of sea salt; blend all these with the nut milk. Prepare a herbal tea from these suggested ingredients, or others: reishi mushroom slices, liquorice, pau d’arco, cats claw, peppermint, chai spices etc. Combine the tea and milk by pouring the tea slowly into your blender, add a sweetener of preference and serve. I have been gravitating towards honey but sometimes have used the coconut palm sugar at times. I think coconut sugar is a great alternative to agave but honey may be a wiser choice. Those who have issues with candida and other dysbiotic internal conditions may want to be a little more discerning about the quantity and type of sweetener they use if any at all. Written in the spring of 2010 by kenny and later published in funky raw magazine 2012