Mary McGuire-Wien has been on the cutting edge of fitness and women's health for over 10 years. An acclaimed Pilates and yoga teacher, she founded her American Yogini retreat center in the Hamptons in 2004. Since its opening, McGuire-Wien has guided hundreds of guests through the American Yogini Juice Cleanse, with remarkable and lasting results. McGuire-Wien is a regular columnist on yahoo.com writing about yoga, health, and food and has been profiled in Time Out New York, Women's World, and The New York Times. She was recently interviewed for an article that is slated to appear in Martha Stewart's Body and Soul and is a regular guest on Plum TV (local Long Island NY station) as well as a columnist for “A.M. New York.”

Jill Parsons Stern has collaborated with more than a dozen writers on fiction, nonfiction, and memoir. Recent projects have included books with noted nutrition and aging expert Gary Null, Ph.D. (Mind Power, NAL 2005 and Power Foods, NAL 2006), Fox Analyst and Commentator Robert Massi (People Get Screwed All the Time, HarperCollins, 2007), and paranormal investigator Mary Ann Winkowski (When Ghosts Speak, Grand Central, 2007).

The Seven-Day Total Cleanse

A Revolutionary Juice Fast and Yoga Plan to Purify Your Body and Clarify Your MindBy Mary McGuire-Wien Jill Parsons Stern

The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

Copyright © 2010 Mary McGuire-Wien
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-07-162374-2

Contents

Chapter One

The Seven-Day Total Cleanse More than "'Just"' a Fasting Plan

When students come to my American Yogini Hohm for a retreat, they have already made a decision to cleanse their bodies through fasting, or abstaining from solid foods. But as they fully engage in my program, it soon becomes clear that that surface motivation is rooted in a (spoken or unspoken) desire for deep change. Each individual's commitment to, and reasons for, choosing to cleanse by fasting is unique to that person. Students frequently tell me they want to fast in order to lose weight, to jump-start a diet, or, more ambitiously, to break their bad eating habits.

Dedicating a certain amount of time to cleansing and fasting is the greatest gift that one can give one's Self. A properly guided cleanse is not simply a fad diet or a chance to participate in the "'detox"' trend. In fact, the very word detox insinuates that you are somehow toxic—and that is quite far from the truth. Our bodies are all miracles of filtration and efficiency. We are building new healthy cells every day, replacing old and tired ones that have served us well for months or even years. The body wants to make us well; it is our trusted partner, here to create health so we can enjoy a purposeful life.

Fasting and cleansing have been an important part of the yogic tradition for thousands of years. Purification practices have always been used to facilitate liberation from earthly bounds and to free the flesh from anything not supporting the union of the body with the divine. In yoga, these traditional purification practices are referred to as austerities, and they are part of a fundamental practice of burning off impurities that hinder the union of our finite bodies with the infinite body of the divine. The austerity of fasting is called tapas, which is the Sanskrit word for heat or burning fire. Fire and burning represent destruction, but it is from ashes that new forests quickly grow. In fact in some cultures, cremation is thought to free the spirit to the divine after death so that it can be reborn.

In yoga, fasting is used to burn off the finite and ego-driven Self to reveal the infinite and limitless Self. Tapas, then, is the burning off of mental, physical, and spiritual impurities that hinder one's connection with universal consciousness. Historically, austerities such as fasting were practiced with the intention of causing suffering in order to "'burn off"' whatever occluded one's awareness and energy, leaving one in a state of pure essential energy. Gurus guided their followers through the intense internal fires of dismay, doubt, and self-conscious striving to a state of total transformation.

Many people come to yoga because they are suffering in some way. Perhaps you feel a sense of pain or dissatisfaction that is hard to articulate, something not quite definable or justifiable. The accumulation of emotional debris—stored emotion that has not been looked at, not yet burned off —can manifest as a sense of unease, a feeling that things are not quite right. You may feel as if there is something "'wrong"' about you—your body, your face, your job, or your relationships. You may be experiencing an emotional crisis, linked to work, family, or a relationship. Although you may decide to try yoga or fasting to achieve the physical benefits of toning or weight loss, you may also be hoping that the practice of yoga will quiet your mind.

It doesn't matter how you have arrived at your decision to practice this seven- day cleanse. What matters is that you have found this book. As you practice this cleanse, all the feelings of being "'wrong"' that you may have been carrying around in your body for years and years will dissolve and a real, authentic, and personal life—one that will be right for you—will emerge in only seven days.

The Seven-Day Total Cleanse comes from my deeply rooted belief that you do not have to continue to suffer in order to burn off the spiritual and bodily toxins that obscure your best and highest Self. I have created this program to help you gain the ability to feel complete safety, comfort, and love toward yourself. Giving yourself comfort and love enables you to safely observe your suffering, and in this "'watching,"' you can finally release it. I want everyone who undertakes the honorable and sacred practice of the Seven-Day Total Cleanse to feel how noble and regal a practice this is. By taking away just one element of your daily life—eating solid foods—and replacing it with pampering and loving indulgences, as well as delicious and richly combined elixirs, you will feel safe and free to release the undigested emotions that are obscuring your personal clarity.

Know that when you embark on this practice, you are following in the footsteps of kings and queens, yogis and yoginis, who have been luminaries at the leading edge of creation for thousands of years.

Why a Juice Cleanse Works Best

Our bodies and spirits are amazing, resilient entities, and every day we are given another chance for renewal—fresh blood circulates through our system, skin cells slough off and are replaced, new ideas arise and are nurtured or forgotten. So with all these opportunities for a fresh start, why do we cling to habits that are unhealthy? Why aren't we all at our ideal weights, why doesn't our skin glow with health, what stops us from finding fulfilling jobs or relationships? In short, why is it so hard to parlay this natural cycle of revitalization into a conscious union of mind and body?

One reason is that our bodies are worn out from working overtime to metabolize a steady diet of processed food. On a cellular level, our bodies exhibit their exhaustion and confusion with a host of complaints: headaches, eczema, asthma, digestive disorders, autoimmune disorders, allergies, and inflammation. Our bodies have become so sensitized and overwhelmed by triggers associated with unhealthy environments and foods that they rebel.

Eliminating processed foods from your body and diet and replacing them with the cleansing, nourishing juices of the Seven-Day Total Cleanse lets your body begin to recover at a cellular level. One of the most critical aspects of this cellular cleansing is the consumption of "'live"' or "'raw"' foods during your entire cleanse. All of the juices and most of the recipes in this book use only "'live"' foods as their ingredients. Live foods are foods that are totally unprocessed and thus retain the vitality of the plants and soil that produced them. All of the enzymes, minerals, vitamins, and nutrients of the food remain intact. They are fully alive, with the energy of the sun surging through their cells, and they pass their vitality along to you when you consume them.

Live foods are also called "'raw"' foods because cooking is one of many forms of processing that destroys the vitality of foods. Nature provides every raw fruit and vegetable with the exact and perfect catalyst it needs to transfer its life force energy to us: enzymes. The enzymes contained in raw fruits and vegetables do the work that must be done in order for us to absorb the nutrients. Without enzymes, our bodies cannot access the...