What if within one day you could feel a greater sense of joy, release all pains in your body, feel the energy of a child, have a calm clear mind to accomplish any task, and open a direct connection with the Divine? And then after nine days you would notice a significant weight loss and bad habits being broken so you can maintain the weight loss and continue to lose weight if needed? The solution is the Nine-Day Diet, a cleanse created by the great yoga guru Paramhansa Yogananda.

For those of you who have never done a cleanse before, do not worry because you can eat as much as you want. The point is to eat high nutrient foods that are easy to digest and promote digestion.

Imagine the roads in New York City. Because the city never sleeps, there are always cars and the roads move slowly. With the influx of people moving at once to Portland, rush hour has bottle necked and is very slow. Yet people sleep in Portland allowing the roads to empty and the first cars in the morning to...

For the past few years I have had a fun game of looking at my face in the mirror to check my inner health after I wake up in the morning or after an event I really love doing. Once I discovered that the coloring of my skin, amount of acne, size of my bags, or how much it glows drastically changes depending on my activities, I developed a science experiment to check the inner condition of my body by looking at the outer condition. Here are four of the most effective tips for taking care of inner beauty that brought about the most beautiful complexion.

1. How You Sleep

People often say one should have an average of 8 hours a night. I find it is not only important to get the right amount of sleep, but how you sleep and when you sleep.

According to Ayurveda, the ancient Indian medical science, after 9-10pm we start moving into the fire and then air time of night when we feel more energetic, thus making it harder to fall asleep. From about 9 or 10pm to 1 or 2am our liver goes...

You have probably been bombarded with all sorts of advice and ideas on all the latest diet fads. Instead what you may be craving is a simple shift in mindset and an approach that will allow you to make better choices without sapping your willpower and beating yourself up. If you understand some basic principles that are easy to remember, you will feel more empowered to take control of your health and to create more vitality in your life.

As a child I started reading nutrition books. I became particular enough about food that my mother was concerned I was anorexic even though I had a big appetite. I actually only went through one phase where I was counting calories and the amount of nutrients I was getting. Most of the time I wanted to enjoy life and not be too particular.

When I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism, Hashimoto’s, hypoglycemia, and food allergies I had even more to learn about food and unique diets for those conditions. After I did all of my...

For your inspiration, a story of Angela healing from diabetes when all hope was lost. This is part of a longer interview with Coach Ruben, author of Evolving Health, to be featured in my upcoming book Healing Happens: Stories of Healing Against All Odds

Avital:                  I was curious if you have any stories where you have seen a major shift in somebody from what typically would happen in that situation in the medical industry and the success that you were able to achieve with that person.

Coach Ruben:     Certainly. I think one of my favorite stories to tell is that of Angela. I met her when she was 15 years old and I coached her in swimming. I coached swimmers professionally for 30 years. She was one of my outstanding swimmers.

When we first met, she was very disillusioned, unhappy, and frustrated. Her previous coaches had told her, because she had gotten...

What I find most inspiring in Paramhansa Yogananda’s book How to Achieve Glowing Health and Vitality is the understanding of our potential for truly healing ourselves. This book accurately reflects the path I have traveled in facing my own health challenges. We can feel caught – victims of the pain we experience or of the prognoses of doctors.

I was told I would be on medications for the rest of my life, that there was nothing I could do about it. The turning point for me came when an energy healer at Ananda Village in Northern California told me just the opposite.  My initial doubt dissolved when I met someone who  had actually healed herself from the condition that challenged me.

The door opened to my own potential for healing. Yogananda explained, “No disease is incurable. Some diseases are beyond the reach of medicines, which by their nature are limited, The medicine is non-curative – so doctors call the disease incurable! But the power of...