I’m all about holistic healing and so when I heard that Oprah
was doing a 21-day gluten-free vegan cleanse along with kicking booze and sugar,
I was highly intrigued as I too recently completed a 12-day gluten free vegan “Great
Food Reboot Experiment” myself. Oprah was inspired by the book Quantum Wellness
My review of Quantum Wellness is coming from the perspective of someone who has spent the last 7 years going through my own leap in healing using both traditional western and alternative healing modalities, recovering from date rape, the eating disorder bulimia, a near addiction to alcohol, depression & anxiety (I was on the happy pills) and being 30 pounds overweight. All of this I've written about in my blog Back in Skinny Jeans.
I’ve also gone through my own food transformation eliminating virtually all processed foods and eating mostly organic or home cooked. I’m an omnivore but have also experimented with vegan, vegetarian, and raw diets, as well as going gluten-free. I’ve done detoxes and cleanses as well. And lastly, in those 7 years, I finally left my corporate career in marketing and am pursuing my life purpose work with my own business.
What does my background have to do with this review?
I mention my background only because it will give you a
better understanding of my review and that I have personal experience with quantum healing because while I agreed with a great deal of
the content in Quantum Wellness, there is a significant philosophical difference
in opinion I have about Kathy's view on quantum healing. Now everyone is different, and we all
have different perspectives. What ultimately matters is finding what works best
for your personal situation which is why I highly recommend experimenting. Bottom line is that I agree with Kathy in
that wellness is holistic in body, mind, and spirit. She and I just have a different
view point on how to get there.
The basis to Kathy's Quantum Wellness are eight pillars of wellness:
- Meditation
- Visualization
- Fun activities
- Conscious eating
- Exercise
- Self-work
- Spiritual practice
- Service
The pillars are then followed up with the 4 R’s: Regular (tending to your daily responsibilities), Relate (Working on your relationships), Rejuvenate, and Reach (doing work to evolve as a person). These 8 pillars and 4 R’s are outstanding but based on my own experience what is hugely missing is Support and Forgiveness. No one can heal alone nor by holding onto hurt.
How support and forgiveness are key to healing
Support is key in overcoming great obstacles and challenges
in one’s health because healing can be very hard, lonely, and stigmatizing
work, and it is best to seek out and surround yourself with people who can
relate to your experience, and who can stick by your side through the mess and
pain. This also includes “partners in prosperity” as I call them. These are
people like medical professionals, healers, and coaches who have a vested
interest in your healing, yes because you are paying them but also because these
people are devoted to the process of healing.
...I do believe that the illness is really a
physical manifestation of the emotional pain going on underneath ...
Many with serious illnesses and un-wellness are also carrying around great amounts of pain, anger, and resentment from their past. We are either mad, upset, or angry at other people or ourselves and only until we start forgiving can we release and heal. I do believe that the illness is really a physical manifestation of the emotional pain going on underneath. In my own journey, when I started to forgive myself and the people who hurt me, betrayed me, and failed me, I saw huge leaps in my own physical healing.
For example, with the date rape, I never reported the man, and kept the secret to myself for 5 years. Holding in that secret and anger is what drove me to binge/purge, drink til I blanked out, and to have anxiety attacks and depression so badly I couldn’t function without medication. When I healed that pain and forgave myself for the parts where I felt I betrayed myself, I experienced huge leaps in my wellness which included being able to get off of the pills, no more binge drinking, and a significant recovery from the bulimia.
Readers like hearing other people's stories
The 8 pillars and 4’s cover some very good ground, but what I would have liked to see was more in depth examples about other people and how they experienced “quantum” wellness using the 8 pillars and 4 R’s. Quantum means sudden and significant, so to me that means people who were told they had months to live but then ended up beating their illness. They are people who lost 100-300 pounds or more and have kept it off. They are people who have had serious addictions like drug, alcohol, or food and have become clean, sober, and well.
Kathy did include some stories of people like these but they were touched on lightly in my opinion. For example, the story of Margie was a very heart wrenching one involving her 3-year-old son, and I wanted to know more details about how Margie used the pillars and 4 R’s to help her heal from that experience. Margie’s story deserved far more extrapolation, and forgiveness was definitely a huge part of her healing which I wanted to know more about how she was able to do that.
Is this a Special Diet Book or a Self-Help Book?
The marketing of this book is confusing. The publisher, and
Amazon have Quantum Wellness categorized as a Self Help
If I had to categorize the book, I’d say it’s a Self-Help Book with Diet thrown in (diet meaning a style of eating versus diet to lose weight) because the content is more about overall self- improvement. I can see why Borders and B&N see it as a “diet book” because 1. Kathy is very opinionated and focuses a great deal on the vegan diet as a way to quantum healing 2. The word “wellness” with a medical doctor giving the forward insinuates “body” which would make sense to see in a health/diet category, and 3. There are a bunch of recipes in the book which you’d normally see in a diet book.
Where Kathy and I differ philosophically about quantum healing
So, the eating consciously pillar about going vegetarian
then vegan leads me to the biggest philosophical difference I have with the
general principle of “quantum healing” that Kathy believes in.
First of all, I have a great respect for those who choose to become vegans because of their moral and spiritual beliefs about animals. Vegans are very passionate about animal rights and I'm cool with people who live their passions. But sometimes, too much passion can turn into zealotry and leave people defensive versus open to your cause.I have experimented with the vegan way of eating more for health reasons than moral/spiritual, so while I can appreciate the vegan philosophy I do not believe that going vegan is an essential component to one being able to experience quantum leaps in their wellness because I and many other omnivores have done it without going vegan.
And while many vegans will disagree with this, not everyone is built to be able to sustain a thriving body on a plant and grain only diet. For every study that says a human body is meant to be vegan, there are many other studies that say the opposite. As another example, if I look at the centurions on the planet, their diets are not all vegan and these people are living over 100 years old.
How my dad healed from colon cancer
Kathy emphasizes that you can prevent cancer and lose weight
by going vegan, which is true to some degree but you can also prevent cancer
and lose weight by simply going more organic, cleaning up your nutrition, exercising,
doing the emotional healing work, and having regular doctor’s check-ups. My
father had colon cancer, and went through the operation and chemo, and this
summer will be 15 years cancer free with zero relapses, and he eats meat and
dairy every day. Dad is also fit & trim and looks 10 years younger than his age. Here he is on his last birthday with mom and his triplet grand daughters.
What was key for my dad's quantum healing was exercise, cleaning up his nutrition, support, spiritual work, and forgiveness. I tell people I’ve had two dads in my life, dad before and after cancer and they are two completely different people. Colon cancer helped my dad become a much better and loving human being and being vegan had absolutely no part in his story. My father is one of my health role models as he is too many.
In the big holistic picture, what about human suffering?
Kathy says that in order to grow in our spiritual path we need to be consistent with our values to be kind and inflict no harm on others which includes animals. The energy of fear the animal experiences at their death can be absorbed when you eat their flesh. I do agree with that to a certain degree, and I can understand that. However, if I follow that line of thinking and follow a holistic view of the big picture, there is also an enormous amount of human pain and suffering that goes into the very living we Americans have in our lives, so every dollar you spend and every consumer product you use, you are also contributing to that human suffering and absorbing that energy.
...if you are going to be vigilant about the humanity and rights of animals, then you need to also include the human suffering as well ...
As some examples, the taxes we pay are going to support a war that is killing thousands of people. The gas we use is making a handful of people rich at our forced expense. In many places, the houses and buildings we live in were built with the hands of illegal workers who are threatened deportation every day. The fancy clothes & purses we buy are made in factories where people live in poverty. The electronics we use are manufactured overseas because it is cheap labor in poorer countries. Farm workers are treated and paid poorly all over the world and in the US for those very fruits and vegetables we eat.
Kathy says you can’t always trust the ranchers even if they are kosher, well likewise, you cannot fully trust every farmer in the world that they are running their farms with humane tactics. And the rain forests they are killing to grow soy to feed cows, that same soy is going into your veggie burger and soy milk. With pain & suffering inflicted upon animals there is also enormous pain & suffering that humans inflict on other humans in order for us to live well in the US. So, in my opinion, if you are going to be vigilant about the humanity and rights of animals, then you need to also include the human suffering as well because that is part of the holistic picture.
Great spiritual people can eat meat too
And lastly, Kathy mentions the Dalai Lama and Nelson Mendela as two great people who can serve as role models to us all because both have overcome great adversity, and are doing enormous spiritual works. I totally agree. However, those two men are not vegans. The Dalai Lama is primarily vegetarian and has spoken about animal rights, but he does eat meat when he travels. These two have reached pinnacles in life that most will never do in their lifetime, and eating meat and dairy has not prevented them from becoming outstanding humans and doing great things in the world. Would you sit at a table and tell either one of these men that they needed to stop eating meat and dairy in order to become more spiritually consistant and healthier people? Even Jesus and Buddha ate meat and dairy.
In India, which is also the Dalai Lama's exiled home, cows are treated as sacred beings, yet their milk is used in cooking and considered a blessing. Milk is offered at their alters for prayers. I do not see how this is not being respectful of animals by the vegan standards. I agree there is much to be horrified by in the slaughter houses that produce meat and dairy for mass consumption, but not all animals around the world are treated with these inhumane tactics.
There are many paths to the same destination
My point is not to blast the vegan lifestyle, but to show that there are many roads to quantum wellness and healing. And while someone may believe that eating meat and dairy is not in-line with a consistent higher spiritual path, that does not mean that everyone who chooses to eat meat and dairy is not capable of having great love, compassion, spirituality, and quantum health. Being vegan does not equal absolute optimal health. It is certainly an option but it is not the sole path because if it was then my dad would not be here today, and I would not be here blogging about how overcoming great health adversity is possible.
I think Quantum Wellness is worth the read because outside of the strong vegan message, the other pillars can help you experience great healing and happiness in your life. As far as the vegan message goes, I'd say that it could have been a better sell to a non-vegan audience if Kathy focused far more on the benefits of the vegan diet versus the horror stories of how animals are killed for food. Great sales people know that customers are far more inclined to buy when motivated by aspiration versus fear.
Check out Quantum Wellness
