This has been the most unexpected best 10 weeks of my life. I came to this class to support my daughter, Pam, and in turn I got the support I needed to lead me to a more nutritious and vivacious life. I have never felt more proud of myself than I do at this time of my almost 65 years! Wow!!! What an accomplishment! Thanks.
I liked the hands on demonstrations each week. Especially the “how to grow wheatgrass and sprouts demonstration”. I started growing both with the help of being given the all ready to plant trays. That was so helpful, and the “stand-out” of the whole ten week class.
I liked being “forced” to make a recipe for the class. This gave me the opportunity to push myself in looking at recipe books and getting the ingredients and putting it together.
I liked viewing the DVD’s each week. I learned so much from each of them, and gave me an opportunity to decide which one’s I want for my own library.
I got a lot of information from the textbook you gave us, and will continue to read it and copy pages for others. It is a great resource for me for the rest of my life.
I loved the “relaxed” atmosphere we had at your home and how open and friendly the classes were. I feel I could call anyone in my class to just talk or to ask for help with something to do with living a raw life-style.
I liked being informed each week about what was happening in the “raw and vegan” community, and I so enjoyed the few events I attended. I look forward to a life long association with the community and advancing my learning.
The “guest speakers” were also very informative and another “resource” for me and my journey being raw and vegan. I especially got a lot from Sharon and just loved when she came to our class at a participant. She gave me many tips and was so open to being helpful. I’d take a series of classes with her if she offered them.
The coaching was helpful, though I was/am very committed to this lifestyle. I think someone who is not “there” yet, the coaching would have been more helpful. I liked my coach very much; she is a committed raw and vegan, and is very knowledgeable and very likeable. Her web site is excellent and full of great information, one I will go to as a resource.
I love that the money from the course goes to help educate children about nutrition and to help fight obesity. I am a recovering compulsive eater myself, in OA, and I know the pain of being 70 pounds over weight and addicted to sugar, flour and junk food. So, that Optimum Health has set up this program, makes me so grateful to be a part of a bigger process than just educating me about how to stay healthy by eating raw, living and vegan.
I thank Betsy from the bottom of my heart for dedicating her time, education, and home to teach this class. I will do what I can to be helpful to our community and to you out of gratitude. Anyone interested is welcome to call me, Stephanie Whiting Tel: 781-829-0920 Cell: 617-744-7916 Let me start by saying why I took the course in the first place. I initially met you at a raw food event. I was very interested in the work you were doing in the school system and wanted to hear more. We met at Prana where you gave me much more detail about what you were doing and how, along with information about this course. Given my profession as an educator, and my desire to offer as much information to my students on ways to increase their health and that of their communities, and my own personal quest to increase overall health, I knew that the class would be worthwhile.
The format of the course is very comprehensive! I liked the sequencing of each of the classes; it flows well and while each class could stand on its own, there is also a good flow of one course to the other. The variety of guest speakers allowed for an array of perspectives and expanded the knowledge base for all participants and kept the class lively and interesting. The hands on food prep took the class from a concept of what engaging in a raw food lifestyle is all about to jumping right in to doing it! It was great to have the “experience” of raw with both prep and consumption. The DVD’s are very informative and truly formed the base of knowledge gained in the class. The weekly calls to my coach were key in helping to integrate raw food living into my existing lifestyle. I gained much from the information shared from the DVD’s, the speakers, the manual and the overall class format. I learned a lot from seeing and experiencing the variety of food we prepared both in class and on our own.
This course has really inspired me. Betsy is an inspiration!! Since I haven’t been able to get to Hippocrates, this has been the next best thing!! I have been doing some things that I never did before…..dehydrating, buying more organic, making actual raw food recipes (not just salads!!), alternate nostril breathing, etc. I also have been more consistent with things that I have done before but just hadn’t been doing quite as much…..rebounding, dry skin brushing, oil swishing, juicing, enemas, etc. I have a lot more motivation to eat better. I agree that there was a lot covered in 10 weeks and the class could easily go on another 2 or 3 weeks. I liked having all the guest speakers — each one had the same message, but a different aspect of it! It’s good to hear the stories of other people & how they transitioned into this lifestyle. The coaching is great — it’s good to have someone help you along the way & listen to your problems! I like the way the recipe part was incorporated into the class each week. When you see something prepared and then eat it, it’s a lot easier then trying it at home from a recipe. The DVD’s were all very informative. I liked it when there was a CD available — it was easier for me to listen to that in the car and sometimes I listened to the whole CD 3 or 4 times! The manual is a great resource and I will continue to refer to it as time goes on. You have certainly put a lot of time and effort into these classes and are to be commended for that. I’m not quite ready to start teaching this, but will do what I can to get the word out to others. Just talking about it more and bringing recipes to different places is more than I did before! Thank you for your willingness to do all that you do. I hope we are able to keep in touch as a class and all see each other periodically. It is always a challenge when you “walk to the beat of a different drummer,” but I feel much more equipped to “fight” after the preparation that this class gave me! I forgot to say that I use Tom’s expression of “Nothing tastes as good as healthy feels” all the time!! Thanks so much!.
I believe that there are no coincidences in life but everything happens for a reason and I am very grateful right now that I got to meet Betsy during a Tao meeting and we had a brief discussion about my intended goal to become a professional Health Coach. Right now, after the finishing of this Life Force Energy course, I feel that I became a much more educated person on health and am making every single effort to buy organic, eat more raw, drink lots of water and eliminate meat products as much as possible. It is also great to see that my family members started to buy organic and they are also inspired by having a much healthier lifestyle. In each class, we got the chance to meet some wonderful speakers and their life stories and achievements have become very inspiring on my goal to become a great health coach. The application of the health tools and the wisdom they provide will definitely benefit our health and well-being even further. I also should say that the CDs and DVDs that have been given as part of the course have been very eye-opening and it will be my goal to promote these materials in my friend’s circle so that more people can watch these documentaries and make healthier choices for their lives. Finally, the raw food preparation part of the class was really interesting for me as I had never made recipe search for raw foods before and it was great to see the possibility of the many delicious foods that could be prepared using only raw food. I will definitely work more on this and have my loved ones experience these possibilities with raw.
This has been the fastest 10 weeks of my life. I found the entire course to be Life-Changing. Each week I left feeling more connected and light-filled. My journey to learn more about raw food and to fully integrate myself into this world has been and continues to be incredible! The speakers were just amazing. The information they shared offered so much support and knowledge. Betsy is an inspiration and a powerful educator with a gift for honoring each individual. I would highly recommend this program and will continue to spread the word. It was an honor and a pleasure to be part of Life Force Energy: The Hippocrates Approach to Optimum Health.
I signed up for this class at the last minute and even hesitated since I only recently moved back to the area, wasn’t settled yet, and other nutrition studies and work on my plate. Betsy encouraged me to dive in and I’m only so glad she did. I have been interested in raw foods for several years, been reading about it, doing some internal cleansing, and trying my hand at a few new raw dishes.
Even though I am an experienced cook, I felt intimidated by the new methods and chemistry of raw food preparation. Even with all my books and online resources, I’m a kinesthetic learner and really did need hands-on experience to learn. Betsy provided this through live demos, her teachings in the class, and in her internship (which I did). She is very generous and shares so many resources and much information. She also made it all seem easy and approachable.
She is a library of nutritional knowledge and knows the best of the best. If there is anything she doesn’t know Betsy is always willing to learn or find out. Her energy and enthusiasm are boundless. As a class, we got to share each other’s new experiments and recipes which allowed me to learn raw food preparation exponentially through the variety of dishes shared. It was delightful to taste so many new, delicious raw food samples, to hear what worked methods best for people (and ones that didn’t), and to get new, creative ideas. This was a very inspiring part of the course. As a class, we also had discussions that were interesting and provocative. Food and eating can be a loaded topic and we shared our experiences with passion and vulnerability.
Even though some of our speakers had to cancel, it was wonderful to meet the speakers who were able to attend. They all had a wealth of information and shared their own, unique experience and opinions. Food for thought! The course is very rich, dense, and thorough. I understand why many people attend two and three times over because one time through is not nearly enough to absorb all of the information on the DVD’s, in the book, in the class, and from the speakers. This course holds a wealth of resources for all those in the Boston area (and beyond).
I had first heard about the Hippocrates Institute while living in Hawaii. Many friends would often refer to the Hippocrates perspective and teachings, and to Ann Wigmore. Even with all of the wonderful “offspring,” the new raw teachers and chefs with their own take on this lifestyle, it seems like the Hippocrates approach is foundational and extremely important to learn more about this lifestyle. It’s important to learn from the source even if one decides to vary some elements to suit individual preferences. All artists learn fundamentals before they develop their own style. The raw food lifestyle in an art de vie, the art of life. This course should be a required fundamental for conscious, healthy living.