News from Dr Nandita Shah's tour

I left Auroville on the 12th of September for Bangalore. It already seems like such a long time ago. So much has happened since then. On the 14th I had a talk called Real Health Not Medicines with a cooking demo at Santa Fe, Bangalore for a group of ex-pat women. We cooked some Indian salads, daal soup, tofu akuri, a vegan Boursin and vegan mayonnaise. We all had lunch together. It was very well received and I already have news of participants who have gone or are going vegan and are also feeling better.

On the 16th Sept we had a Reversing Heart Disease and Hypertension Seminar. This was co- organized by the Bhoomi network and held at Prakriya Green Wisdom School. We had a special guest too. Allon Kahana attended a Peas vs Pills workshop in Auroville 5 years ago. He had had a heart attack 13 years ago when he was just 32 years old and had been on medications ever since. The diet changes he made through the workshop enabled him to get off all his medications and he now conducts his own Reversing Heart Disease workshops and residential programs in his home country, Israel. He shared his experiences with the participants. We have news of some of the participants who have already made changes and are experiencing benefits from this workshop.

On the 18th of September we had a Reversing Diabetes Seminar at Modak organic restaurant in Bangalore. We had just a few participants but Allon was also there and we had a few more special people. Dr Agrawal and his wife came from Shahjahanpur. Dr Agrawal found out about this from his doctor friend in Mumbai. He bought Dr Neal Barnard's book and started a vegan diet 2 months before the workshop and was largely well by the time he came. This was expected. But his wife who had had sarcoidosis for 11 years saw very impressive results too and recent blood tests show her to be free of the disease. Dr Agrawal suggested conducting this seminar for people with auto-immune diseases. We will do this too one day. We had a small meeting of the participants from the 21-day Diabetes Reversal Program (which was held last May/June) towards the end of this seminar. This was an opportunity for the new people to hear about the results of this program from the participants and inspire them to improve their health.

Rani, one of the participants of the 21-day program, was there along with Millie for these events. Both are good cooks and we are hoping that they start healthy cooking classes for participants and others.

After this I left for Mumbai. There, Ashit Sheth, one of the participants of the 21-day program had arranged multiple talks every day in schools, colleges and institutions. SHARAN's Shawn Rodrigues, Monika Mehta, along with Ashit and his wife Rima accompanied me for most of them. It was Ashit's wish that this information reaches the maximum number of people possible. While in Mumbai we did talks for at least 3500 people of all age groups and all spheres of life, including a very open group of medical doctors and cardiologists. We also did talks for parents, design people, chartered accountants, financial consultants, senior citizens, BMC workers and BMC executive staff.

There were 3 workshops in Mumbai: Reversing Diabetes on 26th September, Peas vs Pills on 2nd October and Reversing Heart Disease and Hypertension on the 3rd. The Reversing Diabetes workshop was very special because we had many participants from previous workshops as well as people who had already tried the program on their own talking about the results of this program. At the end, past participants of the 21-day program also came. All except one of the Mumbai participants were there with their spouses and shared their experiences in this workshop. This was very moving. We also had 8 doctors attending this program.

The other 2 workshops in Mumbai also had past participants who shared their experiences. This is always such a great inspiration to the newcomers because it's daunting to change your lifestyle. Several participants had done one or more of our programs before and so had plenty to share. There were doctors in all the 3 Mumbai workshops. This is a special bonus because participants can be sure that there is someone amongst them who understands the process clearly and would raise doubts if there were any.

Shawn is a professional photographer and is busy putting up many of the photos of these events on our albums. You can see them at: http://picasaweb.google.com/Sharan.India1
In case you were at one of these talks or workshops or at one of our events, you may see yourself too!