Taking in sun energy. Digestive fire: enzymes, amino acids, essential fatty acids, vitamins. Sunning your skin. Movement & exercise. Sun Salutation (yoga).

A recent television documentary about Albert Einstein shows the young physics doctoral student in several quiet scenes staring at beams of sunlight pouring through the branches of trees, musing on the nature of sunbeams while missing another physics class (he was notorious for his absences). These stories of Einstein mesmerized by sunlight are quite famous, and they remind us of the profound nature of sun energy. We are made of sunlight. Not only are we made of ancient sunlight, but everything around us is made of energy from the sun as well, including that car you drive, and the gasoline you pump into it. It all comes from sunlight-the source of all energy on earth. Sunlight led Einstein to the theory of relativity, which states a simple natural truth: energy, including energy stored in matter, comes from the speed of light particles emitted from stars such as our sun. When you flip the light switch, the electricity that lights up the light bulbs in your kitchen come from either a coal burning power plant, or a nuclear power plant, or solar panels. All can be traced back to our sun. Coal, like oil that is refined into gasoline, comes from ancient plant matter that grew during the carboniferous period when the earth's atmosphere had more carbon dioxide than oxygen, and the earth's surface was covered in plant life 5 miles thick (before the ice age that killed the dinosaurs). These plants transformed sunlight energy through photosynthesis into stalks and leaves, and the energy stored in them became buried and fossilized. Thom Hartmann's book The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight is an excellent read on this topic. Coal and oil come from those buried plants that were compressed underground for millennia; and the energy that supports our urban lifestyles (cars, computers, indoor lighting, etc.) comes from burning these fossilized forms of ancient condensed plant matter. Hence oil and coal are non-renewable resources: once we use them up, we can't just manufacture them again; it took millions of years and specific geological circumstances to create them. Humans discovered them relatively recently, and by the year 2050 most experts expect them to be depleted. Obviously it will be more and more advantageous and necessary for humans to learn to store and transform sunlight energy more directly.

In the meantime, we must get sunlight energy for ourselves through plants that have stored the energy of the sun through photosynthesis, either by harvesting and combusting plants (trees and fossil fuels) or by eating plants (or eating animals and fish that have eaten plants).

The reason I belabor this simple truth is because it is such a stark, non-negotiable reality, and one of the keys to wellness. There is absolutely no benefit from trying to resist the reality that humans get their energy from the sun, and that we depend on plants to transform sunlight into something we can digest. Accept this simple truth and you won't need nutritional counseling, you probably won't be tired every day, and you will be less vulnerable to disease. This truth does mean you will always have your dinner plate heaped up with vegetables rather than chocolate chip cookies, French fries and ice cream. The problem is that Madison Avenue and fast-food marketers get in between you and the simple truth, and many people get confused about how to eat for their wellness. So the first step may be to get Madison Avenue advertisers out of the space between your neo-cortex and your mouth-the gateway to your digestive tract where all nutrients from sunlight are absorbed into your body and cells.

Here are the simple guidelines of nutrition. Living plants have more sun energy. The more dead the food, the less energy. Sprouts, freshly picked salad greens, a bell pepper just off the vine, fresh fruits just off the tree, almonds that have been soaking overnight in water to activate their enzymes, carrots at the farmer's market that were pulled from the earth just that morning-all of these living, raw foods are full of energy. Frozen foods and canned foods generally have less vital energy than fresh foods, unless your "fresh" foods are not so fresh and local, but have been stored cold, shipped thousands of miles, and sat being spritzed with water for a couple days in your grocery store. If you canned your own peaches immediately after picking them, they probably have more nutrients than the peaches shipped from across the country that you bought at the grocery store that never really ripened. The point is to capture the nutrients as soon as possible from the time of harvesting. That's why your local organic farmer's market is always your best choice. By the same token, all those packaged food products that sit on the shelves for weeks in the middle of the grocery store between the refrigerator aisles that usually line the walls-those have very little energy left in them and from a nutritional point of view are a poor expenditure of money.

On the other hand, fish have lots of stored energy in them; just pick low-on-the-food-chain fish that have low accumulations of mercury. Red meat also has lots of stored energy from all the plant feed the steer ate; however, it takes such a huge amount of plants to feed the steer for market-from grasslands to the corn the beef is "finished" on in feedlots-and we have to cut down so much natural forest and divert so many resources, including oil, to create enough pasture and farmland to feed beef cattle, that beef is a very inefficient source of energy given global food supplies in relation to the global demand for food. (See Michael Pollen's excellent book, The Omnivore's Dilemma , for more on this subject.) If you do eat beef, eat it moderately, and avoid anything but free-range beef or buffalo, which is not factory farmed, because common market beef is loaded with bovine growth hormone and antibiotics that can affect the human endocrine and immune systems.

Cleaning up what you eat is the first step to balance, the second step is cleaning up your digestive fire. Energy is all around you, but you must take it inside you in specific forms that can be easily digested by your s tom ach, and absorbed by your intestines. The health of your intestines will play a crucial role in how much energy you can absorb, and the food you eat will play a crucial role in the health of your intestines. Many, many people in the US fall into a viscous cycle with bad food and poor digestion, so much so that obesity is now commonly recognized as a "national epidemic" by the US Congress, and the second most preventable cause of disease after cigarette smoking! The road to all health, no matter what ails you, is to detox your gut, cleanse your metabolism, and eat the best quality, most alive and pure foods you can get your hands on, in the right amounts and the right combinations for your body and blood type, and at the right times of the day and the right frequencies given your metabolism. This is why Deepak Chopra in his book on chronic fatigue, Boundless Energy , starts with some basic guidelines about digestion: don't eat again until your last meal is fully digested, and, as I mentioned in the Water section, drink hot quality water every 30 minutes to cleanse and hydrate your gut, so you can get some energy coming into your cells from the foods you do eat.

And what foods should you eat? There really aren't that many options when it comes to what really nourishes us. Our digestive fire requires Essential Fatty Acids (good fats), Amino Acids (proteins), and Vitamins (in addition to the minerals discussed in the section on Earth), and I will review each one in detail below. Just remember that the basic nutritional needs we all share as humans are simple and straightforward, though each person needs to fulfill these needs specifically for their body type and situation and environment. Again, if you're not sure what you need, consult with a naturopath, a nutritionist, or holistic MD. I would be happy to refer you to one if you don't already know one.

Essential fatty acids. Good fats are the most misunderstood food in the U.S. Good fats, known as Essential Fatty Acids (EFAs), are one of the food sources that we cannot do without. Without them our bodyminds will begin to lose function. We need these essential fats for our hormonal system (hormones attach to fat molecules to travel around the body), for our eyeballs, our skin, our joints, our organs, the tissue around our organs, our glands, our skin, hair, the list goes on and on. This is why low-fat and no-fat diets are the most dangerous and devastating to the human body. Women with eating disorders lose menses from lack of essential fats as their endocrine system begins to break down, and will often grow downy hair on their skin in an effort to keep warm as their bodies lose the ability to regulate body temperature internally (a function usually regulated by the endocrine system). Eating good fats is not what makes anyone fat, eating more carbohydrates (sugars) than you burn on the day you eat them is what makes your body store more fat. Avoiding fats and binging on lots of sugars and carbs without being able to stop (guess what, it's fat that tells you when you're full and need to stop eating!) will definitely make you fat.

Essential fatty acids are where lots of energy from sunlight get stored-in the seeds of plants, the nuts of trees, and the nourishing milk of animals. These foods are nutrient-rich. Good essential fats come from seeds, like flax seeds and sesame seeds, from oils like olive oil and fish oil, from nuts and from dairy products like yogurt, cheese and milk (again, make sure you buy organic, avoid the bovine growth hormone and antibiotics which can encourage abnormal tissue growth), and from some plants, like the common garden herb purslane. These good fats are very sensitive to sunlight and heat, and go rancid quickly if not refrigerated or taken from a fresh source daily. So if you have an expensive bottle of olive oil that's been sitting on the counter all summer in the heat, throw it out.

Bad fats come from unnatural processes, such as deep frying oils at high temperatures, and heating oils and then adding a hydrogen molecule to produce hydrogenated fats, or trans-fats, that have a long shelf life. This artificial process allows food products like packaged cookies to sit on a grocery store shelf for weeks and weeks without turning moldy, or pastries or sandwiches to sit for several days on a shelf at a café without going bad. Trans-fats make huge profits for food marketers, but the human body can't digest them properly, and they don't provide the good fats we do need. You would be lucky to find one food product in any vending machine that doesn't have hydrogenated oils in it. The practice is widespread throughout the U.S fast food industry, and has not been regulated by the FDA. The best way to avoid trans-fats is to avoid packaged foods and eat only fresh foods, joining the "slow food" movement and cultivating the practice of taking the time to cook your own high-quality nutritious meals. Eating out at restaurants with poor food quality or fast food restaurants (more and more organic or raw food restaurants are appearing every month, so always remember you have choices) and eating on the run are all bad for digestion, supplying little of the vital life force energy all of us need to be in these bodies in this world.

For many people, changing eating habits requires major lifestyle changes. If this is your situation, welcome the change and the energy it will bring to your life to come back to balance in such an essential, core way. Doing so will help to balance out any emotional waves you're riding as well, as food is biochemistry in its most direct and pure form. Balance your food and you will balance your gut, balance your mind, and balance your emotions. For this reason, I ask all my clients who want to change an emotional posture to consider the relationship of that posture to their food habits.

Vitamins. Water soluble vitamins are another non-negotiable nutritional need we have as humans. The vitamin and supplement industry, part of the trillion-dollar wellness business, markets all kinds of combinations of vitamins, and lately the water industry has taken a market share of this essential food source as well (with products like Vitamin Water). Many of my clients do well with vitamin supplements when they are trying to change poor eating habits. These supplements can help them get an energetic jump start on the life changes they are facing to reclaim their balance and wellness.

I do want to point out, however, that fresh quality food is always the best source of nutrients for us, and hard-core advocates of the "slow food" movement see vitamins and supplements as part of the fast food industry. So if you are taking supplements, just keep in mind that you can never completely substitute whole foods; there is no substitute for eating well. In other words, supplements are not substitutes, nor are they meant to be lifelong strategies to compensate for poor food habits. If you can choose between a nutrient-rich fresh food and a supplement, choose the food; you'll be able to absorb more energy from the food source itself.

Many diseases have been linked to vitamin deficiencies. Some medical researchers suspect a link between Alzheimer's and vitamin B deficiencies, particularly B 12 . Pellagra, which results from a lack of B 2 , provides a classic example of the links between vitamin deficiencies and bodymind dysfunctions; this deficiency causes nervous system malfunctions, mental disorders, loss of memory and paranoia. B vitamins come primarily from green leafy vegetables that we need to eat daily.

Amino Acids (Proteins) Along with the right composition of minerals, essential fatty acids, vitamins, clean water and clean air, and the enzymes to break down food sources, we as human beings need proteins. Proteins are amino acid chains that provide the building blocks of our bodymind. You can get proteins by eating fish or meat or dairy products, ideally ones that are not contaminated with mercury, pesticides, growth hormones or antibiotics. If you're a vegetarian, you need to get your proteins from nuts and seeds and by the right food combinations, such as beans and rice, or peas and grains, or beans and corn. Just eating rice or pasta, for example, can lead to the protein malnutrition that causes the distended bellies that we associate with starving children. Our bodies like to take in proteins and good fats at the same time, which is why Udo Erasmus, the creator of Udo's Choice Oil Blend and author of Fats that Kill, Fats that Heal , recommends mixing a tablespoon of his oil blend in a bowl of yogurt for breakfast. It's also why Atkins said eat your steak with the fat on it. Too much protein foods can cause your pH to be acidic, but not enough can cause you to be protein deficient, lacking the vital energy to fire up and live a vital life. Balance your protein intake with fresh vegetables, fruits, and carbs. If you tend to binge on carbs, you may experiment to see if what you really crave is protein and fat.

In addition to digesting sun energy stored in plants, fish and animals, we also need sun on our skin to produce vitamin D. Unless you have skin cancer in your family, you need about 20 minutes of sunshine a day, ideally in the morning before 10 am when the sun's rays start to get too strong, or in the late afternoon when they begin to weaken again as daylight wanes. Many people take 15 to 20 minutes of sunshine before applying sunscreen, again it depends on the time of day, your skin type, family history, and how much of a tan you have. This is a good place to note that your skin is the largest organ in your body, and is highly porous, so choose safe natural sunscreens, like Dr. Hauschka's Skin Care Products (see the Healthy Products Guide), and avoid chemical sunscreens that might protect you from sunburning but expose you to chemical toxins.

Exercise is also part of stimulating fire energy and keeping the flow vital. By cranking up the heat and moving intensely, you cleanse and oxygenate lymph and blood, and get the energy flowing. Exercise also shuts down the digestive tract, allowing it to replenish, while you pump your muscles with fresh blood. Best to exercise with an empty s tom ach and bowels. This helps your digestive fire when you eat later. The sun salutation in yoga is a basic sequence of postures that gets the energy moving throughout the entire body, through every limb and joint and all the glands. It is called sun salutation for a reason, and is devoted to heating up the fire energy that yogis recognize ultimately comes from the sun. I highly recommend learning this set if you don't already have a yoga practice.