Dandelion flower, like the summer sun

Welcome to Health Alchemy, the website of Craig Lane, certified nutritionist and herbalist. Craig has an exhaustive and ongoing education in nutrition and healing including a B.S. in nutrition from California Polytechnic Institute, Completion of the Kushi Institute of Macrobiotics program of study and extensive training in the world’s major herbal and health traditions: Western medicine, Chinese medicine, and Ayurveda.

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Please check out the Intake Forms by clicking here.  If you need quick health feedback based on practical terms, and practical applications, then please use this service.  It only costs $35 for the interpretation of your entire bodies health.  For $125, you can get a Health Starter kit with food, herbal, and supplement recommendations.  And you also get a one-hour consultation in person or over the phone.  Sometimes email consults are necessary.

Himilayan Crystal salt rock

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I often say, “What we can’t digest, digests us.”  Our bodies expend energy to digest food, then get energy back from the food.  If we consume foods that require more energy to digest than we get back, we get “old age degeneration.”  If we cannot get at the food faster than the microbes which live inside all of us, then THEY digest the food.  Can you see if your gut microbes are out of balance what might happen? 

Learn to move from sincerity and see what health really is.  There is much confusion about nutrition.  But the ways of eating from desire are likely going to bring suffering.  What is more important, your desires, or your health?

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Craig offers detailed nutritional counseling sessions to help you transform your health.
An initial package of 3 consecutive sessions over 3 months is $200.00 (plus cost of herbs and supplements).  It can be done in person, over the phone, or by the internet.
This is a savings of $75.00 instead of paying by visit. You will learn to:
• Adjust long-term imbalances in your health through dietary cleansing, improved nutrition, better eating habits, and the use of herbs and supplements.
• Lose weight by eating right, not by following a diet.
• Eat the healthiest whole foods for your particular body.
• Change your cooking habits to improve your digestion and nutrition.
• Lose your taste for foods that do the most harm to health, such as sugar, coffee, and overly processed carbohydrates.

*Get involved in a community of people who can offer wonderful recipes, health support and encuoragement, and offer support.

*Get help with athletic training, and optimizing your workouts with special foods and herbs recommended just for you.

Mostly you will learn nutrition and why eating well makes sense, which helps you overcome poor eating habits.
In order to overcome a lifetime of poor eating, you need to re-educate both your mind and you palate about what good food really is: fresh, whole, and unprocessed.

Did you know that most Americans do not eat enough of the right fats such as raw, virgin, minimally processed olive, coconut, hemp seed, flax, sesame, real raw or cultured butter, and more?

Did you know that when the body gets the right fats, the brain understands that the body is full and you won’t want to eat as much?

Learning to eat right means you will, after a few months, feel better than you have felt in years and lose weight without trying. (Click here to go to client testimonials)
Becoming accustomed to eating whole, fresh foods means that you will eventually want less and less of the things we love to indulge in, like chocolate, pastries, and lattes. And when you do indulge, you’ll be pleasantly surprised that these longed-for goodies no longer seem to pack the same punch. Yes, you MAY be asked to give up coffee and sugar, but it’s not that hard when you get to eat moderate amounts of cultured cream, cultured butter, raw honey and the most wonderful fresh vegetables and fruits. And moderate amounts of protein, of course, including meat for meat eaters. Despite the vegan and low-fat claims that long-lived people do not eat flesh foods, this has been shown to be their own bias and without much direct evidence from our ancestors.  Please go to this link for the most scientific and well-investigated information about this – (http://westonaprice.org/take-a-guided-tour/beginners.html)

At some point, you may need to cleanse your system of built up toxins.  Our bodies have filtering and transforming functions, and they must be “tuned-up,” just like your car, right?  This is actually the not-so-secret secret of health.  Take in, enjoy, let it go.  And take in the most efficient fuel, not poor quality stuff that leaves alot of residue and takes more energy to digest than it gives back to the body, right?

 Craig also offers a Nutritional Exam based on the principles of practical Folk Health. One can expect to get their imbalances pointed out, their constitutional patterns outlined, a plan of action for greater health, individualized detoxification protocols, strong areas validated, and herbal/dietary kit given.

Click this link to see some of the Health Techniques Craig recommends (Subtle Health)

Click this link to see Seasonal Health Information, year round (All Seasons)

Click this link to see Physician’s statements about health (WiseDocs)

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Please use this site as a forum for classes, events, health information, and periodic updates. Seasonal health adjustments through dietary, cooking, and lifestyle changes are the main focus of this work. Also offered are links to local spiritual websites, groups, and gatherings, dietary and lifestyle counseling via live appointments or online, and referrals to other health professionals.

This website is a means to support and help those suffering or wanting to know life’s deeper truths. Please call 831-713-8867 to make an appointment or with questions.

Office Hours
For Shiatsu and Acupressure treatments, dietary and health counseling/coaching, and herbal prescriptions
Wednesday 4:00 – 9:00 PM
Thursday 4:00 – 9:00 PM
Fridays 4:00 – 9:00 PM
Saturday 11:00AM – 6:00PM
Sunday open office hours and evening gatherings

Craig Lane, Dakota Health Center, 111 Dakota Ave. #2,
Santa Cruz CA 95060 • 831-429-1188

Craig has a new online health newsletter called Embodied Health. Please contact us if you would like to be added to the mailing list.

We now have a Starter Health Kit available to mail or email to clients for $20. Contact us for more information.

INTERNET AND PHONE CONSULTATIONS
Contact us about our online and mail based service to upgrade your health through e-forms, emails, phone, and other convenient services.

COMMUNITY COOP FOOD GROUP AND COOKING ASSISTANCE
Check out our personal in-home cooking and health service. Have someone come to your home and teach how to cook basic recipes, quick and easy meals, and REAL health foods. Learn from people who embody health, care about local farms, and can be a support. Don’t live an image of health, live real health! See for yourself how good you can feel. Contact Charity at (831)325-6457, or Noelle at (831)332-3913.

Embodied Health – what is it?  What does Health Alchemy mean?
American Heritage dictionary defines embodiment as “to give a bodily form to.” Another definition is “to make part of a system.” In my 15 years of health teaching and clinical work, this is the missing link.  We must live and feel our own experience.  And feel, and taste, and explore, and investigate.

Health alchemy is the process that always goes on in life, without our human ideas about “what should be.”  But we, as co-creators of our own lives, can change, alter, add, or let go of anything we like.  And, a little secret is the ultimate creator is Thy Will Be Done. 

 The beauty of trying a food, herb, or experience, then seeing the effects is my passion.  Alchemy is a process of forces, elements, and phenomena changing to something else.  In dis-ease, these forces and elements are at odds with others, put very simply.  In health, they are all present and aligned.  In the modern world, most of us are not  getting enough of the right proportions of minerals, elements, and energies.  In my practice (life is a practice, have you noticed?), constant study, detective work, and living ALL of myself mean I am aligned with the river of my life.  Think of me as a guide on your path down your own river.

Do we ever arrive at perfect health, we might ask?

No.
But, seeing more subtlety, feeling more sensitivity, and riding a current of what many call, “The Natural State” becomes more obvious.  Having more energy and enthusiasm are also side-effects.  But pursued for their own end usually results in suffering eventually.  Embodiment is about living what we know to be true, no matter what the cost. Living from this uncontrived natural state offers the resources of the entire universe (The One, The Unborn) as opposed to our own contrived notions about what is good or bad for us or others.

Living from this place feels as if one is riding a raft down a river. We can control where on the river the boat (being) goes, but at the mercy of where the river is going. It can be very uncomfortable as conditioning from the past resists not being in control anymore.

This is a very subtle and confusing process, but it is also our birthright. Our health, clarity, enthusiasm, drives, compulsions, and sense of connection all improve with letting go of resistance and “letting the river carry us.”

Surrender. What does it feel like? Can we get out of our heads and concepts and really feel? What does it mean to really be here, in this moment?

The implications in my own life were immense and rewarding. But I did not have a choice in a sense. Has there been a yearning for something in your being, in your heart? When I found what my own yearning was, it was both shocking and a pleasant surprise. My heart broke, but wide open eventually.

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My old site, ShivaWarrior, is named after the god Shiva, one of the three incarnations of a deity Brahma.  That site honored the warrior in us all. Shiva is associated with tearing down the parts of ourselves that no longer support what we are becoming. After tearing down the veils of past conditioning, we can build a more functional and harmonious being. That includes the very basis of our health: the food we eat.

This website is an evolution into something more mysterious than any identity.  Health seems to never end, joy seems to ever expand, and life seems to exist always, in all ways.  Have you noticed how everything we see is only real, right now?  Quick, did you miss that?