This is the third and final part of our three-part interview with the amazing Queen Afua. She has so much to share with us about healing and has been instrumental in helping thousands of women and men on their healing journey. In this segment she shares her recommendation for those wishing to transition to a healthy vegan diet. For the previous segments read Black Vegetarian: Queen Afua and Interview With Queen Afua: Part 2.
Ama: For someone who is just starting on the journey to veganism what advice to you have for them.?
Queen Afua: It’s attitude. Because everything starts with the mind. Most people who I see have had to go through crisis. That’s when most people are ready to change. If it’s just about loosing a few pounds or getting rid of a headache, being a little stressed out. That’s not going to be enough motivation for most people.
When they go through a crisis, that’s when they are ready to make that shift. It’s called by any means at that time. And that’s when I fill the cup up. I say “OK, are you ready now?” And I go.
But if someone just wants to get a little advice, you just do like basics. Start to get a little more greens in your refrigerator. Green up because the sunlight is liquid sunlight. And the greens do so much. The greens transform your bloodstream, so if you have high blood pressure, you’re going to lower it. The greens calm your nature, if you are very up emotionally, stressed out, it will repair your nervous system. The greens repair the cells, at the cellular level if you have cancer cells. The greens help your skin to become more radiant and the being to grow, and to overcome. The chakra of the heart is green so it balances out your relationships from the past. A lot of the burdens we carry in our hearts can be purified through the green. So I would say start with the green.
So that means from the green juicing. Of course most people don’t want to have green juice. So we put a little fruit in it. What ever helps is ok. As well as having a salad a day. Get that roughage and then go to two salads a day. And then maybe you want to have some dandelion tea for your iron. So that to me is number one. Start with the green.
And then maybe being green, going out to the park and sitting with the trees. I’m a biker, a mountain climber, a yogini, I do a lot of movement. But, I go to the park, and I say just lay down on the grass. And if you are really hurting lay flat down and let all your burdens just drop into the earth and give it up some where. Feel like yourself again. Or lean on a tree, let the tree give you support. Nature will love you and support you back to wholeness. That’s number one to me.
Number two is be around people who are doing the same thing. Do what ever you have to do. Google them. Go to events, events are everywhere. And if you are around other people who are doing what you want to do, or doing what you are doing and trying to do, it will strengthen you. Being here this weekend with everyone, not just teaching myself, but hearing everyone else teach, doing what I’m doing but from different angles, it makes me stronger. I’m enjoying my green even more. And then for instance I was listening to Dr. Hapi for a few minutes and I wanted to sit on his class too. He was talking about the breath. And I was an asthmatic so I love to hear his talk about the breath and the breathing. So just being in the atmosphere of those like spirits. It’s food, its nourishment as well.
And then look at your home as a healing center. Begin to look at your house different. Don’t look at your house as just a house that you rest your head or you pass out in. Or you get up and take a shower and you run out.
Your house is everything to me. I learned that because people kept coming to my house. Whenever I would go to another house or place people would come and follow me to that place. And I would just use the rooms in there to help them.
So I say rename the rooms. So for me I always say the kitchen is the nutrition kitchen pharmacy. So everything in that kitchen should actually heal you. From your soups, to your salads, to your dressings, to your tonics, to your main dishes, your protein dishes everything. You could be sprouting in your kitchen, wheat grass in your kitchen, let that kitchen come alive. And that is your little mini hospital. And so that’s one room that you can begin to acclimate in your home.
The other room is the hydrotherapy room. I’m creating charts for the rooms. So you set them up and look at them and be inspired. So I created this chart for the hydrotherapy room based on the chakras and I say take these different baths to wake up different aspects of the being. And then use your hydrotherapy to zone treatments of water in the shower and zoning on different parts of the body to help flush it out.
As well as taking your healing baths and putting your herbs in it. And then doing some internal bathing, washing out the colon and nose rinsing, really getting into the water element to heal the body. The water to me is just so important because it stabilizes it balances out, it harmonizes.
I was invited to speak to Odyssey network, which is a group of 500 women who come every year. And those women are women who are running the country. And they invited me to speak. They don’t have a wholistic component so I was one of the first ones so I was happy.
I gave them many things to do. But I was on the phone with them having a conference call on a Saturday. And one of them “My gosh, the bath changed my life,” They didn’t change their diet yet. It’s just step-by-step. They went from the flexitarian, started incorporating the vegetarian foods, and the live foods, and then some juicing. That’s how I move them through. She said, “I didn’t change my diet yet, but I’m on my way, I’m waiting for my 21 day detox. But the baths made the difference. I’m always stressed out.”
I said from the most high-powered, if you don’t know what to do because you are over giving, you are over staying, you have to create a whole new strategy, you have staff to be responsible for, the bath will equalize everything. So she did about 30 minutes. She turned off lights. She lit a candle and she started to do some self-love. Self massaging and breathing and affirming. She took some lemon water in with her, so she had an internal baptism flush. She had the bath outside. I said, “take the bowl of water and pour it over your heart. let go of the heavy heart stuff. Pour some on your back and let go of the burdens of your spirit. When you come out you will be new-born.”
The other piece I got from the ancestors. I kept looking at the ancient the Persian Coming Forth By Day. I would look at this page, but I never saw it. It would be about going in to come to life. And that means doing the opposite.
My interpretation is the circle of wellness. So just as you sleep or rest you also work. As you eat, you fast. As the sun rises the sun sets. As you talk you go into silence. And that’s the balance.
So I have been doing this one pose for maybe 25 years that I tell to every single one of my clients to do, and you will recycle your life back to you. You will get your life back. You will reclaim your organs back. You will reclaim your mind back. You will reclaim your heart, that prolapsed womb, uterus you can pull that back up. Prostate, you can pull back up. And that’s from just that one pose. I saw this upside down little tiny man in the glyph.
I said “Oh! That’s what they’re talking about.” Bringing the soul to life coming into your balance. And that your seat is on your throne and your energy has got to be put back into your throne constantly, which is your oochi, the first eye, some people call the third eye. And that is the inversion.
So when you come out that bath do it every time. Lay flat in your bed. For a mini inversion you put a three pillow lift under you legs. And so you have a mini inversion. Your back is flat-out then your legs are on an angle.
For those who don’t have high blood pressure, you can go further, and you do 45 degrees. So that blood is coming back and so you have an affirmation. That blood is coming and breaking up the cellular. All that stuff that you think is aging us, its breaking all that up. The heart valve, clearing that out. The brains, clearing that out. The prolapsed womb, resetting it.
The heart is now getting this blood pumped stronger. So that to me is the fountain of youth. The fountain of youth is inside. So that fountain is moving and flushing. Because we are standing upright, everything is pulling down, our legs expand, our knees expand, we get swollen ankles, we start walking closer to the earth down. And that will pull everything back up again. So do that for 10 minutes sunrise and sunset. Everybody can do it.
For me it’s just bringing all those elementals together. It’s a way of life. Most people come to this to get rid of something quick. It’s a quick fix. Not to dedicate. So I tell them right in the beginning. One person said, “Well after I’m through with this can I go back to what I was doing?” I said, “Well if you want to get those problems again they will be waiting for you. They sure will be there.” So I said, “No it is a way of life.”
Start to incorporate, let go. I learned to call myself the door of no return. Because people when they come to me they do different things. Sometimes they cry. So I just sit them down and ask them one question. “How can I best help you.” And if they’ve gone through a lot in that. I’ve learned maybe it’s a surgery that was about to happen. They’ve got a little time to figure it out. Or they’ve been given the next medication and they’re not feeling any better. And they don’t know what to do. And their family is sick and they feel kind of locked in. Their family is not encouraging them. So when they realize that there might be a way out of this. They feel empowered.
Ama: Your inversion, are you talking about what is sometimes called legs up the wall in Hatha yoga?
Queen Afua: No. That one is for those who are more on the yoga path. So your back is flat and your legs are going at an angle. Then if someone can’t take too much pressure at one time I just have a three pillow lift and they feel like they can go to sleep. And then I have an inversion swing that lies flat. I do that everyday. Then for those who can do a shoulder stand, but the beauty of the other inversion is that people can relax.
Most people don’t want to do too much work. Some people don’t even want to make their own salad. So juicing, I got to clean the juicer? Are you kidding me? They don’t want to clean the juicer. But what happens is you get so excited and one thing leads in to next.
But people need support. And that’s what you and Dr. Opare are doing is giving more support. And people need to hear about it all the time because the media is telling something different. If we don’t hear about wellness consistently people just fall off easy.
So what I do when people come on my 21-day detox I give them an hour of power with myself and I walk them through my book, the City Of Wellness and The Seven Kitchens Of Consciousness.
The Seven Kitchens of Consciousness, the first one is the soul food vegan kitchen to transition them in. Familiar foods.
The second kitchen is the manifestation kitchen. What do we have for lunch. Because that lunch period is when we manifest when the sun is at its highest point. And we can wipe out that manifestation or wombenifestation time by having foods that are a low frequency. Because we are going to have lunch and then we are going to be finished. For four hours we say, “What time is it? 3:00, 4:00, 4:30, quarter to five ok I am almost done and we’re just dying throughout the whole afternoon. So I give them what to do so they can keep that manifestation going.
The third one is the live food kitchen. It’s all the sun recommendations, and the stones, and the affirmations and the movements meant to go with it. And I connect what the issues are, what organs were working on with that.
Then I go into the fourth kitchen, which is the emerald kitchen, which is one of my most exciting kitchens for me personally. That’s the chlorophyllian kitchen. I talk about my introduction into the chlorophyllic life and the green and the green power and what that does to transform. That’s the heart of the kitchen to me.
The fifth kitchen is the fasting kitchen so as you are going you are getting lighter. And the fast kitchen is fully liquefying. And what then what you’re saying, what you’re speaking here in your mind and your heart can now move out into the world when you fast. Everything quickens.
Then you go into the sixth kitchen. I call that the healers kitchen. In the healers kitchen is philosophy. That’s when I’m speaking to my companions on the journey who have passed away and I reflected on what is it that I need to do because I look at everything as a message, what is it that I need to do to change so that I can share with others so that they don’t find themselves leaving early on.
And one of the things that I examine is the circle. Back to the circle for me. What healers pretty much feel when they are helping is that they are giving. If they don’t feel that they are also receiving simultaneously they get to a point where they get burnt out. And then they get angry. And they start get angry at the people they are serving.
But what happens is that they now have to make a living because that’s their work. So they’re angry at people they have to serve to make their money from and it stresses them out more. So then they are not eating well. They’re telling the people and they are getting better. But that’s part of what I observe.
So for me when I see my clients, I’m just as excited. I shifted my energy fully. I’m so excited that I’m seeing them. It’s such a pleasure. They say, “I’m so happy to be here with you.” I say, “I’m so happy that you are here.” So that I’m breathing in life, vitality and joy at their presence as opposed to “Ok now what do you need. How can I help you? What can I give to you?” That pulls your emotions and your psyche and everything down. But when they are touched, they cry, we pray, I hold their hand, there is a connection. I say, “Thank you so much for coming. It’s been a joy working with you. I know what you’re taking about, were going to help your family.” So I am just all in it with them as my healing and my lessons inside of this. So that has been a recycling for me just like the inversion. So that circle, that’s why I am still in it. People say “Your still in this?” I say “I’m ecstatic more now then when I was 16 about this healing and what is taking place for us.”
So that was a big piece. And then also to heal before you go to work. Heal in the middle of the day. Do your juicing, do your healing, do your inversion, do your little rest, do your prayer, read, do what ever you need to do, that you know is your method, that you give to others, and then do it again at the end of the day. Do more than the person that you are serving. Don’t feel like been there done that yourself and your good so I’m not vegetarian now. NO you have to go more because you’re giving more. And actually you must give more to yourself then you give to everyone else.
Even when I am coming into town here, I have to make my own food. I’m very simple eating. But first felt like my body being off in my travels and my best work is when I’m traveling. Because I have no weight of what I am doing day-to-day. I’ll just be in harmony. But I didn’t for the first few days.
People were preparing food for me but I needed to prepare my own food. And that could be cutting an apple. But I need to do the cutting my own leaves. And putting my own olive oil. And when I didn’t do that I felt discombobulated, and I was loosing some things. So I knew life force was leaving. And the minute I went, I went to Sevenanda and I got my own food and I did my own thing and everything came back. It was a simple thing of preparing myself, preparing my own food. Putting my hands in it. Running my bath, doing my healing. And that’s my mediation.
And healing for me is a mediation. It’s a gift, it’s ongoing so it’s not something I want to come out of ever. I want to continue going with it. I feel like I am just getting started. So much more to learn and grow with.
One thing I did this weekend, I realized that I wanted to have more time to look up. I didn’t have a lot of time to look up. And two days I didn’t look up. But I was hearing. So I split my mind. I was hearing and I was doing consultations. Because normally I’m away, I’m not in the mix. But here I’m in the mix and I want to look up. But I’m looking at the client “Yes.” “You want to…” “Ooh! That was…” “Mm hmm..”
So I had two days of wanting to participate with the rest of the world but I’m so busy making sure that I keep the company alive. Keeping the products on the shelf. Because I’m working there in Brooklyn while I’m here. And everything that I am making here I give to the institute to keep everything going and keep the staff going. So it’s pretty much selfless service at this point. So whatever I receive is recycled back in and we keep everything alive.
And that impacts me because the healers that I have seen go on to the next world like that they didn’t leave anything behind for people to read so their legacy stopped. I talk of them but their legacy stopped with them. The people who remember them are their family members. And the people that were their devoted clients. When I see them on the journey, Dr. Davidson was a great, wonderful healer. He would open up his doors to all the new healers to come, like the new kid on the block. And what ever they were doing with their natural healing he would let them come in, I was one of them.
He was our acupuncturist and medical doctor, and herbalist and he passed at 54, but we don’t have a book on his work. So I was happy to have your book [Dr. Opare]. That’s what keeps everything going and for the next generation hears you. Because they’ve got to connect for it to be current. So that’s where the internet comes in as well. Dr Moore, he had a little tiny pamphlet, where in the world is that? People have tapes on him. His tapes are magical, but there is no book. So that continuation. I put a lot of energy into the books. I became very, I guess, myopic, focused in, I didn’t look up, much. I still got some work, I’m not looking up much. But it will soon come. I’ll be able to participate.
And a healer called me from here and said, “Don’t you know me?” I said, “Forgive me. I’ve been just in.” And it’s not that I want to be in like this but people ask me for certain things. And it’s not like just one or two people. When I go to different cities. Man Heal Thyself came because MEN were getting mad. They stared getting annoyed. “Oh, you wrote another book for women?” I said “We’ve got 40 issues to pull from. You got about 3 or 4. Your prostrate,..” They kind of left me alone for a minute but it kept happening. So that’s when I wrote Man Heal Thyself. And then my son said. “We’re wellness warriors Mom. You can write this book.” So then I started to work on the book. So everything that I have been doing has been making me go in.
So I apologized and said. “I don’t know you but I’ve been hearing of you of late.” So I know that I am even talking about this that I am getting ready to come out of just that and I getting ready to have a relationship.
Ama: I feel more honored than ever that you took this time to share with us.
Queen Afua: Well this is my time. This is what I do. I do interviews. Because this is how the work can go out. So although this is in. This is in for me because it’s very private but it can go out.
Nana Kwaku: We help people do juice fasting using a modified Paavlo Airola method because we believe that in order to make changes that you need to detox and break addictive patterns of food consumption and that there is no better way to do that than juice fasting. So I want to ask you what your experience is in working with fasting and how do you recommend fasting.
Queen Afua: That is what people knew me as, and as a matter of fact in my first book, Heal Thyself I focused it on fasting. And I have watched people come to me with fasting. And because they didn’t prepare enough time they would end up falling off. Or they would end up detoxing those first few days, emotionally so heavy that they would find themselves going up and down with mood swings. So what I ended up doing with fasting is that I have people prepare to do a fast. So how I do it is with four dietary levels. I have them start with, well if they are meat eaters if they jump to a fast, I hear you saying they are on long enough that by the time they have gotten to the other end they will have had enough time to work out all of that flesh out of their system. So that’s how I am hearing that.
So I go through transition from them eating meat. Most people who come to me are eating meat. So I have them come off of the meat. I make an agreement. We have an unwritten contract. This is what you can do. What are you willing to let go of to get what you want to see achieved?
So they say “Well I have these issues. I am willing to do this to achieve that” So they’ll come off that. I’ll tell you one person to let me give you a vision of everyone. She started with Dr. Sheridan and myself, she was that test. And from that test she was on everything. Beef, pork, lamb, everything. And then she went on my formulas. I have the Master Herbal Formula is 13 herbs that detoxify all the systems of the body, the liver, the kidney, the gallbladder, the spleen, the blood and all of that. Then she took the green life formula to repair because disease is two things to me, malnourishment and toxicity. If you’re going to address the malnourishment and feed the tissues and the cells and can you detox the body, those two are married, then one can make the transition smoothly.
So then we go from transitional flexetarian to vegetarian, beans and peas and some cooked and some live, move into live foods and then go into the fast. So that can take a season to go through.
So my quest is to get them through 12 weeks, living a lifestyle. And while they are living that lifestyle they are learning how to prepare the foods and the juices, setting up their kitchen so they are creating such an infrastructure that they will not fall off. And they are creating a family infrastructure because for me if they start doing a lot of fasting and with their family they don’t have relationship necessarily with food so much. So then the children, the mate, they’re two different worlds. They are now eating and bringing the children into this way of eating that they are eating. And then they are bringing the husband, it’s usually the women in this case, they are brining the husband in and making the food that they are eating so there are not two or three different plates in the house. Because if she has a glass and he has a plate there is going to be problems. Because she is going to be so much more advanced than he is. And I’ve heard that. That’s been coming down the pipes.
What we’ve been teaching in Sacred Woman, the men are like “What?!” Now she’s been getting up early, she’s doing meditation, and she’s eating this high frequency food and he’s kind of like out there. So for me it’s, the way I am doing it, is I’m bridging a family unit so that the family can actually move together in synchronicity and in that process they are changing their house into a wellness house. And then who ever that lead person is, that lead person may be the one that is the faster. And they fast and they do everything quicker. Because they have actually been doing some things anyway before they even got to me. So they may go into a fast and be ready for it.
But back in the day people used to say, “back in the day you didn’t have the book, you didn’t have the formulas, you had us running over here to get your stuff here, get your stuff there, and blend it make it and dada dada,” and I had workshops ongoing, and I was a colon hydro-therapist actively. So they would come get their colonics and I would also do sweats. So they would do a sweat at the beginning and maybe another one at the end. They would do a colonic and the beginning, middle and end. So I did a lot of other work. Sometime they would come and do a bath. It was and extreme hands on. I’m not doing that level. I’m doing, they read the book, they get the kit, I give the workshops.
Nana Kwaku: I want to thank you for your strong work that you’ve been doing for a long, long time. It’s also refreshing to see your humility and you are so approachable and personable, for being so famous.
Queen Afua: I was telling someone today, the name is its own entity. It’s a different person. And I know it’s the books, and its the family. My whole family is in this. It’s not just me that puts energy into the work. So I can be personal because its me.
Ama: If people want to find out more about you how can they find you?
Queen Afua: www.queenafua.com or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/queenafuawellnessinstitute.
Or if they want to pick up the phone, I still pick up phones. 718-221-heal (4325)
And then my books are in different pockets. The book that went mainstream, which you can find in mainstream stores, is Sacred Woman through Random House. And then I did talk about Heal Thyself in Sacred Woman a little bit here and there so people were introduced to Heal Thyself through Sacred Women. And then Heal Thyself was able to go into those bigger stores. And then all the others are in smaller stores. And I sell them on my website.
It looks like I’m going to be spending a little bit more time in Atlanta.
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Wow! Queen Afua has shared so much with us. We fully enjoyed our time with her.
What stands out most for you in what she spoke about?
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arbraqt, What a blessing you were open to a better way. Too many folks would rather be cut up or poisoned than change how they eat or live.
About 15 years ago I was sitting in my doctor’s office watching a video about all the body parts that was going to be removed in my total abdominal hysterectomy. I had been bleeding for one year. My hemoglobin dropped to 5.5 and I had started to slip into a state of unconsciousness at work. I had heard Queen Afua speak at Marthe’s Vineyard in 1987. She talk about the sacredness of the womb so I called her and she immediately told me to cancel the surgery and do the 21 day detox. By the way, doctors get upset when you cancel surgery the day before, especially when your insurance has already approved the $23K to cover the cost. She dropped me as a patient. I did the detox and my period stopped and my hemoglobin begin to increase. Because of this magnificent Sister/Soul, when I die, I want my tombstone to say – Here Lies a Black Woman Who Died with her Uterus – Compliments to the Queen! She might remember the call from Arbra Tawwab, in Tampa, FL. (Funny, but true-smile)
What Queen mentions about needing to constantly connect and hear about wellness to maintain the lifestyle is so true. I cannot begin to count the number of times that I have started her program and my own variations of her program only to fall off after not reaching out to connect to like minded people. It is too easy to fall back into old habits. Yet each time I see/hear/read and interview or a wellness book I get charged up again.
Thank you so much for sharing this interview with us…I can’t speak for other people but I definitely needed this!
You are so welcome Aisha! Yes indeed the need for a healing community is strong. The message we hear loud and clear from the mass media is telling us the opposite of what we need to hear. Keep reading, listening, and learning.