Ann Wigmore's Most Recent Teachings

In the past few days, we have touched on where Dr. Ann got her "roots."  Now lets talk about the evolution her work took.  Beginning under the name, Rising Sun Christianity, and then later Hippocrates Health Institute, Ann Wigmore  taught the value of eating an uncooked (vegan or animal product free) diet.  Important aspects included drinking fresh wheat grass juice and eating freshly grown greens, generally sunflower and buckwheat greens, grown in 7-10 days in soil produced in your very own home, from the compost you make yourself, with the help of earth worms.  Other important aspects of the diet were the sprouts and the naturally fermented foods (veggie kraut and rejuvelac - mentioned in an earlier post already).

In the early nineties, Dr. Ann and the manager of Hippocrates Health Institute, Brian Clemente, went separate directions.  Brian took Hippocrates Health Institute to Florida, where he continued to teach his version of Dr. Ann's program. Ann began her teaching again, still in Boston and then soon thereafter, at her facility in Puerto Rico.  Her focus changed a bit, as she became more convinced that blending the food with rejuvelac, which was touted as being enzyme and probiotic rich, helped make the food more digestible.  Less and less salads or "chew food" and more and more blended creations were served in her healing programs.  Cleansing of the colon through enemas and colonics was a large focus, as illness was seen as originating often in  an unhealthy "gut".  Ann many times said that the causes of disease are toxemia (literally being filled with toxins) and deficiency, not having the nutrients required for health.

The focus on consuming an uncooked diet was due to the presence of enzymes and nutrients in uncooked food and the idea that cooking destroys or changes some nutrients, making them less available, and enzymes do not survive temperatures beyond 118 degrees.  When there are no longer enzymes present in food, our bodies need to produce / construct digestive enzymes to help break down the food.  When we consume food which still has enzymes intact, if we masticate (chew) our food properly, these enzymes can begin the process of digesting our food, therefore rendering digestion a less taxing process.

The use of sprouts is because beans, grains, seeds, and nuts, all potential life, in the raw form, have enzyme inhibitors present that make it not possible for us to properly digest them raw.  When cooked or soaked and sprouted, these enzyme inhibitors are deactivated.   However, cooking destroys the natural enzymes, while sprouting actually increases the nutritional content of food.  So hence, the sprouting began.....

As mentioned previously, The Ann Wigmore Foundation and The Ann Wigmore Institute still exist and offer classes and retreats throughout the year. The Ann Wigmore Foundation of San Fidel New Mexico http://www.wigmore.org/ and The Ann Wigmore Institute of Aguada Puerto Rico http://www.annwigmore.org/about.html are still accepting students and teaching in the spirit of Dr. Ann.  Though over the last 18 years since Dr Ann's passing, some things have changed and evolved, when talking to someone at each local, I felt so much of the same original energy that was there when I worked for Dr. Ann 20 years ago, and I was glad.

But I am going to pass on more of the recipes and ways that things were done back when I was a part of it all.  Interested? Curious?  Check back tomorrow when we will be talking Energy Soup!  And I will give you the recipe I was taught to make!  Likely I could have prepared it in my sleep and the recipe is still firmly fixed in my memory banks!