Powerful 2026 Healing Boost from Shantree Kacera

Namaste, Shantree :)

It's Friday morning at 10:55 AM EDT as I begin to write this follow-up to last night's Spiritual Fasting webinar that you so graciously provided as a free introduction to your latest book and to your consulting practice.

Your inspiring webinar and beautifully written book have given me a very powerful boost during this springtime month of healing. The linkage to the work of Rabbi Gabriel Cousens, MD, was worth the price of your book alone. But your book is filled with many more insights than this, and your potential to facilitate a deep healing in my case goes far beyond simple quantification in American or Canadian dollars. It's an integral medicinal correction that has many subtle life-force components involved. Like a key fits to a lock, the totality of your background is the key, and the totality of my context is the lock. If you're willing, I would like to start working with you as a client and a student. Because of a disability I am of very limited means, so if you are agreeable to working with me, we'll need to determine a schedule and a rate of compensation that feels fair all the way around.

Here is what I am thinking. I will lay out my initial case in this post here on my blog Manna with Jonathan. If you're willing, I'd like you to share your opening thoughts in the comments section below (or via email if you prefer to do that, in which case I hope you will allow me to post your feedback as a public comment for the education of my current and future readers). Your opening comment would be the equivalent of a free consultation. I don't want you to feel pressured to write a detailed paragraph or anything like that. I believe you can have tremendous additional healing impact in just 1-2 sentences. I am seeking slow, small, and simple interventions.

After this opening free consultation, I propose to spend the next year working my way carefully through your book Spiritual Fasting, with a focus on putting into practice a weekly "Monk Fast" from Wednesday at 6 PM to Friday at 8 AM (38-hours total). I've done that in the past with good results, even while on my low maintenance doses of psychiatric medications, so I know it is achievable for me, but it's not something I have ever tried to do as a repeating weekly discipline. The idea that I will not be abstaining - as I have understood fasting in the past - but rather feasting on the unadulterated Life-Force of the five elements, makes all the difference in how I approach this ancient practice. It's also helpful to know that I can allow myself to integrate herbal teas and green juices into my regimen if I find a pure Monk's Fast too difficult.

Next year in May, I propose to write you another update on my blog, and again, if you're willing, it would be excellent to receive a comment. In 2027, however, I would like to reimburse you for your reading and response time, and hopefully I can then also afford to add a half-hour Zoom call into the mix. 

If conditions continue to support us in our endeavor, I would ideally like to repeat this annual blog post check-in and 30-minute Zoom contact for a total of 6-10 years. There are many side directions we could take (e.g., Sprouts and Microgreens, The Essential Dozen), but if I hold firmly to your teaching that "fasting is the first principle of medicine" (via Rumi), I would really like to see if I can keep my relationship with you focused on deeper and deeper levels of spiritual fasting mastery.  

This is my proposal. Before you say, "Yes, this sounds like a reasonable approach given your budget and my availability," or "No, this doesn't sound like a good fit given where we both are right now," please allow me to lay out a bit more of my backstory.     

I first learned about your work at The Living Centre around 2010. I was 38 years old at the time, married to a clinical psychologist, and working full-time on a 5-acre vegan permaculture retrofit in northern Maine. I had left the field of clinical social work in 2007 to start a plant-strong spiritual writing career that I thought would catapult me to the heights of fame and worldly impact. It was a noble aspiration, but my foundation was undermined by some difficult genetic risk factors, psychosocial imbalances, and outright character flaws. Gradually, I spiraled downward into a severe mental health crisis that cost me my marriage and 5-acre northern Maine vegan permaculture dream. In 2012, I returned to my mother's urban bungalow in Albany, New York, and suffered through repeated psychiatric hospitalizations until I finally accepted conventional psychiatric medication for a diagnosis of disabling bipolar schizoaffective disorder. As you can imagine, it was terrifying for me and my family and deeply depressing.

In the spring of 2020, just as COVID-19 was starting to ramp up, I was released from psychiatric hospitalization into the hands of a very good outpatient team. We are now six years into my recovery, and I have made remarkable progress. But healing is a lifelong journey. My conventional psychiatric medications come with some challenging side effects (including weight gain, fatigue, and high cholesterol) and there is much room for recovery still ahead of me.

This said, there are four reasons why I think we could make a very good teacher-student fit over the next 6-10 years.

1. Plant-Strong Energetics

I have had a chance to observe your journey into elderhood as depicted by your website for almost sixteen years now. Most recently, I have read enough of your book on Spiritual Fasting and seen enough of your teaching qualities in last night's webinar to feel very comfortable with your plant-strong energetics. Your consistency and your personality as a healer feel like an excellent balance for my own constitution.

2. Permaculture Resilience

One of my deepest wounds is the "failure" of my 5-acre vegan permaculture retrofit dream. For a long time, I considered unsubscribing from your newsletter because it was painful for me to see your accomplishment in plant-strong permaculture without comparing it to my own failed dream. I would feel depressed by my disconnection from the trees I had planted, guilty about letting down the vegan permaculture movement, angry at my disability, and envious of your success. But I also really believed in what you were doing, so I hung in there. Gradually all of my toxic "comparison mind" faded away, and I was left with nothing but appreciation and gratitude for the consistent doses of high-quality healing energy radiating from your Living Centre emails. Now that I am becoming a caregiver for my elderly mom and her urban bungalow, I've decided to resume permaculture design practice right where I am. While I don't expect to be looking to you for explicit permaculture teaching, it means a great deal to me that you are one of the most advanced plant-strong permaculture pioneers in North America. That implicit shared foundation adds a critical dimension to your healing role in my case. Only someone who is even more deeply committed to a vegan permaculture healing career than I ever was can truly understand what a blow my diagnosis has been, and how important it is for me to turn my losses into lessons of vegan permaculture recovery and resilience that I can share with others in the community who may face similar setbacks.  

3. The Cutting Edge of Integrative Plant-Based Psychiatry

I have an excellent therapist and psychiatric nurse practitioner. They are well aware of my overall journey and are very supportive of my intention to obtain Plant-Based Nutrition and Food for the Environment certificates from the T. Colin Campbell Center for Nutrition. They know that I would eventually like to be able to help vegans recover from vystopia and other complex spiritual emergencies, if not somehow clinically, then at least through a future book or series of video lectures. They also know that I am taking an integrative, whole-foods, plant-based approach to psychiatry. While conventional psychiatric medications have played an essential role in my recovery thus far, so have lifestyle medicine and complementary therapies. It's possible I will be able to further reduce or even completely eliminate my dependence on psychiatric and cholesterol-lowering medications. While I sometimes dream about it, I am not recklessly wedded to this goal. As long as I am able to maintain biopsychosocial and spiritual homeostasis, it's completely okay by me if I need to maintain conventional psychiatric medications for the long run. Either way, if you are not opposed to sharing your consultation with someone on 0.5 mg of brexpiprazole, 20 mg of fluoxetine, and 20 mg of atorvastatin daily, I could be a very interesting case of integrative psychiatry for you to consider!     

4. Honoring the Sacred Feminine

The final point I think should share concerns the sacred feminine. The breakdown of my marriage was as devastating as the loss of my 5-acre vegan permaculture retrofit, if not even more so. It doesn't help me feel any better about myself that a root cause of my marital failure, above and beyond my psychiatric diagnosis, was an addiction to pornography. Thank God that blockage is now four years completely behind me. I had a born-again experience at the end of 2021 and have been peacefully and perfectly celibate ever since. While it's possible that my recovery journey might take me back in the direction of marriage, there is an even better chance that I am now firmly on the celibate "new monastic" path. This said, I don't want to grow cold in my relationship with the sacred feminine. For many reasons, I have come to suspect that a celibate vegan permaculture practice could be a specialized form of mystical marriage to Gaia. The fact that you have forged such a strong multi-dimensional partnership with the sacred feminine is very important to me, and I think it's another factor that will amplify your implicit ability to facilitate healing in my case.   

There is much more that I could say this year around, but this should suffice to give you a fairly good picture of where things stand with me at present. You can always check out my Blogger Profile and take a dive into my other blogs if you really have time and interest. My mood and cognition have been stable for years, but I do struggle with fatigue (especially if I overeat or eat improperly - even just a little). I also have a lingering touch of spiritual grandiosity, on the one hand, and "impostor syndrome," on the other. If I stay on my current recovery trajectory for another 6-10 years, I should be able to reach a dynamic unity between humility and competence just in time to start serving as an authentic elder for others.

Perhaps I should say a word about my daily diet before I close. Here is where that currently stands:

• Morning Supplements: Vegan Vitamin B-12 (Deva 1000 mcg methylcobalamin); Vegan Vitamin D3 (Deva 25 mcg); Vegan Multivitamin (Deva Tiny Tablets); Vegan Omega 3 (210 mg EPA, 420 mg DHA); Astragalus Root (550 mg) 
• Breakfast | 8 AM | 30 Minutes | 400 Calories: raw fruit, hemp hearts, ground flax seed, chia-cinnamon gel
• Lunch | Noon | 1 Hour | 900 Calories: tofu, lentil sprouts, sprouted raw grain or cooked pseudo-cereal (quinoa, buckwheat, amaranth), non-starchy vegetables, Vitamix raw nut-seed dressing
• Dinner | 5:30 PM | 30 Minutes | 300 Calories: raw fruit and walnuts with a medjool date or a processed vegan protein shake (e.g., Garden of Life Replacement Meal Raw Organic Chocolate)
• Beverages: filtered water, herbal teas, 1 cup of coffee per week on Fridays (no caffeine otherwise), no alcohol    

I am 6 feet tall, sedentary and about 30 fat pounds overweight, so this is a caloric-restriction program to help me hit my target weight by the time we hopefully talk again next year. I've had good success with 1600 calories per day in the past, and I will increase my caloric intake gently upward as I increase my activity level with outdoor walking and/or indoor cycling. 

In closing, to reiterate, my primary focus in reaching out to you is spiritual fasting. My goal is to incorporate a 36-hour of Monk Fast (Life-Force "Feast") into my existing regimen every week on Thursdays for deep cellular repair. Your book will be my guide. Next year maybe I will be competent enough to work with you on a constitutional analysis before undertaking some longer monthly or seasonal fasts. Eventually maybe it will make sense for me to reach for some 7-10-day fasts. Alternatively, maybe it will make more sense for me to reduce my expectations to no weekly fasting and just one Monk Fast a month or quarter. Either way, the background material I have shared with you is purely for context so that you understand where I am coming from as a potential student and client.

Please don't feel pressured to take me on board. But if you decide to give my proposal a try, please recall that I don't expect you to compose a lengthy written response to my blog posts. If you want to write a full paragraph, that is fine, but I will be really happy if you just take the time to read my article and respond with 2 or 3 sentences that provide a gentle "nudge" in whatever direction you sense I most need to consider. This time around, I am already bearing in mind your helpful webinar recommendation to focus on energetically warming spices for any coldness I experience during my fasts, as well as the sesame oil rub for my skin. 

Have a blessed spring and year. Thanks again for your wonderful practice, your beautiful book, and your generous free webinar :)        

Postscript

I don't know if you have a background in western tropical astrology, but in case you do, it is worth my noting that Venus and Uranus were conjunct at 29 degrees 53 minutes Taurus during last night's webinar. This is tightly conjunct my natal Saturn at 29 degrees 36 minutes Taurus. The synchronicity is highly consistent with a vegan permaculture breakthrough. What is more, transiting Pluto at 5 degrees 28 minutes Aquarius is tightly conjunct my natal Sun and North Node. All in all, our contact is taking place at a unique rebirth moment in my chart!