GABRIEL COUSENS, M.D.

Gabriel Cousens M.D., M.D.(H), D.D. (Doctor of Divinity), Diplomate of American Board of Integrative Holistic Medicine, Diplomate Ayurveda is considered the leading live-food medical doctors and spiritual nutrition experts in the world, and, is recognized as "the fasting guru and detoxification expert" by the New York Times. He is also a psychiatrist, family therapist, Ayurvedic practitioner, homeopath, acupuncturist, medical researcher, ecological leader, and bestselling author of books such as Spiritual Nutrition, Conscious Eating, Rainbow Green Live Food Cuisine, and There Is a Cure for Diabetes.

A cum laude graduate of Amherst College, where he was captain of an undefeated football team, Dr. Cousens was selected as an All New England lineman and one of eleven National Scholar Athletes inducted into the National Football Hall of Fame. He received his M.D. degree from Columbia Medical School in 1969 and completed his psychiatry residency in 1973. Dr. Cousens was the Chief Mental Health Consultant for the Sonoma County Operation Head Start and a consultant for the California State Department of Mental Health. He is listed in the Who’s Who in California, Who’s Who among Top Executives, Strathmore’s Who’s Who, and National Register’s Who’s Who and is a former member of the Board of Trustees of the American Holistic Medical Association (AHMA).

A Senior Essene teacher, Reiki Master, and meditation teacher since 1973, Dr. Cousens has presented seminars on many topics including health and nutrition, psycho-spiritual healing, meditation, and spiritual awareness throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe. As a spiritual facilitator, Dr. Cousens received much of his training and experience during a seven-year sadhana with Swami Muktananda. In 1981, Swami Prakashananda, Muktananda’s first liberated disciple, recognized him as a “yogi of real spiritual attainment” who has “realized the innate perfection.” Dr. Cousens is recognized as an internationally celebrated spiritual teacher, rabbi and founder of the Essene Order of Light, a yogi of 40 years, and a 4-year Native American Sundancer and Spirit Dance chief in the High Horse Lakota clan, to which he has been adopted. Dr. Cousens' spiritual background involves extensive study and personal experience with the kabbalistic, Essene, Judaic, yogic, and Native American aspects of self-liberation, which have given him a unique, authentic, ecumenical, unified worldview. His many designations attest to a dynamic, eclectic, comprehensive body of practical knowledge that composes his teachings on Whole Person Enlightenment and Holistic Veganism. 

Gabriel Cousens, MD has developed the first live-food, vegan Masters program in the world in conjunction with University of Integrated Science California. He is the director and founder of the Tree of Life Foundation and the Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center, called by Harper’s Magazine, “One of the world’s best 10 yoga and detoxification retreats”. Dr. Cousens has taught about live-foods, spirituality, and diabetes prevention in United States, Israel, Egypt, Morocco, Lebanon, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Mexico, Ecuador, North Africa, Ghana, Nigeria, Canada, Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand, Bali, and almost every country in Europe. He is a co-founder of a West African NGO called the West African Rural Health Empowerment Society, and has established health and diabetes prevention programs in Nigeria, Ghana, Mexico, and with farm workers in the U.S. His work in Africa has earned him adoption into the Baika tribe of the Buem traditional area of Ghana, and he has spoken at the University of Ghana’s medical school in Ho. 

Gabriel Cousens, M.D. is listed in the "Who’s Who in California", the "Who’s Who Among Top Executives", the "Who’s Who in Executives and Professionals", and "Strathmore’s Who’s Who”. He appears frequently on radio, television, and magazine publications worldwide. Gabriel Cousens is married to Shanti Golds Cousens and has two children and three grandchildren.

MEDICAL BIO:

Gabriel Cousens received his MD from Columbia Medical School. He is a Diplomate of the American Board of Integrative Holistic Medicine, a Diplomate in Ayurveda, and has also earned a Homeopathic MD. He has over 35 years experience in healing diabetes naturally.

Recognized worldwide as the leading medical authority on live-food nutrition and as a spiritual teacher, he is a holistic physician, psychiatrist, family therapist, international lecturer, medical researcher, green-juice spiritual fasting and detoxification expert, acupuncturist, and the author of the books: There Is A Cure For Diabetes, Spiritual Nutrition, Rainbow Green Live-Food Cuisine, Depression- Free for Life, Conscious Eating, , Tachyon Energy, and Creating Peace by Being Peace. Gabriel Cousens, MD, has published research in J of Biochimica et Biophysica Acta, Psychopharmacology, School Health, and J of Orthomolecular Medicine.

Dr. Cousens has practiced yoga, meditation, and Ayurveda for thirty-five years, and is an acupuncturist. He has worked extensively with black communities in central Harlem and the South side of Chicago, as well as Latino community in the Southwest. He has unique and powerful multi-ethno-cultural understanding and background, which he brings to his discussion of holistic healing.

Dr. Cousens has created family-centered teen centers in Boston and in Petaluma. He is the founder of the Petaluma services center, which has a forty year history of integrating about forty different medical and social services in southern Sonoma county. He was the chief mental health consultant for Sonoma county Head Start and the mental health consultant for the state of California. He also taught family therapy dynamics to a variety of groups from Head Start teachers and a 2-year Masters course for PhD students as well as running family therapy psychosomatic seminars at the family practice residency program in Sonoma county.

He regularly speaks on radio, appears on television, and addresses a variety of medical audiences and medical centers on the topics of reversing diabetes naturally, reversing depression naturally, and the biochemical and psychosomatic interface of depression and heart disease. He also speaks nationally and internationally on the importance of live food nutrition and meditation for health.

His adolescent interest in health and medicine led him to construct a heart-lung  from Amherst College, where he published his first scientific paper in Biochemica et Biophysica Acta. Dr. Cousens was captain of an undefeated college football team, and was inducted into the National Football Hall of Fame. He graduated from Columbia Medical School, where he published his second paper in School Health, based on his three year experience living in Central Harlem. There he developed a training program that was accepted in half the schools in Central Harlem and eventually accepted by the N.Y. Department of Health. During his psychiatry residency he taught psychopharmacology to first year residents and published a paper in the Journal of Psychopharmacology. His current focus is speaking at medical schools and to medical audiences in the US and internationally on how to reverse diabetes naturally. He is currently involved in creating a study of 500 type 2 diabetics using the principles of natural healing, diet, and herbs.

Since 1993 Dr. Cousens has been the director of the Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center and Tree of Life Foundation. He has a program to reverse diabetes in twenty-one days, in which 33% of type 1 diabetics have come off their insulin and have a blood sugar of less than 100. 55% of the varieties of type 2’s have come off all medications and have a blood sugar of less than 100 within twenty-one days.

Gabriel Cousens, MD is married to Shanti Golds Cousens, and is the father of two and a grandfather of two. Gabriel and Shanti share the teaching of a Sacred Relationship Course for couples. The essence of Cousens’ work is establishing programs to help individuals, families, nations, and the planet come into balance and health on all levels.

SPIRITUAL BIO:

Dr. Cousens' spiritual path began in 1943 at the age of one, when he faced near death from miliary TB prior to the introduction of antibiotics.  At this time, his older brother was also close to death from rheumatic fever. At the age of 9 he began having explicit visions of white robed ancients in a desert setting.  Neither he nor his parents understood these visions. At the age of 15 his older brother was killed in a car accident. This event served as a spiritual wake-up call.  Gabriel spent hours in silence in his brother’s room for several years.  During this time he created a heart-lung machine which won the Illinois state science fair. His father died when he was 21, and his mother died when he was 33.  He had no teacher to illuminate the mystery of death for him. 

When Gabriel received Shaktipat initiation from Swami Muktananda in 1975, and in a direct aperception of the truth, he realized: "There is no death for the Self; only the body dies".  Gabriel then began an eleven year period of intense spiritual lifestyle (sadana) under the guidance of Swamis Muktananda and Prakashananda simultaneously.  Swami Prakashanda was the first person to be acknowledged as liberated by Swami Muktananda in 1969.   Swami Prakaskananda acknowledged Gabriel's liberation in 1981.  Shortly thereafter Swami Muktananda acknowledged Gabriel's liberation just prior to leaving his physical body. In 1983, at the end of a 40-day fast and three days of unbroken nothing awareness, a small voice broke the eternal silence with a whispered message (chasmal); he was now to serve his people of birth.

As a result of that Divine direction, Gabriel entered into a study of the mystical Kabbalistic and Essene aspects of Judaism to realize truth as bitul hayesh, in which the personal I disappears leaving only Hashem (God); all else being the dance of the illusionary matrix.  In 2008 Rabbi Gershon Winkler initiated Gabriel as Rabbi into a lineage that may be traced back to the Bal Shem Tov, the Maggid of Mezerich, and Rabbi Elimelek. Gabriel also explored the mystical Jewish/Native American connection.  He completed four years of traditional Sundance as well as the Eagle Dance in the fourth year. He was adopted into the Lakota High Horse Clan and given the name Yellow Horse. He then became a Spirit Dancer (traditional Ghost Dancer).  He has continued this since 2000.  Gabriel has realized Mitakuye Oyasin as the "unity of the four worlds and the four levels of physical creation and life".

These Kabbalistic/Essene/Judaic, Yogic, and Native American aspects of Self-Liberation have brought Gabriel to a Rama Krishna level of attainment and have given him a unique, authentic, ecumenical, unified world view.  Presently he serves as the Rabbi for the Etz Haim shul; "Rabbi at large"; and an Essene Rabbi bringing Jewish (B’nei Israel) and non-Jewish (B’nei Noach) peoples into unity for the healing of the planet. He has developed a two-year Essene training program for this purpose. As the founder and director of the Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center and Foundation, Gabriel has combined these three traditions into a way of living which he calls the Six Foundations and Sevenfold Peace.  This is a pre-conditional lifestyle for liberation. Woven into this is his work as the physician leading the planet in living plant source nutrition and the development of natural healing modalities for diabetes and depression. As a family therapist and psychiatrist, he teaches a sacred relations course with his wife Shanti.  He leads spiritual fasting retreats, teaches conscious eating courses, and has developed a Western Jnana Yoga program called Zero Point. He co-created the Kundalini Crises Clinic in 1976 with Dr. Lee Sanella, and is a vehicle for shaktipat transmission at the direction and empowerment of Swami Muktananda. He is considered a master of kundalini as well as a teacher of meditation, prayer, jnana, bakti, karma, and mantra yogas.  Gabriel has been a student of hatha yoga since 1975.

As a part of his world service, Gabriel functions as a live-food vegan peace worker reactivating the prophetic teachings of Genesis 1:29 for the healing of individuals and the planet from the ravages of global weather instabilities such as warming.  In this capacity, he participates in moving the world from the ecologically destructive "Culture of Death" toward the green "Culture of Life". As a husband, father, and grandfather, he supports families on the spiritual path.  In summation, Gabriel is a world teacher, a servant, and an inspiration to thousands for the paradigm of whole person liberation.

PRIESTESS SHANTI GOLDS COUSENS, MA

Shanti Golds Cousens is the co-director of the Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center in Patagonia Arizona where she teaches Kali-Ray® Tri-Yoga, aromatherapy, and other classes in the Center’s spiritual retreat programs.

Shanti has dedicated her life to love, service and devotion. She was initially trained as a community nurse in her native land of New Zealand. She has earned her B.A. and Masters Degree in Vegan and Live-Food Nutrition from the University of Integrated Science. She offers a variety of workshops at the Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center in Patagonia, Arizona, as the Director of TriYoga®. The depth of her experience in the spiritual and healing arts, along with her compassionate presence, inspires and illuminates the lives of all those she serves.

One of Shanti’s first live-food mentors was Gabriel Cousens, M.D., Founder/Director of the Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center, who would become her husband eleven years later. After many years of study she has been ordained as an Essene Priestess in the Essene Order of Light, and she is currently assisting Gabriel specifically in the preparation and training of priestesses.

Shanti became a vegetarian at age 16 and she began her study of yoga at the age of nineteen. Five years into her practice of yoga, at the age of twenty four, she met Kali Ray®, with whom she would spend the next 16 years living, learning, training, meditating and teaching. In 1986 she became among the first of the trained Kali Ray TriYoga® teachers and taught as a Senior Teacher at the Kali Ray TriYoga® headquarters in Santa Cruz, California for 16 years.

Shanti quickly found the harmony between the practice of TriYoga® and a vegan, live-food diet. As a teacher, she expanded her classes to include living foods education and hosted living foods gatherings a t the Kali Ray TriYoga®Center. With great generosity, she offers her love through preparing delicious live-food delicacies to nourish body and soul.

Shanti’s passion for healing, spiritual illumination and a holistic way of life lead her to the art, science and spirit of aromatherapy. For seven years she studied and worked under Elizabeth Van Buren, Director of the College of Botanical Healing Arts in California. She completed extensive studies of botany, chemistry, blending therapeutic oils and individualizing the healing approach for each client. During this time she was employed by Elizabeth Van Buren blending customized oils and as an independent aromatherapy healing practitioner. She continues to share this time-honored healing art as an aromatherapist at the Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center.

Shanti and Gabriels partnership embodies the Divine Flow inherent in the Culture of Life and Liberation lifestyle. They inspire those around them to manifest sacred partnership, right livelihood, holistic living and Divine Union. She co-teaches the Sacred Relationship Course at the Tree of Life with Gabriel, and also co-participates in the spiritual questions and answers are port of the evening programs at the Tree of Life. The essence of her work is to bring the healing power of the Shakhinah energy (Sacred Feminine) into the planet for the healing of the world.

THE VISION OF THE TREE OF LIFE FOUNDATION

Our vision is to create a living experience of the meaning of sustainable healthy living for the individual and for the planet.  This means providing people with a direct experience of what it means to live a quality of life that is healing both to themselves and to the planet of every single level from agricultural interests of our society to personal health, emotional health, and spiritual health.  We offer this so that people can know that such an existence is real and can experience the joy of living that way.  In essence, each person has a deep yearning to live a quality of life or what we may call an “awakened normality”.  In that way the Tree of Life is an oasis for awakening. 

THE TREE OF LIFE FOUNDATION is deeply committed to providing experiences and empowering people to apply that experience of “awakened normality” back into their lives. The Tree of Life Foundation mission is to be an oasis of awakening on every level and provide a direct experience of a quality of life that is healing to oneself and to the planet, through pure reliable agriculture, personal health, emotional well-being and spiritual vitality.

The Tree of Life is actively involved in establishing and operating a number of humanitarian and health projects in the United States and around the world.  All of our projects are designed for the healing of the planet…from the personal to the ecological and spiritual level.  Presently there are a number of projects in which we are actively engaged. They include:

1. Transforming the health and humanitarian awareness both on the personal and global levels through leading-edge work on the art and science of rejuvenating health and well-being.  We are acting as an inspirational training center for people around the world by helping them directly experience the joy of health, harmony, and rejuvenation, helping them takes it back to their own countries. 

2. In his book, There is a Cure for Diabetes, Gabriel Cousens, M.D. M.D.(H),   establishes that diabetes can be reversed naturally and he is doing formal research to prove this.  The Tree of Life has a Reversing Diabetes Naturally program in the U.S. in which approximately 70% of people have healed from non-insulin dependent diabetes.

3. The Tree of Life Foundation has developed an sustainable vegan gardening that is designed to be totally solar as we expand our large-scale infrastructure.  It offers an ecology experience to its world visitors as a working model for what can be done in their countries to maintain and protect the ecology.

4. We have a highly recognized program in nutrition and food preparation also attended by students from around the world.  Most students go on to teach health and lifestyle and start plant-source-only restaurants around the globe.

5. Training, self-empowerment courses, family life, psycho-spiritual healing, food preparation, and detox and spiritual healing are offered for increasing the quality of life and healthy functioning of families and couples.  We emphasize a family-centered approach to health.

6. One of the major problems in the world today is addiction.  The Tree of Life is actively developing solutions for helping people overcome their addictions so that they can lead happy, productive drug free lives.

7. Since 1985 we have sponsored quarterly peace meditations throughout the U.S. and Europe, called Peace 21. Dr. Cousens also started the Peace Everyday Initiative to create peace, which is now practiced by over 192 organizations around the world.

8. We have laid the groundwork to begin programs in helping and teach Native Americans in every tribe throughout the U.S. how to heal diabetes naturally and to eliminate it as a predatory disease in their society.  Once this is started, we have the background to begin to heal the alcoholism problem in Native American societies.  The diabetes and alcohol problems exist in many indigenous people around the world.  Once the Native American program has proven successful in the U.S. we hope to begin similar work with the Mayori tribes in New Zealand and the Aborigines in Australia where these problems are epidemic.

To learn more about the Tree of Life Foundation click here.