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(Choose this path if you have any nervous system disorder.)
This is one of four Starting Paths for beginning the Ancestral Regeneration Protocol, offered for anyone whose current health will not allow them to begin with the standard Week One foods. Whichever path fits you, keep following the protocol week by week — or slower, if that is what your body needs — for the morning routine, mindset work, detox, and lifestyle pieces. Skip any food you cannot yet tolerate, and bring it back in once you have seen some healing.
For the lows and the highs of this journey, it also helps to read Addiction and Compulsion: A Nervous System Perspective and Rhythm Over Perfectionism. They will help you meet setbacks with curiosity and calm, and celebrate your progress along the way.
Begin by reading the Featured Posts in the protocol, and print the foods that are on and off the menu.
Begin at Week One and follow those instructions, but for food, begin at Week Nineteen instead.
If you need the High Histamine Starting Path, you may begin there for your meal plan.
You may bring in properly fermented dairy if you are tolerating it.
You can make the cabbage juice if you are tolerating ferments, but you will not eat the cabbage yet.
You will want to be in the intensive gut-healing phase from the very beginning if you tolerate stock; if not, eating any foods from the High Histamine Plan or any foods on the menu will be perfect until you can introduce stock. Reversing Food Intolerances
Please do not rush introducing foods. In fact, it can be so helpful to think about the food, welcome the food, and spend time just looking at the food to regulate your nervous system around a food that you may feel anxiety over.
Begin putting a teaspoon of fat into your soups every day, and increase by a teaspoon once a week if tolerated.
Your goal is 1 cup of protein per day, 1/4 cup of approved vegetables, and unlimited fat — 2 cups a day is great and cream can be a lot of the fat intake. Increase slowly, and give your body the same amount of additional fat daily except on the day you increase.
Work through the exercises and information in the protocol, but you will not want to add in the food from the beginning weeks for these conditions. You will want to take a break from honey and fruit, insoluble fiber, and perhaps ferments. You will be prompted to bring them back in when it is time.
Keep properly cooked carrots, onions, and/or garlic on hand for blood sugar swings and cravings. Eating extra carrots in the first few weeks will help with cravings and nausea. A teaspoon of animal fat with a little mineral salt can also help with cravings.
Morning Routine
Your morning routine must be done the same way every day.
If you are working, do the full routine but shorter. If you are homebound, give the morning routine at least 4 hours.
Wake at the same time every day. Even if all you can do is roll onto the floor, make sure to get out of bed.
Take ketone and glucose readings with a Keto-Mojo after week three. Your goal readings are 2.0 for ketones and 60 to 90 for glucose. It is okay if it takes time to get into ketosis, and it is okay not to feel the energy from it right away — it will happen. Your body will use the ketones to repair itself on a cellular level, and the energy will follow. Your glucose energy system most likely is not working properly, and you will find ketosis helpful.
Dip your face in ice water for 15 seconds, hum for 30 seconds, and repeat two more times. A cold plunge is a good alternative, or you can do both.
Make a cup of loose-leaf tea with 1 teaspoon each of St. John’s wort, chicory tea and 1/4 tsp mucuna pruriens powder. Do not use St. John’s Wort if you are taking an SSRI.
Use a circadian light or get sun if possible (Feel Bright Light is recommended but any 10,000 LUX light will be great) for 20 minutes while listening to a motivational speaker.
Write in a gratitude journal until you feel gratitude — writing about small things often works better.
If you are working, do a 20-minute body scan meditation flat on the floor, no pillow, arms out slightly with palms up. If you are not working, do an hour of the meditation. Do another hour of the body scan meditation at bedtime.
This can be done while falling asleep — download it onto an old phone, use wired headphones, and put the phone in airplane mode inside a Faraday bag so you are not exposed to EMFs.
Do at least two 5-minute body scans at set times during the day to bring yourself back into your body.
Movement
Get a stationary bike. Pedal with no resistance and work up to 45 minutes very slowly. Begin with 1 minute per day if that is all you can do and celebrate it!
Do not take walks until your circulation improves greatly.
If you are bed-bound, do shoulder shrugs until you are strong enough to get on the bike for 30 seconds, then work your way up very slowly to 45 minutes.
Move all of your body every day: stretch your fingers, spread your toes, do a full body massage, pump your calves by pointing toes, make faces, open your mouth as wide as possible, stick out your tongue as far as possible. Think like a toddler with the sillies and do that! If you have energy enough, you can dance and incorporate more movements, but refrain from cardio and HIIT.
Do not sit in chairs with your legs dangling — always keep your feet up.
Lifestyle to Add Throughout the Day
At least 30 minutes of laughter.
Reframe stressful thoughts — there is more on this throughout the protocol.
Colour, or do tasks, with your non-dominant hand.
Take at least one detox bath per day if tolerated; do a foot bath only if you cannot tolerate a full bath.
Turn off electronics and blue light by 7 pm, and sleep with a sleep mask. If you like sound while you sleep, try Mozart slowed to 432 Hz on YouTube, Masaru Emoto’s album Messages from the Water, Gregorian chant, or rain sounds. Use no fan at night, and keep your bedroom pitch black in addition to the sleep mask.
Write in a gratitude journal before bed and list your accomplishments for the day. Pray the same memorized prayer, or say the same memorized affirmation, every night.
Listen to Mozart with headphones every day.
Follow the meal-time instructions in the protocol.
It is perfectly normal to have an uptick in symptoms and experience a lot of die-off, especially in the first three months.
Reframe difficult days with, “These symptoms are difficult, and they are a sign of my healing.” There is nothing wrong with you, and you are going to get well!
Just remember my favorite Mary Ruddick quote: “Nobody ever died from eating soup!”