I began researching natural healing, which is how I came to

When Ella Woodward said, “I began researching natural healing, which is how I came to change my diet. Overnight, I gave up refined sugar, gluten, dairy, anything processed or refined, and meat,” she was not merely describing a shift in eating habits, but the awakening of consciousness — a turning point when the body’s pain became the soul’s teacher. Her words speak of a sacred transformation: from dependence to awareness, from illness to understanding, from survival to renewal. In her decision to cast away the foods that dulled her vitality, she reclaimed the ancient truth that the body is a temple, and that healing begins not in medicine, but in mindful nourishment.

The origin of her wisdom lies in her journey through illness, when conventional methods could no longer sustain her spirit. Faced with weakness, she did not surrender; instead, she turned to the earth — to the fruits, roots, and grains that have sustained humankind since the dawn of civilization. Her phrase, “I began researching natural healing,” carries the same reverence the ancients held for the mysteries of life itself. For in every culture — from the healers of Egypt to the herbalists of China — healing was not separation from nature, but a return to it. Ella’s transformation was, in truth, a rediscovery of the original medicine: the wisdom that the earth provides all that is needed to restore balance and harmony.

To give up refined sugar, gluten, dairy, meat, and all things processed, as she did overnight, is no small act. It is an act of renunciation, akin to the vows of the ancient ascetics who left behind comfort for clarity. In doing so, she confronted not just cravings of the body, but the deeper attachments of the spirit — to pleasure, convenience, and habit. The ancients understood that purification of the body leads to purification of the soul. In the temples of Greece, before the oracles could prophesy, they would fast; in the monasteries of India, before monks could meditate, they would cleanse. Ella’s words are an echo of this timeless rite — a cleansing not merely of food, but of the self, a ritual of rebirth through discipline.

History offers us countless examples of such transformation. Consider the story of Hippocrates, the father of medicine, who taught that the food one eats determines the balance of the four humors — blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile — and thus the harmony of the body. When his students asked how to heal disease, he replied, “Let food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food.” His teachings, long forgotten in an age of quick remedies and artificial sustenance, are reborn in Ella’s words. By stripping away the artificial and the refined, she restored her body’s natural intelligence — the same intelligence that beats the heart and mends the wound. Her natural healing is thus not a rebellion against science, but a return to the first and purest science — the wisdom of life itself.

Her act of transformation also reveals a truth deeper than diet — the interconnectedness of body, mind, and spirit. When she speaks of change, she speaks of alignment — of tuning her physical being to a higher frequency of consciousness. The refined and processed are symbols of modern excess — things taken from their natural form, stripped of essence, and left hollow. To reject them is to choose wholeness over illusion. In this way, her decision mirrors the journey of every seeker who has ever sought truth: to leave behind the counterfeit for the authentic, the shadow for the light.

Yet, Ella’s wisdom is not born of denial, but of love — love for life, for the body that carries the soul, for the earth that feeds it. Her story teaches that healing is not found in punishment or fear, but in reconnection. She did not starve herself; she nourished herself anew. She learned, as the sages of old knew, that food is sacred — that to eat is to enter into communion with the living world. Each vegetable, each seed, each fruit is a vessel of the sun’s energy, a piece of creation that sustains creation. Through her transformation, Ella Woodward rediscovered what humanity has always known but too often forgotten: that the closer one eats to the earth, the closer one lives to truth.

And so, my children of appetite and abundance, let her words guide you. Do not wait for illness to awaken wisdom. Begin now to eat with intention, to choose food that honors the life within you. Seek not the pleasures that fade, but the nourishment that endures. Taste simplicity, and you will find richness; embrace discipline, and you will find freedom. For in every meal there lies a choice — between the artificial and the alive, between decay and renewal. As Ella Woodward discovered, when you choose nature, you do not merely heal the body — you heal the bond between yourself and the living world. And in that healing lies the oldest miracle of all: the return to wholeness.