Monthly Newsletter  

o Living in Paradise  

o Amazing Stories -- New Feature on the Tanglewood website  

o Internship program update  

o New Prices and a short-term chance for big savings  

o Foundation to help people afford to fast  

o Week-long retreats at Tanglewood

Greetings!

As usual, it’s been a while since I wrote. From now on, I’ll be writing to you at the beginning of each month. Hopefully, that will keep each letter a little shorter. In the meantime, there’s a lot to tell you about… It won’t take more than 10 minutes to read this letter though, and you’ll be glad you did.

Living in Paradise

We’re coming up on a year here in Panama, and life is good. Our site here is beautiful, with a view across a beautiful green valley to the mountains on the other side, and from one part of the property, to the Pacific Ocean, about 10 miles away.

We’ve been busy transforming the site since we arrived, and the place is more beautiful all the time. We’ve planted thousands of fruit-bearing and ornamental plants. If you’ve been to any of our previous locations, you already know that I’m not too fond of grass, and tend to replace it with perennial gardens that require less watering, no cutting, and produce much more oxygen, as well as habitat for lots of critters. Go to www.TanglewoodWellnessCenter.com/gallery/ to see some just-posted photos of some of the grounds and the work to date (and in-progress).

We’ve also been upgrading the building to optimize it for our use. It’s by far the best building that we’ve had so far, but it did need more than a few improvements. Some huge advantages are that it’s all on one level so there are no stairs (which can be difficult when you’ve been fasting for a while!). Also, every room here has an en-suite bathroom.

And, of course, the perfect climate here makes fasting (and living!) far more comfortable than it was in Maryland. We’re virtually always in shorts and short sleeves, and shoes and socks are almost entirely a thing of the past.( I am considering stock in a flip-flop company though. : )

You may want to come see how idyllic life can be here yourself. There are several opportunities to do that, including, of course, coming down for an always-empowering fast, coming for an internship (with the possibility of permanent employment afterwards!), or coming for a one-week retreat. Info about each option follows below.

Amazing True Stories

We continue to see miracles at Tanglewood every month; “incurable” diseases cured. People with long-standing conditions that disappear. And people finding new levels of physical and emotional health that they never thought they’d enjoy. Or enjoy again. We’re about to add a new feature to the website where each month I’ll tell one these amazing stories. I’m hoping to get the first one up next week, and will send you a quick message when it’s up.

Powerful Internship Program Takes Everything to the Next Level

As you may know, we've had an internship program for 7 or 8 years. It started out when a young woman called from the UK to ask if we took interns, and I thought, "Why not?". Back then, it was designed as an exchange, and our interns worked for 3 months in exchange for 28 days here as a guest (fasting 21 and re-feeding for 7), and complete access to yours truly (how can you put a value on that???!!!) for the whole time. It also meant lots of work. The program had evolved over the years, a little, including reducing the number of hours worked from 50 to 35. There were incredible opportunities for the interns, but the program still left much to be desired.

Before moving to Panama, we spent 6 months completely re-designing the internship. It still includes 28 days as a guest, and almost-unlimited access to me, but much, much more, too.

Our interns now go through a four-week orientation and training period after their fast. This time is dedicated to their education and growth, and includes daily exercise/yoga, meditation, weekly excursions, occasional morning trips to the beach, classes on everything from non-violent communication and radical honesty to Creating Perfect Health, listening skills, presentation skills, and learning how to care for and interact with the center and our guests.

The last phase of the program is a nine-week service period where the interns work 35 hours/week, take about 5 hours of ongoing classes each week (plus daily exercise/yoga),

and have an opportunity to continue practicing all the skills and behaviors learned up to now in a supportive environment.

It’s an amazing program by itself, and with four months in a tropical paradise eating nature’s perfect foods for humans, it’s hard to beat. And at $2000, it’s still an amazing bargain when you consider the value of the fast, the education, the coaching, and room and board for four months. Most similar programs charge much more, and include no time as a guest. Remember, our paying guests pay $2700 for the 21-day fast and 7-day re-feeding alone!

This program is clearly not for everyone. It’s challenging in many ways and is designed to be. But if you believe that you can create anything you desire, and are ready to learn how, you might want to check this program out. I guarantee you’ll never find anything more powerful or empowering.

Our interns complete the program more fit, more healthy, more emotionally balanced, and more ready to consciously create their life and relationships than ever before. From our first two sessions, 3 interns chose to return for a second internship, and at least two others are considering doing the same thing. Find out why the people who have already been through are so eager to come back for more. For more information or to apply, please go to www.TanglewoodWellnessCenter.com/intern.php now.

How Tanglewood Does it Better

It was bound to happen eventually; for several years, we’ve held our prices steady, even as inflation, and many of our costs, continued to rise. We’ve done this to try to make this amazing experience available to as many people as possible.

In the meantime, many of our costs have continued to rise. We recently surveyed the other water-fasting opportunities and found that the virtually every one was at least 25-50% more expensive than Tanglewood for a four-week fast, and some much more than that. Ironically, the most expensive guy, (well more than twice our prices,) claims that most places in North America charge “much more”. A little marketing hype, anyone?

And as I’ve pointed out before, there are some very significant differences between Tanglewood and the other options. We have always been 100% committed to locally grown produce (for re-feeding). For more than 10 years in North America, we bought and served 100% locally grown produce, while every other center said it cost too much.

We’re also the only place that has always provided organic cotton linens and towels to our guests. In fact, we’ve taken very seriously the Great Law of the Iroqouis Confederacy that said, “ In every action you take, consider the impact on the next 7 generations.”

Our staff/client ratio is higher than virtually every other center. We work hard to meet our guests’ needs while they’re here. And unlike most other places where the staff knows fasting only intellectually, everyone at Tanglewood – including our interns -- have fasted here, and full-time staff receives fasting time in addition to their vacation every year.

Having said all this, with the obvious advantages Tanglewood offers, and the huge discrepancy in prices, it’s time for us to raise ours a little bit. Incidentally, even with the new rates, we’re probably still the least expensive, high-quality option available.

Your Chance to Save -- As Prices Go Up!

In the meantime, because you’ve been supporting Tanglewood, we wanted to give you an opportunity to save money by locking in our old, lower prices for the next 3 years. Here’s how this works.

If you go to the “shop” section of our website, you will see our new rates. These new rates are in effect, now.

But you can go to the( fasting special expired) to still purchase fasting time at the old rates. You can lock in these low prices by pre-purchasing as much time as you want right now. You’ll have up to three years (through June, 2009) to use this time, and you can sell or give it away, too. We’ll send you a certificate for each block of time that you purchase, and you’ll redeem the certificate when you want to fast.

If you’ve been planning to come fast at Tanglewood, this is the time to make a commitment and save quite a bit. If you know you are coming, you only need to go to the (fasting specials expired) to access our old prices, and buy the time you want. If you are coming for four weeks or more, you’ll probably cover the cost of your airfare. If you’re coming for nine weeks, you’ll save $825 by booking your time now, rather than waiting until you’re ready to come.

Whether you want to come fast once, twice, or several times the more you buy, the more you save. If, like many of our clients, you already know you’ll want to spend four weeks here each year, you can pre-purchase 3 four-week stays now and save yourself $1350 over the next three years.

Why are we doing this? Well, there are several reasons; We knew things would slow down a bit when we moved here. And we could run expensive ads to increase our occupancy here. But it occurred to us that we’d rather “spend” the money by offering you incentives to commit in advance to your future fasts here. Also, we are in need of additional staff housing, and would like to build some new space to accommodate our daily exercise classes. Reward yourself now while helping us meet future space needs.

Your opportunity to save will expire on Father’s Day, June 18. You have just over two weeks to commit to your future time at big savings. 

New Foundation to Help Future Clients

As always, the question is, how to insure that most people can still come fast if they’re serious. Finally, we have a solution that we believe will make it possible for anyone who’s committed to fast, while allowing us to charge enough to keep doing what we do.

How? We’re in the process of setting up a foundation that will be able to help those people who are sincere in their desire to function at the highest level, but just can’t afford to come. This will be set up soon as possible, and once up, we’ll be taking donations to create this fund, which once in place, will make it possible for people to get a partial “scholarship” to help cover the cost here.

Retreat from the hustle and bustle

Over the years, we’ve had many people who have wanted to come spend time at Tanglewood without fasting. Whether they wanted to experience eating the Tanglewood Diet in a supportive environment,  learn more about creating perfect health, or simply to take a break from their busy life, they knew that they could rest and relax here, while being supported in their choices. Unfortunately, it didn’t really work for us. The needs of most people who are fasting are very different than those of people who are not, and it never seemed to work so well to try to accommodate both at the same time.

Because we were always fasting people, it made it very difficult to accommodate the “non-fasting” client. Now, with our new schedule of nine weeks open and four weeks closed, it appears there is a way we can make this work.

We close for four weeks both to give our new interns a training and orientation period and to allow me some precious time off. We realized that we could continue training our new interns – and have them learn a lot about serving guests – while putting on a one-week retreat at the end of each orientation/training every quarter.

Each retreat will combine rest and relaxation, a couple of excursions, amazingly good tropical fruit, life-changing education and lots more, all in a beautiful tropical paradise. With only 14 guests/retreat, these will be exclusive events designed to meet your needs.

We have several people who are interested in organizing groups to come down, and this may be the way most of the retreats happen. If you’d like to discuss the possibility of working with us to create a custom retreat for your group, contact us at info@TanglewoodWellnessCenter.com.

For Tanglewood,

Namaste,

Loren