Meet Our Founder, James Templeton

I went all out, even though I didn’t have much energy – I was very weak from chemo and surgery, and had lost a lot of weight. I studied macrobiotics and started cooking the foods, with my stepmother’s support. She helped take care of me and helped me cook a macrobiotic diet, (as much as we understood at the time) until I could fend for myself. To give you an idea of the diet, a typical breakfast was miso soup, brown rice, and cooked greens. I read every book about macrobiotics I could get my hands on, trying to understand the keys to why it works. I wanted to get well, and prove macrobiotics was going to do it for me. I charged like a bull into my new lifestyle. I was really excited! I spent many hours reading, studying, meditating on it, using positive visualization. I did stretches and exercises that consisted of tapping on meridians, the energy highways of the body. I practiced deep breathing. I was careful to chew each bite of food 180 times. I began to realize what real food tasted like, and started getting a tremendous amount of energy from what I ate. And, although not part of the macrobiotic program, I also took a lot of Vitamin C, about 20,000 mg per day, which I still do today. I felt like I needed to exercise to get this poison out of my system. Getting back into exercising was a slow, gradual process. I started to run as much as I could, usually just a mile before I would throw up, which felt like a purge. I’m the kind of person who sets goals, and wanted to prove to myself that I was going to make it. I believed if I could run 18 miles, then that would prove to me I was going to beat this cancer. I exercised like I hadn’t in a long time. And still sore from major lymphatic surgery, I eventually ran that 18 miles. I felt dead tired after, and my leg swelled terribly, but I did it. Now I felt like I had a fighting chance. Running was too hard on my leg, so I bought a bicycle and rode 100 miles per week. Diet, stretches, exercise, deep breathing, visualization – this new healing lifestyle kept me busy. I went back to work, which was sometimes 12 hours a day or more, driving up to 300 miles some days. Many times I would find myself dozing off at my desk just to keep my energy up. Then, I rode my bike in the evenings. I planned my meals ahead and ate leftovers at work. After just 3 months, I had gained some weight back, was sleeping well, and even the swelling in my leg was starting to go down. I felt like a different person, better than I had in my whole life! It was amazing to me to feel so alive from natural therapies after feeling like I was dying using medical treatment. I was lonely, and wanted support in my new healing way of life. I read a book where a couple of hippie hitchhikers led a big city doctor to healing his cancer by way of a macrobiotics institute. I knew this was an adventure I couldn’t miss out on.