The Queen of Green Wants to Raise Your Vibration. Here’s How.

Lauren Von Der Pool is a culinary multihyphenate: a plant-based, celebrity chef; the CEO of Food Art by Lauren; author of the best-selling book, Eat Yourself Sexy; and the founder of a non-profit. Her career includes time as a personal chef for celebrities including Venus and Serena Williams and serving as the executive chef for former first lady Michelle Obama’s 2009 childhood obesity campaign, Let’s Move.

Von Der Pool has dedicated her career to the importance of healthy living, committing herself to heal with food, promoting self-empowerment and personal health through consciously engaging with nutrition. After a near-death experience at the age of 16, a pivotal moment that impacted her like an awakening, she adopted a plant-based diet as part of her healing. 

As she continued along her wellness journey, delving deeper into the world of self-healing, she took the principles of “food as medicine” to the next level by integrating energy healing into her culinary process.

We learned about the concept of metaphysical mealtimes from Dr. Will Cole, but Von Der Pool refers to the subtle aspect of food quite literally. Combining her passions for energy work and cooking, she cooks with the knowledge that certain foods, spices, and herbs are medicinal in their own right. In addition, her introspective practices moved her to learn various meditation and energy healing teachings, like Joheir, Marma, and Reiki. 

It was when she began integrating these practices into her work as a chef, and her clients experienced the high-vibrational effects of plant-based eating for the first time, she witnessed a new kind of healing take place in which they felt great energetically. This is why she enhances the high-vibrational states of her food through the infusion of subtle energy healing.

Plant-based options across menus and grocery stores aisles have increased monumentally over the past few years with a marked rise in flexitarianism — the name for a part-time vegan diet that minimizes the consumption of animal byproducts. Only 2% of Americans identify as vegans, yet 35% of Americans have consumed plant-based meat in the past year, with 90% saying they would eat it again.

Beyond animal ethics and sustainability discussions, plant-based eating can have other implications on our well-being. According to Von Der Pool, plant-based diets are “high vibrational” — referring to the spiritual energy housed in all living things that some call chi and others think of as consciousness. Fans of the etheric realm note that everything is energy and certain of earth’s treasures vibrate at higher frequencies — including crystals and plants.

“Eating plant-based improves how you feel physically, mentally, and emotionally,” Von der Pool says, alluding to the belief that what you ingest can help to elevate your spiritual energy similar to the way that fans of crystals infuse their water or wear jewelry on their bodies. “[Plant-based eating] improves what you attract into your life. This is very natural, basic, and innate–you change what you are eating, and you naturally will feel better.” As you attune to a higher frequency, the shift that takes place makes you more aware of your physical and inner-states—and more often than not, people report feeling great.

Going beyond the basics of nutrition, certain branches of wellness believe that life-force energy contained in our foods is another one of the ways that our food nourishes us. The same way reiki replenishes our subtle systems with universal life-force energy, it does the same to our foods. Thus by giving reiki to ingredients and meals, it is almost as if the energy healing is being performed directly to us.

Von Der Pool prefers giving reiki to already high-frequency foods like organic fruits and vegetables, performing what she likes to call Culinary Reiki on each fare. “I feel like we are impacting the food just as much as the food is impacting us,” she says. Culinary reiki also seeks to raise the vibration of food with sacred sounds and intentions. Before creating a dish, Von Der Pool meditates, completes a series of breathing exercises, and rubs her hands together to get the energy flowing. That energy, coupled with prayer, affirmations, and sound healing, our meals become conduits for the sacred sounds and high-vibrational frequencies that we already know can be stored in our water and skincare products.

Von Der Pool sees this culinary energy work as serving a healing function that goes far beyond the physical. “It also raises the vibration of our etheric body so that we are untouchable by those things and people resonating at frequencies below us,” she says. “It allows us to heal and balance our chakras by eating the rainbow and raising the vibration of the food we eat.”

Food is a foundational pillar in our lives, but the nutrients they contain are just the beginning for a true wellness enthusiast. By incorporating more fruits and veggies, you are already adopting a more high-vibrational diet and making less of a carbon footprint. But by infusing energy healing into your foods, you are unlocking the latent healing potential in your meals — physically, emotionally, and etherically.

To rē•spin the healing potential of your mealtimes, here is one of Von Der Pool’s plant-based recipes for Grand Slammin’ Tacos from her book, Eat Yourself Sexy. These tacos are fresh, yummy, and super easy to make. 

• 3 cups of soaked almonds
• 1 Vidalia onion diced
• Three cloves fresh garlic
• Two jalapeños diced and deseeded
• ⅙ cup of extra-virgin olive oil
• Two tablespoons of paprika
• Two tablespoons of onion powder
• Two tablespoons of pink Himalayan sea salt
• One tablespoon of cumin
• One tablespoon of garlic powder

• Two tomatoes, diced
• One red onion, diced
• One avocado, diced
• Two jalapeños, sliced
• 1 cup romaine lettuce, diced
• ½ cup of sour cream

• Six red or white cabbage leaves

1. Take the almonds and run them through your Champagne Juicer with the flat screen that doesn’t have the mesh finish, or just place them in a food processor.
2. This will give you a nice meaty texture.
3. Add the rest of the ingredients, mixing them in very well.
4. Place on a Texflex sheet and throw in the dehydrator overnight.
5. The next day, add the nutmeat to your taco shells and toppings.
6. Buen Apetito!