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Kushi Institute Founders
Michio and Aveline Kushi
For more than 60 years, Michio Kushi has helped guide humanity toward a healthier, more peaceful world.
After coming to America from his native Japan in 1949, he and his wife Aveline pioneered in the development of macrobiotic education and the introduction of natural foods and holistic healing.
Since the mid-1960s when the Kushis started Erewhon Trading Company - the groundbreaking natural foods store in Boston, which later became a national chain and distribution center - the organic, natural foods revolution has spread around the world.
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Michio Kushi lecturing to students
in Boston in the early 1970s
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In the 1970s and 1980s, pioneer medical tests on macrobiotic subjects at Harvard Medical School, the Framingham Heart Study, and other institutions, showed remarkable health in the test subjects.
Published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association, and other leading scientific journals, these studies on macrobiotics were the first to show that high cholesterol and high blood pressure were major risk factors for cardiovascular disease and that a balanced, largely plant-based diet could help prevent and, in some cases, relieve cancer.
Due to these studies the medical profession began to recognize and integrate macrobiotics and other natural alternative and complementary approaches to health improvement.
In 1978, Michio and Aveline Kushi founded Kushi Institute in Brookline, Massachusetts, in order to teach a new generation of students how macrobiotics could help meet the challenges facing modern society.
In 1985, the Kushis opened a new Kushi Institute campus on a 600-acre estate in the rural town of Becket, located in the Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts. In 1990 all Kushi Institute educational activities were consolidated at the Becket campus.
Thousands of people have attended programs at Kushi Institute over the years, many of whom have gone on to become macrobiotic teachers, chefs and counselors.
In addition, holistic practices that Michio and Aveline Kushi helped introduce, including shiatsu massage, acupuncture, palm healing, meditation, and visualization, are now widely offered at medical centers, hospitals, nursing homes, prisons, and other institutions.
Other macrobiotic organizations founded by Michio and Aveline Kushi include: East West Foundation, East West Journal, Kushi Foundation and One Peaceful World Society.
In the late 1980s, Mr. Kushi gave a pioneer seminar on a dietary approach to AIDS to hundreds of doctors in Gabon, West Africa, at a conference sponsored by he World Health Organization.
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Michio and Aveline Kushi at Kushi Institute in Becket, MA
in the 1990s
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Michio Kushi has written over eighty books, including The Macrobiotic Path to Total Health, The Book of Macrobiotics, The Cancer Prevention Diet, Diet for a Strong Heart, One Peaceful World, The Book of Do-In, and Holistic Health Through Macrobiotics.
In 1995, Mr. Kushi received the Award for Excellence from the United Nations Society of Writers.
Aveline Kushi's books include: Aveline Kushi's Complete Guide to Macrobiotic Cooking along with other macrobiotic cookbooks as well as books on the macrobiotic approach to using healthful foods to support specific health concerns.
In 1999, the U.S. government officially recognized the contribution of Michio and Aveline Kushi to modern society by creating a permanent macrobiotic collection at the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. At a gala reception in honor of the Kushis, the director stated:
The National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian Institution is honored to present the [Special] Collection on Macrobiotics and Alternative Health Care. This collection of health, nutrition, and personal family materials and artifacts documents important and little studied aspects of American life and culture. . . . The significance of macrobiotics in American life is little understood although it relates to such broad historical issues as the postwar move toward a more healthy diet, our increasingly global culture, alternative healing, peace studies, and traditions of grassroots activism.
For the past half century, Mr. Kushi has been vigorously engaged in macrobiotic education throughout the U.S., Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. He has guided thousands of individuals and families to greater health and happiness in personal consultations and classes, lectured to physicians and scientists, advised governments, inspired medical research, and served as a consultant to natural foods businesses and industries. He was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize with recommendation from volunteers from the American Bar Association. In Washington, D.C., he made a presentation on macrobiotics to the White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine, and the U.S. House of Representatives unanimously passed a citation in his honor. He is president of the Green Cross Group of Japan.
Aveline Kushi passed away in 2001 at the age of 78. Michio Kushi lives in the Boston area with his wife Midori Hiyashi Kushi.
Michio Kushi's Background
Born in 1926 in Wakayama prefecture, Japan, Mr. Kushi graduated from Tokyo University. His studies centered on political science and international relations, especially past and contemporary efforts to create a federation of governments to establish world peace. He came to the United States in 1949, settled in New York, furthered his studies at Columbia University, and met Albert Einstein, Thomas Mann, Upton Sinclair, Pitirim Sorokin, and other prominent scientists, authors, and statesmen. To expand his understanding of human behavior across time and history, Mr. Kushi also studied, and was deeply influenced by, Western civilization, Middle Eastern culture, and Indian philosophy and medicine. His father was a professor of Renaissance history in Japan, his mother taught at Christian schools, and young Michio had been brought up in a unique East West social and cultural environment. Before coming to America, Mr. Kushi met George Ohsawa (Yukikazu Sakurazawa), a prolific Japanese author, health educator, and world traveler. Kushi's interests and Ohsawa's teachings complemented each other so well that their newly formed friendship and collaboration would last until Mr. Ohsawa's death in 1966. In the late 1950s, they started to apply the term macrobiotics, a traditional term for the way of health and longevity to their teachings. The word goes back 2500 years to ancient Greece and the teachings of Hippocrates, the father of medicine, whose motto was "Let food be thy medicine, and thy medicine food." Together Mr. and Mrs. Kushi built on and expanded the teachings of Mr. Ohsawa and the long lineage of dietary philosophers and health reformers around the world. The influence of macrobiotics on U.S.
dietary patterns:
Macrobiotics has introduced and/or popularized healthful organically grown foods including: various whole grains, beans, traditionally processed fermented products, sea vegetables, natural seasonings and sweeteners, and other healthful foods and beverages. Macrobiotics influenced the U.S. government's landmark report Dietary Goals for the United States (1977), calling for sweeping changes in the modern diet, and contributed to the development of the Food Guide Pyramid in the early 1980s. Since then, national dietary guidelines have continued to strengthen. The grain, cereal, pasta, and bread group, which constitutes the foundation of the Food Guide Pyramid, now includes whole grains such as brown rice, millet, and barley as its major portion. |
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Kushi Institute offers programs that can change your life!
Click here to see all programs.
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Kushi Institute
198 Leland Road
Becket, MA 01223
1-800-975-8744
413-623-5741 x 0
programs@kushiinstitute.org
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Kushi Institute is a federally approved 501-C-3 non-profit educational organization. Discrimination based on race, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, age, national or ethnic origin, political beliefs, veteran status, or disability unrelated to course requirements is contrary to the principles and policies of Kushi Institute.
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