Following Rosicrucian instruction, Neville put himself through a seven-year regime of strict vegetarianism, teetotalism, and celibacy, a period that overlapped his years working as a professional dancer. In restaurants he would ask waiters whether the soup had beef stock and refuse it if so, denying himself fish, fowl, meat, and even eggs throughout; looking back, he judged the whole discipline a well-meaning but misguided 'blind alley,' undertaken in ignorance of nutrition and at real cost to his body.