A poem for Beltane

Breathing you in

Close to you
I never feel eclipsed
by your warmth

it feeds me
green man, green woman
I send my roots

into the earth
and they rise wherever
you are, connecting us

Beltane is our time
breathing you in
through my skin

you exhale only love
green woman, green man
I choose you

we wear garlands
tied in knots
around our hearts.

Wheat free is wonderful (but it’s fun to cheat!)

A couple months ago it appeared that my diet was standing still so I decided to get more serious about it and read  “Wheat Belly” byWilliam Davis, MD to help guide me. Intuitively, I knew that I felt better without wheat but I adore bread, pasta, crackers and all things carby so it has always been a struggle.
 

The “Wheat Belly Cookbook” was perfect for my replacement recipes and soon my best friend was a bag of ground flax. I made breads, tortilla, crackers and eliminated flour, potatoes along with other starches (except small amounts of quinoa, millet and wild rice). I grated courgettes into tender pasta shapes with a buttery, spicy cashew nut sauce. My weight fell off rather quickly and my energy zoomed. I am sleeping better and have more clarity.
 

But it’s not for everyone. I was talking to a woman I know named Marta today about her experience going wheat free and she felt, even after a year, that there was no difference for her. Significantly, she has other issues and this decision was not taken lightly. Marta is from Italy and I just had to ask her how she was going to manage while she was visiting later this month.
 

She confessed that she’ll be cheating.  I had to smile…the lure of freshly made pasta was on my mind today as we’re dining out at a local Italian restaurant for our anniversary.  I initially didn’t want to go, but this is one of my husband’s favorite bistros and the photo of Spaghetti alla Carbonara with a fresh egg yolk on top weakened my knees.
 

I may hate myself tomorrow morning but La Traviata's house made pasta will be relished strand by lovely strand. 

New tattoo for an old scar

Living in Austin at this time of year is always so much fun. During SXSW, you think nothing of finding a mobile tattoo parlour in your neighborhood!

Free tattoos in exchange for a video? Sign me up!

It wasn't really that impulsive. I got this tattoo of an olive branch on my foot after many years of consideration. The scar I wanted transformed is about three inches long, pink, puffy and tender to the touch.

Everyone warned me it would be too painful. Yes, it was painful to cover it completely, I twinged a lot, but the result is really quite life-like, beautiful and really worth it.

Thanks to the artist Jason Angst! Thanks to Reebok for funding the project. Thanks to my husband for encouraging me to do it. This tattoo experience reminds me of the ho'oponopono mantra:

I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you.

Take time to heed your intuition super-powers!

Workaholics aren’t heroes. They don’t save the day, they just use it up. The real hero is already home because she figured out a faster way to get things done. – Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson, Rework

When I worked for a not-for-profit school as Office Manager, I was on-call 24/7 and worked many more hours than I really was able to. Putting in all those hours, multi-tasking at every moment, I felt like a hero until the wind ruffling my cape slowly died, and I crashed in slo-mo, grasping at my remaining powers to help raise me.

It didn't help at the time that my father passed and our animal companion of 11 years had to be put down. Our house was on the market and not selling. I was feeling soulless and started to seek out ways of regaining my balance. The one constant in my life that gave me a glimpse into something bigger, my intuition, needed stoking. I decided to move on and focus on cultivating that essential part of me. 

Intuition has helped me in so many ways and I feed it by listening to and acting on my messages. One message I heed more than ever is to slow down and focus on one thing. Simple, but not compatible with the modern work world. Get that one thing done well and move on. I think that is truly the fastest way to work as fewer mistakes are made and I feel more complete. 

I also strive less at saving the day in order to save my sanity. For instance, last night I was scheduled to volunteer at an event from 5 pm to 10 pm. I was the first to arrive and worked busily until I felt my cape falter around 9. Although I had only an hour to go, I had to head on home and I didn't feel the least bit like a slacker by asking to check out early.  My intuition was spot on...a few minutes after getting home I was hit with nausea and crawled into bed, glad to not be braving an active break-down at the end of the evening.

In these little ways, I feel more like a super hero for saving myself. 

Grateful for an easy smile

I'm grateful for being able to smile easily,

Not that I'm claiming I have "an awakened mind" but being able to settle into a moment and smile because I feel calm, or am at peace with what I'm doing, is key to keeping myself patient. As someone who usually abhors ploddingness, I've always struggled with being patient with stagnant energy, or time-wasting, or just slow moving people.

My goal today is to smile more. Over the past month I've been sick with a virus that really knocked me for a loop. I hadn't been sick in almost two years. My ribs hurt at the end of the day from coughing. It's only been over the past few days that I've felt better and my stagnant sick energy is being replaced with my usual energetic joie de vivre.

And that makes me smile.

Doctored - Please see it if you can!

I attended a private screening of "Doctored" last Saturday in Austin. This new documentary is an eye-opener for those who are unfamiliar with the hardships chiropractors have had to face in order to practice their non-invasive, drug-free trade. It is about the hardships the average American faces in getting care outside mainstream, modern medicine. It is about trusting your care to alternative doctors and the fight that many patients have to struggle through in order to get well.

I consider my chiropractor my primary care doctor. She practices a specialty of chiropractic called NUCCA and she only adjusts the atlas (very gently, too, mind you!). I've been dealing with what I thought were allergies last week but eventually the coughing (along with other symptoms like a skin rash and fatigue) made me suspect I had walking pneumonia or bronchitis.

What can a chiropractor do for that? He or she can manipulate your spine in order for the messages that come from the brain to travel without interference throughout your body. Your body can better fight off infections.

After not being checked for a while, I started coughing and was adjusted on Friday.  The coughing went away for six hours, until I lost my adjustment. Feeling like I may really need antibiotics to kick this gunk's butt, I saw my MD today. She ordered a flu swab, a chest x-ray, and prescribed an inhaler and cough syrup.

While I was back at my chiropractor's office this afternoon, my MD's assistant called to say it wasn't the flu and my chest looked clear. But they would prescribe antibiotics "just in case."

Dr. Gregg adjusted my atlas and I stopped coughing. She did muscle testing and agreed that the antibiotics would help me...so, although I'd prefer not to, my original hunch to take drugs was accurate. While I'm glad I don't have the flu or pneumonia, I'm also grateful that keeping my adjustment has kept me from making urgent care appointments with my MD for over a year. Prior to getting my atlas adjusted, I went 2-3 times a year for various ailments.

Being "Doctored" was clearly on my mind today. I found help in both traditional and alternative modalities (oh, not to forget, a Qigong energy healer also worked on clearing my lungs whilst at the chiropractor's) and I'm so very grateful that I have the intuition, knowledge, insurance and time to get good care.

Book Review: The Body Ecology Guide to Growing Younger: Anti-Aging Wisdom for Every Generation

My interest in healthy aging started early with tales from my paternal grandmother of her grandfather who died at the age of 95…in a mining accident whilst he was at work! This story amazed me as a child. Sometimes I thought Grammy was exaggerating, but longevity was certainly common on the Polish side of the family. Although Grammy lived to 85, her sister, my great-aunt Pauline, lived to 100.

On my mother’s side, her sister Mary (who had the healthiest lifestyle of her six other siblings), lived into her 90s. My mother will be 84 this year. She is in a wheelchair, but it was only a couple years ago that she was living on her own before needing surgery to remove a cancerous kidney.

As it’s likely that I’m going to chug along another 30 to 50 years, I definitely want those decades to be as vibrant and enjoyable as possible. Reading books like The Body Ecology Guide has become a favorite past time, and I feel I've learned a lot about staying young. I’m eating more organically grown whole foods and fewer processed foods. I walk or ride my bike daily. I don’t smoke or drink heavily. I meditate, sleep well, keep in touch with friends and volunteer outside of work.

What I love about this book is that as a self-proclaimed “bible” it is enjoyable to read while providing essential information. However, the author Donna Gates touts her own product line so often it tends to feel like an extended infomercial script. It’s a small criticism, as she also gives many other resources that I’ve found extremely useful. I especially enjoyed learning about the Five Tibetan Rites as a way to keep one’s chakras stimulated.

One area I think Ms. Gates should have explored is natural healthcare through upper cervical chiropractic adjustments. Since I've been keeping my atlas adjusted, I've never felt healthier. Due to the lack of nerve interference, my immunity seems to be working in top form but sadly this gentle specialty of chiropractic isn't well advertised.

Because of The Body Ecology Guide’s heavy focus on diet, I've started sipping water with fermented apple cider vinegar between meals and have found it really does suppress my appetite (I now have 8 lbs of holiday flab to lose). I’m adding more intensity to my walks/rides and strive to add more fermented food to my diet in general. I have not yet explored the author’s business website (young coconut kefir seems to be a hot product) but I’m very happy with the direction my life is going and highly recommend The Body Ecology Guide as a vital resource. 

FTC Disclosure: I received this book for free from Hay House Publishing for this review. The opinion in this review is unbiased and reflects my honest judgment of the product.