Author Archives: MaryAnn Reynolds

About MaryAnn Reynolds

I practice advanced bodywork in Austin, TX, specializing in Craniosacral Biodynamics and TMJ Relief.

Ruth Reichl’s delicious deviled eggs recipe

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My favorite food writer is Ruth Reichl, former food critic of the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, editor of Gourmet magazine, book author (Tender at the Bone, Comfort Me with Apples, Garlic and Sapphires, Not Becoming My Mother, and more) and a wonderful tweeter to follow on Twitter.

Her tweets are poetry, jewels of sensual delight. Here’s a recent one:

Late spring. Damp green grass beneath my feet. A flock of tiny yellow birds. Local strawberries, so sweet, drenched in thick Jersey cream.

Doesn’t that make you want to hang out with Ruth, wherever she is? She’s so present, so alive, so appreciative.

She wrote about how to make deviled eggs, and I learned several things:

  • Fresh eggs do not peel well. Get farm or backyard organic eggs from free-range chickens and let them sit in the fridge for a week before hard-boiling.
  • The term “deviled” was used starting in the 18th century to refer to spicy foods, such as deviled eggs and deviled ham. They are also called “stuffed eggs” and “mimosa eggs”.
  • If you want perfectly centered egg yolks, store the eggs on their sides.
  • Bring cold water with eggs in it to a boil, then cover and turn off the heat for exactly 12 minutes.
  • After cooking, immediately chill the eggs in a bowl of ice water to prevent the greenish tinge on the outside of the cooked yolk.

I made deviled eggs yesterday, before I read this article. They are so easy and yummy in summer! I use store-bought mayo (made with olive oil—Ruth provides the recipe for homemade—click the link above) and topped each filled egg with paprika and exactly three capers.

Below, two eggs are store-bought organic, and two are from Hal’s backyard chickens. Guess which is which? Also notice the greenish tinge on one of the yolks. That egg must not have cooled quickly enough!

My granddaughter, who turns 12 today, has a shortcut to get deviled egg flavor without the work: She peels a hard-boiled egg, cuts it in half, and smears a little yellow prepared mustard on it. Pop it in your mouth, and voila! Quick and easy!

Practicing wellness of body, mind, heart, and spirit: James Altucher’s Daily Practice

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One of my favorite discoveries in the blogging world is James Altucher. He’s a good prolific writer, inventive, irreverent, smart, down-to-earth, no-nonsense, and he comes across as a regular person who has learned from his mistakes.

I get the impression that he’s done really, really well in business, lost it all, started over, more than once. HBO, hedge funds, start-ups, investments, Wall Street, whatever. I don’t really know that world, but I imagine his blog reaches a lot of people in the financial world.

He’s also experienced some relationship ups and downs and a marriage that didn’t work out, and now he is married to Claudia Altucher, a yoga teacher. He practices yoga.

What impresses me most in his writing is that he combines his financial background with amazingly sensible wisdom about how to live life well. I follow him on Twitter and Facebook and look forward to reading his blog posts.

You can check out his blog here: The Altucher Confidential: Ideas for a World Out of Balance.

The reason I’m writing about him here on my blog is because he advocates doing something he calls The Daily Practice, which he calls

a simple tool to improve, inspire, and unlock greatness.

It’s pure genius and truly simple. He has three big goals in life:

  • He wants to be happy.
  • He wants to eradicate unhappiness in his life.
  • He wants every day to be as smooth as possible. No hassles.

If you’d like to achieve those goals in your life, read on.

James discovered that every time he hit a low point in life, after a major failure, feeling unhappy and hassled, he did something every day for himself in four areas that helped move him closer to the three big goals. You can do this too:

  1. Do something physical for yourself to get and keep yourself in good shape. He mentions doing yoga every day and exercising vigorously enough to break a sweat for 10 minutes. Being healthy is a prerequisite for being happy, and exercise also helps calm your mind. You get to choose how you want to do this.
  2. Do something emotionally good for yourself. He mentions that if someone is a drag on you, cut them out or minimize your time with them, and if they lift you up, spend more time with them. He mentions being honest without being hurtful and never doing anything you don’t want to do—he doesn’t go to weddings.
  3. Do something to stimulate yourself mentally. He suggests thinking of 10 businesses you can start from home or listing every productive thing you did yesterday. You could learn a foreign language in daily sessions, memorize a song, or do a crossword puzzle, whatever works for you. Altucher carries around waiter pads to write down his ideas.
  4. Practice something spiritual, which can include praying, meditating, being grateful, forgiving, or studying a spiritually uplifting text. I like this suggestion: You can also meditate for 15 seconds by really visualizing what it would be like meditate for 60 minutes. 

Altucher says every time he has hit a low point and then started doing things in these four areas every day, his life would improve. He’d begin to feel lucky. Ideas would flow, he’d start executing them, and people would help him. People would smile at him.

He calls this improving the internal fire. I think that concept is from yoga, but you get the picture. Living fully, in joy, lit from within.

I get that this is a great practice! And I want to think that I already do this, but you know what? I don’t keep track of what I do every day, and I haven’t tied my behavioral choices to three big goals. I have not made a commitment to work on myself daily in specific ways in these four areas.

Well, James has thought of that, and he has set up a website called The Daily Practice where you can set up your own activities in the four categories (plus a new fifth one, Fun) as well as how often you want to do them, and track your actual behavior.

It’s in beta right now, but I’m trying it out, and so far everything seems to work.

Also, your big three goals might be a little different. Who doesn’t want happiness? But I actually don’t mind a few occasional not-too-major hassles because they challenge me to grow, and that gives me something to write about. So my third goal is to spread the wellness and joy to others.

If you’d like to set up physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and fun challenges for yourself and track your activity using The Daily Practice, go to tdp.me and set yourself up! It’s also a Facebook app, but you don’t have to share your postings. In fact, if you’re my friend, please don’t. TMI. Tell me your results, instead.

Today I have done a tarot reading and watched a fun movie (fun), meditated for 15 minutes and forgave someone I had problems with (spiritual), connected with two people who lift me up (emotional), read something stimulating (mental), and did sun salutations and slept well (physical).

Thanks, James!

Repost: Tracking the Hadzabe: One of Africa’s Last Nomadic Bush Tribes

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Tracking the Hadzabe: One of Africa’s Last Nomadic Bush Tribes.

My friend and fellow writer Shelley Seale went to Africa and had one of the most interesting days I can imagine, spending time with the Hadzabe, a small, remote bush tribe who still live by hunting and gathering, speak using clicks, and are uninterested in seeing photographs. Fascinating!

She also camped in the Serengeti and awoke to giraffes grazing right outside her tent!

Lucky gal!

The questions of the heart; seeking the sound of a normal heartbeat

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I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language.

Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now.

Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

I have a friend who just had a second surgery on his heart in two weeks. His heartbeat has not had a regular rhythm for some time now.

I’m searching the internet for a sound file or an iPhone application that is just simply the sound of a normal heartbeat. The longer the better, and if he can loop it to listen to all night with headphones as he sleeps, fantastic.

At a minimum, it will be soothing, because if you can imagine, heart surgery is a pretty nerve-wracking big deal, especially when the problems aren’t fixed the first time.

At best, listening to the sounds could entrain his heart into a normal rhythm, which he did experience briefly after the first surgery.

If you know of anything, please comment or email me. Thank you.

Meanwhile, remember that besides the brain in your head (headquarters for the nervous system that runs throughout your entire body), you also have two other centers of intelligence: your heart and your gut.

I believe Rilke is onto something about the intelligence of the heart.

I have learned to sit with the questions in my heart and let them transform me, and I am a much better, broader, deeper person for it. I get perspective on my own fear-driven behaviors. I get insight into the behaviors and possible motivations of others.

I don’t know that I have answers. Perhaps the only answer is to be willing to sit with the feelings that are unresolved and allow them to change, not forcing or judging, just allowing and noticing.

It does seem to me that gradually healing occurs. Gradually forgiveness comes. Gradually lightness replaces heaviness. Gradually clarity replaces confusion. Gradually …

This is another rhythm of the heart.

Please say prayers for Marco. Thanks.

Buddha’s Brain supplements: an update

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My October 2010 post about the supplements recommended in the book Buddha’s Brain now has links so you can order these supplements online from Amazon.com (which offers discounts for subscription shipping) if you wish.

Some of these supplements are difficult to find in stores, meaning Whole Foods doesn’t carry them.

Here’s the original post with the new links. None of the data has changed except an error about the recommended dosage of huperzine A. I changed mg to mcg after further research.

Sprouted green lentils in Greek salad

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Every once in a while I crave salad for breakfast, especially in summer, and that is what I had today.

Reminds me of following the candida diet about six years ago: no dairy, grains, fruit, sugar, or lots of other forbidden things. It was very, very strict, and I followed it perfectly for nearly three months—if you mess up, you could feed the candida yeast and have to start over. Man, I had never been on a diet before—this was Marine Corps boot camp!

Nothing I had ever eaten for breakfast was on that diet except eggs! I tell you, eggs over easy without toast to mop up the runny yolks just wasn’t the same! I often ate salads for breakfast then. (I did clear the excess candida, by the way.)

Today I made a Greek-style salad using baby spinach and adding chopped red onion, black kalamata olives, cucumber slices, half an avocado, local Pure Luck goat feta, and sprouted green lentils.

greek salad with sprouted green lentils

After taking the photo, I added Sass Green Gaia Undressing, also a local product that may be distributed widely (if it’s available in your area, you’ll find it in the refrigerated salad dressing case). No oil, no dairy, all plant.

The healthy fat in the avocado staves off hunger pangs until mid-day, when I’ll have a smoothie. The lentils and feta add protein.

Health is grand.

Getting healthy: adaptogens, chocolate berry and green smoothies, and sprouted lentil salad

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My acupuncturist, who is consistently the healthiest, most vibrant person I know, told me at my last visit that I have a bit of adrenal depletion from the stresses of my 10-week contract editing job in a big technology company, now over. It was a long commute until everything was finally aligned for me to work from home the last two weeks.

When my contract ended, I had plans to swim, hike, and get outdoors, but my energy was low. All I wanted to do was veg out at home.

She told me to take over-the-counter rhodiola (for the endocrine system) and eleuthero (also known as Siberian ginseng). Both are adaptogens, meaning they are metabolic regulators that increase the ability to adapt to environmental factors both physiological and psychological, and avoid damage from such.

That means they help you recover from stress and alleviate its adverse effects.

After a week, I feel better. Yesterday I had a big surge of energy and walked 3.5 miles and kayaked for an hour. Today is a slow day. Tomorrow, I want to do some hiking and swimming. I want my full energy and vibrancy back!

She shared her diet with me:

  • For breakfast, a chocolate berry smoothie made with raw cacao, organic berries, chia and flax seeds soaked in filtered water for a couple of hours, coconut/almond milk, and whatever other kinds of goodies you want to add. I add pomegranate molasses, goji berries, coconut water or fresh grapefruit juice, maca powder, hemp seeds, and peeled ginger. Add other fruit if you like, but berries are awesome for brain health and not that laden with fructose. Filling up my blender yields about 3 servings, and I will sip on one all morning.
  • For lunch, a green smoothie made with something picked fresh from the garden (kale or chard), more soaked chia and flax seeds, and garlic. I add coconut water or grapefruit juice, hemp seeds, maca powder, turmeric, spirulina, ginger. I also added some packaged fresh spinach and lettuce and a leaf of Romaine, plus celery—what I had in the fridge. I will sip on one all afternoon.
  • She eats one regular meal a day, at dinner.
  • She eats some seaweed every day, like a sheet of nori that you’d use for sushi.
  • She sprouts lentils and finds ways to include them in her diet. I’ve been sprouting red lentils, which are so tiny, they soften and sprout quickly. Sprouting amplifies the nutrients in the lentils as it turns a dormant seed into a living plant.  The legumes become much easier to digest, and more minerals and enzymes become available. By eating them raw, you preserve the enzymes.

Here is my recipe for sprouted lentil salad:

  • Soak red lentils overnight in plenty of filtered water since they triple in size. Drain, rinse, and cover jar with a cloth. Rinse and drain every eight hours. You can use them as soon as they soften—they start releasing their goodness from soaking even before they sprout, or you can wait until they develop little sprouts in a day or two.
  • Give them a final rinse and put in a bowl. Refrigerate what you don’t use—they’ll last up to two weeks.
  • Add some chopped cucumber.
  • Add some chopped red onion.
  • Add 1 tsp of olive oil and 2-3 tsp. of apple cider vinegar or lemon juice, to taste.
  • Add a light sprinkling of good salt to taste and mix well.

sprouted lentil saladYou can tell I’m making this up as I go along, can’t you? : )

Try adding avocado, celery, tomato, green pepper, herbs, green onion, cabbage, beet, greens, carrot, apple, green (brown) lentils—your only limit is your sense of adventure!

The fear of emotional overwhelm

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Ann, a new reader of this blog, recently sent me a message on my MaryAnn’s Bodywork and Changework Shop Facebook page that she is doing the trauma releasing exercises, and I thought I would move the discussion here so more people can participate:

hi maryann!

i have just discovered your blog online. thank you for sharing your story and advice to the world. i feel a kinship to you, as i am in the third month of my trauma releasing process.
i practice spring forest qigong (5 yrs)

i have done tre exercises 3 or 4 times a couple of months ago and now i can do them at will.

as fear and anxiety are aspects of myself that i am reclaiming/ integrating… i tend to stop the tremors that seem to want to happen a lot now because my mind wants to understand what is actually happening and will this clear the messages from the subconscious. i have apprehension that the amount i release will then need to be felt consciously afterwards and maybe i shouldn’t do them a lot so i can maintain a balance/ keep up with the processing of the emotions…. or do they just go away?…i saw that you posted to do them as much as they want to come out at first. any thoughts?

i have read that the symptoms come back if you stop…so how do they clear?

maybe they get pushed out in a continual cycle that allows you to consciously release what you can… the release just keeps them suspended for a time?

well, that’s enough thinking… any thoughts?

you are lovely.

heartfelt gratitude.

ann 

p.s. the other day i tremored, kicked, wailed, spoke in about 6 different languages… very grateful i have read waking the tiger as i guess you do need to release the things you would have done when you froze. in the english parts i said “no, i said no!” and i didn’t just “say” it. and at the end of it i went back into english and i said “NO. YOU GET OUT OF ME!” it felt awesome.

A little later, Ann sent the following message:

in re-reading this i could sum it up as : fear of emotional overwhelm 

Well put, Ann. To Ann and everyone else who has ever feared being overwhelmed emotionally, whether by grief, anger, or some other emotion (even bliss), I just want to say that this is very, very common.

We all have emotions. Infants and toddlers seem to have a very full range of them and express them freely and with their whole selves.

And at some young age, we begin to receive messages about emotions: which ones are good, which are bad (or positive and negative, if you prefer), which ones are not okay to express in public, maybe which are not okay to even have, which ones are harmful to repress or bottle up.

Maybe we’ve been on the receiving end of someone’s rage, bad boundaries, or lack of feeling, or have felt/not-felt those ourselves. Maybe we’ve felt emotional pain so strongly we’d do anything to avoid feeling it again, including numbing out for years.

No wonder we get messed up emotionally.

It can feel unsafe to let go emotionally, as if we could die or crumble or never come out on the other side. We fear our own emotions, especially the strong ones, because part of us wants to be in control, and emotions can be very intense.

Ann, it seems to me that needing to experience a balance between release and conscious processing is a belief you have acquired. Try on this belief and see if you like it: allowing the emotion/trembling/etc. to flow through you IS clearing the subconscious. You don’t have to understand it for it to work!

And if understanding does come, it will come AFTER you clear the channels and return to a calm state in which other parts of your brain can come online to create whole-brain insight.

I also imagine you experimenting with releasing as much emotionally/physiologically as you feel comfortable with for a few days, letting your conscious mind work at its own pace, and seeing for yourself what happens. That cannot mess you up—it’s just you discovering what mix of emotion and thought, conscious and unconscious works best for you.

I remember feeling rage about 10 years ago for the first time since I was about two, because it wasn’t acceptable in my family or in much of society. I was alone, remembering something I hadn’t thought about in years, when suddenly I had a different understanding of it that brought up hot, intense anger.

I didn’t know what was happening at first, so I kept allowing it to happen because I was curious—and alone. I am sure I got red in the face. There was definitely an upward surge of hot energy toward my head and a stiffening of my posture. I stopped in mid-stride.

Right after I was feeling the most intense anger, my inner witness was marveling, “So this is what rage feels like! I get it how steam comes out of Elmer Fudd’s ears and the grimace and posture he makes!”

It actually had a very, very cleansing effect. It renewed my self-esteem and motivated me to protect my interests. Afterwards, I felt like I had on a cloak of protection. It was actually near the beginning of my trauma recovery process, but I didn’t know that then.

Interestingly enough, fully allowing that rage to flow through me and feeling it completely took maybe 30 seconds. A very slow 30 seconds, to be sure.

Imagine: I had spent years denying/repressing my anger, and when I let it ripple through me, it only took half a minute of intensity, and the benefits were enormous and lasting.

Lesson 1: Emotions have two components. You experience them in your body, and they change you (you resolve an inner conflict, and then you take action: set a boundary, express a concern, reframe your identity, make a decision, right a wrong, and so on).

Lesson 2: You can allow yourself the experience of feeling the emotion fully without having to take action right away. That can come later. Unless the situation is life or death, you can let it settle before doing anything. That provides time for other less emotional parts of your brain to add their gifts on the wisest course of action for you to take. Meanwhile, you’re not bottling up something toxic.

Lesson 3: This is easier said than done. We’re all here in the School of Life. We mess up, we learn, we forgive, we grow.

So this is the thing. I can’t really tell you what’s right for you, but maybe these lessons can help you get through the labyrinth.

I found this quote on Tricycle Daily Dharma, and it’s perfect for this post:

The ebb and flow of life is not unlike the sea. Sure, sometimes it’s calm and serene, but at other times the waves can be so big that they threaten to overwhelm us. These fluctuations are an inevitable part of life. But when you forget this simple fact, it’s easy to get swept away by strong waves of difficult emotions.— Andy Puddicombe, “10 Tips for Living More Mindfully”

I would be remiss if I did not mention one of the best books I’ve read about emotions and their messages, The Emotional Hostage: Rescuing Your Emotional Life by Leslie Cameron-Bandler. It’s an oldie but goodie that helps you decode the purpose of each emotion and use your emotions to live more authentically.

Photos from Tom Best memorial

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Scroll all the way down to the bottom of the right column and click the More Photos link (or just click this link) to view the photos I posted from Tom’s memorial service yesterday.

If you didn’t know him, maybe you can tell from the pictures how special he was.

I am happy I got to have him for a teacher and a model.

Many, many people helped make this happen, especially Katie Raver and Linaka Hana. Kudos, you two!

 

One happy introvert

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I just spent three days—from Friday afternoon until Monday afternoon—with other people, on retreat, then preparing for and holding a celebration of the life of my dear teacher, Tom Best, who died about a month ago, and cleaning up afterwards.

I was with some of the dearest people I know. Smart, good, resourceful people. Beautiful, fun, funny, loving, adorable, competent, capable people. I met new people I’d love to know better. People came in from Serbia, Germany, Arizona, New York, Florida, and elsewhere.

Since nearly everyone there had at least taken NLP practitioner training (Tom taught NLP, but he really taught love), and some much more advanced training, the quantity and quality of resourcefulness present in the circle honoring him was probably more than I’ve ever experienced. Maybe more than I’m likely to experience again. Of course, I leave room for unlikely possibilities. I don’t know the future. But that was one illustrious company to be part of.

And finally, I am home, by myself, and it feels so expansive and relaxing to have this solitude.

I cherish this time to sort through my impressions, understand people more deeply, absorb and integrate the experience at my own pace.