Category Archives: heart

I’m going to massage school at Lauterstein-Conway!

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I was taken with this quote in a book I’m reading.

The leading contemporary philosopher of the body, Don Hanlon Johnson, also underscores how the invention of different body therapies arises from the originator’s own spontaneous movements, which too easily become rigidified when they become formalized and taught to others in an authoritative manner. The most promising future for body therapy will be in the direction of returning us to an experience of basic, natural movements that take place effortlessly and spontaneously.

This quote is taken from the book Shaking Medicine: The Healing Power of Ecstatic Movement, by Bradford Keeney. I’m nearing the end of reading it. (Okay, I’m slow sometimes and usually have four or five books going at once.)

Keeney reports on his first-hand experience with Kalahari Bushman ecstatic shaking practices, shaking medicine on the Caribbean island of St. Vincent, the ecstatic “holy rolling” of the African-American church, the Japanese shaking medicine called seiki (not to be confused with reiki), kundalini, and his own Life Force Theater.

More to come on that…

The quote above fits with the practices of some of the bodyworkers I’m working with, who, although they trained in a rigidified method, have evolved their work in the direction of moving and healing naturally, using their intuition, familiarity with the body, and healing skill to facilitate rapid change and healing.

I’m feeling more solid, aligned, and at ease than ever — and that’s something for someone who’s had nerve damage, PTSD, scoliosis, and serious injuries. (Some of this great feeling of health and wellness may be due to the brainwave optimization process I undertook last week as well. There’s no separation between mind and body.)

Bodywork is a very inspiring area of learning and practice that I want to pursue. I’ll be starting my training later this month in The Lauterstein-Conway School of Massage in Austin, Texas.

There are three more spots to be filled in this class — click the link to learn more.

My experience with brainwave optimization

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Last week I did brainwave optimization, aka brain training, at NeuroBeginnings.  I did the baseline assessment in May and wrote about it here. It’s an astounding new technology with huge potential to alleviate suffering and help people’s brains function optimally without spending a minor (or major) fortune on health care.

Gigi Turner, owner of NeuroBeginnings, likes to schedule the training to start within two weeks of the initial assessment, but we had to work around finishing my 3M contract, which was hard to pin down. You need a full week as free of demands as possible so you can integrate the brain training. It’s a wonderful activity for a vacation (or stay-cation if you live in Austin). 

By the way, Gigi is hard-working, personable, and adorable. She’s easy to relate to, and you know she’s working for your best interests. She’s a woman after my own heart, fascinated with the brain and its workings, making the world a better place one brain at a time.

I did two sessions per day, Monday through Friday, one at 9 am and another at 12:30 pm, each lasting about an hour and forty-five minutes.

Between the morning and afternoon sessions, I hung out at the Zilker Botanical Gardens or walked along Barton Creek. It felt great to move after being still, and being outdoors in scenic nature was refreshing. I’d get lunch at the Daily Juice or Whole Foods, something light and very healthy.

During each session, I sat in a special recliner and either watched a computer monitor or just relaxed doing nothing. Gigi attached electrodes to my head and moved them to various places — frontal, temporal, parietal, and occipital lobes.

There were several exercises I did in every session: sitting and watching a bar move to a lower position,  reclining with the lights off and relaxing deeply, imagining/remembering an activity that uses all the senses, and visualizing a guided meditation.

During all the exercises, I heard musical notes playing. Gigi said you actually want them to stay in the background and not think about it too much. They are random notes, not playing a tune, not rhythmic, not even music — just random notes. There are a variety of musical sounds. You might hear the random notes played on a guitar, xylophone, steel drum, bells, or piano.

I am a thinker. I have a very active mind, and I’m gaining facility in switching from that active, inquiring, analytical state to more relaxed states.

I noticed that I liked it when a lot of notes played fairly densely, and I didn’t like it when one note played over and over, or when there was a long silence. I wanted the “music” to be pleasing to my ears.

A couple of times I would recognize a fragment of a song in a string of 3 or 4 notes and smile to myself. I noticed that if I was getting one note repeatedly, I could move my eyes, and the sound would shift. That’s an NLP trick!

The sounds reflect current brainwave activity, allowing the brain to “see” itself, as Lee Gerdes says in his book, Limitless You. You do occasionally view your brain activity on the monitor, but mostly the brain is hearing itself, and the more in harmony and cohesive the brain gets, the more the sounds reflect that.

You don’t have to do anything. The brain adjusts itself. At least, that’s how I think it works.

Watching the bar was hardest for me. I tried too hard, and it strained my eyes (I wear contacts and need to blink often — did you know your brainwaves change when you close your eyes, even to blink?). I stopped drinking green tea in the morning and brought eyedrops, attempting to make this exercise easier to accomplish.

I finally started getting the hang of it on Friday when I imagined that the sound of the air conditioning was a waterfall that was very nearby. When my attention was split between listening to the “waterfall” and gazing beneath the bar (rather than staring intently at it), I made progress.

I believe that exercise was about my “thinking” mind — aka bringing down my beta waves.

I went into brain training wanting to get rid of any remaining dysfunctional patterns from my childhood trauma and years of PTSD. Most of the changes took place in the frontal and occipital lobes — the center for executive functioning and the visual cortex, respectively. After my last session, Gigi gave me printouts showing how my brainwaves in those lobes had changed over the week of training. She got my left and right hemispheres more in sync in those lobes.

I loved the relaxation exercises. It turns out I’m very good at going into alpha! As I got used to the process, I got pretty good at dropping into theta and good at noticing the difference between alpha and theta. (Theta is where deep healing occurs.) I dropped into delta (sleep) a few times, especially after lunch, at first, but as the week progressed, I was able to stay awake in theta for longer periods.

I really loved the task of imagining I was entering a house, walking upstairs, and entering three rooms. Each day I created different rooms. Here are some juicy ones:

  • A room full of guides — lamas, teachers, angels, masters, buddhas and boddhisattvas, yogis, healers, shamans, seers — who included me and gave me gifts, laying their hands on me.
  • A room of possibilities that I’d like to manifest — travel, prosperity, success, joy, gifts and talents and skills, love, creativity, equanimity, health, goodness.
  • A room containing my fears and obstacles, with wonderful resources to address each one.
  • A room of gratitude for past, present, and future.
  • A room where I gave my gifts and resources to those who needed them.
  • A room of beginner’s mind.
  • A room for my future sage elder self.
  • A room of intuition.

Also, the Jean Houston guided meditation of cleansing the senses works well here. Having NLP training was useful!

During the five days of training, I didn’t experience any sudden or drastic changes in brain functioning, but each day I felt a little bit sharper, more present, more centered.

I learned that my brain operations were actually in pretty good shape to start with, and with a few tweaks it will operate even better. The changes will continue to manifest over a period of months after the training.

To get the most from it, the instructions are that for at least the next three weeks, I need to avoid alcohol and recreational drugs, exercise/walk daily, eat a lot of protein, and drink plenty of water.

It would be helpful to practice awareness through progressive relaxation, visualization while listening to a CD Gigi gave me (I liked the sound of a stream during some of the sessions, which has become an anchor), and doing breathwork.

I also need to postpone appointments for other therapeutic modalities until three weeks have passed, so I’ll need to make some phone calls on Monday.

If you’re interested, I recommend calling NeuroBeginnings for a baseline assessment. Her number is 512-699-6593. The baseline assessment currently costs $160. The entire cost, at present, is $1,635, if I remember correctly. Compared to doctor visits and medication, brain training could actually save you time, money, and side effects. 

I’m going to wait at least three months before going back for a tune-up unless something drastic happens, and then I hope to try one of their new gamma wave protocols.

I look forward to noticing improvements in my brain’s functioning and sharing them with you!

Noticing space, chunking up

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This dharma talk by Ajahn Sumedho, published in Tricycle, brings attention to something we often ignore: space. It is one of the first steps in seeing things differently.

The space in a room is peaceful. The objects in the room can excite, repel, or attract, but the space has no such quality. However, even though the space does not attract our attention, we can be fully aware of it, and we become aware of it when we are no longer absorbed by the objects in the room. When we reflect on the space in the room, we feel a sense of calm because all space is the same; the space around you and the space around me is no different. It is not mine. I can’t say “This space belongs to me” or “That space belongs to you.”

Space is always present. It makes it possible for us to be together, contained within a room, in a space that is limited by walls. Space is also outside the room; it contains the whole building, the whole world. So space is not bound by objects in any way; it is not bound by anything. If we wish, we can view space as limited in a room, but really, space is unlimited.

Noticing the space around people and things provides a different way of looking at them, and developing this spacious view is a way of opening oneself. When one has a spacious mind, there is room for everything. When one has a narrow mind, there is room for only a few things. Everything has to be manipulated and controlled; the rest is just to be pushed out.

Noticing space reminds me of a concept in NLP called “chunk size”. Noticing space would be a relatively large chunk size. Just noticing objects and ignoring space would be relatively small.

Many of the characteristics of becoming enlightened, from what I can tell, have to do with viewing the world with a larger chunk size. Big Mind. Big Heart. NLP calls that “chunking up”.

To move in that direction, begin to notice space. Notice that it’s empty. Notice the space between thoughts, between breaths.

Notice that space connects us all.

Bodywork and TRE update

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Yesterday I learned something: there is such a thing as too much bodywork.

I had an early appointment with Chandler Collins, DC, who did applied kinesiology on me. I’d been having some nerve pain down my outer left leg. He made it feel better. That was about 20 minutes.

At 11, I had two hours with Bo Boatwright. We talked and then did some tablework. We did the stretching myofascial release on my hips, and then he spent a good amount of time doing reiki on my left sacroiliac joint. Just quietly holding. I had some shaking in my left arm. Then a lot of neck work.

That is, if I’m remembering right. You’ve heard of “sex haze”? There seems to be such a thing as a bodywork haze, because when I showed up for my appointment with Fran Bell at 1:30, she took a good look at me and could tell I couldn’t integrate much more.

She taught me an exercise using a stability ball, worked on me, woke me up to being more present. We talked, then she got out her pendulum and had me lie on the table. She checked — my chakras were still, not spinning. (Heck, I can’t tell. All I know is how open they are.)

So she did more work with me on the table, and left me there to integrate it. I dipped down into delta waves for I don’t know how long. My chakras were spinning after that, energy reaching at least a couple of feet out.

Advised me to look at tree trunks and go home and take a nap.

It has hardly ever happened that my appointments line up on a single day like that. A few times I’ve seen two healers, but never three.

You really do need time after bodywork to integrate it and get the most out of it. Take a nap or do simple things — gazing at a landscape, walking at a leisurely pace, making a salad, playing with a child, listening to music — not reading, working on a computer, or watching anything intense on TV or movies. 

~~

This morning I did the trauma releasing exercises, which I haven’t done for a few weeks.

Wow. I had an entirely new pattern come up. After shaking of legs, pelvis, arms, shoulders, and neck while lying with knees bent, soles on floor, I straightened my legs. Usually that puts an end to the shaking.

Not today.

My legs wanted to shake while lying straightened on the floor. They even came off the floor for a bit. Then they shook with my heels as pivots. My feet and legs rocked right and left in unison, like windshield wipers. They moved pointing out-in-out-in in unison. They moved forward and back in unison. Sometimes just my knees lifted and lowered repeatedly.

Some of these are Trager-like movements. (I’m barely familiar with Trager but remember that. My astrologer mentioned recently that she was certified in Trager and referred me to someone if I’m ready to experience it.)

When my body stops shaking, I lie still, not knowing if I’m done. Usually, more shaking arises.

I like to give my body the space and invitation to release what needs releasing. When nothing is forthcoming, just being still seems to give the deeper tensions time and permission to release. 

It wasn’t intense shaking when my legs were straight. The most intensity came from my arms and my legs with feet flat on floor. The rest of it was mild to moderate.

~~

I am hoping to start Level I training in TRE later this summer. After completing it, I’ll be able to do sessions with individuals.

Thank you, readers, for over 10,000 views

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I checked my blog stats today, and it looks like sometime on Thursday, I passed 10,000 views of my blog, a milestone for sure in the past year and a half of blogging.

I also had my best two days ever this past week, 108 views on Monday and 116 views on Tuesday.

Thank you. I’m feeling like I have become a bit successful at blogging. I’m not just foolin’ around any more.

I have a few ideas about getting better too (most of which involve learning from someone whose blog I admire to get tips and techniques for better design and graphics).

Some of the most viewed pages, besides the home page (which changes with every new post), over the last 30 days include:

The most used search terms over the last 30 days include variants on “spartan trailer,” “trauma releasing exercises,” “cave of forgotten dreams,” “byron katie website,” “buddha’s brain review,” “maryann reynolds blog,” “effortless wellbeing,” and “fran bell”. 

Some of the more interesting search terms that led readers to my blog were:

  • “why do i feel pain in parts of my body”
  • “the right side of the brain is hit the left side of the body is affected”
  • “don’t meditate”
  • “is tim ferris into yoga?”
  • “jobs that are not corporate not sedentary”
Some of these might make good topics for posts. Tim Ferriss, are you listening?
Anyway, I just want to say thanks again for checking out my blog, reading stuff, leaving comments. I appreciate you stopping by.

Allowing the inner Buddha to walk, working with Fran Bell, emergent knowledge

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I’m sharing a beautiful article from Tricycle magazine, Walk Like a Buddha, written by Buddhist monk, teacher, and activist Thich Nhat Hanh about walking meditation.

For many of us, the idea of practice without effort, of the relaxed pleasure of mindfulness, seems very difficult. That is because we don’t walk with our feet. Of course, physically our feet are doing the walking, but because our minds are elsewhere, we are not walking with our full body and our full consciousness. We see our minds and our bodies as two separate things. While our bodies are walking one way, our consciousness is tugging us in a different direction.

For the Buddha, mind and the body are two aspects of the same thing. Walking is as simple as putting one foot in front of the other. But we often find it difficult or tedious. We drive a few blocks rather than walk in order to “save time.” When we understand the interconnectedness of our bodies and our minds, the simple act of walking like the Buddha can feel supremely easy and pleasurable.

What this brings up for me is noticing where my attention is. When do I pay attention to my body? My answer has been: not often enough. It’s there all the time, so easy to take for granted. The external world seems so much more engaging because it’s constantly changing.

I walked habitually, without paying much attention (or rather with more attention on my destination than the journey), and as a result, I acquired some mindless movement patterns that actually created stress and tension in my body.

Fran Bell is helping me with that. She shows me there’s an alternative, and it feels so relaxed and healthy! I feel totally in my body. I enjoy it.

But I only see her for an hour a week, and although I retain some of what she shows me, I also become mindless again, some of the time.

The real learning is up to me. Influenced also by the book Effortless Wellbeing, I’ve been paying attention to my body when I lie down, when I sit (at my computer and in the car), when I stand, and when I walk.

Where do I feel tightest, most constrained? Can I just let go of that? Well, yeah!

Here are some of my new awarenesses:

  • Walking as a unit rather than as an assemblage of parts.
  • Feeling the left-right symmetry of my moving body.
  • Feeling the rhythm of walking.
  • Balancing my head easily atop my neck with minimal strain.
  • Balancing my rib cage easily above my hips with minimal strain.
  • Ankles, knees, and hips.
  • Feeling the natural springiness in my walk.
  • Feeling the side-to-side sway of my body.
  • Feeling the relationship between my hip and the opposite shoulder.
  • Letting my arms swing from my dropped shoulders.
  • Keeping my sternum in an easy natural place.
  • Keeping my eyes in a soft gaze.
  • Finding the most ease.

Walking meditation is really to enjoy the walking—walking not in order to arrive, just for walking, to be in the present moment, and to enjoy each step. 

I notice that walking with mindfulness adds presence and pleasure to my life.

He goes on to include some instruction about adding breath awareness to walking medication. Here’s an excerpt I liked:

After you have been practicing for a few days, try adding one more step to your exhalation. For example, if your normal breathing is 2-2, without walking any faster, lengthen your exhalation and practice 2-3 for four or five times. Then go back to 2-2. In normal breathing, we never expel all the air from our lungs. There is always some left. By adding another step to your exhalation, you will push out more of this stale air. Don’t overdo it. Four or five times are enough. More can make you tired. After breathing this way four or five times, let your breath return to normal. Then, five or ten minutes later, you can repeat the process. Remember to add a step to the exhalation, not the inhalation.

108 blog views yesterday! Thank you!

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Not long after I started my blog, in February 2010, I had my best day in terms of readers ever — my blog got 89 views.

That day was totally an anomaly. I was averaging 6 views a day those first couple of months, except for that one day. Sometimes WordPress features a blog, and a lot of people look at it. That’s all I can figure.

Yesterday, May 23, 2011, I finally surpassed that record. I had 108 views (auspicious number!). There’s a lot of interest in my posts about the Herzog film The Cave of Forgotten Dreams and in a post on being gluten-free that I also posted a link to on Gluten-Free Girl’s blog.

Several readers read posts about reiki and Fran Bell.

There’s continuing interest in shaking medicine and trauma releasing exercises.

Also, a lot of people are finding my blog these days searching on “spartan trailer” or something similar. That topic (housing) is not really related to the rest of my blog, except in terms of lifestyle design. Moving into a trailer is an experiment for me.

I’m thinking about starting a separate blog about the trailer but feeling uncertain if I have the energy to keep up two blogs. I’m fixin’ to get busy with my return to school.

So maybe I’ll just post photos of the trailer when it gets here (hopefully within two weeks) and as I repair and renovate it, and post the link here. I’ll let y’all know what I decide.

My blog has been getting over 50 views a day for weeks now. It’s very gratifying! My writing has improved with practice, and more kindred spirits around the world are finding this blog, commenting, and subscribing.

Anyway, if you’re reading this, I just want to say thanks for reading me, thanks for leaving comments (200 now!), and thanks for subscribing!

I love writing, following my fascinations, and getting your feedback and suggestions and stories and support.

I feel more connected. I hope you do too.

THANK YOU.

How to get smarter

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A couple of Facebook friends (thanks, Nelson and Jacqueline!) posted links to this guest blog post from Scientific American entitled You can increase your intelligence: 5 ways to maximize your cognitive potential. The author, Andrea Kuszewski, who has worked with children with Asperger’s syndrome and helped them increase their IQs, posits that IQ isn’t something that’s genetically predetermined.

Rather, we can get smarter.

I agree with this from my own experience. Clearing excess candida and getting gluten out of my diet resulted in the dissipation of a brain fog that I hadn’t even been aware of — because I had a brain fog! I remember realizing with joy that I could focus on reading difficult texts that I would have given up on before, and I could retain what I learned.

I also read the book Buddha’s Brain and take most of the recommended supplements for brain health. I’ve noticed a difference from that. My brain seems to be humming along more contentedly, and I feel more integrated.

Tell ya later about brainwave optimization!

Of course, this is anecdotal and not scientific evidence, but it seems to me that that’s always where good research starts — from noticing differences. And if it’s true for me, it’s true for me, and that’s good to know.

Kuszewski’s post draws on research findings published in 2008 that stated that you can increase your intelligence significantly through training. And she says if you can live your life by these five principles, you’ll be smarter:

1. Seek novelty. Be open to new experiences.

2. Challenge yourself. As soon as you master something, move on.

3. Think creatively. 

Creative cognition involves divergent thinking (a wide range of topics/subjects), making remote associations between ideas, switching back and forth between conventional and unconventional thinking (cognitive flexibility), and generating original, novel ideas that are also appropriate to the activity you are doing.

4. Do things the hard way. Use your skills — don’t let technology (calculators, GPS, cars) erode them.

5. Network. Expose yourself to new people, ideas, environments. Everyone benefits.

On becoming gluten free

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I was inspired to write this post by the blogger Gluten-Free Girl. She invited people to share their symptoms. They were so all-over-the-place, including migraines, arthritis, random crying, fatigue, menstrual difficulties, infertility, canker sores, peripheral neuropathy, Hashimoto’s, and many more types of suffering, that I wanted to share my story and let anyone who’s just found out about candida and/or gluten-intolerance, or whose story is similar to these, know that there’s hope.

Life can be so great when you have your health. And the food industry and restaurants are increasingly becoming aware of the need to offer us alternatives.

If you have a gluten-free story, I urge you to share it at the link above. It makes a huge difference to have a lot of stories in one place. There are millions of us (18 million out of 307 million Americans, by latest estimate, have celiac or gluten intolerance), but most of us experienced feeling like we were the only one. We have lots of company!

And…in my opinion, this post and all the comments should be required reading for health care practitioners.

~~

When I was a child, sometimes on weekends, my father would make pancakes for breakfast.

Halfway through a stack of two pancakes buttered with margarine and smothered in fake maple syrup (because that’s how we ate back then), I’d start to feel not so good. Not really sick, but not well, either.

I guess the best description is that my usual vibrancy disappeared. I felt a little woozy, a little queasy, somewhat clumsy and sluggish. My belly didn’t hurt, but it didn’t feel good either.

It would last for a couple of hours, then  dissipate. I stopped liking pancakes.

Looking back, that was the most flour I ever ate at once. My family wasn’t big on bread. We didn’t eat much pasta or fried breaded food. But we did eat pancakes and sandwiches and cake and cookies and gravy, so I ate wheat if not every day, then several times a week.

In adulthood, I often had diarrhea, gas, and bloating, and less often, I had painful colon cramps that doubled me over, but I never reported it to a doctor. I thought I was just prone to stomach bugs.

In hindsight, I had no idea what good bowel health was. People just didn’t talk about it! That’s a good topic for another post… ; D

Generally, I felt dull and sluggish a lot of the time. Dissociated, not quite present, uncoordinated, depressed. (I also had PTSD, also unbeknownst to anyone. It’s hard to truly know what to attribute these symptoms to.)

I had skin problems — outbreaks of adolescent and adult acne. I had itchy, blotchy rashes at various times on my stomach and chest, my back, and my arms and legs. I would break out in a rash from sun and heat.

I took Seldane and later Claritin daily for allergies. I didn’t get the association between dairy and mucus, or between liver health and allergies, back then. I thought my allergies were all due to airborne irritants. I didn’t believe it was possible to care for my health so that I didn’t need pharmaceuticals.

I know differently now.

I often had low energy and was easily exhausted. I’d go out on Saturday mornings to run errands, and after two hours, I’d hit the wall energetically and have to go home and take a nap. I attributed it to the stress of being a working single mother.

Oh, yeah. I was told that I was a colicky baby, often screaming for hours. Hmm.

I did receive muscle testing and acupuncture treatment (NAET) for allergies in my mid-40s, when I first became interested in alternative medicine. I remember being told that my body reacted to grasses. I thought it was to grass pollen in the air. I never thought of grasses as foods. Of course, wheat and other true grains are grasses! As is sugarcane.

NAET helped. I no longer had an annual winter sinus infection, and I only needed to take Claritin 3-4 times a year.

I still had the occasional colon cramps and diarrhea, gas, and bloating. The colon cramps could be so painful, I’d become pale, break into a cold sweat, and feel weak and shaky.

It took me a long time to heal after a car accident in 1996. My body hurt. I had low back pain and was diagnosed with scoliosis (not sure when it started, and it’s now healed with chiropractic help). I had a couple of bouts with plantar fasciitis. My weight fluctuated by as much as 35 lbs., and I’m 5’1″.

The enamel on my teeth had gotten thin or worn away in spots, leaving me with sensitive teeth. I often had night sweats. I developed rosacea. I had canker sores. Sometimes the toes on my left foot went numb. I lost bone density.

I’m just today realizing that these health problems may have a connection with being gluten intolerant, after reading others’ stories. There are over 300 symptoms of celiac. No wonder it’s so often misdiagnosed. It’s enough to want to tell anyone with inexplicable symptoms to go gluten-free for a month and see if that helps.

~~

I grew up knowing very little about the relationship between food and health. I was never tested for food allergies. I had “hay fever”, and my digestive symptoms appeared when I was an adult.

One of my brothers had asthma and was tested, though. He had the traditional scratch test and was found to be allergic to a lot of things, both food and airborne. He reacted to cats, dogs, pollen, dust, eggs, dairy, nuts, and a lot of other foods, but not to wheat or grains. He took shots for years.

While going to Active Life Chiropractic in late 2006 for treatment, I was told that my health insurance covered food sensitivity testing (the Immuno 1 Bloodprint tests your blood for over 100 foods) and asked if I was interested. I agreed to be tested, thinking that I probably had some minor food sensitivities.

The results of my food sensitivity test came back a couple of weeks later. I was found to be sensitive to wheat, oats, two kinds of yeast, two kinds of beans, potatoes, tomatoes, and sugarcane. That was mind-boggling!

Because of the yeast and sugarcane, my doctor recommended that I be tested for candida. That test came back positive.

So I started my gluten-free journey with the candida diet, which meant no grains, dairy, any sweetener except stevia, yeast, fruit, juice, alcohol, potatoes, peanuts, legumes, mushrooms, chocolate, caffeine, condiments, vinegar, high-glycemic anything, cured or pickled or fermented anything.

(Hmm, isn’t it interesting that most of the foods I tested sensitive to were also banned on the candida diet?)

I cleaned out my fridge and pantry of everything with any forbidden ingredient in it. I didn’t want to be tempted or to make a mistake. It took over an hour to read the ingredients on every single label, and at the end, I had two paper grocery bags full of food to give away. Bye-bye, Michaelangelo’s frozen lasagna, Campbell’s tomato soup, soy sauce, mayonnaise, ketchup, barbecue sauce, coffee, honey, maple syrup!

My start date rolled around. It was by far the most drastic change in eating I’d ever experienced. It was so drastic, I decided to stick to it 100% so I would never have to do it again. Dang, it was rough, but I was determined to find out if I could feel better. 

I lost weight and went to bed hungry at times. Breakfast was the biggest problem because there were no traditional breakfast foods that I could have unless I wanted eggs every day. I often ate fish and salad (with Annie’s vinegar-free salad dressing — bless you, Annie) for breakfast.

Food was no longer inspiring — instead, it was plain and simple fuel. If I got hungry, I just waited until the next meal. Meat, fish, eggs, and non-starchy vegetables were my mainstays. Scrambled eggs were yummy with salsa verde on top. Little discoveries like that kept it interesting.

I took a supplement called Candex, which helps dissolve the cell walls of yeast. My poop smelled yeasty for the first few weeks.

After about a month, I discovered the book The Body Ecology Diet and began making young coconut kefir at home and  drinking Helios brand plain dairy kefir with FOS to get some probiotics into my gut. I slowly added grains like millet and quinoa and low-glycemic fruit like blueberries, Granny Smith apples, and kiwis.

(By the way, if you borrowed that book from me, I’d like to have it back.)

After two and a half months, I noticed that I felt really different. I felt physically good and my energy level had increased, and I noticed that I felt more present, like my brain was working better, like some kind of brain fog had lifted. I could focus better, read more difficult books, understand more complex thinking than before. My memory improved. I experienced myself differently. I felt smarter and more alive!

I stuck to the strict diet until my body told me I had cleared the excess candida, which was 3 months. The test had said I had mild candida. If it had been severe, I still would have stuck to it to find out if I could feel better. Anything to consistently feel better.

I transitioned from the candida diet to avoiding the foods I had tested sensitive to — the wheat, sugar, potatoes, and so on — and taking it easy on the other candida avoids.

~~

I was tested again a year later. Candida was balanced. I was sensitive to fewer foods (a couple of new ones too), but wheat and several other foods were still a no-no. My chiropractor had my blood tested this time for gluten. I wasn’t sensitive to it, only to wheat. So probably wheat inflames my small intestine.

Then my health insurance stopped covering the test, which was too expensive to continue on my own, so I haven’t been tested again.

Meanwhile, I read Eat Right for Your Type and noticed a strong similarity between the candida diet and the recommended diet for people with Blood Type O. Type Os should not eat wheat.

My theory is that people are born sensitive to certain foods and stay that way, and other food sensitivities come and go, based on stress and/or overexposure and sometimes maybe just shifts in body chemistry. Sometimes we crave the foods that make us feel bad, and sometimes we instinctively avoid them. That is some great learning there!!!

If you can’t afford to get tested but suspect you have food sensitivities, try the Blood Type Diet. I bet you’ll feel better — and it includes feel-good foods, not just avoids.

Also, I’d love to know how many celiacs, gluten-intolerant folks, and people with candida are Type Os and how many are another blood type. Please comment!

I was still in denial about wheat. I’d tell myself that every once in a while, I could have a burger or some birthday cake. I enjoyed those moments, but I eventually learned from experience that my body just cannot handle more than a quarter teaspoon of wheat without affecting my small intestine adversely, and that if I do “get glutened”, it takes 3 days for my body to get back to normal.

What I suspect happens is that the lining of my small intestine gets irritated by wheat, and it stays that way, interfering with absorbing other nutrients, until the wheat is completely out of my body.

That’s 3 days of malnutrition.

It’s just not worth it. I can now resist cake, cookies, burgers, and so on. I feel so much better consistently when I do. 

I’ve learned over the past five years that I can handle spelt and Ezekiel bread, but it also seems important that I don’t eat them often. In general, my body doesn’t do well with grains. Rice is my most tolerable grain. Quinoa is great. It’s a seed, not a grain.

~~

I have no idea if I have celiac disease, and it doesn’t really matter. Gluten-free means wheat-free, and I’m fine with describing myself as being gluten-sensitive or gluten-intolerant, as eating a gluten-free diet. My body doesn’t agree with wheat in particular, grains in general, potatoes, some legumes.

So basically, to cut to the chase, I spent over 50 years of my life consuming something that made me feel bad, interfered with absorption of other nutrients, and diminished my presence, intelligence, and vitality. I don’t like to dwell on thinking how much better my life could have been if only I or my parents had known. That feels tragic, and I can’t change the past. I want to feel great in the life that’s ahead of me.

I suspect my mother may have been gluten-intolerant. She often had gas, bloating, and bowel issues, low energy, took a lot of naps, had arthritis. She had anemia a lot as a child and young adult. She never knew.

I’m so grateful that I know and can act now. And if telling this story helps one person have better health, investigate, or stick to a gluten-free diet, it’s worth it.

Fantastic prehistoric cave art movie

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Do you ever think about the human species, where we came from and where we’re going? I do. I’m very excited about seeing a new movie, The Cave of Forgotten Dreams, that will probably be the closest look any of us will ever get of the oldest art created by our species.

By all accounts the art is pretty wonderful.

The film is by Werner Herzog, who has made so many memorable films, like Fitzcarraldo, Encounters at the End of the World, Grizzly Man, and many more dramas and documentaries.

The Cave of Forgotten Dreams is about Chauvet Cave in France, which contains the oldest art known to be in existence. The film is also Herzog’s only (and probably last) film to be made in 3D.

Here’s some background information about prehistoric cave art, which I have long loved for its mystery and beauty. For perspective, science tells us that humans have been around for 190,000 years but only began writing around 5,000 years ago. All that time before writing is considered prehistoric. Not much is known about most of our species’ history.

The first major cave with paintings discovered by modern humans was Altamira. In 1879, the nine-year-old daughter of a nobleman who was also an amateur archeologist led her father into this northern Spanish cave to see the paintings on its walls. The cave had been sealed by a rockfall 13,000 years ago, and only when a fallen tree disturbed the rocks was human entry again possible.

The next year, he and other Spanish archeologists proclaimed the paintings to be Paleolithic in origin.

They were ridiculed. We may laugh about this now, but for years, the cave paintings were thought by many eminent scientists to be forgeries, because prehistoric humans were considered incapable of creating such art!

(Remember the stereotypical cave man, often a subject of cartoons? I think instead of being dull and stupid, they must have been exquisitely alive. No manmade toxins in the environment, acute senses because of the need to be alert for predators and food, the need to observe patterns and develop skill to survive, the importance of the group, living with a much smaller human population with much less competition…. Hmm. We may have peaked early.)

Anyway, in 1902, the leading proponent of the forgery idea famously admitted he had made a mistake in print (‘mea culpa”).

Horses, bison, goats, deer, wild boars, negative handprints made by blowing paint around the hand, and abstract shapes appear in Altamira.

Other Spanish caves with prehistoric art were soon discovered, but none matched Altamira. The Altamira paintings are estimated to be 17,000 years old.

The second major discovery of prehistoric cave paintings was at Lascaux in southern France. Four teenage boys discovered the cave in 1940 when a dog disappeared into it. They followed the dog, saw the art, and told their teacher, who told an expert.

The oldest Lascaux paintings as old as 20,000 years. There are over 2,000 figures of animals, humans, and abstractions: horses, stags, cattle, bison, felines, bird, bear, rhinoceros, aurochs (huge bulls) appear, as do some abstractions that may be maps of constellations.

After he visited Lascaux in 1948, Picasso is said to have said:

They’ve invented everything.

The cave of the new Herzog film is Chauvet Cave in southern France. It was discovered in 1994 by three archeologists who felt an updraft of cool air while exploring a cliff.

Chauvet has never been open to the public. Only a handful of researchers and scientists have been inside. Herzog is the only filmmaker granted access, and he was limited in how many people and what kind of equipment he could bring in. He winged it pretty well, I hope.

The oldest Chauvet paintings were painted 37,000 years ago. These paintings made when both Homo sapiens and Neanderthals coexisted in Europe, one species on its way in, the other on its way out.

The artists used perspective, shading, stencils, pointillism. They worked with the caves’ contours to produce 3D effects. They blew paint through hollow tubes to create a certain effect.  They used charcoal and colored clays from the earth to draw and paint with, made lamps of animal fat and plant wick to see what they were doing, created brushes, even built scaffolding.

They painted eight legs instead of four to produce the effect of a running animal and used repetition of the same image with the legs in different positions, making the world’s first “motion pictures.”

The art looks fresh and spontaneous, as if painted with a skilled, practiced hand. There is evidence in places of pigment being scraped away and painted over. These guys and gals (some of the hands depicted on the walls are female) were serious artists.

Here’s a description from Judith Thurman’s article on Chauvet in the New Yorker:

From here, one emerges into the deepest recess of Chauvet, the End Chamber, a spectacular vaulted space that contains more than a third of the cave’s etchings and paintings—a few in ochre, most in charcoal, and all meticulously composed. A great frieze covers the back left wall: a pride of lions with Pointillist whiskers seems to be hunting a herd of bison, which appear to have stampeded a troop of rhinos, one of which looks as if it had fallen into, or is climbing out of, a cavity in the rock. 

Now maybe you’re getting a sense of why this movie is so meaningful. It opens up so many questions: Was this art created for ritual purposes? Was it for good luck in hunting or to celebrate a successful hunt? Was it for fun, because they could? Why are humans and plants and landscapes not depicted? Were these paintings made by shamans, teenagers, men, women? How did they get so good?

How is it that perspective wasn’t rediscovered for thousands of years?

Imagine the later painters encountering the earlier paintings. Some paintings were painted over a period of thousands of years. Imagine collaborating with your distant ancestors.

Mammoths, lions, bison, and rhinoceroses all existed in southern France during this time!

Getting to see these images is a rare opportunity to see our species freshly and to have a little more information into the big mystery of life, at the same time as these images deepen the mystery about who we are and where we’re coming from.

The carbon dioxide in human breath damages cave paintings. Fungus and mold grow and spread. All these caves are now closed to the public, with research carefully monitored, but replicas have been made of Altamira and Lascaux, and one is planned for Chauvet. So we probably won’t get to see the real thing.

This is as close as it gets.

Werner Herzog’s website: http://www.wernerherzog.com/home.html

The Cave of Forgotten Dreams trailer: http://www.wernerherzog.com/index.php?id=64

Judith Thurman’s article on Chauvet Cave in the New Yorker:  http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/06/23/080623fa_fact_thurman