Emotion In Motion

Just finished the last day of my first round with the 21 Day Cleansing Raw Diet from The Garden Diet.

http://21daysraw.com/

I am sitting here pondering the differences in how my body feels after being mostly raw for well over a month now. For the most part, I have noticed a deepening sense of self awareness and calm.

For the most part...

This past week, the 3rd week of the cleanse, was also a time of recokoning and reconciliation. It was a time of mismanaged emotions surfacing and demanding to be dealt with.

I am trained in Breema, and in Breema I was reminded often to not just look at the body as this physical mass of tissue, fluids and bones - but to also recognize that our 'body' is much more than this. It is important to take moments and remember that there are also psychological, emotional and spiritual 'bodies' integrated with our experiential being to take care of.

Over these past weeks, as I feel extra weight coming off of my frame, I am also feeling the need to let go of extra 'weight' from the other aspects of my 'body.' Unfortunately, this 'extra' doesn't always surface in the most pleasant way, but like any healing crisis, sometimes you have to bring to the surface the irritants before they can be expelled.

And that is what these past few months have been for me. The various 'bodies' that make up my being have had enough of the unhealthy irritants and it has became mandatory that they either be transformed or expelled.

But interestingly, the paradox is:

The transformation and expulsion must come from within my own being. Only there. In many ways I am realizing...

I have also been my own irritant. My own thoughts, emotions, thinking patterns, beliefs...

These are what need to be transformed, not all the things and people that I felt were the causes.

It is interesting how life's events often mirrors prior life's events. In this case, with my own husband, I was reminded of what I watched my mother go through with my biological father. The circumstances are different, but the pattern is evident. The triggers for the memories, to cause the emotions to surface, still very present. It appears we repeat ourselves. Slow learners we be, it seems. Self created repetition to gain a deeper understanding of ourselves through our interaction with others?

Cleansing the 'body' is definitely a constant work in progress. It will take much more than 21 days, maybe even more than a lifetime.

Now on to the 'transition.'

http://28daysraw.com/

Pulp Julius

When I was a child my mother would sometimes take us to the local mall. When there, when we would beg for a treat, she often went with the healthier option and would stop by the Orange Julius stand and we would get one of their famous orange smoothies. Orange Julius now has many options to their menu, but back then, the menu was pretty basic. I loved watching them put the orange smoothie together and was always amazed how something so simple to make could taste so good. Fresh oranges, some ice, raw eggs and a little milk...and viola.

As I began my first day with The Garden Diet 21 day cleanse, every time I took a sip of my home made raw vegan version of an 'Orange Julius'  it made me realize that, much like how we are drawn to not so healthy 'comfort foods', often created from childhood memories, we can also draw from memories of eating healthy foods. Simple adaptations can still 'comfort' us and create new experiences and memories to pull from.

This time, no dairy or egg. Instead of squeezing the juice from the orange, I peeled the oranges, added some ice water and blended them into a simple smoothy with a bit of clove added for another layer of bliss.

Here are some interesting links about drinking orange juice with the pulp. Blending in the pulp has many advantages over just drinking the juice, even when its in its raw state, especially for those who are sugar sensitive.

http://thewaterygourmet.blogspot.com/2010/02/is-orange-juice-with-pulp-better-for.html

http://healthyeating.sfgate.com/oranges-lots-fiber-4551.html

http://justjuice.org/2012/juicing-fresh-fruit-is-fresh-fruit-juice-good-or-bad-for-you/ 

Lighten UP

I made it through the holidays! For the most the part, I did manage to stick with the raw food outline that I learned while doing the Raw Rapid Weight Loss menu plan. I had a few days of snacking, including the New Year's Day party posted here...but I feel good that I kept to a few bites here and there and didn't stuff myself. At this party I even brought my own juiced drink with me (I hid it behind the woman pictured with me) to fill me up and help with all the temptations! I do think the results are showing. My challenge is I am on lite duty/medical leave at work. That has helped with the transition and made it easier. I've been getting more regular sleep and am not on my feet as much. Bringing those changes to my enroute duties, on a regular basis, will prove to be interesting.

The new year is here and I do feel I am ready for a complete and refreshing over haul. Time to 'lighten' up. In a few days I think I will be ready to start the 21 day cleanse. I also plan to try out random raw recipes on-line and post my results.

WRR-WRR ...

I tried to jump in and do The Garden Diet's 21/ 28 plan but found it a bit over whelming to start with.

Then Jinji came up with her:

Wild Rapid Raw Weight Release Rumpus!!!

I joined in that journey on December 2, 2013 and have been using this plan as my basic outline so far. It seems, for me, that this was the platform that I needed to start me down this path. It seems to have been a great help to others as well. As of December 11, 2013, according to my doctor's scale, I am down 10 pounds from my prior visit in October. I tend to think that most of this 'loss' came from following this menu.

To learn more about the WRR-WRR, and maybe even join in the journey, go to: http://jinjeetalifero.com/?p=3069

Back Tracking...

I grew up knowing that a diet heavily mixed with raw foods was the best. My mother used to own a health food store and being a book worm, I grew up immersing myself in the books she had in the store. I had come across a number times that eating more raw food was necessary for health, and though I have maintained a vegetarian lifestyle all my life, I never fully made the connection to doing a raw lifestyle until I got really sick while under a doctor's care for a growing pain I was experiencing in my side. I ended up with iron overload for 'borderline' anemia and antibiotic side effects for what proved to be non existent (but still possible - according to that doctor) kidney infection (only because she couldn't figure out why else I was in pain).

This started me on actually looking for alternative ways to deal with this now exacerbated health crisis. So, I went back to my roots, my own self induced childhood learning, and started fasting and cleansing. One of these was doing (with much success) the liver/gallbladder flush. An on-line search for something entirely different lead me to a link about it that reminded me of this (instinct has a way of drawing you to 'goggle' what you need to find sometimes). I grew up reading about liver/gallbladder flushes, but until this episode in my life, I never felt I needed to do one personally. This is when I made the real connection to what pasteurizing and homogenizing dairy does to dairy products, for this is what I surmised was the root of what was causing my side pain - an inability of my body to properly digest such foods and storing the 'fat' from it in my liver ducts and gallbladder.

This led me to questioning what heating does to other foods we eat.

While researching more fully into this, I came upon the garden diet web-site. It was another one of those light bulb moments for me, with that 'PAY ATTENTION!!!' voice sounding in my inner ear. Then the journey of 'knowing' what is best for my health and actually 'doing' what is best for my health really began.

 

I did meet the Talifero's on one of their retreats and for a time was raw. Storm Talifero was actually one of the first people I met that made me realize that someone could actually be raw and healthy...for life. With these lifestyle changes, I dropped weight, felt better, and looked at life very differently. 

 

But with a raw diet, cleansing also occurs - on many levels. Sometimes one is ready for such cleansing and sometimes it can be too much. I have learned such a journey takes a life time. It also can have many detours along the way and that those detours, though sometimes difficult, are not necessarily a 'bad' thing.

Since then, there have been times where I could do the raw lifestyle with more ease than at other times. More stress, without fail, always led me backtracking to the old comfort food cravings. Life is never really without stress though. So, it really becomes an issue of how to deal with it...or how to adjust how I have not been successfully dealing with it.

My life is so different now than when I first started discovering raw foods though. Back then I was Massage Therapist and a Breema practitioner, who occasionally did a bit of acting on the side. I was focused on healing and led for the most part, a solitary introverted life. A car accident, along with the financial housing implosion in 2006, changed all of that for me. Now I work in a stressful job on trains, with a body that I have never been able to get truly out of pain since that accident that same year.

It has been 7 years of learning first hand now how many of the people who used to come see me for stress and pain relief felt. I have been learning empathy first hand.

With empathy comes understanding but it takes focus to make something more useful of it. Focus...and practicing what I used to preach it seems.

 

On October 8, 2013, I hurt my back at work.

It is interesting how the body will often 'give' at it weakest point. It is even more interesting that it sometimes takes our body 'giving' in for our consciousness to follow. 

 

When I had my car accident I used to say that the universe was telling me I needed a knock up side the head to get me to change course for some reason. This time my back told me it was at its breaking point. That, along with the headaches slowing growing into almost constant migraines, I needed to buckle down and do everything I can to better manage 'THE pain' I have been in now for so many years. That as much as I was trying to ignore it, it was not going to just go away.

I am reminded from my Breema training: How can I be more comfortable? What adjustment, no matter how big or small it is, can I make to be more comfortable?

Good question...

Finishing Is Beginning

This is my 'finishing' photo. My finishing not taking enough care of myself like I need to. It was taken on November 2, 2013 at the Run or Dye event in Santa Rosa. I was feeling so-so that day, with one of the constant headaches I have been dealing with for years now since my car accident in 2006. The accident that derailed me from the path I was on and started me in a completely different direction. Personally, I hate this photo. It is not how I see myself. But, it is what it is and it is time for me to acknowledge that...and know that nothing is ever stagnant. That I can be much more comfortable with myself. That there is ALWAYS something I can do to be more comfortable.

Part of this is to do more raw living...and less cooked dieting.

I am pictured with my loving husband. He loves me no matter how thick or thin I am...on any level of being.  I love him back in the same way.

My challenge is to show that sort of forgiving love for myself. Sometime we are our own harshest critic.

This is also my beginning photo for this blog. My RAW journey. I have tried this journey many times, have had 'success' as well as overturned apple carts along the away. I guess like many journeys...there is really no beginning or end...just the next page and new chapters. I have no idea how it will go, but with the word 'raw' in it - I expect it will be just that. My focus of this journey is to incorporate more awareness and care into my life. I don't expect it will be easy, but it should prove to be ... interesting.

After many years of dealing with weight consciousness, self loathing and overcoming bulimia, I decided to 'ignore' the scales. I don't use them anymore, if I can help it. The last time I weighed in was at the doctor's office. That was on Oct 10, 2013 @ 220 pounds. I have no idea how much I weigh here, but I suspect it is pretty much about the same. Give or take a few pounds, this is pretty much the 'heaviest' I have been in my life. I think I am ready to let go of some that extra 'baggage' now. It is not my goal though. My goal is to be healthy, more self aware and loving.

End of story...and a new beginning.

Santa Rosa 'Run or Dye" November 2, 2013