Becoming Whole

"Meditation is painful in the beginning but it bestows immortal bliss and supreme joy in the end."- Swami Sivananda

Watching Oprah's interview with David Arquette yesterday was interesting. If you follow this sort of thing, (and these days the "news" usually reports celebrity breakups as if it were actually newsworthy so you can't help but know these things.), David and his beautiful celebrity wife Courtney Cox Arquette, were separated a few months back causing David to spiral out of control very publicly. Tabloid photos of him leaving night clubs extremely intoxicated or hearing parts of radio interviews where he sounds terrible and shares very personal and private stories about his marriage were becoming commonplace.
Yesterday on Oprah his sister Patricia revealed that she and Courtney staged an intervention for him that he gladly and willingly accepted since he now knows he was screaming out in pain and asking for help for quite sometime.

It was revealed that the Arquette's had grown up in a very unstable life. Living in a commune and having actor/poet parents. There was alcohol, drugs, drama and abuse in their household. David became the perfect child. Sweet, kind, funny. The sisters described him as being the perfect little boy but they said, not even a perfect kid could make everything in their house all better. But of course he could not. Then he married and became a father and was now defined by this new role. Now I am a father and a husband, I will play it perfectly. But still not having dealt with the pain of childhood of course he soon began to unravel and his family broke apart. Thus beginning his public downward spiral.

I was fascinated by his story and was moved by his honesty and his obvious heartfelt and authentic wish to now be who he really is, a whole person. I to struggled to be a good girl for my parents. Doing "my part" was all I could do to control our out of control lives. Be sweet, be good, be pretty, be smart. I tried my best but inevitably failed to keep my family together. Fear, embarrassment, confusion, anger, resentment were shoved down beneath the surface of the smiling, happy good girl I was. I became a wife and mother very early on and FINALLY found what I had always wanted. Control over my own life. I was still a good daughter, now adding to it good wife, good mother, good friend, perfect household. I was so busy being all of these things I didn't realize that I still wasn't being myself. I would live a life of unrequited self love for quite some time to come.

The time, as it tends to do, went by very quickly and I found myself still young with almost grown children. As I have said before my role went from from manager to consultant right before my very eyes. It was quiet for the first time in my life. And in the stillness I began to notice things I never did in the noise I surrounded myself in. Things came to the surface that I didn't even know were down there! The road to being a whole, real person is not easy. When you live the life of the "good child" you don't feel worthy. A lot of women I know even justify sitting down during the day. Most women, even if they have some free time, wont use it to sit down and read a book or have a cup of tea or do some meditation. Most women will justify sitting down only if they are on the computer or have a load of laundry to fold in front of them. Sitting down is a decadent luxury. I urge everyone, men and women, to sit in quiet everyday. It is not easy! Your mind will wander, you will start to jump up remembering a million things you just HAVE to do. You will start to notice things you may not like. About yourself or others in your life. Being honest with yourself is not always easy but to be who you are truly meant to be needs honesty. Ain't no way around that. Release control, you don't have it anyway. I am fortunate beyond measure that I have a great partner who is understanding and learning all of these new facets of life with me not against me. Coming to this place is a journey two people can't always get to together. Everyone at some point starts to feel the shift. And you either open your heart and embrace it, or you start putting walls up and shutting it out one way or another.
So if you are starting to feel the shift, you are not alone. There are great books out there to help guide you through these uncharted waters. The one I just recently read and LOVE is Elizabeth Lesser's book Broken Open, how difficult times help us grow. I highly recommend it. I am excited for the future, a whole person lives a much richer life than running around just trying to be "good" all the time. David ended the interview showing us voyeurs into his new whole life. Not surprisingly yoga and meditation is a part of his daily life. He said it gets a little lonely sometimes but he is figuring it all out. Sometimes life is lonely. Can you sit quietly in the silence or do you need to fill it up with noise? Its how you handle things, not what happens to you that makes the difference.

Water, Consciousness & Intent: Dr. Masaru Emoto

GLUTEN FREE PART 1

The greatest wealth is health.  ~Virgil

Ok, this is big. It’s not only a big self-discovery that may resonate with you but it’s big that I am admitting this. Last week I did something that I never thought I would do. I went to the bookstore and purchased a book. (That’s not it) I went home and put an Oprah magazine in front of the cover so not even my husband would know what I was reading and I read this book from cover to cover. The book is called ‘Sexy Forever’ by one Suzanne Somers. Yes, I am taking advice from Chrissy Snow. And you know what? It has already changed my life for the better. (That is what I get for being a judger of former sitcom stars giving health and lifestyle advice. If Henry Winkler comes out with anything I’ll be first in line)

Ms. Somers claims to be able to help you ‘fight fat after forty, Shed the toxins, shed the fat’.  She had me at fat.

I saw her on The Today Show, (YouTube it!) And what she was saying made sense.

What she said was what I have been hearing from my Dad for years but I really didn’t think it was affecting me at all. I felt good, I looked good. I am young(ish) and I exercise and eat well 90 percent of the time. (Possibly 85) And all of the sudden over the past 8 months it’s like someone found an air valve and started to slowly blow me up. I looked sort of the same, my clothes still fit although not really comfortably depending on the TIME OF DAY. (That’s important) Even my watch, that used to slide around on my wrist like a bracelet was tight and leaving a red mark on my arm. (For how long until I actually noticed I have no idea.) I was so busy trying to find inner peace; I didn’t see that my outer body was going into crisis mode until it was glaring.

Suzanne asked Hoda and Kathilee are you tired of eating salad and killing yourself at the gym to either maintain status quo or not see any results at all? (I think Kathilee said something like, “I know Hoda is!” wink, wink) And all women for years have gotten is that standard line given to women of a certain age, ‘That’s what happens!’ My mom used to say to me all the time, ‘By the time you hit menopause they will have invented a cure for it.’ (Well, btw we are still waiting for flying cars too.) Not that I am menopausal, BECAUSE I’M NOT! (Defensive?) But apparently I am….its hard to even type it, peri. BLUCH! It sounds awful doesn’t it? Well the good news is according to my new BF Suzanne is even if it may sound awful, it doesn’t have to be awful.

She explains that the ‘thickening’ that happens to women after a certain age where there boobs get bigger and their backs get bigger and the weight that just seems to keep coming and doesn’t come off so easily is not “Just what happens” and we don’t have to suck it up and kill ourselves at the gym to still not be where we want to be. Its actually a body bloated with toxins from this ‘environmental assault’ she says, we are living in. She goes on to explain that our body has a job to do and everything we put into our bodies has to be used, stored or eliminated. Toxins are foreign substances that the body doesn’t know quite what to do with so like all well meaning annoying over zealous do gooder it says, “I’ll store this in your fat for you!” Gee, thanks.

So our deodorants, shampoos, face creams, cleaning products, pesticides, synthetic pillows, mattresses, air pollution chemically enhanced food, nutrient deficient soil we grow our food in and everything else we live with on a daily basis is making us fat. When we spend so much of our lives ingesting all these toxins we develop intolerances to certain foods or at least things that are in certain foods. Our body is TRYING to tell us what to do and we are not listening.

These days we are all living until we are in our 80’s and 90’s but our quality of life is leaving us much earlier and it doesn’t have to. As we age we lose certain estrogen related hormones that keep our metabolism up. Combine that with our toxic food and world we live in and our bodies start screaming to us that something isn’t right! Hormonal health she claims is the way to weight loss.

She goes on to talk about natural hormone replacement therapy but my head wasn’t in that yet although I plan to keep this book handy for the future. What I was interested in was the skinny factor. (Hey, sorry I am human and I want to look good. If good health comes with it…BONUS) So she says have blood work done and find out what you are allergic to or have an insensitivity to and you can eliminate those things from your diet, eat organically and you’ll be thin. VIOLA! So I am giving it a try.

I admit that I usually will mindlessly eat because if 1 slice of pizza is good then 2 will be better! Life is short, I justify, I don’t care no one is going to dictate what I eat I am going to enjoy myself! But at my own expense. Then I ignore the side effects of my body saying to me please don’t! Like feeling bloated after I eat a harmless turkey sandwich on whole wheat bread and suddenly the pants I put on in the morning feel bad by 1pm.  Or my “bathroom time” is out of whack. There are a million signs telling us what is wrong. We just have to listen. So I haven’t gotten the blood work done yet but I will. I did however talk to my friend Cathleen who is very knowledgeable and mindful about such things and we also share a lot of similar ‘ailments’ so we compared notes and I realized I might have gluten intolerance. She asked me do you feel like it effects your breathing as well? And I was quick to say, “No, I don’t think so.” Because I wasn’t calling because I was interested in my health I was interested in my pant size. And then I actually thought about it for more than my 2-second attention span that I usually give to my body’s mechanics and I said, “Actually, I do struggle with my breath but I just assumed that’s just the way I am.” Isn’t that funny what we just accept things that we really shouldn’t in so many aspects of our lives? Mother’s especially, I think, don’t pay enough attention too themselves they are always spending time taking care of everyone else to notice what is going on in their own bodies until it becomes to late.

Cut to the chase, on Thursday I cut glutens, (anything with wheat), out of my life and four days later I have lost 5 pounds. Thrilling isn’t it?  I already try to purchase organically grown produce and meats, etc. What is the best part is that I now have a better understanding of how this mind, body, spirit connection thing really works. I put milk in my coffee and noticed my stomach went crazy. Could dairy be next?? (Or GASP coffee??) And I don’t feel like I am depriving myself of anything because there are so many alternatives out there. I have passed by boxes marked ‘GLUTEN FREE’ forever and never gave it a thought. If I pay attention to my health my body is happy and if my body is happy then my mind gets happy. If my mind is happy then no matter what happens in life, I can face it. Strong body, strong mind, happy heart. Thanks Chrissy Snow, you wise sage.  Mr.Roper had you all wrong.