Movement

I moved halfway across the country (almost literally) at the end of August.  Most of July & August were about downsizing to a point where I could fit the ‘necessaries’ in a trailer & haul it to New Mexico.  I have committed a year to this adventure.  I may or may not stay beyond that.  I won’t know ’til I get there. 

All movement is movement forward.  You can’t move backward – you can stop, but you can’t move backward.  I will appreciate the moments in stillness, and observe the movement forward into whatever is next.

Fermentation convert

It took a recent visit with an holistic nutritionist to convert me, but now I’m sold.  I’ve been dealing with a small handful of chronic health issues for ages – and though I can honestly say I feel much better now than I did a year or two years ago (this has been a rough couple of years for me), I cannot honestly say I feel good most of the time.  I have good days, followed by several days of fatigue, indigestion, aches, and so forth.  No energy, can’t eat (don’t even want to), shoulder & neck stiffness.  There are other issues, but I’ll spare you, Dear Reader.

Somehow, it was just never enough that I ate well (all whole foods, no processed/packaged foods, organically grown whenever possible, no refined grains or sugars, no dairy, no soy, only high quality oils & protein foods, etc etc), my health has still been twitchy.

The holistic nutritionist spent a little time with me, gave my new client questionnaire a look-see, and – among other things – recommended drinking Rejuvelac twice a day.  I was not thrilled.  I had never been a big fan of fermented foods, even though I was aware of the probiotic benefits.  I hadn’t gotten past the ‘ick factor’ we in germ-phobic America often have about bacteria & fungus.  I also didn’t care for that sour, fermenty taste.  Even though I’ve eaten yogurt & drunk kefir over the years, it’s always been store-bought & sweetened up.  I never got any benefits from it, though – probably because the dairy (which I no longer eat) was counterproductive for me.  Same goes for soy, by the way.

I can definitely say I’ve gotten over the ‘ick factor’ now.  I accepted that I needed the benefits, and that a daily dose of raw, live probiotics would support my health – and went from there.  I’ve been making & drinking Rejuvelac for almost two weeks, and I’ve moved on to (bottled) Kombucha, and today I finished making my very first batch of coconut milk yogurt (my very first batch of any milk yogurt, actually).  I’ve experienced enough benefits in this short amount of time that I’m willing to commit to maintaining raw, live, cultured foods (and drinks) in my diet (and on my kitchen counter) for the foreseeable future.

If you’ve heard of Rejuvelac, but been afraid to try it, I can tell you: it’s good for you, and it’s not icky.  It tastes a bit like unsweetened lemonade, and if you add a few drops of stevia to it, it’s very easy to drink.  If you’ve heard of Kombucha, and been afraid to try it, I recommend one of the commercial, raw brands flavored with only a small amount of natural juice (I’ve been enjoying GT’s Gingerade Kombucha – tastes like real, naturally crafted Ginger Ale).  If you’ve thought about making fermented drinks or foods of your own, Rejuvelac is quite easy (loads of recipes are on the web) – and if my experience proves anything, so is yogurt.  Try it, you may like it – and it definitely will like you. 

An Alternative Approach to Dry Eye Treatment

Well, I wanted to share what seems to be (in process) a successful alternative approach to persistent dry eyes.

I had Lasik in December of 07; my recovery was perfect, my temporary dry eyes were completely healed by three months post-op (tear function is disrupted by the surgical process, the majority of patients regain normal tear function by 6 months at the most, but a proportion of patients have long-term dry eye problems).  So far, so good, except that they overcorrected me slightly, so I went from VERY near-sighted to slightly far-sighted, and that was a strain.  So I finally got up the gumption to go for touch-up surgery in June of 08; my eyesight is now perfect, but the post-op dry eyes have never healed.  So for almost a year, I’ve had dry eyes, and been very reliant upon artificial tear eyedrops. Tho’ I signed a statement that I knew ‘permanent’ dry eyes were a potential risk, I was very optimistic after the first surgery that I wouldn’t have a problem after the second.

The dryness had been frustrating me, as had the redness & irritation.  I keep thinking things would eventually correct themselves but they hadn’t.  At my last regular post-op check-up in December, the new optometrist (new to the practice, and new to me) said something about ‘Meibomian Gland Dysfunction’ – the meibomian gland is inside the eyelid and secretes the oily layer of the tears, which keeps the watery portion of the tears from evaporating.  (good link here:  http://www.dryeyezone.com/encyclopedia/mgd.html)

Ah-ha!  At least that tells me what the problem is.  Her suggestion:  eyelid scrubs and keep using the eyedrops.  I tried mild scrubbing with a soft cloth, and that did nothing to help the dryness or irritation.  Why oh why didn’t I do more research before?  I don’t know.  Further research has since taught me that eyelid scrubs are not known to be useful for meibomian gland dysfunction-caused dry eye.  And why oh why do I listen to doctors at all anymore?  Again, I don’t know.  But what happened was … I took her suggestion a bit more seriously in recent weeks, and invested in some pre-soaked eyelid scrub cloths (the kind the eye doctor recommends).  They didn’t help the dryness, and over the course of about two weeks made my eyes and the whole eye area drier – AND my eyes became more red, more irritated, and got to an unbearable level last week.  By Thursday, I could barely open my eyes without pain, it felt as though there was NOTHING left protecting my eye surface, and I was very concerned that my eyes might be damaged – my eyes were totally red, lids were inflamed.  I wasn’t sure if it was the eyelid wash, general allergies (I was a bit sniffly that day), or just a random worsening of the dry eye problem.  I had stopped the scrubs a day or so before, when my eyes started to feel notably more uncomfortable.

A week or more previously, I had begun listening a bit more closely to my intuition regarding my dry eyes, and had been researching alternative approaches to the problem – I was thinking about the folk remedy use of castor oil for eye health, and I’d looked into that a bit more closely (as well as I could, given the nature of the internet & needing to separate fantasy from reality on the web).  I’d ordered a couple of items from Garden of Wisdom, and had asked Markey (the owner) to include a special order item for me:  cold-pressed castor oil in one of the little .25 oz. dropper (sample) bottles.  In a fit of irony, it arrived the same day I reached the point of unbearability – I thought I might be dealing with some serious eye damage by then.  I called my eye doc and set up an appointment for the following Monday, so I had four days to deal with things on my own, and see what happened.

Here’s something: even the eye doctor I saw confirmed that usually ‘the approach we use doesn’t help that much’.  Dry eyes stay dry, and we just keep putting drops in them.  Oy.  I was reading case after case on the web where patients with dry eyes went from doctor suggestion to doctor suggestion, prescription to prescription, and at best they just maintained a state of relative comfort with regular application of artificial tears, but no cure & no real relief.  I’m pretty sick of that already, and being at a point where I was tired of dealing with the ‘usual’ approach, I was willing to try something less ‘chemical’ and more likely to actually work.  I went back to intuition, simplicity, and folk remedies.

I had settled on warm compresses, castor oil, and – potentially – colloidal silver.

Since we have to separate fact from fiction on the ‘net, especially with alternative health suggestions from random website visitors & owners, I’ve learned to listen to my intuition – and it usually steers me the right direction.  But I share this while also saying: This is MY experience, this was MY intuition I was listening to, these are MY eyes I’m testing this theory on.  Your mileage may vary, and I am not a medical professional.

What I’ve done, and the current state of affairs:

I had already begun using warm compresses on my eyes a day or so before (Monday or Tuesday).  The idea behind that is the warmth liquifies the oily secretions from the meibomian glands, helping to unblock the glands and release the secretions onto the surface of the eye.  On its own, over a couple of days, I hadn’t seen improvement.  The castor oil arrived on Thursday, as I said, and that evening I put one drop of castor oil in each eye, closed my eyes for a minute or so, then applied a warm compress.  I used the warm cloth to gently wipe away any excess oil around my eyes.  I ended up with a light layer of oil around the rim of my eye that I left alone.

Here is what I was theorizing with the castor oil – when used in the Oil Cleansing Method, we guess that the castor oil is helping to both draw the oil out of the pores AND altering its structure so that it can be more easily removed.  Castor oil also has some anti-inflammatory & anti-bacterial qualities.  There may be other things going on, but it’s mostly theoretical anyway, so whatever it is, I assume it’s good.    Anyway, I was thinking the drawing & structure altering qualities would work in my favor with the meibomian gland oils that seemed to be blocked.  The warm compress would also, theoretically, help that.  The anti-inflammatory quality of the oil would hopefully work its magic in and around my eyes.

I have read some folks who swear by putting the oil directly IN their eyes, and others who insist that should NEVER be done.  I went with my gut, and put a drop directly in each eye.  At first, I experienced some burning of the eyes for a minute or so (just after putting the oil in), but even that went away after the first couple of days as the dryness and irritation reduced.  The oil seemed to offer a temporary oil layer that did what the meibomian gland secretions are supposed to do.  My eyes get really dry overnight, especially, and the castor oil only slightly reduced that – but during the day, I noticed a real improvement.  I also noticed that when they felt a little dry, and I would put in the artificial tears drops, my eyes got even DRIER.  Another ‘aha’ moment.  I’ve been avoiding eyedrops ever since.

On Sunday, I stopped by the natural foods store to pick up colloidal silver in a spritzer bottle.

Now, that’s a topic you could spend some time researching, but I’ll give the short version:  colloidal silver is – literally – ’small particles of silver suspended in pure water’. Unfortunately, most bottles labeled ‘colloidal silver’ are not truly 100% colloidal silver, but are instead ionic silver or mostly ionic silver with a small amount of true colloidal silver.  There’s all kinds of controversy about it, but what is not controversial is that silver is antibiotic, and products containing silver have been used in the eye for ages.  The controversy surrounds the quality of the product and whether products labeled as colloidal ARE colloidal, or ionic, or silver protein, or yada yada yada.  There’s some good independent research info here http://www.silver-colloids.com/Reports/reports.html & I’ve determined that the colloidal silver I have is about 10% actual colloidal silver with the rest ionic silver solution.

The only real problem with an ionic silver product is that, when ingested, the ionic silver combines with chloride in the body to form silver chloride, a salt which doesn’t have the antibiotic effect of silver, but is usually excreted as waste with few or no side effects.  But it can build up in the tissues if used in very very very high quantities & in that situation may cause permanent skin discoloration (argyria) – but this problem is MORE likely to occur with very very low quality silver products that are silver proteins in water, not true colloidal silver. Colloidal silver labeled products are not regulated, so it’s very difficult to know what you’re getting, hence the random paranoia you see out there.  Anyway, the brand I got is about 10% actual silver colloids with the rest as ionic silver, which is fine for my needs – topical application only, small amounts, not planning to use long-term, no opportunity to convert in large quantity to silver chloride.  Still with me so far? 

I continued to apply the castor oil drops in my eyes, plus a warm compress two to three times a day (first thing AM, midday, last thing before bed PM), and added spritzes of colloidal silver after (yes, directly on my eyes/closed eyelids).  I did this Sunday afternoon & Sunday night (the spritz of silver colloid solution immediately reduced the feeling of irritation, and I saw further improvement in redness), then Monday AM & just before leaving for my eye appointment.  The air conditioning in the office dried my eyes a bit, but aside from that, they felt about as good as they had a few months back (before they started drying worse from allergies & eyelid scrubs).  At this point, I was pretty convinced that I was on the right track, so I really just wanted to know how my eyes looked to the doctor.  She told me they actually looked a bit better than the last time she’d seen me!  The cornea surface was fine (no damage from the painful dryness of the previous week), and she described my eyes as ‘a little inflamed, but not too bad’.  They looked far less red to me than they had in previous days.  She prescribed & provided a bottle of steroid eyedrops (“to relieve the irritation”) which I have yet to open.

I warned her that I’m that kind of patient they warn you about – the ‘usual things’ don’t usually work for me, and I tend to have sensitivities & reactions to medications.  I asked if she had alternatives to the steroid drops, or suggestions.  She had none.  She acknowledged that in high use over a long term they are bad (they raise eye pressure and cause glaucoma!), but didn’t have any ideas.  She didn’t seem to notice when I said I’d been applying castor oil to my eyes & that it had helped.  And she shared that she’d ‘just come back from a seminar on dry eyes & this is what they say we should start with’, then described the rest of the ‘usual course’ of treatment for dry eyes that ‘they’ told her to use (when I pushed ever so gently on what kind of results they see, she also acknowledged this program doesn’t seem to work for a large number of patients).  Alas.  They were the same scrips I’d already read up on, and determined the same thing – they don’t work for a lot of people, who just continue to suffer for months & years.

****It’s now Wednesday, about a week from the worst point of discomfort and a week into my own dry eye treatment.  I am very satisfied with my progress so far. The redness around my eyes is minimal to barely noticeable, and the area no longer seems ‘inflamed’ or swollen. The feeling of irritation IN my eyes is rare & barely noticeable.  The feeling of dry eyes has been greatly reduced.  I can see a decent tear layer on & in my eyes.  How much of this is my own tear function improving, and how much is the castor oil in my eyes, I don’t know.  I do not use artificial tear eyedrops during the day anymore, and my eye comfort seems to maintain.  Overnight, my eyes are still drying out – by morning, it’s a bit uncomfortable until I do my routine.  I think when I reach the point where my eyes are NOT uncomfortable when I first wake up, I will consider that a serious victory.

The current routine (AM, PM, occasionally mid-day):  warm water splash on closed eyes, castor oil drop in each eye, warm compress, gently remove excess oil around eye with damp compress cloth, gentle wipe same warm cloth along closed lashline, blink a bit, spritz colloidal silver solution on eyes a couple of times.  My eyes feel pretty good after this. 

As usual, I’ve been super detailed, but that’s purposeful.    I think the details are important here.  Since I realize my style of writing can be a bit too much at times, I might follow up later with a LESS detailed post.

Please note: my eyes were relatively healthy before the inflammation of last week; except for the meibomian gland problem (and the resulting dryness), overall everything was fine (tho’ irritated from dryness & occasional allergies).  I’ve had regular eye checks over the past 18 months (part of the Lasik care).  And again, these are MY eyes, and it’s my choice to go against doctor’s orders (I’m not using the prescription eyedrops), and it’s my choice to take an alternative approach to treatment.  I would never push anyone else to do this, but I think it’s good to know there are other options when the ‘usual stuff’ isn’t working.  I do think this serious dryness & inflammation problem was at least partly from a reaction to the eyelid scrub, but I would have been trying this approach anyway, so luckily no harm done.

PS – my follow-up with the eye doc is in two weeks (well, two weeks from the Monday appointment).

How to Meditate (even if you’re not the ‘meditation type’): Part 1

I meditate every day.  I don’t say that with false pride or with false modesty.  It’s simply a habit I created to support myself in my spiritual journey.  I didn’t decide one day to meditate every day without fail; I didn’t make a conscious resolution.  It just happened.

After about a year of semi-regular meditation, I realized one day that I just couldn’t go to bed if I hadn’t ’sat’.  That’s usually what I call it:  ’sitting’.  If I don’t ’sit’, I don’t go to bed.  That’s all.  One night, it was very late, maybe 2 or 3 am, I thought to myself, “I’ll just go to bed.  I’ll just skip it tonight.”  I brushed my teeth, pulled down the covers, and next thing I knew, I was sitting at my altar preparing to go through my usual meditation rituals.  Boom.  It was such a habit at that point, my body wouldn’t even allow me to go to bed without completing it.  That’s when I knew I’d finally reached that point where it was no longer something I just did when I remembered to do it, or thought I had time for it, or thought I *needed* it.  It was, in fact, a part of my daily life.  It was normal.

That’s when I began to see that the only real difference between a ‘meditator’ and a ‘non-meditator’ is the habit of actually meditating.  If you look for reasons why not to do it, or argue that you don’t have time … you just haven’t built in the habit yet.  For me, I usually sit just before I go to bed – it’s part of my ‘wind down before sleep’ routine.  Sometimes, I’ll do it in the middle of the day, or after dinner.  But the HABIT is prior to sleep.  That works for me.

So the first thing is to identify YOUR best time.  I’m alert but relaxed later in the evening.  Maybe you’re alert but relaxed at lunchtime.  Or just prior to dinner.  Or, heaven forbid, at 5 am.    That’s your time.

The second thing is to find a space.  It’s a challenge, I know.  I didn’t build my meditation habit until I lived alone.  I know how hard it can seem, with partners & pets & telephone calls.  But there has to be a corner, a space, that you can call your own.  Particularly in a shared housing situation, whether roommates or spouses or a family of ten … we need a space of our own.  Just a corner will do, where the others in your life will honor your time with quiet & reduced distraction.  It may require agreements, you may need to ask your partners to hold to a contract where they allow you to sit quietly for a period of time, without interrupting.  Ideally, you have a room or a closet that you can make into your own sacred space.  Ask that your partner & family members honor your time: if the door is closed, please do not disturb.

The third thing is to give yourself permission.    How many of us put everything ELSE first?  The kids, the spouse, the job, the committees, the hobbies, the TV …

You can absolutely count on being more centered, more compassionate, more prepared to manage every little crisis that pops up … if you’re regularly taking care of yourself by sitting quietly and turning within for 10, 20, 30 minutes.  It’s okay to take care of yourself.  I’m giving you permission, now just give it to yourself. 

When I worked in Human Services (homeless services), I would tell my counselors & volunteers to remember what the stewardess always tells you during the emergency instructions: put the oxygen mask on yourself before you try to help the person sitting next to you.  If you can’t breathe, you can’t help your neighbor.  If you can’t breathe or maintain your center, you can’t offer your clearest head or kindest heart to your spouse, child, friend in need.  You help others by helping yourself.  Do you want to be compassionate towards others?  Begin with compassion towards yourself.  We are taught to believe that ‘putting others first’ means never ever putting ourselves first, but that message only contains half the equation.  To help others, to offer the best of ourselves, we must be healthy & hardy enough to not lose our own center in the process.  Meditation taps into our center, our Self.  By honoring and caring for that center, we offer the best version of ourselves to those we wish to help; and we offer more compassion and better help to them as a result.

So, pick a time, pick a place, and give yourself permission.  Next time, we’ll talk about some very easy ways to focus and to create a habit of meditation.

Namaste (I bow to the Divine in you).

EFT

I’m reading up on the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), a technique that uses light tapping on acupuncture meridians plus positive affirmations to help people overcome physical & emotional barriers to their happiness.  I’ve heard great things about it, and plan to use it on myself once I’ve read up a bit more.  I’m excited about any technique that honors the body-mind connection.

Check out the website for more information, and let me know if you’ve tried it & what you think.

in the middle of the night …

The mind races, late at night.  Not in a bad way, necessarily, just the brain on overdrive.  Talking to a friend earlier this evening got me going.

All we need in life is one person – one – to love us wholly and unconditionally.  If we have that, we experience love in the purest form possible in this physical experience of life.  If we experience that, if we feel it for just one minute … we know how to be loved.  And if we know how to be loved, wholly, purely, for whoever we are in this life … we then know how to love.  And if we know how to love, with that same purity and without conditions, we can love ourselves.  And if we can love ourselves, and can allow others to love us (it’s a circuit – it must be completed), we know how to surrender to Divine Love.

If we experienced that unconditional love from a parent or someone at home, we can grow up with a sense of self, a Center – we don’t just sway with the wind or desperately seek approval & love from others.  If we don’t experience that at home, we seek it elsewhere – that’s a hard road, but there’s room for love there, too.  We have a lot of lessons in that seeking behavior, but (still) ultimately, if we allow one person to love us wholly and without condition, and see us with our faults and imperfections, and continue to simply allow them to love us through that, we still have the opportunity to learn how to love ourselves and surrender to the Divine.  So all is not lost – even if you think you had the worst childhood, the most unloving & dysfunctional family, the most terrible youth, the most destructive marriage … allow one person, just one, to love you wholly, and you will know how to love yourself.  It’s in you.

If you think this is about leaving the power in the hands of others, it’s not.  You find love by loving.  To repeat, it’s a circuit that must be completed.  You cannot receive love without loving:  you cannot give love without allowing space for more.  Hold on jealously to love, and there is very little of it; give it freely, and it is abundantly yours.  The more the give, the more you have.  Love, allow others to love you, and you love yourself.  It’s a fairly simple equation, and it begins within your own experience of relationship to others, it is within your control.  The practice of it can seem less than simple when you begin, but as it becomes habit to say to yourself “I love”, the experience becomes easier & freer, and the mantra becomes “I am Love”.

“I love because I am Love.”

Because you are.

Mokshya

‘Mokshya’ or ‘moksha’ or ‘mukti’ … Sanskrit for ‘liberation’ or ‘release’ :  it is the concept of  liberation from the cycle of suffering, death, and reincarnation.  It is the goal of the spiritual life to free oneself from the bonds of karma and rebirth, and to ultimately unite with the Divine.

Nature heals

So the biggest driver of my interest in natural and alternative healing is vanity.  Or *was*.  Vanity began it all.  I started breaking out as a young adult.  I was one of those teens whose skin barely ever had a pimple all through high school, then BAM.  So began a struggle, a battle, a fight to the death.  20 years later, here I am, still working it out.  I’ve learned so much about my body since then, and the structure of skin, and just why it is that some people have easy, healthy skin, and some … don’t.  The main thing I’ve learned (and this, sadly, is a recent understanding) is to just leave it alone.  Duh.  Skin heals.

A relatively healthy body – and a relatively healthy skin – is designed to be self-healing.  We undermine nature’s design to our detriment.  Every time I put something on my skin to ‘help’ it, I’m sending my skin into a minor state of shock.  So I’m learning to – finally! – leave it the hell alone.

In the past few months my skin had gotten steadily more upset.  Dry, dry, dry, irritated, dry, breaking out, and still dry.  Well, geez.  Seems almost unfair.  Then I basically stopped doing anything to it, and it’s ten times happier than it was.  No longer red & irritated.  Breakout clearing.  Huh.  Amazing.

The funny thing is, I’m totally ‘nature girl’ when it comes to skincare.  Very few products, and most of them are pure, natural individual items like sesame oil or aloe juice.  Every time I downgrade my routine, my skin is happier.  I’m getting closer & closer to just splashing my face with water once a day and walking out the door.  The ultimate low-maintenance routine.  The less I do, the happier my skin is.  My skin is sensitive, dry, and easily thrown off balance.

I’m always so tempted to ‘do something’, put something on, and I need to remember what I keep learning bit by bit – the body is designed to heal itself, the skin is designed to heal itself, LET IT do what it does.  Leave it alone.  So this is my reminder to myself:   let it alone.

So.

Well, like so many of my grandiose plans – I set up a blog, lose my computer, work on other things, finally have what I need to blog, realize I’ve lost track of whatever it was I thought I had to say – I start, then avoid getting to it.

So this is me finally getting to it. It’s a combination of thinking there’s a lot I want to say, not believing it’s interesting enough to share, wondering if I have the ability to verbalize what I want to verbalize, and just plain old putting stuff off. But I’m here. How much do you really want to hear about me? ‘Cause ‘me’ is all I’ve got.

So here’s the funny thing about the Universe …

I said “I’m starting a new blog about spirituality yada yada yada …” and on New Year’s Day, while I was at an afternoon yoga class, my home was burgled, computer & several other quick-cash items taken, including every piece of jewelry I’d formed an attachment to in my life.

Ha Ha.  Very funny.

You can’t tell me God doesn’t have a sense of irony.  We say “Oh, look how non-attached I am to money & stuff”, and the Universe says, “Really?  Let’s just see.”  We say, “Oh, I’ve moved out of the past and into the present moment,” and the Universe says – you guessed it – “Really?” 

So my connections to my past are further removed from my life.  The only photographs I had left of any event prior to this past August were digital pics on my computer.  Huh.  Sorry, no more looking backward, Kiddo.  Not even an option.  Whatcha gonna do about it?  Nothin.  And the jewelry.  Wow, was I ever emotionally attached to my jewelry.  It wasn’t about dollar value at all – it was about who I was when I bought a pair of earrings for myself, or where I was when I got a necklace, or what my life was about when I was given a ring.  I gave away all the jewelry I didn’t like last year – well, unless they were actually worth a little something, if you know what I mean – so what I had left meant something to me.  I liked what the carnelian drop earrings said about me, and what the amber pendant said about me, and I remembered where I got them & why, and how that felt.

The loss of the laptop was an inconvenience for the most part (and an expense, as I’m still working through the insurance process), except for the loss of the pictures.  The loss of the bike is a shame, but it wasn’t expensive and I don’t desperately need it right now.  The DVD’s are just dollars (tho’ you gotta wonder what kind of person steals ‘The Princess Bride’ and ‘Groundhog Day’, and can’t recognize the layers of karma there).  What hurt was what can’t be replaced.  Pictures and memories.

But somehow it was still just stuff.  Just stuff.  Stuff I was attached to, stuff I didn’t need, stuff that could be taken away from me at any time, stuff that I couldn’t bring with me into the next life no matter how well I packed it.