When has a week been so full?

The picture on the left is from The Whole Daily by Alice Nicholls and I think most of us will agree with the 20 health tips listed.

Ayurveda

Our subject for this week was Ayurveda and its principles and the role they play in our digestion.  I took the questionnaire and I came out as a Pitta (summer) with an even spread between Vata and Kapha.  There are plenty of places online to take a quiz if you are interested in finding out about your own tendencies but here is one DoshaQuiz.  It is on Deepak Chopra’s website.  This week I also started another of his and Oprah’s 21 Day Meditation Challenges.   This one is Manifesting True Success.  I have done many others and love them and look forward to my mornings with Deepak and Oprah.  Here is a link to learn more:   Chopra Meditation

Creativity

We were given a couple of new tools to support our journey.  One of the tools is really interesting.  It is called Morning Pages by Julia Cameron.  The idea is to get up and immediately go and sit down with pen and paper and write three (3) pages of whatever comes into your head.  No one will read this, it doesn’t have to be graded, it is just a stream of words flowing onto the paper.  My honey calls it a brain dump.  It amazed me to actually do this a few mornings and to discover that I was at page 3 and really didn’t remember getting there.  The words just poured from my head, down my arm out my fingers and onto the paper.  Afterwards I felt really clear headed and refreshed.  Julia was one of our lecturers and it was a fascinating talk.  The concept was how to introduce more creativity into our lives.  The tool is Morning Pages.  The next tool is Artist Dates but I haven’t gone there yet but it sounds like fun.

Is it serendipity or synchronicity?

This week we had two episodes of Small World Syndrome.  We never go to early church and my honey decided we would go last week and try it.  While there some folks introduced themselves to the church and said they were from New York.  As it was time to walk out I asked honey if he was coming and he said no he wanted to talk to the people from New York.  It turns out that the only couple we knew from his town were his best friends.  The family that we both know is a very close family to ours and my daughter and the son of this family consider each other brother/sister.  I was dumbfounded.  The second incidence was yesterday when we went to Hilton Head to run errands and in a rather obscure parking lot at a little spot where the needlepoint store is we ran into good friends from back in Canada.  How come?  It was a day full of nice surprises.

In the kitchen this week

I decided that I needed to learn how to make homemade mayonnaise.  When I was growing up we would go to my grandparents house and Auntie Vi would make us little cucumber sandwiches with homemade mayonnaise.  Hers was the best.  I found a recipe in Dr. Mark Hyman’s book “The 10 Day Detox Diet” and tried to make it.  The first attempt was pretty awful as I didn’t have any regular olive oil, much to my surprise, so I used garlic flavored olive oil.  The second attempt was even worse.  The reason was the olive oil again.  It was suggested that we use EVOO and frankly, EVOO tastes like gasoline to me.  So that one was tossed too.  On the third try I was happy with the result because I used regular olive oil (Pompeian).  Even my honey liked it and used it to make egg salad with avocado for lunch.   This was a real success because he is fussy.  So here is the recipe I used it makes about a cup:

1 large omega-3 egg
4 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 cup olive oil (you can use EVOO if you like it)

Combine the first five ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth then with the blender running slowly add the oil in a steady stream through the hole in lid until the mayo is thick and smooth.

Hints

I picked up a few hints from the lectures this week on how to improve your digestion and get bile flowing.

• 15-20 minutes before your meal, drink water it hydrates the buffer in your intestine and gets the bile moving which provides more healthy acid
• take ginger before your meal
• beets will get bile to flow so eat beets if you like them
• cinnamon
• fenugreek
• lots and lots of leafy green vegetables

Stress

Most of the time I am in a good place with a nice balance in my life.  NOT NOW!  I admit that I am stressed.  Too much on my plate this past week and I am paying for it now.  Two nights of waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to go back to sleep, digestion issues, energy all over the place either hyper or logy.  Not only was it a very full week of class work, we had social engagements and entertainment four nights (my rule is maximum of three), plus a two day golf tournament with one day played in torrential rain which was an endurance lesson and really not my idea of a fun day of golf, and then trying to wrap my head around my to do list which is growing, not shrinking.  I want to stop the world and get off for a rest.

The interesting thing about all this is that when I went to do my workbook assignment it turned out that it was all about managing stress and working on getting a strong support group behind you.  All of you are my support group and I love and appreciate the fact that you read these blogs and hope that you will comment when you feel like it.  Some of you write to me and that makes me feel good too.  Thank you for being in my corner.  It means the world.

Have a wonderful week everyone.

Lou