Tag: sunrise

Homeward Bound

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Day Seven, Last Day.

We choose to end our time here on the beach as the sun rises again. I am convinced there is no better way to start the day. We are all together, including the therapists. It feels like a special group. We’re told we were a low maintenance group and we hear, “You are our favorite group.” There is an ease among us now. We have been through a transformation together and it has bonded us. At least while we’re still in one place. Once we get in our cars and onto our planes and back into our lives, who knows.

Of the Fourteen people involved in this whole process from the therapists and cooks to the doctor and the participants I knew five coming in. And I’ll continue to stay in touch with them. But this whole experience is unique because we each had such inward experiences. We were tiny little islands of processes. Our take-away and evolution, or involution, were extremely personal. While we shared the same big house and amazing therapists and helpers, our transformations were ours alone.

We came together in this experience in much the same way we get to know our neighbors right after a hurricane or other natural calamity and vow – at least privately – that we’ll all become best friends and this will become THAT neighborhood where everyone knows everyone else. But it’s not sustainable. I’m not sad or wistful about this, just observing it.

People come into and leave our lives all the time. It’s by design.

Today, I meet with Dr. Jain for the last official time. The news is all positive. My agni is up, my ama is down, but there’s still a ways to go. My Pitta/Kapha constitution has been restored but my Vata is still elevated, but not nearly to the degree it was, there are still some stress management practices I will need to continue.

Oh, and, I should be a vegan.

He actually told me this back in August when I brought my husband here for some mini-panchakarma. I nodded and said okay and committed for about 45 minutes. I didn’t totally agree with him. Here’s why:

About 12 years ago I got fed up with food being the enemy and decided to make it my friend by learning as much as I could about it. I found an amazing program in NYC called the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. It continues to be one of the most profound and life-enhancing experiences I’ve ever had. During the study of  my own self with regards to food I came to the now-educated conclusion that the Blood Type diet held the most positive answers for me. I was also quite taken with the whole concept of Ayurveda, so as a newly minted Certified Holistic Health Coach I used those two philosophies together to heal my own food issues as well as the digestive, weight and stress concerns of others.

All of this to say, my blood type tells me that I should basically eat beef and broccoli. And when I do eat mostly paleo my weight normalizes, my energy is sustained and I feel good. But it’s been a long time since I held to a strict diet of any kind.

So I do what I should have done in August, and ask him why.

Does it have something to do with agni? Does eating meat put the fire out per se? I mean, I’m open to try almost anything that will boost my energy and make me feel shiny again.

“No,” said he, “eating meat has nothing to do with agni. You do not have enough agni right now to digest meat.”

Of course! That makes total sense.

In truth, if I thought I could be a healthy vegan I would completely embrace it. I don’t like the smell of cooking meat. I don’t like touching raw meat. I do love a beautifully seasoned filet made by a Cordon Bleu chef. But I am committed to my own health. I have promised myself, and Dr. Jain, that I will do the vegan thing for three months. My hope is to be balanced enough to add eggs back in. That’s all, I don’t need meat. Maybe a few times of year. Some happy grass-fed, free range animal protein. Or not.

If I had one recommendation about all this food misinformation and conflicting theories – for anyone who is looking for one – that came out of all this experience it would be this: find a way to cleanse so that you can begin to understand the language of your body again. Learn to listen to its needs, not the desires of your tired, worn out ego looking for a sugar bump. Reset in some way and listen.

Really listen.

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Our amazing healers: Casey, Roslyn, Jenny (therapists), Dr. Jain and Michele Jain.

Scrape, Pull, Brush

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Day Four

On this morning we decide to do our pranayama and meditation on the beach as the sun rises. It’s chilly so we bundle up, gather towels to sit on and blankets to wrap ourselves in. The tide is making its way in and at this particular location that means there will be no beach on which to sit in less than an hour so we perch on the ridge of the sand dune and wait. The sky is already light and beginning to blush as the sun still hides behind the horizon. The full moon is directly behind us slowly descending against a gradient sky of pastels. Suddenly a man with fishing gear is standing beside us with a huge smile on this face. He says a hearty “good morning” and makes his way down to the water’s edge to set up his poles. Not long after, another happy soul appears and emits a, “Wow! Good morning!” They must not get much company in the wee hours.

Their mood is infectious. We learn later, when we ask one of them to take our photo, that they are here on vacation from Portugal.

The sun rises behind the Florida mountains, rimming the tops of the clouds in a shimmering neon orange. It is full minutes before it seems to move at all. We’ve forgotten pranayama, mostly,  but we do chant a quiet Gayatri Mantra and an attempt is made to do an open eye meditation. But mostly we’re struck silent by the magnificence before us: this trivial thing we take for granted will happen on a daily basis.

Once the spell is broken and the sun too bright to gaze into, we do some random yoga poses. It turns into more of Simon Says play time, with each of us guiding one pose. Then Dr. Jain’s wife, Michelle, who is a yoga teacher and yoga nidra facilitator (among her many talents) asks if we’d like to do some laughter yoga. She’s certified in that as well.

We’re a bit tentative, too refined for such silliness, then she lets out this huge belly laugh totally unexpectedly and we fall apart. It might be my new favorite yoga.

Laughter is indeed the best medicine.

Back at the house we begin to mentally prepare for our personal schedules. My meeting with the doctor is early today and our goal is to discuss my daily routine. (Finally! Over 40 years of journals have been filled with this ridiculous notion of scheduling my day or at least my morning. Mostly it ends up with me needing to get up at 3 A.M. and be done with my whole day somewhere around 11 A.M.) I have some ideas of my own so we’ll see what comes up.

I show up armed with the daily routine for a pitta, some notes from a friend who is in a training for just this – creating healthy habits based on Ayurvedic principles – and the usual suspects I believe I need to complete in the morning in order to feel prepared and productive.

He tosses the pitta routine aside, apparently my secondary dosha, Kapha is what needs addressing at this time, and he scrutinizes my various lists placing check marks, numbers and other notations beside items. Overall his recommendations seem doable and at this moment I am committed and ready to take my time and my life back. Here’s the abbrieviated list:

  • Rise before the sun
  • Tongue scraping – clearing the sleeping muck (or ama – toxins – that collect on the tongue overnight)
  • Oil pulling – a blend of sesame oil with a touch of peppermint oil swished around the mouth, pulled through the teeth and gargled
  • Drink a cup of hot water
  • Pranayama – specific breath work to clean out the cobwebs of the nasal passages and sleepy brain
  • Meditation – maybe 10-20 minutes to start
  • Yoga – whatever I want to do

Beyond that, he has no opinion of the morning routine. I still think I can cram in journaling, reading and writing, which may put me back at 3 AM, but we’ll see. Also not sure where walking or the gym will come in. But I like the beginnings of this, it feels like something I can implement while I’m here and continue once I’m home.

I skip lunch so I don’t react during my treatments. It’s a good plan and I am glad I did. So many things are better on an empty stomach. If only I could remember that more often.

The treatments hold no surprises today. I am able to relax through them. Tomorrow is Big B day. THAT may have some surprises.

Evening session after dinner brought a cooking class with a sidebar of Dr. Jain’s personal story and entry into Ayurveda. It was far more entertaining than the cooking lesson. Like most people who make huge lifestyle changes, he was struck with a personal issue that seemed devastating at the time.

He calls it the first crack in the ego foundation. This crack is  necessary and the impetus for change.

As chief of staff and general surgery at a hospital, at the prime of his life and career, he developed an auto-immune muscle disease. He was told he should take a year sabbatical and rest. There’s a lot in between, but the bottom line is, it led him to Ayurveda and he credits Ayurveda for healing him completely of the disease.

For me, it’s the personal stories that have the most impact and his was profound.

I head up to bed with the sense that I am exactly where I am supposed to be in this moment. I open the window to hear the ocean and try not to think about Big B.

Saturday Morning Spells

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There is something so enchanting about the first morning light. As darkness relents to the rising sun the whole world is aglow for just a few moments. Light filters through trees, like a mystical omen of the magic to come. The world seems to warm. It’s only meant for a few. It’s too easy to miss, to sleep through.

During this time, in the summer months anyway – of which there are at least six here in middle Florida – the ground begins to make noise. Fallen leaves rustle, rocks are pushed out of the way by tiny reptilian feet. Most birds are still rubbing the sleep from their eyes, but a few start to chirp a little lazily.

There is one that seems to sit just outside my bedroom window whose sole purpose is to let me know the sun is about to come up. In an hour. He panics, I think.

Once the day begins to brighten and the sun makes its way to a visible point, the rest of the avian world begins to come alive. Two mourning doves coo sweet nothings on my fence. At times they roam around the floor of my tiny backyard looking for morsels. So at home, they wait until the very last minute to fly off in a huff when the hounds are released for their morning routines.

It is Saturday. The usual humming of car motors, the rise and fall of garage doors and the air brakes of the school bus are all absent. In their place is silence; the background on which all other sounds can be heard more clearly. A wind chime from two doors down announces a gentle breeze, a dog barks in the distance and beside me a cat works a catnip filled toy, causing the tiny bell on her collar to sing with excitement.

It’s too early and not enough hot yet for the summer bugs to begin singing. I don’t know what they are, some sort of cicada maybe, but I love their song. Or more probably, what it represents, and the fond memories of fleeting summers where there were three other seasons.

In an hour or so, the light will be different, more common. The sweet sounds against the quiet background will be lost to activity. The morning will be just a memory soon forgotten as the day picks up speed.

But later, much later – although it will be here before we know it – will be dusk. That golden hour when the sun, knowing it’s time is short, will flame out spectacularly providing the perfect light for a few fleeting moments before bidding adieu.

Yet there is still light, even after the sun slips below the horizon. As the creatures of the earth honor the rising sun each morning, it is the sun itself that celebrates the end of its workday with an explosion of colors that dance within the clouds.

I wonder what colors the sky will celebrate this evening.

[Photo: Allison L. Andersen. Taken at the Amrit Yoga Institute, Salt Springs, Florida.]