Tantrums As A Way To Self-Discovery

I made a huge discovery last week. I discovered what aspect of my personality was lurking behind my Thinker. As is usually the way, it wasn’t someone telling me what it was, but an “ah ha” moment brought on by a series of events that brought me to my proverbial knees.

For the last 6 months I have been working with my colleague Heather to try and bring about my vision of truly integrating the mind and body. I have been following the trail of intuitive breadcrumbs; meeting and working with other therapists, teasing out a method, building affiliations, blogging, getting a booth at the Natural Living Expo and at the Lincoln-Sudbury High School Wellness Day. Most of these things were quite challenging to me.

However, while all this was going on, I have also been dealing with a very challenging home life. I live with my significant other, and as of this summer, both of his boys, aged 19 and 21. It’s not a big house and it only has 1 bathroom. Not an impossible situation, but everyone needs to do their part so that everyone can get to work on time and the house doesn’t turn into a hovel. Unfortunately, that has not been the case for most of the summer into the Fall, with Steve and I basically being the cook, the maid and the chauffeur.

So, what do you get when you add the frustration of growing a business, the anxiety of manifesting a vision, the fear of financial disaster, exhaustion from spreading yourself too thin, and anger and resentment from carrying more than what you feel is your share of the load at home? In my case, it was a full blown tantrum, complete with throwing things around.

It was not my proudest moment.

But what tipped it off? You could argue that all of that was enough to send anyone over the edge. And yes, I could certainly feel the tension building, but it didn’t have anything to do with what was going on outside of me. This was a seething cauldron that was kept out of sight and mind until the pressure to keep the lid on got to be too much, and exploded. And it was me keeping the lid on. What about myself did I not want to see?

What tipped it off was a conversation I had the morning of the Tantrum. I was talking with my nutrition counsellor, Paulina, after one of the group meetings about spirituality being one of the primary foods of life. This moved on into talking about faith and surrender and how I have a REALLY hard time with that because, “I don’t like to lose. I want to win.” Those exact words. They just popped out from the depths of some abyss that I had relegated them to. It wasn’t the Thinker saying those words. It was the badass of the profiles that I learned at the Energy Medicine School: the Enforcer/Charismatic Leader, and it wasn’t small!

I was so shocked and appalled (a beautiful bit of judgement there) from that spontaneous visit from my lower self, that I decided to pretend it never happened. I’m a Thinker. It’s not about winning for me, it’s about bringing ideas and inspiration into the world. (Visions of wide rivers with pyramids and bridges in New York seem to be pouring in from somewhere...) That may be true, but that isn’t all of it.

Well, apparently, once you let that particular cat out of the bag, it won’t go back in, hence the tantrum.

It wasn’t until the next day that I had the “ah ha” moment though. There I was, in the shower, and a little thought pops in. “Trust, faith and surrender are the same thing.” (Thank you Guides!) And in that moment, as they say, I had a thousand moments. I saw in a thousand ways, thoughts and actions, over the course of my life how I didn’t trust, or if I couldn’t win I wasn’t playing, the competitiveness, the stubborn will, the “my way or the highway” attitude.

But most importantly, I saw that I knew it all along, but either ignored it or rationalized it away. But I never owned it. That’s a lot of me not to own. That’s a lot of power not to own.

So there I was, not 3 days before the Natural Living Expo, the biggest event of my professional career to date, and I find a large part of me that’s hanging out in the open, raw and bleeding. Just what I needed.

The good news is, I have lots of Enforcer/Charismatic Leader friends to help me. I called one of them, (another Heather) and when she stopped laughing, she had a great insight. Basically that just before the Expo, a time that I need to be that Charismatic Leader pioneering a new vision into the world, I’m shown that I have one. I have what it takes. She also helped me see the gifts that are the other aspect of that characteristic. She helped me see the strength, determination, fearlessness, integrity and nobility that doesn’t demand followers, but inspires those to follow. My Thinker, as much as I love her, can’t do that. 

So I want to say a big “Thank You” to the universe for giving me the opportunity to see and appreciate a part of me that scared the crap out of me, in a timely way with all the support of my Guides and friends. It may have looked ugly at the time time, but that's what it took to get me wake up. Just what I needed. Maybe this will help me find the trust that I need to surrender. 

Maybe!

Diet Experiment Day 12: A Short Hiatus

I have made an executive decision. I’m going to take a couple of days break from the experiment before I dive into the next nutrition challenge.

Now, I’m not going to go off the rails. I’m still going to stay away from wheat and dairy and try to keep to the blended diet that I have been doing, I’m just not going to write about it. Mostly because I seem to be either at a plateau or just generally much improved and at a stable point, so not really much to report.

If something goes completely crazy between now and Monday, then I’ll definitely note it down!

So, a run down on how I did overall based on my original criteria.

I don’t feel crappy! To be honest, I haven’t felt crappy for over a week. I have to say that I was quite surprised at how quickly I went from feeling awful and having painful digestive issues to not having them. It was like I climbed out of this big hole and I have to say I’m really not looking to go back in again! (Hence why I will keep to most aspects of the blended diet.) It may not have been a miraculous turnaround, but it was pretty spectacular.

It’s amazing what not feeling crappy does for your energy and motivation. It allowed me to want to as well as be able to do some more exercise. That then improved my energy and motivation at the same time. Getting better quality sleep also helped, so I was even getting less sleep but feeling rested and ready to go.

Not much weight loss I have to say. The grand total was 3 pounds. However, because I am less bloated and have been working on strengthening my core as well as my legs, my posture is better and I think it looks like I lost more than that. It certainly feels like it. And, as it was low on my priority list, I’m not really upset about that.

As for immunity, I’m still not sick.

The most important improvement is my connection to my body. I have always been amazed by the human body on an intellectual level, and know about all the incredible things it can do. However, it pretty much stayed as mental concept. To pay such close attention to it and to be able to check in and feel the changes as I made adjustments was a bit of a revelation. To be sensitive to and aware of what was going on real time allowed me to fully appreciate it’s amazingness at the physical level rather than just as a mental concept.

Diet Experiment Day 11: Proper Prior Planning...

It was a bit of a weird day.

I realized this morning that there wasn’t a whole lot of food in the fridge. I had a mild panic as to what the heck I was going to eat. There I was, all ready to check to see what food would be good for me today only to find that it was actually more of a question of what food was there to eat at all. What made it even more exciting was, with back to back 90 minute clients, the earliest I would get to eat lunch was around 2:00pm.

Okay. So, it didn’t matter whether or not the eggs and rye bread are what I needed or not, they were what was available. They were also quite filling, and I knew that would be needed. There was a banana available, but it was on it’s last legs, and I didn’t even know if it would still be a solid by the time I got to work.

I also decided that, if I actually got time to eat, I should probably have something prepared. A scan of the cupboards produced some Tasty Bite Indian curry style stuff. (As an emergency, they aren’t too bad. The ingredients on the package are actual ingredients that you can find in your average kitchen, without the hassle of having to cook it.) The chickpea one looked good, so I had that. Then I needed some rice. I cooked up some rice, heated up the beans, put them together and pronounced it lunch. Another look through the fridge turned up some salad I didn’t finish and some beets. Perfect. 

I don’t know why I worried. I only had, maybe 5 bites of the curry and rice and 4 bites of the salad between clients.

Note to self: It would probably be a good idea to have some fairly healthy emergency type food available in case you forget to go shopping. It kind of defeats the purpose of a diet experiment if you don’t have the types of food you are trying to experiment with. Although it does bring up a good point. You can’t always be prepared. Sometimes life just gets on top you and you do something human, like forget to go shopping. I figure, as long as I don’t make that a habit and it is the exception rather than the rule, I should do okay.

Otherwise, weight stayed the same, I got out of bed okay and was fine about facing the day, so not too bad. 

Diet Experiment Day 10: The Gauntlet Has Been Thrown

I’ve been given another challenge.

I have been sent menu plans and recipes for Super Immunity from the nutritional counsellor running the group I am in. I have had a look at the menu plan and there isn’t one bit of animal protein on there. Not only that, the percentage of raw to cooked food is probably around 60-40 or even 70-30 in favor of raw. Essentially the opposite to what I have been doing and not recommended by either of the approaches, one saying that I need animal protein in my diet for optimal health and wellness, including immunity, and the other, just too much raw food. Not to mention that I am 4 days away from finishing this experiment and I’m basically being asked to pony up for 2 more weeks. It also looks, at first glance, like quite a lot of work preparing the meals.

How do I balance this? How can I incorporate 3 different approaches to nutrition that all  have stacks of research or thousands of years of clinical trials as well as my personal experience that validate their efficacy?

Probably, the first thing to do is look to see where they all overlap in terms of specific fruits, veggies and grains that are recommended. At first glance, there is actually quite a lot of overlap (which says a lot in itself if the same foods keep coming up over and over again as foods that are considered healthy across party lines.) Things like cruciferous veg, certain berries and other fruits, certain beans and one or two grains appear on all three lists. If there are any in the meal plan that are considered avoids on both of the others, they won’t be included. If something is on the meal plan and one of the other lists, I’ll muscle test it to see if I should include it.

Then I will adjust some of the immunity recipes to add some animal protein, but try and keep that to a minimum at maybe one meal per day. There are soups, stews and other cooked food included in the meal plan, so I may move them around a little bit so that some of the days that are mostly raw or cold meals are more balanced. That will probably be determined by muscle testing to see what would work best for the day

So, effectively, I’m going to do the best blend of the three that I can manage that maintains their general integrity, ask my body what it thinks, and then see what happens. However, probably won’t start it until I finish with my current experiment. It looks like I will need the weekend to study ingredient lists, get my pantry in order and come up with a plan to execute the plan!

So, I accept the challenge. Sort of.

Diet Experiment Day 9: Whole Foods Hi Jinks

Who knew you could have so much fun grocery shopping! 

Let me set the stage. In order for Steve to muscle/energy test my Spleen/Pancreas, I had to hold my arm down at my side, palm facing backwards so my thumb is touching my leg, with me holding what I want to test in the other hand. Steve then reaches in between my arm and side at the wrist and pulls, while I try to hold my thumb against my leg. If my arm comes away easily, (tests weak) then that food would interfere with the health of my Spleen/Pancreas. If there is good resistance, or he can’t budge it, (tests strong) my body says it’s okay.

The first thing I wanted to do was get a reading for something that has continually tested negatively to work as a control, so we know what it feels like in order to compare it to other things. (It’s not supposed to be a competition to determine who’s stronger, Steve or me, rather if I am strong or weak compared to myself.) Well, I tried to test with some bread in one of those hard plastic containers, but it gave a positive reading. That confused me, so I grabbed some cheese that had a light plastic covering. Steve lightly tugged my arm and my whole body was knocked off balance so I had to take a step or fall over! So that’s a “no”. (I’m assuming that the plastic around the bread was too thick for my body to get a reading.) So, we had a baseline, and then just went about the store, as we usually do, looking at what’s there and seeing what we we would like to eat, except that instead of just putting in the basket, I held the food and he tugged my arm.

I can only imagine what it must have looked like to other people seeing me being tugged around Whole Foods with food in my hands! I have to say it turned something that could be considered drudgery into a really fun game! So we bought food that seemed to agree with me and had a nice, but (because of me) simple dinner. 

I woke up less groggy than yesterday, but not better than the previous days. What was different was my digestion. It had calmed down more than it had been since I started this experiment. Now, that could have been because of a lot of reasons, one being that I have been cleaning out my system for 9+ days. I just find it interesting that it hadn’t happened, say, a couple of days ago. I did lose a pound from yesterday though, so that’s good.

I decided that it was a success, so I wanted to test what to eat for breakfast and lunch today. Unfortunately, Steve leaves very early in the morning, so I had to do it a different way. Luckily, Donna Eden has a method of self testing! Actually, she has several, but I used the one where I am effectively a pendulum. This, obviously, has the same issues as testing with a partner in that you could sabotage it easily. I did my control test again, and my “yes” and “no” were different from hers, but were consistent with me, so I went with that.

I have to say, some things surprised me. My body chose eggs (I was expecting oatmeal or some leftovers) with some rye bread with coconut butter (both chosen last night as food that would work, and both only have like 5 ingredients apiece) and some steak from last night’s dinner, but not the peas or potato, or other leftovers in the fridge. So I try other veggies in the fridge and get negatives. I need a vegetable! Then I spied the kale and grabbed that. I got a yes! Then I start preparing to cook it, when a thought pops into my head: test cooked or raw. My body said that it wanted it raw. Kale?? Raw?? While I was flailing about, my eye caught sight of the avocado that we got that had tested strong. I held them both together and got a “yes”. Well, that’s a little better. That should smooth out some of those rough edges. Because I was having so much fun, I also tested whether or not to have oil and vinegar with it, and then which kinds! The banana tested strong so I brought that too!

So, with a combination of intuition and muscle testing, I am determining my diet. I’m curious to see if there are any improvements, if things stay the same or go backwards.

Diet Experiment Day 8: Further Explorations

I woke up a bit groggy this morning, cause unknown, but it may have had something to do with waking up rather early, around 5:30, deciding that was much earlier than the 6:30 that I had planned and went back to sleep. I finally decided (as it happened, just past 6:30) that the bizarre dream I was having really wasn’t entertaining me enough and decided to get up, albeit a bit more slowly than I have been of late. I’m sure the gloominess of the morning didn’t help either.

My weight stayed the same as yesterday, so improvement numbers are pretty low today, probably no higher than a 2.

Now, my body could still be adjusting itself, cleaning out the old rubbish and getting used to this slightly different nutritional situation, but what if it isn’t? What if this is an indication that it needs something a little different? As you can see, my brain is bored. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it also wrong. So, how do I get them to work together, because I want to do what’s right for my body? How do I find out if there is something I can do that is more beneficial than what I am currently doing?

I guess I’ll have to ask my body. I can almost hear you now. “How are you going to do that?”

Well, I think the most straightforward way is through muscle testing, also known as applied kinesiology. Basically by testing a muscle’s strength or weakness, you can determine the health or lack of health to corresponding organs. It was originally developed my Dr. George Dearheart and was further refined to include acupuncture meridians.(http://www.icak.com/, http://www.kinesiology.net/) So by testing various muscles, you can determine if an energy pathway is blocked or not. By testing different foods at different times, you can determine whether or not any particular food, drink or whatever is harmful or helpful.

What this means to me is effectively giving your body a voice. As my actual voice is pretty much in the control of my mind, it’s nice to have a way for me to determine what my body (which can’t speak my mind’s language) has to say.

Although it sounds simple, it’s not really easy. The actual how-to of testing is quite simple, and usually done with two people; the tester and the one being tested. The one being tested extends an arm out parallel to the ground and the tester pushes down on the wrist with two fingers and the says “resist”. Because we are dealing with subtle energies, thoughts (which are subtle energies) can influence the outcome. If you are not really adept at it, you could be engaging more that the one muscle being tested, you could unconsciously be affecting the outcome with preconceptions, and if your body is really out of whack, you could get a false positive, like caffeine testing helpful because your body is exhausted and needs a boost.

However, I’m not going to let that stop me! This is an experiment, and you have to learn somehow!  So, this evening, as Steve and I have to do some food shopping, I’m going to muscle test the foods we buy to see what is beneficial. I’ll also try and muscle test whether or not to have them cooked or raw.The test I’m going to use is one I got out of Energy Medicine by Donna Eden. She has one for Spleen/Pancreas, which is the one linked to digestion in Chinese Medicine. It is also a lot less obvious than me sticking my arm out in the middle of Whole Foods and Steve pushing my wrist! (I have also had this done to me years ago, so I actually have a basic understanding of what I am looking for. If you would like to try it, you may want to either check out Donna Eden's Energy Medicine info http://www.energymed.org/)

Diet Experiment Day 7: How Do I Think I Have Done?

I am one week in now. It seems like much longer than that!

I managed to circumnavigate another temptation. This time it was homemade birthday cake and Kimball’s ice cream! One of my nephew’s had his 15th birthday party yesterday, and it really was all I could do to not have any. I don’t even have a sweet tooth! It was one of those unfortunate timing issues, because if I was at full strength, you could be sure that I would have had some of each! Birthday celebrations don’t happen every day. Hopefully that is it for the temptations for this week.

Because I am feeling a bit feistier, I am going to add a little bit of raw veg today. Not a huge amount, just some broccoli to snack on in case I get hungry. I figure that I have enough cooked stuff to balance it out.

I also switched my energy/aura work back to the morning. I was feeling so good the last 3 or 4 days that I decided to see if I would fall back to sleep or not. Good news! I didn’t fall back to sleep. I was still quite relaxed, though, and thought briefly about the fact that I haven’t really had a day off yet, but really wasn’t so tired or resentful that I couldn’t get out of bed with relative ease. I’ll call that a 3. I also lost a pound since yesterday. I’ll also call that a 3. Overall, I’ve lost about 1.5 pounds in a week. I may need to bump up my exercise.

So, improvement ratings for the first week:

Not feel crappy: 6

Have more energy; 6

Be more motivated: 5

Boost Immunity: ?

Lose some weight: 2

I’m going to have a bit more of a look regarding immunity. I haven’t really addressed it, mostly because I haven’t been sick, but maybe I need to talk about how different methods approach the subject of immunity. That will have to be another day as I need to do some reading up on that.