How NOT to Get Sick and Lose Your Hair This Winter

Winter is the season of colds, flu, and hair loss. Its cold and drying effect on the body leaves you susceptible to viruses and harmful bacteria, not to mention, many people complain about excessive hair loss. However, I’ve found a surefire way to prevent those aches, ills, and stresses by following a few really basic guidelines.

Here’s the secret:

Moisturize

Lubricate

Hydrate

Remember the letters MLH, and you’ll be on your way to a healthy winter. Let me break this down for you.

In the winter the whole body gets cold and dry. Inside, you end up with these little pockets of stresses that are the perfect breeding ground for disease causing germs. A seed can only take root in stable soil, but if there’s erosion or the soil is not fertile, the tiny sprout dies because it has nothing to support it’s growth.

In that same way, imagine a virus trying to take root in your body when there’s no natural cleansing and erosion taking place. Let’s say that your nose is dry and congested – something that happens in winter even without an infection. Instead of the mucus in your sinuses forming a smooth, protective coating and constantly moving and draining, there are dry spots, and some spots not protected by the mucus. The role of the mucus is to protect and cleanse the areas of your body that are susceptible to disease. If it’s not working properly, the virus has direct access to your cells, starts making copies, and pretty soon you’re stuck with two weeks of miserable snot-filled sleep or the full on flu.

In the same way, your hair needs proper nourishment to grow! If your skin is dry and cracked, and if nutrients aren’t flowing to your skin and scalp, you end up with hair loss.

Your entire body relies on the healthy movement of bodily fluids for healthy functioning. If blood can’t get to the heart, you have a heart attack. If nutrients can’t get to the cells, they don’t function optimally. If your joints don’t have proper lubrication, you end up with damage and pain in the joints. And like the example above, if mucus in your lungs and sinuses don’t move, you end up sick with a cold. Even your colon and kidneys rely on daily movement to function optimally!

So, here’s how we’re going to get ready to be healthy this winter. Let’s start with M: Moisturize.

When I think about moisturizing, I’m thinking about adding water. The only real way to add water is to literally consume or apply it. However, things get tricky in the winter because water absorbs into the body more slowly when the body is cold and/or the water is cold. Also, applying too much water to the outside of the body can literally wash away necessary oils that will help protect and nourish the body. In order to make sure you are adding appropriate moisture, you’ll want to make sure the water is prepared properly. We know that boiling water before drinking it help to push it into the tissues faster. If you don’t like sipping on hot water throughout the day, you can always boil it in the morning, let it cool to room temperature, and sip that throughout the day. Personally, I like to make a big thermos of warm, spiced, decaffeinated tea, and sip on that throughout the day. Not only does that ensure my body is getting enough water, but it also guarantees that it will absorb quickly to provide the moisture my body needs for proper functioning.

Here are a couple of nice, warming teas you can add to your winter routine. In addition to warming the body, they also contain herbs that calm the nerves and prevent anxious feelings:

Vata Tea

Relaxing Tea

Or you can make the tea yourself: Make Your Own Winter Tea

Next up: Lubricate! Your body has a natural way to lubricate itself, but it relies on you for help! The winter can make us feeling cold and stiff with aches in our joints in the morning. This ISN’T just a symptom of getting old unless you allow it to be. The reason why young people don’t wake up with aches and pains in because their body is more efficient at lubricating itself, and they are moving and playing which brings that lubrication into much needed parts of the body. I’ve found myself in the habit of doing some very relaxing morning yoga (12 rounds of sun salutation) when I get out of bed, but any kind of movement will work. Here are a couple of videos to demonstrate easy ways to get your body moving and lubricated:

Sun Salutation

Yoga for Mobility Training

Of course any exercises will work to get your joints warmed up and lubed up! If you like high intensity, go for it!!

Lubrication isn’t just for the inside of the body! It’s also for the outside and the parts that get exposed to the outside elements. I’m talking about your skin and your sinuses! These are two major entry points of germs that can get damaged during the winter, but it’s easy to protect them with proper lubrication.

Each morning before waking up, I’ve started the practice of Abhyanga which is a gentle oil massage for the whole body. It feels soooo good to rub my whole body down in the morning, and it really wakes me up. You perform this massage upon waking in the morning – before your shower. It protects the skin and supports the natural lipid barrier so you don’t get dry, cracked skin in the winter. Pay extra attention to your feet!

If you need extra help in the hair retention area, applying oils to the scalp and sleeping with a cap at night will both bring needed nutrients to the hair and scalp, and prevent fall out and breakage. I use organic caster oil on my hair, eyelashes and eyebrows. My sister Gina is a Monat consultant, and they have an amazing hair oil that would be perfect for winter: Rejuvenique Oil Intensive.

Also, at least once a day I recommend nasal oil to ensure proper lubrication in the sinuses. I like this one: Nasal Oil, but any kind of organic, cured sesame or olive oil will do. Note to allergy sufferers: this also prevents allergens from triggering your mast cells! Since I began using a nasal oil 2 years ago, I’ve been booger and sinus infection free. In fact, in a previous MRI of my head, I had chronic sinus inflammation from years of sinus infections, and in my most recent MRI there was no evidence of inflammation. My breathing is clearer, and I spend a lot less money on Kleenex! HA!

Finally, don’t forget that you need to hydrate. Hydrating doesn’t mean just drinking water. It means you find a way to retain the water that is lost from a dry winter. For the skin, I look for products that are water based and/or contain humectants like glycerin and hyaluronic acid. I recommend safe, organic, and vegan brands including Beauty Counter which makes Countermatch Recovery Sleeping Cream! My friend Katie Britton is a rep for this company, and you can find out more information at her Facebook group here: Katie Britton – Beautycounter.

Hydrating your sinuses can mean using a neti pot which uses a saline solution to dry more moisture into the sinus cavity. I know it’s uncomfortable, but it’s definitely key to keeping dry sinuses hydrated.

In the winter, the body dries out from the inside, so for proper hydration make sure you cook lots of warm soups and stews or pastas that contain a little extra natural salt (sea salt or Himalayan salt) and healthy oils (organic olive, sesame, sunflower, coconut, or avocado) and contain foods with gelatin and sea veggies. This is one of my favorite winter dishes if you’re in a dinner rut and can’t stand another day of soup: Winter Pasta for Vata. There’s something so yummy about the bright lemon with the fennel, carrots, and soothing, salty oil on top of warm pasta. It’s satiating, vegan, and will brighten any dull day.

Now, that I’ve shared the secret to health this winter, you can apply these in your life and expect to get measurable results! As long as you remember M: Moisturize, L: Lubricate, and H: Hydrate, you’ll be well on your way to conquer the winter!

I wish everyone a happy and healthy holiday season filled with lots of warmth, comfort, and joy!

With all my love,

The Guru Girl

 

 

 

 

New Year’s Resolutions – No More Alcohol

Staying Healthy and Bringing Awareness of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome

I have a short list of resolutions that I’ll be making this year, but the first one is the easiest. I’m dumping alcohol from my life completely. I wouldn’t say that I have any kind of a dependency on alcohol in my adult life, and I don’t drink daily or even weekly (unless I’m nursing a bottle of wine over a week at the rate of 3 ounces a day). However, during my life, I have become awakened to the way alcohol is used in our society, and I’m going to stand firm as someone who has decided it’s not for me.

My relationship with alcohol started as a very young child – second grade to be exact. I had it at church, but we called it the Blood of Christ. I was served a sip of white zinfandel at least twice a week. It felt warm in my mouth and belly, and knowing that I was receiving this blessed sacrament brought me great comfort. As I’ve been thinking more about this first encounter with alcohol, it’s undeniable that this pattern sowed seeds that led to my alcohol dependence in high school. Receiving this sacrament was telling me that this warmth and comfort from alcohol is good. No matter what sins I had committed or how bad I felt, a little wafer of gluten and a sip of wine makes it all better.

I have a lot of addiction in my family. I grew up among people who are alcoholics or have alcohol dependencies (we call them “big drinkers” or just “drinkers”) or are addicted to drugs, toxic food, bad relationships, and gambling. A few years ago I found out that an uncle had molested his children too, so sex addiction is also likely. The truth is that humans are not perfect. We make a ton of mistakes. Addiction has roots in both nature and nurture, and in my experience with addicted family members,  they often feel deep shame that they either deny for purposes of self-preservation, or they keep it all hidden to prevent others from finding out. In some cases, they just don’t give a shit. They drink and drive (sometimes even getting caught and shamelessly blaming others), post pictures of themselves drinking on social media, do things that are dysfunctional, dangerous to themselves and society, and do things they wouldn’t do unless they are drinking. Some family members have walked away from their entire family to seek out relationships with someone they believe will give them more love than their spouse or children, only to wind up with an abuser. Some spend all their money on gambling and go into huge debt. Some are very ill from being overweight because they seek food for comfort instead of using tools to comfort themselves from within by exploring and exposing those wounds with a therapist.

If someone is an addict, it’s easy to feel ashamed or afraid, but from a logical perspective, shame and fear don’t produce right action. Shame has a basis in fear, and it only perpetuates the cycle of addiction. If an addict can recognize these feelings of shame and fear, they can begin the process of acceptance and understanding. That’s how they can move to right action. When people acknowledge their problems, they become receptive to finding resources to help them live without hurting themselves or endangering those around them. I don’t mean to oversimplify addiction, because I know it’s very complex. With most addicts, they have to hit some sort of a rock bottom to realize that they don’t want the life they are living, and in that, they recognize their life is made worse because of their addictions. Even after a family member was caught drinking and driving multiple times, lost her marriage, family members and full rights to see her child, she still hasn’t hit rock bottom, so I know that these things are complex.

Our house was dry growing up. As a rule, we didn’t have alcohol in our home. It was only in my early teenage years that my dad would have some beer around, and it wasn’t much. Maybe he’d show up with a six pack here and there because they were damaged cans from work. My parents only really drank alcohol at our grandparents’ houses, and that was usually limited to a cold beer on a hot summer day or holiday festivities. Man, did my family throw some wild parties! My parents rarely went out drinking. When they did have a rare date (like literally going years between dates), it was usually for a wedding or other family event, or maybe an outing when certain family members came to town. There were a handful of times my dad came home slobbering drunk, which I found completely repulsive and disgusting when he couldn’t stand up straight and was throwing up in the only toilet in the house, but again, that was extremely rare. He didn’t know his limit because he wasn’t a well-practiced drinker, and he was also on medication that didn’t mix well with the alcohol. For the most part, daily life was dry.

I’m glad our house was dry because from the perspective of modeling good behavior for us as children, I think this is where my parents did an excellent job. They were forced to deal with daily life without using drugs or alcohol, and I think we had much better care than some other children I know that didn’t grow up in a dry house.

As I came into my late teen years and was packed with compounding adult problems I was forced to carry, I began experimenting with alcohol. Honestly, between my use of alcohol and caffeine pills, I’m pretty sure that’s the only way I was able to graduate. I was in ballet, I was learning and playing four instruments, I was in three choirs, and I worked as a professional singer while taking college courses full time and working a job at McDonalds. I tried out for the cheerleading squad, but dropped out after being unable to attend practices because of my crazy schedule. In December of 1999, I sang for 17 funerals, I had just gotten out of an abusive relationship, my dad was out of the house, my mother had disowned me and turned my family against me for breaking up with my boyfriend, and I was taking some of the most difficult classes in school. White zinfandel became my coping mechanism. When I drank it, I was pacified physically and spiritually, and the more I drank, the more I didn’t care what pressures I had. White zinfandel turned into beer and shots. Pretty soon I was drinking at least 4 days a week, and at least two of those days I was having more than 3 drinks a day.

Moving to D.C. was the best thing I could have done for myself. Although I was going from one stressful situation to another, I didn’t know anyone here besides my boyfriend’s family, so I had plenty of time to catch up on sleep, read my bible, and abstain from alcohol. I worked three jobs: I was a substitute teacher for the Loudoun County school system, I had a part time job at a bank in the evenings, and on weekends, I worked the front desk at the Sheraton Hotel. I ate healthy again. I exercised. I didn’t have to be around dead bodies while trying to keep my shit together singing for people who were in the depths of despair and mourning. Leaving my hometown and family was the end of my major problems, and thus, I didn’t need to use alcohol. Although I continued to drink in a social way, I didn’t do it daily.

Skipping forward to life today, I’ve become much more aware of alcohol and its effects on humans. First and foremost, alcohol is toxic to the human body. After three years of doctor appointments, voracious reading post-car accident, and learning about alcohol’s extremely toxic effects on the brain, I’ve become a quasi-expert this area. Here’s the short story: there’s no human need for alcohol, and we’re not going to suffer alcohol deficiencies if we don’t drink. We can argue about resveratrol in red wine, and I can give you Japanese knotweed which has more resveratrol without the toxicity. You can say that it’s used as medicine to calm your nervous system, and I can give you magnesium rich foods which will calm your nervous system without damaging it. You can tell me that you like how it cleanses your palate with creamy pasta, and I can give you sparking water with lemon or lime. You can tell me that your baby is still feeding from the yolk sack so downing a box of wine in your car while driving won’t hurt your baby, and I’ll tell you:

1. Once alcohol is in the bloodstream it can diffuse into nearly every biological tissue of the body – including your unborn child.
2. Drinking and driving is not only illegal, but it has the potential to kill YOU, YOUR UNBORN CHILD, AND OTHER INNOCENT PEOPLE.

I CAN ALSO TELL YOU THAT THROWING YOUR BOX OF WINE OUT ON THE ROAD IS LITTERING. But if you cared about yourself, your unborn child, or the people on the road, you wouldn’t be the littering type anyway, so I digress.

So I have a couple of confessions to make. First, during my three pregnancies, I had about the equivalent of 2.2 glasses of wine. That means I consumed some alcohol during two of three pregnancies. I remember those times clearly. Once I had a drink of my sister’s wine while on a double date (she was dating Sean Banks the now imprisoned Christian Mingle Rapist). …talk about a horrible experience… The second was when I had nearly a full glass of wine during that same pregnancy during a Valentine’s Day dinner. Then when I was pregnant with my third child, and I had a glass with Thanksgiving dinner.

The second confession is that I’m not only writing this blog to talk about what I’m going to do in 2017, but I wanted to explain why I’m giving up alcohol in 2017. It’s to compensate for my complete helplessness watching someone drown their unborn child in alcohol nearly every day. That whole drinking and driving story above? Yeah, I’m compensating for her.

“Why are you so obsessed with my life,” she asks? It’s because I care. I care about the child you say you want to mother, but you choose alcohol over every day. I care about the one you’re supposed to be growing in your body, but you binge drink while driving regularly. I CARE ABOUT YOU, AND AT THIS POINT, I FEEL LIKE I’M THE ONLY ONE WHO DOES BECAUSE I’M THE ONLY ONE WHO GIVES A SHIT TO TRY AND GET THROUGH TO YOU.

So, I’m going to be a dry mom the same way my mom was a dry mom. I’m going to do this so that I can make damn sure I’m dealing with my problems like a grown-up instead of turning to something that could make me feel less pain about what you’re doing to your life and your children. I’m not going to regress by making the same mistakes like when I did with an immature teenage brain. As an adult, I have the tools to do it like a grown-up – without alcohol or drugs or food or gambling or any unhealthy compulsions. I challenge you to be adult enough to quit too.

In times like these, I often dive back into my roots and look for comfort and confirmation in the bible. If we were created in God’s image, shouldn’t we honor God by taking care of this temple that houses this Holy Spirit? If you are a manifestation of God’s divinity, don’t you have a responsibility to honor this manifestation? For me, that answer is yes. That means I protect myself from toxins, and I definitely protect my children (born or unborn), as well as those around me.

I’m not going to make lame excuses like “relaxation” or “resveratrol” or “palate cleansing” because I know there are non-toxic alternatives. I’ve given it up to set an example to myself and to my kids that Mama can get through life without alcohol, and that’s a point that I’ll be making regularly so they understand why I’m dry. Although I don’t have a dependency, I know that I’m taking all this pain that I feel for those innocent victims of alcoholics, and using it to be sure my own house is in order.

Please keep in mind that this blog is about my experience, and yours may be different. You may have an occasional glass of wine or beer, and it may not affect you. However, if you drink to unwind from the day, or to compensate for feeling bad, or you have more than one drink a day, you may have a dependency. Emotional drinking can creep into dysfunction really quickly, so if you find yourself pouring something to ease negative emotions, check yourself and see if there’s something non-toxic you could use instead of alcohol.

I’m going to end this blog in a different way because my intention is to communicate directly to those who still believe they need to hold onto their addictions, specifically to alcohol, and specifically while pregnant, to get through life. The links below contain resources to  help you understand what you’re doing and how you can get better. I’m here to support you in your journey, but the first step is acknowledging you have a problem.

Alcoholics Anonymous

National Organization on Fetal Alcohol Syndrome

This Mother Drank While Pregnant – This is Her Child at 43

Please stop drinking. If you can’t do it for yourself, do it for your children.

 

 

 

 

The Day I Woke Up

I’m not exactly sure where to begin this story, so I’ll begin right here. In the present. The only time that has ever happened is right now, but in another now it also happened that I was in a car accident. In the space of February 15, 2014 at approximately 1 a.m., my life changed completely. I thought I was walking away alive, but that was the moment I lost myself again. This wasn’t the first time I lost myself. No, I’ve lost myself so many times as a child trying to run away from things that frightened me and throwing myself into something that brought me relief. I lost myself early in my marriage. I lost myself with the birth of my third child. This time was different.

I remember about six months after the accident lying in my bed after waking up from a nap. I looked up and observed my room, and it was difficult to make sense of it. I picked up a book and tried looking at words, and they didn’t make any sense. I got up, walked downstairs to the laundry room, and attempted to put in a load of laundry, but when I stared at all the buttons, I couldn’t figure out what to do with them.

At this point, my neurologist had already written my symptoms off as self-manifested, so I just stared at that washing machine and wept. As a mother, I had never longed so badly to do a load of laundry in my life. I saw the piles. The visual input of the mess was so maddening that I could feel the anxiety storm literally short circuiting my brain. The more I tried to work the washing machine, and the more I saw the mess, the less I could do. My symptoms flared, my head started pounding, all I could hear was what sounded like loud AOL dialup in my head mixed with clanging pots and pans – the sound I later began to call “my music” and which remains with me today, albeit quieter and sweeter now.

It was at that present moment of weeping that I finally gave up and just surrendered. Even though I wanted to fight for my health, I knew that fighting wasn’t helping me. I was always taught to keep getting up and keep fighting, so obviously this surrender was against my nature. “Fuck it,” I thought. “I’m going to be a sad vegetable with a goldfish memory. This is who I am now, and I need to just be ok with it.”

When I met people or when I interacted with friends, I’d start by telling them or reminding them about my brain injury.“Just so you know, I’m (still) dumb as shit with this brain injury, so if you tell me something right now, it might fall out, and you might need to tell me again.” Naturally people would get frustrated and impatient with me. I was always held to their standard, or they’d forget that because I looked like the same old Jessica, not the sad vegetable version. My quick wit was gone, so I couldn’t make people laugh. My ability to find words was gone, so I couldn’t have intellectual discussions with anyone. I was constantly embarrassed and felt worthless, and in each instance of failure, I surrendered deeper and deeper.

Despite my continued surrender, I felt. This level of feeling was deeper and more intense than anything. I’ve heard that when people lose a sense that the rest of the senses become more perceptive to compensate. My sense of hearing, sight, smell, taste, touch, and feeling were getting stronger. The deeper I felt, the more sad and empathetic I was becoming. Everything felt so overwhelming and everything was charged with emotion. That by itself was incredibly challenging, but I embraced this new me and accepted it as I accepted being impaired in all the other ways.

During a regular check-in with my general practitioner, I asked her about hooking me up with some Valium so I could have a little something to get me through life. A few days earlier, Kathleen from the Transcendental Meditation (TM) center had dropped off some pamphlets about the practice. I discussed this with my doctor, and instead of giving me something that might further impact my cognitive problems, she wrote me a prescription for TM.

On October 2, 2014 my better half and I went out on a date to celebrate our anniversary. We had a lovely dinner at Clydes in Ashburn, and then we went over to an introductory talk about TM. I immediately signed up. At first I gasped at the cost, but after spending literally thousands on specialists that hadn’t helped me, I figured I’d just add this to the pile. Although I had stopped fighting to get better, I was still an active seeker, and in my seeking, I was open to trying new things.

The weekend before I began TM, I was standing in the kitchen getting some breakfast, and I heard a voice in my head calling “Lakshmi! Lakshmi!” Auditory “hallucinations” weren’t new for me. They’ve been around since my earliest memories as a child, so I just accepted it. Greg was across the way in the family room folding clothes, so I asked him, “Who’s Lakshmi?” He did his typical Nova Scotia mumble and I heard him say something like, “I think she’s a goddess or something.”

Hmmm…

On Saturday morning, I drove to the TM center. I brought my flowers, fruit, and white handkerchief. As I followed Kathleen up the stairs I blurted out, “This is the first day of the rest of my life.” I wasn’t really sure where those words came from. It was a spontaneous thought that didn’t make it through any kind of a filter, and it just burst into the air. She smiled and looked at me in a curious way. I wasn’t sure what she was thinking, but I just reiterated again, “I really think this is the first day of the rest of my life.” This is what my “feeling” was telling me. The words were coming from my chest – my heart, not my brain. It felt like I was truly thinking and receiving these thoughts in my heart, and the words came from that area before coming out of my mouth. At this point, with all the crazy symptoms I had experienced, nothing was weird anymore, so like everything else, I just surrendered to this new version of myself, and went on to learn the TM technique. When we got to the top of the stairs she smiled and said, “that’s beautiful,” and I smiled back at her. It was a very sweet and honest moment between teacher and student. In that now, with my mind in that space, I had no idea what those words even meant…

If you’ve ever practiced TM, you know how powerful it can be – especially in those early days of unstressing. For three days I couldn’t get out of bed. Literally. It felt like I had been smashed in the head all over again. The sounds were so intense, and it felt like I was going insane. I wanted to quit, but Kathleen encouraged me and instructed me to get plenty of extra rest. So I did.

Day four came. I woke up. I meditated. Then I felt like I had this great wind of energy at my back. I went down to the laundry room. I looked at the clothes. I looked at the washer.

No anxiety. No storm. No freak out. I was alone in the silence.

I picked up a pile of whites, put them in, filled the soap dispenser, closed the door, and pushed the buttons to begin a load. And then I broke down in tears of joy. What a glorious moment!

On day four of the follow up, I met with the other students that had learned TM the same day. We each talked about our experiences. When I got to my turn, I couldn’t help but burst out laughing when I said, “I could actually do laundry today.” I’m not sure anyone could possibly know how monumental that was for me after months of struggling with pushing the “play” button on an LG washer.

So my journey began. At the 10 day follow up I was able to be in a grocery store without shutting down. It wasn’t a big store like Wegman’s, but it was Mom’s Organic Market, so it had everything I needed. At the end of the first month, my eyesight improved to the prescription I had when I was in second grade. At the end of the forth month the so called “permanent hearing loss” that I had sustained in the accident was so much better that my left ear (the bad one) tested BETTER than the right ear. I went outside without sunglasses. I went shopping at Target. I had dinner with my family at the Silver Diner – although I still needed ear plugs when the sound was too intense. I was sleeping better. I was getting less frustrated and angry. I felt more grounded and anchored. I felt connected.

Then one sunny day, everything changed again. I awoke from a nap, meditated, got up, and walked down to the kitchen. While I was making my salad for lunch, carrot and peeler in hand, I had what can only be described as a mystical and divine experience. For a moment, which felt like all time and eternity, I was.

I. Was.

All of it.

Everything.

I was the carrot, that gave its life for me. I was the peeler. I was the bowl. I was the wall, the couch, the chairs, the fridge. From my little finite awareness, I began to experience the consciousness – the spirit – which ran through everything, and I was in union with it all. I fell to my knees with the carrot in my hand, and held it to my chest. I cried and laughed in cycles. The sound in my head was that of an infinite sea of concert bases all playing the same note, but that note was simultaneously, infinitely diverse. It sounded like, “Om,” and it undulated and oscillated. It pulled me in, and pushed me back out of myself. “Om my God!” I blurted out and followed it with more laughing.

I had awakened.

Every question I ever had about anything was answered in that one moment. I was experiencing pure, unbounded infinity. Deathlessness. Infinite silence and dynamism. Unconditional love. Bliss. Joy. Ecstasy. It poured through my entire physiology. I felt the most incredible love and power crawling through my entire nervous system destroying everything that was blocking its path. My heart was on fire with love.

I can’t help but laugh when I think that THIS experience is what Maslow was talking about when he put “self actualization” on top of his hierarchy of needs. I have realized the self – my Self. THIS is enlightenment. THIS is being more awake than I’ve ever been. This is like waking up from a dream when I thought I was already awake.

How beautiful.

Once the power of that moment passed, I was left back in my materialistic, dual thoughts which were exactly the opposite of this Earth shattering non-dual experience. Now I have come to understand that awakening is nothing more than a re-remembering before my separate self decided to overlook the ever present awareness, The Self unfolding itself to itself. Being, and the infinite space of pure silence, creativity, intelligence, and infinite potential. Once my thoughts came back, and I refocused my awareness on objects, the experience continued to fade. Now that I’ve immersed myself back into activity, I can easily dip back into that field of consciousness and stabilize it in my waking states by meditating.

The best part is that nature supports me, and it feels amazing!!!!

PEOPLE, LISTEN UP! This experience is our birthright as human beings. Imagine the disappointment I felt when I realized how robbed I was by a Catholic education and upbringing that went on and on about faith and didn’t lead me to a direct experience of it! True faith is based on direct experience. Everything else is just hope. Here I was, looking faith right in the face with this HUGE and very direct experience of unity! Bible verses and hymns and songs and poetry rushed through my mind. All of it finally made sense.

My hope is that all seekers go on to “overlook” the material and the ego and find themselves in everything. I can now say that I have faith that if you seek, you will find, and if you knock the door will be opened unto you. …and know that this isn’t something that you achieve through belief alone. This requires direct experience and practice in your daily life. Of all the different ways to achieve this state, you can pick any type of yoga you want, but TM is a royal path, and it’s a path that I would choose over and over again if I ever had to make a recommendation. You can pray, meditate in your own way, practice acts of kindness, be a servant leader, etc. Pick a yoga – any yoga, just start something, and it will take you down the path you seek.

Now, I’ve surrounded myself with seekers whose hearts are set on pure knowledge and understanding. As our group becomes bigger and brighter, we clear away the cobwebs of those who are lost, and shine our sunshine onto them. Not only do I continue to have amazing and profound experiences, most of which I don’t share publically, I’ve noticed the sweet spirits living in my house, at work, and in my social circles are having their own as well. Right now, my whole family is on fire, and each day just gets better and better.

…and about that brain injury… Well, it’s been two years, and even in the last month or so, I’ve noticed such dramatic improvements that most of my days are “normal days.” I still feel gaps here and there, but I know I’ve come a long way and continue to progress. Without this head injury, I wouldn’t have adapted in all other perceptive areas to compensate for my bad brain, and I definitely wouldn’t have found TM. Without TM, I wouldn’t have this amazing brain, body, and heart. Learning it was definitely the first day of the rest of my life. My heart knew it from the beginning.

You should also know that heaven is on Earth for those who seek to experience it. It’s not in the clouds up in the sky or far away. It’s here. I pray for the enlightenment of all human beings, the world peace it will bring, the fear it will erase, the senseless killings and death it will prevent, and in the meantime, I’ll keep writing and shining in this incredible world.

Loving you all,

The Guru Girl

P.S. If you’re a seeker, know that you are safe to share your experiences with me! I’m excited to hear them! Someday, I will share my story about Lakshmi. 🙂

Is Time Travel Possible? Yes. Just Ask Your Inner Child.

When I was about three or four years old, I had an imaginary friend named “My Imagination.” We did everything together. I would talk to my imagination all the time; we played, we read, and we snuggled together. Whenever I had a question that no one else would answer, I’d always ask My Imagination. Whenever I heard my parents fight or there was stress in the house, I’d call on My Imagination to comfort me. We lived in a roomy, handicapped accessible apartment, and outside the door in the hallway, there was some kind of a wall plate attached to the exterior wall. That’s where I believed my imagination lived. I don’t know why that’s where my friend came from, but I was sure, that’s the place from which she came and went.

My Imagination wasn’t a secret either. I told everyone about everything we did together. It was a little bit of a joke in the family that Jessie had this imaginary friend, and based on my recollection, they were even more amused that my imaginary friend was named “My Imagination.”

Fast forward to my adulthood when I registered for a Masterclass at Mindvalley Academy. It was online, so I lugged my laptop and some headphones to my bedroom, sat on my bed, and logged on. I don’t remember the name of the woman running the class, but the experience she left me with will never be forgotten. In the context of healing your inner child, she introduced that she would be leading a guided meditation.

I’ve always loved guided meditations. I remember doing one in elementary school during religion class and a couple more in youth group. The experience was so relaxing, and because I’m the type that’s highly suggestive and visual, it was very effective. I hadn’t participated in any guided imagery sessions for a long time, so I was excited to begin.

Because I quickly entered a trance like state, I don’t remember all the details of how I got to the place that I did, but I do remember what happened. After bringing our awareness to a place of silence, she asked us to find a moment in our childhood when we needed help, and we were supposed to have a comforting conversation. Immediately I found my awareness entering our old apartment through the dining room wall, which is ironically on the other side the wall from the wall plate. My parents were doing their normal squabbling, and I looked down and saw a little me staring up at myself. Little Jessie asked, “Did you just come out of the wall?” I paused for a minute and looked back at the wall replying, “Yep. I suppose I did!” Then little Jessie asked, “What’s your name?” I laughed at her innocence, knowing that she was looking up at a big grown up version of herself, so I knelt down and wrapped myself around her and said, “I’m your imagination, and I came to tell you that everything is going to be ok!”

In an instant, my eyes shot open and my heart started racing. I didn’t know what was happening, but I did know something very clearly – I was My Imagination. It was me. It was me the whole time.

…and then I laughed and thought, “Of course it was me! Who else would My Imagination be but me?”

Now, if you’re into quantum physics, read books like Physics of the Impossible, or are a Transcendental Meditator and consciousness geek like me, you’ll know how many doors this just opened in my mind. This blew the doors right off their damn hinges! What if I am able to heal my inner child by using a consciousness-based approach, which is beyond time and space, to go back to myself as a child and heal my emotional pain so that I can have a bright future?

Ram Dass would say, “FAR. OUT.”

Ok, so from a less far out perspective – maybe basic psychology – what if we can, as adults, connect with our inner child on a level which produces healing to traumatic events so that we can become better adults? Well, from my experience, we can.

Honestly, it doesn’t matter whether I was LITERALLY time traveling or just rehashing the memory of meeting my little self when stuff started getting bad.  At then end of that experience, I had relived a memory and using nothing but me, I comforted the anxiety I experienced when I watched my parents fight. This became a new chapter in my healing, and it became my go-to technique for making myself feeling better when I started reliving old, scary moments that would trigger anxiety storms in my head. I now know how to go back in time, using memories and consciousness to fix little me, so that big me can thrive.

I went online to see if I could find something similar to the guided meditation that I used. Below, you’ll find one that is 10 minutes and the other that is 20 minutes. If you have some time, find a quiet place away from distractions and try them out. Let me know what you think!

The Guru Girl

 

 

 

 

A Blog Just For Me – Ra Ma Da Sa Sa Say So Hung

Today, I’m writing for me. Just for me. Nobody else.

I’m a typical libra. I crave balance, and today, balance needs to come through deep healing. Beyond my typical needs for physical healing from this brain injury, I need emotional healing. I need emotional healing that only comes by turning myself inside out, twisting myself into knots, sweating, purging, crying, and screaming. This isn’t something that can be done in the quiet of a dark closet, alone, with my face in a pillow and my eye makeup running down my cheeks feeling sorry for myself because of what I’ve had to endure. No, this type of healing happens only in a giant field of wild flowers, embraced by the warmth of the sun, caressed by the gentleness of Zephyr’s breeze, wrapped in the only thing I’ll ever need – my greater spiritual Self, of which I am simply a point in Its infinite perfection. Because it’s only in this place where the heart opening required for emotional healing will take place.

But now it’s winter. Everything is beginning to freeze, and I can feel my emotions stiffening and crystallizing, like frost on a window, into a pattern of sorrow. And it’s not like I’m even sad for myself. I’m sad for all of it. I’m sad for everything that doesn’t feel compassionate or loving. I feel it so deeply, and it’s throwing me off balance.

When I started writing these blogs, I did it because I was at a place where I finally realized I was stronger than my past, I was stronger than my failures, I was stronger than the pain of all the experiences that held me down for so long. And in that same strength, I knew that I needed to write my story. I knew that I wasn’t alone. I was never alone. People who I knew in my life, who walked along side me in the halls of my elementary school, and who played jump rope with me at recess were going through what I was going through. And I know many of those people never had the courage to speak for themselves, and when some did they weren’t heard because nobody believed them. Yesterday was a day of awakening for me. My mom’s family has been attacking me over my blogs, making veiled threats, trying to get me on a phone so they can yell at me, and posting aggressively on Facebook calling me a liar. While this sadness has been building over the last few months, it really knocked me off balance yesterday. It came from one comment about a place called The Hardwig House.

The Hardwig House is a wonderful place. That’s the only way I can describe it. It’s a place where people like my dad, who is mentally ill, can be safe, make friends, share meals and experiences, and know they won’t be judged. My dad goes to The Hardwig House nearly every day.

My dad is a wonderful man. He’s a magical man. No one can make you laugh like my dad. No one make up the silliest songs and jam them out on a guitar like my dad. No one has the spiritual and emotional wisdom that my dad does. You know why? Because HE HAS NOTHING. HE HAS FUCKING NOTHING. He’s got a shitty apartment, no money, no prospects for work because of his injuries, and no skills for anything other than manual labor. He’s had multiple failed back surgeries. He was hit by two cars in the past year. People are always stealing from him. He won’t move out east because he lives his life to serve his elderly mother, my most beautiful Grandma Jenny, who is well into her 90s. …and he has The Hardwig House. THAT’S IT.

So, I’m cool with the fact my uncle, my supposed “elder” and supposed “role model” shits on me by saying I’m crazy, should be on meds, and calling me a liar, but saying anything negative about the Hardwig House is so low. Telling me that I’m crazy and that’s where I need to be in such a derogatory way is not only attempting to put me beneath you, but it’s also saying that the mentally ill are less than you.

…and that’s where things get sad. That’s what makes me so frustrated. That gets right under my skin like a freaking parasite that’s just gnawing away at my life force.

Do you think my dad chose this life? Do you think my dad enjoys this burden? The weekly injections. The experimental drugs. The life of psychotherapy so he can be semi-functional? The alienation from society? The need to live disability check to disability check? The judgement? The stigma? The ignorance because people don’t want to know him?

Do you think mental ill people choose to be this way?

…and why do you think you’re better than the “crazy” people that end up at The Hardwig House? Why do you cut so deep by making these insensitive comments with the only purpose of freeing yourself from any pain you might feel only to inflict it on your niece or anyone else who read those comments?

These are all rhetorical questions, and obviously they’ll never be answered without someone telling me to shut up, stop being crazy, stop lying, stop embarrassing myself, and all the other stuff I’ve had to hear and read.

The saddest part of all of this was the realization I had last night. If I would have told these people in my family what I had to go through as a child, they wouldn’t have believed me. They would’ve called me a liar. They would’ve told me how horrible I am for saying the things I’m saying. They would’ve blamed me for the things that are happening to me and told me to take responsibility for my life. How do I know this? Because they’re doing it right now. And if they’re going to say this to a completely sane and rational adult, they’re definitely going to say it to a kid – because in my family kids are less than adults, and we know where we are in the pecking order. In this realization, I have come to understand that God truly had a hand in this part of my life. All my guardian angels, all my inner knowing, everything was telling me to just keep chugging on and getting through by keeping my head down. Fake it. Get through it. Put on a smile and pretend.

The old me would probably tell myself not to write this blog. “Be strong. Don’t let them know they’re hurting you. Don’t let them know that they were able to uproot you and throw you off balance. Don’t let them see that they get under your skin. Put on a strong face and ignore it. Just block these jerks on Facebook and be done with it.”

But then I had a thought:

No. I won’t pretend. I won’t put on the mask. I won’t keep up this bullshit facade of being ok. This did hurt me, but surprisingly it didn’t take away my power. These feelings are not something I should be ashamed of or hide. It’s normal and natural to have feelings, and the constant pretending that I’m not hurt is was what caused all my problems in the first place. I deserve to be sad about this, and I deserve to be able to express that sadness. Life is going to keep giving me this same lesson and kicking me in the ass in the same way unless I learn from it, so this is my opportunity to completely change and learn the damn lesson.

First, I’m going to move on. What value did they ever add anyway? Not much. My fantasy of what I thought my family was is obviously not the reality. I have to remember that the disassociation won’t stop me from feeling – really feeling – these emotions and particularly this sadness. It will however, assist me in the brave move that I need to remove myself from the toxicity of these people once and for all. This is another step to becoming the most authentic version of myself. THIS is what it means to be human, and THIS is how I will practice setting boundaries for how I deserve to be treated. Family is a choice, and it’s not me who has cut the cord. They have already cut it. They cut it a long time ago. They have made it very clear I am not welcome. I don’t need to stand at the edge of the cord and long for connection because there’s nothing there for me. I’m their ugly duckling. I’m their outcast. I’m the black sheep.

I’m glad I learned this lesson as an adult, because if this happened when I was 15, I strongly suspect that I wouldn’t be where I am today. Learning this lesson as a child may well have killed me – or at least my spirit and my will.

 

I spent years of my life being strong and sad. Now I’m busy being vulnerable, happy (even in my sadness), truly authentic, and it feels sooooooooo good.

 

Winter won’t stop me from finding that field on a warm spring day to melt my sorrows – even if I only find it in my mind.

Ra Ma Da Sa Sa Say So Hung.

I call on the the sun, the moon, the earth, and the Infinite Spirit to bring deep healing.

I call on the most sacred Spirit to lift up my dad, everyone at The Hardwig House, and every mentally ill person on this planet. You are the most beautiful of us all. It’s you that have overcome the most. You are the strongest and the most beautiful. I’m honored to be called crazy and that I should be at The Hardwig House. That’s a much better place to be than where I came from.

 

Get Over It

Whenever I hear my family members say or write this in response to reading one of my blogs, I realize why I write in the first place.

The line “get over it” is indicative of the environment in which I was raised – one of chronic and severe invalidation. If I had a different opinion or view of the world than my family, I was shamed and deeply criticized through invalidation. My private childhood experiences were met with erratic, inappropriate, and extreme responses. The experience of my painful emotions were completely dismissed, and I was often told to just “get over it” – just as I continue to be told today.

I actually remember one time that my 16 year old sister was so violently invalidated, that she was actually slammed into a wall by one of my aunts while my mother, grandmother, and another aunt looked on and also invalidated her after the event happened. What was the line?  OH, “I don’t want you girls to sing at my funeral.” Yep. That’s the one.

That takes me to the question I want people to really think about. What does it actually mean to get over something? How do you just get over it?

Well, in a family that constantly invalidates the feelings and emotions of others, it means bury your anger deeply, deny that it happened to you, remain angry inside, don’t talk about it to anyone, and never bring it up again. Sometimes it means you act out by drinking excessively, using drugs, or lashing out at others to the point of complete alienation.

But in order to truly get over something, you need to bring those emotions to the surface, you need to feel them, face them, analyze them, feel them some more, be vulnerable, accept your emotions, and ultimately surrender them. Maybe you’ll even blog about them to help others process their own pain.

Like food, you need to digest feelings. It’s true. Let’s examine that for a minute. When you wake up in the morning, you might feel hungry. Instead of having a light breakfast of some fresh or cooked fruit, cereal, or a broth, you might have a pile of bacon, eggs, hash browns, and pancakes. If you’re eating that pile of food before 10 a.m., your digestive fire isn’t working well enough to break apart all that food. It lies stagnant in your gut, it gets sour, and it actually starts to get rotten and toxic. This toxicity can spill into your blood stream through the tight junctions of your gut, and then create loads of inflammation in your body. Inflammation creates all kinds of diseased states in the body including cancer and chronic inflammatory conditions like MS, lupus, and other not fun stuff.

Invalidation works the same way. Let’s say you get up in the morning, and you didn’t get enough sleep the night before. On your way to the bathroom to pee (and your bladder is spilling into your kidneys), you step on a piece of Lego (besides childbirth and heart attacks, likely the most painful experience known to humans), and you buckle over in pain to soothe the foot that probably has at least a 3 inch deep hole in it. Someone shouts at you, “Man up you little bitch! It’s just a Lego! Get over it!” (If you’re a man, I just emasculated you on top of invalidating your pain. If you’re a woman, I probably just offended the hell out of you.)

Wow. That really hurts. Not only did you have to get up too early, but you’re in a state of total renal congestion, just stepped on Lego, and now someone tells you to “man up.” Seriously?

Next you rub out your foot, take your morning pee, and on your drive to work, you’re totally consumed with angry thoughts about the “man up” comment. You’re unable to be present with the drive because the thoughts are consuming your conscious awareness. Someone stops short, you slam on your breaks, and now you’re mad at the driver in front of you for being an asshole driver.

Because you know it’s really your fault for not paying attention, you take the “man up” comment and you bury it. In order for you to safely drive the car, you need to focus on the road, and that means to also control your thoughts.

Because your body is in a state where it’s unable to process those emotions, it festers – just like the big breakfast too early in the morning. Your body doesn’t like anything that festers, so it stores it in your body, and often surrounds it with fat (the way the body protects itself). If you’ve ever had a broken heart, you know that love can cause physiological changes to your heart – that’s where that distress is buried. It’s actually theorized in Eastern medicine that undigested emotions and broken hearts lead to heart disease, lung problems, and breast cancer.

If you’re carrying around too much weight try this: eat your largest meal of the day at noon when your digestive fire is at its peak and call a therapist who can help you confront and healthfully digest old emotional baggage. I’m confident you’ll see the scale move in a healthier direction.

…and because I’m such a big fan of Transcendental Meditation, I highly recommend that as well!

If you saw pictures of people in my family, you’d probably see a few things in common – obesity and chronic illness. If you read any of their posts on Facebook, listened to phone conversations, or read their emails, you might also see something in common – chronic invalidation. Some of it is actually full of nastiness and hate.

So the next time one of my family members tells me to stop writing blogs because they think I need to “get over it,” maybe I need to gently label their behavior as invalidation, suggest a diet change, and about 6 months of DBT with a good therapist. Then, I’m sure they’ll be able to get over it themselves.

In the meantime, I’ll remain being over it. It takes great strength to write these blogs in the face of familial resistance. However, people like my soul sister Amina (LOVE YOU GIRL!!) and others have found these to be therapeutic because they recognize their own experiences in mine. Sometimes we need a spark to start us on our journey, and sometimes you get to travel with a great group of people who all seek the same release from this toxic, emotional baggage.

That’s why I do this. I’ll never tell you to get over it, because it’s time someone breaks the cycle. Instead, I’ll offer this:

I’m sorry that you don’t like what I’m writing. I’m sorry if it makes you relive your own experiences that you have buried. I’m sorry if this blog triggers feelings within you of anger, resentment, or your own memories of emotional pain. I know you are a strong person and have the ability to work through those issues in a healthy, positive, and functional way. However, please know that writing this blog is my mission and my duty. It’s what I have spiritually been called to do. Please respect my boundaries as an adult even though you didn’t respect them when I was a child. Know that I’m writing out of goodness and with an open heart.

With all my love,

The Guru Girl

 

 

 

 

 

I Love You

“I don’t trust people who don’t love themselves and tell me, ‘I love you.’ … There is an African saying which is: Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt.”

― Maya Angelou

Nearly two years ago, I was in a car accident, and it was at that moment when the hidden facets of many of my family members and friends revealed themselves to me. In one smash, I went from being the superstar in my own life to disabled. I couldn’t read, walk straight, be in areas with lots of visual or noise disturbances, and I would even have to plug my ears before flushing a toilet because the sound would send my head spinning and would throw me to the bathroom floor. My boss thought I was faking it, and on one occasion he actually pushed me to see if my balance was so bad I’d fall to the ground.  I couldn’t stand being around my kids, and I was so desperate for rest, quiet and darkness, I wanted to hide in my closet with earplugs and an eye mask…and a giant protein bar. My extended family…OH they were the worst. Excluding my dad and sister Gina who genuinely seemed to care about my well being, many of the others invalidated my suffering and treated me like nothing happened. It’s not like I was hoping they’d ask how I was doing, but I guess I was expecting that when they’d call me up or communicate with me in some way their only intent wouldn’t be to throw their problems on me or spend 60 minutes venting about how shitty their life is. In worst cases, I was getting harassing calls with lists of expectations of what I should be doing for them. Imagine that?

One by one, I made decisions to detach from their lives. It has not been easy, and I’ve received a lot of hate mail during this process, but I’m sure I’m doing the right thing.

Recently a family member sent me a message and said, “You know I love you, right?”  I was completely bewildered. What? This particular person has abused me for many years. This person’s actions show that the only thing they are capable of doing is manipulating and abusing. Love? No. Surely this is the kind of person Maya Angelou was talking about.

The truth is, many of my family members don’t love themselves. How do I know? They participate in activities that are unhealthy to their minds, bodies, and spirits. They make decisions that lack compassion, and thus, they cause more pain and suffering for others. They fail to acknowledge or apologize for their wrongdoings. They blame the innocent for their own self-created problems. They defend their actions by pointing at other people who are in completely different situations but might engage in similar behaviors.

So, remember that old cliche, “If everyone else was jumping off a bridge, would you do it too?”

In my family, pretty much everyone jumps off the bridge. They’re so afraid to question the way they think that they all just go along with the crowd. Even if the crowd is inflicting harm on others. Even if the crowd is going against their own religious beliefs. Even if the crowd is separating itself from itself. It’s easier to say yes to jumping off the bridge than ask, “Why is jumping off the bridge a good idea?”

Over the last few months I’ve been an active witness to a lot of destruction in my family unit. People are choosing the allure of the material world over compassion and healing relationships. People are pointing fingers at others instead of at themselves. People are speculating and creating their own wild stories based on the sinister nature of their own thinking.

Even when I attended a court event to sit and meditate for peace outside the courtroom, I was verbally crucified by people who didn’t like the way I walked in, sat down, and meditated. Even though a family member who made a surprise visit to town didn’t tell me she was coming, she didn’t have any problem complaining that I didn’t make time to visit her (when she never contacted me or tried to arrange something).

That is sinister thinking. It’s ignorant, demonic, and not of compassion.

I’m still medically disabled. I can’t do much for people, but I do what I can. I give 100 percent to myself, overflow onto my children and my husband, and the rest I give to others. People (including family and friends) who are actively trying to improve themselves, showing compassion and peace, acknowledging their mistakes, being vulnerable, and those learning to love without condition are the people I make the most time for. They are the ones who have the greatest potential for growth. Their sights are set on the stars, and the love they have is never overshadowed by ignorance.

Please don’t tell me that you love me and that you “have a weird way of showing love.” That’s an excuse for treating me badly. That’s manipulation, and I’m not buying it. I forgive you, but I do not accept your behavior, and so I continue to chose not being in your lives. I know it goes without saying that abusing a disabled person is even more heinous than someone who is healthy, but clearly you don’t care about that either. …especially when you just finished saying that children need to take responsibility for being abused by adults.

In essence, I have chosen to separate myself from the pack that’s headed for the bridge. I’d rather be a farmer. But, if you like that bridge idea, that’s cool with me. It’s your life. Jump if that is your desire.

I’ve learned such a valuable lesson in all of this. Sometimes people love you because you’ve given everything you have to them without boundaries, but when you have nothing to give, and you need to set boundaries for your health and survival, you’ll see their true colors. You’ll realize their love has always been conditional, and the only way they’ll love you again is if you agree to go back to being their doormat. That just makes you co-dependent and enables their dysfunctional behavior. Don’t do it. Free yourself.

With all my love,

The Guru Girl

 

The Lies of My Life – Success Means Being Skinny and Pretty

I actively experience this lie, because for some reason, this is one of those negative voices that just keeps finding its way into my mind. Re-wiring this lie out of my brain can take some time because this voice has been a loud influence throughout my life. For some (including myself) it can be difficult, and even painful, to release. This is especially true because we learn this from the female role models in our lives, including *gasp* our mothers.

When I was a very young girl, I remember my mom really being into fitness. We lived in a small apartment that was handicapped accessible, and it was cool because it was so roomy, you could basically do laps around the apartment and get a decent workout. My mom walked a lot of laps, and I did them too. She watched Gilad Janklowicz’s and Denise Austin’s exercise shows on TV, and like many people do, worked hard to stay in shape. Everyone on those fitness shows looked so happy and healthy. And Gilad was soooooo dreamy, right?

I remember my mom constantly dieting too. At one point she said she was going to have nothing but water for two weeks, and after it was done, she said she didn’t lose a single pound. Looking back, I don’t believe that she didn’t eat a single thing, and I believe she likely had an endocrine disorder that was exacerbated by her poor dietary choices. She’s clearly got a strong kapha constitution, but she didn’t listen to her body, she fought against it, and when you fight yourself, yourself fights back. Queue the downward spiral.

I watched her and her sisters struggling with their weight. I also saw my dad’s sisters work on keeping their weight in check, but there was a significant difference in the way my parents’ families looked at weight issues.

On my mom’s side of the family, many of the women with weight issues (with the exception of a few) practiced extreme dieting. Rumor has it that one of my aunts was using amphetamines (speed) to control her weight. I would hear comments like, “She’s not a size 8, and shouldn’t be trying to squeeze herself into those jeans because it makes her look stupid.” Everyone was struggling and ironically, everyone had an opinion about how the others should be living their lives. My mom would practically starve herself all day, and as soon as we went to bed, I’d hear the fridge open. I never knew what happened after she opened the fridge, but I suspect that she was binging. Growing up in that family, I can only imagine that my aunts were talking as much crap about her as she did about them.

My dad’s sisters were different. I’d see them measure out their cereal for breakfast, and because my grandma Lucca was so focused on healthy eating with an emphasis of fruits and veggies (evident by her bountiful garden), they seemed to emphasize health over weight. They never talked crap about each other – well, as it pertained to weight, anyway. HA! I remember a few in that family being avid runners. Ironically, many of the girls went on to become nurses.

Around the time all my female role models were flaming their battles of the bulge, my mom enrolled me and my sisters in dance. My teacher’s name was Janet Wagner, and was she ever the nicest and most beautiful vision! Skinny and pretty, she appeared to be the only woman in my life who wasn’t struggling with her weight. This was my first look at a woman who wasn’t constantly griping about her flab. Whether or not she struggled with her weight, she never made it a distraction in dance class, and she always seemed happy – or at least pleasant.

Things were status quo until 5^th grade when my younger sister started significantly filling out. While Janet was teaching us to keep our “stomachs in and butts tucked under” to give ourselves the proper ballerina lines and posture, my mom was focused on telling my little sister to “suck in” because she would look “sloppy” in pictures. She would always point at the chubby girls in our class and say they looked sloppy. Sloppy was the word for “not skinny.” But sloppy wasn’t the only way I heard these girls described. I heard “she’s got her gut hanging out” and “she should be wearing a long shirt” to describe these little girls. Fortunately for me, I had a very “vata” body type, so it didn’t take much to “suck in.” You better believe I still sucked in for all my pictures! This wasn’t because Janet wanted a proper line. It was because I didn’t want to get shamed for looking fat and sloppy when the recital pictures came back. Because you know when those pictures came back she’d compare us to the other girls, and we knew exactly where we stood and where we needed to be.

As I got older, and my little sister got bigger, the comments kept coming. Whether or not my mom or my other family members were aware, they were fat shaming my sister. I always heard comments like “she’s the chubby one,” “look at those chubby cheeks,” and “she looks like a good eater.” Maybe people thought the comments were innocent, but in the context of my mom’s opinion of overweight and sloppy little girls, it was deeply mortifying. My sister’s self-esteem was in the damn toilet, and I saw it.

The summer after 6^th grade, I decided to take matters into my own hands. I loved my sister so damn much, and I was so sick of hearing the comments and criticism of her sloppy looks. I created a diet plan for our summer which included 800 calorie daily diets complemented with a heavy biking schedule. I knew enough about the food guide pyramid to make something nutritionally balanced, and figured we’d maintain a good weight if we sustained our energy throughout the day. Before it was a fad, we were eating 5 times a day with a good mix of carbs, fats and proteins while engaging in an aggressive workout schedule. It was all written down, and my sister and I were accountable to each other if we strayed from the plan.

My sister lost so much weight that summer that her teachers didn’t even recognize her. On the other hand, I stayed the same size. I entered 7^th grade 5 feet tall and 80 pounds, and my sister had lost over 30 pounds. Everyone told her how great she looked, they complimented her on her dramatic weight loss, and were in awe of her transformation. She was also approaching puberty too, so her looks became more mature. She seemed really happy about the attention, but there was something that was still wrong. Inside she was fighting a battle. You could see the lights go on. Being skinny means people like you. I got the same impression. Skinny and pretty is good, and everything else is bad.

I’d definitely call my sister a bully. She bullied kids in school, and she definitely bullied me. It was nearly daily, and to the point I was wavering between constant sadness and rage. I often fantasized punching her in the face. One time I even tried it, but she slammed the door in my face, and my fist went through the door. Yeah. I was that mad.

When she finally entered 7^th grade, her bullying evolved into cheating. She bullied the teachers by stealing answers to the tests, memorizing them, and acing all the tests. I thought she was always really smart and that’s how she got such good grades, but then I knew that she had mastered the system by cheating. While I sat in my room and cried because I had a crappy home environment that lacked love, way too much on my plate in terms of extra-curricular activities, a private school homework load, and the expectation of perfection, she was hacking the system by cheating.

Well done, little sister. Well done.

She was suffering as severely as me, but just in a different way. As we continued to get older, a couple of older teenagers entered my family. The stress was too much for my sister, and I watch her lose control of her eating again. By 9^th grade, she was up to almost 160 lbs, and these boys weren’t even being kind about their comments. On a regular basis I heard them call her “fat fuck,” and I was always amazed that no one told them to stop. It was like my mom believed if she ignored it, the name calling would stop, but it didn’t.

Although I was being abused too, I was able to stay under the radar with the verbal assaults. I had big, ugly glasses, but I was skinny. I knew if I had control of my weight, that I wouldn’t be verbally abused in the “fat” category. I watched everything that went into my mouth, I constantly chanted “my body is my temple,” (thanks to St. Thomas School’s religious education) and I took advantage of every opportunity to fill my face with fresh food or get exercise. I knew that my worth and freedom from abuse relied heavily on my weight, but as I entered puberty it became increasingly harder to control it.

Lucky for me, around that time I was working at the Minnesota Workforce Center, and one of the random unemployed guys came in and brought us a copy of the cabbage soup diet. SCORE! Now, I had a way to stay skinny, and it worked!

I brought the paper home that had the cabbage soup recipe and instructions for eating. My mom and sister were interested, so we made a huge pot of soup and everyone ate. I’m not sure how much weight the rest of my family lost that week, but I lost 10 pounds. Ironically, I didn’t have 10 pounds to lose, but it came off. I was happy, and every time I stepped on the scale and saw it going down, I felt success. I knew what success tasted like – cabbage soup.

I used the cabbage soup diet a couple times a year to keep my body in check for ballet. My mom was feeding me McDonalds, so this was the way I used to cleanse and atone from all my junky eating. It wasn’t like I chose this food. This is what was fed to me. It was more convenient for my mom to buy me fast food than make food, so she turned to convenience, and I was slowly being poisoned.

If anyone’s ever seen the documentary called Supersize Me, you know what happens when you eat too much McDonalds. I gained 20 pounds in a few months, and soon my whole face was broken out with severe cystic acne. I finally got rid of my ugly glasses, I was still skinny, but now I was ugly. At the time, I was taking classes at the college in a post-secondary program, and my mom was taking a keyboarding class with me. She would look at my face, make comments about how bad my acne was, but she never took me to the doctor to get me medication for this skin disease, and she never bought healthy food. She said our state-sponsored medical plan probably wouldn’t cover my acne because it was “cosmetic,” but she never actually called to check to see if this was the case. The fact is, acne is covered by insurance. It’s not a simple “cosmetic” problem. Ugh.

My worth sunk. My sister’s new boyfriend called me an “eyesore,” my mom would cringe when she looked at me, and I didn’t know what to do. I spiraled into a deep depression. Lucky for me, around the same time I started spending time in Canada with my boyfriend’s grandparents, and the more dinners I had at their house, the more my face cleared up. Within a couple months, I was nearly all clear.

Around the time my face cleared up, my boyfriend told me he thought my sister had bulimia. I had no idea what bulimia even was, so he explained to me that she’s eating a ton of food and then throwing up in the shower. So I watched, and listened, and soon I knew he was right. I did what every responsible, loving sister would do: I told my mom. I confessed that I had been watching my sister binge on foods and then go throw up in the shower. Some weeks she’d go through tubs of peanut butter, maple syrup, and ketchup (which I later learned are preferred lubricants for vomiting), and she was literally eating what little food we had in the house until the cupboards were bare. Instead of my mom contacting a pediatrician, a psychologist, or a doctor, she just yelled at my sister. “You better not be throwing up in the shower!” she scolded.

Are you fucking kidding me? <==My actual thought at the time.

My sister was obviously in terrible pain. If she was going through the motions of binging and purging, then she’s got a serious mental problem. How did I know this? I read it on the internet! Her weight plummeted, and people admired how beautiful and skinny she was. No surprise. My sister was literally abusing herself and her body, and she was being openly celebrated for it.

Bulimia is a horrible disease. I watched her puke her body away and puke her teeth away. She puked her self-esteem away, even though she was using it to gain control over her life. I don’t know why she did it, but I suspected she was trying to escape from the years of fat shaming, the current abuse, and the lack of parental love. If she was skinny, my mom would value her. If she was skinny, she wouldn’t have to suck in for ballet pictures. If she was skinny, she’d be back in the limelight, just like she was in 6^th grade. If she was skinny, she’d be happy, and so would everyone else.

But it didn’t make her happy. It made her angrier. She started lashing out and abusing other people. She started forging my mom’s checks to steal money which fueled her eating disorder, she lied to me, she lied to her friends and family, and she was lying to herself.

I ended up moving away to the Washington D.C. area as soon as I graduated from high school, and I was married and pregnant with my first child a few years later. My sister, still suffering from bulimia, stealing, and lying, came to live here too. As I gained weight during my pregnancy, I heard all kinds of passive aggressive comments about my weight. I heard comments like, “I don’t know why you’re gaining so much weight; you must be eating a lot,” and “when I’m pregnant someday, I’m not getting all fat (que side glances at me) because I’m going to stay really fit and work out every day.” I also got “the looks.” Oh! The looks I got! Little did she know, my hormones, not my eating habits, caused me to gain nearly 50 pounds each pregnancy. In fact, three weeks after giving birth I had lost 45 of the 50 pounds, illustrating that my weight gain was water weight, not stored fat. Every time I would wake up from a nap, I’d have a GIANT pee and lose 3 pounds. Seriously. My sister was fat shaming me (for water weight due to hormones) at the most critical time of my life – when I was growing a baby.

By the time I was pregnant I had completely lost my inclination and desire to control my weight. I knew it was healthy to gain weight during pregnancy, and breastfeeding required a high caloric intake. My entire focus had changed. Instead of trying to keep my perfect size 00 body, I exercised, cooked and ate healthy meals, and allowed my ego to be annihilated by falling in love with marriage and motherhood. My mother’s voice in my head faded away… …at least for a few years…

When I seriously got into my career, I noticed something very frightening. The skinny (or fit), and pretty people had the best jobs, were taken the most seriously, and seemed to be the most successful. Maybe my mom was just preparing me for the reality of life? Maybe I unfairly judged her tough love, catty comments about looking “sloppy,” or acne triggered looks of disgust. In reality, she and all the other female role models were being shaped by society. Only the strongest and most present were able to talk themselves out of the negative messages and view their bodies as something that should be nurtured and respected. Society (especially Corporate America) still has it wrong, and the only way to change the message is to be the change we want to see.

Here’s the simple truth:

Our body is a temple for the spirit that connects us all. You are the entire universe manifested in human form. You are enough. You are a success. Right now. As is. Without caveats. And no one can tell you anything different.

Because of Transcendental Meditation, I have been given the opportunity of a lifetime to free myself from these dysfunctional thoughts. I have come to realize that the destructive comments that people make about others illustrates the relationship they have with themselves. It’s not you. It’s never you. It’s them.

…and today, when I’m PMSing and feel like I’m a sausage shoved in a casing, or when I don’t have makeup on, I can still feel that voice creeping up and telling me I’m a failure. I acknowledge these thoughts without judgement when I live presently; I let them go as they bubble up; and I practice self-acceptance. When someone has labeled you as the “pimple-infested, overweight, ugly-duckling,” you know that what’s on the outside is just a small piece of who you are. Once you get right on the inside, it doesn’t matter how the outside looks.

Once you understand the truth, you will always feel perfect. Because you ARE!

Remember that. Love yourself. Heal yourself. You’re a success.

With all my love,

The Guru Girl

Forgiveness

I need to give a shout out to Mindy for triggering my inspiration for this blog. I know Mindy from my childhood. She was one of the most beautiful ballerinas I had the honor of dancing with as a kid, and she’s grown into such an amazing woman. So, thanks Mindy. 🙂

Mindy sent me a message saying she was thinking of me when she heard Dr. Caroline Leaf speaking at her church, and she sent me a link to her teachings on the brain and it’s interdependence with Christianity. I’ll post the link below. I highly recommend watching!  It’s great stuff!

Now, as a survivor and thrive-or (yes, making that word up), of a traumatic brain injury, I’ve learned a thing or two about the brain. I currently have a list of 19 medical professionals that have been helping me through the healing process after my car accident, but honestly, very few of those folks actually DID anything to help me heal. I did most of it by myself. Yes, my chiropractor spent hours working on my soft tissue and back alignment, my osteopath performed lots of cranial-sacral adjustments, and my physical, cognitive, and vestibular therapists helped rebuild the parts of my brain that were damaged. However, when it came to healing, I did it. My drive to seek knowledge, truth, understanding, going to each appointment, following orders, doing exercises, following a proper diet, etc. is what made me heal. My healing came through my own works, my own thoughts, my own emotions, and my own will. I wanted it. I went after it. I didn’t fear my prognosis, because I wanted to come out of my accident as the best version of myself.

One surprising thing about healing from a severe injury is that oftentimes, as you fix some obvious broken areas of yourself, you start to discover lots of old baggage that also needs to go. This stuff has been hanging out in your mind and body tightly bound up to protect you from being hurt by it anymore. Your body protects you from this toxic baggage, but these little pockets of yuck are essentially the seeds of disease. They’re festering. They smell like dumpsters. It’s icky.

So, on this path to healing, I found that I also needed to unwrap the other baggage, look at it, sort it out, and figure out what to do with each item. …kinda like cleaning out your closet and sorting into the “keep,” “donate,” and “toss” piles. Unlike a closet cleaning, this baggage, once unwrapped spewed forth so many emotions; so many in fact, that I couldn’t even look at what was inside. I hadn’t looked at this stuff for so long because it was inexplicably painful. But then, like every major obstacle in my life, I put my fear aside, chose love, and went right into each package of ick. One by one, I slowly unwrapped, looked, felt, cried, vented, wrote, meditated, prayed, cried, etc., until all I was left with was an object without any emotional wrapping. Just a memory. Not good or bad. Just a memory no more moving than a jagged, little pebble in an infinite sea of jagged little pebbles.

…and that brings me to forgiveness.

When I tell you that I had to do a lot of forgiving during the process of cleaning out my closet of emotional and often traumatic memories, believe me when I say it. When you’re looking back at your past and thinking, “How could anyone do something so horrible to me?” as an active victim, and then immediately making the choice to forgive, you’re doing the hardest thing you’ll ever do, and the best. Holding onto this stuff – even the stuff you’ve forgotten about – really colors your heart. It’s toxic in your body. It’s you poisoning yourself from within. You can’t love fully, you can’t be the most compassionate version of yourself, and you can’t really be the best version of yourself unless you forgive.

The process became even more complicated when during my own housekeeping process a close family member was in a downward spiral with her substance abuse and psychiatric problems. I understood why she was flailing in her physical and spiritual life because I know her story. I know she has stress, it’s displaced, and she flames it on everyone because she can’t find the strength to clean out her own closet. When you’re so deep in stress, and you’re literally buried in a closet of emotional trauma, sometimes all you can do is shout about how miserable you are, blame your situation on everyone else, and not pull yourself out. For many years I was her personal whipping girl of blame when she sought to vent off the extra steam because she couldn’t handle all the exploding emotional baggage anymore. I made the bravest decision of my life when I chose to forgive her, remove her entanglement in my life, and move on without her. It was a very difficult and sad decision, but my heart is at peace now, and I pray for her almost daily. Although I don’t feel her suffering, I know she is, and I hope that one day, she’ll find her way back home.

With forgiveness, we have to start simply. At some point everyone needs to start at one end of their closet and work out of it. Maybe you’ll pick a corner to start in – don’t try and tackle it all in one day. Bit by bit, you can find your way out if you want it.

The good news is that there are quite a few tips, tricks and secrets to helping you through the process. Here are a few of my favorites:

1. Transcendental Meditation. It does all the work for you. Just do it for 20 minutes twice a day, and let your mantra go at it. It will take awhile to get through all the stress, but it’s a very balanced approach to addressing the heaviness of this stuff.
2. Fasting. Fasting isn’t just for brides-to-be that need to get rid of back fat before wedding pictures! LOL! I use fasting for spiritual reasons, and I find it extremely effective. Deprivation from food for just three days can completely re-focus your awareness, unclog your channels of compassion, and clear away years of toxicity. It’s a real karma burner! I’m in the middle of an 11 day fast now (3 days only water, 5 days veggie juice, 3 days fruit/veg smoothies), and on this 6th day, I’m feeling better than I have in years. Fasting is a wonderful blessing. Check out Markus Rothkranz’s book Heal Yourself 101.
3. Cognitive behavior therapy. You can’t always chose what happens, but you can chose how you respond and how you think about negative events. Turn your frown upside down, and see a therapist who can give you tools to be successful. Read Dr. Phil’s Life Code or Dr. Lawlis’ book Retraining the Brain: A 45 Day Plan to Conquer Stress and Anxiety.
4. Prayer. Prayer is powerful. It can literally change your life. Never underestimate it’s power and ability to help you sort things out.
5. Turn to your family and community. Humans are hard wired for community because at a quantum level we’re all connected. The best thing about spending time with other people is that they can also counsel you and support you as you make choices to forgive.

I’m sure there are many other ideas, so feel free to share them with me in the comments below!

Don’t be afraid to look at your baggage. Don’t be afraid to forgive. If you can’t do it right away, just try, try again. Be brave. Love yourself. Forgive, hang up your favorite memories, and throw the rest in the “toss” pile. You’re the only one who can heal yourself, and you deserve a clean closet.

Sending you all my love,

The Guru Girl

Link to Dr. Caroline Leaf’s videos: http://subsplash.com/rivervalleychurch/s/2c14431

Love – Unconditionally

What’s the hardest thing anyone can ever do? Love, unconditionally.

We use the word “love” pretty loosely in our society. I love salted caramel gelato. I love her dress. I love this sunset. But all of these statements describe conditional love. Conditional love describes love of something only if it selfishly pleases me. This week I’ve heard religious people say, “we love, serve and pray for our enemies,” but go on to tell me the answer is to kill them. Well, that’s not love either. You can’t possibly be unconditionally loving your enemies if you seek to kill them. That definition of love is conditional. “Love the sinner, hate the sin.” Well, that statement is about conditional love too. When we say that, we’re basically saying, “I love you only if you act a certain way, otherwise I will hate part of you – the part that is doing something that I hate.” Why can’t we just stop at “love the sinner?” Period. The rest of that phrase is just putting a condition on your love.

There are a lot of things that I have hated in my life. I was mistreated and abused by many people throughout my life. Most of the people who abused me were supposed to love and protect me. I hated them. I hated what they did to me. I hated how I felt about myself when these things happened. Then one day my eyes opened – I realized I hated and I was hating. The fact that I was hating people and things just made me a hater too, and I was hating because people were hating me. Funny how that works, right? I was desperately lost in a cycle of hate, and I didn’t even know it.

Hate is not such a horrible thing to experience, because you don’t know what true, unconditional love is unless you know what hate is. Hate is usually caused by fear. Hate is often the result of something making you feel unsafe. It can be in a family, social, or emotional setting. You experience fear when something doesn’t resonate with what you’re programmed to believe is “good” and “right,” so when people act a different way than you want, you contract back into your corner and hate it. It scares you. For instance, when we see someone doing something we consider “bad,” we fear the consequences for ourselves, we label it as a “sin,” and then we hiss and spit in the corner. Pointing. Judging. And that makes us no better than the person who is triggering that emotion within ourselves.

But I’ve come to know and experience that acceptance and love of these things that we fear is incredibly freeing. The only person who suffers is the one who hates. That lack of love, and that paralysis of fear eats you from the inside. It destroys your ability to be the best version of yourself. If you’re spending your time pointing fingers at people and telling them all the things you hate about them and want to change – that’s not going to change them. It will, however, harden and color your own heart. You stain yourself when you do that.

Isn’t it better then, to stop judging things as good or bad? Isn’t it better to stop labeling things as “sin,” and instead realize that there are things that feel better to us than others? Once you do that, you can open your heart and learn to love people right where they are – not where you want them to be. You also come to a place of understanding why people do the things they do. Stress and trauma create a diseased mental and emotional environment, and people unconsciously make decisions to diffuse their own anger. That includes both the “judger” and the “sinner,” who are really very much the same. Those people just lack love, despite what they preach, and oftentimes they haven’t been privileged to receive unconditional love. They learned this behavior by receiving conditional love: I’ll love you if you look or act a certain way or make me look a certain way. Sometimes these people grow up in a world of violence and never experienced love at all – conditional or unconditional. Sad, right?

Under all that stress, and under all that judgement in EVERY HUMAN  lies the pure innocent state of being. It’s the state of being when we were born. The one that looks into our mother’s eyes and into her soul and loves – unconditionally. Do you remember that? Can you imagine it for a moment?

…and if you can, for a moment, think about what you hate the most, and then open your heart and love that thing or person unconditionally, your life will begin to transform. Love by understanding, empathizing, and feeling deeply. Love with wild abandon. Turn your hate into acceptance.  Accept and love things as they are.

Changing the way you love will literally change your life.  Let’s stop and contemplate that for a moment. Let’s try to be present when we start experiencing fear and hate, and during that process of understanding, let’s shine a spotlight of love – the unconditional kind – on whatever we’re wrapped up in. It’s sooooooooo hard. You’ll feel the layers of hate and fear cracking on the facade of your heart. It hurts. Your heart has been bound up with these conditional fallacies for so long. But I promise you, this practice will just continue to make you a better and better person.

…so, to wrap this up, I want to leave you with a quote from my favorite poet, Rumi:

“You have to keep breaking your heart until it opens.”