Ayurvedic consultation

Like the rest of you, many times over the years I have tried to figure out my dosha. You know, my Ayurvedic archetype. There's vata, pitta, and kapha, and each represents a different combination of the elements, and shows up differently in each body. I've read a couple of books about Ayurvedic medicine, and taken all the available questionnaires to determine my dosha. But whenever I try to pinpoint my type, I'm left scratching my head (which, it turns out, is consistent with my body's dosha): I'm partly this, partly that. Apparently my mental dosha differs from my physical dosha, which explains something, but I will have to think about it for a long time before I understand what that something is, because that's just how my mental dosha works.

After hearing an interesting lecture on Ayurvedic medicine during my course at Kripalu, I decided to schedule a consultation with the Ayurvedic specialist on staff. I wanted to know how my furnace is doing. Essentially, we each are a furnace, and our fire is either burning efficiently (think steadily burning, warming fire), too quickly (think throwing dry paper onto that fire) or too damply (think wet leaves on the fire).

I filled out the six-page questionnaire that asked about everything from my sweat production to the rhythm of my "evacuation" to the speed of my speech. I'll spare you the details. Okay, okay: Scant to moderate; just fine, thank you; and erratic.

The specialist typed my dosha in short order by noting my general frame and assorted features, checking my Eastern medicine pulses, listening to my erratic speech. Vata, she says. Pola, you are very Vata, she says. Vata's elements are ether and air, and the energy is cold and dry. She gives me a little lecture about energy cycles of one's life, cycles of the year, cycles of each day. She and I are meeting in the cold and dry point of the day, the year, my life. It's hard to find balance in my energy when I carry my cold and dry Vata body through a cold and dry day in the cold and dry season of my life. My furnace is like that guy in the Jack London story who is trying to light a fire in the dead of winter; I can't get a good, steady flame going. I start to feel chilled just hearing about it, and zip up my vest.

She tells me I once basked in the warm fire of youth, which has more Kapha energy, but now I have entered my "wisdom years," which are all Vata.
"Wisdom years!" I chuckle. "I'll bet you learned to say that in this country."
"Yes," she confesses. "I once told a patient she was old, and she said that was offensive to Americans. So now I say 'wisdom years.'"
"Well, it's okay with me. You can say old."

So she does. She speaks frankly from that point onward: Your energy is cold and dry. Your body is drying up, pola. All right, already! Geez. You don't have to hit me over the head with it.

She gives me a long list of dos and don'ts. Among the many instructions for balancing Vata in a Vata time of life is not to eat so much cold food; she 'd like most of what I eat to be cooked. When my family has a salad for dinner, I should wilt mine, she says. Mmmmmmm, soggy salad. She's not wild about my kale chips, though, which are too dry and crisp, like me. I should eat smooth food, but not cold smoothies. She would prefer, too, that I warm up my gazpacho in the summertime. Yummmmm, warm cold soup. 

Laura is delighted with one of the Ayurvedic consultant's recommendations: that we turn up the heat in the house while I am in my wisdom years. I've conceded 4 whole degrees in the daytime, and we're now set at 66 degrees. The consultant thinks I should aim for 70-72, but she's not paying for the oil.

Speaking of which, among her strongest recommendations is that I give myself a warm (almond) oil massage twice a week. Not in the shower, where you might be able to stay warm and drip into the tub. No, you should do this some other time outside a tub -- dripping onto everything around you: your eyes, your clothing, keyboard, grocery lists, the dog--who is also in his wisdom years--as he wanders blindly by.

The instructions are as follows: Warm half a cup of almond oil in a pan. Pour half of it onto your head and massage it in. Rub the rest of the oil onto your body. Keep it on for an hour.

I feel like I am not deep enough into my wisdom years while I try this procedure. How one remains warm while covered with oil -- which is warm for all of a minute and then soon is body temperature, then soon after that is oh, about 66 degrees -- I cannot figure out.

But I am game, and I like that the Ayurvedic doctor promises me the oil will actually get absorbed by my skin and that some of the oil will nourish my brain. That I could use. I rub a quarter cup of warm almond oil into my scalp, tuck a towel into my collar, and try to continue my morning.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

I confess that I do not massage the oil all over my body. I am not up for being naked, cold, and slippery for an hour. Plus I'm thinking that if someone came to the door, it'd be both embarrassing and dangerous:
How'd she die? 
Doorbell rang. She slid straight into the door. 
Poor thing. Right smack in the middle of her wisdom years. Tsk.

There is a long, thoughtful pause before someone asks what they are all thinking: What's with the grease?

balloons and burgers

Die-really-hard followers may remember that a couple of years ago I inflated a small, well-meaning helium balloon called The Letter Composer, and let it fly into space. I watched it float away, and then I think I actually saw it explode when it was just the tiniest dot against the sky. I had been hoping to write letters for people who were in knotty interpersonal situations. I'd listen to their story and then help them make their point -- respectfully stating their case, bringing them closer to repair or closure, helping them feel heard. It would combine the writer bits in me with the therapist bits in me. TLC would be offering TLC. It was a lovely experiment in how quickly something can get lost on the Internet if you don't tie a very sturdy string to it -- a string with tightly fastened colorful ribbons of marketing, GroupOns, and Google Ads.

That reminds me of how last year, when Laura was trying to figure out her next professional move, she toyed for awhile with the idea of international educational consulting. "GO FOR IT!" begged a well-connected friend in Hong Kong, who assured Laura of tremendous success and a full roster of clients in very short order. "Here are the shoes you'll need to wear in Hong Kong," that friend said in an email that followed their phone conversation. She included a link to a picture of a pair of snakeskin flats with bows on them. "You'll have to leave the clogs at home." She offered to take Laura shopping for the outfits that would go with the shoes, and also suggested that Laura maybe not make much reference to her personal marital situation. I saw Laura open her hand, releasing her balloon to fly noisily around the room. It landed in a wet heap, right on top of her clogs.

Neither of us wanted to do the "marketing"  of our balloons, and those two bright, inflated things went on their way. Mine, well, we know -- it popped silently against the blue sky. When Laura's international consulting balloon throoshed around, we laughed at the funny sound and tossed that thing in the trash.

As for me, I keep wanting to marry these different parts of me to each other but maybe they are just meant to be roommates. I don't know if the nutrition evangelist in me will be able to make a go of a health coaching practice. That field is filled with young women with long, lush hair and perky breasts. I'm serious. I don't think the writer in me can -- or will-- make a go of anything even remotely lucrative. I still have ideas and still move toward them, but I am balloon-shy now. You launch enough of them and watch enough of them pop, and you just get shy.

Now and then, though, it all comes together -- just for a moment. While at Kripalu, I wrote to the executive chef to get her recipe for mushroom nut burgers. It had to be done, just as a letter must be written to the editor when the paper has done something brave and good, or mean-spirited and bad. In that chef's brain was a recipe that could solve the problems of depression and obesity in one meal, and everyone at lunch that day knew it. Defying the signs in the dining hall that said recipes are not available except for those that are in our books and the chef's monthly blog (this is purple so that you click on it, El!), so please don't ask, I asked. For one delicious moment in time, I achieved the marriage of several important parts of me: the writer, the nutrition nut, the introvert who occasionally issues an implicit invitation to connect. 

Definitely eat more kale

I was excited about the five-day "nutrition intensive" at Kripalu beforehand, but I didn't expect to love it as much as I did. I wasn't sure about all the hubbub about Kripalu, and half hoped it would be just okay so I could avoid raving about the place like everyone else does. You know. It's like I feel about the Uggs I'm wearing in this chilly kitchen as I type; they're so popular you almost don't want them to be as warm and cozy as they are. You're a little sheepish when you end up loving them. I felt that way about Kripalu.

When the course began, we wrote down our "intentions" (you're not allowed to take a course or workshop any more without writing down your intentions), and, in addition to learning all I could about holistic nutrition, all I wanted to do was to be fully present and to feel more relaxed each day. And when you write down your intention, well. You might as well check it off your list, because that's what you get.

So I had a wonderful time, felt more relaxed each day, and learned a crazy amount about nutrition from some teachers who know so much that that in itself was amazing. Most of my fellow students were either doctors or nurses, and I hoped no one was noticing the wisps of smoke coming out of my ears during a couple of the lectures. My brain was working so hard. My little nutrition flashcards I mentioned in the last post are like kiddie cards: "5+3" on one side, and "8" on the other. The lecturers are talking about glucagon, glycinate, glycation, gliadin, glutamine, glucosamine, and glycolosis, which to me is just gratuitously complicated, like George Forman giving all of his sons the same name. I followed along as best as I could, but sometimes I felt like that Will & Grace episode where Will, faking that he knows what he's talking about with a guy he wants to impress, rubs his chin and says, "Mmm, Mombasa."

Mmm, zinc glycinate, chelated.

True confession: When I'm in classes that really grab me, taught by someone who is extremely knowledgable, there is a little part of me that splinters off and starts to think, "Gee, I wish I knew all the stuff this person knows." It's a silly, self-defeating tussle. If that part of me would shush I would actually be a step closer to knowing what I want to know, and I could simply enjoy being in the presence of someone with a wealth of knowledge.

But Kripalu was great, and I was fully present. I felt more and more comfortable each day. For the first time in my adult life, I wasn't counting down to when I could go home. Because no one was home, and I wouldn't see Laura until the weekend anyway. That made it possible for me to just be where I was. This was new, and I liked it.

More soon, likely after the (happy) Thanksgiving onslaught. In the meantime, remember: if you eat animal products, you are what they ate. Try to find milk from Jersey cows. It is cleaner and tends to come from smaller farms. Most tree nuts don't have to be organic, but peanuts do. And if you have any smoked animal product, have some Vitamin C afterwards. It neutralizes the, um, it neutralizes something.

I'm thinking maybe I should try some Vitamin C for the smoke coming out of my ears.

Anyway, definitely eat more kale.

cod liver oil

Erp. Pardon me. I've begun to take cod liver oil. This is how focused I've become on health and nutrition. When Yani opened the refrigerator the other day and saw the cod liver oil, she shut the door firmly, looked me in the eye, and said, "Ma. What. Are. You. Doing." She's been a trooper with my nutrition whatnot, but I lost her at the cod liver oil.

While Yani lived here in September and October, I got her to love butternut squash (research shows it takes 3 times to develop a taste for something you've been iffy about -- don't you just wish you could take part in that study? -- and you will recall that we have enough to supply Farmington with 3 servings of butternut squash per resident). She was open to cooking with coconut oil, she gave in to not having bread around, and we had kale as an appetizer most nights. When I made my first batch of almond milk, she congratulated me without even a hint of an eye roll. But the cod liver oil? I probably should have waited until she moved out before getting that.

After the cancer diagnosis, I started taking an increasing interest in the physical health of my counseling clients. Before that, when physical issues would come up in session, I would empathize like a good therapist does, and then begin looking for the emotional root of their ailment. Yes, yes, any emotional disturbance is somehow experienced in the body, but the point is that I felt like my job was to explore their emotional lives, not their refrigerator. After cancer, I started to feel less sure about that. Instead of focusing on the psychodynamic flora of someone's depression or anxiety, I wanted to hear about their intestinal flora. How they were sleeping. When they move away from blue light in the course of their day. How often they let the sun shine on their face. How much sugar they eat. How often they eat fish, or fish crammed into capsules. I found myself wanting not just to talk about their relationship with their mom, but their relationship with kale.

I can't learn enough about nutrition. It's asking a lot of a 57-year-old brain, to take all this in, but I am so hungry to learn all I can. I have a pile of flashcards: "Fat Soluble Vitamins" this one says on one side. "D, A, K, E," I say to myself before flipping over the card. On the fridge: little notes about soluble vs. insoluble fiber, insulin resistance, grams of sugar to a teaspoon. I'm taking a year-long course on holistic nutrition, and beyond that I take all the webinars and go to all the seminars I can find about nutrition, dietary theories, varsity-level smoothie making. I am workshopping my way to nutritional Nirvana. If there is such a place, it's overflowing with kale, I can tell you that much. People there sleep on beds of it.

I've added a branch of health coaching to my practice so that I can work with people who want to make dietary and lifestyle changes but don't know how. I'm looking for clients who are recalibrating after a cancer diagnosis, or recovering from chemotherapy. Or people who may finally be concerned about gradually creeping up toward “diabesity.” They may just know they're off track. I'm finding that I feel pretty passionately about this new mission -- I feel like I need to do my part to keep us all from going to hell in a bread basket. In terms of our collective health, the sky really is falling, like in that book "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs." 

Along with the new branch of my practice, I've made remaining healthy (and happy) the organizing principle in my life. Followers who have been with this blog from the start will recall that mid-chemo I wondered if I was supposed to be making a sea change in my life. I didn't want to. I liked where my little boat was going. I don't know if I am embracing holistic nutrition as a way of staving off early death, or as a way of living a long, energized life. Sometimes I can't tease those apart. 

This is a sea change for me. It's not the answer to everything, but I now have a set of (erp) oars.