Out With The Old

July 25th

I am the last man standing. Everyone I have befriended over the last two weeks is gone. I have a very good feeling about this week, though, despite the fact that if I have to eat one more salad without dressing I will most likely set fire to my taste buds. I mean, seriously. The first week the food was verging on enjoyable. The second week it was tolerable and the third week, it seems, it is deplorable. Oh, but it hasn't changed and therein lies the problem. It's the same thing for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I am having a considerable amount of difficulty downing a plate of dressingless, flavorless salad and scrawny watery vegetables first thing in the morning and then having to do it all over again at lunch and dinner... ach, just the thought of lettuce makes me queazy, I have to say. Strangely I have become a huge fan of cabbage. Never could stand the stuff before but now I can't get enough of it. Tonight I picked through the greens of the salad and ate only the cabbage and I'll do it for the next 6 days if I have to, mark my words. I'm considering a visit to the local organic market to pick up some dressing. I don't need much, just a dollop to get me through the day. Is that bad? Is that cheating? Or is it just plain survival?

July 26th

Okay, I'm better now. It was just a momentary fit of culinary proportions. I had taken the off-campus "cooking" class the day before and even though it was all raw (and vegan) it was the damn tastiest food ever. So much flavor and excitement it made me look forward to going home and keeping up with the raw food diet, but it also ruined me for the rest of my time at OHI because I got a taste of what this diet COULD be like. I added some seasoning to my salads today and (lo and behold) they tasted much better! The seasonings have been here the whole time but I haven't really needed them... now they are saving my life.

There has been all this talk about letting go of old stories. I first heard this from J (the psychic) and then again in just about every class I've taken here. I knew what that meant and thought I was doing a pretty good job of clearing out the old stories and negative "self-talk." Then the other day in our stretch class (I thought it would be more like yoga but it really is just a meditative stretch class) I was on my back with my left leg stretched out on the floor and my right leg up in the air (upside down splits, if you will). I was then instructed to take my right leg out to the side so I steered with my right hand and went as far as I could, all the while thinking, "Gah, my hips are SO tight... so tight... so tight." Then it hit me that, as inconsequential as it seemed, I was telling myself an old story. So I experimented and switched my thought to "my hips are relaxed and open... relaxed and open... relaxed and open." I shit you not, my hip responded immediately, opening up and allowing my leg to fall another 6 inches toward the floor. Don't get me wrong, there is still a lot of physical work to be done before my hips are pain-free, open and relaxed to their full potential, but simply changing the story got me six inches closer in a matter of seconds, and it really made me think. The big, obvious stories are easily recognized and therefore easily changed, but there's so much more to it; so many stories that don't seem to matter actually might, in the end, be more important to change than the bigger ones (I say change because simply getting rid of an old story is not enough - nature abhors a vacuum - it must be replaced with a new, positive story). In a yoga class a few weeks ago, before I arrived at Nutrition Prison, we were doing hip openers and the teacher informed us that the hips are where we store old relationships. This made absolute sense to me in the moment, but for some reason I had let go of that information until that moment in the stretch class. Every time I've stretched my hips since then I do so with the mantra, "I don't need you [my body, my hips] to protect me anymore, I protect myself by following my heart and my intuition. You can let go now." And it all sounds like a bunch of New Age bullshit but I tell you, my hips feel more open and less painful every time I recite those words (in my head, of course) and I haven't experienced such openness in my hips since before college (fancy that... even my protective hips date back to college).

July 27

With all my old friends gone I find myself alone even more so than before. I eat alone, I do the morning walk by myself (it's just not the same without Ray. I've started doing 2 1/2 laps in the time others do 1 1/2, probably because I'm unable to saunter along and discuss the woes of dressingless salad) and just about every minute of the day, except during class, I am alone. I suppose it is the week I am meant to face myself without any real distraction. There are a few exceptions to this solitude, of course, but interactions are short and (mostly) sweet. Last night a man (who was here last week but with whom I have never had occasion to interact) said hello to me as I sat and ate by myself. I waved and smiled and he leaned over and said into my ear, "You're like a pixie." He straightened up and I smiled, letting out a puff of air through my nostrils. He leaned over again, and into my ear whispered "Can you fly?" He popped up to get my answer and I nodded my head with a coy corner-mouth smile. He leaned over again, "Good, I've got a few wishes I'd like to talk to you about." With that he was gone and I continued shoveling gazpacho into my mouth. A couple hours later I was sitting in an over-sized chair drinking rejuvelac (a fermented quinoa water that is a natural probiotic, replacing the good bacteria that's been flushed out with the bad during the detox process). This same man spotted me, stopped, gently pointed in my direction and said, "There's the magic. The magic lady." Silence, it would seem, has added a layer of mystery and magic to my personae. I can live with that :)

This morning I sat outside with my vegetable juice (Tuesdays - Thursdays are optional juicing days and I LOVE me some green juice as an alternative to three more days of salad) and a man approached, gesturing to the chair next to me and asked if anyone was sitting there. I shook my head and made a small motion for him to go ahead and sit. He asked how I was and I gave a thumbs up. We sat in silence for several minutes and then he held out a piece of his watermelon and asked if I'd like it. I shook my head and smiled and, perhaps instinctually, held up one hand as if to say "no thank you." After several more minutes of silence the man got up and left. I guess I was not enough of a conversationalist for him, though he never bothered to find out why I wasn't speaking and I no longer offer that information until it is imminently necessary or requested.

Watermelon?! You may ask. Well, I should explain that there are two different diets here. There's the hypo diet (short for hypoglycemic) which does not include ANY sugar (no fruit and no sugary vegetables such as jicama, carrots or beets). Then there is the regular diet on which you're served watermelon 4 days a week for breakfast, apple sauce another day, oranges another day and I don't know what-all that 7th day because I try not to drool over other people's breakfast. I have opted for the hypo diet for several reasons, the most of which I will not mention here, but not the least of which is that I have this intuition that it will do my throat some good. I loves me some sugar and it's helpful to flush it out and give my body a break. Speaking of which, that's not all I'm flushing out...

I urge you to stop reading now if the mere mention of a colonic a few posts ago made you uneasy. I don't know why I feel the need to share this with you but the post is called "Out With The Old" for more than just the previously mentioned reasons. Colonics are my new best friends. I actually quite look forward to them which is, I admit, a little bit crazy. My first colonic two weeks ago (I now realize) was a disaster. The woman really knew her shit (oh yeah, there's gonna be lots of those). She massaged my abdomen (more specifically my colon by way of my abdomen) but nothing was coming out. She said old stuff (I'll spare you the phrase that's in my head) can be the same consistency as a tire. Gulp. She said she could feel it in there and I should sign up for another colonic the next day because the first one is always the toughest and it would be good to get them back to back. She had a lot to say about my eating habits and food allergies and all this without me saying a word (or even writing a word for that matter). She could just tell by feeling the desperate state of my colon. She massaged my abdomen and reflexology points on my feet and legs for an entire hour, but still nada. I was, quite literally, full of shit (I think I've been waiting all my life to say that and have it be true). Subsequent colonics have been just astounding. The tube is clear so you can watch as the old shit escapes from your body. It's gotten to the point where I'm slightly disappointed if the colon therapist's arm gets in the way of the tube as she massages my abdomen. It is inexplicably cathartic to watch yourself release shit that looks like a cross between driftwood and dinosaur poop. It's poetic, really. Letting go of old stories, letting go of old bullshit, letting go of old actual shit that's been holding me back and dragging me down. Halle-fuckin-lujah.