Shadow writing

Today I have attended a workshop in shadow writing. Shadow writing is basically a Jungian concept, a method to facilite a dialogue between the Ego Consciousness and the Unconscious.

It is also used for its therapeutic effect. At the Ann Wigmore institute, where many people attempt a lifestyle change, shadow writing workshop is a new tool to help people connect to the shadow in their past and another to the shadow? of the future. (I have not yet attended the second part of the workshop, so I am not quite sure what exactly it will be - I only know it will deal with the future. )

Our exercise in shadow writing had us instructed to write from the back of our heads, without stopping, crossing over or putting a pen - or pencil - away, once we started writing. We were to write for 12-15 minutes on a topic "I am from" . Totally relaxed, whatever comes to mind and perhaps we would connect with our shadows. Before we started we heard a few examples of what other people wrote, just to give us some ideas to start. Many were about childhoods or roots in general. When I put a pen to the paper I wrote:

" I am from a burgeois villa in a small town in central Poland. I am from a gestapo prison.
I am from being sheltered from the truth too horrible to know, so I don't really know where I am from.

I am from the victims. I am from the opressors.
I am from the life-loving, rebellious Poles with tons of attitude. I am from logical, disciplined, obedient Germans.

I am from the fighters who were told to surrender facing an overwhelming power and did not obey. I am from the fighters, who were ordered to kill and torture and obeyed without a cry.
I am from contradictions.

I am from a patrician villa filled with remnants of old silver and the best damast linnens, where my grandmother taught me how to eat snails, while using breadcrumbs as a substitute.
I am from a stalinist terror and a poverty too grinding for my grandmother to comprehend, or even acknowledge it. I am from eating breadcrumbs pretending they were snails.
I am from duplicity - from a place and time where I could not repeat outside the house what had been said inside it without putting someone in danger of jail, prison, perhaps more torture.

I am from a sunny garden, from the love of my grandma and grandpa. I am from the absence of my father - he was killed when I was a baby. I am from the absence of my mother - she had to leave me with grandparents to study in a big city far away.

My daughter is from the abscence of her father - I divorced him when she was a baby. She is from the absence of me - I had to emigrate without her... "

Here my time was up, and I don't reallly know where I was going with it... Perhaps to a conclusion that if I had a granddaughter I would hope she would live in a place and time where she could be safe from war, terror, hunger and forced abandonment. I don't know.

The therapeutic effect? I did not feel emotional when I was writing, but I almost choked on tears when I was reading what I wrote to my fellow workshop participants.
And I am perceived as a highly rational, no-nonsense type of person, who is always smiling. :-)

Amazing results

I checked my blood sugar levels this morning and it was perfect - and I did not take a drop of insulin in 48 hours and only a half of my glucophage dose! In fact, after eating 3 dates equal to about 20 grams of sugar my blood sugar raised no higher than to 120!

Of course my semi fast for 2 1/5 days after my emergency room visit contributed to it undoubtedly, but I already ate a full living food lunch (raw lasagna, rollies, greens, sprouts, kale, tomato dressing) and a gourmet living food dinner last night (vegetarian sushi, raw green soup, raw vegan pizza) at 'Natural High' in Rincon and my results are close to miraculous.

And most of the credit for my diabetes reversal needs - undoubtedly - to go to living foods and Ann Wigmore's Natural Health Institute that propagates and teaches it!

Tuesday at an emergency room

Rebellion - there is always a price to pay for it, isn't there?

I was slightly rebelling yesterday against the institute's blended day: there are three of them every first week of the program to help new program participants cleanse their bodies, and one day the second week. They are appreciated by program participants, but for some staff they can get slightly boring with time, as it did for me yesterday, so I was rebelling: first eating almost nothing the entire day and in the evening going to supper at one of the nearby roadstands. Usually, I was told, the road stands in Puerto Rico offer tasty local fare, but I got yesterday far more than I bargained for : an e-coli, most likely in the spring sallad!

I was sick like a dog all night, so sick, I thought I was going to die. I was unable to leave the bed and thought - wise after the damage - that, especially considering that I live alone - I should have been far better prepared for an emergency. As it were, I was in a new place, and haven't yet recorded any of my new colleague's and new local friend's private phone numbers, so I had nobody to call for help, my apartment was locked from the inside so nobody could get to me without breaking out the door if I was unable to open it myself, and - worse of all - I forgot to place my cell phone on my night stand and for many, many scary hours I could not get up and reach it even to call 911.

I was conscious all that time, save for an awful abdominal pain etc. (I'll best spare you the disgusting details), but when I tried to even sit on my bed , I felt so dizzy, that I could not get up, until finally, many hours later, I managed to sit down, then raise myself to a near standing position and... fell on the closet door. From there, one painfully small step after the other, feeling like on an out of control merry-go-round, hugging the closet, then a wall, I was finally able to reach the bathroom.

Then, on my way back, now a tad more experienced in that - walking the walls - skill, I ventured a long trip to the apartment door, unlocked it, and grabbed my cell phone from the dining room table on the way back to my bed. Then I was too exhausted for a few more hours to use the cell, but when I did, I called my employer, left a message and fell asleep.

In the morning I discovered how caring both my employer and my coworkers were: one of the director's Leola Brooks (called by all here "everybody's favorite grandma") visited me, helped me to check my blood sugar (which was awfully high due to infection) and my blood pressure (which was stratospheric) and suggested gently that I should go to an emergency room immediately.

I agreed and she helped me to get dressed and dispatched a bilingual colleague with me to the emergency room in Rincon. And when I came back from the emergency room I discovered that the institute's housekeeping staff has not only cleaned the mess I made that night, but my entire apartment, and washed and dried my bed linens and towels. Boy, was I grateful.

At the emergency room I was immediately examined by a doctor ( who was informed of my high blood pressure and all other symptoms even before I arrived) and then put in a bed for observation, hooked to an oxygen tank, given a drop, an EKG, taken a battery of blood - and other tests - given a medication and .... realeased after about 5 hours, feeling almost human again. I was instructed to be carefull eating sallads at rodside stands.

The emergency room bill was - perhaps - the biggest shocker: $ 95 for all that! Full price, for the uninsured, since my employee's health insurance has not kicked in, yet.

Can any of you, living in the USA believe that?

There are benefits to be "just" a commonwealth territory, and not a state: efficient, effective and extremely affordable health care for all!

A busy Monday

There are two construction projects going on next to my ill-chosen first Puertorican apartment, one a villa and the other a 77 unit condo project with a swimming pool etc, so it is recently no problem for me to get up at 6 am (when the noise of construction machines starts), but today I skipped yoga on the beach and headed almost straight to work, stopping only for about 15 minutes to jump on a trampoline ( since it apparently wakes up our lymphatic system) , then at a wheat grass juicer and was at work before 7 am. And am still here, although I stopped working some 15 minutes ago. Well, yes, I took an hour for lunch and instead of eating my energy soup (it is a blended day at the institute - sort of a semi-fast and today I am sort of rebelling against it) went to take a dip in the sea. I also took an hour for dinner and went for a long walk on the beach (after eating a couple of spoon fulls of energy soup with blended papaya - starvation is not my goal). The sunset was breathtaking and I again regretted having left my camera. (the photo is from flickr by feivel2010)

But now, after working 11 hours - some retirement! - I feel tired, so I'll probably be heading straight to my apartment to enjoy the night silence - a nice, though brief, respite from the noise of the construction work allowing me to read and to sleep - untill - hopefully - 6 am tomorrow (sometimes they start at 5:30).
Lucky for me I found a replacement to my apartment - a little, secluded place directly on the beach, and will be moving again next Sunday.

A glorious Sunday

It's such a glorious day: the surf is up, up, the waves crash with strength on the beach and on the rocks, where parts of the beach totally disappear under the waves, when the tide is so high.
All morning I could hear the crashing sound of the waves while doing my laundry (don't you just love doing laundry in the tropics? the washing machines are outdoors, but under a roof - in case it rains - right next to a traditional pila, and nearby are the clothes lines, so alive with colors, after you hang your laundry in the fresh air), and when I finally got to the beach, attempting to do some swimming in a semi protected from the current cove, I was bombarded by coconuts, dislodged by the waves, rolling back and forth, lots of them rolling back and forth and some hitting me. A bit too intense "massage" if you ask me.

The beach is fringed with coconut palms and every day we pick sprouted coconuts from the beach and bring them to the institutes's coconut shed, where one of our macho chefs will open them with a machete ( I ain't brave enough - yet - to use a machete on a coconut myself, although, when I lived in the cloud forest of Costa Rica four years ago, I had my own machete - ha! - and was becoming quite handy at using it... at least in my own opinion... the real pros smiled politely after they stepped back to a safe distance) to get to the spongy texture of a coconut that has sprouted, being exposed to both sun and sea water. Its flesh taste like a cotton candy, only better... and it's good for you, too :-).

It became quite hot in the early afternoon (94 f) so I came to my office for a couple of hours to cool myself (my office has ac, while my apartment does not), intent on blogging, as promised, but instead I spent time reading European Sunday newspapers on Internet, so the description of Ann Wigmore Natural Health Institutes's program will have to wait till next "too hot to stay on the beach" free time, sorry :-(

P.S. Photo courtesy of Coconut Palms Inn in Rincon

A happy grouch

After reading my last two post you must think that I am a boring grouch, totally unfit for a life in a Third World "paradise". And perhaps I am - to a point that is.

The last two posts were written almost three weeks ago, but I could not post them, because I could not connect my laptop to the Internet and decided to forgo Internet for two weeks, when I went through the "Living Food Healing and Rejuvenating program" run by my new employer, the Ann Wigmore Natural Health Institute. I admit, I was more than a bit sceptical of all the claims of almost miraculous health improvements made by former participants, but, since I was going to work here, I decided to first try it myself.

And today, I am happy I did.

Not only have I lost a total of 9 pounds in three weeks (two weeks 100% on the program, the third week 75 % on living foods - I have not been a vegan, a raw foodist, not even a vegetarian before I came here and I decided that 100% living food lifestyle is not for me, despite its advantages, but due to them, I'll strive for being between 50% to 75% living food lifestyle), I also lost about 10 years off my appearance ( and I was looking younger than my chronological age even before... lol, aren't I vain?) . I am positively glowing, radiating health and happiness. I wish I could post a "before" and "after" photos, but I still have no camera and no access to my previous picture data base :-( .

What's more important, my diabetes started reversing itself quicker than any former participant claimed. Already during the third night I had the first low blood sugar incident and - according to my doctor's previous advise for such an occurrence - which I at that time thought unlikely - I had to eliminate one of the two anti-diabetes pills I was using. Yet the next night I had another low blood sugar incident and - again according to my doctor's advice - cut down my insulin intake ( I use Lantus, a 24 hour insulin) from 30 to 25 units a day. Next evening, after dinner and a bowl of watermelon as a night snack (which I admit, I squirreled away from breakfast), my blood sugar was 67, slightly below a low fasting level of 70, so I further cut down my insulin intake to 20 units a day. Then my blood sugar levels stabilized, ranging between 70 and 120, but a few days later I noticed that I could see better without my glasses than with them. I was not prepared for it but another program participant, a young and gorgeous Type I diabetic was: 'Typical for diabetes reversal' said she. Hmm, I thought, I had astigmatism long before I became a diabetic, but never mind, lets enjoy it and not look a gifted horse in the mouth too closely, as an old proverb says.

In my next post I'll tell you more about the program and - for the sake of a full disclosure - about some of mine and other participants less pleasant reactions during the program.

Now the rain stopped and - after a whole day at my desk - I am heading to the beach for a swim, a walk and to watch the sunset. Happy, happy, happy. So happy, that not even shabbiness bothers me much any more ;-) !