I love my school
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For those of you who subscribe to my newsletter: You may be reading this newsletter anticipating health and wellness hints. I don’t have any but this: Do what you love. Then you’ll figure out how to be healthy enough and fit enough to gain immense pleasure from it. Whether it’s playing ball with your children or grandchildren or traveling the world or gardening.
This is my last newsletter to you in this format. As the Internet world is changing, so are my ways of communicating with you. I’ll keep up my blog at lucybeale.com. I’ll post new entries on Facebook. You can “friend” me as Lucy Beale Partridge on Facebook or follow my blog.
I’ll be writing about fine sewing and fabrics, and will post some of my Fashion Illustrations. Here’s how I arrived at this place: Nine months have flown by. I didn’t write… anything except a couple class assignments. In March 2013 I decided to go back to school in Fashion Design, my first love since I was 15 – in the mean time I had fun and rewarding careers as a chemist, an IBM computer salesperson, a stay-at-home mom, public speaker, and author of 10 or so books on weight loss, health, and wellness.
Salt Lake Community College – SLCC – has a great deal for seniors. Costs $10.00 per semester. Studying alongside design students and learning about Pattern Drafting, Fashion Illustration, and Textiles is so cool. I love sewing. And am now creating a new wardrobe of clothes that fit (long enough sleeves and pant legs) in colors and fabrics I love. Think silks, wools, cottons, and linen.
My biggest fear about going back to school was dealing with my allergies – perfumes, old musty buildings, many foods, makeup, air pollution and virtually anything else you can think of. After plenty of research I found an allergy doc in Utah who uses LDA – Low Dose Allergy treatments. The essence of the treatment is just a couple pokes every 6 weeks and after a year or so one’s allergies are gone. The harder essence is giving up all foods that feed allergies. My lifelong friends are gone – candy, cake, sweetened chocolate, fresh fruit, bread, wheat, dairy, cheese. (Fruit cooked with a whole grain is fine.) Dr. Remington assures me that I will be able to eat these in a couple more months.
I haven’t baked my all-time famous brownies in 9 months. I’ve asked our Holiday party guests to bring Christmas cookies to share. I’ll provide chocolate mousse, which I think I can avoid eating. But if I made baked goods, I’d HAVE to eat them and would probably tank my allergy regimen.
The results are outstanding: my central nervous system no longer goes on alert with exposure to public buildings, perfume, eye makeup (yeah-mascara revisited). School is now a total body, mind, and spirit pleaser. So is the symphony, museums, theaters and other events I used to avoid. Oh, and yeah, my muscles and joints are happy, too.
A real Pilates studio opened down the street and I’m back to twice-weekly group classes on the Reformer. As opposed to un-real Pilates mat classes which are disguised callisthenic ballistic gung-ho classes.
Tonight we go to opening night of the Festival of Trees and I am so excited to be able to be there and feel comfortable and not be yearning to leave the moment we walk in. I’ll be allergy-free. What a miracle.
Miracles are what I wish for you this season. That your wishes come true and that you have fabulous health and love throughout the New Year.
Blessings, Lucy
The BIG Questions
Onions by Lucy Beale
I spend lots of time around food. Heck, we all do. Even if you think you don’t, you do. I know you eat. Otherwise you simply couldn’t be reading this. You would be in a different astral dimension, one in which you may not need to eat, but also wouldn’t have a body.
Once upon a time, one of my husbands, Bob, decided that he was going to learn how to transcend his need to have a body by giving up the need to eat. I thought this was really a dumb idea, and ultimately convinced him that this wouldn’t give good example to our baby son. After a week or so of my total adamant disapproval of his plan, he changed his thinking and instead decided to give up the need to sleep. I am absolutely not kidding. He found a couple other guys who also wanted to transcend the need to sleep (no kidding here, either) and they starting holding some kind of business meetings in our home at 2 am while the baby and I were sleeping. The guys were generous enough not to “OHM” so loudly that they disturbed our well-earned slumber.
This “spiritual” endeavor went on for about 2 weeks. He looked like a zombie, he talked like a zombie. By the way, just so you can picture this event in your mind, he was a businessman and as was the fashion in those days, he wore a 3-piece suit every day to the office. (suit coat and pants with vest, white shirt, and tie) Now you get the full zombie picture.
Then, one evening he came home from work looking like a zombie with spots on his shirt and tie and said that perhaps I’d been right all along. Giving up sleep hadn’t exactly worked out as he planned. That day at lunch with a client at a nice restaurant, he nodded off and did a face plant directly into his plate of food. Notice it was food on his face that finally woke him up enough to face an important fact of life. In our incarnate phase of reality, people have bodies. One responsibility we humans all have is to take care of our bodies which includes eating. It can be harmful, let alone stupid to think and act otherwise.
Since you have a body, you need to eat. But eating brings with it some BIG problems. If you eat mindlessly, soon your waistband will be screaming at you to set it free. Or it may look better by being draped rather than dressed. You might want to go on a diet, which never works well for long. So I’ve been thinking of pithy questions with which to accost myself when a feeding opportunity beacons.
Lately I’ve been asking as I gaze into the pantry, “Am I hungry or am I bored?” Duh, obviously I’m bored or I’d be doing something more compelling that gazing into the pantry.
At meals when I want to eat more food but have already satisfied my appetite I ask, “Do I want to eat this because Patrick is still eating, or does my body require more food?” Again the answer is obvious. I’m eating because Pat is eating. He’ll claim he only eats desserts because I do. How easy it is to not be mindful, and instead bury our personal body truth in someone else’s behavior.
I didn’t try to give up sleep along with Bob. If you are ever tempted to give up sleeping, ask yourself this pithy question, “Do I really want to transcend my body, or would I rather eat sitting in nice restaurants and avoid face plants?” Duh!
P.S. I asked Bob to review this before I posted. He thought it was fine and enjoyed reliving the moments.
My Beloved Back Roller
- Back Roller
I love ingenious wellness devices that perform amazing feats. Such as this back roller. My videographer (in 1997) clued me into this amazing device as we were in the throes of tedious editing. His back would get weary while filming with the camera on his shoulder and from lugging around all his equipment. He used the back roller to un-kink and soothe his spine and give his back muscles the opportunity to realign.
When we took a break, I got down on the floor and rolled on this wavy-styled rolling pin, starting just below my neck. I did this slowly, scooting down inch by inch, taking a couple deep breaths for every inch the roller traveled. Some spots were a bit tender, so I took a couple more deep breaths at those places and tried to relax into the spots. Within 15 minutes, I stood up feeling taller and quite relaxed. At that moment I realized that I needed to buy one. If you click on the picture of the roller, you can buy one, too. (about $20.00) I’m glad I did. It lasts forever – I’ve had mine 16 years. It’s inexpensive. It offers hours and hours of spinal alignment sessions, yet it only takes 10 – 15 minutes per session. What’s not to like?
I use it often, daily when I remember. I take it with me when I travel. It remedies the effects of cramped airplane seats and heavy luggage. After some research, here’s what I found it does for the body:
Moves lymph fluid to help detox the body
Stimulates acupuncture points for all internal organs and glands
Helps back alignment
Soothes and enhances the central nervous system – which gives that Ahhh! effect
I’ll be adding additonal clever wellness devices for you. Soon I want to buy the iPhone app and headset that assist a person with meditating. It sounds like another ingenious wellness device. I’ll let you know.
