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I survived The Week of Extreme Healthiness!
It truly wasn’t that difficult. I had plenty of food (‘ceptin for dinner-which was just 1 cup of light soup each night)
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All the breakfasts were good
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Buckwheat-millet pancake with stewed fruits (ya, I couldn’t wait to take a bite before I took the photo)
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Drinks were wonderful and lunches were the heartiest meals of the day, as you can see below
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Cabbage wrapped spring rolls with tahini sauce-totally yummy for lunch
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There was none of this. Nada, zip, vapor.
aaah, can’t you just smell what you’re missing??
and
I don’t want to say that going 7 entire days & nights without wine was hard…
but going 7 entire days & nights without wine was hard.
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Saturday was interesting.
After starting with breakfast at The Cafe I ambled upstairs to a morning meditation class followed by Sound Healing, which might have been one of my favorite parts of the week.
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The Staircase at The Alchemy Arts Center
The lovely Rose sits ramrod straight in front of two extremely large and beautiful gongs and beats not so gently away at them with a large cloth covered …gong beater.
The sound is resonant, intense, and feels as if it’s reverberating into your very core. With your eyes closed and your heart open, it’s quite an amazing experience.
I would definitely like to do that again. In fact, I’d like to have my own set of gongs for all sorts of reasons, but we won’t go into that.
After The Gong Show
I treated myself to the infrared sauna at Alchemy Arts
(this is not the actual unit there)
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These are NICE! Pretty much like a traditional sauna except dry (no water poured over coals) and you really don’t start “glowing” until towards the end of a 30 minute treatment. As most of the infra red saunas I’ve seen on the internet appear to be portable, this would definitely make a luxurious and easy enough addition to a home spa!
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Out of the sauna and into the Isopod;
Slim Paley photo
The flotation tank was fun and not at all claustrophobic, which was my one big concern. Much larger than I’d imagined, you pull the “roof” up and down from inside so you are always in control. I’ve never been to The Dead Sea but it must be a similar sensation- you actually have to fight against not floating. That being said, it takes awhile to relax your neck muscles and “trust” the float, if you will. It took clasping my hands behind my head (like men on a sofa watching football-not a pose I find myself in often) to really relax. The moment I adopted that pose, my entire balance changed and I was able to fall into the experience.
Strangely, I also started to root for The Patriots.
Did I enter into a meditative state? No. Alas, the endless lists that cycle through my mind don’t have an “Off” button.
But I did enjoy feeling a little bit astronaut, a little bit Mary Poppins, a little bit Gaga…
All in all a good time was had,
and here are just a few things I learned from this experience;
-that I can easily go at least a week without any animal protein
-vegetables are truly delicious and creatively limitless recipe wise-
They’re the Karl Lagerfeld of the Food Pyramid.
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-I can easily manage a week without carbs.
-no bread, no problem.
-that lo and behold, I love like freshly squeezed Wheatgrass shots
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They really grow on you.y
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-That simply adding a single exotic element to an otherwise ordinary ritual (lemon grass in your tea, essential lemon grass oil in your bathwater) can transport you off to Calcon Land after a taxing day.
-But… wine is good.
How about Lemon grass wine, damn it??!
Lemongrass Martinis?!
I might be on to something but…
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back to shopping for just a moment;
The adorably happy tableware at Alchemy Arts that several of you inquired about is made by Pip Home
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Perhaps a couple of sweet heart shaped plates for Valentines Day?!
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And lastly,
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I rounded off My Week of Health & Fitness on Sunday with a lovely yoga session with the Divine Denise Zeverdes , yogini extraordinaire and owner of MoYo in Montecito.
As you can see, she brought me a little gift, that just so happened to match the colors of my yoga mat and accoutrements (sooo Denise!)
And NO it wasn’t candy or chocolates!
PS. I’m loving my ‘tagged’ personal yoga mat! It makes me so happy every time I unroll it, and it comes in handy for instruction too;
“Put your big toe just to the left of the “OM”, “Place your hands on either side of ‘DO NOT COVET YOUR NEIGHBOUR’S DOWNWARD DOG”
I highly rec. graffitiing one of your own.
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So now, all that’s really left to make things perfect is one of these;
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God only knows I have enough marsupials around the property!
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Namaste All
xox
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