Catching Up

I guess I didn't blog yesterday. I was too busy blissing out.

I remember when I was in Japan and our school was in the midst of a crisis - we were losing students and had no money. Someone said that the Chinese character for "crisis" was the same as "opportunity". I don't know if that is true, but I have come to believe that all crises are opportunities. This crisis on Wall Street is an opportunity for us to try to do something different, or for Wall Street and the ruling class to milk what's left in US treasury before Bush leaves office. My health crisis, was an opportunity for me to try to find a better way of living. I don't know what happened in Congress today, but I know yesterday I focused on healing instead of being sick.

I had an appointment with my cute, sweet chiropractor at 9:30. I can feel a huge difference in the mobility of my neck since my first visit with him, and he also noticed the difference. My neck is still a little sore, thus, I will continue to see him, and I think there might be a relation between the pain in my neck and my ear problems. After that, I went to Coto and bought some fruit and a nice piece of chocolate cake. I came home, put the fruit away and ate the cake and then went to the spa.

At the spa I had a facial by a woman named Monica. She was really sweet and complimented me on my Spanish (I remember her from the last time I was there). I don't know what she did to me. She kept putting on creams and then wiping them off. At one point she put a mask on my face that she said was made with gold. Wow! It felt so extravagant. She also gave me a really nice neck, shoulder, head massage. She said I was very tense and thought I was spending too much time going out late at night chasing boys or girls (she offered both options, which was kind of nice). I told her I don't go out. But I am tense for sure.

After the facial, I had a massage by Christian. He's the guy who did the facial last time I went to this spa. It was a wonderful massage. So good I am going to try to go back again just for massages (if I can get him). A massage alone is $40, yesterday's treatment with sauna, facial and massage was 170 pesos (about $57). At those prices I could go every week!

I left the spa and got a hankering for meatballs. At first I wandered the streets looking in restaurant windows trying to decide on where I could go for a nice lunch. But instead I went to the Disco, bought some ground beef, bread crumbs and a few other necessities and came home and ate the lentils I had from Monday and then made meatballs and a pot of tomato sauce. I had gnocchi while I watched Patito Feo, and had strawberries and cream for desert.

The meatballs and gravy (we call spaghetti sauce gravy)were really good. The gnocchi were ok, but I could taste the salt in them. I would have made my own, but it's a mess. The strawberries were really yummy. They are all over now and I paid about $1.50 for 1 kilo of strawberries. I have strawberries coming out the wazoo.

I spent the rest of the night just relaxing. Watching the Daily Show online, watching a little TV and then doing my Italian homework.

Ah, I almost forgot. I found some videos on You Tube yesterday for self-healing and also watched an interview that Oprah did with Jon Kabat-Zinn, and therein comes the opportunity out of this crisis.

My body does this amazing thing to me when I get out of balance in my life - it knocks me on my butt and forces me to wake up. When I am living unconsciously, it gives me no other choice, unless I want to life a life of intense pain and suffering. It's kind of a curse, but it's a good thing too. It seems that other people can live unconsciously and get away with it. I can't. If I get too stressed out, if I don't take care of myself, if I lose my center - I will end up paying for it with vertigo, hiccups, neck pain, insomnia, acid reflux, rashes... you name it, my body has thrown it my way. Sometimes it takes a while for me to recognize the signs, and often when I am in the midst of some unpleasant bodily reaction it is difficult to make any changes, but eventually I get the message that I need to do something different.

What I am doing now is really paying attention to how I am feeling and being really careful to not put myself into situations that are stressful - like a tango class. When I am in stressful situations that are unavoidable, like walking down a crowded sidewalk that is blocked off because of construction and is covered with mud and has piles of dogshit for good measure - I breathe.

So far this has been working well.