My Resolution

I’m pretty slow to start the new year with my resolutions for change. It seems that each year, I am completely burnt out after the growing/harvest/preserving season then jumping right into the holiday season that by the time the new year begins, I only desire to sit and do nothing (ok, I want to chat on Twitter or take naps). And cook yummy food from all that I’ve put up!

I’ve been reading about what several others have been saying their resolutions are and for me, the only major things I need to change in my life this year is to get more exercise and more sleep! I have no problems eating what’s in my pantry as one big challenge I’ve seen people participate in. In fact, I try to live this way year round and am nervous we are going through our canned tomato and sauce supply way faster than I thought we would and I am trying to make the home-canned supply last til next summer! I’m sure it won’t at this rate.

I don’t need to challenge myself to do a 3 week jumpstart your diet challenge which is another big one I’ve seen written about to detox your body on a plant based diet. I eat a plant based diet and occasionally the very nutritious eggs from my own backyard chickens so this is a way of life for me, too. I also like to wait until springtime to do a liver cleanse, it’s too cold for me in the winter to do cleanses like that.

No, what I need to do (and began doing this past week) is something I saw written up on the Huffington Post called “Sleep Challenge 2010 – Women, It’s Time To Sleep Your Way To The Top, Literally.”  Once I read that article, I knew I had to do it. I was resistant at first, I like going to bed between 12-1 am and sleeping in a bit in the morning but with an almost 6 year old boy as my daily alarm clock, I rarely get to sleep past 7 or 7:30 and that’s late for him. So I was getting around 6 or 6.5 hours of sleep each night. I have been dragging and some days, I’ve only gotten about 5.5 hours at night and that puts me over the cranky edge so I can’t function the way I want and need to.

I realize I have to get a minimum of 7 hours of solid sleep at night and preferably 8 hours of sleep every night to feel well. My son sleeps through the night for the past few years and even in his own room now. The only time he wakes us up at night is if he’s sick or had a bad dream. After suffering through several years of extreme sleep deprivation because of him, I should want to go to bed early and get 8+ hours of sleep every night! Why my resistance I wondered? I realized it’s because it’s “me time” for several hours in the evening. After we eat a family dinner, my husband does the bedtime routine with our son then has his guitar playing hour (or more) every night and I clean up and have things I catch up on, books I am reading or tv shows on Tivo to watch! I wind up waiting for my husband to watch certain shows with me and we seem to go to bed too late because of this. He always says he does better on 6 or 6.5 hours of sleep and if he sleeps longer than that, he’s dragging. I’m the other way around so I don’t believe him! Who can function well on 6 or 6.5 hours of sleep every night? Not me!

He is sort of doing this sleep challenge with me because consistent, solid sleep is so beneficial for your body in so many ways and he’s recovering from several weeks of some funky virus invading his body and doing strange things to him. Solid sleep also helps to prevent getting run-down and sick in the first place. Your immune system works better, you have more energy, you look younger and your mental state is in a much better place, too. There’s also evidence that not getting enough sleep makes you gain or retain weight and sufficient sleep helps you lose it!  There really is not one downside to getting your “beauty sleep.” It is quite a challenge for me to get up to the 8 hour mark. I’m working on cutting back on my evening activities and getting more things done during the day.

This past week I’ve been aiming for 7-7.5 hours of sleep each night (by counting backwards from my 7 a.m. wake up time) and I feel good but still tired and dragging at some point in my day. Clearly a sign I need more sleep! Who knew? This week, I (and possibly Michael) will be trying for 8 whole, glorious hours of uninterrupted sleep each and every night. If I can do this, I will feel like superwoman and will be able to really increase my workouts and pretty much revolutionize my world! I like the info in this update from Arianna Huffington about what happened to her after finally getting those 8 hours of sleep each night.

I encourage anyone reading this to give this sleep challenge a try. Lawd knows we all need it!

Gardening = More Sex!

Well this should be good news to women everywhere – both gardening and yard work helps to boost a man’s sexual performance according to a study by the Medical University of Vienna. Hear that men? Now not only can you be helping both the planet and your wallet by growing some tasty organic veggies in your backyard, you will be improving your sex life and making your partner very happy at the same time.  I say that’s a win-win for everyone!

As reported in the Telegraph:

As little as 30 minutes a week tending the garden or allotment can dramatically improve men’s performance in bed, according to the experts in the field.

Digging, weeding or mowing the lawn for half an hour reduced men’s risk of failing to live up to expectations in bed by more than a third, the survey found.

I find this news very promising for the women who may have to deal with issues in either category. Your man too lazy to want to garden? Tell him it will improve his sexual performance in bed. Ditto for men who have any kind of performance issues in the bedroom.

Not only does the act of gardening benefit a man’s health in so many ways, it also benefits their partner who would like free, local, organic produce out their back door and more intimacy in the boudoir.  Whoever said that women were less interested in sex than men clearly does not really know much about women!

And for the record, both my husband and I like to garden….a lot ; )  And the phallic tomato pictured above grew in our garden last summer!

Belly Dancing and Birth

As some of you may have read in other posts of mine, I love to dance.  I especially love belly dancing and did it for many years before I became pregnant.  There is just something so ancient and primal and very feminine about the movements and skills you develop with your body in performing this dance.

I love when synchronicities happen because I came across this website, The Goddess Dancing, and it has a few articles about  belly dancing and birth and their similarities.  I find this fascinating because I have been specifically trying to do this dance again to help my pelvic bones shift so that I may get pregnant one more time and have a natural birth like I want.

From my first birth experience I was told by my OB (and it was confirmed by my massage therapist) that my pelvis is sort of “funnel-shaped” meaning that the bones are not far enough apart to push a baby out and my baby could not drop down at all during labor (i.e. – we would have died without a c-section).  I want to change that and belly dancing seems to be the only real way to do it.

This one article on that site, The Dance of Birth,  was written by Anita-Cristina Calcaterra in 1992 and the first line reads, “It is important for women to reclaim birth as a natural and powerful process”.   It says that a dancer named Morocco in 1965 compared childbirth classes taught at a NY hospital and the Natural Childbirth book by Dr.  Frederick W. Goodrich to her dance movements as she performed them.

Other birth instructors in the 70’s compared the similarities in the muscle isolation of this dance with Lamaze and other dancers showed how the movements of this dance help in “moving the baby down” the birth canal.

Wendy Buonaventura published a book in ‘83 called Belly Dancing, where she outlined the role of the dance throughout history in many cultures.  She showed that the dance has always been a part of the birth process.

Another great article on this subject, In the Belly of the Goddess: Belly Dance and Birth, written by Cathy Moore, a certified nurse-midwife  goes into more detail and comparisons on this subject.  It does mention that in middle eastern cultures even today, the laboring woman will have other women (and even men) doing belly dance moves around her to remind her to do these movements to help her labor and stop the pain and to move the baby down.  I would totally LOVE that!!  A group of friends and relatives dancing to drum music and helping me bring my baby into the world with that kind of rhythm and vibe going on around us.  How cool is that??

I think it really is a shame that we are so far away from that kind of primal, movement filled type of labor in present times.  We need to incorporate more of this into our modern birthing ways, even for home births and especially for the hospital births.

I feel the Goddess energy move through me when I belly dance and I especially felt it when I was pregnant.  It is so powerful.  How wise that women combined it since ancient times to assist them in a gentle, powerful birth.

Saving Our Children

Here is an article written by Cynthia Keyes from a newsletter I receive and it is something that I agree with completely. She makes very important points that I felt needed to be shared so I am reprinting it here in it’s entirety because I could not find anywhere online to link to it.

Saving Our Children by Cynthia Keyes

Once again, our planet has come full circle, bringing us to the beginning of a new year, a new cycle. Each time we experience one of Nature’s great cycles, we are reminded that we are part of the natural world and as such, we need to be nurtured by Nature to grow and flourish. If we don’t, we may be putting our health and wellbeing at risk. And this applies even more so to young, growing children.

Yet, it seems that we are increasingly allowing our children to go without Nature’s bounty, and they are paying a great price as a result. One thing that has been making headlines lately is the obesity epidemic in children that is sweeping our country. Along with this increase, we are seeing an alarming jump in obesity-related diseases such as type II diabetes, which until now was almost exclusively, an adult disease. The primary cause of this rise in childhood obesity is a drastic change in diet that is being fostered onto these children by adults. Instead of nurturing them with food that is healthy and nutritious, they are being allowed and sometimes encouraged (by food processing companies, and fast food establishments with their commercials geared to children) to eat overly sweetened, and overly processed items that fill them up but do not nourish them. In addition, many of our school lunch programs rely heavily on processed foods as part of their menus.

As a result children’s bodies are not getting the nourishment they need to grow and mature into healthy adults. Instead the lack of nourishment and the massive amounts of sweetners (including one of the worst offenders, high fructose corn syrup), trans fats, vegetable oils and refined grains are taking a huge physical toll on these young growing bodies. They are becoming more and more likely to become physically ill with chronic diseases caused by poor nutrition. In addition, their brains are not being properly nourished, so there is an increased risk of developmental problems and learning disabilities.

So much money is spent on research to create high-cost drugs used to alleviate symptoms of diseases like type II diabetes and heart disease, when so often getting rid of the diseases themselves is just a function of proper nutrition. Yet there is comparatively little independent research on just what constitutes proper nutrition. As an example, dieticians and nutritionists, when referring to bad fats, will almost always lump trans fats together with saturated fats when there is a world of difference between them. Trans fat, (Crisco and margarine) which used to be touted by these same people as a healthy fat has finally gotten the bad press it deserves, but not before it made untold numbers of people sick. However, saturated fat (unprocessed tropical oils and animal fat including butter and cheese) when eaten in moderation is natural and necessary to our health. If the fat comes from animals, it needs to be from those raised the way Nature intended, on green pasture and without hormones, unnecessary antibiotics and overfeeding with grains. Saturated fat is a natural fat that we, humans have been eating throughout our evolutionary process. Furthermore, children need these healthy fats, which are full of vitamins A and D, and omega 3 fatty acids to grow properly, and for proper brain development.

It disturbs me when I see schools responding to the obesity epidemic by restricting children’s intake of whole milk. Children need the saturated fat in whole milk, butter and cheese. What they don’t need is trans fat and fat from highly processed vegetable oils like corn, soy or cotton seed oils that are so often being used as substitutes for trans fats. These oils are delicate and become rancid when heated through processing or cooking. When that happens they produce free radicals, which wreak havoc within our bodies, triggering illness and disease.

Children, above all, need fresh, organic fruit, vegetables, milk, butter, meat and whole grains to grow and be healthy. They also need sunshine, fresh air and plenty of exercise. That means incorporating time for recess and physical education as a necessary part of school activities. In too many instances young children are denied recess as a form of punishment for misbehaving. Yet, the very reason for their perceived misbehavior may be that they are not getting enough physical activity. Even when they are home there is often too much time spent sitting in front of the tv or computer instead of running and playing outside.

One of the biggest violations of children’s natural development is what has been happening to the youngest of our children, since the advent of “No Child Left Behind”. Because of the rigid time table of standardized testing that is in place as part of that program’s requirements, children in preshcool, kindergarten, and first grade are being forced to learn reading skills before their brains’ natural pathways have developed enough to do so. It is like expecting an apple tree to bear fruit before it even grows branches. It is impossible.

There is an excellent article, Teaching our Children to read, Write and Spell by Susan Johnson, M.D. in the autumn issue of Lilipoh that goes into the relationship between children’s physical development and the development of the brain. According to the author, it is the movements of the body that create the pathways in the mind of reading, writing, spelling, mathematics and creative thinking. By looking at whether or not a child can carry out specific physical movements, we can determine if a child is developmentally able to accomplish certain mental tasks like reading.

If we as parents, grandparents, educators and legislators don’t begin to recognize that our children need to be nurtured and raised in accordance with their natural developmental requirements, which have evolved since the beginning of the human race, we are dooming ouselves to a failed society. One in which illness and mental disabilities will be predominant eventually causing an economic crisis beyond anything we can imagine.

To stop this from happening, we need to recognize that for proper brain development our children must be allowed to run, play and develop physically and these activities need to be incorporated as part of the requirements for academic achievement. We also need to take the responsibility of feeding our children away from agribusiness and food processors, and insist that the food we give them be healthy, natural and highly nutritious. In order for that to happen, it would be helpful to get some comprehensive, independent studies on what actually constitutes good nutrition. There is so much confusion, and so much misinformation often slanted in favor of special interests like the big pharmaceuticals, and the food industry that it is no wonder people are confused as to what they should be eating. But when in doubt, natural, unprocessed foods are always a good choice.

Dancin’ Fool

I love to dance. I have danced most of my life, all different styles, either in classes or out with friends and I have performed as a dancer many times as well. I stopped taking classes about a year before I got pregnant bec. of commuting, classes were at night, etc. I couldn’t deal. When we moved out of the mountains and back to suburbia, I wanted to sign up for classes to eventually dance and perform with a troupe. I have been doing belly dancing for several years and this is something I really love. It’s such a feminine dance, very flowy and graceful and different than any kind of dance I’ve done before. I think it’s special and something good for all women to do. In fact, it was started as a dance for women by women not what the common general consensus about this dance form is out there.

Well, I had a whole host of back problems from pregnancy and especially after so I have not danced at all in the past almost 5 years! I think this is the longest I’ve ever gone without a dance class of some sort. My massage therapist even said to me the last time I went for a massage when my back went out, ” your hips don’t move when you walk.” I almost died when she said that. I said, “but I used to be a belly dancer – I’ve even performed!” and she told me to get back to it asap bec. the problem in my hip area could be helped by it. Wow, I totally was stunned over that statement. How far away from my true self I’ve drifted so much so that my hips don’t move when I walk! I do have lots of pain deep in my hip and low back so I think I’ve over – protected myself in this area.

I’ve been looking into classes and can’t find one that I either like (I’m not a beginner but haven’t danced in a while) or a time to take it. So, while out shopping lately, I decided to check out dvd’s for sale, something I actually never do but felt compelled to just take a look for some reason. I got 2 belly dancing dvd’s to try that I thought looked good and both instructors on 2 diff. dvd’s are named Melissa. How weird! My name. I thought that was a good sign. One of them lives and dances in NYC, my home town and she is also a pilates instructor, something I’ve been doing alot of to help my back get better. This was it. Now I can do it at home on my time until I get back to the level I was at to attempt dancing with others again.

I started dancing last week, and it feels so good. Like riding a bike, really. I think my body is happy to being doing it again, too.  I keep thinking about it every day and hope my son will take a nap so I can dance!  It even felt good on my hips and low back. I should have started this sooner. It feeds my soul to dance and I’m happy after a workout of dancing unlike after a pilates or yoga class or using the elliptical trainer or walking. I may feel good that I worked out but not joyful inside like I do with dancing.

It’s nice to feel like I’m back to being me. I didn’t realize how much I missed being a dancer.