My digestive system didn't feel well on Friday morning, so before I left for a session with my Korean Chinese Medicine practitioner, I only had a spinach and strawberry green smoothie. Eating light before Tui Na massage and acupuncture with Jin is always a good idea, but that Friday, it was a very good idea.
Jin put me on a 48 hour water fast, noting in his stern, yet kind way that it might be difficult, what with New Year's Eve and all. No lemon, no herb tea, just water. I'd never done one before. I was nervous. But I trust him. He's very, very good at what he does.
And so after two days with nothing but mug after mug of steaming hot water, this morning at 7a the fast was broken with a mug of ginger tea, with just the tiniest dash of stevia, about a tablespoon of vanilla almond milk. Delicious. Now I'm drinking a mango, strawberry, blueberry, spinach smoothie, and holy cannoli: it is fantastic.
The fast itself wasn't that big of a deal. I woke up the morning after the session feeling like usual, that I'd been in a car wreck the day before. Jin's stuff makes swedish deep tissue work or rolfing look like a back tickle. But once the bruising and pain subsides, the range of motion and absence of pain, the sheer feeling of flow in the body is . . . fantastic.
A pretty monstrous headache kicked in yesterday at around 3p yesterday, but aromatherapy oils - tangerine, camomile, peppermint - massaged onto my forehead and neck helped, as did a long aromatherapy bath with eucalyptus and lavendar. A lot of napping occurred, as did hitting the bed early, along with much aimless, random kitty snuggling, both feline and human instigated. And four pounds were missing from the scale this morn, mostly bloat of course, but four pounds of bloat is a beautiful thing to have vamoosed.
I thought about food a lot. I discovered that pretty much everything triggers the desire for food for me. Tired, bored, up, down, happy, sad, confident, confused - all caused the bright idea to pop into my head: let's get something to eat! But I kept coming back to the fact that Jin said my digestive system needed it, and so I trusted him, and trusted my trust in him, and hung in. But what I also noted is that I craved for the largest part, healthy stuff - veg stir fry and green smoothies and such.
The real parting gift happened last night, at a little after midnight. I went to bed at 8p, covered in toasty kitties. I don't remember anything waking me, just opening my eyes, a phrase from the dream I'd just been in looping round and round. I got out of bed, had a glass of water, took a tee-tee, sometimes whispering the phrase, sometimes just watching it repeat inside my head. Then I crawled back into bed, pulled a kitty up into my arms.
Then I noticed the sound of explosions in the distance. It took a few moments for it to register that it was fireworks, not gunshots. And then I realized: It's 2012.
Then the significance of the phrase made itself known, how it was a message for the new year for me. I got out of bed, walked to my desk, and wrote it down:
Transformation: it goes in as one thing and comes out as something completely different. . . transformation . . . it goes in as one thing and comes out as something completely different.
So, that was my new year's eve. How was yours?
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