East Grove Blues

My my last day of work has come and gone, and while I am sad to say good bye to my students and fellow teachers, I am very happy to be done with teaching for the moment. Teaching is a lot of fun, but it is also exhausting. I came away almost everyday drained and tired. That means that I put my all into what I was doing, which made me a fairly decent teacher I believe, but I didn’t have enough time to recuperate. By the end of the week I would wake and drag myself out of bed. Not because I hated what I was doing, but because I was still tired and wanted more sleep.

Some people are gifted with boundless energy. Some people can feed of the energy of others. I draw my energy from myself. I can get a boost from an energetic class, but only while I am around the kids. As soon as it ends I crash. On friday I got out of class and shamelessly fell asleep in a chair in the teacher’s room. A lot of time all I need is that nap. When I woke up a half hour later I was ready to go and play again. I just needed that time to recharge.

It has been a great time. I have learned that I do love to teach, but I want to do it on my own terms and by my own schedule. I somehow need to figure out how I can teach Yoga part time and work with trees on the farm. If I can do that than I could perhaps have found a little heaven on earth. So that is what I am working on right now.

Today is my last day of teaching Yoga here in Japan. I asked my students if they wanted to have a party or do yoga. They all said they wanted to do Yoga. That made me ridiculously happy. It seems most everyone’s favorite pose is happy baby pose. I could speculate as to why that is, but I will let your imagination fill it in. It will be hard to say good bye to my Yoga students. I feel bad leaving them without a teacher. I hope they continue on their own or move over to the Tai Style Yoga class on friday.

Wednesday will be hard as well. It is my last music night in Miyako. I have had a great time playing with the Ramblers and my voice has noticeably improved over the last year. I am starting to find my own voice, the one that is unique to everyone. I will keep singing until I have it down and being the lead singer in a band has been invaluable to me. In some ways it will be the hardest to say good bye to the Ramblers. They are like family to me.

It is around sixty degrees today and sunny. It feels like spring and that is happiness. It has been a rather long and cold winter so far and any hint at spring makes me feel better. It could still snow in march, or even as late as april, but god willing it won’t. It is supposed to be warm for the rest of the week. The best part is that tomorrow I only have one class and the rest of the day I can spend walking around my middle school. I plan to hike up a mountain and enjoy the fantastic weather.

I hope spring brings with it better feelings. It has been a dark winter with a lot of dark thoughts. I have been on an emotional streak since november and I am ready for a level playing field. Feeling better is just a hope though, but sometimes that is all a person needs to get better. There is some truth to positive thinking and the body can do some pretty amazing things. I will wait and see as patiently as I can, and continue to hope for some better days and happier feelings.

I lost my appetite for a couple of days. That is a strange thing for me. I am used to being hungry, in fact, it feels odd when I am not. I thought about putting more food in my belly, but there was no desire, so I resisted the thought. My brain kept telling me it was time to eat more, but my body just kept saying no. I regained my appetite last night and today it has been going strong again. I almost wonder if I haven’t been sick or something. I don’t feel sick in any way and haven’t had a cold in over in a year.  My body likes to do strange things at times though. I feel like a spectator just waiting to see what will happen next.

So I keep doing research on the internet. It is so weird. I will read one report and then read a different one that says the exact opposite thing. For example one will say eat tofu and then another will cast it as the devil and must be avoided. I really do think there is something for everyone. The most important thing I have learned is to just experiment and see what works and what does not. The other day I tried some fatty pork and that was a huge mistake. It was badness for several hours. On the hand lean pork heart is fine. I wish I could get my hands on some grass fed beef from the farm and see how that works in my GI track. Hopefully I will find out soon enough.

In four weeks I will be getting on a plane and heading for home. Perhaps by then it will have stopped snowing in Iowa as well and spring will be following. I can’t wait to see the progression of flowers in the timber again. It is such a beautiful thing and the best part is that after/during the flowers there are mushrooms to eat. Glorious mushrooms! It is truly spring when I start thinking about a ‘mess a’ rooms’ in the skillet.

After a some very interesting dreams and a thorough cleaning of the system this morning I am feeling much better. In fact I feel pretty amazing. My energy levels are back and I have a general feeling of euphoria that is not that common. It’s like I had a cold yesterday and felt horrible, and today the cold is gone and I feel like I could conquer the world.

I had a much needed night by myself last night. I got a little walk in and I did some internet research. The research was fruitful and has helped me in my my mood and well being. The internet is such an amazing tool, but like all tools it can be dangerous. I have to remind myself of that so I don’t get carried away by someones opinions that are not actually based in facts. That is part of the reason I got carried into the mess physically that I am.

This is my current theory and is subject to change. It seems that I trained to long and to hard, like three to five hours everyday to hard. I upset a careful balance and I am paying for it now. I worked so hard that it is likely that I was deficient in many vital vitamins and nutrients. That is not a good way to stay healthy, and I didn’t. I am attempting to reverse the effects with better diet and proper exercise. It might be a while before I run for two and half hours again. A half hour yes, an hour maybe, but no longer. It’s not needed and it does more harm than good. Sometimes it takes a whamping for us to know our limits. I have repeated this process more times than I would care to admit.

There are some things on the emotional side as well, but I am not willing to go into those until after I work through them. As seriously as I take them, it shouldn’t effect my everyday mood or how I will act towards people. I tend to keep my demons to myself until I can work ‘em out. I am sure they will find a way out here after a while, but I am not ready for that kind of openness or what it might mean.

I had some cool dreams last night that really helped to identify a lot of the issues I am/need to work with over the next couple of months. I don’t know what it is about my dreams but them seem awfully prophetic to me. Perhaps I am reading into them to much, but anything that can help me be a healthy stable individual is welcome.

I have Yoga tonight and that always makes me feel better. If I feel any better I might just start dancing.

I am teaching a really neat story in my second year middle school. By teach I mean that I am reading a story to kids who are trying to stay awake while they dream of video games and sports clubs. I don’t blame them one bit, I was probably worse!

Even so, I find the story to be a really good one, even if the English they use is really strange. I will try to clean it up a bit and make it a bit shorter.

“There was an old shrine on the edge of a small village. One day a huge storm came and washed the shrine away. When the storm stopped the people of the village came out to look at what had happened. In place of the shrine there was a giant hole in the ground. No one could see the bottom of the huge pit. One person got the nerve to shout, “Hello, is anyone there?” and then threw a small stone. No echos came back.

A stranger came and offered to buy a brand new shrine for the hole. The people agreed and soon the man was using the hole as a dump. People from around the world paid him to dump anything from industrial waste to nuclear fuel. The little town became a city and was very clean. No one worried about what to do with trash because the hole was never ending.

Several years later a man was working on a roof top of the city when he thought he heard from above, “Hello, is anyone there?” He looked around but couldn’t see anyone so he went back to work. A few minutes later he got hit by a small stone.”

There are so many morals in this story. I think it is rather apt for what we are doing to ourselves everyday. Not just the global warming and all that, but what we do to ourselves as individuals. I am no better than anyone else and I am suffering the consequences of my own actions everyday. One of these times I will finally wise up.

I have had several days in the last month that I have fasted, but what about the opposite. To have one without the other would be out of balance. (This could be just a bad excuse to eat a lot.) When I do eat, I do eat a lot, but I generally try to eat well. My idea of eating well is always changing, and if I was smarter and wiser I would just relax about it and wing it, but sadly I am not. For some reason I feel like I need to be on top of it and I need to be hyper aware of everything that I consume. Sometimes I eat things that I know are not ‘healthy’. I do it consciously and know many of the outcomes of eating said food. It usually doesn’t stop me though.

Today is one of those days. It is a New Moon, Valentines Day, Tet and the Chinese New Year. That sure is a lot of different holidays wrapped up in one day and so the folks at Ocean’s decided to have a Gyoza making party. A Gyoza is a meat and cabbage filled dumpling that is either fried or boiled. I am avoiding carbs at the moment, but I made an exception for a ‘Feast Day’. I ate, and I ate some more of the little pockets of delicious goodness for about three hours. We spent about two hours making them, while consuming them as they came, and then another hour having lunch.

My stomach was very angry at first but after about a half hour it settled down and I was able to eat more of them. I felt full surprisingly quickly and I spent most of the ‘brunch’ just grazing on a couple here and a couple there. After the lunch part the chocolate came out for Valentines Day and I proceeded to mow down many chocolates and cookies. I heart cookies. They are so good even if they are horrible for you.

Horrible is a terrible word though. They can be hard on your body, but at the same time they can make you feel better. If you are willing to make that trade off and just enjoy life as it comes than it shouldn’t be a big deal. I don’t think it is. As much as I rant about eating well, or not eating at all, I also enjoy group meals with lots of food that I wouldn’t normally eat. You can sit at home and be healthy, but terribly unhappy, or you can take the good with the bad and just have a good time. I wouldn’t and won’t do a Feast Day everyday, but now and again is a lot of fun, and the friendships you make can keep you as healthy as a salad can.

There are many types of health, and emotional health is just as important as physical health. In fact they usually go hand in hand. I think that being healthy is knowing that one day isn’t going to kill you, but also having the will to make it just one day. Your body can adapt quickly to just about anything as long as your not feeding it crap all the time. Life is pretty short and we should all enjoy it while we can. Finding that balance is part of that and can make us even happier in the long run.

I have to make one note. Do not continue a fast through the night when you need to be rested for school the next day. I was hoping for a good nights sleep, and even went to bed before eight. It took me forever to fall asleep and I woke up several times at night.

One interesting side effect of the fast was that I dreamed about food all last night. Eating it or not eating it, it was all about food. Strange enough, when I woke up, I wasn’t that inclined to eat, but once I got started there was little stopping me.

I had a huge breakfast. Fish, broccoli, banana, strawberries and fish/tomato soup that was heavenly. I cooked it for so long yesterday that I could chew and eat the bones. That means lots of minerals and calcium for me. I haven’t been that hungry since then. I have been eating more out of habit than anything else. It is so strange actually being full all day. Is this what most people feel like? It is not a feeling that I am used to. Much of the time, even after I have eaten, I am still hungry on some level. After a while you kind of get used to the feeling, which is why today has been so strange for me.

I made some serious improvements with my workout today. I was shocked that I could hold an unassisted handstand. I felt stronger in everything I did. This seems like it would be counter intuitive. Shouldn’t I be weaker after a fast? I have no complaints though, it is always nice to see large gains over a few day period.

The reason I changed my diet was for its anti-inflammatory properties, but I am seeing a lot of other benefits emerging. I am feeling stronger and I am loosing a lot of fat. (relatively) Again it seems counter intuitive to me considering I eat a lot of fats/oils. But I won’t complain. I am more concerned with how I sleep and feel, and less with strength and weight change. So far I feel pretty good and I’ll probably do another fast here in a couple of weeks. Next time I will eat the night before I go to school. Not getting a good nights sleep usually hampers everything that I do. Today seems to be the exception, but I don’t want to take any chances next time.

I am getting pretty good at avoiding my rice during lunch. Near the end of the meal while everyone is talking I quickly dump the stuff in a prepared bag in my pocket. I feel like I am sneaking candy or something in school instead of not eating something that is ’supposed’ to be good for me. Some of the kids always seem to notice me do it, but luckily they are to scared to talk to me to ask me any serious questions.

I always feel drained after classes. I have one left to go and then I can relax at home for a couple of hours before going to Yoga. Yoga always makes me feel better and more awake. As much as I have said that I am feeling stronger, I am still tired from the kids at the end of the work day. Physical and mental tiredness are two different kinds of animals, but they cause the same feelings within me. I am definitely not unhappy about it being Friday.

I have started doing my paperwork for leaving Japan without burning any bridges on the way out. There are far to many papers, that are mostly confusing and are all very much making me worry. I hate doing paperwork, it seems like such a waste of time and yet I can see it’s need. (Pay check and whatnot) I am paranoid I will forget something important and/or not turn in everything on time and I won’t be able to leave when I want to. All in all it’s turned me into a mess this morning.

The worrying and paranoia started seeping into other area’s as well. I starting worrying about my internships and whether I will be able to do them. It then moved to diet and exercise and if it is all really worth it. it basically sent me into this downward spiral of idiocy. I know that I shouldn’t really bother about it and that everything will turn out all right in the end. I shouldn’t have a care in the world right now, but sometimes I can’t help myself.

I just have to ride the wave of emotion and hope for it to settle down. I try to look at it from an objective point of view, as if it isn’t happening to me, but to some other poor soul. I don’t think it makes it any easier, but it does give me some perspective and understanding. I know what is causing it and I know it will go away in time. I just have to be patient with myself. Writing things out generally helps my mood a bit, so I hope this gets it out of my system a little quicker.

I felt terrible on friday as well, but I bounced back and felt great several days after. Today I feel awful and fate willing I will be back on top for the rest of the week. Emotions are such strange things.

Side Note: (possible other cause of frustration) I slept poorly last night and my gums bled this morning. It may have been the school rice or the green tea or just about anything. I guess I won’t know anything for sure until I can just cook for myself everyday.

Since about this time last year I have been visiting a Buddhist sect called Shinnyo en. They are a modern sect of an older form of esoteric Buddhism. Like many Buddhist orders they claim a direct line to this darma or that. I can never keep tract of all the names or what they mean. Not to seem like a dick, but I really I don’t care a whole lot.

I originally started to go to see what it was and what it was like. I generally am interested in anything religious and my curiosity got the best of me. They also have a special form of meditation called (excuse my spelling) Sheshin training. They have a spiritual medium help you through your meditation. Seeing that I had a chance to try all this out and see what it was like, I decided to give it go.

Here are some things that I like: They have a very solid community of very eager and helpful people. They are great with volunteer work and they keep the place very clean. They do a wide variety of different ceremonies that are usually interesting the first time around. The head of the order is a women and she has a quiet but commanding presence. The first head of the order gave up a lot and went through some rigorous training before finding his own middle way.

Things I don’t like: The temple is like an office building, far to ‘modern’ for my tastes. They video tape everything, which is kind of creepy, but they also replay old video’s of previous sermons, which can be alright. They are almost to happy and smiley, it seems like an effort and less natural. You have to pay for meditation training (BOOOO!!!!!), and they have a book store which sells expensive watches.

The weirdest thing for me is that they say that the two dead sons of the founder are spiritual guides (in the spirit realm) for the sect. They pray to them for guidance. I don’t want to make the opinion of this being good or bad, but for me personally it gives me a weird vibe that has permeated the whole experience. I just can’t get over it. Inside the temple they have these cast heads of the two young sons, and their parents, the founders of the sect. Maybe it’s because I went to Eureka College where they have a scary bust of Ronald Reagan in the middle of campus, but those gold cast heads freak me out. Not a fan.

Today, after a year of going on and off I finally hit the right time to do the meditation training. I was supposed to feel spiritual energy coming from the spirit realm through my spiritual guide and into me. ( I didn’t) He was then supposed to give me special words to contemplate before my next training. (the special words seemed a bit general) I felt a bit uncomfortable for most of it and rather empty at the end of it and not in a good way.  I don’t like organized religions in general, but I find them fascinating. This was no different. It was interesting, but I didn’t get what I was ’supposed’ to get out of it.

So what did I take away from the experience? Sitting meditation is just not me thing. Being there today reminded me that almost all of my meditation breakthroughs have come from walking meditation. I feel like my form is best when I am walking and I find it much easier to clear my mind when I have to keep stepping. I had forgotten a lot of that because I have been focusing on sitting meditations for probably over a year now. To be honest it is also cold and I have been lazy. I made it out tonight though, and it was a lovely time, as meditation goes. I am glad to have gone to the training if for no other reason that to connect with what really works for me.

Perhaps one of these days I will get to what good meditation feels like to me. I will wait to go into the weirdness of that for another time.

Monday and Tuesday were a little rough for me. Not anything especially bad, but a sluggishness that wouldn’t go away. I felt heavy and tired all the time, which is terrible if your trying to motivate yourself to get outside and workout a bit. I am not sure what brought it on. Perhaps it was because of the fast, or perhaps it was because I started eating again. I am not really sure yet what it was. I felt pretty good during the fast, even energetic at times. Even with the sluggishness I did work out a bit the last two days, but I couldn’t really push myself. I couldn’t go above and beyond the relatively simple. It was frustrating to no end.

As always Yoga helped. After Yoga yesterday I was starving, even though I had eaten a large dinner. I decided to go ahead and eat again, and then again. I couldn’t seem to fill my belly. It was like my system finally kicked into gear. I only got about six hours of sleep last night but I woke up relatively rested. I felt good this morning shoveling my drive way at five in the morning and I felt good skiing with my kids at elementary school. I felt strong again after a short workout in the gym and I feel alive right now after running barefoot on sub-0 pavement outside my house. I even did a couple of sprints to really get the blood moving. It is so much fun jumping over ice and dodging rocks while I run. I have to pay attention to every movement or I end up with sharp pains from rocks in my feet. When I run barefoot it is no longer a strait line, but a curvy line that is ever so much more fun. Even with paying attention and even though I have only been running short distances, I still have managed to get a blister or two. Nothing to keep me off my feet or even from being mostly barefoot all the time.

I was browsing through the Daily Show website and saw a link to the Colbert Report about an upcoming guest that does the Paleo Diet. It’s really interesting and I might even try it. I remember my friend Tom mentioning it to me a while ago but I brushed it off because I was assuredly thinking I was already on the best diet. I still get on my high horse and ride it, something I need to work on.

Anyway the diet is similar to mine except more meat and no grains. I already like to eat mostly fresh fruit and veggies, so all I would do is get rid of the grain. Not eating bread would be hard, because I really like bread, in all its forms!  Most everything else I am already doing; spend as much time outside as you can, run barefoot, be active and fast. I have to thank Tom again for some idea’s on fasting, he has been doing it for ages. The whole point of the diet, even though I would consider it more of a lifestyle, is to go back to what we are designed to do. We are good at several things: running, eating and having sex. Those are in fact what we are programmed to do and it is hard to fight programming. A lot of times we have to go a long period, some longer than others, without one of those things. Surprisingly though, we are as good at not doing as we are at doing, but now I am loosing myself.

So I don’t know yet whether I will try the Paleo diet. It would be hard seeing that I eat rice almost everyday at school. Here is a website with a bunch of links if you are interested. http://paleodiet.com/

So I successfully managed to not eat for two days. Now considering poverty and world hunger this is no great feat, but for me it was quite the challenge. After doing two days I think I would like to try even more. The most I could do in Japan is three days, unless I get a long weekend. It was hard and definitely more of a mental challenge than anything. For some reason we have got this idea that we have to eat.

I never knew how addicted to food I am. I realized this when it was my normal meal times. I was hungry during the entire fast, but I would be starving to the point of craziness during meal times. For about two hours I would have to fight my brain and body telling me it was time to eat. Most of the time it was manageable, but not then.

My energy level never really dropped at all. My head felt strange because of the hunger, but I was able to walk in the park and around my house without feeling terrible. I cleaned my entire house (excluding my shower, which is tomorrow morning’s work) while I was hungry and it didn’t effect me at all.The only time I felt a little woozy was during Onsen. The hot water made my head spin, but I recovered quickly after a few minutes of rest.

The weirdest point was last night. I had been ravenous on the way home from Onsen, but when I got home and drank some tea my hunger disappeared for about an hour and a half. The tea was enough to confuse my brain into thinking I had ate. The hunger came back as the night ebbed on, but for a while there was nothing but normal feelings all around. It was so strange and it was very nice.

I’ve been told that the first two days of fasting are the hardest. Once you get past them the hunger disappears for a few days. I would love to try a five day fast, but that will have to wait until I get home from Japan. I will probably drink juice during a longer fast. Five days without anything sounds tough.

Dinner tonight was amazing. I had simple, mostly uncooked food; spinach, salmon sashimi, chestnuts, mikans, olives and bread with olive oil. The spinach was to die for. The stems were actually sweet, with an earthy taste to the leaves. The bread melted in my mouth and the chestnuts were sweet, but not overly so. If you ever want your food to taste good than try fasting for a few days.