I'm dogsitting for a friend, so today had 3 walks. I took 'em both out this morning, and got home just as the sun was lighting up the porch. It sounds romantic, but it was about 35 degrees! This evening, after playing toss with the purple foam ring in the backyard, they went for separate walks because they like to go in different directions, and have MUCH more spunk as the day goes on. It was really a lovely evening. They live in Philadelphia, which is several weeks if not a month ahead of where I live only about 20 mins away. It's amazing how much of a microclimate the city can be. After both walks I sat on their deep front porch and savored the air. It's warm, but as I cooled down I felt the damp chill that is spring underneath the warm. The traffic is nonstop, people are forever calling and yelling to each other, and I breathed a sigh of relief that I don't live in the city full time. It's not for me. And on a related note, here's what it looks like when I try to take a picture of the season's first daffodils while on a dog walk!
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Day 5:
This morning I did about 5 minutes of yoga, and some mat pilates with my clients, including my favorite hip work. Those hips are finally starting to feel better! They've been really tight and sometimes painful. And I went to bed really early! Feels soooo good to do that when I get the rare chance. Day 6: No running today, because my buddy and I took a kickboxing class! This was my second, and I did much better this time. It was a lot more fun too! And now I'm sore, but in my legs and shoulders like I'm supposed to and not my neck like before. I did quite a bit of hauling of heavy bags this afternoon, and whew! I felt it. Fortunately I had a delightful, deep bathtub waiting for me tonight.
Day 4:
We both woke up with all the best intentions of meeting at 7 and jogging in the beautiful warm morning, and we both canceled from tummy trouble. Ah well. I did a 20 minute yoga program based on Warrior poses in the afternoon, including one-legged Warrior 3! I also spent several hours cleaning my place, so I'm counting that!! I also still felt like I was recovering from the day before with Dory; it must have been more draining than I realized. There's a side benefit I'm noticing- I'm motivated to eat better, and regularly. So this week feels good so far! Happy New Moon! The moon went dark, and now the energy is rebuilding towards the next full moon. What New Moon habit should I pick? I had a bunch of ideas for what to try this new moon, but I wasn't sure what to settle on. Then it hit me- my energy is up, my motivation is up, it's time to get my strength up! If I can't exercise at least a little every day, and I OWN a pilates studio, then I'm in trouble. And now that I'm not so very tired all the time, I do dream of being even less tired. So pilates, yoga, running, kickboxing, let's do it. Point of order: I don't DO pilates when I teach, although it IS a very active hour per class. But I'm not going to count teaching time as actual exercise since that's what I do just about daily. Time to step it up, Paula! So yesterday, Day 1: I worked with one of my instructors on advanced Footstrap moves and combinations. Footstraps on a pilates machine are heaven. That's a picture there of me from a million years ago at an outdoor event, and while you are normally lying down and not lifted up like that, you get the idea. Your feet are in loops, and you can do all sorts of super hip things. I'm telling you, heaven. Later that evening, I did a set of leg presses with my advanced class and realized I need to do that more! This morning, Day 2: I ran with my Running Buddy. This was the first time since last fall that it hasn't been too cold. It sounds nutty, but the temp today was 32 degrees at 7am and that was perfect. We did 2.6 miles and as you can see by the little bottom graph, it took 17 minutes! We did a fair amount of walking, since we both developed low belly cramps and my legs were very tired. That was unusual, and I attribute it to the Footstraps yesterday. The top graph was the elevation change on our route. We went down a little hill and back up it, yakking the whole time because we haven't seen much of each other for the last few weeks, and had a nice time. I've been continuing my day on, day off pulling, but I have been having internet connection trouble! So here is the rest of my pulling saga from this past week: Morning 9: I stayed at a friend’s house, and forgot my oil, so I skipped this morning too. It seemed to help my lips! They’re still recovering from whatever that dryness is. My digestion is not dry, though, which remains a good thing. Morning 10: I pulled again this morning, and noticed I don’t have nearly as much mucous as I used to, and definitely don’t have those hard dry bits anymore. I like how this feels, except for the lips! I’m also not as distracted as I was last week, not forgetting things and bumping into things as much, but I don’t know if this is the pulling or what. Morning 11: I’m skipping again today, trying to see if one on, one off, helps the dryness without reducing the benefits of the pulling. Today I was scraping at my lips with my teeth constantly, because the dry skin is starting to come off in pokey spikes. Fun! I think I’ve had it with the dryness. I wonder if I should wait for a different season. Since it’s March, and very clearly a time of transitional Earth (according to Daoist 5 Element Theory) maybe my body is not willing to easily release what it’s accumulated. Morning 12: The great Dory Ellen Fish gave me some insight- the lips correspond to the Stomach, not the Large Intestine as I though, and she thinks the dryness is my stomach detoxing, albeit uncomfortably. She agrees that it doesn’t sound like a good detox, and urged me to switch to untoasted Sesame Oil in case the Coconut is too much, and to shorten the time I do it. She also shared an online forum of people with the same problem asking questions. There’s no really helpful solutions in it, but it’s really nice to know I’m not a complete oddity. Morning 12: I haven’t pulled in several days, and my lips are fine. The weather turned cold again so they’re a little dry, but nothing out of the ordinary. However, I have a new symptom! My shins are super dry- red, a little blistery, and VERY itchy. This also corresponds to the Stomach and Spleen meridians, furthering the detox connection. Did I mention it itches??? So today I’m going to drink tea a la Susun Weed- nourishing infusions! Nettles, Chickweed, Dandelion, Alfalfa, maybe some soothing Plaintain and Milky Oats, anything to calm this and nourish my system a little. And, I’m going to wait till Lady Spring wams up a litte more! Morning 13: Still itchy and red in the legs. Now I have a couple welts on the back of my hips, and on my elbows, as well. Clearly I have something to go through here, but this is pretty severe discomfort! I'm using a liniment I made up of Comfrey and Calendula oil, and Gotu Kola tincture, to help my skin. It's not necessarily ideal- I'd like to use some Plantain, for example, and maybe some Rose, but it's what I had on hand and seems to be easing the crazy need to scratch through my pants. So, to recap: I like oil pulling! But it doesn’t seem to like me, at least not right now. I’m going to make a few changes: 1. Try sesame oil next time 2. Try pulling for only 5 minutes, and work up from there 3. Wait till next season, for the warmer end of spring, to try again Morning 7: And I forgot to elaborate on happy poops yesterday. No matter, we’ll do it now! Margi Flint, a well-respected Herbalist in Marblehead MA, gives my favorite (and a wonderfully precise) definition: "The perfect bowel movement... is brown, about an inch or slightly more in diameter, a good seven to ten inches long, comes out perfectly when one is prompted to relieve oneself, moves easily and evenly when one sits down, forms a round curly-cue- like soft serve ice cream- slowly sinks to the bottom of the toilet gracefully and leaves one in a good mood." (The Practicing Herbalist, 2nd ed., p 177) She does go on to detail more factors, but for our intents and purposes let's leave the definition here. Remember, it should leave you in a good mood!
And very dry lips, again today. Morning 8: I decided to skip today. My lips were killing me, rough and getting inflamed above the edge of my top lip, too. I obsessively used my lip balm today, Burt’s Bees with Peppermint, and my lips really sucked it up. Morning 6: Much better lips, and no change in my happy poops. I bet you’re starting to regret reading this a little by now :) But hey, we all do it. In a minute I’ll even tell you what constitutes a happy poop! Pulled again, spit in the appropriate place- and trust me I was actively telling myself to pay attention repeatedly- I have been more distracted that normal which has gotten in my way this week. I was chatting with someone about oil pulling last night, and she was a little amazed that I can do it for 15 minutes already. I guess I hadn’t thought about it much, but now I see 2 keys to that: 1. I don’t use too much oil. I have a small mouth, so I might use 2 teaspoons max. I also don’t measure! I just dig out a chunk from my jar and chew on it till most of it’s melted- this is easily the worst part. If there’s not enough, I add some more. 2. I do something else. Today I made a pancake for breakfast, so I mixed up the batter and set the cast iron on the stove, dressed for work, and then I browsed through a magazine for 5 more minutes till I was done. Otherwise I’m thinking about it the whole time and driving myself nutty. Morning 4: I was so dry yesterday! My lips are so rough, and I had to put moisturizer on my chin- I was scratching my face on that ‘goatee line’ guys have, and I was all red. I know the moisturizer is only a stopgap, that there’s more going on here, but at least it helped! There’s some talk about both tongue scraping and oil pulling removing toxins from the digestive tract, and I’m wondering about a connection. A dry lower lip points to a dry colon (whereas I’ve found both lips being dry to correlate to an overall winter misery dry state!) However, both my lips are severely dry, as is my lower chin area, which also points to digestion, BUT (TMI alert) my elimination, ok fine, my poops have been not only daily but consistently in the morning! This is cause for celebration in the Paula Household- 4 days in a row of great poops?! This is history making. The point is, my digestion doesn’t seem to be dry at all. So I wonder if my intestines are going through an exfoliation process that’s being mirrored here on the surface. I’ll have to give it more time and see how it goes. I was all kinds of distracted this morning, and ended up spitting in the sink a second time. I didn’t even notice till after I had brushed and left the bathroom, when it hit me and I went back in to run the hot water again! Argh. The reason I forgot about the pipes, though, was that I again had to quit at almost the 15 minute mark because of post-nasal drip. There’s too much to simply hold in limbo in my sinuses, and I WON’T swallow a glop like that, and I wanted to see what color it was. I know, I know, that’s disgusting, but it’s a diagnostic tool! It was white and a little pale yellow, btw. Morning 5: Yesterday was very uncomfortable. The chin dryness has abated, but my lips were all pokey and white, with dry skin bits sticking out and yuck. I obsessively alternated between Burt’s Bees Peppermint lip stuff and scraping them with my teeth to exfoliate. Actually, by the end of the day I was pretty smooth! I figured my teeth were gentler than using a mirror and tweezers and yanking out all that skin, it was that annoying. Therefore I decided to skip pulling this morning. I needed a break! Morning 2: Yesterday afternoon, my nose dripped constantly. I felt like a toddler who needed to wipe her nose. It wasn’t really mucous, just clear liquid, but geeze Louise it was annoying. This morning I pulled again, this time in the shower. I found myself forgetting to swish, just holding it in my mouth, but then I’d start up again. I didn’t time it today, but I guessed that the entire thing took at least 15 minutes, given my average showering time. AND I remembered to spit in the toilet! Again I felt more post-nasal drip during the pulling, but had no extra mucous during my time at the sink. I did see, though, that the buildup I had noticed around my upper gum line was almost gone. However, my lips are strangely dry. It’s strange because that usually happens with weather changes and in combination with the backs of my hands, my legs and/or my face drying too, and none of them seem to correlate with this. It’s also more my upper lip, whereas I’m used to my lower lip being the drier one. Morning 3: Last night I again had a little mucous to spit out that was hard and dry. I believe the oil is softening bits held in, or stuck to, my sinuses and tonsils from a cold I had last month. Interestingly though, this week I have had very dry lips so the benefits of the oil don’t seem to extend past the mucous membranes they contact. Same pattern as yesterday, pulled in the shower, and remembered to spit in the toilet. Tomorrow I plan to wash my hair, and I see that as a potential problem in terms of tilting my head, etc., but we’ll cross that bridge then. No extra mucous today, still dry lips, but my teeth are smooth feeling. Why didn’t I take a teeth-selfie to compare color after all this?? There’s lots of info out there about oil pulling; I'll be sharing some of my favorite resources, and you're welcome to search it. I'm telling you, there's LOTS! My goals are whitening, buildup removal, and re-mineralization of my teeth. This cleansing process fits in nicely with the waning energy between the Full and New Moons. Now, full disclosure: I’ve tried this before, but only for a day or two at a time and I didn’t stick with it. So this time around, I have a plan.
Morning 1: I dug a hunk of coconut oil out of my jar in the kitchen. No, I didn’t measure it. I guesstimate it was between 1 and 2 teaspoons. I chewed it a little, constantly reminding myself not to simply swallow it! When it was liquid, I started swishing. It quickly took on some air and got a little thicker, a little more substantial, which was better for me than the thin, pure oil feeling I had at first. My goal is 15 minutes. This will get boring quickly. Yesterday I moved a bookshelf and I noticed the newly blank wall, so I decided to hang some pictures on it. I went and found 2 nails, stuck them in 2 holes already there (my walls are old plaster, so I try to use existing nail holes) and tied a length of ribbon around the hanging loops on 2 small frames that hold small paintings. I hung the ribbon over the nails and adjusted the frames to asymmetrical heights, then hung 2 more frames on the ribbon stretched between the nails. And then my 15 minutes was up, and I had a decorated wall. Not bad! I was distracted by my decorative accomplishment, so when I went back in the bathroom I immediately spit the oil in the sink. Whoops! The oil can easily congeal in the pipes, you’re supposed to use the trash or the toilet instead. So I ran the hot water while I brushed my teeth, which I know is not environmentally appropriate but hey, if it saves my pipes… Then I salt rinsed, and felt very virtuous! I did notice that when I was pulling I felt post-nasal drip that was hard to breathe around sometimes. Then, when I was rinsing after brushing, I had some (TMI alert!) hard, dry chunks of mucous coming out that I hadn’t been aware I was holding in there somewhere. |
Fun Fact: I'm an herbalist and a movement coach. Not a doctor, or a pharmacist, and not pretending to be one on TV.
This is a public space, so my writing reflects my experiences and I try to stay general enough so it might relate to you. This does not constitute medical advice, and I encourage you to discuss concerns with your doctor. Remember, however, that the final say in your wellness decisions are always yours- you have the power to choose, you are the boss of you. And, some of my posts may contain affiliate links. If you make a purchase through them I'll earn a few cents. Thank you for supporting my work. This website is provided for educational and informational purposes only and is not medical, mental health or healthcare advice. The information presented here is not intended to diagnose, treat, heal, cure or prevent any illness, medical condition or mental or emotional condition. Working with us is not a guarantee of any results. Paula Billig owns all copyrights to the materials presented here unless otherwise noted. Categories
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