The Mindful Detox: Part II: How I Did It

II

How I Did It

To create the Mindful Eating Practice, I created an assemblage of the best practices from several explorations of diet, lifestyle and mindfulness. For 100 days: from March 1^st to June 8^th I would exist in a different way, eliminating five things: sugar, dairy, gluten, coffee and alcohol. In their place, I would look to create clarity, joy, balance, calm and health-intended purpose. I would lower my blood pressure, cholesterol, inflammation and weight. All of this happened. I now exist in the future I imagined: even at the cellular level.

Body

In 2012 when I experienced my first exploration of how rhythms turn into practices and practices become habits, my integrative medicine doctor encouraged me to walk for 30 minutes every day. “Pair your exercise with something you love,” she said, a glimmer in her eye. Something I love, I thought. I love taking in the luminous water at White Rock Lake. I love capturing the sunrise at dawn, studying the effects of light and color under a big bold Texas sky. She encouraged me to create a new practice pairing these loves: nature, photography and exercise. From this seminal conversation #pocketsunrise was born: a now six-year study of the lake during what I call The Magic Hour. Sunrise holds all the promise of a new beginning: a tabula rasa to hold and be grateful for: a place to create. Exercise became something I looked forward to, and #pocketsunrise has been a joyful companion to this practice.

It is with this spirit that I approached designing the Mindful Eating Practice. I looked back at the elimination diets, cookbooks and books I’d come to love over the years:

•       From the Elimination Diet at the Sammons Cancer Center program in the Cvetko Center I chose to eat meals high in fiber, color and nutrition. I looked for alkaline fruits with lower sugar content (apples, cranberries). I created salads with lean proteins.  Protein shakes with hemp, fish oil, and other brain boosters.
•       From Mark Hyman, I borrowed the Protein Shake, the supplement packs for the 21-day detox and the Regulate Female Hormone kit. I also sources several recipes from the 10-day detox and his book Eat Fat Get Thin.
•      From Arbonne and the Nutritional Reset Program I carried over the chocolate and vanilla protein powder for shakes and the green-tea based Fizzys.
•       From my exploration of Ayurveda and consultations with two brilliant practitioners I built in new practices of drinking a glass of hot water upon waking, adding triphala to my supplement pack and sleeping just seven hours a night.

Mind

In the weeks leading up to the start of the Mindful Eating Practice and for the next 100 days, mindfulness would be my quiet companion. I found and made time to meditate daily: from 3 minutes to 45 minutes. I sought out the quiet.

Preparation was vital to setting the intention to be different. I spent time thinking about how I could create new habits and neural pathways around healthy eating. I wrote about “me” in that future. On March 1^st I wrote in my blog:

As for well-being I am creating a me that will flourish in 

lower blood pressure 

more fitness and exercise 

more energy 

less inflammation 

more capacity for yoga 

more clarity in purpose and thinking 

Writing this puts it all into existence: me in this future of health and well being: leading in contemplative work and heading up an art museum that celebrates the compassion that happens when art meets healing. I am my own best experiment, and I am taking myself on to be someone who is stronger, wiser ready for the good work ahead of us. Pardon my dust and please hold me to account every day. 

In my brain and in my thinking, I worked on my being already in that future. I imagined how I would look: the clothes in my closet that would fit more loosely. I imagined the way I would feel: lighter, more flexible, more alive. To these little meditations in the first days I created three mantras I would carry forward:

 
For well-being: to every cell

For finding beauty in unexpected places: little alleluias everywhere

When I felt the liminal response to a take a glass of bubbly from a tray of champagne flutes: be like a monk. 

Be like a monk leads me to the importance of Spirit in this work. In addition, and not separate from mindfulness, is prayer. Taking on a new practice for 100 days takes will, and as I experienced it, will comes from the heart. I had a heart connection to this work, forging this future. I filled my thinking about this re-construction of myself with love, grace, patience and understanding. Monastics (I would learn during the last week of the Mindful Eating Practice) live in this love. For all they give up, love fills. Love filled up the spaces left from eliminating five things. I was in love with the capacity to sit with desire. I loved writing about the work to create a different future. I loved the community cheering me on: at home, at work and through my social networks. More love existed with each day, each failure, each challenge. As in mindfulness, if the mind wanders, you can always come back. There is beautiful grace in this work. The grace to forgive and move on. This came from sitting with Spirit, opening the heart and just listening.

The Mindful Detox: Part I: Why Now?

I

Why Now? 

Last week I completed a study of myself: a 100-day Mindful Eating Practice. This chapter of my life existed from March 1st- June 8th, 2017. 

I became my own laboratory: the subject of my inquiry and curiosity.

This project was created to replace something else: a surgery to manage two issues caused by stress and weight. I chose a kinder, gentler medicine. And I’m really glad I did.

In December of last year—after months of resigning myself to feeling as good as I could, I made a declaration to have two surgeries just after the first of the year.

The first was a long-recommended sinus surgery to repair the back of my septum and open up my sinuses. I was born with cleft lip and palate and had multiple corrective surgeries as a child. The miracles of all of those surgeries manifested in a new issue: scar tissue wreaking havoc on my body’s ability to keep my sinuses healthy. I was hopeful for an outcome free of repeated sinus issues and infections: free to feel wonderful enough to work, speak, write, transform. The need for and the potential of this surgery were both clear to me, and there was no question my quality of life would improve. It did tremendously.

The second surgery wasn’t so black and white. Also long-recommended, this surgery, scheduled for February 8, was a partial hysterectomy to alleviate inconvenient and unpleasant symptoms of fibroids and delivering two nine pound babies. Without saying too much more about that, I signed up and met with two surgeons, completed the blood work and set the date in my work calendar.

Also in my work calendar was a work dinner on January 31 where, by chance I was seated next to my dear friend and wellness advisor to our museum, Ayurvedic practicioner Sapna Punjabi Gupta.

She took a deep breath after I told her my story. “Cancel the surgery,” she said. “Give me three months.”

I looked at her in disbelief. “Cancel the surgery? Can you do that?”

At home later that evening I called my Integrative Medicine doctor, Dr. Carolyn Matthews (Baylor). She generously walked through the plan with me, and with much compassion, helped me see that surgery didn’t have to be the only way.  Twelve hours later it was done: two doctors’ offices, one operating room and admissions removed my name from the schedule on February 8, 2017. Yes, you can cancel a surgery.

I spent the month of February thinking back on the lessons I’d learned in the vast world of health and well being since a diagnosis (and cure) of papillary carcinoma (thyroid cancer) in the summer of 2011.

Having cancer opened up a new future for me: a future of exploring and listening to the best teachers in the fields of integrative medicine, mindfulness and well being. Having cancer made me well: grounded in an understanding that our bodies—to the cellular level-- are a reflection of how we live.  

As a student in the relationship between diet and longevity, I participated in several elimination diets through the Cvetko Patient Resource Center at Baylor Hospital (21 days), with Arbonne (30 days), and with Mark Hyman (21 days). For me, 21 days is a commitment, but one without lasting impact. I knew I needed something with more staying power: 100 days, 3.14 months, almost a season, long enough to make new habits a practice.

I also knew it had to be simple: I chose to eliminate five things: alcohol, dairy, gluten, sugar and caffeine (which quickly became coffee, interestingly the experience I missed the most throughout the detox). The Mindful Eating Practice, as it was designed, became my synthesis of many learnings, explorations and experiences. The success of the Mindful Eating Practice happened because I worked from a future I wanted to be in. I authored this future. I engaged dimensions of body, mind and spirit to steady my focus, and ultimately create that future.

Crow 31 Days: Impermanent Continuings

For this year's Asian American Pacific Islander Month, May, I entered a study of Asia in my world: the blessings of friendships, spaces, experiences and the sacred realm. 

On this last night of May in the year of two thousand and seventeen, I watched the sun set over the Lower Hamlet of Plum Village. This post is not about the Asia I find in Dallas, but rather the Asia I have come to look for in the south of France: the one grounded in contemplation. 

Dear reader, you find me in Brigitte's home just across the road from Plum Village. I am in a shared room with my dear friend Nancy listening to the crickets signing French lullabies. Night falls on the vineyards and hills around this utopia of fruit tree and farm. And we are in Noble Silence until tomorrow after the breakfast dishes are clean. We are in Noble Silence-except for the little clicks of my keyboard. 

Zen master, Buddhist teacher and writer Thich Nhat Hanh created Plum Village after the French Government granted him asylum after the Vietnam war. You can read more about him here. Tonight I want to tell you about the sounds of silence. 

I am here with my colleagues to learn about what is created in the space of quiet: as a person, as a leader, as a museum director. We arrived just after 3 this afternoon. In the precious words of Thich Nhat Hanh: 

I have arrived. I am home. I am listening. 

There is space in silence. 

Voluminous, endless sunset over the poplar grove. 

The tinking of the tea cups as they are hand washed in the kitchen. 

The music of rain drops hitting the stone gutters. 

The rhythm of leaves meeting and separating in the bamboo grove. 

The murmur of three women who snuck off to the Farm to giggle and chat. 

The patter of my housemate's (the one I haven't met yet) feet as she prepares for bed. 

Of all the things I have written about this month: from exhibitions to temples, perhaps the greatest offering of a study of Asia is the one inside each of us: the quiet within. Contemplative practice is derived from Buddhist practice --this truly is the wisdom of Asia: the secret we are just beginning to hear. But contemplation is not limited to Buddhism: any prayer of any religion, any mantra, any inhale and exhale of breath is contemplation. Being awake to being alive is contemplation. 

I am here to learn with over 100 other executives and managers closing our eyes and opening our hearts for Mindful and Compassionate Leadership: A Business Retreat. I learned today that this is the first retreat in Plum Village's 35-year history offered for the business world. 

This secret, this wisdom of the ages, is being shared in a new frontier: the culture of work. For the Crow Collection of Asian Art, a practice of sharing mindfulness is flourishing in a medium of employee development, art and culture. 

I am inspired to share this beautiful secret: the one that holds a space for well being, for being well, and for being more compassionate: at home and at work. 

I will share the quiet inside. As a beginning, I am hear to listen, and I am hear to learn. It may be the ending of May, but it is also the continuing: the continuing of the blessing of pursuing joy and the wonder of being alive. 

And I wonder, will the cricket sleep when I turn out the light? 

Crow 31 Days: The Emperor in Exile

In a house in Dallas, Texas a large painting by Texas artist Bill Komodore (1932-2012) hangs in the living room. It was painted in 2012: a swirling, yet calm composition presenting the image of a small figure in Lotus Pose on a platform under a structure.

Bill, originally from Athens, Greece and schooled at Tulane, was a professor of painting at Southern Methodist University for many years: taking in culture and experiences and sending them back into the world through his brush, paint and canvas.

This work, painted the year of his death, is inspired by another work: An Exiled Emperor on Okinoshima painted during the Momoyama period in Japan around the year 1600.  The screen is on display as part of the current installation in the Asian galleries at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas. (note the wonderful audio tour from my friend Jennifer Casler Price on the work on the Kimbell's website)

The Emperor is likely the Emperor Godaigo (in power 1318-1339). Godaigo's life was written in a fourteenth century account in the text Masukagami, written 1180-1333.)  He spent a year in exile after being accused of treason, and after sitting for four long seasons, escaped in a small fishing boat with help from a loyal associate, Takaoki Chidane.

In Komodore's new art history of Godaigo's year of contemplation, we see less details from this story of isolation and waiting. Komodore did not include the story cues of waves, gate and fisherman, or the somber hues of ink and paper: his canvas has all of these things, just through a bolder palate: the nuance of water swirling around the emperor, the sense of isolation, but not being truly alone. Here is a Texan, inspired by a masterwork painting at the Kimbell Art Museum: one that tells a story in 1600 of an event that happened almost three centuries prior, re-immortalized in a contemporary art collection in Dallas, Texas.

This new work is very much a metaphor of how Asia occurs for us in Dallas in 2017.

We see things: screens at the Kimbell, jades at the Crow, Meiji bronzes at the Dallas Museum of Art, and we, as the viewer, assimilate that learning in new contexts of Asian Art History.

Asia is no longer a place inside of lines on a map. It is of the world.

Our work is to slow down, look closely and study. To sit, like this Emperor, for a time, and take it all in. This role as "interpreter" is both an offering and a responsibility: a responsibility to be authentic and sensitive. This role as "interpreter" asks us to listen: to the waves, the crane at water's edge, to the hum of lohans meditating in the wilderness in a jade miniature mountain.

In the listening, in the silence, like the Emperor Godaigo, we hear the moment when it's time to stop sitting and create the next amazing action of our lives.