Wellness for Mom

After too many years of claiming I was going to do something and too many failed efforts, I jumped at the opportunity to try a different approach. My good friend Kathleen Reily is my new guide in improving my health. My work with Kathleen will fit in nicely with the only things for myself I have stuck with lately, Heilkunst – my healing work with the amazing Rudi Verspoor, Dr. Raphael Kellman, Reiki, and EFT – and I don’t do enough of the last two! Kathleen is very devoted to families facing ASD. She has been working with families with special needs for over 20 years in a variety of capacities including as a nutritional interventionist for children with ASD and ADHD. She recently decided to bring her practical and nurturing approach to wellness to a more specialized counseling practice for moms and has developed a six month program focusing on helping moms to better care for themselves in addition to providing nutritional guidance for the children. Having known her as a friend and NAA colleague for awhile, I am thrilled to be working with her as a client.

I am one week into my work with Kathleen and already feeling better. I feel more energetic (even my usual 3:00 slump seems to have disappeared!) and I am making changes I can stick with – I hope. Kathleen is a proponent of picking a few small things to change at a time because all of those small changes add up. I need this approach. My usual approach, left to my own devices, is to jump into something full bore, only to give up because it was too drastic and difficult. Kathleen tempers this in me. She also gives me someone to be accountable to in making my changes. These are things I definitely need. Add to that her knowledge, insight, accessibility and helpful tips and this is winning package!

So, what are my changes this week? I am supposed limit wheat at dinner as much as possible to improve digestion and inflammation. OK, that has actually been pretty easy!

I am supposed to make green smoothies a few times a week… Check! I went to a local health food store for fresh green smoothies from the juice bar while I was shopping for a high-powered blender to make the smoothies at home. I am the proud owner of a new VitaMix (ordered Weds. night and had it by Sat. – wow!) – it has the horsepower of some small cars. I have been making smoothies every day. I toss in all manner of greens and fruit and a minute later everything is mixed into a smooth smoothie – no lumps. I am choosing a green (kale, chard, romaine or some mix), parsley, cilantro, ginger, beet, celery, cucumber, some fresh lemon juice, chilled herbal tea, an apple (and maybe some other fruit). I am endeavoring to use all organic produce and I will mix it up depending on what is on hand and available either from the CSA or elsewhere. I add some maca powder and maybe a few cacao nibs and blend away. Yum. These shakes are surprisingly delicious - honestly. I usually have a hard time eating breakfast and these are a really fast, easy way to have a hit of nutrition at the start of the day and I have no problem drinking them down. I spend maybe 5 minutes the night before putting all my veg in a bowl and each morning I make an extra cup of tea to chill for the next day. In the morning, it is just coring and quartering my apple and dumping stuff in the blender. Super fast!

Next, I was supposed to try to go a few days without coffee this week. I have not had a cup since last Tuesday. I did not mean to stop cold turkey but it seemed to just happen. I am a fortunate coffee junkie – if I stop I don’t get the headaches etc. so this has been a not too difficult switch. I have been enjoying some herbal teas instead, but I am not foreclosing the possibility of a cup of coffee on occasion.

As an unintended benefit of these small changes, I am not craving the Coca-Cola that I know I should not drink, but love anyway. I have only had Coke on one day since I started working with Kathleen. That is probably the biggest and most unbelievable change – and it was not even on purpose.

Finally, on the fitness end, I was supposed to spend 30 minutes on Sunday reacquainting myself with the Wii Fit balance board that I have owned (and ignored) for longer than I care to admit. I put on the EA Sports Active disc and did a workout. I chose medium intensity workout that included running, boxing, kicking the heavy bag, squats, lunges, curls, inline skating, bent rows and other things. It was actually a lot of fun. However, perhaps I should have started off a bit more slowly as my quads have not been happy since Sunday!!!

More about Kathleen…

Kathleen is experienced and knowledgeable about a wide range of healing modalities. She is a Certified Holistic Health Counselor and Nutrition Consultant and holds a degree in Natural Health Sciences. She also is a Board Certified and Accredited Member of The American Association of Drugless Practitioners (AADP), with affiliations to The State University Of New York (SUNY). Moreover, she is a certified level 1 and level 2 Reiki practitioner.

To top it off, she is also a trained professional chef and personal chef, having cooked in homes and restaurants in New York, London and California. Kathleen’s cooking is delicious and healthy and she has shared with me recipes and food and I am always amazed. I especially appreciate her recipes that fit Henry’s dietary restrictions but are delicious and elegant enough for any event.

In addition, Kathleen and I are both involved in the NY Metro Chapter of the NAA and serve together on its Parent Mentoring Committee. She regularly attends AutismOne and Defeat Autism Now! conferences. Her website, autismhelpathome.com explains her services in more detail.

Let the Blogging (Re)Commence!

Okay, okay… after being gently hounded by several friends for not blogging in almost two months, I’m back! (Hopefully not in Poltergeist/“They’re baaaack” sort of way!) I have pulled out my calendar to see what I have been up to and I have to admit, I have been a busy girl – my DH would say too busy, but not me. Rather than one boring long post that will put all of you asleep, I wanted to do a quick recap and you can click on my specific posts about:

• Reflex Repatterning and Brain Gym
• Neurofeedback
• Spring Allergies
  
• The NAA-NY Metro
• Autism Awareness Month Candlelighting Ceremony
  
• AutismOne Legal and Advocacy Training
  

A quick update on Henry . . . In a nutshell – Henry seems to be doing well. He is incredibly chatty these days, much more outgoing, and school work seems to be more readily clicking (though still a challenge!). On Friday, Henry sang in his school spring concert and he proudly displayed his really cool artwork in the art show that preceded the concert. His class sang a reworked (age appropriate!) version of “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” from Monty Python’s Spamalot. It was really cute and all the classes performed with such gusto and talent it was a joy to watch all of them.

Henry also gave a great science presentation at school recently. He had the choice of doing a poster or actually demonstrating an experiment and, to my surprise, chose to demonstrate for the entire class. His experiment involved using a lemon, two forks, some zinc plates and wire to activate a small digital clock – pretty cool stuff. He impressed all of us with his knowledge and understanding of the experiment and he was so proud when he successfully demonstrated it!

In the category of “Hey, you never know…” Henry asked to take his NintendoDS to school recently to play while we wait for the lobby doors to open at 8:15am. I held off letting him do this because I feared he would isolate himself from the other kids and just play his game in a corner. Was I wrong!!! The darned thing has turned into a great tool for socializing. Every morning, Henry is surrounded by other children and they are all talking about the games and sharing thoughts and ideas. Who knew??? And Henry has been great about leaving it in his backpack during the day (a condition of being allowed to bring it). A great, and surprising, result (or maybe I am too old to realize that these games actually can be social?)

And me? I continue to work with Dr. Kellman to get my thyroid in order and we seem to be making good progress (Henry seems to be in a really good place with his thyroid right now). Henry and I also continue our sequential homeopathy and Heilkunst work with Rudi Verspoor and we both continue to see benefits from this treatment. Henry seems to be the somewhat more unusual patient who reacts almost immediately to homeopathic remedies, if he reacts at all. In a way, I like this because it shows me that something is going on.

I love being involved at school, and in addition to serving as the co-chair of the Parents Association Communications Committee, I have done a number of projects this spring at school. I worked with Henry's fabulous music teacher, Sarah, to develop and make cute, simple costumes for Henry and his classmates for the spring concert that evoked the “Spamalot” medieval spirit. I also have been working on the school yearbook with Henry's amazing art teacher, Peter, and a dedicated group of other parents. I took on the parent dedication pages – so many of our families supported the yearbook by purchasing dedication pages -- I was amazed and a bit overwhelmed by the response but the extra work was worth it -- I am hoping our final product looks fabulous -- we all put in lots of time and effort and -- more than once -- the great parents with design training on our committee saved me with technical assistance. We are producing the book through Entourage Yearbooks. This is the school's first year using a professional yearbook company and Entourage has been very patient with all of our newbie questions. The one great unanswered question is my husband’s: “What are you doing up at 1 a.m. working on the yearbook???” Sorry honey.