The winter blush falls
A fast dance slows for the eye
No wrong steps in flight
Category Archives: Healthy Behaviors
Haiku: A Literary Therapy
“It’s truncated like a haiku – mundane observations that reveal everything. ” – Paul Butler
winter air chills
birds sing faithful tomorrow
the sun warms anew
Love on Delivery Comes Knocking at the Door
In the wee hours of the morning someone told me that my happiness was unsustainable because it was based on serendipity. This same morning I lit a candle and prayed for other’s healing, including my own.
I also decided to let love inside my life. So in the afternoon on my routine walk, I wear headphones blasting John Lennon wisdom. Dance on the street and let the wheels roll by.
And just as am about to cross the threshhold, the morning’s decision becomes true. Love finally comes to my door.
Hearts sprinkled on melted snow outside my home.
There’s plenty right about being happy in this moment. To walk with eyes wide open. Finally and finely attune.
What’s wrong with that? Build my vision out of the strings I see. Serendipity or not, hearts are there.
Proof.
Cynics and Hermits rejoice!
Long live Zamunda’s King.
Olfactory Dysfunction and Neuron Stupidity
It’s close to quitting time and the Friday blues come. Bang it out. The to-do list needs to be crossed off. Women are productive but girls dabble.
But every song on Spotify reminds me that I’m no different. I take comfort in averages.
It’s when I rub the bump which keeps its growth in the middle of my forehead. The night before I hit myself and now I’ve become the most wonderful imitation of a unicorn.
I call Mama. She’s at JC Penney.
“Would you like me to buy you some underwear?” she inquires. “It’s one for $11 and the other free.”
“Mom, if you buy me underwear I will tell the next man I sleep with that you buy me underwear,” I respond with sweet resentment.
“For this reason I’ll make sure they’re passion killers. Grandma underwear.”
“Mom, you buying me underwear is kinda like a chastity belt. ”
I tell her that we can write about chastitiy belts; if we get 100 bucks for it that would pay for the underwear.
We laugh again.
“How are you?” she now inquires about me.
Instead of white lie, I utter confidences. Heart is still broken. That I miss a man I perhaps invented. I’m a coward. That I never heard his voice again.
“How can so much stupidity be in one neuron!?” she chastises while sorting through the undie pile miles away.
I laugh but make notes to remind myself of such a wonderful saying, “neuron stupidity.”
So between advice and underwear sizes, I start my own inquries.
The night before I prepared a news report and come to learn about her condition: Anosia. The inability to distinguish aromas.
“Hey, can you smell mint?”
“Yes.”
“What about oranges?”
“Yes.”
“Roses?”
“No.”
So I go down the list. I scribble all the time but perhaps this one is purposeful.
No, she can’t smell leather and can’t give me a clear answer on fish.
“Well, don’t worry about fish. When you visit I’ll take you to Chinatown. You’ll smell fish alright!”
We laugh again.
“Why are you asking me these questions?” she responds while still on the hunt for undies.
“Ah, well, what you have is Anosia but it’s not as serious as it can be.”
“Ah, well, I’m wearing this perfume and I can finally smell it!”
“Good, make sure to smell it. Work that muscle.”
“Ok.”
“Mom, don’t buy me clothes!” the futility mixes with oxygen as it exits my mouth.
“Give me torment! Tell me what not to bring you. I’ll show you the clothes in Google.”
We laugh again. I’m her barbie, a “muñequita de sololoi.”
Love is promised and professed until another day but don’t say what I read the night before: “Anosia could be an indicator of death within the next 5 years.”
Labor Day is the Day for Holy Healing
The calendar on the fridge still read August. It was now the first of September and so I ripped the page. Upon closer inspection a drawing to signify the Labor Day holiday shared space in the calendar with five words: Our Lady of the Remedies.
I’m not Catholic so this was news to me. It was also news to me that the town of Cholula in Mexico has one of the largest churches dedicated to this saintly gal. Who she was, I don’t know. Legend has it that one of Cortes’ men buried a small icon of this saint during a retreat from the Aztecs. Twenty years later the figure was discovered and the Spaniards decided to erect a church.
So I looked at the calendar and decided to do some healing. Yeah, I could go pray to Nuestra Señora de los Remedios but I also think she would want me to help myself and be part of the miracle.
I was literal and did the healing myself. Why the need for healing? Hey, I’m a believer in the I-need-a-tune up approach.
Lately, some of the decisions I’ve made have left me unsure of who I am or what I’ve become. Yes, friends tell me I’m too hard on myself but this time I did an action that’s out of character. In my quest for faithfulness to an ideal, I buckled and split myself.
In any case I decided not to ruminate and instead changed how I handled the feeling. I got ready and met with my paisano in Chinatown. Over Singapore noodle and while our foreheads perspired due to the curry, we talked about the importance of “desahogo.” The need to talk things out and let things flow. How in heartache one has to let things go and grow. Even Anton Chekov wrote a story on how desahogos and closures come in different forms. One must do whatever to avoid the drown in the lake of sorrow.
So my paisano and I exit the restaurant and meader looking for cures. We walk aisles and see goji berries, stories of Monkey Kings’ on healing quests and teas that promise good circulation. Remedies hidden in drawers while others in plain view that deliver virility. Remedies in needles for $45 per session. However, the best remedy was the laughter we found in bells.
Earlier in the week Aunt Damaris told me about the therapeutic effects of bells. Now, she has decided to become the family’s curandera. Her barridas, or cleansings, come with bells to ward off negative energy, las malas vibras.
So I see bells and chuckle. In the middle of the Chinese store I did a Mexican barrida with a bell. Our ears perked up to the chime.
We laughed but in that Chino barrida, we believed and it was a good enough miracle.
What Color Says About Your Emotions
by Jumah Chaguan
I peered inside a black box in which different colors alternated. My feelings and answers to questions changed. It was the color yellow in front of me that made me giddy. Red, on the other hand, aroused anger and heaviness. I wanted to leave.
A Color Walk on Walnut Street. Images by Jumah Chaguan
“Color helps you feel your emotions and gets you more comfortable with different emotions. It’s an interaction between you and your personal growth and what you are doing,” says Dr. Doris Jeanette, a Philadelphia-based psychologist who has used color therapy for over 30 years.
According to Jeanette, color is emotion. So when someone avoids a particular color—red in my case—we are not really avoiding the color but rather the emotions associated with that color.
So how does color therapy work?
APAPACHO VS. GOOGLE
By Jumah Chaguan
The doctor gave me news, not all the news, they never give you all the news. Just enough news to give jitters and turn my eyes like a breach at the Hoover Dam.
Don’t get me wrong. I was composed as I could be under the circumstances, I even gave the nurse context: “I’m a cryer, don’t worry.”
The nurse, who did a really good rendition of a perplexed automaton, hands me a box of tissues. She tilts the head to one side, a sign of empathy. Then the official bearer of not so informative news enters the room.
“It’s rare,” the official bearer tells me. “But we do know the entity exists.”
Well you can imagine. My stomach dropped to the floor. Just the night before I had booked lodging in Europe. I was feeling proud. The first mujer in the familia to do a solo trip. Doing things to show that I was finally getting a life. But no, hours later I found myself a patient in walk-in limbo.
The official bearer looks at me and offers wonderful advice. “Just Google it. And if you see the symptoms and say to yourself ‘Hey, that’s me!’ Then we’ll know.”
Yes, the official bearer actually pretended to type on an imaginary keyboard. In the medical establishment’s defense, they did give me a sheet of paper with symptoms and other things, but I was too worried to look at.
The preoccupation was the needles that were about to pierce my vein. As a child in Rosita I used to turn cheetah and away from the nurses. Along the years I managed the phobia. Most of the time I’m proud to say that I handle needles like a woman but today, I just sobbed.
What I needed the most didn’t come from automaton or the Google ambassador, it came from the lady waiting in the hall. She was there to escort her friend, who looked way more ill than me.
The lady was the “rotundity of the moon.” Her fingers were buttery pancakes. Everything about her in that moment seemed to wrap me in abundance. She held my body and prayed for me. I just fell into her arms while the body tingled.
We touched heads and hugged again. She implored Jesus. I agreed. However, I desired more. More touch. It dawned on me how much of it was missing in my life. The importance of touch, a loving hug or as we say in my land el “apapacho.”
Apapacho is the colloquial for abrazo, the Spanish equivalent for embrace. By replacing the “b” with a “pa,” it transforms the embrace into more than just a hug, it’s the sort of personal touch that makes you feel like a little kid again, spoiled and special.
When we touch, the brain releases a hormone called oxytocin. Well, it turns out that oxytocin is the stuff that makes people “Happy Together.”
Dr. Kathleen C. Light of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill researches oxytocin in couples. Her work shows that partners with good relationships also have higher levels of oxytocin.
Light believes that oxytocin is the glue. It helps people form social bonds, it helps a child to learn to trust. If there weren’t enough hugs going around while you were growing up, well, you might struggle a bit.
If you are lucky to get hugs, then you are less likely to be depressed or have high blood pressure. In other words, it’s good to be all touchy-feely.
Light also says that even other forms of contact which provides support such as phone calls or even emails, can trigger the hypothalamus, the specific part of the brain that gives the good dope, oxytocin.
So it made sense that I reacted positively to the kind woman’s embrace. I wanted to get on the oxytocin train. Even Darth Vader set the Death Star on a course to apapacho land, see below.
So in my search for oxycotin, I thought of the fabulous Zeefro, my best girl friend and the empress of multi-task world. This is a woman that can take a conference call, parachute on the streets of China with only a subway map and still manage to get back to the office within a week! Surely, she could help.
“This lady hugged me, it felt so good,” was all I could say between tears to Zeefro. It still didn’t register what I had experienced.
“Of course, she gave you an apapacho!” said the wise Zeefro.
I smiled. I hadn’t heard “apapacho” in such a long time. Zeefro has the best gift, she always keeps it real, in perspective.
“Let me think, let me think,” said the sage. I could hear her type away. Googling.
“No…that’s not what I want. Oh? No wonder you’re scared,” Zeefro remarked. “Right now we just need to know how to manage.”
And it was the use of the word “we” that gave me comfort. I stood on the corner, snot all over my face but managed to crack a joke. Zeefro wanted me to breathe but I laughed.
Breathe?
I had so much snot up my nose that Krazy Glue might want to patent me. So I walked around the block and found myself in CVS, the tissue aisle. On my arms I carried deluxe tissues and water filled with so much electrolytes to replenish things I didn’t even know I had.
I crossed the street and saw it, the Aveda Institute. My survival mode kicked in. I broke rank with myself, I did my own self apapacho.
Usually I love to wallow like a good telenovela watcher lost in the land of Venus in Furs, but on the day of an uninvited illness, rebellion was the only option.
Well, I almost didn’t. I passed the institute. I had convinced myself to return to work but then I saw her. My own private version of Adele but with a name like Gwen instead.
Gwen was on her way to cut hair. On the street, with my face covered in dry tears, I stopped her and asked about ombre highlights. She spoke with such confidence that she “had me at hello.”
And it was not just the confidence but also her updo. It was classic messy-chic. In that instant I recalled what my girlfriend Bobby used to say, “Never trust a hairdresser with a bad hairdo!”
So I went inside and against my nature, I pampered myself. Don’t get me wrong, I struggled the entire time. I caught myself squeezing my hands under the gown, but then relaxing as best as I could. I told my body to enjoy Gwen’s shampoo.
At one point I almost fell asleep under the dryer. And you have to understand, I struck it rich with Gwen. She gave me access to the exclusive echelons of blow drying. Gwen’s hair dryer was Italian, red and top of the line with Ferrari-engine technology. This hair artist was serious about the craft!
What made my hairdo great was not that it was only $46, it was Gwen herself. She had also been under the weather this past winter. She also had a bad morning like me. This hair healer confided with me her styling secrets. So much was her tenderness and enthusiasm for her calling that she made me want to finally use the rollers I had in my closet for the past 5 years.
Gwen loves to make people feel good. She will admit that when she needs an upper, she does her own hair too. This healer and apapacho artist did all this while looking like a Texas beauty queen and that might be in the cards for her. Gwen has contemplated a move to Dallas, the land of big hair. For sure she’ll make it big there.
“I love to tease,” said Gwen.”The higher the hair, the closer to heaven.”
We laughed. I didn’t need the box of tissues anymore and the hair bump she gave me lifted me higher to heaven.
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