L and I went to the first meeting of The Canyon Ranch Institute life enhancement program (CRI/LEP) at Fairview hospital on Wednesday night. It will be the first of 12 sessions to help 20 participants find "wellness". This program is going to help us get our health and our lives in balance. They use the metaphor of thinking our lives as tires on a car, when all the tires are full of air you are in balance, when you get a flat the car isn't balanced and you stop your trip. I think it's a good metaphor, and they've broken down each tire to represent a part of our healthy journey: body, feelings, mind and sense of purpose.
We have a nice big binder to read before hand and take notes if we want to. A team of 12 professional from the hospital have all been trained by Canyon Ranch and are our partners as we go through the twelve weeks. Wednesday we had a social worker Megan give a presentation of the tire concept. She did a very good job. We also walked up and down flights of stairs and walked around Fairview (it was cold and rainy outside) and did some physical therapy stretches. This will be a component of every session.
Before Megan gave her presentation, there were staff from Berkshire Medical Center and Fairview to greet us and there was a true sense of joy that we were doing this program. One special guest from BMC a Dr. Pettis. He's an MD that specialized in nephrology. His parents had poor health and eventually died, and he himself started having health problems. Rather than just take meds, he started looking at integrative medicine, and he started changing his habits with diet and exercise. Like the metaphor above, his tires needed air. He became healthier and left nephrology and is in administration at BMC working on initiatives like this one. Gosh, he was nice and articulate about functional medicine. I kept hoping he'd say he has a private practice, I'd jump at the chance to make an appointment. You'd like him a lot.
Then a great thing is that we get a dinner each meeting. Canyon Ranch recipes are going to be used and Wednesday we had, Spanish onion soup, a choice of poached salmon with citrus or chicken, brown rice, steamed broccoli, a tossed salad and dessert of baked apples with ginger and nuts and dried cranberries. You can choose what you want but I thought that we should sample everything so we can see what CR is trying to achieve: portion size, nutritionally balanced entree, and tastes of salty and sweet. L agreed, so we took one sample of the soup and one dessert cup. I thought the food was very good. I really didn't have a complaint. However, many people in the group had comments about the broccoli being overcooked, or that no recipes should have sugar since that is not healthy, and another woman spoke up and disagreed that she didn't want flavorless food, then another is on a sodium restriction. It became clear that food is going to be a major issue with this group. L and I have talk a lot about going all-in for these 12 weeks. CR has been helping people for a long time, I think we need to give them a chance. Since I've been limiting sugar, the dessert cup seemed very sweet...but it's not to say I couldn't be inspired to make it myself (they give us all the recipes) and tweak it. You do it all the time.
So that was it. The three hours passed quickly. I do wonder how us 20 participants are really going to gel. L and I were the only ones that asked questions, and we've been preparing for over a month, talking about it, starting to walk every other day, and I've been reading the Tim Ferris book again the 4-hour body, and going over Dr. Mowll's diabetes seminar lectures. Next week L and I have to meet with the nursing team where we will go over our lab tests, and create our unique journey...
I've got my tire gauge ready and we have the air compressor in the garage... wish us luck
M
ps: I found this quote from L this morning...she's such a peach, a perfect buddy...I am so very lucky
Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don't give up.
