Wicca

Wicca and the specifics of my spirituality are something that I don't often get a chance to talk about with though outside my Circle (aka Coven) and my very very very close friends.

Like many witches, my path has been very eclectic and until recently very informal in my "training".  In mid-2009 just as I was ending a serious relationship I found a wonderful local Circle that was beginning it's third year.  Over the first year and a half I would attend rituals and take classes as my schedule and budget allowed.  Then all of a sudden this past year my spiritual growth took off and in the span of one year I have completed the spiritual work of three years.

Let me take a step back.  The Circle holds regular rituals open to all members and has a five year Priestess training program for those who would like to pursue it.  Each year of the Priestess training program is considered a Degree.

Over the course of my first year and a half with the Circle I completed my First Degree.  Over this past year I have completed enough work to account for my Second, Third and Fourth Degrees which fully catches me up with the founding members of the Circle.  I was never really trying to catch up to everyone else, but as the events of the last year have unfolded my jet-propulsion thru my spiritual work has kept going.

An additional requirement for my final Degree is to study a healing modality.  My High Priestess teaches Reiki.  I had had some Reiki session and like it, but never had  any interest to actually learn it.  As I moved thru all the spiritual work I actual opened myself up to Reiki and have now completed my first two Reiki Degrees and am in the process of obtaining my Reiki Master/Teacher Degree.

If you told me a year ago that I would not only have completed 3 years worth of Priestess training but that I would actually be taking Reiki I would have told you that you were blowing smoke (apparently that was sage you were blowing at me).

Vinyasas

One of my favorite things about yoga is that you don't have to Gumby to enjoy it.  As a non-normally-abled person the initial though of yoga scared the bejesus out of me; I'm pretty sure the first time someone suggested to me I looked at them like they had three heads.  But after taking several classes and talking with several instructors about how to adapt yoga to my abilities I've really grown to love it.

Sadly as my battle with fatigue has been worse this year and consequently I've fallen out of my yoga practice, which included two- and three-minute mini-office-yoga breaks, a short morning vinyasa for stretching and the occasional course of Sun Salutations.  So as I had my annual check up with my primary care doctor she reminded me of how great yoga is and got me thinking about ways to try and work it back into my daily life.

In an attempt to gently ease back into my practice I've decided to share with you my current morning vinyasa:

Warm Up:

Cow and Cat Poses

Vinyasa:

Dolphin

Child's Pose

Cobra

New Year (a little late)

Well, this Radioactive Duck has been swamped (and stressed) with work. I won't bore you with the details, suffice to say that even with insomnia there has been little room for anything more than work and family drama. So as I try to reintegrate myself into blogging, the post may be short and more sporadic.

For the winter holidays I received a new custom corset that fits me even better than my first custom corset. There is definitely a learning curb in figuring out the measuring and fit, and even more so when your corsetière is not local. My new burgundy and lavender corset upgraded the front busk to a spoon busk and I'm very happy for this splurge. Currently I'm only wearing it 1-2 times a week, but can go about 9 hours with a 3-4" reduction. I hope to be feeling up to wearing it more during the week as 2012 progresses.

Corset Ramblings

While recoeving from surgery I've been enjoying reading Corset Magic which happily arrived the day before surgery. My favorite part of the entire book is when proper corset wearing is describe as being like getting a hug from an old friend. 

This is the corset I currently have, and have had for a while.  It's from Empire Intimates, http://www.empireintimates.net. We have a love hate relationship.  

The good:  it's reversible to all black, the hip flutes.  

The bad:  it's overbust and my cups overflow (for lack of better word), the boning is not top quality.

I am eagerly awaiting my first custom corset from Romantays, http://romantasyweb.com.  This corset is going to be a Victorian underbust.  My plan is for my new corset to be foundation wear, assist with my back pain and posture, and perhaps even assist in my healthy weight loss goals.

Now I know corsets have gotten a bad rep in some feminist circles, but I feel that corsets can be used to enhance femininity without restricting me to someone else's ideals.  It's like how feminist are taking back "bitch" and "cunt".  Now those are not words that I having taken back at as feminine empowered words.  And I know this brings up the what is feminism discussion, as has been discussed over at Five Seed.  Which brings me to my self-image.

In the past I have had problem with my self-image.  But through a lot of hard work, emotional and spiritual, I've much improved how I see myself.  Surprisingly, I see myself much different than I appear in pictures, even resent pictures.  I've somehow learned to look beyond the outside package of my physical body.  When I look at myself, I see so much more than what's physically on the outside I know see what's on the inside too.  Ok, that's gone off on a tangent that I wasn't planning to so I'll stop here for today.

The One Time I Plan to Talk About My Diet and Eating Disorder

With the new leaf that Ducktales is taking, there are some things that I want to address in this blog and others that I will focus on in other outlets.  

Part of living smaller and greener is eating a better diet and generally living a healthier lifestyle.  Like many people I have tried an array of diets over the years in hopes of battling the bulge that seems to be inevitable in America.  However dieting lead me down a dangerous road in the past and I have much anxiety around diets these days (which leads to me self sabotaging the diet).


As a child I struggled with my body-image (and truthfully still struggle with it to this day), which concluded in me making several bad decisions as an elementary school student that make eating a balanced diet to this day difficult.  (Why I decided to eliminate vegetables from my diet in third grade is beyond me now, but the mental impact of this decision makes eating vegetables difficult to this day).


Something changed when I entered high school and I begin being less restrictive in what I ate, but some habits like not eating vegetables remained.


I did really good on my own and never received an treatment as a child/adolescent.  I managed to keep things going well thru college, then after college I decided to try Jenny Craig and things quickly spiraled out of control and I began using laxatives in addition to restricting.  This time, thanks to people who took notice, I received some out patient treatment and tried to come to terms with what and why I was doing things.


Needless to say, since the Jenny Craig incident I have been loathsome to try any other commercialized diets.  Now I'm not trying to endorse or warn against any particular diet, but am simply recapping my story.  

About a month again I decided to call Ravel Medspa to inquire about how their laser lipo worked, not that I could afford it, but to see what it was all about since I had heard it all over the radio.  After talking with the rep, she suggested that I look at their weight loss program, WeightNot.  What intrigued me about this program was that not only was calorie intake reduced, but that it was supervised by a medical doctor and was assisted with supplements meant to address the chemical level of weight loss.


The biggest different to me between this program and Jenny Craig was that when I told them I was going to have surgery, they recommend I stop taking the supplements and increase my good fat intake in preparation for surgery and during recovery.  While on Jenny Craig I had a number of surgeries and each time they advised me to keep the lower calorie intake of the diet.  The WeightNot approach was so radically different and really focused on being healthy.


So after completing the JumpStart portion of the WeightNot program I lost seven pounds.  Prior to increasing my diet in preparation for surgery I had lost 19 pounds, but prior to surgery had put back on about three-four pounds.  I do have to admit that I haven't been strictly sticking to the diet, but am slowly seeing that my tastes preferences are changing and making it easier for me to stay on the diet.  For instance, I'm a huge chocolate fan and just this morning after a few pieces of dove chocolate I was done and actually wanted some almonds.  In the past I would have continued to eat the entire bag of chocolates without ever registering whether or not I was full or even enjoying the chocolates.


I also like that the WeightNot program stresses a walking regimen versus a hardcore workout regimen as when taking in less calories it can be harder to do a vigorous workout.  I do have to say prior to surgery I was not walking as much as I should have, but then again I was having serious pain in my legs and after my two weeks of recovery I can't wait to start walking at the gym and getting to see some of the my old work buddies who use the gym too (exercising and socializing)!