I can’t believe that it’s almost over. This week has been truly transforming and I can understand why Deborah says that the miracle is in the week. You really do need a whole week here to settle into the culture, the idea of getting healthy, and experience the joy of doing nothing. At first it’s a struggle to let go of civilization, and if you came here for only three days you’ll never “get it.”
Tim and I spend the whole day together and I got to choose the classes that we took all day! We started with the 6:30 am river hike, then we tried out NIA, which Tim loved. We were both feeling a bit drained, so we took 10:00 am off and decided to go walk the Labyrinth. It is amazing how powerful that space can be if you really hold true to it’s meditative intentions. While walking it I got a sense of peace. I could hear, “You are where you need to be, you are who you’re meant to be, all is well, so let it be." So I started quietly meditating on those powerful words. I need to stop projecting onto the future or struggling with my past, I needed to embrace THE NOW and LIVE IN IT to the fullest of my ability. I know I try to multi-task everywhere I go and I think this lesson is about focusing on one thing while in the present and savoring that moment. So that’s what I’m going to strive for from now on. I’ll let you know how I’m doing.
Our last night at the Ranch was topped of with a lobster dinner, WINE, beer, and a live band. It was a blast! Tim and I left at 8:30 pm to pack, shower, and go to bed. It’s 9:17 pm on Friday right now and I’m sad this adventure is about to end. We’ve had such a wonderful experience here and we’re sure to come back. I’m thinking about putting a Tango Diva trip together in May at the Ranch. Let me know if you’re interested! (teresa@tangodiva.com)
I must be the luckiest girl in the world right now. I’ve spent a week at one of America’s top spas, I’ve met the most incredible people, I’ve made a few new friends, and I’m enjoying a cup of hot peppermint tea in front of a cozy fireplace. My body feel better than it has in years, I have no pain anywhere, my skin is soft and my muscles are toned. My husband is in bed reading and all is well. At last!
The walk to the organic veggie farm was awesome! Actually, the walk was easy, but the organic farm was amazing. Sergio has been the head farmer for the past 19 years. This guy is full of passion about all the amazing veggies he can grow and loves to talk about them with a big smile that reached from ear to ear. While walking around the garden, he’d break off a cauliflower plant or broccoli stock for us to try. I never tasted such fresh vegetables in my life; they were actually sweet. The best part of the walk was the breakfast at the farm. It included a big, yummy frittata, and chocolate bread, along with fried cactus, potatoes, and warm granola.
The day rolled away quickly between the stretch and dance classes, and a killer cardio circuit class. I got the rare opportunity to meet with Deborah, the founder of Rancho La Puerta and the famed Golden Door. What an whip she is! I am so impressed that at 83 years old she can still run this 3,000 acre peace of heaven. You’ll read all about my interview with her in the Diva Visionary section in January. I admire her philosophy and drive and I’m amazined by what she has been able to accomplish.
After my Energy Balance massage and delightful dinner, we all headed down to listen to Deborah give her “official” weekly talk. I’ll share all her insights with you later, they deserve their own page on Tango Diva. We ended our night with a wam cup of tea and a hot shower. Another perfect day!
Today I’m not doing too much. I slept in again and enjoyed a leisurely hour-long breakfast of eggs and tortillas as the hikers came in from their morning on the mountain. Tim signed up for a three-day hike, so I really haven’t seen him much on this trip. We meet for dinner at 6:30 pm every night, after my daily treatment, then we’ll enjoy the night’s activities and end our busy day with a cup of hot peppermint tea in front of our cozy fireplace.
At 9:00 am I took the NIA class. It’s really hard to explain, but is stands for Neuromuscular Integrative Action. Basically, we all dance around the room, making sounds, and doing karate moves, it’s really fun! At 10:00 am, I got down in the African dance class, they even had a live drummer! (Yeah, I know, versus a dead one) That class was just as exciting as NIA. Great rhythm, fantastic moves, inspiring music, and energetic women dancing to tribal beats. WOW! I spent some time writing, enjoyed another delicious meal for lunch, and then relaxed. My muscles are a bit sore today.
A group of us chilled under the gazebo drinking the requisite 2:45 pm soy smoothie and miso soup (yum!). The sun was warm on our faces and we just sat and enjoyed the heat while laughing about the day’s events. I’ve renamed the Feldenkrais class Fart-enkrais class because in every class someone ends up passing gas in a big way. We try not to laugh like fifth graders, but it’s hard.
For something a bit different, I test drove a Thai massage. Girl, if you’ve never day one of those, get yourself one! In the massage, the therapist stretched you like you were in a yoga class and uses his body as the pulley to stretch your body out. Oh, did I mention that you are completely dressed while all this is happening. For you hard-core Divas, this is the perfect massage to stretch out your tight bods of steal. I was loose as a goose by the time it was over.
After dinner, which was a yummy veggie soup, followed by a fabulous salad with organic everything, the main course was scallops and shrimp on a bed of mashed potatoes, and finished with a tartlet of creamy berry mouse. (I’ve been told that dinner is a mere 700 calories – it’s all about portion control) we all played Bingo. If I didn’t work out my abdominal muscles enough on this trip, I made up for it with all the belly-aching laughing I was doing. Barry, the Ranch’s fitness guy and Bingo master kept me bent over in laughter with his dry wit. I’m sad to say that we did not win any of the great prizes (chocolate, bread, folk art, and other sundries).
Tomorrow we’re going on the morning mountain hike to their organic farm. We’ll be eating breakfast there and learning about how they can sustain 150 guests per week with their garden. Very exciting! I’m feeling alive again!
I can’t remember the last time I moved so much in my life. It’s great! I woke up and did the 5 mile hike at 6:15 am, (yes, I made it this morning!) next breakfast, next samba class, next circuit training, next sit by the pool, next walk the Labyrinth, next Mexican folk dancing, next Feldenkrais, and to top it all off I had the best massage of my life.
Walking the labyrinth was a pretty amazing moment. It’s a beautiful maze, outside, under a grove of old, wise oak trees. Me and three other women silently walked and meditated about the wisdom that shined on us at that moment. For me, it was my book and how I need to get over my fear of failure and embrace the process. It’s a job, and one that I’m good at. I must keep focused on my daily tasks and not get overwhelmed by the project as a whole. Also I learned that I don’t trust myself and that I need to. I have deep wisdom and abundant abilities. I can’t let my past, my childhood, or my failures keep me from accomplishing what I was put on this earth to do. I believe I was put here to help women find their inner strength and to venture out into the world with confidence. There’s so much to that, and the benefits of traveling alone are endless. For me, I use travel as the metaphor for change.
When you come to The Ranch, you have to get a Healing Massage. It is the most amazing 90 minutes of my life. My therapist, Elva, found tight muscles from years ago and relaxed them. It was exactly what my tight, overworked, stressed out body needed. After my massage, I relaxed in the steam room, then spent sometime in the private, outdoor hot tub where I walked around naked and took a shower under the stars.
Did I mention that I’m not stressed out at all anymore? I wish that I could feel this way all the time! And think, I’ve only been here three days!
Getting up at 6:00 am for a hike was not going to happen. So, once again I headed over to the dinning room at 8:00 am for a wonderful breakfast.
One of the classes I took today was all about breathing–perfect timing. I learned that breathing is way more important than I thought, it’s not just my lungs that long for air, it my whole body. We practiced some breaths together and at first I was light-headed, I was told that’s because I got too much fresh oxygen in my brain (how about that!). I’m now very aware of how I’m breathing and I can feel the stress melting away.
It’s hard not to have random “Ah ha!†moments here. Just walking down one of the many rosemary and sage-lined paths is meditative. I can’t help but smile when I hear a bird chirping or see a cute bunny rabbit hopping across the brick paths. I can really feel the love and dedication that the founders Edmond and Deborah Szekely put into this amazing spa for the past 65 years. What a gift they gave the world!
After a few hardcore classes, I wandered around the gardens, found a hammock and took a nap. What a treat it was gently swaying under the warm shade of lush greenery. There I got another “Ah ha!†Maybe life was not meant to be so tough, maybe we were meant to live simple lives in nature. I drifted off again, woke up and scurried to my next class.
We hooked up with a few other couples our age at dinner. One couple (the newlyweds) is from DC and the other from NYC, we’ve also connected with a great gal from LA and a darling chick from SF. There’s a few famous people here too. I can’t tell you who they are because that would be uncool, but let’s just day that you’ve read about them in Vanity Fair magazine and seem them on HBO.
I’m looking forward to breathing again. It’s been a few weeks since I took some deep, relaxing breaths and I know it. My trip to Europe took the wind out of me, and all the smoky venues just ripped my lungs to shreds, so my breathing became very shallow and week. Then my damned computer set my mind on fire. I feel myself holding my breath as I write, then pressing “save†and quickly exhaling stale air from a few paragraphs before.
It didn’t help that the night before my husband and I got to “The Ranch,†we had a pretty intense night of disagreeing about stupid stuff. We’re both so stressed that we took our tension out on each other. So, here I am, the first full day in Tecate, Mexico, settling into the routine of healthy living, healthy learning, and relaxation.
Since we arrived things have been wonderful. The staff is super-duper friendly, and all the guests are way nicer than I expected. I never know what to expect at spas, I’ve been to some that are full of fat, bitter women, and others brimming with prima donnas sporting a full face of makeup in the weight room. Here, everyone is really chill, and most of them are return visitors.
When we first arrived off the plane, they gave us a list of our booked treatments in the fantastic week-long day planner, complete with hour slots we could fill in with the classes we wanted to take. Because our bus to the ranch was stuck at the Mexican-American boarder for an extra two hours, I had time to fill it out at San Diego airport. The classes I chose sounded great! Samba, All That Dance, Cadio-Challenge, and the list goes on.
Getting up at 6:00 to hike was not on my agenda today. That was way too much work. So, I slept in, strolled over to breakfast as the hikers returned glowing from their morning on the mountain. Breakfast was out of this world. That’s the other tricky thing about spas, you never know what the foods going to be like. And the food here is dee-licous! So much so that I have to watch what I eat. I think it helps that we’re in Mexico, so there’s lots of great spices and wonderful flavors.
I spent the day skipping from one great work out to another. I started at 9:00 am with a heart-racing Samba class, that was followed by Circuit Training, next came Yoga Flow. I took a break for lunch and caught up with Tim, who was doing a completely different set of classes. The afternoon I learned how to strip tease (watch out Vegas!) then I toned it down with some Feldenkrias (you got to look that up yourself!) and I ended my classes with a course on hypnotherapy.
After all that work, I headed to the spa, where I got an Ayurvedic massage. I spent some time in the steam room, and sauna, took a shower and charged off to dinner. Dinner, like breakfast and lunch were spectacular. We ended out night with a great talk about folklore by Rabbi Michael Zedek. He’s a pretty special man, and I’m so glad that I’m here the week he’s speaking. His other classes are Miracles of the Ordinary and Stories for Leaders.
I’ve forgot how to breathe. Since my time in beautiful, but smoky Europe, I’ve been taking shallow, useless inhalations. In the beginning, it was because I didn’t want to inhale more smoke than necessary to keep my pulse going. Now, I think it’s because every time I use my Apple computer, I wait in anticipation for something bad to happen. It’s like watching a scary movie and you think the next scene is going to scare the devil out of you. Same feeling. Things are still not working right, but I’m not going to take my computer in until I deliver my manuscript on March 1, 2006.
I’ve written 12 of the 50 chapters, and I back up my files hourly now. I’m averaging about four chapters a week. This is only possible because I have an amazing crew who’s supporting me. Sarah Naimark is my research assistant, she’s the one that forges through the vast mountains of information and books, so I can make sense of it all. Then there is Stephanie Block who directs and coaches me through each chapter. Sometimes I get so stuck on a word or a phrase and she’s the one to slap me out of it. The word for today was “darling.” She threatened to cause bodily harm if I ever use that word in my writing again.
On Saturday, my husband and I are going on a much-deserved spa vacation. We’re going to Rancho La Puerta (http://www.rancholapuerta.com/) for a week. I can’t wait. My whole life I have dreamed about going there, but due to time and funds, it never happened. We’re skipping Christmas this year, this is our gift to each other. A pretty nice one I must admit!
While there, my goal is to relax, rejuvenate, detox, and write a few more chapters. I’d love to truly rest my mind for a week, but that ain’t going to happen. I have 76 days to finish a 50-chapter book.
Sorry that I have been away for a while. Funny, I’m in Europe for 16 days and I blog everyday, then I come home and I disappear. It was for good reasons, I assure you. Remember that my Apple PowerBook G4 went into the shop before my trip? Well the saga took a turn for the worse.
On Thursday December 1, I hooked up my external hard drive to another Apple to download some files that I needed to work on ASAP, I still did not have my computer. Nothing was there, all my files were Alias’. I immediately called Naomi and left a message begging her to not clear my hard drive. I had not saved my information properly and that was my only copy (yes, my fault). I then called her Friday morning, no luck. She didn’t answer her phone, nor did she ever return my calls. On Friday afternoon, I was told that my computer was ready for pick up and that my hard drive was replaced. I fell on my knees and dry heaved, my hard drive had everything: my book, all my writing, all my contacts, everything. Gone.
I accept full responsibility for not backing up properly. But the customer service, the lack of communication, the rudeness, the complete disrespect for my concern about my hard drive, and the general feeling that no one at Apple cares is really disappointing.
Luckily, the Mac Genius at Apple is a true hero. His name is Eli Block and I brought in my external hard drive and he took the time to find some old data on it from October. You should have see it, it was a scene out of a movie. I sat there, with a half dozen other people waiting for help, when Eli hooked up my hard drive to see what he could find. I was sick, shaking and on the verge of tears. All the customers were so supportive and kept me calm through the process. Then, all of a sudden, beautiful Eli pops his head up from his monitor and says, in an angel’s voice, “What’s the name of your book?†I said, “Fly Solo,†and he says the best words I’ve heard all year, “Top 50?†And I exclaim, “YES!†and start crying. Everyone around the Genius bar started clapping as Eli grined, and I wept for joy. Eli is on the Acknowledgments page of my book.
But, now, the right-hand-side side of my computer, where I rest my wrists, is pushed in and creeks when I’m typing – this was not so when I dropped it off in November. I dare not take it in to get it fixed, I might lose another 3 weeks off my deadline.
Almong the delightful crew of Fresh From Santa Barbara Culinary Academy was the owner and winemaker of WINE CASK –
Doug Margerum. Much to my delight. For I had celebrated my 40th at WINE CASK with a goup of friends from all over a few years back. It was a very special experience then – and once again last nite. He shared his experience of first tasting wine from a barrel on family trip to France. All of his senses were engaged and he was hooked. He began crafting WINE CASK into a bistro in the 80′s, and now it is a destination of choice in Santa Barbara among food and wine cognoscenti locally and throughout the world. On the way out he handed be a bottle of his M% – a blend of five Rhone Valley varieties (Syrah, Grenache, Mourv´dre, Counoise, and Cinsault – hmmm yummy, thank you Doug!www.winecask.com
Last nite I savored sin – a sample of a very limited release of Syrah from Cold Heaven Cellars. Delicious. Paired with a colorful appetizer of butternut squash polenta and mushroom mouse prepared by Executive Chef Josh Brown of Bouchon, Santa Barbara. Morgan is visibly passionate about her winemaking. She spoke lightly of the Syrah – but clearly she loves her work and the people she works with. Known as the Queen of Voigniers. "She is striving to produce something extraordinary to give people every opportunity to taste Voignier the way it should be: complex, lively; and fresh. I encourage you as you travel in the Santa Ynez area to visit Cold Cellars and meet Morgan. She is enchanting.
