Category Archives: Raw food

2 Things to Prevent or Treat Type 2 Diabetes

July 17, 2014Eating Healthy on a Budget, Health, Nursing, Nursing Student, Raw food, RunningType 2 Diabetesadmin

It’s 11 o’clock at night. Yes, I’m studying again. 2 weeks left in this semester of Pathophysiology and we’re studying how to prevent or treat Type 2 Diabetes.

My pathophysiology bible says “25.8 million people in the U.S. have been diagnosed with Diabetes, another estimated 7 million are undiagnosed,” and “diabetes costs us $174 billion a year.” To put that in a little better perspective it helps to know that there are 313 million people in the U.S., so roughly 1/3 have diabetes.

Holy canoli! That is amazing.

Later in the book it states that it’s best to “prevent and treat Type 2 Diabetes with dietary measures and exercise. Resulting weight loss causes an improved glucose tolerance.”

I wonder what it would be like to be Type 2 Diabetic and go to the doctor. Do they prescribe diets and exercise? Is there a place patients go several times a week, the way you would go to the physical therapist, to learn how to change your food habits? Maybe there is a live-in retreat where you can go for immersion training to develop a healthier lifestyle until you have enough knowledge and practice to be on your own. Maybe there is a home health nurse or dietician who goes food shopping with you to help you learn how to make healthier meal plans.

Surely that is something that could be prescribed. Surely insurance would pay for that. Or maybe that is not included in the $176 billion cost.

Sheesh! I would totally love being a nurse in that kind of setting.

Is there something like that out there?

Wendy Finn is the mother of 4 boys, owner of I.M. Spa, a Raw Food Enthusiast and educator, a world traveler in pursuit of superior massage education, a Master Massage Therapist of 20 plus years, a gardener, and a nursing student. She’s passionate about touching people and sharing health.

Meet the I.M. Spa Girls

July 15, 2014Farm and Garden, Health, Massage Therapy, Northwest Arkansas, Nursing Student, Raw food, Small Business, Spa, Travel, Uncategorized, Working Momadmin

On our work retreat Spa Girl Travel escape to Dallas, we set out to 1. Spend many hours at a spa lounging, 2. Explore Raw, Vegetarian, or Vegan restaurants, and 3. Spend time with each other, not passing each other in the hallway on the way to our next treatment at work (we work at I.M. Spa).

We really have a great crew.

Jennie is our quilting queen who flies the front desk and makes sure all of our appointments come together as planned. She writes the newsletter for the quilter’s organization in Northwest Arkansas in her downtime. And she’s a joy to everyone she meets. She loves this picture she took outside of the Cosmic Cafe Vegetarian restaurant in Dallas when we were there.

Julie is our sports massage gal from Iowa. She just got married, lord help her. Hope is in the air. It’s a beautiful thing. She loves to upcycle old decrepit furniture and make it beautiful again, especially if she can do it with her family members. She’s like the stealth bomber. We never really know when she arrives at work because she’s so stealthy. And she has an amazing smile.

Katie is our certified skin nerd. She loves skincare, body waxing, skincare products, and anything to do with skin. She spends her downtime traveling to awesome concerts across the country, even as far as Boston. We have songs on our playlist in the treatment rooms at I.M. Spa that Katie and I have to control ourselves to keep from just outright dancing during a session. So yes, while your eyes are closed during your facial or massage appointment, we might just be dancing while we work.

Lisa is our professional people poker. (Acupuncturist or Doctor of Oriental Medicine if you prefer). She is so zen that sometimes I just sit next to her to catch the vibe. She’s a no drama mama of 2 from New York who had a miraculous recovery with acupuncture, couldn’t believe that people didn’t know about it, and decided that that was what she wanted to do with her life. Pretty cool.

Jessica Crass is our powerhouse farmgirl from Missouri who traveled the world, got an education in social work, went to massage school in New Mexico, and settled in to Northwest Arkansas to have a family farm, raise a family, and build community. When people ask me if the therapists at I.M. Spa give a deep enough massage I tell them that Jessica drives a tractor for crying out loud. Yep. And she’s a Doula to boot. Hard and soft all at the same time.

Jessica. Gotta Love a Tractor Driving Gal.

Jessica Patterson, Nora, and Andrea couldn’t make it with us on the trip to Dallas. Nora, who’s been with me since 2006, just had her second son, so she’s tied down for a while in attachment parenting land. Nora is solid and steady as a rock. She’s a ‘can do’ woman who loves gardening and making tinctures, crafting, and projects (like re-upholstering a chair).

Andrea, our gymnast, Ultimate playing, massage therapist trained in Oregon is similarly tied down with her sweet one year old son. And these days we only see her intermittently.

And Patterson, our multi-talented esthetician/massage therapist is still adapting to her move to Fayettevelle from East Arkansas and needs to put down a few more roots before any travel plans can be made. Maybe they’ll make it with us on the next trip.

These are the amazing women who make I.M. Spa tick. They are funny, grounded, community serving, hard, soft, loving, determined, creative, flexible, beautiful, and excellent at their jobs. They are integral threads in the fabric of our community, and I’m honored to be able to work with them and have them in my life on a daily basis.

Fayetteville is a better place because of these women.

Be Raw! Live Long! A Raw Food Review.

July 12, 2014Farm and Garden, Health, Raw food, Small Business, Spa, Travel, Uncategorized, Working Momadmin

We Spa Girls from I.M. Spa, as a work retreat, just traveled to Dallas to relax at the spa and discover excellent raw food and we were not disappointed! Even though Dallas sadly only has one Raw Food restaurant (that I could find) the food there was beautiful and delicious, and the service was spectacular.

When I’m checking out a new raw food restaurant, what I’m looking for is something that I’m not already doing myself. What does this restaurant do that is different and awesome? It turns out that while Be Raw covers the the standard spaghetti and meatballs, the Pad Thai, and Taco Salad, this dish, the Coconut Kale Enchiladas, stole the show.

Not only is it beautifully presented, but it is so yummy and complex. Marinated Kale wrapped in coconut meat wraps, and drizzled with 2 types of raw cashew cheeses. And yes those are green and red picos on the side.

If you have never encountered coconut wraps before let me just tell you that they are not easy to prepare at all. To make them you have to use a cleaver to open a Thai coconut, scrape out the meat, whiz it up in a blender with your spices, and dehydrate them. It’s a process.

I felt very decadent eating such hard work.

And for dessert?

Be Raw has some amazing desserts and this one was fantastic. I have not yet ventured into the world of brownies with my raw food time in the kitchen, but this one certainly gives me something to aspire to.

What the other Spa Girls were having?

Chocolate Cashew Cheesecake! AAAAaaauuuuuuggghhhhh! To die for!

Our server was fabulous. Animated, enthusiastic, and educating everybody who had never been there before about what it means to eat raw. You can’t see his shirt completely, but it has a picture of a dinosaur on it with text that says Lacinato Kale (dinosaur kale). And in the teeth of the dinosaur he had colored in bits of green to show that the dinosaur had in fact been eating kale.

The I.M. Spa Girls, not including me, putting a smile on even though I am keeping them from eating.

We all loved our food and Jessica and I were still stuffed when we arrived home 5 hours later. We also went to King Spa and Cosmic Cafe during this trip. Details yet to come! Fun Fun!

Spa Girls Travel to Dallas!

July 5, 2014Giveaway, Health, Nursing Student, Raw food, Small Business, Spa, Travel, Uncategorized, Working Mom, Yogaadmin

To celebrate our sweet little business making it through the challenges of me being gone most of the time during my first semester at nursing school, we Spa Girls at I.M. Spa piled into the minivan and travelled to Dallas for a couple of days of Spa travel, foot massages, and raw food–my favorite things!

There was much discussion in the weeks before we left for Dallas about the fact that the spa we were going to required that you get naked and shower before getting into the hot tubs or advancing on to the saunas. I had no idea that people felt such an aversion to locker room nudity, but then I am a veteran of Esalen and Breitenbush where co-ed nudity is common at hot spring bathing areas. I think I’ll have to give an entire post to spa nudity in the future. Needless to say, the spa girls survived the nudity and hopefully are minimally scarred for life.

Our first stop was in Frisco, just North of Dallas, where some of my family from Texas met with us for foot massages at this place called Shuang Feng Foot Massage. I’ll fill in more pictures and details in future posts, but this is a quick rundown of where we went. After foot massages we had lunch at Cosmic Cafe vegetarian restaurant. By then it was 2 o’clock and we headed over to King Spa where we relaxed, steamed, sauna’d, and dozed (one of us studied–a lot) until midnight. Yes you can easily spend 9 hours lounging in the spa. We stayed at Hilton’s Doubletree in Farmer’s Branch and Lisa and I woke up in the morning, and rather than finding a yoga studio, decided to do a YogaGlo class before we headed to Be Raw–the only raw food restaurant in Dallas. But man it was amazing!

After lunch at Be Raw we headed home to Fayetteville, Arkansas. The girls watched Casanova with Heath Ledger and Pitch Perfect and we made it home by 7. I was still full from lunch by the time I made it home. A lovely weeked of spa travel–yum!

Last Chance to Win $100

June 24, 2014Giveaway, Health, Raw food, Small Business, Spa, Travel, UncategorizedDallasadmin

We are so excited to be traveling to Dallas this weekend. And this is your last chance to win a reward for helping us find

The wonderful ladies of I.M. Spa! — The I.M. Spa Staff. Our Dallas Spa Seeking Travel Crew!

Our Road Trip Crew to Dallas!

great local places to spa and eat healthy. Enter into the drawing for $100 spa services at I.M. Spa when you:

1. Tell us in a comment at the end of this post where we should go in Dallas on our raw food, spa, relaxation Road Trip this weekend…

2. Your Name will be entered in our drawing for $100 in Spa Services or Product when we get back from our trip on Tuesday the 1st of July!

3. Follow us at #itouchpeople on twitter (@imspa) and @itouchpeople on instagram to see where we go and find out if you win!

4. Find out more about our trip here.

Change Your Relationship With the Ground, a runner’s meditation.

June 17, 2014Health, Raw food, Runningattitude, meditationadmin

I’ve heard people say that their joints just can’t handle running anymore, or that their joints can’t take the constant pounding anymore, or that they’re pounding the pavement everyday when they’re running.

Back up the truck.

Of course your body can’t handle all that pounding. No body could.

When I feel like I’m pounding I know it’s time for a runner’s meditation. I need to change my relationship to the ground. I don’t think running has to be hard on your joints. I don’t think it has to be hard on your body. But it starts with your mind. What are you thinking?

Get Out and Run Dang It! The Road Awaits You.

Imagine you are a cat with feet and legs that adapt to impact and step lightly. When you are running have these two words in your head–Lifting–Lightly. Imagine that you are light as a feather. This is a simple adaptation that does not seem like it’s doing a lot, but it can change your running tremendously. The mental shift from ‘pounding hard’ to ‘lifting light’ will not only lift your body but your mental state as well. Try running a half mile with thoughts of pounding the pavement. Then do another half mile, intentionally thinking about lifting and being light. It can be an amazing difference.

Something that has been huge for me in changing my relationship with the ground has been getting rid of my arch supports, transitioning to minimal shoes, and shortening my stride so that the ball of my foot comes down first instead of my heel. (And yes I pronate my feet when I run, but it seems like, biomechanically, that that is what is supposed to happen. I’m okay with it.)

Pain, in this case, is my friend. If my foot is in an ultra-cushioned shoe I can pound it over and over again into the ground because it doesn’t hurt my foot. It does hurt my joints and the rest of me though. My minimal shoes are like gloves so I don’t slam my feet down into the ground. I’m not pounding the pavement. I’m not pushing off and working hard because my shoes are like gloves my feet and legs are more like springs. When my feet land, they are poised to come back up, unlike the pounding pushing of the cushioned arch supported foot.

Also, because my shoes are more like gloves, my foot can use all it’s joints, tendons, and muscles as my foot adapts to the terrain. Everything gets excercised. And if you know anything about yoga or bodies, movement is life. Trap my foot in a cushioned shoe that doesn’t let my foot move and I am going to lose function. I don’t think there is a one size fits all plan for human feet. Some people feel like they couldn’t live without their arch supports. Others swear by minimal shoes. Find what works for you, but do change your relationship to the ground.

You can think of the ground as hard, unforgiving, and relentless. Or you can think of it as receptive, open, exciting, and inviting.

You choose and your body will express that choice.

Do you have a meditation or mantra that you use when you run?

Working, Student, Mom

June 8, 2014Farm and Garden, Health, Nursing, Nursing Student, Raw food, Small Business, Working Momadmin

This week has been intense.

What I have done this week:

Completed the 2nd week of Pathophysiology class, finished reading 8 chapters, 3 quizzes, and 3 chapters of learning objectives, and reviewed for our first exam (which will be tomorrow. Yes, I’m nervous).
Cooked 2 huge tuna casseroles for my two middle children who were celebrating their Half Birthday because I couldn’t plan their party in January because my schedule was too intense then–haha!
Birthday For My Two January Boys Who Had to Wait Till June to Celebrate!
Prepared 2 huge bowls of raw pad thai for the party.
Made raw carmelized onion bread and spread.
Took the whole family (plus my cousins and uncle who came to visit from Texas) blueberry picking. It’s a tradition and we love it.
My Fabulous Uncle Rufus Picking Blueberries!
Made raw blueberry cobbler for everybody.
Hosted 2 nights of parties for my 2 half birthday boys. On Friday night we had three extra 15 year olds over to spend the night and they were having airsoft wars in the dark until 3 in the morning. On Saturday night we had three extra 12 year olds over and they were wrestling in the living room until 3 in the morning.
Worked at the spa on Friday and just a little bit on Saturday.
Payroll, data entry, and two interviews for work.
I’m pretty sure I’m missing some stuff, but that’s a pretty good representation.

A friend saw me while I was out picking up the birthday cake for the boys and suggested we catch up over tea. I may have time for that next summer. Time passes so fast at this pace.

Keep on Strolling-Junk Food and What is Normal in our Culture

February 20, 2014Eating Healthy on a Budget, Farm and Garden, Health, Northwest Arkansas, Nursing, Raw food, Running, Small Business, Spa, Working Momcultural norms, culture, junk foodadmin

Made it through the first round of tests at school with all A’s but one B (88% bah!). I’ve got all my business taxes taken care of and just need to finish my personal taxes. The spa is trucking right along. We made it through an amazingly busy Valentine’s week and had the biggest grossing day in the history of the business. (I think everybody getting released from the ice and snow helped push that along). I did 22 massages that week and it was the week I had 3 tests.

9 more days till March and about 2 and a half months till final exams.

With the weather change I’ve been able to run everywhere with my stroller. Today I had to eat at the Union because I didn’t pack enough food and a woman stopped me before I could get out because she wanted to ‘see the baby.’

There is no baby. Yes I push a jogging stroller everywhere I go, and the baby is my baccalaureate of science in nursing. So if you see me in public, I’m the weird lady pushing a stroller full of business clothes, computer, school books, and raw food. Cuz when I leave the house in the morning I have many hats to wear, and they all gotta come with me.

Zachary got his braces off this week. He’s so happy. And his teeth are so straight. While I was waiting for him to get done with his 2 hour appointment, I watched Khan Academy videos about Metabolism and tried not to fall asleep. When Zach came out he had a bag of ‘goodies’ for doing such a great job. In the bag? Candy. Tons of Candy.

Yes, I was speechless. No, I don’t want to be the food Nazi, but seriously? The reward for getting your braces off is that you are now free to destroy your health as efficiently as possible. Congratulations. No thank you.

I took Zach to Penguin Ed’s, a local restaurant, for one of their homemade cookies as a consolation prize for giving all the junk food back to the Orthodontist.

I think I will forever be known as the weird unstable mom in that office whenever I go back again.

It’s very surreal living in this culture, knowing what I know about food and clean burning fuel for my body, and jogging with my weird jogging stroller past these ‘normal’ stores that probably don’t have one piece of fresh, real food in them, but are filled with snickers bars, cheetos, m&ms, kellogg’s nutri grain bars, etc. etc. Walls full of garbage, stores full of poisonous fake food. It’s surreal living in a culture where it is normal to reward kids, actually today one of my teachers actually rewarded our class–a class of adults, with candy. It’s surreal living in a culture where I feel strange drinking strawberry, banana, coconut oil, cashew, and dates out of a mason jar, but I would feel ‘normal’ if I had a throw away Starbucks cup and a Snickers.

Wow, I had no idea that huge soap box was just going to jump right out on the page, but there it is.

Keep on strolling.

Cramming it all in!

February 13, 2014Massage Therapy, Northwest Arkansas, Nursing, Raw food, Spa, Working Momadmin

I don’t want to be obnoxious about posting what I’m doing on a day to day basis, but the thinking behind it is that when I’m old and decrepit I can entertain myself by how I used to wile away the hours.

6:00 a.m. Get up and make pineapple, cilantro, lime, and ginger smoothie for breakfast, make oatmeal for the kids, make raw marinara sauce and rice pasta for the kids and spiralized zucchini pasta for me and Craig, also make almond milk, and a strawberry, banana, cashew smoothie for a snack later.

Pack up school books and lunch. I’m driving today, so no running gear. Hang out with kids while we’re all getting ready. Let Sean, my 15 year old, drive us to school.

8:00 a.m. Get to work. Get set up to do massage. Answer phone messages. The day before Valentine’s Day is one of our biggest grossing days at the spa. TONS of gift certificates. Nonstop.

8:30 a.m. Do a massage.

9:45 a.m. Hitch a ride with a friend to Nursing Class. Work on getting caught up on my notecards.

11:00 a.m. Informatics in Nursing class with a quiz. I really like the teacher in this class. Very clear dissemination of information. Nice.

1:00 p.m. Catch the bus back to main campus and my statistics class. Eat lunch and work on notecards while I’m waiting for class to begin.

2:00 p.m. Statistics Class. Got my Quiz back and graded 99%. Yay! I love a solid A.

3:15 p.m. Craig and Ben (husband and 8 year old son) pick me up and take me back to work.

3:30 p.m. Do another massage for an hour and a half. I have the best clients. Absolutely love them.

5:00 p.m. Run down the street to my church (St. Paul’s Episcopal) and pick up Zach (my 12 year old) and Ben from choir and bring them back to work with me.

5:15 p.m. Do a half hour massage.

6:00 p.m. Do a facial.

7:30 p.m. Balance the end of day drawer. Dang it was sooo busy! Poor Jessica! Tons of gift certificates sold today. She must be exhausted. Put in a load of laundry, dump the trash, and wash the last of the dishes.

8:00 p.m. Go home. Wash our dishes. Heat up veggie stir fry Craig made a day or two ago. Hang out with the guys. Dance to Ben Harper and be silly and loud. Zach’s car won the first heat of his races at school today. It’s awesome. He was singing, “I got a car! I’m an engineer! I got a mouse trap!” Hahaha. Most excellent. Ben went to sleep without snuggling. Not cool. I snuggled him anyway.

10:00 p.m. Study for Microbiology Test and Lab Test for tomorrow.

9:50 p.m. Said good night to Sean over and over and over. I love visiting with him at night. He’s such a cool guy. He’s scheming ways he can make money in the summer. (Earlier in the evening as he was sitting at the computer he informed me that he needed to be 18 years old and 5 foot 6 to wear the Chik Fil A Cow. Which inspired the discussion of, “Why don’t you look for a job with a local business.” You know me. I told him he should just go be the Chuch E Cheese mouse (not a local biz, but it’s a funny concept) and get punched in the tenders by a bunch of over sugared small people. This kid’s gonna be good with money. Always scheming.

10:30 p.m. Write a blog post.

11:00 p.m. Get ready to run to school tomorrow (Friday) with my stroller, take my Micro test, run to work, work till 5, run back to school, take a lab test, and maybe get a ride home at about 9p.m.

11:10 p.m. Go to bed early (hopefully). Been going to bed at 1a.m. for the past few nights. No bueno.

It’s a busy world. But I do think the Fall semester is going to be the butt kicker.

One foot in front of the other, eh?

We’re All Addicts

February 4, 2014Eating Healthy on a Budget, Farm and Garden, Health, Nursing, Raw foodaddiction, addicts, alcohol, heart disease, heroinadmin

Addict-1. to cause to become physiologically or psychologically dependent on a habit forming substance. 2. To occupy (oneself) with or involve (oneself) in something habitually or compulsively. From the freedictionary.com.

Two weeks ago in Sunday school for the teen group, one of the youth leaders, Hershey Garner said, “We are all addicts.” I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. It’s so true.

Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s heroin overdose this week is another tragic reminder of how hard it is to be in a body on the planet. For me it is crucial not to look at Phillip Seymour Hoffman from the outside and say, ‘sucks for him.’ It sucks for all of us. For me it’s crucial that I recognize that I’m no different than him. No, I’m not a heroin addict, thank God, but I’m a human in a body, dealing with addiction. We all are.

Whether it’s shopping, eating, working, gambling, alcohol, drugs, drama, or (here’s a good one) the way we repeat our behaviors in relationship, we’re all addicts.

I don’t watch much TV, so I’m not familiar with Russell Brand’s work. But I did see a piece he wrote about addiction that was spot on. I love that the answer, at the end of the piece, his salvation, is another addict. We’re all addicts.

Another TV reference I’m more familiar with, I have been known to stay up late and watch him because he makes me laugh out loud, is Craig Ferguson. Craig did a monologue one night about alcohol addiction that is so brutally honest and fabulous. He speaks as Russell did about the daily life long vigilance it takes to remain substance free.

These are men who see their addiction for what it is and are hitting it head on.

Today in my twitter feed I saw this article from Good Morning America referring to the “biggest study of its kind,” a study linking sugar intake to heart fatalities. My first reaction was indignation (my own compulsive behavior at work). ‘How many studies do they have to do to prove this? Seriously?’ That’s what was happening in my brain. We have huge buildings across the country filled with poison labeled as food (grocery stores). In particular I’m fascinated with gas station ‘foods.’ Skittles, M&Ms, Doritos, doughnuts, hot dogs, corn dogs, pizza. It’s enough to send a raw food gal into post traumatic stress disorder. And still we have to have more studies to show that it’s causing heart fatalities?

We have a whole country full of nonfood disguised as food, and hospitals full of sickness as a result of nonfood ingestion, so it’s good we have people doing these studies to keep drawing awareness to our food (or nonfood as the case may be) addictions. According to the Center for Disease Control heart disease is THE LEADING CAUSE OF DEATH in the United States. Hopefully more and more of us will see our addiction for what it is, like Ferguson and Brand, hit it head on, and reclaim our lives. We are all addicts.

Clean Burning Food

Touching People and Sharing Health!