My Trager Treatment

My friend Meg's mom, Pat, is taking classes to become a certified Trager practitioner and she needs "guinea pigs", so I volunteered. I'd never had a Trager treatment, although I've heard about them. I wasn't entirely sure what to expect, but I have an open mind about the whole mind-body connection and I like and trust Meg's mom. There are articles about the Trager method and the related Mentastics movement education at the United States Trager Association's web site, because I'm not sure I can do an adequate job of describing the session!

We did table work today. We started by chatting about my goals for the session. I wanted to just relax and to rid myself of the lingering effects of any stress floating around from last week at work. We discussed any weak areas in my body and areas where stress tends to manifest itself before I hopped on the table. I wore some nice loose-fitting clothes, so I didn't feel the need to undress any further, although sessions are very private and it is like massage in that you can undress to your level of comfort. A lot of the session revolved around gently getting my muscles relaxed and warmed up and then taking them through a range of motion. Pat and I talked quite a bit throughout the treatment, but it wasn't annoying. She is learning, so feedback during the sessions is important. As with massage, you promise to let the practitioner know if anything hurts or is uncomfortable. The hardest thing to do, and I struggled with this during massages as well, was doing abso-freaking-lutely nothing to "help". It's very hard to put yourself in a state of total non-resistance. I had to practice this and remind myself to just let Pat move my head or my arm or my leg. There were several times when I could feel the heat from her hands as they moved over me, and there were several times that I swore I could just feel energy flowing through various parts of my body. At the end of the session, I was as relaxed as I've ever been from a massage but without the achy muscles that usually come from having a really good massage. I felt very centered, grounded and solid afterward, rather like everything was properly aligned. No achy foot or achy knees. It was a great feeling, and I volunteered to go back for another session. My lower back is a problem area that gets very stiff, and I'd like to get that feeling looser, although I feel very relaxed right now.

In a lot of ways, it was rather like being petted and caressed, in a totally non-sexual way, for 90 minutes. I joked afterward that I must have been a dog in another life because I really liked getting rubbed behind the ears and having my back stroked. Let me tell you, I now understand why Dogzilla likes it so much when I pet him for hours at a time when he's napping on my lap. Pat and I talked afterward, though, about how we live in a society where we don't touch each other in non-sexual ways very often, though. Our culture doesn't have a place for much of that kind of interaction once we leave babyhood, and it's a shame because we are such tactile creatures.

Anyhow, I was very impressed and I am going to be quite happy to go back for another session. It was a really serendipitous opportunity to do some very necessary self-care, and I'm grateful for it.

I ran a few errands and then I came home and read a little bit. I even curled up for a nap after dinner (pan-seared thin round tip steak, with a red wine-rosemary pan sauce and oven roasted potato wedges with leftover haricot verts). I still think I'll sleep like a baby tonight, too. I plan to sleep IN tomorrow morning, since I don't have to work until 2:30.

Chicken with Provencal Sauce, Or Kitchen De-Stressing

First, let me admit that I have not been stressed about anything since Saturday after I got to chat with my boss. However, I've wanted to try this Cooking Light recipe for "Chicken with Provencal Sauce," and while testing it out, I began to see how it would be a great recipe to de-stress by after a hard day at work. The recipe really isn't complicated and it relies mainly on good technique. You pound 4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts flat, sprinkle them with salt and pepper and cook them for about 6 minutes a side in a hot non-stick skillet that you've coated with olive oil. Remove the chicken from the pan and keep it warm. Throw some minced garlic into the pan and saute to soften it, then put chicken broth in the skillet to deglaze the pan. Throw in some Herbes d'Provence and let it all reduce down to about 1/2 cup of sauce. Take it off the heat and stir in some lemon juice and whisk in a tablespoon of real, honest to God, unsalted butter. Adjust salt and pepper to taste. Drizzle about 2 Tbs. sauce on each chicken breast. Easy. What makes this a de-stressing recipe?

First, you pour a glass of nice white wine to drink while you cook. I had a 2004 Honeymoon Vigonier that I got from Trader Joes. Very fruity (apricots, peaches and mango are what I tasted most strongly), so a nice sipping wine. None of that high alcohol heartburn effect. Second, there is nothing that isn't relaxing about whacking a chicken breast with a mallet. Third, allowing 10 minutes for prepping everything (flattening chicken, mincing some garlic and assembling salt, pepper, herbes d'Provence, lemon juice and butter), cooking time is maximum of 20 minutes. Nuke some nice frozen haricot verts from Trader Joes while chicken is browning on the second side. Take THAT, Rachael Ray. Fourth, there is nothing that isn't utterly satisfying about having nice juicy, perfectly browned chicken breasts as an end result. Fifth, you've got leftovers for several days, and even if you run out of sauce, you've still got some lovely cooked chicken to make other stuff out of. This all adds up to de-stressing cooking in my book.

I stored the leftover sauce separately from the leftover chicken. Tonight I stirred some dijon mustard into the leftover sauce for a slightly different taste. I'll make a salad with chicken later in the week and a chicken panini, too. Or maybe chicken-topped pizza. Depends on my mood.

Anyhow, today was a very unstressful day. Put the money in the registers and made out the daily cashier schedule, then I headed off for a 3 1/2 hr. training class with some of my co-workers. Afterward, our manager took us to lunch. We rolled back in about 1:30. My day ended at 4. I don't get many days like that, so I will take them when I get them. Ahhhh.....probably have to pay for it come Saturday. We are usually ungodly busy on Saturdays.

Tomorrow is my day off. Laundry beckons. It is the bane of my existence, but I live in a temperate but northerly climate in a society where clothing is not optional. I'm going to go watch a movie now.

Morning update: attempted to watch "Ned Kelly". Not even Heath Ledger and Orlando Bloom made this bearable. Very boring. Not quite as coma-inducing as "Cold Mountain" seems to be for me, but a close second if I'd been lying on the couch reading and not gotten so distracted with yet another round of "Jewel Quest" on the computer.....

Pledge Week

Sigh. I love PBS. Really. Except during pledge week. Which seems to come every other month in this town. And the only reason I really hate pledge week is because in between begging for money all they show are things like the same Wayne Dyer lecture, the same Suze Orman lecture and the same do-wop concert. Unless they show "Has-Been Disco Stars". Honestly, if I could afford it, I'd make additional pledges just to get these damn stupid pledge week shows off the air. Or so they could maybe get some NEW ones. The only one I even remotely like is the cooking one, where they have real people come in and prepare the recipes they've sent in. This time they were doing "Family Favorites".

Of course, my real concern is that now I will have to tune my bedtime TV to something else for a whole week. I can't sleep to people begging for money in between Wayne, Suze and the disco and do-wop crews like I can during regular PBS programming. Well, except for This Old House. Very hard to snooze through that power saw or power drill that makes an appearance in every show.......

A New Day

Well, I've been kvetching about work quite a bit lately. Finally had the chance to talk with my boss, and, surprise, surprise! She actually anticipated every one of my current concerns and addressed them before I even had a chance to start in. My schedule is not changing a whit in the next couple of weeks, there are lots of potential new hires coming in to interview next week (with the goal being to make offers to two so that we have at least one for sure--the other person can most likely be sent to another store if need be), and there are people coming from other stores to cover any open shifts. Of course, they are coming from much lower volume stores, so we may kill them at our store with our volume. Heck, even a slow Monday or Tuesday is probably more volume than the store these people are coming from do on a weekend! Oh well. Guess they'll see how people at the busy stores live. They might even be bored where they are and want the challenge. At any rate, I am not covering these shifts and I am getting my scheduled time off, so all is right with my world again.

I shared some of my homemade granola with one of my co-workers, and she was impressed. It is always amazing what impresses people that don't cook. Anyhow, she even said she's consider making it. She figured she could just come over to make the granola and we could drink beer. I said that would be a good idea if we ever get the same time off. I think she'd actually like the recipe and get lots of use out of it once she saw how easy it was to make.

I did make some baked ravioli yesterday. I jazzed up some frozen cheese ravioli by tossing them with a sauce I made by browning an onion and some hot Italian turkey sausage and then adding a can of drained, diced Italian tomatoes and a can of garlic-herb marinara sauce. Topped it all with a sprinkle of Parmesan and baked it for about 30 min., or until it was nice and bubbly. It will make something good to tote for lunches next week.

Going to have a bit more coffee and see if I can't get the dishwasher unloaded and reloaded and the clean clothes put away before heading off to work today. Yesterday was, as is usual for a Saturday, ungodly busy at work with messy people who have apparently never seen spring clothing or Easter stuff. They left it all over the place! I thought we'd never recover, especially since all the sales floor folks were up on registers most of the evening. Hopefully, tonight will be a typical Sunday, though. That will mean we are fairly busy from about 1-7:30 or 8, which gives us some time to start pulling things back together before we close at 9 so that we are assured of getting out by 10. Earlier if we really go dead.

Sunny and COLD here today. Brrrrr.......I'm staying inside until I have to go out.