Day 10: I love Nia!

Hello friends! Hope everyone had a good Wednesday. A quick shout out to my friends from the clinic, hope you had a good Wednesday clinic today!
We started our day with Tai Chi at 7am. I really like the Tai Chi (even though it is at 7am). It is a gentle wakeup, no quick movements. We stood facing the window in the exercise studio, which overlooks Okemo Mountain, a beautiful setting for some gentle Tai Chi.
After breakfast, our first class was "Behavior Special Topic: Connecting with your Heart." After a quick meditation, we were led in an art project. We made Thank You cards to ourselves for allowing ourselves to have this experience. We then had the option of putting our card in an envelope and having it mailed to us. I will have mine mailed to me in one month.

My Thank You letter to Me

At 10:30, we had a Nia class. Nia is a sensory based movement class in which you are encouraged to express yourself through movement or dance. It was so fun! I love Nia! The movements are very free flowing. It is not like a aerobics class where you do a certain move 8 times and then move on to another one. Some of the basic movements seem like aerobics movements but you add expressions and flowing and dance to those movements. I am hoping to find a Nia class when I get home and maybe I can drag my friends along with me.
For lunch today we had macaroni and cheese and salad. Yes, that's right, macaroni and cheese.
Our first class after lunch was "Mindfulness Tools for Self Care: Creating a Cognitive Shift." This is all about how our thinking influences our feeling. We explored ways to stop ourselves when we start negative self talk. We need to learn to recognize when we are about to enter a "funk" or start negative self talk so we can act before that happens. One way to do that is by creating our Green Mountain 911 Emergency Kit. This should contain reminders of what we learned here, things we were proud of here, our little "nuggets of success." Whenever we feel like we are going to enter a funk, we pull the kit out and look at it in hopes it will change the course of our negative self talk. We also talked again about rebel behavior. We have to discover positive rebel behavior so that we will not want to engage in negative rebel behavior, most importantly, eating.
At 2:30, we went Vermonting to a place called Buttermilk Falls. It was a nice day and after all the rain yesterday, it was nice to get outside. It was so beautiful. I took my camera along and got a chance to take some great pictures that I will post on Facebook when I get home.

Some of my Green Mountain friends 

After a snack of Green Mountain Truffles (amazing little balls of yumminess and healthy too!), we had a conversation cafe. Thinking cafe, I was hoping for some coffee and scones but that was not the case with this cafe lol! This was a chance to talk as a group, led by our psychologist Darla. We were able to share our thought about our journey so far. Some of us shared our feelings on leaving at the end of the week and returning to the real world. One important thing that we have to strive for when we get home is to be able to keep that "Green Mountain Me" that we've worked so hard to be here.
Dinner tonight was not my favorite. It was steak, brown rice, broccoli, and for dessert, pears.
After dinner, several of us gathered in the Okemo room for a great game of Taboo. I hadn't played Taboo in so long and forgot how much fun it was!
To close, I want to include a few lines of a poem that we read in one of our classes today. It is entitled, "The Prelude" by Oriah Mountain Daydreamer.
"What if it truly doesn't matter what you do but how you do whatever you do?
How would this change what you choose to do with your life?.....
What if there was no need to change, no need to try and transform yourself into someone who is more compassionate, more present, more loving or wise?
How would this affect all the places in your life where you are endlessly trying to be better?...
What if the question is not why am I so infrequently the person I really want to be but why do I so infrequently want to be the person I really am?
How would this change what you think you have to learn?"
Goodnight from Vermont.