The Healing Page 2

  Three months after my first cooking class, I decided to do this three-day test. Taking cooking classes was a symbol of my entering the middle class, I reasoned. I would need to know how to make complete meals.

  Growing up, I remember my mother telling me, “Eat as much of the school lunch as you can, so I can save money on the food bill.” Each week, my mom would clip coupons—kids-eat-free, two-for-one, or half-off at the local Ponderosa Steak House—because she was too tired to prepare dinner. She would fill up the freezer with boxes of discounted steaks and French fries. “Fend for yourselves,” she often told my little brother and me. Our house never felt like a home. Instead, it felt more like a refugee camp with each person trying to survive after a twenty-five-year, bloody civil war.

  It was different at my friend Barb’s house, in her middle-class neighborhood. Her mom waited for us to get off the school bus. “You girls must be hungry. Take your things off and sit down at the table.” She poured us hot bowls of homemade turkey soup with chunks of fresh carrots and celery. She served us oven-fresh, warm Italian bread. She made us a green salad with fresh tomatoes. That experience etched itself in my mind, making me think that cooking and preparing homemade dishes, daily, was how middle-class people lived. Now, it had become an aspiration.

  * * *

  The morning of my first cooking class was a crisp and clear Saturday. I decided to ride my new $500 Fuji mountain bike to class. The bike was yet another symbol of being a young urban professional who was not interested in buying a car. And I was killing two birds with one stone by riding my bike to get me where I needed to go while getting exercise at the same time! Efficient. I would just be commuting as I challenged myself to ride the hills of Pittsburgh, from Shadyside to Squirrel Hill. It was a steady two-mile climb. One mile flat, and then a mile downhill. For someone who had never really moved her body much, this was a new way of being.

  I got to class ten minutes late, sweatier than I had anticipated. I removed my helmet and biking gloves and quietly took a seat in the back row. There were only ten students in the class. The room was fairly small, but the metal in that kitchen shone brightly, making it seem bigger. I knew nothing about kitchens, but it seemed state-of-the-art.

  “This course is called ‘Food as Medicine,’ ” said Gia, the instructor. “We’ll learn how simple and common foods can help heal and prevent illness.” Gia stood in front of the class, a thin yet fit woman with dark, wavy hair, brownish eyes, wearing a loose cotton shirt. She owned her own healthy living business, Holistic Wellness, and radiated well-being. I expected a plump instructor wearing chef whites. Gia wore an apron. She talked about the healing powers of a vegetable soup she was about to make. Holding up a root vegetable, she explained, “Daikon is a white radish often used in Japanese cooking.” Gia told us that daikon helps to dissolve fats inside the body, especially the liver. She went down the list, telling us the main properties of each ingredient.

  I soon realized that the cooking class I thought I’d signed up for was not at all what I was about to get. Obviously, I hadn’t read the flyer carefully, if at all. My assumption, since it was in a middle-class neighborhood, was that it would be a course in how to cook lamb in wine and other bourgeois standards. I’d imagined a mock Julia Child cooking show. Instead, I learned how to use soft barley porridge to reduce a fever. I learned that an umeboshi plum could help reverse a hangover, and how a broth made from sweet vegetables, carrots, butternut squash, cabbage, and onions could help you manage your pancreas and sugar cravings. Gia’s teachings were about how specific foods can resonate with specific body parts such as organs, glands, and bones, to promote or impair good health.

  Even though this was not what I had expected, I was in the right place. I had nothing to lose. My family suffered from all kinds of sicknesses such as heart disease, diabetes, high cholesterol, asthma, eczema, and hypertension, not to mention addiction to drugs, alcohol, and food. The idea of changing my life through clean eating thrilled me. Excited, I left the class knowing I had the power to choose how to contribute positively toward my health. My family history no longer held me captive; it was only one factor, not the whole story.

  Eating more whole grains and exercising could lower my high cholesterol. Consuming less refined sugar could hold off diabetes. I could actually strengthen my pancreas by eating foods that are naturally whole and sweet. Choosing not to drink or overindulge in alcohol could block an alcohol addiction. Even if I couldn’t choose my gene pool, I could choose my habits.

  I jumped on my bike, tackling that first hill with more enthusiasm than I’d had when I left that morning to go to class. Joyfully, I pedaled harder and faster. Reaching the top of the hill, I coasted along the flat road, a cool breeze sweeping across my face.

  Six months after graduating from college with a degree in business and management information systems and three months after my first cooking class, I had put most of my middle-class living activities into practice. It was February 1990 and I thought I was home free, just like my mom said I would be. I’d escaped the life patterns that promote addiction and violence. I was all set to do what my college friends and peers did: go on vacation, eat good food, read books and magazines, and only date successful young men.

  Instead, I continued to be plagued by memories of my past.

  “Yeah, you know he’ll have to stop cold turkey,” my mom said to her mother about her younger brother, Paul, who suffered from heroin addiction. “He’ll have to go down into someone’s basement and sweat it out.”

  “I know. But that’s the easy part. The hard part is facin’ those demons that made him use the heroin in the first place,” my grandmother explained.

  “Yeaaaah. When those drugs wear off, the pain is still there. I can’t figure out why people use drugs in the first place,” my mom said.

  I wasn’t using heroin, but not having refined sugar in my system for three days had me sitting on the floor with my back against the wall, hugging my knees. It felt like a drug withdrawal, primarily because it illuminated my demons and my history. It was hard for me to believe that eliminating sugar could make me feel this way. I didn’t know it then, but research is proving that sugar destroys the liver in the same way alcohol does, causing it to be fatty and scarred, not to mention the extreme emotional highs and lows it causes.

  My new world was very different from that of my family. I wondered: Can I have a middle-class life and climb upward socially while my siblings are drowning in drugs and alcohol? Can I dodge the statistic that clearly states kids like me can’t transcend their environment? I yearned to vanish from that world. But it felt inevitable that the boogieman would get me.

  On that day, when I was crying on the bus, my struggle began. Later that day, on the carpet, I stretched out flat and stared at the white stucco ceiling, exhausted.

  I trudged to the kitchen and leaned on the sink. Then I went into the bathroom, dampening my face with warm water and looking in the mirror. “I know what they want from me,” I thought. “But what do I want from me? How can I create the life I want from the inside-out?”

  I went into the kitchen and started cleaning the dirty pot I’d used to cook the morning’s steel-cut oats. I pulled out the food I had prepared for cooking that evening’s dinner and thought, for the first time, maybe food can heal and maybe it starts with a bowl of steel-cut oats for breakfast and ends with a dinner plate of black bean stew over short grain brown rice, baked sweet potatoes, steamed kale, and a small side of hijiki caviar. I trembled. If eating basic whole foods for only three days could unearth such a complicated past, what else would be revealed on this path to holistic health?

  In addition to periodically adding whole-food dishes to my diet, I was ready to incorporate something called yoga into my routine. I didn’t really know what it was, but I had always wanted to try yoga in college. I was curious; it seemed like a path to peace, with stillness as an answer to the chaos I was raise
d in. But mostly, I had a feeling yoga would strengthen my mind and body, a strength I was sure I had but had not tapped into yet.

  The yoga class I signed up for started at 9:00 a.m. on a Sunday. The very first position was a resting pose called Savasana. I lay on my back, legs apart, breathing. We did leg lifts to warm up, followed by a series of standing poses. Quickly, I noticed that I was the only one who could not hold the yoga poses for the instructed length of time.

  I stared at my crestfallen face in the large aerobic studio mirror and watched myself struggle, lose my balance, and have to release a pose before everyone else. I heard the instructor, Abela, say, “And remember, go at your own pace. Do what you can for today, and most importantly, listen to your body.”

  Her words soothed me. “Inhale, while lifting your right arm up toward the ceiling. Slowly lean over to the left. Breathe deeply and hold the posture. This is a basic side bend.”

  My lungs contracted and I coughed. Once again, I had to come out of the pose. I felt weak, while everyone else seemed fine.

  I don’t know why I hadn’t noticed it earlier but, looking around the room, I realized I was the only black student in class, and everyone was either double or triple my age. I was pretty sure I didn’t belong. At that point, I was ready to quit. My mind wandered. Maybe yoga was not for me. I should stick to walking and learn how to use the treadmill and StairMaster. Corporate middle-class people do that, right?

  “Watch me first,” the instructor said, interrupting my daydream. She held both arms straight out in front of her, and began to lower her torso, bending her knees. She looked like a human chair. “We will use the Chair Pose to transition into our next asana.” We all followed her lead, listening to our knees crack on the way down. With our arms out in front, balancing on our tippy toes, we looked like a row of chairs. The balls of my feet and my toes started to hurt from the pressure. I was happy when she said, “Place your hands on the floor and extend your legs, one at a time, and sit L-shaped.” Again, we followed her lead. I felt my toes tingling.

  “Inhale, lifting your arms out to the side and then up. Next, exhale. Extend your arms toward your toes and hold your hands anywhere along your legs. Go to the point of a stretch, not strain. This is the Forward Bend pose.” Wow. I was touching my toes. This stretch felt good. I felt good. Abela continued to instruct us to breathe and relax, to just let go. Finally, a pose I could rest in. I wasn’t coughing or struggling. I kept on breathing and holding. For the first time since I was a kid, I was enjoying myself as my body and breath opened up. But, most of all, folding forward released something that allowed me to relax, and to surrender.

  “You’ll be teaching this one day,” I heard a voice say. I lifted my head slightly and looked around. No one was speaking to me. In fact, no one was talking at all. Then I heard it again. “You’ll be teaching this one day, and get closer to your grandfather.”

  I stayed in the pose. My head was down and I didn’t dare move. My breathing was slow, but many thoughts raced across my mind. Am I going crazy? Do I have schizophrenia? Mental illness might run in my family, too. What’s happening to me?

  My attention snapped back to Abela. “Now, exhale all the air from your lungs and inhale, stretching your arms up toward the ceiling.” I lifted up from my core. From the center of my bellybutton, waves rippled throughout my abdomen. It felt as if a heavy raindrop had splashed onto my navel, causing concentric circles to vibrate and encompass my entire body. I looked around suspiciously, now talking to myself under my breath: “Should I be scared? Am I having a freaky mind-body-spirit experience?”

  But I didn’t feel afraid. I simply felt open and curious.

  I kept observing my body and mind. Abela kept teaching, and I kept holding the poses, again only half the allotted time.

  At the very end of class, we did a longer Savasana, for twenty minutes this time. I wasn’t accustomed to lying down, doing nothing. At first I gazed up at the ceiling, wondering what would happen to me if I closed my eyes. There I lay, flat on my back, legs apart, and arms down by my side with palms facing up. I felt vulnerable, but I finally closed my eyes. With each breath, I surrendered. I drifted off while the soothing music played; I floated to a place that was still and quiet. I wasn’t asleep, and I wasn’t awake. I was suspended in a peaceful place. It was dark and black. It was a place I had never been before. In this place, I didn’t have to be anything or anyone.

  I felt safe while my body went through a myriad of sensations. At times, my body felt heavy, then light, then warm, tingly, and then completely still. Some part of me observed a separation between my physical body and, for lack of a better word, my soul. My soul lifted out of my physical self, expanding to the size of the room. It felt like it was being nourished, the opposite of my usual feeling of being chronically depleted.

  When class finished, I was overcome with the desire to sustain that nourished feeling. I knew that I couldn’t yet hold the poses, but it didn’t matter because whatever I could do brought me an incredible experience. I wanted to learn more. When the teacher brought us back from that place, I sat up and wondered, Where did I just go? Was it real? How do I get there again?

  CHAPTER 2

  Cooking with Gia

  TASTING THE SWEETNESS of Savasana, hearing that voice during the Forward Bend pose, and revisiting my childhood trauma were just the start of my holistic journey.

  When I signed up for my first cooking class, I was simply doing something that I’d perceived would move me more into the middle class. I didn’t realize that I would be challenged to bring together all my different flavors into a healthier and more self-caring version of myself.

  I wanted to learn more about this holistic health lifestyle. Holistic Wellness regularly sent newsletters to my home. One day I received a personalized letter from Gia that seemed to speak directly to my need to rebuild my shaky foundation, and I immediately called her to schedule an an in-home consultation. She came to my house in the way I imagined doctors made house calls in the 1950s. But she didn’t look like a physician; she wore loose-fitting natural fabrics with a kind of comfortable, elegant, chic. She moved in her clothes as if in an easy flow with nature.

  After our initial greetings, she examined my whole life and my surroundings. I had never received this kind of attention from anyone. She made me feel like everything in my life mattered, and that all the events in my life, good and bad, had contributed to who I was. I felt like I mattered. I must admit, it was a new feeling.

  Gia pulled out her client notebook and glanced at the intake form. I fixed on her fingernails. They were short and manicured, but not polished. They were not like the nails I saw on the professional women in the corporate world, which were lengthened with gel, silk, or acrylic, and polished flawlessly. Gia’s hands looked strong, natural, and yet beautiful. As she talked, I listened raptly.

  “Saeeda, the basis of holistic health is to have our internal world be at peace with our external world.” She went on to ask me about my sleep, my menstrual cycle, my significant other, family, and friends. Yes, Gia was like a doctor who made house calls. But she also went a little deeper, like a psychologist, a clergyman, and a friend. Nothing was off limits.

  She explained that outside things affect how we express peace and harmony, or dis-ease and dis-harmony. Holistic health looks at the whole picture, physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually—not to mention financially. She talked about being at peace with it all.

  After Gia took inventory regarding how I viewed my life, we visited my kitchen. Opening up the cupboard door revealed two boxes of Cracklin’ Oat Bran and some tomato sauce (the other four boxes and extra jars of these items were in the freezer, since I stockpiled two-for-one coupons just like my mother.) I had bowtie pasta noodles, herbal teas, orange juice, milk, bread, ketchup, and very few fresh fruits and vegetables—one onion, several stalks of celery, a carrot, and a few apples. I also had the rema
ins of my bulk cooking ingredients from the class—brown rice, lentils, steel cut oats, barley, and shiitake mushrooms.

  I handed the Cracklin’ Oat Bran box to Gia and she showed me how the cereal contained multiple forms of sugar products, all of them refined. We examined most of the food items in my cabinets, refrigerator, and freezer. I was amazed that so many items were loaded with sugar: my dry cereal, tomato sauce, ketchup, and even my bread. Not only did sugar appear in everything, it was listed under different aliases such as cane sugar, brown sugar, corn syrup, sucrose, maltodextrose, and high fructose corn syrup.

  Gia departed, leaving me with lots of information and recipes to make. I thought long and hard about what she had suggested. I could slowly phase out these old food items or give them all away and start fresh with better quality foods. She encouraged me to cook more and share meals with others. I was committed to following her instructions, even if I didn’t like to cook that much. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was about to embark upon was a radical detox, long before the word was fashionable: no processed food, no sugar, and only whole-food meals.

  I learned later that my regular consumption of refined sugar (both the known and unknown) affected my pancreas, my insulin levels, and my liver, which stored excess sugar as fat. Sugar made me feel tired and grumpy, especially during my premenstrual time. But mostly I felt spaced out and numb.

  When I stopped consuming sugar, I experienced a chemical withdrawal similar to my Uncle Paul’s heroin withdrawal. I became depressed, yet I was no longer fuzzy. I was less irritable and fatigued. I was in the process of sobering up. Even though it was challenging, I knew it was the right thing for my body and my mind.

  The detox reminded me of the time when I went through the entire fourth grade without knowing something was wrong with my eyesight. By fifth grade, I’d had my eyes tested and, lo and behold, I needed glasses! With glasses, I could see much better. I didn’t like everything I saw at school or in my neighborhood or at home, but at least everything was clearer. The three-day detox had a similar effect. I didn’t like what I saw, but the picture was clear.