Mary's Musings

Well I got started. I did do the Five by Five Challenge five mornings. I don’t do formal exercises over the weekends. I did two reps of each of the five exercises and then repeated the sequence. I think I may increase to three times next week. Also, I am doing Beth’s Beginning Workout Pathway to get restarted. You can choose from six workouts, or groups of workouts. These are primarily between ten and fifteen minutes each. There is a range of exertion involved with one group sitting and one stretching. This week I chose Ankles and Upper Body (repeated on another day), Big Band, the Neck Routine, and Basic Transverse and Mula Bandha. The emphasis is on strengthening the core muscles that keep us upright and balanced. I was somewhat loafing on a couple of days so I chose some very easy and basic routines on those days. I need to do a full review of each of these routines, but later for that. If you are already a member of her studio, you will know anyway. If not,you can join here ....

I read a lot about oil pulling and decided to try it with coconut oil. The taste doesn’t bother me, but I have a really hard time concentrating on swishing.   I get busy thinking of other things and wind up just holding it in my mouth. I did notice how much cleaner my teeth felt and my guns stopped bleeding even though I did not get my teeth professionally cleaned for literally years. When I did have them checked they were amazed at the condition of my gums compared to my teeth.   I am careful to spit it into the trash to save the pipes. That said, I was told that oil pulling does not loosen dental work. I believe that dental work in good condition is not loosened.     BUT, what seems to happen is that if there are cracks and/or leakage that are filled with guck, the oil pulls out the guck and loosens them. This is not really bad, but it can get expensive if it shows up all at once. I chose to have my teeth pulled and dentures made. Are there toxic materi...

I had put off having children until we had both graduated from college. The draft still existed, so my husband enlisted in the Navy as pilot/officer. Now I was ready, but my body hadn’t gotten the message. Finally, I wrote my mother (I was in Florida and she in California). She suggested vitamin E and I conceived in 2 weeks. We decided to return to CA for Christmas. The budding Naval aviators got the holidays off.   We drove with one other officer.   The guys   were to alternate driving to make it straight through. Fortunately, I did not have morning sickness with either pregnancy.as I stayed awake the whole time, afraid they wouldn’t. Back in Florida, I had to make a decision about which hospital to have my baby. The much closer hospital was in a very small town. The larger Navy hospital was about 40 miles away and not by freeway. Due to my mother’s experience I chose the larger hospital. In retrospect, it was probably not the best choice. Both would have bee...

First in a series of book reviews .   I was privileged to get a sneak preview of this first novel by a first time author.   I found it a thriller and hard to put down. It deals the interaction between spirits and humans. Books of this kind are treated as science fiction, because the world doesn’t believe that this interaction occurs. I can tell you from personal experience that it definitely does. There aren’t a lot of books showing this. Frank Peretti shows the fighting that occurs between evil and good spirits. Angels and demons if you will. The setting and story line deal with regular people in regular towns. Robert David MacNeal wrote his books as science fiction in order to appeal to both Christian and secular audiences. The story line is about control of planet earth by good or evil forces. However, to Christians, he makes no secret of the fact that his books are expressly written to show how spiritual warfare works. O’Haire shows that the warfare is real and...

I am trying to establish an exercise routine. I use Fit2b for the basics, but I am working on Dynamic Aging by Katy Bowman, too. I was doing really well, then I sprained an ankle. And basically had to quit for about six weeks. I own Beth’s 5x5 Challenge . It features five different exercises each five times and then repeat that sequence five times. By the end of the week you have exercised all the major muscle groups. I have gotten up to three repetitions, but I am shooting for the full five and adding in the weights. I am starting with two reps. I do those first thing in the morning as a warmup for the day. . Later in the day I am starting with the Foundational Five for review and then plan to add the Beginning Workout Path . I will probably keep up a couple of the basic exercises and the alignment workouts. I really need to get my head back over my shoulders instead of leading with it. Hopefully I can progress to more strenuous exercises in time. There are so many rou...