Art For Healing in North Orange County

First a weight loss/giving up wine update. Yes! The weight is slowly melting off! Today I tried on a dress I bought about six months ago that didn't fit me when it arrived. It fits now! I have a new dress for the wedding I'm going to next weekend. Yay.

Okay, the real purpose of this post is to promote Art4Healing in North Orange County. Come try it out! It's relaxing, meditative, and fun. You don't have to be an artist. I'm doing classes on Sunday afternoons from 2-4 and I plan on adding classes on either Thursday afternoons or Thursday evenings, depending on interest.

Here's the information: Call Shany at Mission Art Center to sign up.


For Registration Call 714-402-8535

These two hour Workshops teach you how to express feeling with colors using the Art For Healing (r) method created by Laurie Zagon. Participants will process their feelings abstractly on canvas while learning about colors, composition, and other elements of art.

At the end of each session, participants will have 2-3 completed canvases to take home with them. All supplies are provided by the instructor for a nominal fee. No prior art experience is required. In fact, many times some of the best paintings are done by people who have never painted prior to the workshop. It isn't about talent; it's about the process and what you learn about yourself while doing the painting.

Come join a group and see for yourself just how creative you can be!

$50.00 per session. (CURRENTLY ON GROUPON FOR $25.00 FOR ONE PERSON OR $49.00 FOR TWO--GRAB IT WHILE YOU CAN)

Most Sunday afternoons from 2-4 PM Call for dates

Mission Art Center
1730 N. Tustin Street
Orange CA 92865
Tel:714.402.8535
Tel:714.637.9698
Email: info@missionartcenter.com

ABOUT ME:
 

Art For Healing in North Orange County Healing Workshops

Kathy Pratt RN, BSN, PHN Art4Healing®Certified Facilitator

Kathy has worked as a nurse for many years. She's found that a wonderful way to reduce stress is through art and creativity. A few years ago she began taking art classes at the Mission Art Center concentrating on painting with oils. A friend introduced her to Art4Healing, a method of supporting emotional healing through art and creative expression using color. She attended a workshop, joined the women's guild, and was hooked.

The next step was taking the Art4Healing® Facilitator Certification program so she can now give back and share the experience with others. Now she is able to offer workshops at the Mission Art Center in Orange, where she is still taking art instruction as well.

UH-OH. 'TIS THE SEASON TO GAIN WEIGHT!

Here we are again. Thanksgiving week. After we stuff ourselves with turkey and all the trimmings it's on to The Season to be Jolly with all the goodies that go along with that. This is the year I'm finally going to knuckle down and do something about my overinflated body before I need to have all my joints replaced.

I just bought Tory Johnson's book, THE SHIFT and started reading it. It isn't "just another diet book". It's about changing your mindset so you can actually get on with the process of getting healthy. Today I'm focusing on one of the first quotes that jumped out at me, "I'M NOT FAT BY CHANCE. THIS IS A CHOICE. AND IT'S A CHOICE I NO LONGER WISH TO MAKE." I've spent a good amount of time thinking about this one. I really have made major changes over the years in the kinds of food I eat and the choices I make. I've been on every diet plan ever invented. I know the calorie count in everything. I know what works and doesn't work. I've learned I don't do well eating any gluten products so I've cut them out of my diet (well, almost totally-perhaps there's a tiny cheat here and there). Dairy products make me wheeze so I've cut them out as well (okay, except for cheese now and then-I really need a bit of cheese on things-oh, and yogurt-but that's good dairy). I love sugar but I no longer eat candy. Sugar is the worst! (except for the one piece I might grab out of the basket at work, or the one I buy in the checkout stand at Michaels-I deserve a little treat every now and then, don't I?"

And then there's the exercise portion of the whole thing. Today I can't go for a walk because my knee really hurts. My fibromyalgia has been flaring up and my whole body hurts. I can't do the you tube yoga video because I don't have time to write my blog post AND do the video.

I guess you get by now where I'm going with this. I just haven't made THE SHIFT. It starts today. No, this isn't a diet. It's THE SHIFT. For me, THE SHIFT means I'm going to shift to being totally honest with myself about every morsel of food I put in my mouth. No, Kathy, a broken piece of a cookie doesn't mean the calories have escaped. And no, Kathy, YOU DON'T DESERVE IT BECAUSE YOU'VE BEEN SO GOOD! It's time to be good to myself in other ways.

Day One of Diet and Exercise Plan

Here I am in Yosemite, hiding half of me behind John Muir. Today is the first day of the rest of my life. Heard that before? Well, it is. Today I am starting my training program to climb up Mt. Sinai in January 2011. While in Yosemite this week I started on the "Dan Diet" and lost three pounds. The Dan Diet consists of eating one sensible meal a day, and two snacks consisting of fruit. One day we split a spinach salad for lunch and we also nibbled on pistachios during the day. Thank goodness the Dan Diet also allows red wine or I'd be in big trouble.

Okay, I need to loose some serious lb.'s before this walk up the mountain which is 7,500 feet altitude. My knees and feet are bothering me. It's time. Also, we did some hiking uphill in Yosemite and I got really winded. The altitude was only 5,600 feet where we were hiking. Big wake up call.

Here's the plan: Dan Diet, walking 30 minutes a day (for the dog), and doing serious cardio on the exercycle and the eliptical when it arrives.  I'll keep you'all posted. (You'all primarily being me, since I think I'm probably the only one that reads this. Maybe I should title this blog Dear Diary?)

Side Show Mary

Mary, a lady in her late thirties, was admitted to our unit for help with weight loss. She’d been the circus fat lady for one of the major big top circuses for a number of years, but once she’d gotten so heavy she wasn’t able to walk, she became bed bound in her home. A family member finally called the fire department and when they arrived, they sawed around her door to make it wide enough to get Mary out, and then brought her to our hospital. When she arrived, we weren’t able to get an accurate weight but knew that she was well over 750 pounds. Our transportation gurney weighed 250 pounds and when we loaded Mary on and took her to the freight scales, the needle buried on the other side of 1000 pounds.


In those days, there weren’t any king size hospital beds available for patients so the engineering department of the hospital bolted two hospital beds together for Mary. When we needed to provide Mary with care, we would have to climb up onto the bed with her; otherwise we couldn’t reach far enough across her body to properly bathe her. Bedpan time was a major event. It took several nurses to get the pan positioned correctly underneath her and then to get it back out again and clean and dry her.

Mary, who loved to eat, was placed on a 300 calorie diet. The weight immediately started melting off. Saturday was weight day and it took most of the staff to get her loaded onto the gurney and pushed to the freight scales. The hospital was very old and our unit was on the second floor. The elevator was also old and a bit temperamental. We were all afraid to get on the elevator with her, so we devised a system of pushing Mary in so her head was facing the door and she could push the elevator buttons herself. Then we would run down the stairs to the first floor and greet her when the elevator doors opened. We used the excuse that the elevator was too small to hold all of us, and we never let on that we feared it would break under the strain of her weight.

I remember the day the needle on the scale finally dipped below the 1000 pound mark, meaning that Mary weighed 750 pounds. We all cheered and clapped, and Mary even offered up a little smile for us. From then on we were able to monitor and chart her progress. The doctors had set a goal of getting her down to 300 pounds so they could perform a new surgical procedure on her. That goal was met nine months after Mary’s admission to our hospital, and an intestinal bypass surgery was performed. A large portion of the middle of her intestines was bypassed so that a good amount of the food she ate was not absorbed. Complications were terrible and she had chronic diarrhea and electrolyte imbalances. Sadly, six weeks after having undergone the surgery and now weighing 250 pounds, Mary died from liver failure. We now know that intestinal bypass surgery had a 50% mortality rate. I still feel a deep sadness when I think about Mary spending so many months eating almost nothing, finally being able to once again get out of bed and walk a short distance and losing two thirds of her body weight, only to die of complications from an experimental surgery. And that was more than forty years ago.