Blog Posts - Sukoshi Rice

I'm too old for this!

11/5/2016

My younger and hipper friend Donna invited me to go to a Stevie Nicks concert in Atlanta tomorrow night. Rock and roll, crowds, city, parking garages: these are all things that give me anxiety and the heebie jeebies. I was so honored, I accepted. And then I started to fret. In the words of my greatest teacher (as I heard them): if it scares you that much, you have to do it.
What was it I was most worried about? It was kind of all of it, the energy a concert requires, both in terms of the crowds and the output from the band. I heard myself say, "I'm too old for this!" which is when I knew I HAD to go. People do these city things all day long, in much bigger cities than Atlanta. If they can, I can too.
It's a good rule of thumb for me, that if it scares me, I have to do it. Irrational fears, not real ones. Like I don't care who says what, I won't bungee jump or jump out of an airplane. I won't walk on burning coals, either. But when it's something anybody can do, and many people do every day, then if it scares me, I'll make myself do it.
Singing on stage was like that. I did it years ago, in a bar, so hopefully I was drinking. But only a few years ago, the man running our local jam session (now closed, alas) saw me singing along with the players on the stage and said, "You're on next."
There were probably about ten or fifteen people in the audience, but it didn't matter. It still freaked me totally out. I did it though, and since it scared me so much, I went back the next week and did it again, and again and again, until now it doesn't bother me at all. Well, hardly at all.

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Silence and Music

9/25/2015

As fall moves in, I am drawn to meditate in the dark early morning. It’s a relief when my thoughts go from their normal busy activity to deep luxurious silence. Beyond identification of race, gender, age, size, religion, politics, or finances is this deep abiding sense of inner peace and stillness.

The only time people seem to disagree is when we talk. I heard a story about a couple who couldn’t speak each other’s language and lived in bliss for several years. Then a visitor came who spoke both languages and translated for them. Soon they got a divorce!

While this might be a kind of a joke, truth is we often do harm with our words. The 4 gateways of speech are: is it true? Is it kind? Is it timely? Is it necessary? If we took the time before speaking to apply this check list, think of all the trouble we could avoid.

As a highly opinionated former New Yorker, it’s a challenge. The best use I have found for this voice God gave me is to sing. When I’m singing, I can’t argue with anything. If there has to be something other than silence, let it be music.

Sukoshi Rice has lived in Blairsville for over 30 years practicing various forms of natural wellness. The most recent is singing and playing music whenever and wherever she can. www.sukoshirice.com or sukoshir@gmail.com

Want to be Healthy and Happy and Calm and Relaxed?

3/20/2015

Who doesn’t, right? What’s in our way? We can say it’s our boss or our job or our families, our lack of money or too much money or anything else. But the truth is, happiness is an inside job. There are people who live on barely anything and are happy, and people who “have everything” who are never happy with any of it.
I saw this many years ago in India, where the street people, who owned rags and sometimes a bowl, were smiling and friendly and laughing. Then I came back to the US and saw rich people in their luxury cars with grim faces of stone.
There is nothing outside of us that can make us happy. No person, place or thing will do the trick if our thinking and beliefs are skewed. The first belief to heal is that things should be different than they are. Once we get past that one, it’s easier. Please try it on, see how it works for you.
If we could accept that everything is exactly as it is meant to be, wouldn’t that be relaxing? If we are just the way we are meant to be, isn’t that better than constantly thinking we aren’t good enough? I’d love to hear from you about this.
Sukoshi Rice is a wellness and TAT Practitioner, Reiki Master and philosopher practicing in Blairsville since 1985. She can be reached at sukoshir@gmail.com

The horrible disease of Never Enoughl

1/28/2015

Living in the North Georgia mountain area, in rural America, it's pretty challenging to shop without either going to Walmart occasionally or going online, usually to Amazon. That got me thinking today about the greed and avarice that probably didn't create but certainly now support these 2 institutions. I believe the mythology that Mr. Walton was a kindly gent who wanted to give people a place to shop with prices they could afford. All good. I also used to think Jeff Bezos was pretty amazing, having put together an online supercenter so anyone anywhere could get whatever they wanted. When we first moved to this area in 1979-80, we had to travel 20 miles into North Carolina to buy parmesan cheese! Every few weeks we went to Atlanta and shopped at the giant health food stores there because we just couldn't buy what we wanted here.
Now we sit in our living rooms and order whatever we want. But at what price? I haven't worked for Mr. Bezos so I don't know first hand, nor have I worked at Walmart, although I have friends who have. In both cases, a good idea has seriously gone awry. We know how poorly paid workers are for both companies, and we hear how stressful their conditions are. The tragedy is how easily this could have been a completely different story, if only the owners had not had this gaping addiction to money, more money than anyone could ever use in a lifetime, or 100 lifetimes!
When is it enough?
In our culture, we have nothing but praise and adulation for money addicts. They are the stars of all advertising, stepping off yachts and private jets wearing thousands of dollars of clothes and sunglasses. Money is glamour, and so we fail to acknowledge it as a sickness when someone becomes a glutton for it.
Two downsides of money addiction are that the people who have it are selling their souls for it, and the people who work for them suffer. This is not to say that all rich and successful people are money addicts, far from it. There are examples of very wealthy people who treat their employees well, pay well and provide healthcare and time off. They manage to stay balanced, which is a choice we all have to make, every day. It might be a lot more challenging for the very rich. That's something I don't yet know about.

Control Freak!

1/28/2015

This morning I went down to my mom's house to take her breakfast or make her breakfast like I do just about every morning since I noticed she was living on tangerines and bananas. I hadn't slept too well cause she had this thing on her leg that wasn't looking too good and I was freaking out. I had just run in to her best friend in the supermarket and said, "She's 98! It's not a little thing on her leg that's going to kill her," and then of course I had to run the rolodex of every bad belief I'd been taught about putting things into words. My nightmare is hospitals and medical interventions, my dream is good health and relative serenity for the rest of her life.

I got out of bed early and decided to warm up the house by baking. Sometimes building a fire in the wood stove feels like too much early in the morning, so I turned on the oven and made cornbread and roasted squash and oatcakes. My oatcakes are what I allow my little Virgo self for treats. They are sugarless, usually, but really too full of fat to make them healthy, which is how they get so crunchy. I put (low sugar) Trader Joe's organic apricot jam on some, and took them straight warm from the oven, down to my mom's house.

Where I had to convince her to try them instead of having Milanos for breakfast. Mint Milanos are great, but I wanted her to eat MY COOKIES!! I made them just for her and I felt just like when I was 8 and selling Girl Scout cookies. I wanted my mom to eat MY cookies, and here I still was, wanting her to choose these healthy ones over Milanos!

At first I felt like a weirdo control freak. Seriously, how bad can it be for a 98 year old to eat Milanos for breakfast if she wants to? And then I saw this journey I'm on with my mom in the light of the whole lifetime tour we've done so far. This is our chance to heal anything that is left, it's our golden opportunity. Sometimes it feels like anything but. It does for me, and I'm sure it does for her. We always butted heads, we were never particularly close or compatible. She was an ex fashion model wife, I was a hippie horseback riding free spirit. We never really got a chance to know each other, and now we have it. I plan to make the most of it. I'll let you know how it goes.

Just Enough to be Dangerous

1/9/2015

It was my visit to the doctor with my mom yesterday that showed me what this expression means. I’ve heard all my life about knowing just enough to be dangerous, but I didn’t really contemplate it before.

I didn’t understand why my mom was supposed to keep doing something that in my mind was no longer useful. To my mind it seemed counterintuitive, yet when the doctor explained it to me, it was obviously necessary.

When I had a gallbladder attack, and subsequent surgery, several “healers” told me I could heal it naturally, their message being “if I just tried hard enough.” Well, I tried everything I knew and lost almost 30 lbs and was sick all the time until I had surgery. They knew just enough to be dangerous and I was lucky to have an advocate with a medical background to support and advise me.

I’m sure this could apply to building a house, driving a car, anything we do in life when we think we know more than we really do. At the root of it is egotism and pride in our own opinion without the benefit of enough training in that particular area. There is always a pushy quality to it of thinking we know better what someone needs or wants than they do.

My take away is to be aware and mindful of this: when offering advice and counsel, make sure it comes from a pure place of helping and not from wanting to appear the expert.

Sukoshi Rice is a philosopher and wellness coach practicing in Blairsville since 1985. She can be reached at sukoshir@gmail.com or www.sukoshirice.com

Healing Stress

11/7/2014

The AARP Bulletin that just came out has a big article on “Stress: Don’t Let it make you Sick”, where it talks about how stress adds to colds, weight gain, slower healing, sleep dysfunction, heart disease, depression, stomach problems and physical pain. I’ve talked about this for years, but having it researched by Carnegie Mellon and Harvard bolsters the validity of my theories!

People have asked me for years how and why Reiki, for instance, works, and now I have a scientifically proven answer: when we relax, we heal.

That sounds so simplistic, but stress leads us to create cortisol which, unrelieved, creates inflammation that causes damage to blood vessels, brain cells and promotes disease and painful conditions.

So when we have a condition, yes, we usually need to change the way we eat, and we need to exercise, but at the deepest level we need to address the way we think and feel. All the organic food in the world, while a great thing, can’t overcome the effects of worry, fear and anxiety. What we think of as highly productive (workaholic) is actually a fear response.

We are a stressed out nation but we have many well tested approaches to healing our stress. If you would like to know more and find a way to healthily manage the stress in your life, contact me for a no obligation no cost consultation on how I can help.

Sukoshi Rice has been promoting wellness in Blairsville since 1985, teaching and leading groups and private sessions to help us all live happy healthy lives. She can be reached at sukoshir@gmail.com or at www.sukoshirice.com.

the amazing gallbladder!

10/23/2014

In one week, I learned more about the gallbladder than I ever thought I wanted to. Since I'm kind of a hands on learner, it took a full blown gallbladder attack to get my attention. I mean, I would probably never have just studied the gall bladder for the fun of it, or even had much curiosity about it! I've had clients with gallbladder issues, but I never in a zillion years thought I would join their ranks. I almost never eat fried foods, icky pastries or sugary stuff, but I learned that isn't always the issue.

I did the one worst possible thing for my gallbladder, and I did it repeatedly and habitually. I overate. Because I am an emotional eater and have a very slow metabolism, if I eat until I feel full, invariably I feel STUFFED an hour later, and maybe ever 2 or 3 hours later. I am a fast eater, which comes from a whole history of eating disorders growing up.
I remember when I lived in the Ashram in Oakland, and there were 2 sizes of trays for the self serve dinner. If I took the small tray and didn't go back for seconds, I was always fine. When something was particularly delicious and I gave in to temptation, I always suffered afterward. Suffering took the form of gas and stomach aches, which I now recognize as bottom line gallbladder issues.
I'm actually pretty in awe of people who don't have food issues, who are relaxed about eating and eat enough to get satisfied. In my family, as in lots of families, eating carried a big heavy emotional valence. My dad had been starved nearly to death in prison camp in WWII. My mom had grown up dirt poor in Alabama in the depression. I had a Jewish Grandmother. And on top of all their issues, I didn't want to eat.
Yup, I was about 7 when I decided not to eat any more. I'm sure there's a backstory here, but basically I was taken to the doc and put on some tonic called "Eat it All." Honest. Within a year nothing was safe. I would have eaten dog food, and I went from this little stick figure to a balloon. My ability to control myself was gone, my natural capacity to judge full or not full was gone, and I ate and ate and ate. And then I became a teenager, and bulimic, well before that had a name. And it was emotional, and family based.
So here I am now, in my sixties, reviewing how disordered and disempowered all that was, and grateful for the gall bladder I guess, since it gave me all this awareness. And since I wrote this originally, I've had the whole thing removed.
It was infected and making me sicker and sicker. When I went to a natural healer, what he told me was that according to Chinese medicine the gallbladder stores rage, unexpressed anger. Aye Dios! That's a whole 'nother story.

The trickle down theory of PTSD

10/23/2014

I just finished writing this whole blog post for the last hour or 2, and it got eaten up somewhere in cyberspace. Maybe I don't know as much about PTSD as I thought. Maybe there was something there I shouldn't say? I mentioned my parents, both of them, and my sons. Maybe I only get to write about my own self. Who knows? I'm not going to write it again right now, but later.....

Healing Trauma

8/1/2014

When we think about trauma, we often think of the big stuff: murders, wars, car accidents. But sometimes the events that cause trauma are simple and small and barely noticeable to the naked eye. I'm thinking about one of the most beautiful women I ever knew who never thought she was pretty at all and was always trying to correct herself. When she was about 3, she got a new party dress and was dancing around in front of the mirror. She said, "Mommy, don't I look pretty?" To which her mother, now long dead and therefore unable to explain why, replied, "No, you are a very ugly little girl."
Twenty, thirty, forty years later, that pronouncement stuck to my friend like the gospel truth. When we learn something at a very young age, and especially from the all knowing parents, we take it as Truth and build our belief systems around it.
Being bullied, told we are ugly, punished unjustly or harshly; all these are part of many people's childhoods and form beliefs that are based on LIES. We don't deserve it! We're not bad! We are beautiful.
Somehow, unless we are able to get deep inside and transform the belief, the bad ideas remain and the good ones (I am beautiful!) often ring hollow. We want to believe them, but our training, our indoctrination, makes it impossible.
Which is where TAT comes in. In the most subtle and gentle way, beliefs that may have been with us since early childhood are dislodged and dissolved. In one hour we might look at something that held us hostage for 60 years and LAUGH! We believed that? And based our lives on it as Truth??? In one hour, it can be gone completely and easily. Try it with me, by phone, Skype or in person, or with a Certified TAT Professional near you.

Author

I am a lifelong seeker of connection with the Divine through music, food, art, meditation, healing work, love, travel and people. My search has taken me around the world to my current home in the mountains of GA. Everything I do is part of this Divine Life. On a good day, I am aware of it, and grateful.

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