October 3, 2019 THE WAY I FEEL

Art is transformative. It has been proven to reduce stress--increase self esteem--foster growth and create a sense of well-being. When you get in the ZONE--It's a type of meditation.You really get lost in the process. Completely focused--calm-in control. It's a wonderful feeling. The problem is--GETTING THERE. In order to get there--you have to--COMMIT --LET GO--SEE. That's what I tell my students. Committing is really scary. But once that's accomplished--let go of insecurity and doubt. STOP worrying about it. The last and most difficult thing to do is SEE. It sounds easy enough but it's not. The  BRAIN has a funny way of  creating pictures in the mind for any images we've seen before--BUT they're actually NOT what we really SEE. Example--think of a tree and your brain will conjure up an image BUT go look at a tree.  What you see is really quite different. The trick is to--trick the brain--be more intuitive--AND-- that takes practice.
The Japanese Lover by Isabel Allende is a wonderful story that spans several generations and continents. Alma Belasco's is a lucky little girl. Because of her mother's intuition, she is sent from her homeland, Poland,  to live with her aunt and uncle in San Francisco in 1939 and narrowly  escapes the horror of World War II. There she meets Ichimei Fukuda, son of their Japanese gardener.  While Alma and Ichimei's friendship turns to love, the Japanese attack  Pearl Harbor and the Fukuda family is sent to live in an Internment Camp. This lovely story unfolds as Alma reveals her past to her care worker Irina and grandson Seth while living at Lark House, a nursing home in San Francisco. Find out how Alma and Ichimei find each other again and what ultimately becomes of their forbidden love when you read this beautifully written novel. It's about 350 pages or a 4 mile run that melts away.