Teresa's Blog

In the haze of my funk I forgot to report on some of the ridiculous (up for interpretation) things I have tried lately to keep myself entertained. Grok is a term from the book The Primal Blueprint which is a book that talks about eating, living and exercising in the spirit of the caveman, presumably how humans spent many many years and in theory perhaps how our bodies still are intended to function as that was only 10,000 years ago and in the scheme of evolution not that long ago.  Grok is a personality developed by the author to represent our ancestors. The book and the author’s blog has lots and lots of references to what would Grok do.  The big big one I tried was to go Poo-Less.  I was really skeptical about this at first and I timed my trial around days with few or no meetings in case it didn’t work out well.  The main idea is to use no shampoo.  And if you think about it is funny.  We shampoo our hair to get the oil out.  Then we put conditioner in because the shampoo makes our hair dry.  And then when we style our hair we put store bought, expensive, and to top it off weird stuff that we can’t even pronounce back into our hair to make it, well oily.  I have already been on a rampage about products for the last few years anyway, mostly after mom’s cancer, although it hasn’t been easy because I feel like you need a degree in bio-chemistry to know what’s what.  So I was glad to further limit the products I expose my body to.  The test went pretty well.  I was surprised to find out what my dirty hair looked like.  I expected to look like I had dipped my roots in vegetable oil after a couple of days but it never happened.  Then I found I had all of this new body in my hair and with no added product.  This Poo-Less experiment has been going on for months now.  Now I have adapted it to shampooing the hair around my face because this does make me feel a little better and cleaner and then every once in a while, probably once a week I shampoo my whole head and start again.  Even after a work out or run I just rinse the rest of my hair out with water and so far no one has commented on a smell so I think I am good. I am not sure if I have mentioned this yet or not but the other thing we do almost all of the time is wake up without an alarm.  We have the luxury of just getting up when we get up and starting our day when we start our day for the most part aside from a few early meetings now and then.  The author of the Primal Blueprint covers on his blog why going without an alarm is good for your health and how to train your body to not need one in his blog here.  I think the best thing is I feel like I have enough stress in my life already so if I can reduce some by not waking up to an awful buzzing (which I am one of the Kulesza deep sleepers, not as bad as John, but pretty bad, so it take a loud alarm to wake me up) than I think I am better for it.  Plus I have always noticed that when I am getting enough sleep I am healthier.  When I was in college and I would stay up late to study for a big exam I think without fail I would always get sick shortly after and I always blamed it on too little sleep. Ok I think the only other really entertaining thing I have picked up is the Grok squat.  Well I am not sure what he calls it maybe he calls it a stretch. The picture to the left is it basically and then you rock side to side.  I did this other day on a street corner on the way back from a little run and some stairs, the cheapest, best work out you can find at your local parking garage.  Anyway I don’t know if I was just really sensitive but I felt like everyone in the nearby cars looked at me as if I might actually be an alien or perhaps caveman propelled 10,000 years to the future.  I didn’t feel like it could look that weird so maybe it was just my lacking confidence.  So I just have to add that this picture is actually from a blog post about the supposed best most natural position to go #2.  I haven’t yet tried that yet, although I am sure you all can’t wait for that blog post!