Meditation and Weight Loss

In this sliver of time before my heart valve replacement surgery, I can’t exercise hard. I can’t jog or do push ups or anything like that, so there’s no chance of me building up those reserves.

That doesn’t mean I can’t start working toward the place where I can do a handstand. Basically, now I can focus my body and lose weight.

The weight lost is tough for me an everyone. So many of those easy foods are prepackaged and full of carbs. Luckily for me, I live down the street from a farm that sells fresh produce. So I’ve been working on this for a while now and ramping up lately. A few years ago, I was 287 pounds. This morning, I was 224 pounds, so that’s great, but I’d like to be around 190 pounds. That’s 34 pounds which isn’t easy.

For breakfast, I had some cottage cheese. For lunch, a little chicken and cauliflower. We haven’t thought about dinner yet, but something easy.

The hard part for me is that I like to go hard with everything and that can be disastrous for weight loss. I need to focus on just moderation without excess moderation.

To help with that, I’ve been meditating some. I’m using websites that my friend Ken gave me and I have the Calm app. I’ve always meditated as part of a Quaker practice, but never daily. The daily part is helpful.

With the better food and meditation, I find myself worrying less about the operation, and more focused on now and healing and building my strength.

The Blessing of a Good Dentist

Well, you can’t have open heart surgery with any infections in your body, so they checked my teeth and determined that I need to treat some gum disease and have a couple of teeth removed.

Modern dentistry tools are wonderfully steam punk-like, and the hygienist and dentist agreed. I guess they’d always thought so to, and we joked about that, and about the view out the window which was of a Catholic church with a statue of the virgin in the front.

She seemed to be blessing me.

That’s appropriate I think. These people who were working on my mouth were removing infections so that I could have a surgery that will save my life. This place in a strip mall in a small town in a part of New York State almost no one knows was a place where my life was being saved.

What an extraordinary thing that is, and I feel and felt nothing but gratitude. I mean there was also a little soreness, but mostly it’s gratitude. I’m swapping out all of the dead parts of me and being given new health and new life.

What an amazing thing it is to have a good dentist, so I thanked the dental team for helping to save my life, and I hope they heard and understood me. I know they get a lot of complaints. They should get nothing but gratitude.

On Heart Valves, Diabetes, and Clean Teeth

So right now, on January 2, 2026, I’m 55 and I can barely move around some days. If you knew me in my California days, you probably remember me walking all over the High Sierra or organizing events and festivals and teaching all the time. Well, that’s not really me any longer. I’ve become an old guy.

But that’s the thing. I won’t be old for long.

I have the heart valve problem, and I found out that I have diabetes, and before I take care of all of that, I have to have my teeth cleaned and a couple of them removed.

This is all extraordinary. It’s amazing. 100 years ago, probably 30 years ago, I would have had a few months to live. As it is, chances are that not only will I live, but afterwards I’ll be jogging and of course training for a handstand.

I ran a magazine called The Journal of Radical Wonder for a while. This seems to me a moment for wonder. What an incredible gift I am getting. Now, I have a hard time walking to the end of the block. A year from now, I’ll be sprinting. I’ll have a new heart valve, I’ll be treating my diabetes, and my teeth will be minty clean!

I’m going to focus more in these posts on the day to day efforts, but I thought I’d have a moment, just to experience this moment of joyful wonder.

By the way, I get it if you’re dealing with medical issues and you’re not as positive as I am. That’s okay. Don’t let people force you into a false front!

What is this?

Hi everyone,

I have heart valve replacement surgery coming up in about a month, so I wanted to work on this blog and to focus on recovery.

I don’t want to dwell on how frightening it is. It certainly is scary, and it will be painful. But I realize that it will be less dangerous and painful than what a lot of women go through giving birth.I can have the same courage and positivity that women have.

Which is not to minimize my or anyone else’s experience. However, I want to focus on the positive. The positive is that in recovery, I can go back to being the vibrant and strong person I used to be.

I can be stronger.

I never have done a handstand, but by the end of 2026, I want to do that. And I want to hike and jog. I want to do another 10K. I used to do them all the time. I want to mow my lawn and shovel the walk. I want to take out the garbage. I want to do through hikes. I want to be the strongest 55 year old I can be.

I want to write and post about this so if you’re going through this, you can stay positive and focused as well. It sucks, but being positive makes it suck less.

If you’re going through this or something like this, remember you’re not the first. You’ve got this.

So I’ll be posting here semi-regularly. I hope you join me for this journey.

I want to do a handstand before January 2027. Right now it’s December 2025. My surgery will be some time in February of 2026. My recovery starts now, before my surgery.