THE CENTER IS A SMALL SCALE PRIVATE PRACTICE and there are days when Dr. Stram does not have any patients at all. He told me that he won’t be seeing any patients today, but I am free to come see some of the acupuncture sessions. I woke up as usual, but realized that it is still raining like crazy outside. So, what the heck I thought, acupunctures aren’t that interesting here anyway. Hence, I decided to take the day off, so that I can stay dry and warm inside the apartment.

Throughout the day, I did make myself creative breakfast, lunch and dinner (which I will share in the future entries), and basically spent most of my time watching ‘Prison Break’ which I had in my computer but did not get the chance to watch. (If you want to know, I’m still at Season One). Prison Break is quite great. Although I consider ‘Lost’ more appealing to my tastes, ‘Prison Break’ does have a bunch of cliffhangers that force you to take in an episode after the other. I finished at least ten episodes today.

The rain stopped for 2-3 hours in the evening, and I decided to go out for a walk. But as soon as I stepped outside the front porch, it started drizzling again, making me go back to the apartment, imprisoning me once again. I did chat with some old friends though, and I did a little reading about CAM and stuff, and ultimately wrote this blog. To tell you the truth, being ‘caged’ inside isn’t that eventful at all, and I do feel a little lonely by myself at the end of the day.

You can say that I can definitely relate to the prisoners in ‘Prison Break’ on the desire to break out and get freedom back, but on the other hand, I felt that I am way better than them, at least I get to watch TV series while I kill time away.

*** CAM of the day ***

Meditation
Meditation has always been related to religious and spiritual purposes. For ages, people knew about the benefits that meditation can bring to one’s physical and emotional health. This form of practice, which is under the NCCAM category of ‘Mind Body Medicine’, is now under extensive research of how it can improve many conditions, such as anxiety, heart diseases, pain and even cancer. Even practicing meditation itself brings upon some kind of health improvement anyhow. Conventional physicians have always treated insomnia with drugs, but Dr. Stram prescribes meditation to those with sleeping difficulties. At the center, they have weekly free meditation classes to teach you how relax and communicate with your inner self. Dr. Stram describes it as watching your thoughts go by, and this usually works if you do it daily.