Home: Valley Village, near Studio City
Children: David, 5; Sayahn, 11; Khari, 17
Unhealthy habit she’s at peace with: Haagen Dazs root beer floats with butter pecan ice cream – every once in awhile!
Habit she’s trying to change: A tendency to launch into a project after the children are in bed, instead of taking care of herself by soaking in a hot bath and going to sleep early.
Health and well-being come down to four basics, in Pamala Tyson-Mudd’s life: eating well, practicing yoga, getting enough sleep, and daily prayer and meditation. With a professional acting career and three children in the family – a preschooler, a tween and a teenager – she knows that once 6:00 a.m. rolls around and it’s time to wake the first child for school, anything can happen. So most days, she’s up by 4:30 or 5:00, to carve out as close to an hour as she can for grounding herself in her faith. Pamala’s husband, Se’an, has his own morning practice, and he helps her remember just how important that time for herself is.
Faith is bedrock to the Tyson-Mudd family, which grew from one child to three in the space of two years. First they and Pamala’s mother assumed joint guardianship of Khari, Pamala’s nephew. Then she and her husband adopted David from foster care. Pamala finds that early morning time, before the buzz of the day begins, crucial to her well-being. She reads the Bible and other spiritual books, and she prays for friends, family and the world. Opening her heart through prayer and meditation helps Pamala move through her own life with more peace – especially once she’s rushing to meet the carpool or gets cut off in traffic by another driver. Inspired by his parents’ example, Sayahn, the middle child, now starts his own day with five minutes of prayer and meditation before school.
While faith is the core element that sustains her, Pamala discovered the hard way that taking care of herself physically is just as important. Naturally a high energy person, she used to treat sleep as optional – something she could catch up on when there weren’t so many things to be done. She got a wake-up call a few years ago, when her blood pressure shot up dangerously high. Shocked and scared, Pamala made taking care of herself on all levels a higher priority. She now gets to bed at a reasonable hour as often as possible – although a sick child or some other unexpected development may derail the best of intentions. On the nights she’s able to sleep a full eight hours, Pamala notices how much better she feels. And she’s gone back to yoga, which renews and strengthens her body.
Eating well is also important. There’s not much refined sugar or snack foods in the Tyson-Mudd house, but the fruit bowl is always brimming with grapes, bananas, or green apples. The children love Pamala’s homemade tea, which they expect in the morning with their steel-cut rolled oats, with their afternoon snack when they come home from school, and again in the evening after dinner. Fresh ginger tea is a favorite, flavored with just-squeezed lemons and a little maple syrup, as is peppermint tea made with mint from a friend’s garden. For herself, Pamala prefers four to six small meals a day, filled with as many fresh fruits and vegetables as possible. “I know my children are watching and modeling me,” she says. “I’m a better mom if I’m a better me.”
