3 Quick Tips to Melt Stress, Boost Energy, and Enjoy the Holidays

Posted on December 19, 2012 by Stephanie

guest post by Erin Owen, YourPerformanceBreakthrough.com

What if I told you the Secrets to Stress Management, Time Management, and Improving your Health were all FREE, already exist inside of you, AND are inspired by ancient Eastern wisdom?

Sounds too good to be true, eh?

Then, what if I told you I could teach you these secrets in less than 2 minutes AND you could easily incorporate them into your daily life?

I know! I know! It’s can’t be true!

But it is.

Here are my 3 Quick Tips to Melting Stress, Boosting Energy, and Enjoying the Holidays… so you can Launch Yourself into 2013 with a Spring in your Step and a Solid Foundation for Performing at Your Optimum Level at Work and in Life at Large:

Tip #1: BREATHE! Take a moment now to pause, take 3 deep, easy breaths and allow any tension in your head, shoulders and back to roll off of you and float away.

Mindful breathing lowers your heart rate and releases feel-good endorphins, quiets your mind so you can think more clearly and make better decisions, and—let’s face it—just feels really darn good!

Tip #2: JUST SAY YES! to what supports your vision, to what feels good in your body, and to what inspires you and gives you joy.

You put your life into smooth driving alignment when you say no to the rest. And you do this by letting go of the “shoulds” and “should nots”, letting go of the externally imposed obligations of society and tradition, and saying “no thank you” to the seemingly-well-intentioned people in your life.

 When the little details of your daily life and the more important decisions of your personal and professional life line-up with what’s most important to you, then you feel more energized and excited about life and work, you sleep better, you experience less stress and less strife, and that shows up in every interaction and every moment of your life. Priceless!

Tip #3: CHEW your food SLOWLY and MINDFULLY. That’s right! Give all of your attention and presence of mind to mingling all your senses and tastes into each morsel of nourishment that crosses your lips and lands on your tongue.

Not only does chewing slowly make you realize what you do and don’t actually like to eat, but there are numerous physical, mental, and emotional benefits. Here are a few:

  • Your blood pressure lowers and your stress level goes down
  • You have less acidity in your stomach, fewer incidents of heartburn, and your overall digestion improves
  • You get a big boost to your immune system
  • Your energy level rises and your brain works better
  • And much more!

Breathing more deeply, making choices that support what you want in your life, and taking more time to enjoy your food and chew it thoroughly are all things you can do now—at no cost—to Melt Stress, Boost Energy, and better Enjoy your Holidays.

If you like the idea of taking one or more of these ideas and turning them into an inspiring, powerful intention to take you to the next level in 2013, then consider meeting with me by phone for a New Year’s Resolution Strategy Session! More details here.

Erin Owen, MBA, is certified teacher of Vinyasa Yoga and Yin Yoga, certified Reiki Master Teacher, author, speaker, and Performance Breakthrough Coach. You can download a free chapter of her book Recharge, Refuel, and Re-energize: The Conscious Entrepreneur’s Guide to Taking Back Control of Your Time and Energy, subscribe to her email list and receive a free 7-day “Stress Detox” audio course, and learn more about her at YourPerformanceBreakthrough.com.

 

Posted in Mental Health, Stress | Leave a comment

Why Einstein Was a Genius: He Did Brain Push-Ups

Posted on December 19, 2012 by Stephanie

Why Einstein Was a Genius – ScienceNOW.

Although the brain, weighing 1230 grams, is only average in size, several regions feature additional convolutions and folds rarely seen in other subjects. For example, the regions on the left side of the brain that facilitate sensory inputs into, and motor control of, the face and tongue are much larger than normal; and his prefrontal cortex—linked to planning, focused attention, and perseverance in the face of challenges—is also greatly expanded. “In each lobe,” including the frontal, parietal, and occipital lobes, “there are regions that are exceptionally complicated in their convolutions,” Falk says. As for the enlarged regions linked to the face and tongue, Falk thinks that this might relate to Einstein’s famous quote that his thinking was often “muscular” rather than in words. Although this comment is usually interpreted as a metaphor for his subjective experiences as he thought about the universe, “it may be that he used his motor cortex in extraordinary ways” connected to abstract conceptualization…

 

 

Posted in Brain, Nervous system | Leave a comment

Ben Affleck’s Hidden Power of Healing

Posted on November 26, 2012 by Stephanie
Agnes de Bethune liked this post

Recently, I had a four-hour layover in Times Square. I was taking the bus up north to visit family, one of whom is critically ill, and my stress level was seismic. Times Square is not a restorative locale at the best of times; after ducking into Le Pain Quotidien for an overpriced lunch, and unwilling to stiff a long-suffering waitress by spending the afternoon there, I found myself walking the streets in a freezing drizzle, lugging a leaden backpack, and overwhelmed by chaos.

Suprisingly good for a random choice.

Urban Outfitters provided no refuge; neither did H & M, Sephora, or any of the other glamorous shops in my path. The rain kept coming. By this time my nerves were so frazzled that I couldn’t summon up the will to obtain an umbrella; for me, chaotic environments are almost as obstructive as low blood sugar, when it comes to making sensible decisions.

Finally, in desperation, I ducked into a movie theatre and bought a ticket for the next available show. (It was ‘Argo,’ : highly recommended.) As soon as I was seated, in spacious, temperature-controlled darkness, I felt my blood pressure start to descend. By the end of the previews I was feeling human again.

A movie theatre, even during an action film, is the opposite of a chaotic environment. Every element of your surroundings is aligned to give you a singular experience; sound, light, temperature, furniture, even smell. Your nervous system is receiving a coherent set of stimuli, telling you–look this way, listen to this, follow this story, feel this emotion. You are taken on a journey, and all you have to do is receive it.

By the time I emerged from the theatre, I was able to tackle the rest of my trip with an organized mind. I’ve never been a Ben Affleck fan, but now I forgive him for looking like a frat boy.

This organized neurological journey is a big part of the healing process, and one often overlooked by modern healthcare systems, although this is beginning to change. It is one of the reasons that I design the Practical Bodywork treatment space with attention to every sense; color, light, smell, sound, temperature. Every element of the environment should send the message: ‘safety, comfort, welcome, peace.’

Architects have begun taking the structure of the human nervous system into account when designing buildings. This development is particularly pertinent to hospitals:

Macagno has been testing hospital design in a virtual-reality lab, and this work could bring us closer to that elusive hospital where, for example, no one gets lost. Other findings from the kind of research he is talking about may challenge what architects have practiced for years. For instance, hospital rooms for premature babies were long built to accommodate their medical equipment and caregivers, not to promote the development of the newborns’ brains. Neuroscience research tells us that the constant noise and harsh lighting of such environments can interfere with the early development of a baby’s visual and auditory systems.

Your environment can either promote well-being, or detract from it. This is a simple idea–perhaps so simple that it is often dismissed. Certainly it seems to have been ignored by a generation or three of big-box retailers, public schools, hospitals and urban planners. Not to mention physical therapy offices.

Related:

Why Are Rehab Centers So Ugly? Part I

Why Are Rehab Centers So Ugly? Part II

How to Heal Your Space

 

Posted in Anxiety, Aromatherapy, Healing Spaces, Nervous system, Stress | Leave a comment

Foam Roller Therapy: Why It’s Awesome

Posted on November 15, 2012 by Stephanie

Practical Bodywork is thrilled to bring you this guest post by Jesse James Retherford of TAO-Fit.com.

Anyone who knows me is aware that I am a huge advocate of foam roller therapy, and for a good reason: it works. In my personal and professional life I have found that foam roller therapy is an incredibly valuable practice. It is an absolutely vital component of a well designed holistic fitness and health routine.

What is Foam Roller Therapy?

Foam roller therapy is simply one of the best methods available to treat and prevent injury. If you don’t own or spend any time using a foam roller (the main tool used in foam roller therapy), then get one. Start.  A foam roller is, in my opinion, one the best investments of time and money you can make when it comes to your long term health and fitness.

Foam roller therapy is the use of a foam roller for self massage. There are many different kinds of self massage tools out on the market.  Finding the right one can be a confusing and expensive process. I prefer to keep my tools super simple, inexpensive, and effective.  The self massage tools that I most often recommend and use are a Trigger Point Grid foam roller, lacrosse ball, golf ball, and a softball.

Foam roller therapy helps break down dysfunctional tissue caused by poor movement patterns, i.e. poor form.  It increases joint function, mobility, and range of motion. It reduces acute pain, speeds up recovery and healing, and it reduces injury.

Foam roller therapy gives you access to the powerful healing of deep tissue fascial massage, all at a very low price, and at any time of day, every day. Integrating foam roller therapy into your weekly routine will help you not only prevent pain and injury, but treat and quickly recover from an injury. It speeds up the recovery process between workouts and reduces the total amount of time you spend lame from an injury.  Using a foam roller after a hard workout is like injecting pure recovery directly into your tissue.  It allows you to have a challenging workout routine, while at the same time, minimizes the pain and injury cycle.

Rolling your back

Want to read something that goes into a bit more detail about how foam roller therapy works? Want to learn how to do it? Read this.

When is the best time for Foam Roller Therapy?

Just about anytime is a great time for foam roller therapy. You can do it in the morning. You can do it in the evening. It’s great before a workout. It’s great after a workout. An important time for foam roller therapy is when you hurt. The best time for foam roller therapy is when you don’t hurt, because it really does help prevent you from hurting in the first place.

This is what this looks like for my clients: I often have a client who comes in for a workout session complaining about some minor pain in their knee, hip, back, or shoulder. These can be very frustrating sessions for the client. Whatever kick-butt workout I had planned gets ditched, because I don’t teach or train clients to exercise through the pain. If your knee hurts, then you can’t lunge or squat. If your shoulder hurts, then you can’t push or pull. The rule is: if it hurts to do… don’t do.

Rolling your quads: scrumptious!

What does a workout look like if we can’t work out?

These are actually my favorite sessions to teach! I love it when someone shows up in pain.  Pain time is learning time.  These sessions are an opportunity to show them where their pain is coming from.  I can teach them how to treat and heal themselves. Instead of going through their regular workout, I pull out the foam roller and show them what and how to work on themselves specific to what they are feeling. I show them where the pain pattern is originating and how to help break it down.

Then we get them back on their feet and have them do the same exercise that was causing the pain. Nine times out of ten, they can perform the exercise with no pain. In the rare case that the pain doesn’t go away, I pull out the massage table and do deep tissue fascial massage. I follow up with corrective exercises to train their body to stabilize and move without pain. These are the most valuable sessions I offer. Teaching people how to move efficiently without pain. And more importantly, empowering them with knowledge, understanding, and tools in which they can integrate into their personal routine.

Foam roller therapy is a powerful tool in your fitness, health, and wellness arsenal. With consistent practice you can perform roughly 80% of the massage work that I do… on yourself. Eighty percent! That is powerful stuff. It means feeling better, better movement, getting more out of your workouts, improved posture, less time in pain, less time on the massage table, and you get more out of a professional massage since you are doing so much of the work on your own. When combined with a holistic training program, the benefits of foam roller therapy is well worth the effort.

This is from an email I recently received:
“I am told by 2 surgeons that I need hip surgery due to bone spur on right hip. Also have tight IT band. I am trying to avoid surgery and be pain free… Since I stumbled onto your website and started to do the foam rolling on all body parts I am pain free… Last surgeon said I have a tight IT band. Physio was targeting just the IT band and after reading what people have posted about rolling everything it made sense.  I have been doing physiotherapy for close to a year and this is the first time that I have found relief.”

Rolling your IT band: not so much!

Interested in learning more? Check these out:
Foam Roller Therapy For Beginners
How To Treat and Prevent Injuries
Foam Rolling The IT Band
A Common Cause Of Sciatic Pain – Self Treatment
Self Treatment For Plantar Fasciitis

In the interest of full disclosure, I am an affiliate for Trigger Point Therapy. This means that if you purchase one of their products after clicking one of these links, I will get a small commission. That said, the only reason I am an affiliate for their products, primarily The Grid, is because I believe in it 100%.

Jesse James Retherford is a coach and therapist in Austin, TX. He helps his clients heal from the dysfunction of chronic pain and injury, recover and rebuild pain free posture and function, and propels them into the best condition of their lives so they can thrive physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually in all aspects of their career and life.  Find out more and sign up for his blog over at www.TAO-Fit.com

Posted in Deep Tissue massage, Exercise, Pain, Physical Therapy | 6 Comments

Dopamine and Desperation

Posted on September 19, 2012 by Stephanie

This past weekend, I attended a seminar on how to write a bestseller. Unsurprisingly, the focus of the event was mostly upon publicity and marketing. (If nuanced insights and a scintillating prose style were all that were required to sell books…well, I can dream.)

One of the speakers had a lot of energy. At first, I thought he was caricaturing the manic marketing guy; he was talking so fast, and in such a high-pitched voice, that a punchline seemed imminent. But he kept it up. For an hour. By the end of the hour, I was horribly certain that if producing a bestselling book requires a person to become a compulsively Tweeting, twitching shell of a human being, I will die in obscurity.

That ‘bestselling author’, however, will die of a nervous breakdown some forty years before I do.

Recently, I read Susan Cain’s new book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Won’t Stop Talking. This book is a bestseller for a good reason. It’s piled with non-obvious insights about the way people’s nervous systems differ from one another, and the implications for the way they function in work and society.

One insight which floored me is that introverts and extraverts have substantially different patterns of ‘reward’ in their brains. An extravert gets a huge hit of dopamine whenever they win something–a sporting event, a game of blackjack, the top 10 list on the New York Times Book Review. Their decision-making habits can often be skewed by this; they may be blind to serious risks they’re undertaking in pursuit of this reward. She uses, as an example, a man who gambled away $700,000 of his $1m retirement fund, in the continuing certainty that GM stock was going to rally dramatically–in 2007.

Introverts, on the other hand, get small hits of dopamine all the time–chopping vegetables with the sun streaming through the kitchen window, listening to a favorite piece of music, hugging their child. What they don’t get is a whopping dopamine wallop when their team wins the Super Bowl. It’s nice, they’re pleased, but it’s really no big deal. They’re motivated by risk-avoidance rather than reward, which means that there should be more introverts in charge of the financial system than there are.

This explains a lot.

I’ve always thought of myself as ‘ambitious,’ but there are many things I am not willing to sacrifice to ambition. Everyday quality of life is one of those things. I’ve often been baffled by people who seem unable to take a break. It appears that their ‘pursuit of fame, fortune and hot sex’ switches are turned on all the time, to the exclusion of enjoying the humble pleasures of Now. Sure, fame and fortune would be nice, but not at the expense of coffee breaks!

Because desperation isn’t healthy. When I’m working on a client, or writing an essay, or studying my Rolfing textbook, I can’t afford to be thinking about how I’m going to Tweet about the right celebrity to get more followers to sell more books to make it to the New York Times bestseller list to raise my fees to become a multimillionaire. That’s not what this work is about. What makes my work special is the details–the right environment, the right timing, the right words, the right silences.

For some truly wise advice on how to fill your life with something more valuable than celebrity Tweets:

How to Find Your Purpose and Do What You Love

“Prestige is especially dangerous to the ambitious. If you want to make ambitious people waste their time on errands, the way to do it is to bait the hook with prestige. That’s the recipe for getting people to give talks, write forewords, serve on committees, be department heads, and so on. It might be a good rule simply to avoid any prestigious task. If it didn’t suck, they wouldn’t have had to make it prestigious.”

Posted in Dopamine, Extraversion, Introversion, Psychiatry, Psychotherapy | 1 Comment

The Myth of the Chemical Imbalance

Posted on September 12, 2012 by Stephanie

by Sujatha Ramakrishna, M.D.

It’s been over a decade now since the pharmaceutical industry started exposing the American public to advertisements such as this one:

In that time I’ve encountered many patients who simply state, “I have a chemical imbalance,” when I ask them what brings them into the office. They don’t want to discuss their symptoms, or the details of their lives. They see a commercial on TV, decide that the description fits, and make an appointment so they can get some medication. Admittedly, these are some very effective advertising campaigns.

Thanks to the miracles of corporate marketing, we now have millions of people in the United States who are convinced that psychiatrists have deciphered the inner workings of the human mind to such an extent that we can add a little serotonin or norepinephrine to a depressed patient’s brain, and presto! Everything will be working smoothly again in no time at all.

If only our work was as simple as poking a dipstick into someone’s head, like a mechanic checking the oil in a car, and pouring a little dopamine in there if we find that they are a quart or two on the low side.

The truth is that doctors don’t really know how antidepressant medications work. We know that they alter the amounts of certain neurotransmitters in the synapses, and we know that they have positive clinical effects, but the exact mechanism of the process remains a mystery. Another rarely discussed fact is that the resulting improvements in mood are neither guaranteed nor permanent. Many patients experience no benefit at all from antidepressants, and even ones who do achieve satisfactory results report that the effects wear off after they have taken them for a few years.

Since psychiatrists are specialists, primary care doctors often refer patients to us after they have prescribed several different psychotropic drugs for them with minimal success, and much of what we do involves adjusting their medication regimen in an attempt to help them achieve remission. Unfortunately, I’ve had many people complain to me that they are tired of being “treated like a guinea pig,” because previous doctors have repeatedly switched them from one drug to another, as if they were conducting experiments on them to find out what worked.

The suffering that these patients endure during their frequent relapses illustrates the problem with believing in myths. In most of these cases, searching for the right mix of medications is a pointless endeavor, because describing their issues as a “chemical imbalance” is a horrible oversimplification. The human brain is not a piece of machinery. It can’t be manipulated and adjusted by a physician according to standardized specifications, as if it were the engine of a car. The biology of psychology is a much more subtle and intricate process than that. When human beings use their nervous systems in certain ways, it causes some neuronal connections to strengthen, while others are weakened. As an analogy, think of how people learn to play sports. The first time that someone throws a football, kicks a soccer ball, or swings a baseball bat, he or she might not be so great. With many repetitions, the neural pathways in the brain and body which are responsible for these acts of coordination become stronger, and the person’s performance improves.

While emotions and moods are different from motor activities, they are nevertheless functions of the nervous system, and the same principles apply. Being happy makes it more likely that a person will be happy in the future, because those neural pathways become strengthened over time. Unfortunately, sad people also tend to continue to be sad, and if the downward spiral progresses it eventually leads to clinical depression. It is theorized that the long-term administration of psychotropic medications somehow alters these pathways, and that those structural changes, rather than the the initial chemical changes, are what result in the relief of psychiatric symptoms. This is why it generally takes several weeks for the medications to start working when they are first prescribed. It’s also theorized that these drugs wear off after a certain period of time because the brain eventually reverts back to its original state, through a process resembling homeostasis.

More permanent changes in the brain can be achieved through other forms of treatment, such as psychotherapy. This is why mental health practitioners rarely, if ever, prescribe drugs as the only form of therapy for patients with active symptoms. Drugs can provide patients with a boost in mood, enabling them to work on the issues in their lives which resulted in their depression in the first place, but unless the underlying problems are addressed they will come up again when the medication effect wears off. A good counselor provides an objective voice, as opposed to a depressed patient’s inner voice of doom, and can help a patient come up with realistic ways to change his/her outlook or behavior that will eventually result in positive and long-lasting changes in his/her brain structure. Changing oneself for the better is commonly known as “personal growth” or “maturity,” and it is not achieved through ingesting chemicals. As with riding a bike, it takes time and practice, and once you learn you never forget.

There are many valid reasons that people want their symptoms to be managed with “meds only.” These include no time for therapy, no insurance coverage, and no interest in sharing their innermost thoughts and feelings with a therapist. However, if patients take psychotropic medications but opt out of other parts of their prescribed treatment plan, they rarely if ever achieve a full recovery. This is something that is left out of the drug-company advertisements, but it’s something that anyone who has ever taken antidepressants needs to know.

Posted in Antidepressants, Medicine, Mental Health, Nervous system, Psychiatry, Psychotherapy, Stress | 1 Comment

The Five Stages of Healing (Bodyworker Edition)

Posted on September 5, 2012 by Stephanie

Like a lot of other practitioners, I tend to suffer from bodyworker machismo. I spend my days treating other people’s pain, and ignoring my own. Which is exactly what I advise my clients not to do.

"Woman with Snake," ink and watercolor by Stephanie Lee Jackson

Recently, I hurt my foot. The technical description of what I did was tearing the plantar fascia on my right heel, after changing my running gait from heel-strike to ball-strike, and then doing yoga with a calf muscle in spasm. But that wasn’t my experience. My experience was that I got out of bed one day and my foot hurt.

So, for your edification and amusement, here are the five stages of Macho Bodyworker Healing.

1) Denial.

All I need to do is warm up, give my foot a rubdown, and it will go away. Like, in ten minutes. In a day or two. In a couple of weeks. Don’t mind me, I’m walking very slowly today. I’ll just stop running until this gets better. Dammit.

2) Bargaining.

I can’t afford to get this treated. I know all about plantar fasciitis, from that two-year bout with it I had, a decade ago. It’s not THAT bad. I’ll stay off of it for a weekend, roll my feet, wear my arch supports. Do some self-treatment on my gastrocs and soleus every morning, and evening, and several times during the day. See? All better!

3) Desperation.

It’s not getting better. I can’t afford to be crippled for two years, again. I can’t afford NOT to get this treated. I’ll call that Rolfer, what was his name? Brian Stern! He’s expensive, but so what? I’m crippled! My body is my livelihood! I have to keep up with two kids in the Franklin Institute! Help!

(Brian Stern is excellent at what he does. He restored considerable articulation to a pair of malformed ankle joints which were rusted stiff. Also, he is warm, approachable and sympathetic. Don’t you hate it when you go to a doctor, in desperate pain, and you get the sense that you are a boring nuisance to said doctor, and to most of his staff? That’s one nice thing about bodyworkers–most of them genuinely like people.)

4) Resignation.

Okay, that was great. My foot still hurts, though. I’d better do the foam roller every day, twice a day, and some gentle yoga. In fact, I should not skip the yoga even when I stop hurting. Because that’s what started this problem in the first place.

5) Exhibitionism.

All better! Mostly. I can walk right-left, right-left again, instead of thump-drag, thump-drag. I’ll do the foam roller for another week before I resume running. Meanwhile, I’ll describe this process in excruciating detail on my blog, so that others may learn from my foolish suffering.

Posted in Ankle pain, Exercise, Medicine, Pain, Physical Therapy, plantar fasciitis, Rolfing, Stress, Yoga | 1 Comment

Big Healthcare and Cheesecake

Posted on August 27, 2012 by Stephanie

I always get a little giddy when a new article by Atul Gawande appears. The latest, in which he compares the quality control and cost efficiency at the Cheesecake Factory with that of Big Healthcare, does not disappoint:

The neurologist, after giving her a two-minute exam, suggested tests that had already been done and wrote a prescription that he admitted was of doubtful benefit. Luz’s family seemed to encounter this kind of disorganization, imprecision, and waste wherever his mother went for help.

“It is unbelievable to me that they would not manage this better,” Luz said. I asked him what he would do if he were the manager of a neurology unit or a cardiology clinic. “I don’t know anything about medicine,” he said. But when I pressed he thought for a moment, and said, “This is pretty obvious. I’m sure you already do it. But I’d study what the best people are doing, figure out how to standardize it, and then bring it to everyone to execute.”

This is not at all the normal way of doing things in medicine.

I’d strongly recommend that you go read the whole thing. There are so many things to discuss that it’s hard for me to pick one. But in answer to the biggest and most obvious question–why aren’t best practices standardized in modern healthcare?–I offer this theory: Because doctors, by and large, are smart and ambitious people. And smart, ambitious people vigorously resist rule by committee.

That is not at all what Gawande or the Cheesecake Factory are suggesting. But in order for best practices to be evaluated and implemented within a large, complex system, communication has to be far more nuanced and, ironically, less hierarchical than has ever been the case in human history. One of the more fascinating parts of the article is his description of a successful interaction between a remote monitoring facility and a suspicious doctor:

Half an hour later, Hayes called Mr. Karlage’s nurse again. She hadn’t received the orders. For all the millions of dollars of technology spent on the I.C.U. command center, this is where the plug meets the socket. The fundamental question in medicine is: Who is in charge? With the opening of the command center, Steward was trying to change the answer—it gave the remote doctors the authority to issue orders as well. The idea was that they could help when a unit doctor got too busy and fell behind, and that’s what Hayes chose to believe had happened. He entered the orders into the computer. In a conflict, however, the on-site physician has the final say. So Hayes texted the St. Anne’s doctor, informing him of the changes and asking if he’d let him know if he disagreed.

Hayes received no reply. No “thanks” or “got it” or “O.K.” After midnight, though, the unit doctor pressed the video call button and his face flashed onto Hayes’s screen. Hayes braced for a confrontation. Instead, the doctor said, “So I’ve got this other patient and I wanted to get your opinion.”

Hayes suppressed a smile. “Sure,” he said.

When he signed off, he seemed ready to high-five someone. “He called us,” he marvelled. The command center was gaining credibility.

Notice: this is not an authoritarian system. This is negotiation by persuasion, using facts, mutual respect, and good manners.

Woo hoo.

Posted in Medicine, Practicality | Leave a comment

What to Do When You Can’t DO Anything

Posted on August 20, 2012 by Stephanie
Leisa Schaim liked this post

As many of you know, my brother-in-law, Leif, is currently battling a rare form of cancer called mantle cell lymphoma. He’s young, formidably strong and has one of the healthiest lifestyles of anyone I know. We went up to Maine to visit him last week.

'Rain,' ink and watercolor on paper, Stephanie Lee Jackson, 2002. Private collection.

It’s impossible to describe what it’s like to watch someone you love go through a terrible experience. As far too many of us already know, cancer treatment is not only brutal, but chronic; it just goes on and on. Coping with chronic is qualitatively different from coping with a crisis, like getting hit by a bus; getting hit by a bus has a narrative arc that you can move through. Getting cancer is like setting up house in the middle of a freeway.

Most of us, of course, want to be able to walk into a crisis and fix it. Feeling helpless in the face of suffering is thus one of the most difficult states of mind we endure. So what can we do about that? Here are a few suggestions.

•  Never underestimate the healing value of mundane service. Wash dishes, clean floors, do laundry, run errands, cook a healthy meal. These tasks are particularly helpful by virtue of the fact that they are infinitely renewable, and can be done without thinking too hard.

• Just be around. Send notes, send gifts, make phone calls. They’re appreciated.

• Don’t say, “If there’s anything I can do, give me a call!” Instead say, “Would it be helpful if I brought a meal, did laundry?” People under stress are often too overwhelmed to be proactive in asking for help. Use your common sense, double-check, and listen to the answers.

• Meditate. Here is Ken Wilber:

…Foremost among these practices is the one known as tonglen, which means “taking and sending.” The practice is as follows:

In meditation, picture or visualize someone you know and love who is going through much suffering–an illness, a loss, depression, pain, anxiety, fear. As you breathe in, imagine all of that person’s suffering–in the form of dark, black, smokelike, tarlike, thick, and heavy clouds–entering your nostrils and traveling down into your heart. Hold that suffering in your heart. Then, on the outbreath, take all of your peace, freedom, health, goodness, and virtue, and send it out to the person in the form of healing, liberating light. Imagine that they take it all in, and feel completely free, released, and happy. Do that for several breaths. Then imagine the town that person is in, and, on the inbreath, take in all of the suffering of that town, and send back all of your health and happiness to everyone in it. Then do that for the entire, state, then the entire country, the entire planet, the universe. You are taking in all the suffering of beings everywhere and sending them back health and happiness and virtue.

When people are first introduced to this practice, their reactions are usually strong, visceral, and negative. Mine were. Take that black tar into me? Are you kidding? What if I actually get sick? This is insane, dangerous! When Kalu first gave us these tonglen instructions, a woman stood up in the audience of about one hundred people and said what virtually everybody there was thinking:

“But what if I am doing this with someone who is really sick, and I start to get that sickness myself?”

Without hesitating Kalu said, “You should think, Oh good! It’s working!”

…

A strange thing begins to happen when one practices tonglen for any length of time. First of all, nobody actually gets sick. Rather, you find that you stop recoiling in the face of suffering, both yours and others’. You stop running from pain, and instead find that you can begin to transform it by simply being willing to take it into yourself and then release it. The real changes start to happen in you, by the simple willingness to get your ego-protecting tendencies out of the way.

–Ken Wilber, ‘Grace and Grit,’ 247-49

This doesn’t have to be a big dogmatic deal. You don’t have to let anyone know you’re doing it. It’s a practice that may help you to be more present, less anxious, and less visibly freaked out. Lots of us want to ‘be strong’ for our loved ones, but what does that mean? Stoicism? False cheer? Pretending nothing’s wrong?

Tonglen meditation can help you stop ‘doing’ and move into ‘being,’ which is where authentic connection lives.

Posted in Anxiety, Cancer, Healing Spaces, Meditation, Pain, Practicality, Stress | Leave a comment

The You-ness of Rolfing

Posted on July 17, 2012 by Stephanie

Theresa Zordan is an expert Rolfer and visionary blogger from Denver, CO who graciously offered to swap guest posts with Practical Bodywork. We are pleased as punch to have her.

It may be hard to believe, but sometimes I forget about Rolfing and how helpful it can be.  It’s especially hard to believe considering I am a Rolfer.  This is what I do all day, every day.  But you see, I have this weird thing in my brain about Rolfing: I think it can help just about everything, for just about everyone.  Except me.

Someone tells me how their knee’s been bothering them; I think to myself, “I can help with that.”  Someone tells me how they feel out of whack and off kilter; I think to myself, “I can help with that.”  Someone tells me how they get headaches a few times a week; I think to myself, “I can help with that.”  Someone’s freaking out about work and their house and their boyfriend; I think to myself, “I can help with that.”  Then, I break my toe, sprain my shoulder, get emotionally wrapped up into a giant-multi-colored-extra-knotted ball of string and I think to myself, “Whatever am I going to do?!?  Who could possibly help me with this!?!”

And so, last week, I found myself with said broken toe (my first broken bone!), and sprained shoulder (thanks for nothing, yoga), and emotional ball of knots and I finally (finally!!!) remembered that Rolfing might be able to help me.  So, I called up my bud, Dave Sheldon, a Rolfer in Boulder, and asked if he could fit me in.  He said yes and I walked into his office with a laundry list of complaints.  It was one of those sessions (do you do this?) where you go in, planning to mention just those two or three things that are really bothering you, and by the time you’re five minutes into the session you’ve listed 23 things instead.  “AND my roommate’s dog is driving me crazy!  AND my sister’s coming to visit next week and it’s stressing me out!  AND my sacrum feels all wonky!  AND I’ve been wearing flip-flops for two weeks now and I’m sick of it, but I can’t wear any other shoes without my toe hurting and I can’t exactly walk into the bank barefoot, can I?”  And so on, and so forth.

Then, the funniest (and at the same time the most natural) thing happened.  I got on the table and closed my eyes, and Dave started working.  All of a sudden, it felt like all these layers were falling away from me.  Like I’d been wearing a suit made out of 23 layers of tissue paper.  So light that I hadn’t thought to take it off, but enough that it was affecting the way I looked and that rustling noise was really getting to me.  And one by one, Dave gently cut each layer away, and let it fall to the ground.  Some layers were wrapped tightly around my foot, keeping it stable, but I didn’t need those anymore.  Some of them were wrapped all around my shoulder, all the way down to my wrist and around my ribs and spine.  I didn’t need those anymore either.  Most of them were wrapped around my heart, or my solar plexus, or my throat, or my head, getting me caught up in unnecessary worry and fear and distress.  I didn’t need a single one of those tissue paper layers.

And I realized there, on the table, why it was that I fell in love with Rolfing in the first place.  Dave wasn’t taking away anything that I needed, or anything that was inherently me.  And he wasn’t adding anything to me, either.  He was simply uncovering the real me, and giving me permission for that to be enough.  I didn’t need any of this tissue paper to make me stable or pretty or to cover anything up.  I was perfectly me, without all that other stuff.  He was reminding my shoulder and my toe that they already knew how to recover from an injury quickly and with ease.  He was reminding me that worry and fear were good intuitive signals to listen to, but there was no reason to walk around spinning in them all day.  And the greatest part was that he did all that without saying a word.  He worked with the physical tissues and the energetic patterns and gently unwound them until there I was, just the way I should be.  And when I came from that centered, more-me sort of place, I realized, my sister and I had shared a house (and usually a bedroom) for 16 1/2 years.  We could probably figure out 3 days just fine.  Oh, and my sacrum felt better, too.

It was funny.  When I walked into his office, I didn’t feel like someone other than myself.  But when I walked out…the change was drastic and clear.  I’d walked in like a papier-mâché doll of myself and walked out as me.  And that right there is some good shit, yo.

–Theresa Zordan, Rolfer extraordinaire

Posted in Belief, Practicality, Rolfing, Stress | Leave a comment