(The whole podcast is a good listen if you like to keep up with the latest science about health, and… it’s 2 hours long! I listen sometimes while driving into Austin for work several days a week. It’s available on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and other venues.)
First, know that some kinds of mouthwash can actually raise your blood pressure. (Timestamp on YouTube is 1:22:38.)
Wow! That was news to me!
There’s an ingredient in antiseptic mouthwashes that you want to avoid: chlorhexidine. It’s an antimicrobial substance used to treat gingivitis.
Turns out the oral cavity (mouth) has a microbiome that includes microbes that regulate blood pressure!
Who knew, right?
Chlorhexidine in mouthwash kills these helpful microbes, leading to higher systolic blood pressure. That’s the top number.
Dr. Huberman also recommends against using alcohol-based mouthwashes because they deplete the healthy oral microbiome.
Takeaway: read the ingredients, especially if you use mouthwash and have high blood pressure.
Second, xylitol is a low-calorie sweetener that streptococcus mutans bacteria eat (like any sugar). Unlike other sugars, xylitol prevents formation of an acid made by these bacteria that demineralizes the teeth and leads to cavities. (Timestamp is 1:14:23.)
So xylitol keeps teeth mineralized and prevents cavities.
It also helps the body produce more saliva, which also supports remineralization of the teeth.
When I do intraoral manual therapy for my clients with jaw tension, I ask them to swish with a little mouthwash before I put a gloved finger into their mouths. I’ve used salt water too. Although it doesn’t freshen breath, rinsing with salt water helps keep healthy mouth bacteria in balance.
I started doing this when the COVID virus was such a concern, and I still use an air filter.
In my years of doing bodywork, I have encountered three clients who didn’t respond well to my work.
Each one of them had chronic pain.
Keeping up with the current understanding of chronic pain, it appears that when the tissues from the original injury have healed but pain continues, or re-emerges later, the pain has become based in the brain, not in the tissues, even though that’s where people feel it. It’s called neuroplastic pain (neuro = nervous system, plastic = able to change).
Brain-based doesn’t mean “it’s all in your head,” as in “you’re imagining it.” Nope. If you feel pain, and it hurts, it’s real.
In my own understanding, when an injury is accompanied by, or occurs with or near, a trauma (stress, overwhelm, lack of resources or support), neurons in the brain can wire together and start firing together, sending pain signals long past the healing of the injured tissues.
Similar to PTSD, chronic pain can be triggered by memories and/or emotions in the present that the brain associates with the original injury and trauma.
Effective treatment of chronic pain often responds to a mind-body approach to rewire those neurons. Fortunately, the brain has plasticity. With help, people who suffer can learn to rewire those neurons and eliminate the pain.
It’s not that bodywork can’t help. It certainly can. Over the years, I’ve helped numerous people in pain feel a lot better, and often their pain has been longstanding. Sometimes one session does wonders. Sometimes it returns, less severely than before, and we keep working until it resolves.
Sometimes a client with neuroplastic pain finally gets enough relief to resolve the residue of the trauma at the core of their pain, and it never returns.
It’s beautiful when that happens!
We know some things about chronic pain now, and there’s still a lot that’s unknown. Curiosity, inquiry, belief, and patience seem to help.
There are pain coaches who can help. I met one who gets regular craniosacral biodynamics and came in for a session when she was visiting Austin from Colorado. She works remotely. If you want a referral, please let me know. I’m sure there are many others around the country.
This past Saturday, I provided the “ofrenda” at the monthly gathering of women dancing the 5 Rhythms (Step Into Yes) in Austin, facilitated by Lisa DeLand (dancingfirelizards.com).
Lisa and I are old friends. We met at Sweat Your Prayers, an ecstatic dance, in 1995. We have similar paths of recovery from adverse childhood experiences, and now, having worked a lot with our selves, by ourselves and with the help of others, we are in the primes of our lives in terms of creating and offering paths to wholeness and wellness for those in search.
Our paths have some overlap. We both are acquainted with the vast amount of suffering in the world, including our own, and feel moved to offer paths that liberate us and those we work with from conditioning that limits us.
My ofrenda was called Bringing Us Home To Our Existence, and I had 20 minutes between waves of dancing to teach the 28 or so women present about their inner rhythms: breath, heartbeat, and tide.
Background: In late 2022, I began posting on Instagram daily — for 100 days — my experience of what I was then calling Biodynamic Meditation. I’d actually begun practicing it many years previously, in 2013, after I took my first class in Craniosacral Biodynamics and wanted to explore how the concepts of the breath of life, primary respiration, potency, and the tides actually manifested in my own embodied existence.
I sat and sat and noticed more and more. It helped to have some direction from my training, and I could go to my teacher, describe my experience, and have him verify whether I was on track.
That’s one way of learning.
I had planned to start teaching Biodynamic Meditation in 2023, and then I learned I was going to have to move from my home of 12 years, which disrupted my plans.
The move is complete. My foundation training in Craniosacral Biodynamics (and certification) is complete. I’m spending this year learning how best to teach Biodynamic Meditation, and I dipped into in-person teaching of a large group for the first time on Saturday. It was too brief, but they got a taste of it. My take is that some people (who all gathered primarily to dance) were not deeply interested, and others came up afterward and thanked me.
I’m now considering calling it meditation for self-healing, meditation for healing, meditation for health, or simply, how to make friends with your body.
If this is a topic you are interested in, I’d love to hear from you! I’m open to working with individuals, small groups, in person, and online.
I made this vegan curry a few days ago and it was so good I made it again! I like to cook big pots of tasty soups or curries, eat it for a few days (it gets even tastier), and when I want something else, I freeze what’s left and make something else. Then I have something that just needs thawing and heating when I don’t have time to cook.
The veggie count (counting each ingredient only once, because the spices and vegetable stock duplicated some): coconut (oil and milk) yellow onion ginger garlic spices: turmeric, smoked paprika, fenugreek, coriander, cumin, red pepper, lemongrass, shallot, makrut lime peel, black pepper vegetable stock: carrots, celery, leek, parsley, thyme, bay leaf, olive oil veggies: tomatoes, sweet potatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, bell pepper, shiitakes, baby Bellas, oyster mushrooms, peas
That’s 30 plants, served over red quinoa, so the total is 31! In one meal!
Honestly, I’m not sure if the red pepper found in the curry powder and red curry paste and also in the vegetable stock is the same as the fresh red bell pepper chunks I added. So maybe the total is just 30…but whatever! I’m pleased with this experiment.
When you add herbs and spices and spice blends like curry powders and pastes, as well as vegetable stock, your plant count goes way up quickly.
The non-plant ingredients were: water, salt, and shrimp and barramundi because I wanted more protein. I added them at the end because they cook fast.
The recipe I used says it makes 6 servings. These are generous servings!
The variety of plants feeds a variety of good gut microbes, increasing digestive health and thus energy and overall health. Another perk: eating a variety of colors of veggies and spices — yellow, red, orange, green, white, brown, aka “eating the rainbow” — has numerous health benefits as well. (Note to self: next time add a blue or purple veggie — eggplant, cabbage, purple onions or sweet potatoes.)
This is a challenge that’s been getting some attention, and it’s worth having fun with!
You’ll get more fiber, eat less processed foods, and it supports your healthy gut microbes. Of course, having a healthy gut influences the rest of the body, improving digestion, energy, mood, sleep, and just plain feeling good.
I didn’t used to eat breakfast, as part of an intermittent fasting regimen. Now, I eat a hearty breakfast and eat again when I feel hungry in the afternoon. Letting hunger drive your eating, and then eating slowly and chewing well until satisfied, makes a difference.
That’s often it for the day. No dinner, and it makes intermittent fasting easier.
I do know the experience of overeating because the taste of something is so satisfying. I’m working with that. Also, I used to have a leaky gut and started working to improve my gut health in 2007, so it’s been a focus for a while.
Here’s what I’ve been eating for breakfast, with minor variations:
The organic sprouted rolled oats came from Wheatsville, an Austin food coop. They cook in 5 minutes, although I changed the proportions to 1/3 cup each of boiling water and oats and immediately turn the heat down to as low as it goes.
Add to that coconut milk yogurt, pecans, dried cranberries, beautiful organic blueberries, flax seeds, hemp seeds, maple syrup, and 5 spices (Ceylon cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, orange peel, and allspice). While the oats are cooking, add everything else to a bowl. When the oats are done, add to your bowl and stir well.
Voila! 13 plants, from Wheatsville, Costco (the pecans and maple syrup aged in bourbon barrels!), and HEB, our beloved Texas chain that does so much for Texas communities in crisis from disasters and Texas public schools.
Really, it’s pretty simple: a whole grain, nuts, seeds, berries, yogurt, a natural sweetener, and spices. Have fun improvising on that!
Next up, a veggie curry served over quinoa.
Can I consume 30 plants in two meals in one day? Stay tuned!
This is the name of a Substack I subscribe to. The writer, Natureza Gabriel, is releasing a book by this title chapter by chapter on Substack now, and the book itself will be published in April. You can preorder it.
This topic is fascinating to me. As a bodyworker, biodynamicist, and teacher of meditation for self-healing, I work with the autonomic nervous systems of my clients/friends in every session (how can I not?), mostly assisting them to move more deeply into a parasympathetic state where healing has more resources to happen — healing like tissue repair, better regulation of metabolic processes, better coordination of the body’s systems, reduction of pain and tension, more wholeness, and more.
People experience themselves differently after a session, and some of each session is cumulative. It lasts. Getting regular sessions changes the autonomic nervous system, reducing stress levels. People sense themselves as more whole, integrated, coherent, healthy. I experienced this myself and changed my livelihood to offer it to others.
When the body is in a more sympathetic state, it’s gearing up for action and doesn’t have resources for healing. And…many if not most people in our culture live in bodies that are more stressed than is healthy. Sometimes way more stressed. And that affects everything: health, relationships, performance, behavior, cognition, presence, intuition…
There are many more autonomic states than parasympathetic and sympathetic. It’s more of a spectrum or spiral than an either-or equation, as seen in the image of the book’s cover above of a poster of the autonomic spectrum. You can get these posters from Gabriel’s organization for your office: https://restorativepractices.com/product-category/posters/
I’m someone who years ago, after being diagnosed with PTSD and processing a major childhood trauma (that occurred before PTSD existed as a diagnosis), asked herself, “How relaxed can I get while awake and not using substances?”
As the antidote to having a “stress disorder” that’s conventionally considered incurable, I set off on a journey of meditation, movement practices, bodywork, NLP, shaking, Zen, vipassana, breathwork, stillness, perception, and craniosacral therapy. Then I trained in craniosacral therapy.
The writer Gabriel has trained in neurobiology and also with indigenous people who have maintained connections within themselves, each other, with the world around them that are not prevalent among people in today’s predominant capitalistic, technological cultures.
I’m familiar with some of these connection states as a long-time meditator and through exposure to shamanic/indigenous and Buddhist/yogic beliefs and practices.
Another book by this author is Restorative Practices of Wellbeing, which I just received and will soon be delving into. Find his books here: https://restorativepractices.com/product-category/books/ You can preorder The Neurobiology of Connection as well.
We make the world a better place starting with ourselves.
It’s a drizzly day here in Central Texas. I drove on wet country roads to get to a women’s silent retreat, because I needed a few hours to simply be with myself peacefully in a quiet environment and allow what wants to arise to arise.
On the last day of November, 2023, I completed a foundation training in Craniosacral Biodynamics that started in September 2021. Ten four-day seminars in Silver Spring MD near Washington DC, meeting and exceeding the requirements for giving and receiving sessions, reporting to and receiving supervision from teaching assistants, writing a research paper on the cranial nerves, taking a four-hour test…
I put a lot into it and got a lot out of it, and I’m pleased with the work that I did to embed doing this bodywork modality deeply into my system.
I’m healthier for it, I’m able to do so much more for my clients, and my practice has grown.
My desire to undertake this training arose during COVID. I didn’t work for the first six months after the initial lockdowns, and when I went back to work it was only one or two days a week until April 2021 when a lot of people had been vaxxed and felt comfortable coming in for (overdue) bodywork.
I had received unemployment benefits and stimulus checks, my expenses were low, and I had a lot of time on my hands when so many people were getting sick, some dying or getting long COVID.
It was a sobering time. I did my end-of-life paperwork and reflected on what I’d really like to do with my life, given the opportunity and capability to make a difference.
I knew my skills as a craniosacral therapist could deepen. I’d had training in both Upledger and Biodynamics styles of craniosacral therapy. I’d thought about getting more training in Biodynamics before, but it never seemed like the right time, affordable, convenient, so I kept blowing it off.
During COVID in spring 2021, I got clear: I wanted to study Craniosacral Biodynamics, doing a full foundation training with a seasoned teacher. I was pretty sure which teacher I wanted to work with, got confirmation on that from a more experienced therapist who’d met this teacher, applied for his next training (which happened to be in DC), and was accepted.
It was a good decision. The teacher was beyond excellent and had three experienced full-fledged Biodynamics teachers assisting him. I don’t know that I could have asked for anything more. Well, perhaps not having to travel.
I did as many Biodynamics sessions as I could, and my practice grew. In addition to my private practice, I began working in an integrative medical clinic.
I did as many trades with other Biodynamics grads as I could and received professional sessions as well, averaging 2 sessions a month over the course of the training. Fortunately, I had a highly experienced practitioner in the office next to mine to answer my practical questions.
I experienced several other challenges doing the training. We wore masks indoors for the first few seminars, and of course in airports and on planes.
I made the trip halfway across the country and back nine times, opting to do one of the middle seminars on video at home when my energy was depleted.
Unaccustomed to business travel and not a frequent leisure traveler by air, the crowded airports and planes were a shock at first. I got TSA Pre-Check and later took a fellow introvert’s advice about how to do business travel with the least amount of stress, and it helped a lot. I feel more ease with business travel now.
I stayed in various AirBnBs in the DC area. Most were okay, some barely tolerable, one felt haunted (or maybe I was more sensitive), one was excellent but only a one-time possibility. I stayed in a hostel midway through and in a hotel for the last two seminars. I used the Metro to get around at first and was fascinated by it, but later took ride-shares between Reagan airport and found lodging in walking distance of the training.
It was lonely, being so far away from home in a place I was unfamiliar with. I made friends with my classmates, but I was on my own after class and sometimes felt acutely lonely. I loved my time in the classroom and appreciated every bit of kindness and connection from those associated with the training, but sometimes the rest of it was really hard.
I’m definitely not an East Coast person, and I had a new appreciation for being embedded in my central Texas community — I know I’ll always have meaningful connections here.
Being adventurous, I explored the wide variety of cuisines in downtown Silver Spring: Thai, Korean, Senegalese, Ethiopian, Vietnamese, Nepalese, Japanese, Spanish-influenced Mexican, something similar to Tex-Mex, diner, upscale American.
Air travel was easier and less expensive when I left and returned on Saturdays, and class was Monday through Thursday, so I had extra time to explore DC. I took the Metro to the Mall and visited art museums and admired the gardens. Another time, I saw the Phillips Collection. I went to the Lincoln Memorial during cherry blossom time.
Toward the end, I rented a car and took day trips to Annapolis and the Chesapeake Bay, and to Gettysburg and Harpers Ferry, just to see the countryside around DC.
A really difficult challenge happened in April 2022. I was in an automobile accident that totalled my car, and even though I wasn’t seriously injured, the effect on my nervous system was substantial.
I wondered why I couldn’t just get it together afterwards. Then I saw a post in an online Upledger group, wondering why people can have, say, shoulder surgery and be fine in a few months, but it can take 1-3 years to fully recover from an automobile accident.
Part of it is the shock. Surgeries are usually planned and can be life-saving. No one plans a car accident and you’re going to be worse off.
My autonomic nervous system experienced a dire threat. I could have lost control of my car and ended up seriously injured or dead. I could have seriously injured others, too — four cars were involved.
Humans are simply not meant to go from 65 mph to zero with impact in 5 seconds or less without repercussions. Every cell is affected. Not only did I feel stiff and unsettled, I felt buzzy electrical energy leaving my body for a few months after the accident.
It took my nervous system 11 months to recover energetically from the accident, and that’s with the help of physical therapy/yoga therapy exercises, giving and receiving Biodynamics sessions, and doing regular qi gong and meditation.
I know I did the best I could to protect myself and others from serious injury, but the person who failed to secure a ladder before driving at high speed in the middle lane of a freeway initiated the whole 4-car accident. They were never identified. My insurance went up, and someone is supposedly suing me, although I haven’t been served any papers yet. Thank goodness for the guard rail I slammed into.
The Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v Wade also happened when I was in DC, not long after the accident, and I read about this far-right court’s desire to overturn gay and interracial marriage and outlaw birth control…a direct threat to the happiness of my family and countless others.
I experienced outrage…and depression. No government should have the right to make these decisions for individuals.
I met a man in person last November after messaging with him. He gave me a book I was interested in. We took it slowly, getting to know each other, and our friendship evolved into boyfriend-girlfriend status a few months later. It’s been a bright spot this year.
The last major challenge was learning I was going to have to move in February 2023. I felt settled in my trailer park. I didn’t want to move. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to find a new location or sell the trailer. After going back and forth on it several times, I ended up selling it and moving in with my sweet boyfriend in Wimberley in August. It’s going well.
Even the 35 mile commutes to work in Austin, driving on two-lane scenic Hill Country roads, are pleasant and restorative.
Being in the classroom and then employing new skills in my practice after each class were bright spots. I look forward to continuing to grow my skills and understanding and hopefully to contribute something to this field.
Doing this training was a true hero’s journey. I met allies, had mentors, encountered dragons, was a dragon, was tried and tested in several ways, and I came through it, completing my mission, transformed and changed.
Now, to enjoy some spaciousness as “what’s next” begins to show up.
Sometimes it seems like there aren’t enough hours in the day.
When you have days like that AND you have insomnia keeping you awake at night, maybe the insomnia is a gift.
When I experience insomnia, I wake up in the dark with a busy mind, thoughts passing through — sometimes zooming through — usually after 4 am when I’ve gotten maybe 5 hours of decent sleep but would prefer 7.
I don’t even look at the clock any more.
Insomnia seems like a big nuisance. A good night’s sleep is most restorative for how well I function the next day. I desire that.
What I’ve been doing recently when I awaken too early is work with my mind, or rather, my awareness.
To distinguish them, the mind thinks thoughts. Awareness is silent and larger. It’s more like a field that includes your mind, body, and the perceptions of your senses: sounds, sights, smells, tastes, body sensations, and thoughts.
I can think thoughts (think think think = mind), and I’m totally in that experience. I am being thought. I can also choose to think thoughts.
I can observe that I am thinking thoughts (my mind is thinking thoughts = awareness), and it’s one step removed from thinking.
When I awaken with insomnia, it seems that my mind is thinking thoughts involuntarily.
But is it?
Because I can also direct my attention to become aware not just that I’m thinking but aware of my body, of sensations.
Sometimes when my monkey mind is racing, it’s a struggle to find enough space between the thoughts to jump off that moving train, but with continued intent to sense into my body, it happens.
(I remember the first time years ago that I jumped off the fast-moving train of thoughts. I was scared and didn’t know what would happen. I somersaulted into darkness and never landed. It was so peaceful!)
Sensations are always available, and plunging into the experience of sensations from the experience of thinking is like entering a different reality.
It’s slower and calmer, like standing in calm water after being on hot, dry land.
What I experience in the sensory state is interesting. The other night, after switching my attention from thinking to body awareness, I got an image of three parallel wavy lines rising off my body and leaving.
When I woke too early this morning, after I switched to my felt sense, I became aware of an area in my abdomen that was roughly round, about 8 inches in diameter and an inch or so thick, that felt a bit denser than the surrounding area.
I stayed with the sensation. The area moved down, spread out, and became less dense.
Maybe it was my greater omentum, which is a little-known, very cool organ that can move around in the abdomen and hug whatever organ needs it.
In these cases, my brainwaves had probably shifted to theta, the irrational state that we pass through on our way into sleep. So what happens may not make sense.
I don’t believe that makes it any less “real”. There are many ways of perceiving.
“Theta waves are the dominant frequency in healing, high creative states, remembering emotional experiences (good and bad), memory retrieval, and encoding new memories into thoughts,” explains communication pathologist and cognitive neuroscientist Caroline Leaf, Ph.D., author ofCleaning Up Your Mental Mess.
“Theta wave pattern activity highlights the interaction that happens between the conscious and nonconscious mind as we think deeply,” says Leaf. “This is a pattern that we want to see in our brain because it reflects improving mind management.”
The gift is that after tuning into my body and staying with it, my mind becomes calm — and I go back to sleep.
I lost my baby teeth a bit later than most children. I believe this was my second grade school photo. Looks like I am missing 3 upper front teeth — and the fourth one came out soon after this photo.
Reincarnation. Not part of Western culture but a long-time belief in spiritual traditions coming out of India.
I don’t have any explicit, conscious memories of previous lives. So there’s room for doubt.
But what if I had implicit memories? Those are the kinds of memories that become so imbedded — wired in, you might say — that you don’t have to consciously recall them to do certain activities, like driving, reading, conversing in your native language. Or, really, anything you do often enough that you don’t have to think about it.
By the way, you can always improve the activities you do on autopilot by becoming present as you do them. Maybe you always miss a spot when brushing your teeth, and you have dental issues. Or you need to look up words in whatever you’re reading for better comprehension. Or your fancy car beeps when you cross the center line, and you learn to pay better attention.
There’s always room for learning.
Anyway, what if a relationship in this lifetime was with someone you knew in a past life, or perhaps several lives?
How would you know?
I’ve been puzzling about a certain relationship for awhile now. Sometimes I feel like I know this person well, and yet, in this lifetime, I know that I don’t. It’s a mystery.
You know how your mind can make up a story to fit your experience? We like for things to make sense. Narratives are important.
My mind did just that! An idea formed in my consciousness that we had been very close in a previous life or lives, and that I loved them very, very much. I don’t know what the relationship(s) were: life partners, parent/child, siblings, best friends, close collaborators, colleagues…maybe all of the above.
That thought felt really good. It changed my perspective, from feeling unsettled about it to appreciating so much that I get to witness some of their current life and can see some of their evolution.
They have created a beautiful life.
Wow, that might be a good perspective to take with everyone! We’re all evolving.
Also, our species has been settling on farms and in communities for 10,000 years and were nomadic hunter-gathers for many millennia before that.
If reincarnation is for real, then we’ve probably had at least 1,000 lives. Maybe twice that many. Who knows? We could have experienced almost everything.
It’s known now that we can inherit memories. Maybe the idea of reincarnation helped explain that in the eons before we knew about epigenetics.
We all have had at least 2,000 ancestors, and through them have probably experienced almost everything.
Either theory could explain the felt sense of having known and loved someone that you know you have never met before in this lifetime.
The Well: bodymindheartspirit 