Monthly Archives: August 2012

Renewing my sitting practice, massage self care, oil pulling, and a 21-day challenge: Byron Katie’s The Work

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I got away from my meditation practice. For many months.

It always seemed like a good idea when I thought about it, and I still didn’t actually do it more than occasionally. Committing to 20-30 minutes of doing nothing — well, it seemed like I didn’t have time. I had other things to do.

This is after years of meditating and a full year of daily sitting.

Hmmm. The mind plays tricks, takes itself way too seriously, makes excuses, avoids.

I missed it, and when a friend told me she gets out of bed and sits first thing every day, it inspired me to start again.

I was also inspired by the film The Dhamma Brothers, about a program in an Alabama prison where inmates did vipassana meditation, 10 days of silent sitting. It was profound to see peace on the faces of men who had committed terrible crimes.

One inmate said:

I thought my biggest fear was growing old and dying in prison. In truth, my biggest fear was growing old and not knowing myself.

Meditation has always been about facing my self, from the day I started, so tentatively, having realized that nothing else I had tried was taking my suffering away, so I might at least fully face it.

It didn’t take it away, but I quickly understood that my experience was larger than my suffering.

Aren’t we all in prisons of some kind? Fears, mindless behaviors, disconnections, denial, insane beliefs…

I want to know myself. And that in itself is such a koan, I felt inspired to sit with it.

Getting on the computer first thing in the morning is my worst distraction. I seem to have developed an affinity for my laptop, for Facebook, email, checking my blog stats, reading what interests me. Time can get away from me. It’s like an addiction.

So I realized that I need to sit first thing. Actually, I do a couple of sun salutations first. Otherwise, more of my attention goes to my aches and pains when I sit.

Yoga frees my mind to pay more attention to noticing my thoughts and sensing the subtle energies.

Today I experienced this:

Indeed, the ineffability of the air seems akin to the ineffability of awareness itself, and we should not be surprised that many indigenous peoples construe awareness, or ‘mind,’ not as a power that resides inside their heads, but rather as a quality that they themselves are inside of, along with the other animals and the plants, the mountains and the clouds. ~ David Abram

Tom Best would love that quote. Living inside of awareness. Sweet. I miss him.

~~~

I’ve been giving 15-20 massages a week, and my body is feeling it. I like the honesty of physical work, and I’m learning about remedies like rosemary oil for achy thumbs, trigger points on the forearm, wrist stretches.

Immersing myself in the cold waters of Barton Springs and snorkeling a lap is very, very good for aches and pains. I sleep well.

I’ve also changed up my mouth care routine. I’m brushing with turmeric (if you try it, be careful because it stains towels and possibly porcelain, but it whitens teeth and reduces inflammation in gum pockets), tongue scraping, flossing, oil pulling with organic coconut oil (sometimes adding a drop of peppermint or clove oil).

I do the oil pulling for 20 minutes most days.

So far, my teeth are whiter, my mouth feels cleaner, and my breath smells good throughout the day.

I’ve done this about a week now. I want to do it for a couple of months and see if it makes a big difference. Some folks claim that oil pulling has huge unexpected health benefits; some say that’s because it reduces inflammation in the mouth and body.

I’ll let you know.

~~~

Finally, I am planning to start a new 21-day challenge on Sept. 1, ending on the fall equinox. I will be doing The Work of Byron Katie, starting with her Judge Your Neighbor worksheet.

I will do at least one worksheet online so people can see how The Work actually works.

I’m also re-reading her book, Loving What Is (which she autographed for me last time I saw her!), and will add insights from that and the workshops I’ve attended.

If you’d like to do it along with me, here’s a link to the worksheet online.

If inflammation is the culprit behind autism, heart disease, and more, the cure is to get parasites and eat real food

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Tonight I read two articles that each blamed inflammation for serious health issues.

One, by a world-renowned heart surgeon, said that the medical profession got it wrong when it began advocating a low-fat diet to control cholesterol. It is now known that inflammation in the artery wall is the real cause of heart disease. More people will die from heart disease this year than ever. The low-fat diet doesn’t work.

And…the dietary recommendations for lowering cholesterol are responsible for the high rates of diabetes and the obesity epidemic.

Only inflammation of artery walls causes cholesterol buildup. It has nothing to do with a low-fat diet.

The biggest culprits in inflammation, according to Dr. Lundell, are highly processed carbohydrates like sugar and flour and an excess consumption of omega 6 oils like soybean, corn, and sunflower.

There is no escaping the fact that the more we consume prepared and processed foods, the more we trip the inflammation switch little by little each day. The human body cannot process, nor was it designed to consume, foods packed with sugars and soaked in omega-6 oils.

There is but one answer to quieting inflammation, and that is returning to foods closer to their natural state. To build muscle, eat more protein. Choose carbohydrates that are very complex such as colorful fruits and vegetables. Cut down on or eliminate inflammation-causing omega-6 fats like corn and soybean oil and the processed foods that are made from them…. Instead, use olive oil or butter from grass-fed beef.

What you can do is choose whole foods your grandmother served and not those your mom turned to as grocery store aisles filled with manufactured foods. By eliminating inflammatory foods and adding essential nutrients from fresh unprocessed food, you will reverse years of damage in your arteries and throughout your body from consuming the typical American diet.

Here’s a link to the original article: World Renowned Heart Surgeon Speaks Out on What Really Causes Heart Disease. And for good measure, read this to learn about the top 10 anti-inflammatory foods.

 

The second article was from the Sunday New York Times Magazine and showed a link between inflammation and autism. At least a third, and very likely more, of the cases of autism are linked to inflammatory diseases, including a mother’s inflammatory response to bacterial and viral infections, asthma, metabolic syndrome, autoimmune disorders such as rheumatoid arthritis and celiac disease, even allergies, during pregnancy.

Rather than blaming diet, this article blames sanitation for high levels of inflammation found in the developed world.

Scientists have repeatedly observed that people living in environments that resemble our evolutionary past, full of microbes and parasites, don’t suffer from inflammatory diseases as frequently as we do.

William Parker at Duke University has chimed in. He’s not, by training, an autism expert. But his work focuses on the immune system and its role in biology and disease, so he’s particularly qualified to point out the following: the immune system we consider normal is actually an evolutionary aberration.

Some years back, he began comparing wild sewer rats with clean lab rats. They were, in his words, “completely different organisms.” Wild rats tightly controlled inflammation. Not so the lab rats. Why? The wild rodents were rife with parasites. Parasites are famous for limiting inflammation.

Humans also evolved with plenty of parasites. Dr. Parker and many others think that we’re biologically dependent on the immune suppression provided by these hangers-on and that their removal has left us prone to inflammation. “We were willing to put up with hay fever, even some autoimmune disease,” he told me recently. “But autism? That’s it! You’ve got to stop this insanity.”

This article’s only mention of diet is that a probiotic taken during pregnancy may help prevent autism.

Read the original to learn about a medicalized parasite being tested on autistic adults. Here’s the link: An Immune Disorder at the Root of Autism.

My take? Do it all! One in 88 children now is born with autism in the U.S. The stress and difficulties of raising an autistic child are huge, not to mention who will care for (and pay for) these autistic adults who will someday have no family to take them in.

If that is due to diet and cleanliness, it’s worth eating fresh, unprocessed foods and living with some parasites. In my opinion.

Boundaries checklist for healthy relationships

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Relationships : A Checklist on Boundaries in a Relationship.

I believe I have posted this before, but if I haven’t, here it is now. It contrasts relationships where you give up your boundaries and when your boundaries are intact. I’ve found it helpful and bookmarked it.

It includes skills like being clear about your preferences and acting on them (I heard Byron Katie say she’s constantly asking herself what she wants), doing more when it gets results, trusting your own intuition, and only being satisfied when you are thriving (rather than coping and surviving).

Some items that I’m resonating with now:

  • Having a personal standard, albeit flexible, that applies to everyone and asks for accountability.
  • Are strongly affected by your partner’s behavior and take it as information.
  • Let yourself feel anger, say “ouch” and embark upon a program of change.
  • Honor intuitions and distinguish them from wishes.
  • Mostly feel secure and clear.
  • Are living a life that mostly approximates what you always wanted for yourself.
  • Decide how, to what extent, and how long you will be committed.

About the last one, I’m liking the new law in Mexico City that allows time-limited marriages. The couple agrees how long they want to be married. The minimum is two years. When the time is up, they either go their separate ways without divorcing or remarry for another period of time.

Love that idea. Wouldn’t it be great to have no more expensive, difficult, embittered divorces? To have a built-in time to reassess how well a relationship is going and together decide whether and for how long to continue it without getting involved with lawyers and courts?

That’s civilized, in my opinion.

~~~

Aug. 20, 2013

I’m adding another resource to this post, which continues to get views long after its original posting. It’s an article about toxic relationship habits that most people think are normal.

The article points out:

…part of the problem is that many unhealthy relationship habits are baked into our culture. We worship romantic love — you know, that dizzying and irrational romantic love that somehow finds breaking china plates on the wall in a fit of tears somewhat endearing — and scoff at practicality or unconventional sexualities. Men and women are raised to objectify each other and to objectify the relationships they’re in. Thus our partners are often seen as assets rather than someone to share mutual emotional support.

A lot of the self help literature out there isn’t helpful either (no, men and women are notfrom different planets, you over-generalizing prick.) And for most of us, mom and dad surely weren’t the best examples either.

Fortunately, there’s been a lot of psychological research into healthy and happy relationships the past few decades and there are some general principles that keep popping up consistently that most people are unaware of or don’t follow.

Here’s the link: 6 Toxic Relationship Habits that Most People Think Are Normal. 

How to experience a longer life: time is experienced subjectively

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Explore – Finally, here is a “guaranteed” way to lengthen….

Love this little paragraph for pointing out that time passes more slowly for children because more is new to them.

To make the most of your time, minimize routine and fill your life with new, active experiences — including spending more time living in the present.

 

Repost: Why Your Health Is Bigger Than Your Body

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Why Your Health Is Bigger Than Your Body

Thanks to Eric Towler for posting this article from YES magazine on Facebook.

There is a link between health, economics, politics, and ecology.

[Dr. Ted Schettler,] the Harvard-educated physician, frustrated by the limitations of science in combating disease, believes that finding answers to the most persistent medical challenges of our time—conditions that now threaten to overwhelm our health care system—depends on understanding the human body as a system nested within a series of other, larger systems: one’s family and community, environment, culture, and socioeconomic class, all of which affect each other.

It is a complex, even daunting view—where does one begin when trying to solve problems this way?

Currently getting over a case of Lyme disease, Schettler notes that the condition wasn’t even on the radar three decades ago. Likewise, West Nile Virus. And dengue fever, first identified in the late 18th century, has soared since the 1960s, now infecting up to 100 million people worldwide each year.

“Can there be any doubt that human health is enormously dependent on ecological systems that we are having a major influence on?” Schettler says. “It’s all one world. Our tendency to describe the natural world as something without humans is part of the problem.”

Click the link to read on. Farm policy, obesity, diabetes, pesticides, Parkinson’s disease, inequality, asthma, breast cancer, DDT, school lunches, lead poisoning, iron deficiencies, hospital food, medical waste… There are a lot of dots being connected.

Yoga in the sculpture garden: I did two arm balances! Woo hoo!

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Today I attended a yoga class at the Umlauf Sculpture Garden near Zilker Park. Wow! I have not been able to do very well with arm balances in yoga, but today my teacher Brigitte Edery worked us up to doing two arm balances!

I love working with Brigitte because when she teaches, I often do poses I believe I cannot do.

First we worked up to doing bakasana (crane pose). I actually balanced on my hands with both feet off the ground, holding it for maybe 8 seconds. (Knees-on-triceps is a lot of pressure. Like this.)

bakasana (crane pose)

Then we did eka hasta bhujasana (one leg over arm pose). I could only hold it for 3-4 seconds, but I did get up. Lifting the straight leg off the floor takes a lot of quadriceps strength. I looked, well, kinda like this.

eka hasta bhujasana

I’m still so excited, I can hardly believe it! I was not able to hold these poses for very long, but just to get up and hold them for any length of time and balance was a pretty amazing accomplishment for me.

And by the way, this class is great. It’s $10 for a 90-minute yoga class (a deal in itself) with an amazing teacher, outside in beautiful nature surrounded by art. Where else can you find a deal like that? And if you are a member of the Umlauf, the class is only $8.

Yoga in the Garden meets on Wednesdays from 10-11:30 all year-round. It is held indoors when the weather is bad; otherwise it meets under the covered patio or out in the open on really gorgeous days.

The presuppositions of Byron Katie

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My NLP practitioner training included the presuppositions of NLP. They are the central principles and ethics underlying the body of work that is NLP. I’ve found them to be very handy guidelines in life.

NLP training does not require anyone to believe them.

Rather, it invites you to try them on as if they are true and discover what happens. If you like the results, you continue to act as if they are true.

For instance, the first six presuppositions as Tom Best taught them are:

  1. People are like mapmakers.
  2. People’s maps are made of pictures, sounds, feelings, tastes, and smells.
  3. The map is not the territory.
  4. People respond primarily to their maps of reality, not to reality.
  5. If you change your map, you’ll change the way you think, feel, and act.
  6. Many of our maps are out of our conscious awareness.

I just attended a workshop with Byron Katie this past weekend, perhaps my fourth or fifth. I thought it might be useful to look at The Work and figure out what its presuppositions are.

This, of course, is a work in progress that I will be revising as I get more clarity, and I invite anyone to add to the list and to clarify anything that isn’t clear. Just post your thoughts in the comments. I am re-reading Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life, and I will be clarifying these presuppositions as I progress.

  • Thoughts flow through the mind because that’s a function of the mind.
  • My thoughts produce my reality.
  • When my mind is silent, it experiences pure awareness.
  • My true nature is pure love.
  • Knowing what is true and real is important.
  • Only I cause my suffering.
  • Suffering is optional.
  • Just because I think a thought doesn’t mean it’s true.
  • When I believe a thought is true, I feel and behave in certain ways.
  • What I believe is what hurts me.
  • Questioning my beliefs is a way to relieve my suffering.
  • I can know whether a thought is really true.
  • I can notice what happens when I believe a thought.
  • When I drop a thought that causes me suffering, I can change my experience of who I am.
  • There are three kinds of business in the universe: mine, yours, and God’s.
  • Suffering comes from living outside of my own business.
  • God’s business includes anything that’s out of my control, your control, and every else’s control.
  • Other people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are their business.
  • My thoughts, beliefs, feelings, and actions are my business.
  • When I pay attention to my business,  my life runs perfectly well on its own.
  • Everyone including me is innocent.
  • Everything that happens is for my own awakening, enlightenment, and joy.

More wit and wisdom from Byron Katie, and a 21-day challenge to do The Work

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Byron KatieThis weekend I got to experience the wonderful presence and work of Byron Katie again. I’ve lost track now of how many times I’ve seen her. I love The Work, her four questions and three turnarounds that you can apply to any thought you have that causes you to suffer.

This time my friend Glenda drove down from the Metroplex to attend with me, and I reconnected with several friends who also hold Katie’s work in high esteem. I remembered to bring my copy of her book Loving What Is: Four questions that can change your life. She signed it for me, and we chatted a bit about using The Work in trauma recovery. (She says it works well.)

Glenda bought her book for children, Tiger-Tiger, Is It True? Four questions to make you smile again, to use with her young grandson as well as an audiobook of Loving What Is and some cards.

My dear late Neuro-Linguistic Programming teacher Tom Best included The Work in his master practitioner training. Even though The Work is not NLP, it is very NLP-like in that it uses questions to induce profound shifts at the belief and identity neurological levels of experience. Tom thought very highly of it, and I cannot think of any other non-NLP techniques that made it into his practitioner and master practitioner trainings.

I’m feeling inspired to start a new 21-day challenge: 21 days because that’s how long it takes to develop a new habit, because I would like for The Work so become so ingrained that as soon as I even start thinking a thought that is less than loving, I can ask “Is that true? Nope! What happens when I believe the thought? Who am I without the thought?” and immediately shift my state.

When I discard painful thoughts, I always feel “returned to myself” with a sense of peace, pleasure, wonder, and expansion. Imagine: We could live from that state nearly all the time!

Katie is onto something of huge importance, in my opinion, with her distinctions between what’s my business, someone else’s business, and God’s business. If what I cannot control is either someone else’s business or God’s business, then what is my business? It is being present in my own life, attending to my own experience, knowing and doing what is right for me, letting go of all stories about how things “should” be.

For my challenge, I need to make 21 copies of her Judge Your Neighbor worksheet (available online if you would like to participate too — I invite all readers willing to do the inquiry of The Work to join me). I plan to blog about it occasionally.

Here are some of her memorable words from the weekend (and here’s a link to the last time I noted her wit and wisdom if you want even more inspiration):

In my world…

Are you being thought?

You can’t feel my pain and vice versa. It’s a projection. I’m the only one who can hurt me.

We’re all innocent.

I asked with the intention of really listening.

They will or they won’t mind you.

I want to know what’s real and what’s not.

Nothing has ever happened, except I believe it happened.

I love everything I think. I’m the best company I know.

Who needs God when you have your opinion?

The ego loves to play.

Apologize to yourself.

You said thank you, so I’m thanking me.

Smoking quit me as I became sane.

Live in your own business.

Prior to thought was pure awareness, joy, the unnamed.

Inequality is not possible when the mind is right.

We’re a human race. We need your help.

Would you hold me now?

I’m always asking what I want.

The mental produces the physical.

Thoracic Park: California chickens treated better than human office workers

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I encountered this great post on Elephant Journal and thought I’d share, since I’ve posted before on the health risks of sedentary work.

I love a good play on words.

The modern office is a thoracic park—stooped shoulders and curved upper backs repeated on every row, on every floor in every building in every city of the world.

We should all be standing up for a good part of the day, but realize that we’re going to meet considerable organizational resistance if we do.

The cultural and social norms of most organizations and the narrow-minded acceptance of the chair as the easiest way to do business can be a stronger force than our will to create a better working environment for ourselves.

Former corporate employee in Australia and current Ashtanga teacher in Istanbul Rocco Marinelli rigged up a standing workstation to this result:

The greatest resistance, however, didn’t come from colleagues but from the very group in the organization there to assist. I returned from holiday to find my desk that had been returned to the uniform state of those around it. My make-shift workstation had been thrown out by, of all people, the Occupational Health and Safety Manager.

An audit was being carried out for work-place safety and my standing workstation was deemed a blemish. Note that it hadn’t been just dismantled but thrown out straight in to a dumpster, a finality in decision making that closed the matter, never to be discussed again.

It may have been jerry-built, it mightn’t have been pretty but it wasn’t a safety issue. The issue was with homogeneity, with regularity, with being able to walk an auditor down a hallway to show off symmetry and unblemished uniformity.

Fortunately Rocco doesn’t leave us there:

The trend is changing, and in less than a few years standing up will not only be accepted, it will be the cool thing to do.

Groups of workers will rotate between sitting down, standing up and moving around because it will be sold to the health departments of corporates by clever people who will make a lot of money. A number of studies already support the idea and the imperative is now being felt by employers to be seen to be doing something.

Within a generation we’ll reflect the same way we look back at smoking in the office. But don’t wait for a study to corroborate what good sense tells you is already true: we are active creatures by design and to switch off your core for eight hours a day is inviting injury and atrophy.

Who cares if you’re the only one? Others will follow and wouldn’t you rather feel energized and healthy?

hemingway

Ernest Hemingway