Author Archives: MaryAnn Reynolds

About MaryAnn Reynolds

I practice advanced bodywork in Austin, TX, specializing in Craniosacral Biodynamics and TMJ Relief.

Now just relax and read this blog post about how people know when they’re stressed

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I’ve thought a lot about the topic of relaxation and its evil twin, stress. I’ve had good reason to. I’ve had a stress disorder, I’ve had stressful jobs, and I’ve lost colleagues to illnesses exacerbated by stress.

Still haven’t found the original citation of the oft-seen statistic that 90 percent of doctor visits are stress-related…

I asked a question on Facebook:

How do you know when you’re stressed?

Here are some answers. Please feel free to comment with your answer. I’m seriously interested in this topic and wanting to aim my right livelihood at helping people become more relaxed.

  • Either I feel very tired, or my ears lay back like a dog’s or cat’s.
  • I get snappy.
  • I second the snappy.
  • Everything is bunched up between my shoulders and neck…and often, I get a headache or cranky or both!
  • I have headaches and fogginess in my eys, drowsiness and anxiousness in my belly. I fluctuate between giggles and frustration.
  • Sometimes I get a small eye twitch. It’s a signal to slow down and let go of things on my to do list. My experience is that as I’ve responded to my stress signals earlier and earlier over time (instead of waiting until they’re completely debilitating — like a migraine), the signals have gotten smaller and smaller.
  • When heavily stressed: Catch myself holding my breath, get obsessively task focused, drawn to eat lots of chocolate. When super stressed I get a little anxious which manifests in my mind generating risks and possible bad outcomes at every turn (e.g., while driving, the idea of someone running into my car will flash for me). I’m quick to recognize that as a sign of stress.
  • Question might be: How do you know when you are more stressed than usual?  🙂 My back gets tired. Lower and upper left shoulder.
  • as if i’m ever not stressed?! ha ha ha, that’s a good’n, mary ann! ha ha ha ha ha!

I notice that some of these are felt in the body (fatigue, tightness, headache, holding the breath), some are felt more as emotions (anxiety, frustration), and some are behavioral (snappy, cranky, giggles, drawn to chocolate, obsessively task focused).

There’s so much more I want to know, such as how you know that you’re not stressed? (Apparently some people never feel unstressed.) Then what do you do to de-stress or lower your stress level once your realize you are stressed?

Green drink recipe

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It’s a day off for me, which means no classes and nothing on my schedule until this evening. That’s rare in my life. Massage school is on break for a week. My program, 3 full days a week, is called “the intensive” for a reason.

I felt in need of an energy boost, so I just made myself a green drink. I made mine in a blender, not a juicer. I like the fiber! I’d love to get a VitaMix when it’s time. They’re so versatile (but expensive).

Into the blender went the following:

  • 2 cans of coconut water
  • 2/3rds of a peeled cucumber
  • half a bunch of Italian parsley
  • a bunch of kale
  • a stalk of celery
  • 1 clove garlic
  • 1 T turmeric powder
  • 1 T spirulina powder
  • 1 T maca powder
  • 3 T flax-seed oil
  • 1 T flax seeds
  • 1 T hemp seeds
  • 1 T chia seeds
  • pinches of herbs from my garden: spearmint, peppermint, rosemary, thyme, basil

All organic where possible. This makes enough for 5 or 6 servings.

It tastes pretty darn good (even for a green drink), if I do say so myself. I take that to mean that my body needs it.

I’ve learned not to put too much garlic in. And if I’d had fresh ginger root, I would have peeled and added it, but what I had was rather shriveled, more ready for the compost pile than consumption.

Not only do I feel virtuous for taking the time to lovingly create and consume this concoction, but the vitamins, minerals, essential fatty acids, enzymes, fiber, and the anti-viral/fungal/microbial/cancer, rebalancing, detoxifying, immune-boosting, energy-boosting properties of these ingredients will rejuvenate me down to the cellular level.

It’s very nice to do something for those hard-working cells that rarely get any credit!

Is maze brightness in rats an equivalent of enlightenment in humans?

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I thought you might like to read an excerpt from the book I’m reading in a book group. The book is called Life in the Labyrinth, by E.J. Gold, who is in the Gurdjieffian Fourth Way lineage of teaching awareness expansion.

As a child of thirteen and fourteen, I found my bedroom overrun with lab rats, and more or less as an afterthought — I had no other use for them, not being particularly attracted to vivisection and the like — built a few mazes to study rat behavior.

One item stood out clearly in my observations of dozens of rats stumbling, bumping and sniffing their way toward their final reward as they learned to synthesize experiential data through a primitive form of deduction…or didn’t learn, and nearly starved to death.

I discovered, independently of texts on behavioral sciences, something which I later learned was by convention called maze brightness, which could be defined for the moment as “becoming able to find new paths through the maze toward the reward-point through sheer repetition”, from which we could, if we weren’t overly concerned about how far we could quantum leap, deduce that some rats eventually become aware of the general rules of maze construction, of course only on a purely subjective-instinctive nose-and-gut level.

I discovered through this a special learning process which could enable the rat to solve not only one known maze but virtually any maze it may thereafter happen to encounter by accident or design.

I also concluded, probably rightly, that such a rat would, eventually — having blundered its way through a sufficient number of mazes — in spite of itself, begin to dimly recognize the inescapable fact that it is in a maze and that moreover, it cannot — at least by present means — remove itself to parts unknown.

Once this first all-important recognition has been achieved, without which nothing further is possible in any direction except down, it can begin to perceive and analyze its surroundings as they actually are, and not as its unexamined fears and perceptual occlusions have caused it to imagine them to be.

Because the perceptual-emotional will have, for the moment, been resolved, it will no longer exhibit the compulsion to maintain a self-constructed veil of confusion and disorientation.

One would think the thrill of observing that single rat, which out of dozens, suddenly gave indications of having become aware of the maze would soon pall, but au contraire…the excitement of this simple yet magnificent discovery never failed to strike me as anything less than downright apotheotic*, and any behavioral scientist worth his or her weight in potassium nitrate who says anything different is spouting pure scoria*.

A rat achieves maze brightness, and its eyes seem somehow at once both older and younger; general posture and behavior toward the environment and toward itself show radical signs of alteration. It seems less frantic, more self-assured, and noticeably less self-destructive.

At the same time, one can see visible signs of excitement as a new sense of freedom descends overwhelmingly upon it, the same sense of freedom which humans who have discovered what they call “enlightenment” experience.

E.J. Gold is a good storyteller, and I’ve just ordered two more of his books, Practical Work on the Self and The Human Biological Machine As a Transformational Apparatus. The book group I joined has already read them, so I have some catching up to do.

*apotheosis means to exalt a person to the rank of God

*scoria means the scum left after melting metal

Perceptual flexibility, the large self, the small self, and feeding the wolf

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If you are trying to understand a negative experience, step outside of yourself first. Visualize yourself as a person in a situation and ask, “Why did s/he feel that way?”

Chances are you will discover some new information about yourself, the other person, and/or the situation. Your point of view is larger.

This is a way to gain insight. I don’t know about you, but I find insight to be very valuable.

The less effective strategy is to remember the experience as if you are re-experiencing it, feeling the negative feelings again, and ask, “Why did I feel that way?”

Often your emotion can overwhelm the understanding. People often replay the tape of “he said x, and I felt y” over and over again.

Guess what that does for you?

I dare you to try this now! Think of a recent situation in which you felt an unpleasant emotion. Please pick something with a small to middling emotional effect and not something intensely painful.

For instance, if someone made a remark that you perceived as insensitive and you felt hurt, review the situation as if you are seeing it occur on film. You are one of the characters. See the other character make the remark and see your character reacting.

Now ask, “Why did that remark get to her so much?”

Then notice what happens.

You might need to do this several times to practice if this is new for you.

It’s pretty amazing how such a shift in point of view can make a big difference. Research has shown that people who self-distance from situations that result in unpleasant emotions feel less distressed later, ruminate about the experience less, and are less likely to be hostile when future disagreements arise.

It is amazing to me how many people live decades of their life immersed in either their own point of view, feeling everything intensely, or distancing from everything and not taking anything personally without knowing they can do both — and can choose which point of view to use when.

And…you can review past events and change your point of view. You can actually change your feelings about the past!

We all have a range of emotions. Like the Native American story says, which wolf do you choose to feed? The one with less suffering or more, your own included?

I call this skill perceptual flexibility. It’s worth practicing and cultivating, in my opinion.

By the way, this is elementary Neuro-Linguistic Programming. A scientific study confirmed what NLPers have long known works. I read about it on Steve Andreas’ NLP Blog in case you’d like to read my source.

Massage, brainwaves, NLP, work, yoga, women in prison, Gurdjieffian book group, trailer, and more

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Life is going pretty well. Knock wood, right?

I’m doing well in massage school. Got in some great practice on three people outside of school this past Wednesday, ahead of Thursday’s practical exam. I have a major written test next week and then a week off. It’s hard to believe that I’m about halfway through!

Tomorrow it will be three months since I finished brainwave optimization. I am glad I did it. I feel more centered, my memory is better, and so is my focus. It’s been worth the expense, and I can still go back for individual sessions if I feel the need. It’s been helpful with juggling school/trailer/moving/remodeling/working and so on.

I’m looking forward to doing some gamma wave enhancement when my trainer Gigi Turner at NeuroBeginnings is ready and I have time.

Also, I can have a drink now! You are warned not to drink alcohol during the training and for three months afterward. Kinda makes me wonder what alcohol actually does to the brain. Any drinking I do will be very light — my alcohol tolerance is low.

I did an NLP session with a friend today and picked up a freelance writing/editing job for her website! This is my second recent website writing job. I love doing this for people who have created and are running their small businesses that make the world a better, healthier place, people who are living their passions. I’m looking for more work like that.

I posted my technical writing resume on Monster.com a couple of weeks ago. I’m looking to work 20 hours a week at most, flex-time and telecommuting preferred. Meanwhile, I’m open to doing freelance writing and editing, as well as more yoga and NLP coaching.

I’d love to teach yoga out of my trailer to individuals or small groups (up to 4 max). I’m putting this out there so if you know anyone in South Austin who’d like a small class with more personal attention, you can refer them to me.

I’m considering teaching a donation-only class on Saturday mornings until the weather gets cold. I plan to check out Searight Park in my neighborhood as a possible location. I have Sun Salutations on my mind!

I’ve been attending a weekly class in Anusara yoga at Castle Hill taught by Brigitte Edery or Liz Belile, both great teachers who stimulate and challenge the mind and body. It’s a natural segue from my Iyengar-based training. Love the attention to awareness.

Next week I’m going with Keith Fail into the state prison in Lockhart to teach some basic NLP to women in prison, as part of Truth Be Told‘s Exploring Creativity program. We’ll teach triple description — first, second, and third position, like first, second, and third person in English class, only applying it to your real life. Perceptual flexibility is a fabulous skill to teach, and I’m looking forward to it.

I’m participating in a book group, reading Life in the Labyrinth, by E.J. Gold. This is my first foray into the Gurdjieffian lineage, not counting my longtime interest in the Enneagram. The group has been meeting for a while, and I’m honored to have been invited. We take turns reading aloud, covering a chapter a week, and enjoying some stimulating discussion.

I’ve signed up for a one-day workshop at Lauterstein-Conway later this month on cranio-sacral massage. I’ve mentioned before on this blog that I received CST every month for 2-3 years from Nina Davis. It is a fascinating branch on the massage family tree.

Week after next, I’m trading two hours of Swedish massage, with all the extras, for a two-hour lomi lomi (Hawaiian style) massage with James Moore. Really looking forward to that! I haven’t had a lomi lomi massage yet but have read about the Hawaiian healers who have kept this art alive.

Last, the trailer. I’m working on finding the best weatherstripping for the aluminum jalousie windows — something that will last that I can buy in bulk for the 48 windows, which have had the old, melted weatherstripping painstakingly removed.

Then, I hope to replace the nonworking sliding glass doors at the entry with something that works and build an entry deck. I’ve been using the back door to come and go.

Oh, and I must share this! August 2011 was the hottest month in the hottest year on record in Austin. It was also my first full month of having AC in the trailer. Friends have been telling me about their outrageous electric bills — as much as $400.

My AC ran nearly all day every day in August. I worried about my bill being outrageous.

The August bill was $100. Whew! Jon Esquivel at Austin Star Services did a good job getting a good unit in this trailer. For that I am grateful.

Other tasks coming up include plumbing and wiring my shed for a washer and dryer, getting some good window coverings and installing them, and planting more trees and a fall garden with some edible landscaping.

I am really, really loving my life now and the direction it’s going. It’s scary to make a big change in direction like I did, and it is working out well. Knock wood!

Blindfolded massage, looking at and seeing

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Yesterday my class at Lauterstein-Conway Massage School did blindfolded massage.

We’re in the 11th week of our studies (going 3 full days a week) and have learned Swedish massage, range-of-motion and stretching, body mobilization techniques, friction and melting, and pressure points.

At this point, we have the Swedish techniques down pretty well. I am still remembering when to integrate the other techniques. To do it all would take a couple of hours. Also important is learning to do the extra work just where the client most needs it.

I’ve decided that I do not like to give massages that are less than 90 minutes. This is from someone who got 60-minute massages for years. Now that I know what massage therapists have to omit to give a 60-minute massage, I see that I’ve missed out on some real juiciness! No more!

I will have my third Swedish practical exam tomorrow. I’m practicing today on a couple of friends.

Back to blindfolded massage. We students paired off and practiced on each other. The connection was so different.

With no visual distractions, the world takes on a different shape. Massaging the back becomes a journey through a landscape, with plains, valleys, mesas, hills, loamy ground, rocky areas, escarpments (and forests on some). Without seeing, the palm and fingers gain insight.

What if at the end of each finger, on the very tip, there is an invisible light shining out, showing the way? What if the entire hand is a light?

A very interesting thing occurred. It’s been difficult to give a massage in 60 minutes since learning the bells and whistles. Our instructor told us several times during the blindfolded massage how much time we had left. Both my partner, Robin, and I finished on time (albeit omitting the abdomen and face), and it looked like most everyone else did too.

I’ve written before about focused and peripheral vision. Foveal (focused) vision is narrow. (I remember this from the book The Open-Focus Brain, and I’ve written about the 12 states of attention as well.)

Looking at (focused) and seeing (peripheral) are different states. One is more stressful, tied to the sympathetic, fight-or-flight nervous system, and the other is more relaxed, tied to the parasympathetic, rest-or-digest nervous system.

Without using vision at all, functioning mainly through touch, time condenses to the present moment.

Robin noticed that I stopped several times, once on each limb, she said. I remember needing to really feel into it. Apparently some others did too.

I also learned not to do anything where feedback from seeing the person’s face is valuable, such as during stretches and when working on the neck. Fortunately, Robin saved herself from me!

Also, draping (sheet placement) was more difficult blindfolded. Robin did well draping me, so I know it can be done.

Wish me luck on my practical exam Thursday and second written exam next Thursday! Then I’ll have a week off.

Yoga for stress reduction

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When talking to my former yoga teacher, who not only taught me but trained me to be a yoga teacher, last week, I told her I’d like to get more people attending my restorative yoga classes.

She gave me a tip on marketing: don’t call it Restorative Yoga, call it Yoga for Stress Reduction.

I have a lot to learn.

Yes, restorative yoga is yoga for stress reduction. That is completely the point of doing it.

Yoga in general and especially restorative yoga do something that many of us have a hard time doing for ourselves otherwise: moving out of fight-or-flight mode. We all need activity, rest, and sleep (and sleep doesn’t substitute for rest). In our busy lives, rest is usually the first thing to be discarded, followed by a full night’s sleep. We’re goin’ and blowin’ from the time we get up until we hit the pillow at night, reacting to crises large and small, and maybe, if we’re lucky or plan for it, slowing down a little at lunch or after we get home from work.

Years of this will take a toll. A two-week-per-year vacation is not enough. We need to rest every single day.

The human body has an autonomic (meaning automatic) nervous system with two branches, sympathetic (fight or flight) and parasympathetic (rest and digest). Yoga stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system, which calms us, aids in digestion, stimulates sexual arousal, broadens our perspective, and restores energy.  

These branches of the nervous system allow us to survive (sympathetic) and thrive (parasympathetic).

The problem is that the sympathetic nervous system is activated a whole lot more now than it was back when the occasional saber-toothed tiger came our way. Survival has gotten complex. Slamming on the brakes in rush-hour traffic, working at and keeping a high-pressure job,  and juggling family responsibilities with work can leave us depleted.

Restorative yoga slows you way down. Way down. For 90 minutes. You do very little, except change poses every once in a while. Oh, and chant OM and maybe do some breathing exercises at the start.

It’s a way to commit to getting some rest into your life.

In a restorative class, I bring props like bolsters, blankets, and blocks. Maybe eye pillows, depending on the class size. We set the props up for each pose and then lie on them passively, holding the poses for anywhere from a minute to 15 minutes.

Time and gravity do the work of relaxing the muscles. If you want to quiet your mind as well, bring your attention to the sensations of breathing. Notice the rhythm, evenness, length, temperature, sound, movement, location, and so on.

Even though it is called restorative yoga, no yoga experience is required. The only requirement is the desire to relax deeply.

How long has it been since you relaxed deeply while awake? What do you remember about that state? Could you use more of that?

Being a Five, reading, writing, and what works

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Part of my journey as a Five on the Enneagram has had to do with my attitude about information.

As a child, I took to reading like a duck to water. I soon became an indiscriminate reader. Comic books, school books, the classics, storybooks and novels, poems, my parents’ books/magazines/newspapers (they were avid readers too), cereal boxes, food labels, trashy magazines, entire menus, every sign that I encountered, billboards, and so on.

My eyes and my mind were very attracted to the written word. (I wear contact lenses now, but my glasses were as thick as Coke bottles.)

I behaved as if I believed that if I read everything I possibly could, at some point I would understand everything. Life, the universe, my purpose, the answers.

This was an unconscious belief, as so many are.

The irony is that I missed out on some important aspects of living because I had my nose in a book!

On the plus side, I was a very good student in school and have gotten many jobs because I could read and write well. (Being an avid reader is the basis for being a good writer, in my opinion.)

I’ve become more discriminating with age, I’m happy to report. I don’t read everything any more. Whew. That wasn’t a very good strategy, was it?

In fact, these days if I start reading a book and if it is not compelling from the start, I put it aside. Maybe I’ll finish it later, maybe not.

Of course, much reading is simply required — road signs, food labels, homework, text messages, deposit slips.

I’ve become more conscious about why I read. Now it’s more of a choice about what information or inspiration will broaden or deepen my journey. 

The reading I most treasure these days is finding new and useful information, information that makes a difference in people’s quality of life. I guess you could call this kind of information insight or wisdom. 

That kind of reading and discerning gives direction to this blog.

I love discovering what works, and I love to share what I find. When I think of what “the truth” means to me, it’s useful information that works or that serves quality of life. Like how to prevent insomnia or a particularly useful way of phrasing an idea, for example.

I’ve also become more attracted to the questions. More on that to come.

Heck, maybe this is one of those things that you know about me already. If so, please rejoice that I’m becoming more conscious.

Prescriptions and modern medicine

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I was just reading an article in the New York Times about the effects of exercise on depression, and this sentence caught my eye:

His investigation joins a growing movement among some physiologists and doctors to consider and study exercise as a formal medicine, with patients given a prescription and their progress monitored, as it would be if they were prescribed a pill.

Hallelujah. I am so glad to hear that the medical profession is broadening what it prescribes.

The word prescribe comes from the Latin pre (before) + scribere (to write). It basically means to direct in writing.

Somehow we’ve come to interpret the word prescription as synonymous with pharmaceutical drug. Glad to know it ain’t necessarily so.

Gee, before you know it, doctors may be prescribing not just exercise, but also massage, diet, and rest, changes that have improved health for millenia without corporate profit.

What a concept.

Oh, exercise was found to be helpful for depression.

Feet report, planting a tree

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Well, my feet did not take me to Barton Springs after all on Saturday. I woke and remembered it was a day of honoring my feet, of letting them lead. I put my attention into my feet, feeling into them.

While still in bed, I did some exercises that Fran Bell gave me to increase my ankle and hip range of motion. Out of bed, I did the Z-Health foot exercises that Patrice Sullivan gave me to open foot meridians.

After that, my feet felt alive and glowing! They took me to the shower. I love washing my feet, especially between the toes.

You can say to yourself:

Oh, those are my ordinary feet, and they look clean. I feel them resting on the floor.

Or you can think:

Wow, my feet are tingling with life force, energy, chi! I wonder how far the energy would extend if I could see it. Seriously, if this energy produced light, you could read by it!

Well, those feet took me to my yoga mat! I did a leisurely round of sun salutions, paying special attention to my feet in tadasana, lunge, plank, down dog, and so on, feeling the mat and pressure and stretch and strength and position and air currents.

Then my feet walked me over to the zafu and zabuton. I turned on a timer for 30 minutes and sat. I wanted to spread the aliveness of my feet into the rest of my body.

That was a great start to my day.

The rest of Saturday, I checked in periodically with my feet without thinking too much. They wanted me to make monkey tea. They wanted me to do some more unpacking and arranging at the trailer. They led me to set up my hummingbird feeder.

Then we ran errands. We went to Home Depot, and among other items I bought a soaker hose. My landscape architect friend/writing client Merrie told me I need to water the ground under my trailer, where there are big cracks in the bare soil from the drought.

I came home and soaked the parched earth.

Feet, connect us to the earth, pachamama, terra firma.  Connect us to our big blue marble. Keep us grounded in what we do. Let us be of service to you.

In the evening, my feet served me well when I gave my daughter her first massage from me, the first of many, I hope.

I danced for 90 minutes on Sunday morning. My feet felt free, loved, and joyous. After lunch, I stopped at The Natural Gardener. I needed some potting soil and bought some basil, thyme, and peppermint. The garden center was nearly deserted. Most people give up on gardening in August around here. I’m just getting started in a new place.

And then I wandered through the tree section. Thirty percent off a tree is substantial, and they had quite a few $24.99 trees before the discount. Half my trailer is unshaded, and since I can’t plant a tree 10 years ago, now is the next best time.

I thought I was going to get a cedar elm but felt pretty ho-hum about it. After discussing various oaks, I was drawn to an arroyo sweetwood (new to me), and one of The Natural Gardener’s plant-loving helpers showed me a mature one next to the parking lot that had been planted about 7 years ago.

Wow. These trees grow fast, are native to northern Mexico so can take heat and drought, and are fragrant, smelling like cinnamon and vanilla. They are multi-trunked, and have spring flowers, a dense canopy, and autumn foliage. Something wonderful for every season, plus scent. How perfect can a tree be?

So that’s what I bought, for just under $18. The cashier said my tree looked like a happy tree! I was a happy customer.

On my way home, I saw a sign:

I bought a tree to plant on the hottest day of the hottest month of the hottest year on record.

Yes, you can plant trees at the end of August if you are willing to check the dampness of the soil several inches down every couple of days. They’ll tell you how at The Natural Gardener.

Got home, picked a site that will perfectly frame a view of the tree from inside a nearly-floor-to-ceiling window, and watered the ground. Water, let it soak in, dig, repeat.

I finished digging this morning and planted the tree. When I came home this evening, my new little tree was having its branches gently jostled by the warm wind.

Next up: mulch.

So that’s what happened from letting my feet lead. I got so connected to the earth, I bought a tree and planted it! I took care of the ground under my trailer. I gave my daughter a massage. I did yoga and sat.

Grounded.

Thank you, feet.