Category Archives: gratitude

What would you do if … ? Stories of conflict resolution.

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What would you do in the following situations?

  • You’re a psychiatrist working in a mental hospital. A homicidal patient has hidden in the elevator. Without seeing him, you enter and close the door, which locks. The patient announces that he’s been waiting for you while everyone is at the other end of the ward, and now he’s going to kill you.
  • An illiterate punk robs your uncle, a beloved doctor who has a heart attack and dies, and the DA wants to charge him with a capital crime. The punk plans to plead guilty. The defense attorney asks your family for justice, not vengeance.
  • You’re a kindergarten teacher who learns that a student is ashamed of her father, who speaks with an accent, after you’ve invited the children to bring a parent to school to teach something they do.
  • A woman comes to you alone for couples counseling. She and her husband live together “for the sake of the children” but are estranged, embittered, and distant in every other way.
  • You’re asleep in your bed when a strange man kicks open the door to your bedroom. You’re a woman, home alone, unarmed, and the phone is downstairs.

These are just a few of the 61 real-life stories in the new book Sweet Fruit from the Bitter Tree by Mark Andreas. I highly recommend reading this book if you like being resourceful in situations of conflict and desire more peace in your life and in the world.

By the way, the psychiatrist asked the homicidal maniac exactly where he planned to kill him—in this spot or in that spot. While the would-be killer thought it over, the psychiatrist pulled out his key and unlocked the elevator. Calmly stepping out into the hallway, he points to a chair that the killer could sit in afterward. Then he points out another chair, and another at the end of the hallway.

Eventually they arrive at the station where the attendants are gathered.

The psychiatrist was Milton Erickson.

If you want to find out what happened in the other situations, order the book!

50,000 views! Thanks, readers!

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Sometime during the night, when July 3 was turning into July 4, my blog passed 50,000 views. I like milestones, and this one is pretty major! The fireworks tonight will have a little extra meaning for me because I am celebrating.

Who knew, when I started? It’s like relationships. No matter what promises are made, you don’t know if they’ll last until they do. There have been times when I’ve thought I had nothing to write about, and then something came up that I wanted to share. Early on, I had some connectivity problems and didn’t post for a couple of weeks, but since then, it’s rare for me not to post at least twice a week.

Since my last milestone posting in April, I’ve met with a psychic who told me that I’ve been a writer for many lifetimes, and that in one lifetime, I was a man who wrote with a quill pen.

I hope what I wrote was interesting, well-written, and effective. (Don’t you know I wish I knew the name of that previous self so I could look up his/my writings???)

Here’s a graphic from my WordPress dashboard displaying the views by month:

You can see how slow it was for the first year, 2010, when I averaged 11 views a day. It started taking off in 2011, and 2012 has been great, so far averaging 125 views per day.

I guess this really tells what it takes to be successful at blogging—that it takes time and consistent posting to build a following. The success is on my terms, too.

The most popular post of all time is an update on my Spartan trailer, which is off the wellness/aliveness topic. Search engines bring viewers interested in Spartan trailers here. Some may even stick around for the wellness stuff!

I wish I knew which posts were most popular with subscribers and regular readers, whom I believe are more interested in trauma recovery, health, wellness, and wisdom.

And okay, I am an eclectic blogger.

Subscribers and readers, what would you like to see more of? 

WordPress began showing views by country in February 2012. Here’s an image of the top 10 countries for viewers since then:

You can see that over 10,000 of the 50,000 views have occurred since late February, by Americans. That’s pretty amazing!

The bottom of the list is equally impressive. It’s amazing to realize that I’ve had viewers from distant countries like Liberia, Fiji, the Faroe Islands, New Caledonia, Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, and Zimbabwe.

I don’t even know where New Caledonia is. Wikipedia tells me it’s a French archipelago east of Australia in Melanesia.

The Faroe Islands are Danish Islands halfway between Norway and Iceland.

Hello and welcome. The Internet really does make the world smaller.

There is no master plan for this blog, except to post what interests me. As I build my massage practice and continue to investigate the keys to wellness, including new discoveries about the ways to be healthy, I’m sure I will blog more on those topics.

I love hearing from you via comments, likes, and shares.

Thank you, readers, for stopping by here, and I especially thank those of you devoted enough to subscribe. You really make it worth my while.

The price of busy-ness. If you need a massage, call me. I’m good.

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I just encountered this great article, an opinion piece from the New York Times, about busy-ness and thought I’d share my thoughts.

Not only am I a recovering serious person, I’m also a recovering busy person. For several years, I worked full-time and went to graduate school while raising a child as a single mother. In hindsight, that was insane.

This downtime after my last contract job in the technology world ended about six weeks ago has been lovely. I’m recovering from adrenal exhaustion, and then, just when I was starting a running practice that I felt joyful about and ready for, I pulled a calf muscle and have had to lay low for longer while it heals. (It’s healing very nicely, with self-care and other healing hands working on it. Thanks, Brigitte and Pauline!)

The universe is telling me to slow down, and I’m listening. I’ve been letting a lot of stuff slide, trusting that the important things will rise to the top of the list and the rest will get done when and if they get to the top. One day at a time. I’m loving my daily Tarot readings, the cards that influence my awareness and development and trust in the universe. My favorite deck is the Osho Zen deck.

During this period I’ve also attended several trainings in Somatic Experiencing, which is based on the truly great trauma recovery research and writing of Peter Levine. (I’m currently reading In An Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness.) I fell in love with it. The main premise is that trauma deregulates the nervous system (into freeze or fight or flight), and that the body can heal itself, with loving attention and guidance.

I’ve been practicing body awareness as well as writing about grounding, centering, and having boundaries. You can expect more posts along those lines.

I also seem to be developing an organic vision for my bodywork and changework practice that involves more teaching and writing. And—I am available now! Call me if you need a massage. I am really good, my rate is reasonable ($1 per minute), and I give discounts for regular customers and referrals.

Who knew that all this time, throughout the history of the human species with all of its atrocities and traumas, that the secret to trauma recovery was right there all along, being ignored by the mind, which in order to “be civilized” began to believe itself superior to the body?

How cut off are we from our own lives? Have you ever had something like this happen to you?

I recently wrote a friend to ask if he wanted to do something this week, and he answered that he didn’t have a lot of time but if something was going on to let him know and maybe he could ditch work for a few hours. I wanted to clarify that my question had not been a preliminary heads-up to some future invitation; this was the invitation. But his busyness was like some vast churning noise through which he was shouting out at me, and I gave up trying to shout back over it.

Self-importance is a joy killer, and that’s all most busy-ness is, when you get right down to it. If you are swept away in a current of busy-ness, why, then you must be somebody important! Or at least somebody.

It’s the opposite of being here now, of being present and grounded/centered/boundaried/etc. in your own body. It’s dissociation.

Here’s more, about a New York artist who moved to a village in the south of France:

What she had mistakenly assumed was her personality — driven, cranky, anxious and sad — turned out to be a deformative effect of her environment. It’s not as if any of us wants to live like this, any more than any one person wants to be part of a traffic jam or stadium trampling or the hierarchy of cruelty in high school — it’s something we collectively force one another to do.

How do we collectively force one another to be too busy to be real? It’s as I suspected:

Busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness; obviously your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy, completely booked, in demand every hour of the day.

I’m listening, feeling, and letting each day unfold while not losing myself in breathless busy-ness. Isn’t that what summer is for?

The space and quiet that idleness provides is a necessary condition for standing back from life and seeing it whole, for making unexpected connections and waiting for the wild summer lightning strikes of inspiration — it is, paradoxically, necessary to getting any work done.

Well, it’s almost noon, and I’m still in bed on this Monday morning, in bed with my laptop, tarot cards, book. Actually, my butt is getting numb, and I feel thirsty. I believe I’ll get up, stretch, drink some green tea, and mosey over to the yoga mat. I hear a down-ward facing dog calling my name.

How to get grounded: the first energy

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Somatic Experiencing (SE) is a training program for professionals assisting individuals in trauma recovery that was developed from the work Peter Levine, author of Waking the Tiger and many more books on trauma recovery. You can learn more about Somatic Experiencing here.

If you’ve read much of my blog, you know that reading Waking the Tiger was instrumental in my trauma recovery, that I spontaneously released blocked energy from a major childhood trauma while reading the book decades later, which not only was amazing but initiated a huge paradigm shift toward health and well-being for me.

I’ve been fortunate enough to attend several trainings and workshops with Brian D. Mahan, who’s a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (SEP). Brian teaches SE to help people learn to help others with trauma recovery. Check out his website here: Brian Mahan, Body Centered Therapist.

(I particularly love his blog post When Is Prayer, Yoga, and Meditation No Different Than Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll? Because you and I know people who are addicted to prayer, yoga, and meditation, trying to bliss out while avoiding feeling what they’re actually feeling!  I think I may have been one of them….)

Back to Brian’s workshop. It had the longest title of any workshop I’ve ever attended, and the title conveys the content: Imagine feeling present, grounded, centered, boundaried, embodied, empowered, in the moment, safe and joyful!  It was so much fun! I recommend this if you ever get the chance!

Also, schedule an SE session with him next time he’s in Austin or remotely via Skype. (You can email him at BrianDMahanSEP@gmail.com and view his Facebook page. Here’s a link to his YouTube videos. Here’s an offer for a 5-minute meditation video. To set up a session, his phone number is 323-459-1845, and he’s on Skype as SomaticExperience.)

I’m going to write about what attending that workshop brought up for me about some of these energies, with Brian’s artful facilitation in directing our attention to the body and using the “felt” sense. This content is universal (we all have bodies and awareness) and I’m running it  through my personal filters (writing, yoga, NLP, massage).

This felt sense is available to everyone with a nervous system. My NLP training is that we represent the world through visual, auditory, and kinesthetic channels, often favoring one at the expense of another. Therefore many people do not develop the felt sense (kinesthetic awareness for you NLPers), and they don’t know they don’t know—until someone starts talking about something they’re unfamiliar with, like boundaries, energy flowing in a certain direction, internal sensations/emotions (both kinesthetic).

I had a doctor once who had never heard of chakras. You get the idea.

Using and developing this felt sense is actually very significant to your overall well-being, and if you don’t experience much kinesthetic awareness, you can benefit from learning about it and experiencing it. I’ve been there. I know.

Many forces conspire to get us to numb out, to go to sleep, to not know who we really are. Think of TV, food,  alcohol, drugs, work, sex, busy-ness, perfectionism, emotional drama—the things people get addicted to serve the purpose of distracting us from experiencing our real, essential selves and all those feelings.

You know what? You don’t have to give any of those things up, right now or ever. Follow along if you’d like to add a new dimension to your aliveness, to wake up a little more, to put a little more life in your life.

If you are someone who wonders what the heck people are talking about when they say things like “I’m not feeling very grounded right now,” “He’s not his body,” or “Wow, that really threw me off center,” this is for you. If you’ve felt grounded before but feel ungrounded now, this is for you.

Being grounded refers to your body’s energetic connection to the planet, to the earth, to the ground. This energy always flows in the same direction in your body:

To experience this, do an exercise (and you may want to have someone read this to you):

Right where you are, without doing anything else, check in with your body. Scan it from head to toe and notice the sensations and lack of sensations.

Now take your shoes and socks off and stand up. Put your attention on the sensation of your feet against the floor. Take your time and really feel.

Feel the entire weight of your body squishing the skin cells on the soles of your feet into the floor.

Feel your heaviness. Just walk around and feel your weight.

Now stop and feel as if your feet have suction cups on them holding you in place.

Feel as if each leg is a tree, sending roots down deep into the earth. 

Now roll more of your weight onto one foot and feel the strength in that leg. Now lift the other heel ever so slightly. Switch sides and repeat. Now lift each foot higher. You’re rocking from foot to foot!

Do you feel a sticky sensation on the sole of the lifted foot? Can you sense its desire to return to the floor? Can you imagine invisible elastic between each foot and the floor?

Now stand still, evenly on both feet. Imagine the earth’s energy field embracing you, pulling you toward it with a gentle hug. Imagine mother Earth, Terra, Gaia, Pachamama holding you closely like a mother holds her baby. You can even prostrate yourself and surrender to it, hugging the earth back if you like. (If not, that’s okay too.)

Stand back up and imagine there’s an opening in the top of your head that opens to the sky/spirit/God/the cosmos. Imagine this energy flowing into your head and going down through the center of your body and down each leg and out your feet and into the earth.

This is you, fully grounded. Check in again, fully.

End of exercise.

Notice that our language has many ways of describing this energy: being grounded, feeling ungrounded, holding your ground, standing your ground, standing on your own two feet, without a leg to stand on, being sure-footed, steady on your feet, sticking a foot in the door, getting in on the ground floor.

Being grounded gives you a position on this planet, a space, a place that belongs to you and no one else, and it also connects you to this planet. You belong to the earth.

What does it feel like to be grounded? Remember what you felt like before the exercise, and compare that to feeling grounded. How would you describe the difference?

More importantly, when could feeling grounded be useful in your life? When might you particularly want to feel grounded? What ungrounded you?

Just for this moment, bring your attention back to your feet. Notice if you feel any shift of energy in your body.

Realize you can play with this, enjoy this, practice this as often as you like until it comes effortlessly (because the body is attracted to joy and pleasure, even the subtle ones). Then you can forget about it, knowing that whenever you need it, the resource of being grounded belongs to you.

Next: how to get centered.

Recovering from a pulled muscle, I apply my massage skills and heal. Voila!

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A couple of weeks ago, I started self-training in running, and I was walking/running on the trail, building up endurance while avoiding fatigue and injury (so I intended). I’d done the warmups recommended by my trainer and felt really good in my running—lifting my knees, almost sprinting, feeling that great-to-be-alive, heart-pounding, hard-breathing experience of really challenging my body in a healthy way. I was loving the run!

Then, running up a hill, I pulled my left calf muscle. I immediately slowed to a walk, walked for about 10 minutes, and then (ruh roh), I decided it wasn’t so bad and ran some more.

Afterwards, I could feel the pull, but it seemed pretty minor. I could walk fine, without a limp. However, I did wisely decide not to run again until it felt really fine.

Six days passed, and I went to ecstatic dance, where everyone dances like no one is watching. I love this practice, moving to music, going with the flow, connecting with others, letting go, being part of the tribe. I can get pretty wild, jumping around with a big grin, leaping from foot to foot, being danced.

If you have no clue what I’m talking about, it’s like this:

The Power Wave

So anyway, while leaping about, I suddenly felt strong pain in my left calf. I limped to the side and did not feel like dancing any more.

Thinking it was my gastrocnemius (the superficial calf muscle), I had a massage therapist work on it that afternoon. I was still limping badly afterwards, although definitely more relaxed. I went home and iced it, and then…

 A massage magazine I’d been reading was next to my bed. I picked it up and saw there was an article by Dr. Ben Benjamin on the soleus, the deeper calf muscle. It included diagnostic tests, and I verified that it was my soleus muscle that was injured. (The image shows it without the gastrocnemius.)

Guess what? It could take 4-6 weeks to fully heal. That was depressing.

Benjamin (who also wrote the fantastic reference book about muscle injuries that belongs in the home library of every athlete (in my opinion), Listen to Your Pain) gave instructions for “friction therapy” massage, stretching, and strengthening. I also put ice on it, several times a day at first and now just once a day right after I do the clinical protocol.

My leg went from maybe 15 percent to 85 percent functional within a week. My limp gradually lessened, day by day. The calf still feels just a bit tight and tender. My hunch is that the last 15 percent of healing will happen more slowly.

Anyway, I feel really empowered about using clinical massage on my own injury and seeing (and feeling) rapid improvement.

I am ready to apply that to others.

The 12 Symptoms of Spiritual Awakening

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The 12 Symptoms of Spiritual Awakening

Making the rounds on Facebook, worth sharing here.

The easiest, tastiest summer salad imaginable: insalata caprese

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Last Sunday, it was my turn to cook dinner for my friend. I wanted to serve food that was healthy, seasonal, and delicious, and I went to the farmer’s market on Saturday for inspiration.

Heirloom tomatoes are in season, and they are exceptionally delicious. However, they don’t keep for a long time like the modern tomatoes do. Eat ’em right up is what I say, and never let them see the inside of your refrigerator. Buy organic, please. Support your health and the growers. Or grown your own.

I have been known to get home with an heirloom tomato and eat it immediately, standing over the sink to catch the juice.

In hindsight, I could have invited my friend to do the same—that would have made the dinner memorable, and it would have been a fun surprise—but alas, that didn’t occur to me at the time.

Instead, I served insalata caprese, which Wikipedia tells me means “salad in the style of the island of Capri.” Capri is an island off the coast of southern Italy (the front of the “ankle” of Italy’s boot). That area, Campania (where Naples and Mount Vesuvius are also located), has a rich gastronomic history, being the birthplace of pizza and spaghetti, as well as being one of the first areas of Europe to fall in love with that New World wonder, the tomato.

Insalata caprese sounds fancy, particularly when you say it with an Italian accent (try it: een-suh-LAHH-tuh kuh-PRAY-say), but it is almost as simple as eating over the sink. Here are the ingredients to assemble:

  • one large, ripe Brandywine tomato without soft spots
  • eight or so large fresh basil leaves
  • mozzarella cheese (I used Whole Foods brand without rBGH)
  • organic extra-virgin olive oil
  • balsamic vinegar (if you’re adventurous, try this version over the supermarket stuff—a little goes a very long way and although expensive, it’s not astronomical like some)
  • freshly ground salt (I love Himalayan pink salt)
  • freshly ground pepper
  1. With a serrated knife, slice the stem end off the tomato and cut the remainder into four thick slices. Put slices on plates (one or two per salad plate, or all four on a dinner plate for a full meal for one greedy tomato lover, ahem).
  2. Being careful not to crush them, slice the basil leaves crosswise and evenly distribute on top of the tomatoes.
  3. Slice the mozzarella and distribute evenly over tomatoes.
  4. Drizzle olive oil over each tomato slice.
  5. Drizzle balsamic vinegar over each slice.
  6. Season with freshly ground salt and pepper to taste.

That’s it. You will need a knife and fork. Now indulge in some summer bliss!

(You will want to drink the juices left on the plate and then lick the plate. I won’t tell.)

Ruth Reichl’s delicious deviled eggs recipe

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My favorite food writer is Ruth Reichl, former food critic of the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, editor of Gourmet magazine, book author (Tender at the Bone, Comfort Me with Apples, Garlic and Sapphires, Not Becoming My Mother, and more) and a wonderful tweeter to follow on Twitter.

Her tweets are poetry, jewels of sensual delight. Here’s a recent one:

Late spring. Damp green grass beneath my feet. A flock of tiny yellow birds. Local strawberries, so sweet, drenched in thick Jersey cream.

Doesn’t that make you want to hang out with Ruth, wherever she is? She’s so present, so alive, so appreciative.

She wrote about how to make deviled eggs, and I learned several things:

  • Fresh eggs do not peel well. Get farm or backyard organic eggs from free-range chickens and let them sit in the fridge for a week before hard-boiling.
  • The term “deviled” was used starting in the 18th century to refer to spicy foods, such as deviled eggs and deviled ham. They are also called “stuffed eggs” and “mimosa eggs”.
  • If you want perfectly centered egg yolks, store the eggs on their sides.
  • Bring cold water with eggs in it to a boil, then cover and turn off the heat for exactly 12 minutes.
  • After cooking, immediately chill the eggs in a bowl of ice water to prevent the greenish tinge on the outside of the cooked yolk.

I made deviled eggs yesterday, before I read this article. They are so easy and yummy in summer! I use store-bought mayo (made with olive oil—Ruth provides the recipe for homemade—click the link above) and topped each filled egg with paprika and exactly three capers.

Below, two eggs are store-bought organic, and two are from Hal’s backyard chickens. Guess which is which? Also notice the greenish tinge on one of the yolks. That egg must not have cooled quickly enough!

My granddaughter, who turns 12 today, has a shortcut to get deviled egg flavor without the work: She peels a hard-boiled egg, cuts it in half, and smears a little yellow prepared mustard on it. Pop it in your mouth, and voila! Quick and easy!

The questions of the heart; seeking the sound of a normal heartbeat

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I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language.

Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now.

Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

I have a friend who just had a second surgery on his heart in two weeks. His heartbeat has not had a regular rhythm for some time now.

I’m searching the internet for a sound file or an iPhone application that is just simply the sound of a normal heartbeat. The longer the better, and if he can loop it to listen to all night with headphones as he sleeps, fantastic.

At a minimum, it will be soothing, because if you can imagine, heart surgery is a pretty nerve-wracking big deal, especially when the problems aren’t fixed the first time.

At best, listening to the sounds could entrain his heart into a normal rhythm, which he did experience briefly after the first surgery.

If you know of anything, please comment or email me. Thank you.

Meanwhile, remember that besides the brain in your head (headquarters for the nervous system that runs throughout your entire body), you also have two other centers of intelligence: your heart and your gut.

I believe Rilke is onto something about the intelligence of the heart.

I have learned to sit with the questions in my heart and let them transform me, and I am a much better, broader, deeper person for it. I get perspective on my own fear-driven behaviors. I get insight into the behaviors and possible motivations of others.

I don’t know that I have answers. Perhaps the only answer is to be willing to sit with the feelings that are unresolved and allow them to change, not forcing or judging, just allowing and noticing.

It does seem to me that gradually healing occurs. Gradually forgiveness comes. Gradually lightness replaces heaviness. Gradually clarity replaces confusion. Gradually …

This is another rhythm of the heart.

Please say prayers for Marco. Thanks.

Sprouted green lentils in Greek salad

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Every once in a while I crave salad for breakfast, especially in summer, and that is what I had today.

Reminds me of following the candida diet about six years ago: no dairy, grains, fruit, sugar, or lots of other forbidden things. It was very, very strict, and I followed it perfectly for nearly three months—if you mess up, you could feed the candida yeast and have to start over. Man, I had never been on a diet before—this was Marine Corps boot camp!

Nothing I had ever eaten for breakfast was on that diet except eggs! I tell you, eggs over easy without toast to mop up the runny yolks just wasn’t the same! I often ate salads for breakfast then. (I did clear the excess candida, by the way.)

Today I made a Greek-style salad using baby spinach and adding chopped red onion, black kalamata olives, cucumber slices, half an avocado, local Pure Luck goat feta, and sprouted green lentils.

greek salad with sprouted green lentils

After taking the photo, I added Sass Green Gaia Undressing, also a local product that may be distributed widely (if it’s available in your area, you’ll find it in the refrigerated salad dressing case). No oil, no dairy, all plant.

The healthy fat in the avocado staves off hunger pangs until mid-day, when I’ll have a smoothie. The lentils and feta add protein.

Health is grand.