Category Archives: mind

Check your mouthwash if you have high blood pressure

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I listened to a podcast from the Huberman Lab, How to Improve Oral Health and Its Critical Role in Brain and Body Health, recently. I learned a lot, and I want to share a couple of insights that can improve health.

(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.

Here’s more on this finding: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/324621#Mouthwash-may-do-more-harm-than-good

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.

I like to use Spry breath mints made with xylitol to freshen my breath, and when researching nontoxic mouthwashes, I learned that Spry makes a xylitol mouthwash that is not alcohol-based.

The Neurobiology of Connection

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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.


To check it out for now on Substack, click this link for a free month: https://neurobiologyofconnection.substack.com?r=icpo. Tell ‘em I referred you.

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.

Reframing insomnia as a gift

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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 of Cleaning 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.

Insomnia over.

Me at 7

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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.

I like this kid! A lot!

Perspective on reincarnation

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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.

How about you?

Do you have explicit memories of past lives?

How about implicit memories?

Have you experienced anything similar?

Whole body awareness with HeartMath sensor: 88 percent high coherence!

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I did something different in my Biodynamic Meditation this morning.

I stayed with whole body awareness during my 45-minute session.

I didn’t put much effort into labeling what was happening.

I just felt my life force moving within my body and field, and it felt great.

And wow! So much life force moving within me!

I noticed how pleasurable it was to simply be aware of my life force energy for that entire period of time.

I clipped my HeartMath sensor to my earlobe and set up the Inner Balance app for a session again.

I was in high coherence 88 percent of the time today.

I could see on the report that HeartMath displays after completing a session how my coherence fluctuated. It’s never a straight line. It is always changing.

I just signed up for a HeartMath training called The Resilient Heart: Trauma-Sensitive HeartMath Certification. I so love learning how we can influence the autonomic nervous system since there’s just so much unhealthy stress in most of our lives.

Let’s change that. Change that, change the world.

Change your bias toward what’s going wrong, toward what’s going right.

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What’s going right in your body-mind system?

Many of us, myself included, have a bias toward noticing what’s wrong, what hurts, is tense, stiff, sluggish, numb, dysfunctional.

We may even make up stories about what’s wrong, feeling ourselves deficient, flawed, less than, unworthy.

I’m motivated to get over that!

You know, if you’re not on life support in a hospital, there’s a lot that’s going right.

A LOT.

You’re breathing.

Your heart is beating.

You’re viewing this post and reading these words.

You very likely are hearing sounds, if you direct your attention there.

The many sensations of body awareness…

Your weight pressing down into whatever you’re sitting or standing or leaning on.

The sense of where you are in space, how your body is arranged, your posture.

Warmth or coolness.

Balance.

Emotions.

Your many systems that keep you organized and alive: cardiovascular, pulmonary, nervous, lymphatic, digestive, immune, etc.

Also, your mind. Your memories and imaginations, beliefs, motivations, identity, skills, preferences and avoidances, etc.

Underlying all is your life force. Yogis call it prana. Daoists call it qi (chi, ki).

I feel it when I do Biodynamic Meditation, doing yoga or qi gong, walking in nature, having a great conversation with someone, hugging a friend, practicing Craniosacral Biodynamics, and just at random times.

I feel grateful for being alive.

That’s what this is all about. This comes even before sensing the Tide in the central energy channel.

This is Day 90 of these posts.

Developing flexibility with the 12 states of attention helps with Biodynamic Meditation, and more

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One of my influential teachers, Nelson Zink, investigated the 12 states of attention, which I first learned of in 2010.

We have three primary ways through which we perceive: visual, auditory, and kinesthetic.

We have locations in which to place our attention, internal and external. The skin is the boundary.

Our attention has range, narrow to broad.

We come to favor a few of these states. Practicing the ones less used gives us more attentional flexibility.

Since the quality of our attention is important, I thought I would share this here.

When I settle my body into my sitting posture, I am using Kinesthetic, Internal, moderately Broad attention, K I B — moderately broad because I’m attending to my whole body and the surrounding biofield.

I tune into my central energy channel, K I N.

When I feel radiance at my face, it’s K I N. When I sense energy moving from far away, it’s K I/E B.

Stillpoints are K I N.

Monkey mind/internal chatter is A I N.

I don’t often get visual input when I’m meditating or receiving a Craniosacral Biodynamics session, but a few people who have received sessions from me have had visions, such as being showered with golden light (V/K I B).

When I give sessions, I open my eyes, looking out the window into the woods and sky outside. That would be V E B, while I’m sensing with my hands and field, K I/E N/B.

If you are curious about this, Google “navaching” and “12 states of attention” to access Nelson’s website and some blog posts I wrote years ago.

If you are challenged trying to sense the Tide, stillpoints, or other aspects of Biodynamic Meditation, you may find it helpful to access states of attention you don’t usually use.

This can be very powerful!

Sensing swirliness is sensing your body healing itself

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What is this swirliness that I sometimes sense in my Biodynamic Meditation sessions?

Another name for it is the inherent healing process.

Synonyms for inherent include intrinsic, integral, essential, natural, innate, inborn, inner.

I believe this inherent healing process is available in all of us humans…and Biodynamic Meditation is a path to discovering it in yourself.

To sense our own self-healing, our minds need to be calm, gently focused within on our sensations to the point of familiarity, and receptive to what we notice.

This is the heart of why anyone would want to learn Biodynamic Meditation.

Continue reading →

Preventing or slowing age-related cognitive decline

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I took notes on Dr. Andrew Huberman’s AMA (ask me anything) — he’s the Stanford neurobiology and ophthalmology professor with a podcast on using science for many factors of well-being.

His AMAs only available to premium subscribers of the Huberman Lab Podcast. Yes, I really am that nerdy!

Dr. Huberman says that lifestyle factors can override a genetic predisposition to Alzheimer’s disease if started early enough.

He also mentioned that scientists are working on a method of early detection using visual screening.

By the way, a friend of mine defined aging as “continuing to live”. I love it.

Many of these tips are best started decades before the ages in which Alzheimer’s usually shows up, but are helpful at any age.

  1. Avoid environmental toxins: pesticides, toxins, heavy metals are neurotoxins. They damage your brain. That means eat organic food!
  2. Do not hit your head hard if at all possible. Give up risky behaviors, especially if you’ve already had one TBI.
  3. Get quality sleep at least 80 percent of the time. Deep sleep helps your brain clear toxins, and you can use sleep apps to measure this. Slightly elevating your feet seems to help. Seems to me this would work best for back sleepers, not side sleepers.
  4. Challenge yourself cognitively. It’s not just doing crosswords, it’s more like learning a new language, reading difficult material, learning new-to-you dance steps. If you don’t get frustrated, you’re not being challenged enough!
  5. Get 3 to 3.5 hours of Zone 2 cardiovascular exercise per week to increase blood flow to the brain. Zone 2 cardio includes walking, rowing, swimming, and working out on an elliptical or stationary bike.
  6. Do 20 minutes of High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) to release catecholamines for alertness, turning on neuroplasticity.
  7. Do 5-10 sets of resistance training to offset atrophy from aging.
  8. Your brain needs acetylcholine for focus and cognition. You can get it from food (eggs, especially) or take AlphaGPC in the morning, 300-900mg. Also: nicotine gum or patches — safe nicotine. Can ask your doctor.
  9. Eat a ketogenic diet. Also fasting.
  10. Take creatine monohydrate, 5 mg per day.