Wild possibilities

A friend is a loved one who awakens your life in order to free the wild possibilities within you.

- John O'Donohue…Anam Cara

Thousand miles away

When the right word is spoken, it will be heard a thousand miles away.
– ancient Chinese proverb

Pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.

– Proverbs 16: 24

To pray

To Pray is to laugh ~

whistle ~ dance on happy feet ~ sing ~ shout ~ and jump - higher than ever before.

But it is also to whisper ~ wonder ~ stumble in dark cry ~ scream or just hold a worried head in tired hands … and wait.

Prayer is our tired reaching out to the One who holds us closer and loves us more than we would dare imagine.

– Greta Schrumm

Heavy burden

It’s really rather unpleasant to be reminded of this –big- problem we have in our day, but here I go anyway.

The United States has the highest rate of obesity in the world. If current trends continue through 2030, over half of adult Americans will be obese, with an additional 35% overweight and the total health care costs attributed to these conditions will double every decade, reaching almost $1 trillion by 2030.

I agree with some predictions that it will be our most ‘weighty’ health issue to confront for many years. Sure sounds like we’re going to be spending the big bucks in various arenas: medically and other.

Absurdity

In politics, absurdity is not a handicap.

-Napoleon Bonaparte, general and politician (1769-1821)

Discuss

Some time ago, I came across this quote, and I think of it every so often...

Great minds discuss ideas
average minds discuss events
small minds discuss people.

30 seconds

“Thirty seconds is enough time to shift your heart's rhythm from stressed to relaxed.”

So says Deborah Rozman (PhD, psychologist; co-founder, Institute of HeartMath, Boulder Creek, CA. Zeer, D. Office Yoga, Chronicle Books, 2000).

The way to do that: Engage your heart and your mind in positive thinking.

Start by envisioning anything that triggers a positive feeling -- a vision of your child or spouse, the image of your pet, that great piece of jewelry you're saving up to buy, a memento from a vacation -- whatever it is, conjuring up the thought will help slow breathing, relax tense muscles and put a smile on your face. Rozman says that creating a positive emotional attitude can also calm and steady your heart rhythm, contributing to feelings of relaxation and peace.

Chew longer

You’ve heard it before and may not need to be reminded; but I do, so here’s a weight loss tip often repeated --

slow down, chew longer, and you’ll eat less.

As reported in Health Jan/Feb 2009, a small study shows chewing each bite 20-30 times cuts calorie intake. And “Women who rush through meals are twice as likely to be overweight, regardless of what they eat, according to a Japanese study in the British Journal of Medicine.”

It’s the ol' give-your-brain-enough-time-to-register-fullness drill.

[Okay now, to the tune of ‘Feeling Groovy’ -Slow down, you’re chewing too fast, ya gotta make the meal last now....]

To be you

Today I went cross country skiing. Generous friends outfitted me and taught me a few fundamentals (thank you Nordgrens!). This was the first time in 30 years and only the second time ever for me to be on cross country skis, so I have to admit - I did some falling (aside from the humiliation, falling is not so bad: it's kinda exciting and the snow is soft!). I noticed that I had to concentrate some on learning the basics, but beyond that, the more I leaned in to the instinctual and didn't try too hard or think too much, the better it all went, especially the downhills.

Besides gift of the reminder to let my instincts lead -- adding to the experience -- the day was beautiful. Big flakes of softly falling snow graced our time.

Snow

Flakes of individuality, Endless different shaped,
All join to make one blanket, To cover all landscapes,

Little gentle ice crystals, Falling softly from the sky,
Effortlessly form such beauty, Without ever having to try,

Another of nature's gifts to us, To show us what to do,
You don't have to try to be beautiful, You just simply have to be you...

by John Hayden

Be kind

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.

- Philo of Alexandria

Endless song

Nature is ever at work building and pulling down, creating and destroying, keeping everything whirling and flowing, allowing no rest but in rhythmical motion, chasing everything in endless song out of one beautiful form into another.

-John Muir, Naturalist and explorer (1838-1914)

Function and fluidity

I’d like to share a few more of Jill Bolte Taylor’s words from My Stroke of Insight on brain function and choice. This is long again, but GOOD stuff (well, interesting to me anyway, you may well differ).

“Many of us speak about how our head (left hemisphere- LH) is telling us to do one thing while our heart (right hemisphere – RH) is telling us to do the exact opposite. Some of us distinguish between what we think (LH) and what we feel (RH). Other’s communicate about our mind consciousness (LH) versus our body’s instinctive consciousness (RH)…or our small self(LH) versus our inner or authentic self (RH)…and if you are a Carl Jung fan, then there’s our sensing mind (LH) versus our intuitive mind(RH), and our judging mind (LH) versus our perceiving mind (RH)…

From a neuroanatomical perspective, I gained access to the experience of deep inner peace in the consciousness of my right mind when the language and orientation association areas in the left hemisphere of my brain became nonfunctional. The brain research performed by Drs. Andrew Newberg and the late Eugene D’Aquili (Why God Won’t Go Away, NY: Ballantine, 2001) earlier this decade have helped me understand exactly what was going on in my brian. Using SPECT technology (single photon emission computed tomography), these scientists identified the neuroanatomy underlying our ability to have a religious or spiritual (mystical) experience. They wanted to understand which regions of the brain were involved in our capacity to undergo a shift in consciousness – away from being an individual to feeling that we are at one with the universe (God, Nirvana, euphoria).

Tibetan meditators and Franciscan nuns were invited to meditate or pray inside the SPECT machine. They were instructed to tug on a cotton twine when they reached either their meditative climax or felt united with God. These experiments identified shifts in neurological activity in very specific regions in the brain. First, there was a decrease in the activity of the left hemisphere language centers resulting in a silencing of their brain chatter. Second, there was a decrease in activity in the orientation association area, located in the posterior parietal gyrus of the left hemisphere. This region of our left brain helps us identify our personal physical boundaries. When this area is inhibited or displays decreased input from our sensory systems, we lose sight of where we begin and where we end relative to the space around us.” p 134-136

Thus, during the stroke, Jill’s consciousness shifted away from feeling like a solid, to a perception of herself as fluid.

I’d like that – more at-oneness fluidity with the universe and Creator.

I seem to have a clamorous left hemisphere - -Rx: way more meditation for me!

90 seconds

“We would rather be ruined than changed…” –
W.H. Auden, The Age of Anxiety

“We cannot underestimate how even a change for the better is a searing passage, a death of another understanding, and its gradual replacement by something larger still.” – James Hollis, Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life

Lately I’ve been challenged to think again about how I respond to various situations. I love learning about new ways of doing and being, but can’t say I love actually changing my ways (change is difficult, as the quotes above suggest). Still, if it can bring us to a “larger” place, maybe change is worth the effort?

I’ve been challenged to change, and to “choose wisely” my thoughts as I’ve read about Jill Bolte Taylor, a Harvard-trained neuroscientist, who at the age of 37 experienced a massive stroke when a blood vessel exploded in the left side of her brain. In A Stroke of Insight, she tells of her experience of intense right-brain predominance when a blood clot the size of a golf ball induced loss of left-brain orientation association areas and thus absence of a sense of physical boundaries, along with loss of language centers and time perception which contributed to her feeling expansive and in the present moment, and much more. She comments, “My spirit beamed free, enormous, and peaceful...I loved the feeling of deep inner peace that flooded the core of my very being.”

As she gradually healed over eight years, she gained back her left brain function, but learned that many of the left brain responses can be noticed, modulated, and not allowed to dominate her thinking as it had pre-stroke. She writes, “I don’t have to think thoughts that bring me pain…I have the ability to choose a peaceful and loving mind, whatever my physical or mental circumstances, by deciding to step to the right and bring my thoughts back to the present moment.”

And Jill shares this 90 second tidbit: “Although there are certain limbic systems (emotional) programs that can be triggered automatically, it takes less than 90 seconds for one of these programs to be triggered, surge through our body, and then be completely flushed out of our blood stream. My anger response, for example, is a programmed response that can be set off automatically. Once triggered, the chemical released by my brain surges through my body and I have a physiological experience. Within 90 seconds from the initial trigger, the chemical component of my anger has completely dissipated from my blood and my automatic response is over. If, however, I remain angry after those 90 seconds have passed, then it is because I have chosen to let that circuit continue to run... By paying attention to the choices my automatic circuitry is making, I own my power and make more choices consciously. In the long run, I take responsibility for what I attract into my life.”

May this new year bring us to new choices in ways of thinking and appreciation for the many capacities bestowed upon us with our marvelous brains!

“Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing!” Isaiah 43:18-19

Live up to

It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
- Alfred Adler (1870-1937)

Steppin' it up

Happy New Year!

Weight is a much thought about topic at the start of a new year, so I’ll go with that flow, albeit unoriginal. I just read a brief interview with James O. Hill, (PhD, director of the Center for Human Nutrition at the University of Colorado; professor of Pediatrics and Medicine at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver) co-founder of the National Weight Control Registry which tracks about 6,000 people who have, on average, lost 70 pounds and kept it off for seven years. Taking a look at what those folks in the Registry have done to lose and keep off weight reveals what works – they “tend to do a lot of physical activity. They tend to eat a low-fat diet and pay attention to overall calories. They self-monitor: they weigh themselves and keep periodic food diaries. And they eat breakfast every day.”

Hill goes on to explain what “a lot of physical activity” is: 60 to 90 minutes daily! Which discourages me. But he remind us, “The good news is that you can spread out the exercise throughout the entire day. You don’t have to do it all at once… You could also try using a step counter…They give you immediate feedback and make setting goals easy. We find that people in the National Weight Control Registry take an average of 11,000-12,000 steps a day, which works out to about five to six miles.” [http://www.webmd.com/diet/guide/expert-qa-starting-weight-loss-plan-james-o-hill?ecd=wnl_skin_123108]

We know resolutions don’t last; instead we need to make healthy choices every day.

Shall we aim to step it up?