Meditation.

Good news everyone! It turns out meditation is a sham! All those people sitting there with blissful empty minds are only PRETENDING to be better than us.

Fine. It's not a sham. But they aren't better then us. I promise. And their minds aren't empty. Or particularly blissful.

When you aren't meditating, meditation can seem foreign and feel like a waste of time. Admit it, even if you have a practice, from time to to time the extra 10 minutes of sleep wins out. Or that beer. Or walking the dog. Or TV. Or kissing. So many things to do instead of sit there!

Here's what this post is NOT:

-It is not a list of all the incorrect assumptions people have about meditation (but I bet those are really funny).
-It is not a list of even SOME of the various meditation practices out there.

There are LOTS of ways to meditate. I'm just going to tell you why it's important that you do and how I do it.

Why Do It:

Meditation, however you do it, is proving to have a whole host of benefits that come with it. Not just a kickass attitude in the face of hard days:

-It helps relieve chronic pain.
-It makes you better at relationships.
-The parts of your brain associated with stress get smaller and the parts of your brain associated with compassion and self-awareness get bigger. Harvard says so. Harvard doesn't lie.
-There are some studies that say that it affects HOW YOUR CELLS METABOLIZE.  I don't know what that means really, but it sounds super important.

Nerd moment: It's SOOOOO interesting to be alive in a time when we are able to poke around in the human brain and human body and witness the benefits of meditation (or prayer or yoga or whatever you do).

What I Do:

I try to sit every day. My friends who got me to start trying to meditate called it that. Just "sitting." It took the pressure off of. Worst case, if I sat there reviewing all the crap I hadn't dealt with on my to do list instead of "meditating," at least I successfully sat there.

So I try to sit every day for 10 minutes but usually I hit about 4- 5 days a week (fine sometimes it's 3). If I'm feeling particularly squirrely I'll just do 5 minutes. A good day has 20 minutes for me.

I sit in a chair, not one of those fancy cushions, because I like the back support, and I sit up straight. I keep my hands on my legs and I stare softly at the ground a little ways in front of me and I just breathe. Because Pema says to breathe. Yes, I practice mindfulness meditation as taught by Pema Chodron.

image credit: http://billmoyers.com/guest/pema-chodron/

I pay attention to every out breath by counting to 20 out breaths three times (60 in total) and then I stop counting and just notice the out breaths and I spend 10 minutes just noticing every time I find myself thinking. Which I do ALL THE TIME.

Pema stresses being kind to yourself when you notice that you are thinking. Don't treat it like a game of Buck Hunter and try to destroy every thought you notice. Just watch it drift on by or try to let it go so it can go away when you realize you're holding on to it.

My meditation practice has taught me how to recognize my split second feelings/thoughts that lead to more feelings and thoughts that make me crazy over the course of a day. Or night.

I've been using Insight Timer to track my progress and time my meditations for almost 2 years now and I really like it. Find me and you can be my Insight Timer friend :)


Where You Can Start:

If that's all too involved and meditation still seems like too much of a brain/time commitment, maybe try this instead:

Sleep.

Sleep. I know too much about sleep coming from a people prone to insomnia. There's two different kinds of insomnia:

1) Not able to get to sleep to begin with
2) Waking up in the night and not getting back to sleep. Often times they like to hang out together.

And in my experience there's a few basic culprits:

-Booze to close to bed time.
-Stress (which we often go to #1 to alleviate).
-Caffeine too late in the day.

I'm sure there's more but those are the big three sleep eating monsters in my world.

Thanks to insomnia, and poor sleeping habits, many of us are walking around in a state of partial sleep deprivation (when you just aren't getting all of what you need). But if you really want to over achieve and say you are suffering "Complete Sleep Deprivation" all you have to do is go more than 17 hours with out sleep! It's just that easy. Many folks even qualify as having long-term partial sleep deprivation, when you go months to years (hello new parents) getting less than your "optimal" amount of sleep.

What Happens When You Don't Sleep:

 http://www.memecenter.com/fun/679700/fucking-insomnia

So I am just going to go right on past the piles and piles and towering piles of research that says: you have to friggin sleep if you are going to have your physical health and want sound judgement. We're just gonna go ahead and agree that's true.

What? No? You need a little something? Ok, here are highlights from Harvard. Harvard did a great big series of studies and came back with the following (I can't link to this because I bought a report and Harvard threatens to break your fingers if you distribute it to more than just one person and I already blew my load on that - so here are my interpretations of what I read, no copyright infringement intended):

-Sleeping 4 hours a night for 6 days won their participants higher blood pressure, higher cortisol (remember cortisol and our good friends the adrenal glands?), a 50% reduction in flu antibodies and signs of insulin resistance (which is a good way to get to diabetes).

-Over the course of two weeks, sleeping 4 or 6 hours a night gets some interesting results. Reaction times are almost the same as if you go three days with out sleeping. THREE DAYS. Memory plummets and the ability to solve problems in general all go to the equivalent of TWO days of sleep deprivation. And more over the study showed that we are just not capable of gauging just how tired we are. Like a drunk person being incapable of knowing how drunk they are.

-24 hours of being awake (and if you're paying attention you can see that partial sleep deprivation eventually adds up to the same thing) has the same detrmimental effects on driving as that of a blood alcohol content of .10%. That's a DUI in most states, people.

Then we've got another nifty cycle that acts up around sleep deprivation:

I don't sleep = I get more hungry than usual = Calorie intake goes up = Obesity increases
I don't sleep = I'm more tired = I burn fewer calories due to fatigue = Obesity increases

And I think we're all starting to learn about the health issues that come with obesity. I'll save that for another day.

Other fun side effects from sleep deprivation include:

-Viruses come make themselves at home.
-Heart disease can too.
-Mental illness takes an uptick.
-Sleep Debt piles up.

Sleep Debt? What the hell is sleep debt? Good question.

Sleep Debt:

Your body is a creditor, bet you didn't know. Let's say your personal sweet spot for sleep is 8 hours and one night you rock some insomnia one night and come away with 4 hours of sleep on a Sunday. Your body is all, "Hey, that's cool. I'll loan you this energy to get you through the day on just 4 hours, but you owe me that 4 back over the course of the next week. But I'll be really nice about it and as long as it's a good solid 2 I'm happy."

But you flake on your body and maybe get an additional 1 Monday night making a total of 9 but then you do another 8 on Tuesday and then Wednesday you come in at 5 and now you're in the hole for 3 more hours. And it piles up my friends. It piles up. And suddenly you're in so much debt the creditors have taken away your ability to drive a car and threatens to break your knees. Wait, maybe that means your body is a loan shark. Do not piss your body off, as you can tell from the effect of sleep deprivation listed above, it will come for you. Yes, definitely a loan shark.

So let's go to sleep and stay there for a good 7 - 9 hours. For weeks on end, shall we?

Sleep Rehabilitation:

Mercifully, paying back the loan shark is relatively simple if you don't have an imbalance in your brain or body that requires all sorts of support that you shouldn't be looking for in a blog. Sadly, it means doing things you clearly don't want to do otherwise you'd already be doing them.

Reduce your daily stimulants - No coffee after noon! Also, the refined sugar is a good way to wake up in the night or have a hard time getting to sleep, so save it for the middle of the day if it's a must (which let's face it, sometimes it is). I bet all caffeine falls in this category. So all you yerba mate lovers, this means you too. And lay off the friggin cigarettes. SO nasty.

Keep it dark and quiet - Get your TV out of the bed, your cell phone too. Or whatever. Stop exposing your eyes to artificial light around sleepytime. This means curtains over the windows, DARK ones, that close out light and an alarm clock that doesn't light up the room in anyway. Maybe a white noise making thing like a fan if you're in a noisy neighborhood. But seriously, we all need to stop watching TV in bed. Bed, in my opinion is for three primary things: sleep, sex and snuggling. Fine, read a book, but you better snuggle it later.

Get in to a bed time routine - This is especially pertinent if you keep strange hours and are going to sleep at erratic times. According to this fantastic book:

image credit: tattered cover

There are two basic circadian rhythms you can have when it comes to sleep, Night Owl or Morning Lark. Make no mistake, you are one of them. I would quote an excerpt from the book right here that's all detailed and educational but I loaned it out.

The point is your brain functions better at certain times of day depending on your sleeping category. The Night Owl functions better staying up later and going to sleep closer to the first hours of the day and the Morning Lark goes to sleep in the evening.

Fun fact: you have no control over this, it might be genetically determined and you might not even get it directly from your parents so it is perfectly possible for a couple of Night Owls to be stuck raising a Morning Lark.  Sleep how you are and keep it on a routine as best you can. Because regardless of when your body prefers to sleep we all need similar things from our sleep, duration, quality, etc.

Back to the routine. For some this means sitting down and clearing your head with lists at some point in the evening so your anxious brain knows you're taking care of business and doesn't nudge you awake. For others it means bath time and tea and a book. Maybe for you it's just brushing your teeth and washing your face. But figure out the routine you want. Do it every night and get in to bed as close to the same time each night (or morning) as possible even on your days off.

Two hours between booze & bed - Yep, that's pretty much it. Give your body time to process instead of waking you up saying, "I'm done! Aren't I a good liver?"

Do drugs* - Not really. I recommend Kava tea for a muscle relaxant (chamomile does NOT cut it for me) but don't do it every night. Much like drinking every night it'll tucker out the liver. In addition I recommend Valerian tincture, two dropper fulls before bed and once if I wake up, does a good job getting the lights out when I need additional support. If I'm really hard up I'll also throw in some Melatonin. Especially if I've been on edge and suspect I might be staring at the ceiling instead of falling asleep.

*Again, I am Professional Nothing in this field. It's just what works for me.

Belly Breathing - If stress is the culprit, I find it helps especially when you combine it with rolling your eyes into the back of your head. Sounds weird, but it's true. The eye rolling can actually trick the body into thinking it's time to sleep because our eyes actually roll back when we fall asleep and our bodies can get confused and try to catch up (ha ha stupid body!). There are other relaxation exercises out there, like visualizations or sex - yes I said that, but the breathing plus the eye rolling is fast and dirty and gets the job done for me.

Exercise - Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. Who has the time when there's beer to drink!? It makes a difference though. Opinions differ on what, how often and how long and how hard. I say if it makes your body feel better do whatever works. Just do it. REGULARLY.



Well, that's my dissertation on sleep. Sweet dreams.

Adrenals.

Today has been a bit of an ass hat. I was going to post this tomorrow, shooting for an every three days sorta thing, but since my own adrenals are extra crispy right now (Dr. P refers to my left one as a flat tire) I thought I'd just go for it.

Let's talk adrenal glands. Truly, this is one of my all time favorite soapboxes to stand on.

Mostly because it was an incredibly hard earned lesson back from my days in the throws of social services administration.

So. Your adrenal glands are these nifty little thumb sized bits sitting on the top of each kidney, like so:

They are there to assist you in your survival. As in: LOOK A BIG SNAKE AT MY FEET! And all of the sudden you're on the other side of the road 400 feet away from said snake with no recollection how you got there.

They do this by creating a cocktail of cortisol, adrenaline, testosterone and some other fancy chemicals and hormones (for our very simplistic purposes, I'm going to totally miseducate you and just call it adrenaline) and pumping it into your system. When the "adrenaline" hits you, senses are heightened and reaction times are increased. You become momentarily super human. Not really, but you get the point I think.

After the snake is escaped and your system is flooded with "adrenaline" it takes about 45 minutes for the body to chill out again. Note: if you're having a fight with someone the same flooding can happen and it might not be a bad idea to take a 45 minute break before attempting a rational conversation.

What's supposed to happen is these adrenal glands then recharge and fill back up with all that handy "adrenaline."

There in lies the rub.

If you are stressed by work, by your kid, by too much coffee coursing through your veins, by an alarmist environment where everything feels like an emergency, then the little guys don't really get a chance to fully recharge because they blow their load again and again at every little thing. They start out helping you cope with stress by putting out "adrenaline" at a 100%.  But while the are recharging something comes up and maybe they only get to 80% the next time they have to do their thing. Or maybe they only recharge to 5% and then you're trying to cope with all of your stress on only 5% of the expected output form your adrenal glands. (These numbers are totally made up metaphors I have no idea how these things are measured).

So then they are firing off at a perceived survival emergency with only 5% because they aren't getting the chance to recharge to 100%.  Basically, our animal bodies are not that smart. They haven't caught up with the fact that every little interruption from our cell phones and our boss and our kids is not necessarily something to jump up and pay life-or-death attention to. Clearly, adrenal fatigue is one way our bodies struggle with our society and modern day realities. Social workers, I'm talking to you.

Side note ladies: If your adrenals are overly enthusiastic they can pile on the testosterone as well. Which is not to say you then become the Hulk. But testosterone has a fancy way of turning into estrogen and then you go from having an excess of testosterone to an excess of estrogen. Which, to my understanding, is one of those danger zone precursors to various illnesses including some forms of cancer.

You might be wondering, "How do I know if I've got tired adrenal glands?" I find this list of symptoms to be accurate for myself and others in my life who have reported the same:

-Every little damn thing is stressing you out.
-When you do get stressed it feels big and loud and hard.
-You tremble easily in response to stress.
-Shallow rapid breathing.
-Teariness.

Your body is going to give you other signs too. But in my opinion, if you do internet heresay research on this you come back with a list of symptoms that can be rooted in a lot of things and generally means your body is over stressed and not getting enough of a lot of different kinds of support. For a long list of ways to worry, I like these folks.

The adrenal glands are gate keepers of a sort. When you blow them out your body starts coming up with creative ways to cope with stress, like gaining weight, losing sleep and taxing other organs. So it's in your best interest to take good care of them.

The care and feeding of your adrenal glands:

"I think my adrenals are pretty okay, thanks anyway." If this is you, then I suggest just staying on top of your excellent sleeping habits, clearly you meditate, so keep that up. And you have some kind of fantastic diet providing you all the nutrients happy healthy adrenal glands need. Also you don't drink coffee, so good for you!

"Hey, yeah. I think I could use a little something, I'm not coping with stress the best these days and they might be getting pooped. And there's no way in hell I'm giving up coffee ever, so just shut up about that already." If this is you, then you and I have a lot in common. We both need to reduce the stimulants, like sugar and caffeine. We need to move our bodies more every day. We need to stay on top of healthy sleeping behavior (Oh MAN, now I have to write one on sleep, great). We should keep rescue remedy on hand and take a supplement dedicated to helping those adrenal glands recharge and we should take it every day religiously. Possibly multiple times a day. I like this one. But I'm not a naturopath or nutritionist and haven't done a lot of research, it's just what works for me. Well, that is until I blow them so far out they need more help than daily maintenance. See: snarky comment from the naturopath mentioned at the start of this post.

"I have debilitating stress. Not entirely sure how I'm getting through the day." If this is you, get thee to a therapist, an MD and a naturopath or a nutritionist or a acupuncturist and stop looking for solutions in some random lady's ramblings about her opinions. But if you want an immediate aid while you are waiting for you appointments, I suggest bovine based adrenal support. It's not a solution. And depending on how fatigued your adrenal glands are it might not make a dent. But, hell, it's something to try and we've all been there when just trying something else feels better than nothing.

Well, that's my Adrenal Gland Soap Box. Thanks for listening and don't forget to thank your adrenal glands.



image credits: Woman standing on soapbox in IWW demonstration, Labadie Collection, Mayo Clinic 

Belly Breathing

Once upon a time I was struggling with some pretty debilitating anxiety.

I had the good fortune to find a helpful counselor right out the gate when I decided maybe my brain needed more help than I knew how to give it alone.

First session right then and there we didn't talk about baggage or work or stressors in general. I just breathed. She had me learn how to breathe into my stomach for three straight minutes. Yes I was too stressed to get there on my own at the time.

Turns out the human body can be tricked to calming then hell down. By breathing in to your stomach. For three minutes. Not less. More than that doesn't hurt but isn't absolutely necessary.

I don't care how you do it...well maybe avoid using the nose exclusively...that could result in hyperventilation and falling down. Deeper is definitely better in my experience. Slower is probably better too, but I found that slow eventually happened on it's own and if I had to breathe rapidly and a deeply into my belly for a minute to get there, that was just fine. I've been using this technique for seven years and I really think it works to calm down when you hit some hard feelings.

So next time you hit a stress wall of some variety and feel up to multitasking (better yet just sit there if you can steal three minutes somewhere) try three minutes of deep breathing into your belly.

This is also a good way to get back to sleep.

Water.

Water. 8 quarts of it a day to be exact. Also known as 2 gallons or 32 glasses. However you do the math it translates roughly to 18 - 20 trips to the loo between waking and sleeping and then another somewhat harried midnight scramble. Not my usual intake, it's a big change for me in fact and comes at the direction of a shiny new naturopath. Because I go to one of those now.

I should probably take a few steps back and introduce myself... and this. I'm Aurora, Hello! 

Ok. Good. Glad we got that out of the way. It has recently been brought to my attention that there's a fair amount of perspective in my brain on the pursuit of well-being, self-care and generally how to take steps that help folks cope with their human bodies, their human brain and their very human hearts. I read a lot about all of it and have had a brief career in behavioral health support, but I'm not a therapist. Or a professional anything as it pertains to health and wellness for that matter. I'm just another human with another perspective.

Which might actually be to the good if you think about it. I don't assume that my opinion is anything more than opinion based on my experience. But it works for me, and for other people. Your opinion & experience are welcome here too.

And here I am, one more human throwing my opinion out into the electronic ethers. If nothing else, I will have all of my habits and interests catalogued and organized for my own reference and enjoyment.

Right, back to water. 

The last 2 years have been a doozy (actually so were the 7 before that but for very different reasons). My current theory is that the stress of the last two specifically finally caught up with me and my immune system took a hit. It's taken several of those over the course of the last decade and is no doubt why and how I've come to some of the opinions I've come to. The most recent hit resulted in walking bacterial pneumonia and nice little virus friend in my lungs after one very rude head cold crashed my body and invited drunken friends.  

After two weeks in bed I decided to gang up on the gang and went to both my MD (whom I LOVE and go almost entirely for the entertainment) and found a fancy new naturopath and resolved to do whatever they both told me to do. At once. So water. 8 quarts of water a day and antibiotics!

I started the water 3 days before the antibiotics and I have to say I'm pretty certain it made an immediate difference. 

Like many people, I take clear, clean, potable water for granted, to the point where I'm actually happily justifying coffee and beer because both are made with water. It's not that I sit around refusing to drink water. I keep a metal water bottle at my desk and everything. I just don't drink it. Well, didn't drink it. It turns out these last weeks when I was beginning to suspect I was struggling with depression as well as illness I was just really flipping dehydrated.   

I don't need my 2 pm black tea anymore and I'm perfectly content with a 2/3 reduction in my coffee in take to a single mug in the morning. Can't say it's reduced my love of beer equally. Plus I'm pretty sure I'm losing weight, but that might be all the running to the bathroom. And my ordinarily fussy complexion is clearing right up.

Water snuck up on me. It's one of those basic physiological needs. Some day I'll do a whole piece on Maslow's Hierarchy of needs and my thoughts there but for now, let me just say, water is foundational. Access to it and intake of it. 

And candidly I'm a little embarrassed that I was trying to get anything done for myself physically, emotionally or mentally while chronically denying myself water for weeks on end if not longer. I was running fevers every week because I was dehydrated. I was struggling with sleep. I was cranky. I had a short fuse and was not entirely rational. My blood pressure was low and blah blah blah. Water. WATER PEOPLE! I'm starting to suspect that most of us walk around mildly dehydrated constantly and the more you adjust to it the more severe it can become. Especially if you're one of those folk who just LOVE to deny their own needs and bodies in favor of making other stuff happen. Like groceries. Or work deadlines.

If you want to learn more about dehydration, I'm a fan of Mayo and Livestrong for accessible information of the medical variety. 

Dr. P. (yup, that's the initial and yes it's funny) says I get to keep this up indefinitely. I'm a week in and not that upset about that prospect.

Ok, that's all for now. Welcome to my brain.