Mindfulness and Pain

I have to share a discovery I made in meditation last night. I don’t think I discovered anything new. I am pretty sure I had read about this somewhere and took the opportunity to try it out. Anyway, it doesn’t matter where it came from, it worked!!

Yesterday I spent three hours driving in the wind and the rain. The last hour and a half was in the dark. It was the first time I hoped I did not see a moose on the highway. By the time I sat down to meditate last night I was in a lot of pain. I have arthritis in my spine and my shoulders and neck take a lot of abuse from knitting, sitting at the computer, driving, and cello practice. After holding a lot of tension in my shoulders during the drive, I felt like there were daggers in both shoulders, the middle of my back and into my neck. Hot, burning daggers thrust in down to the hilt and then twisted.

The pain became worse as I was sitting still and was starting to affect my ability to relax. Then I thought –where in my body do I not feel pain? My right foot. I started to focus on how relaxed my foot felt and, as soon as my attention left the pain in my shoulders, the pain eased. For the next twenty-five minutes, whenever the pain in my neck and shoulders started to take over, I would redirect my attention to a part of my body that was not in pain and the pain would disappear.

During other meditations, I have tried breathing into the pain and that helps some, but re-directing the pain worked better.

In Buddhism, we are taught that it is our resistance to the pain and suffering in our lives that causes the most turmoil. During meditation I did not resist the pain. I just moved my focus to an area where I was pain free. I wasn’t denying the pain, or trying to push it away. I just changed my focus. I later went back and massaged my shoulders with a good arnica/menthol ointment and took some Tylenol. I gave the pain the attention it needed when I was able to do so, but during meditation I was able to move my focus.

I can apply this to so many areas of my life. Nonresistance does not mean that I ignore the pain and suffering in my life. It means I don’t give it all of my attention and that I remember to focus on the good. I hope that by writing about this I am able to remember this and can help others as well.

Wellness Update - Getting Ready for Winter and the Holidays

I had a visit with Dr. Jane yesterday and still am amazed that she is able to take the time to sit and talk with her patients. She talked with me for almost an hour! I am so grateful to have found her.

I had been in to see her mid October and things weren’t going so well. I was already starting to feel the effects of the shorter days and was starting to have increased sugar and carbohydrate cravings. Along with the depression, the cravings were symptoms of seasonal affective disorder. This has been an issue for me in the past and I was hoping to be able to make it through the winter without visiting my dark places.

When I visited Dr. Jane yesterday I had followed most of her recommendations from October and already feeling a difference. I sit in front of a therapy light every morning for 30-45 minutes and I made a visit to the massage therapist she recommended ( I now have her in my budget for monthly visits). I had also made a little change on my supplements and Dr. Jane convinced me to go back to what I had been on originally. I feel hopeful that the SAD will be under control for this winter.

My focus for this visit was my immune system. I tend to get at least a touch of every little virus that is out there and, since I travel around the state a lot, I also pass it around. She recommended two things – meditating daily for 30 minutes and setting a stop date to end my sugar consumption. She said that research shows that sugar basically makes the body a petri dish for bacteria and viruses. I guess this explains why so many people get sick after the holidays. Dr. Jane also said that there is a lot of research that shows that meditating daily improves T-cell function better than any supplement available. She recommended taking something like EmergenC or Airborne when I feel something coming on but that the meditation should do the trick.

Since my sister has had so much success with cutting out sugar and Dr. Jane is recommending it, I have set a stop date of January 1 (also my one year anniversary of stopping meat consumption). Dr. Jane said that it wouldn’t be wise to even attempt this during December but I will try to be moderate in my holiday goodie eating. And now that I have committed myself to this on this blog, I have to do it.

The other big thing – I need to start walking on the apartment complex’s clubhouse treadmill on days when it is too dark and rainy to go outside. I plan to get a pair of snow sneakers from LLBean so I can walk outside as much as possible but there are just some days that are too nasty to go out. Does anyone have any good suggestions for music to make it more enjoyable!!?

Last, but not least, I worked out my budget for next year and I can afford to not only pay off some bills, but I can also take yoga teacher training. I am going to go for it. Ommmmmmmmm!!

Grateful for Letting Go

This week was definitely more about patience and acceptance than it was about gratitude. Gratitude ended up being a part of it but my week certainly started out differently. I had tried to blog about the wonderful things in my life but I was in a dark place. And I was wallowing it. I was not just down in the mud, I was rolling in it and spreading it around.

I was living in the past. I was acting as if my life was still what it was thirty years ago and I was having a hard time sleeping and I was spewing my upset to anyone who would listen. I was unpleasant and judgmental about my unpleasantness. If I tried to be grateful for anything I would be drawn back down into my misery like a crab being pulled back into the bucket by its companions. I was a mess.

I don’t know what happened. I know there were people praying for me and sending me love and light. I was so unspiritual that I was rejecting anything that was positive. However, early Wednesday afternoon the fog cleared and I started to have a sense of peace and well-being. The complaining, the crying, the ranting at the Universe just stopped. There was no big moment of insight, just a sense that I could come back to the present and live here.

Now I can list what I am grateful for – my family and friends, my home and my cat, Boo, a job that challenges me and lets me use my talents in a meaningful way, and the grace that comes that knowing that I can live in the present and let the past stay where it belongs.

Walking and Breathing

I haven’t done much writing lately unless I count the blog for work and a grant narrative. I have been under the weather for the past month. Almost as soon as I got back to work from my vacation in mid-October I was hit with a nasty virus that made the rounds all over New England. And since I drive all over New Hampshire I was bound to catch it. Sometimes I feel like Typhoid Mary, carrying the virus from one place to another.

I finally was able to get out for a good walk today after some yoga. I can’t say how much I missed that part of my Sunday morning routine. It is so critical to my well-being to be outdoors and all I was able to do for the past few weeks was sleep. I agree that sleep is important to wellness but I was beginning to think that no one was going to see me out and about until spring. Yes, it was that bad. And I am one who likes to wax poetic about naps and consider myself a napping aficionado but I was doing way too much research. There were days when I slept over 16 hours between night and naps. It appears to be over now. I still want to nap, but the urge to sleep for hours seems to have passed.

It felt wonderful to get back out and walk along the Merrimack River today. As I was getting out of my car a pair of golden retriever puppies came running up to me as if they had known me all my life and were very glad to see me. Who can turn down a golden retriever puppy? And these two were wet! I did not mind whatsoever. Their boundless joy and eagerness to greet me made my day.

It was around 40 degrees and the sun was shining. I find that perfect walking weather while others may deem it too cold. Personally, I like a little chill in the air. I warm up pretty fast and by time I finished I had my jacket tied around my waist and had a little fog building up on my sunglasses.

While I was walking I thought about breathing. Breathing is the most important thing that we do and we give it very little thought. I have learned a lot about how working with breath can regulate the central nervous system, decreasing anxiety and increasing a sense of wellness. Yoga teaches us different breathing techniques that increase our capacity and regulate our stress hormones. I also recently learned that most of the toxins that we release during the day are let go through our exhale and mindful breathing techniques can increase our total body wellness. Our blood is cleansed when it passes through our lungs and then the blood carries oxygen back through all of organs, cleansing them as well. What we breathe and how we breathe is critical. Too many of us breathe shallowly. We were taught to suck in our guts and stick out our chests and this is totally counter to what we really need to do which is to breathe down into our belly and let our diaphragms fill with clean fresh air and then push out the toxins with our exhale.

When I walk, I want to inhale as much of the fresh air as possible. It is as if I am hungry for it all, for the fresh air and sunshine.

Our life begins with an inhale and ends with an exhale. I hope I am doing a good job paying attention to the breaths that come in between.

Oh, and here is a picture of a sweater than I managed to finish while I was recuperating.

Changing Seasons and Blowing Noses

It’s the last day of my favorite month. The vivid reds, oranges, and golds have changed to russet browns. The leaves will soon be off the trees and I will be waiting for that first scent of snow in the air and the morning when I wake to find the trees have all been dressed in white lace.

The first two weeks of the month I was on vacation and the last two weeks have been spent blowing my nose, taking my temperature, and alternating between shivering between the blankets and wiping sweat from my brow. I don’t know if it was the common cold, an upper respiratory infection, or the flu. All I know is that it has been a “wicked pissah” and I am in fear of my nose falling off. There isn’t a trash can in the house that isn’t overflowing with tissues. Boo stopped sleeping with me after the second night because as soon as she would settle in I would start sneezing or coughing. Her indignant meows expressed her impatience with human frailties and she found other sleeping arrangements at the other end of the apartment.

I haven’t been able to knit as much as I would like or write. Cello practice has been non-existence. Who can hold a cello and bow, concentrate on music, and sneeze and blow their nose at the same time? I doubt that even Yo Yo is able to make accommodation in his practice for a runny nose and a hacking cough.

Sleep has become my refuge. If my body said sleep, I obeyed. Two, three hour naps prevailed. I reveled in them. I have always been afraid that a good long nap would interfere with my night sleep but that has not been the case. If anything, it has enhanced it. When I was able to get in a full day of work without the nap, I was only able to get a few hours of sleep.

Thursday night I was in bed and feeling relaxed. I did not have any anxiety. The little gremlins were not sitting on my comforter and I felt ready to drift off into blissful sleep. Then the switch was flipped and my mind started a party. I entered this world of stream of consciousness nonsense that kept me awake until three in the morning. Here is a sample”

“I wish I had emptied the dishwasher before bed. It would be nice if I had a housekeeper. Not one of those people who comes in a couple of hours a week, but a Mr. French, a Rosie, a Hazel, an Alice. Wait. Do single middle aged women ever get those? Has there ever been a television show where a single middle aged woman has a housekeeper? It is always men or families. I guess we should be able to do it all ourselves. And I am not middle-aged. I was middle-aged at 35 or 40. There is no way I am living to 110 so I am not middle aged. Oh, I have yoga tomorrow. I need to make sure to take my mat. And I want to call for a massage. And there is a report on the internet I want to read. Yoga, massage, report. Yoga, massage, report. And what would I want a housekeeper to do if I had one? Let’s see – empty the dishwasher, laundry, grocery shopping, cooking. That’s getting expensive. ……………………………” I think there was a period when I was comparing Disney princesses and their wicked stepmothers. I go there sometimes because I find it weird that Disney killed off all the mothers and replaced them with wicked stepmothers. What is that about? I digress. You get the drift.

My mind went on like that until I got up at 2:30 and put in a load of clothes, placed my yoga mat by the front door, and read the report on the internet. My mind had finally sufficiently tired to allow sleep. The next two nights, however, were spent dealing with coughing. I finally gave in and bought some over the counter medication to help with nighttime coughing.

Now, let me talk about the neti pot. I don’t mind using it. I understand the theory behind its use. But when my sinuses are so inflamed that it feels like hot acid being poured up my nose I have to stop. Any suggestions out there? I am using tap water – should I change to distilled? I am getting a little shy about using the pot because of the pain but I really think it would help.

That is how I am transitioning to the winter. A great vacation followed by a knock you off your feet illness. I have a tendency to want to hibernate as it is and starting out with an illness has set the precedent for the rest of the winter.

Dr. Jane is firmly suggesting the use of a therapy light. With my lifestyle, she suggests I use the therapy visor that I can wear anywhere (ubetcha!! I am going to wear that puppy in public. Sure.). Since Dr. Jane’s advice has not failed me so far I am going to purchase either the visor or the desk lamp before the end of November. Her prescription is to sit in front of 10K Lux for one hour a day before 10 a.m. That should help with my seasonal depression and my sleep issues. She also recommended regular massages. Have I mentioned how much I love my doctor!!!

Happy Samhain!!! Happy Halloween!! Blessed Be!

P.S. I didn't ask permission to use my sister's picture of her dressed as the Evil Queen. I hope she doesn't mind.