Thinking outside the box

How much time do you spend outside every day? Some people don't venture out very often. They're busy or working or engaging in activities that can only take place inside. Some people have no idea what the weather is like because they go directly from a garage into a car into another garage and another indoor space.

I'm not blaming anyone for this way of life, but for those who don't purposely, purposefully, consciously and mindfully go outside every day, I feel very sad. An indoor life is limiting in many ways.

For almost all of human history, people spent most of their time outside, only entering caves to sleep at night. Later we made tipis and other portable structures which we used for cooking, meeting with others and sleeping. Now most of us in my society live in box shaped rooms.

A great teacher of mine used to say, We become the shapes we inhabit. Oh yeah.

Of course the boxes we inhabit must be Pythagorean in design, otherwise the buildings would not be stable. I'm amazed we can create these perfect cubes. But the effect of living in these boxes, over time, is limiting in scary ways. Anything slightly off plumb in terms of horizontal/vertical is very hard for people in my society to perceive and can seem "wrong" compared to the the neatly predictable rooms in which we dwell. Boxes convey the idea of order and precision which really has almost nothing to do with the way life unfolds. Living inside these boxes magnifies the urge to control everything, which, in most of us, is already exaggerated. The shape dampens creativity and curiosity, reinforces the idea that predictability is a good thing (is it?)

Fresh air is important. Having a look at the sky every day, as often as possible through the day and evening, is (ironically) grounding. "Tasting" the weather orients body and mind. We might look at the weather report before going out to understand how to dress or whether to take the umbrella, but the actual going out enables us to access, directly through the five senses, crucial, non-verbal messages about how to behave and respond. I think we should all get out there every day whether we think it's too hot, cold, rainy, windy, cloudy or whatever. Becoming physiologically aligned with the weather can make or break the rest of the day.

Have you been outside today? Had a look at the sky, taken in lungfuls of fresh air? If not - please, give it a go. You will be refreshed and inspired by the experience, even if the weather is not perfect, I promise. Believe me. (If you don't believe me, read The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett. It is one of my all-time favorite books.)

Shalom.

Inhospitable

Once upon a time, hospitals were places people went to die, mostly. The word "hospital" referred to what went on inside, not to the buildings themselves. During the Civil War, DC was full of tent hospitals. Buildings with large spaces became hospitals. Even the rotunda at the U.S. Capitol was a hospital for awhile.

Early hospitals were filthy spaces, full of flies and bacteria. Many people died from infections in early hospitals which is why so many folks dug in their heels, refused to go, were fearful of these awful places. They were grisly, gnarly, awful.

Fast forward to 2011. Hospitals in developed countries have become like space ships straight out of science fiction movies. Many of them are huge and labyrinthine, and even though I'm sure the trend is to make them seem more accommodating to humans, they are cold, soulless, and buzzy from all the electronic equipment.

My belief is that hospitals are not that great for anyone including the people who work there. It's not just the shiny floors and harsh lighting, terrible food and weird smells that don't contribute to healing, nope. The way they're set up is so hierarchical, it's like entering a feudal fiefdom. Seriously hospitals are more hierarchical than the military, more than the government. Everyone knows her or his place and believe-you-me, everyone, from the front desk receptionist to the most esteemed surgeon, knows where they are in the pyramid, who is above them, who is below them. The power struggles among hospital staff are petty, monumental and ongoing at all times. The competition among those of the same rank is epic. It is so bizarre.

Burn-out is always a factor for the people who work at hospitals. Nurses are worked to death, as are doctors at every step of the ladder from intern to whatever the highest rank is. No one can remain compassionate, patient and open hearted through all that, though I will say that for the most part, the hospital staff I've worked with has tried, really hard, to avoid burn-out.

One way to avoid losing it is to become numb. I've seen that glazed look on the face of many a hospital worker, no matter their role or what's going on, though perhaps especially in emergency rooms. I don't blame them. Sometimes these people don't seem numb, but it's clear they're exhausted, bone tired. No wonder they lean towards sedating the patients, to keep them quiet. When people begin to recover, they tend to get mighty cranky. I understand the urge to press a button on their I.V., put 'em back to sleep.

There's also the geek factor these days. Hospitals are full of equipment and machines and surgical/medical techniques that allegedly save lives. (I always wonder what that means.) My guess is that people who know how to use these machines lean towards their use in most situations, just because they can. What's not neat, geeky cool about the gizmos, hey?

But meanwhile, the patients, oh god the patients. Most folks entering the hospital these days feel relief. They are in a setting with highly trained people and highly sophisticated machinery and modalities. The assumption that goes along with this is that they will be well cared for.

There's no way to measure the pros vs. the cons of hospitals. They are neither all bad nor all good. They are complicated places set up in a way that's bewildering even to those who work there. To the patients and the people who visit patients, they are very intimidating.

I visited clients in two different hospitals this week, hence the rant. Isn't the word hospital related to hospitality? Whoa.

Have a peaceful day. Shalom.

Letting go.

Autumnal rose.

The Buddhists have known it forever. We cling to the past, to our delusions, relationships, jobs, situations, long past their expiration date. We cling, and then we suffer. We are so controlling! We're responsible for everything bad - or everything good - we want everyone to behave in a way we approve of. We are controlling, and we suffer terribly from it. The next thing you know we are old or sick, and then we die, still clinging, still suffering.

What the Buddhists do is practice letting go, they practice every day. It's not the only thing they do of course; they also practice compassion and mindfulness, but oh my they are so smart to know how bad it is when we cling.

Clinging is different than commitment, by the way, yes? I say yes.

I could go on, but I think instead I will quote from a tribute to Steve Jobs that appeared in the Washington Post this morning. I've read a lot of great stories about him of course. The message in the following applies to all.

We spend a lot of time wishing for the past, carping about our gizmos and the sway they lord over us, while loading up our iPods with songs that were popular when we were in high school, while stalking old boyfriends on Facebook. That in itself is a pleasant form of grief, but it is grief all the same.

Jobs kept nudging us away from that. Under his leadership, Apple’s subliminal selling point was: Let it go. Let go of the uneasiness about computers. Let go of ugly, antique technology. Let go of the fantasy future of personal rocketships. Let go of something deeper, something resistant in you that romanticizes the past.

In 2011, so much of our culture — as well as our politics — feels as though we’re losing grip on the old, beloved things. Where did record stores go? What happened to letters that come in the mail? Where did movie theaters go? What about the books? Where is my Main Street? Where is my America?

Jobs had been teaching us to say goodbye to all that for decades — we just didn’t know it. Some of us said goodbye to typewriters in the 1980s when we finished term papers using MacWrite on a Macintosh Plus for the first time. Some of us said goodbye when we made PTA fliers and “Lost Dog” posters that were far and away better than their Sharpie-scrawled predecessors. Let it go, let it go: Take your CDs to Goodwill; give your books to the library sale.

It was therefore an irresistible metaphor, in these final years, when the auditorium lights would go down and the crowd would go wild for Jobs, who increasingly greeted his followers and touted the latest neat, new thing even as he wore the look of a person who was not going into that future with us. He would be getting off here; we were to proceed without him into the unknown. Let it go and look ahead was the message all along.

Let go and reduce your suffering, y'all! Be here now! Shalom.

Birthing

This family is experiencing a very happy moment at Peregrine Espresso. Beautiful.

Every now and then I take on the role of doula or birth attendant, normally for someone I've worked with while they were pregnant. Even less often I agree to doula (is it a verb? I wish there was a better word for it) for someone near and dear, which was the case yesterday.

As usual, the experience was awe inspiring, wondrous, nerve-wracking, epic. Every birth is. Because I dearly love the mother and father of the baby who was born yesterday, the experience was even more emotionally intense than usual, whatever "usual" means.

When I see how hard it is to give birth, how much work it is, what women go through, I wonder how it can be that there are so many homo sapiens on the planet at this moment in history. After the birth, walking home in the resplendent sunshine down Pennsylvania Avenue, I saw a lot of people, of course. I kept thinking Someone went through all of that to bring each of these people into the world.

May I take a moment to say the obvious: Women are NOT the weaker sex.

The way women give birth is a huge topic of controversy within the circles of people who assist with the process. Doctors tend to want to medicalize birth, though far less than they used to. I was born in 1953 when in the U.S., childbirth was utterly medicalized; my mother was strapped down to a table, flat on her back, drugged out of her mind on ether, probably, as were most women at that time. Right after birth I was held by the feet and slapped around until I cried. Is it any wonder that so many of we baby boomers headed into therapy as soon as possible? For heaven's sake.

These days most doctors are far less brutal, though of course they tend towards medicalizing the experience since this is how they were trained. On the other side of the debate are the midwives who are fierce about "natural" childbirth. (I put that word in quotes since I don't think there is such a thing as unnatural childbirth. C-section birth is not unnatural. It is a highly assisted form of birth that does not exist in the supernatural, yes? I say yes. For one reason or another, vaginal birth is not an option sometimes, but that doesn't make it unnatural. At least not to me.)

Women are not as physically strong as they once were; many are not up to the task of going through labor and delivery without anesthesia and other types of assistance. For these women, who sit at desks all day for instance, it is brutal to insist that they give birth without pain relief. Among young, ambitious, uber-achieving mothers (which would include many Washingtonians) it is a badge of honor to deliver without anesthesia. That seems quite weird to me. It's so macho.

As a doula what I want to do is be of help. If the laboring mother is good to go without anesthetic, great. But if they need some help, I don't understand why that's such a bad thing. But then I'm not a purist in any way imaginable. I don't judge anyone for the choices they make around their health, even if their choices don't make sense to me. As a doula, I am there for the laboring mother. What she needs, I embrace.

Yesterday my dear friend cruised through labor and delivery without the controversial epidural. She was amazing as were the midwives and nurses at G.W. Hospital. Whitney Pinger was the attending midwife yesterday. It's no wonder she won an award from Our Bodies, Ourselves. She is a stupendous midwife! I've added a link under Healing Resources for the midwifery program at G.W. Hospital, even though they say straightaway they support "natural" and "normal" birth. What is normal in any situation or experience? Please explain! Even though they are fanatical about their approach, the midwives yesterday were top-notch.

What an experience! Wow. L'chaim, y'all. Cheers.

Slow down and feel better

Impatience is anxiety. Anxiety creates excess stress which is, as everyone knows, bad for everything.

But how do we keep from becoming impatient? It is a quality embraced by the society in which I live. Everything is supposed to happen instantaneously. Snap. Yesterday at Peregrine Espresso there was a long line of people waiting to order. The guy in front of me said to the cashier, "When I saw the long line, I almost cried."

Really? From the time he got in line ahead of me until the moment he began sipping his delicious latte, three and a half minutes passed. I know - I timed it. Wow. Of course I do it, too, waiting in line or at a stoplight, waiting waiting waiting impatiently for the light to turn green. It's only 45 seconds until the light turns, but I'm chomping at the bit. Is 45 seconds really too long to wait? If I don't step on the gas the microsecond the light turns green, people behind me will honk. We are very impatient people here in Washington DC, hence over-stressed and in no way the better for it.

There are many American slang phrases that pay tribute to the virtues of impatience. Hit the ground running, for instance. What does that mean? Why does everything need to be so fast? I could name other phrases, but you get the point, yes?

One of my great therapists used to talk about building the capacity for tolerance as a basis of good health. Tolerance is patience, it means you can sit with situations, people, emotions, that you can give these powerful things some space. Take a deep breath, count to ten, is a well known practice for developing tolerance. There are a million others.

Meditation as well as my work have provided ample opportunities to practice. I can't rush through a session of bodywork; it just doesn't work. When I'm feeling impatient I consciously slow down. It's a powerful practice I highly recommend. Say you're hurrying to get dinner on the table, rushing, pushing. Take a breath, light a candle, pour a glass of wine. Purposely slow down. What I've found is that when I slow down, time magically stretches out, and my impatience (as well as anxiety) abates a bit. In the case of dinner it might add 10-15 minutes to the time I spend cooking. Ten minutes. You don't have ten spare minutes in your day? If that's true, then something is very out of balance in your life. If you do have the time, but never take those ten minutes, try it. You might enjoy cooking dinner, who knows? You might. Your body will definitely benefit from it. And dinner will taste better, I promise.

Have a nice, slow Monday evening. Shalom.

Intuition Training, Wandering Aimlessly

It is my decidedly not documented theory that all intuition begins as sensation. There are clairvoyants who receive visions, clairaudients who hear voices and sound, and clairsentients who receive information through touch. I'd be willing to bet good money that every way of receiving intuitive information is preceded by sensation.

What I mean is that when intuitive information is received, sensate perception changes first, mainly from out of the nowhere. For example, you get the goosebumps suddenly, not because of a change in external temperature, or the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. Your heart starts racing, or calms down, you break a sweat even though it isn't hot, or feel queasy, edgy, headachey. It's hard to breathe all of a sudden, or you start coughing though you are not sick and aren't suffering from allergies. Or maybe you feel extremely happy all of a sudden for no apparent reason. You're smiling, laughing - from out of the nowhere.

Sometimes people stand up and walk to a window before the guest arrives, head towards the phone before it rings. This is the body understanding what's about to happen, but before the brain catches up.

After sensation comes the story, vision or message. The hair on my neck stands up and I hear someone walking behind me. But when I turn around to see who it is, there's no one there. It is only then that I decide it was a ghost. (Most people would decide it was "just the wind" or some other, more rational explanation.) Whatever it is, the hair on my neck knew first, after which the frontal cortex cranked into gear to create the best possible story of what just happened.

To work with intuition, we need to be embodied as often as possible, so as to notice changes in sensation straightaway. If you can derail, even for a few seconds, the machinery of cerebral story-making, you'll catch a glimpse of the raw data before it has been interpreted, like the live feed off a satellite, before it is spun into "the news." Does this make sense?

Here's a great exercise. It's fun and interesting if you can be open to whatever happens. There is no goal here except paying attention. Gather your camera, phone, maybe a bottle of water, and head outdoors. Decide you have nowhere in particular to go, and will absolutely not run errands. Next, put one foot in front of the other, see where your body leads you. If you normally turn left on the sidewalk, stop before the habitual turn, check in with your body. Will you follow the path well marked and frequently taken? Does your body want to go in another direction?

Follow your body for awhile, at least a half hour. Initially it's likely you will feel self-conscious or your rational function (being the bully it is) might try to shame you by saying you should be doing something productive, or you're wasting time, or this is stupid, blah blah blah. My conscious mind goes on and on. For heaven's sake. I honor my skepticism but there are times when I need to place the tyrannical voice on the back burner. When I wander aimlessly is a great time to turn DOWN the volume on the bossy rational function. When I notice that my mind is harassing me, I invoke my curiosity, then go back to letting my body lead me around. I'm not hurting anyone with this behavior, and even if I walk in circles for a half hour, well, so what? It's fun.

If you can't connect with where your body wants to go, ask yourself, "Where is the most energy here?" Also, "Where is the least energy?" Watch what happens with your body when you pose the questions. Sometimes the eyes dart to the left or right, other times the whole body will turn in a specific direction. Do you want to walk towards the energy or towards a less active location? Follow your body.

I know it sounds silly. Well. It IS silly, but well worth the effort, if you want to work with intuition, that is. I remember one year at camp in England when my body literally turned 180 degrees, my head tilted back and I found myself staring at the sky micro-seconds before an aqua blue-gold meteor fireball streaked overhead. I saw the whole thing because my body turned me around. Amazing. I could tell a hundred stories like this, but I will spare you the details.

You will learn so many things about yourself if you try wandering aimlessly. Also needless to say it's great for your physical body to take a wander. Fall is here in the northern hemisphere, a great time to take a walk. Spring, too, is an excellent time to explore, don't you think? I do.

Shalom.

Intuition Training, the Games

A porthole window at a community garden. Very cool.

We start by guessing. Those of us who want to tap into the intuitive function (the birthright of every one of our species) begin by guessing. When the phone rings, before you look at the caller ID, ask yourself, "Who is that calling?" Rather than going straight to your rational function which will figure out the probabilities of who might be calling, pay attention to your body, are you relaxed? Did you tense slightly when the phone rang? Did you want to answer quickly or let it go to VM? Notice your reaction to the ringing. Then guess who it is, or ask yourself, "Is this someone I want to talk to?" See what comes into your mind.

Of course by that time the call will have rolled over to VM. I hope it wasn't important! Yikes.

Little games like this are harmless; you aren't in a court of law after all, and if you guess wrong, who cares? The thing is, these intuition games help you sharpen your sixth sense. I think about wine officiandos. When they taste wine they talk about floral, earthy, leather, smoothness, citrus tones (whatever that is!), a "long finish" (huh?), etc. What are they talking about? Mostly when I taste wine the best I can do is "I like it," or "I don't like it." But those who taste, pay attention, taste again, eventually hone their palates, sharpen the sense of smell and taste to a poetic high art.

One thing wine people do, to learn about wine, is blind taste, then guess - grape, vineyard, vintage. After awhile, they get really good at accurately identifying even obscure wines. I bet the maps in their brains for taste and smell are huge.

Likewise, those who work with intuition must have monumental brain maps for sensing the subtle energies. I wonder what my brain looks like in that regard? Kind of fun, kind of creepy, to think about.

What am I saying? Just like anything else, reconnecting to your intuition takes practice. It also takes a light touch. Start by guessing about the phone calls, when the doorbell rings unexpectedly. Use your physical sensation as a basis for the guess. See what happens. Have a little chuckle when you guess way wrong, hey?

Integrating the intuitive function leads to wholeness, hence good health. I could go on and on with more exercises. Should I?

Happy Saturday. Shalom.