Author: Ron Passfield

Aging and Retirement Planning

Bec Wilson, creator of the Epic Retirement Flagship Course, reminds us that the concept of retirement has changed in recent times.  “Retirement” used to mean leaving your job and work because of your age.  It was often age-related with organisations setting mandatory age limits for full-time employment.  Bec notes that a more modern concept of retirement involves choice – choosing to live off income from investments, superannuation and pensions while undertaking personal exertion in relation to work that you choose to do (whether paid or voluntary).  There is also the choice not to work at all but to pursue your “bucket list”, including travel options or explore hobbies or other recreational/sporting activities.  Bec explores these retirement choices extensively in her book, How to have an Epic Retirement.

Barriers to retirement planning

People are often fearful of retirement planning because they are concerned that they will “run out of money”.  They may be anxious that stopping work will leave them without a purpose and structure to their life.  Many people define themselves by their work role – e.g. a teacher, social worker, lawyer, accountant, or librarian – they are concerned that they will lose their identity if they stop working.  Others are concerned that they  will not be able to enjoy their retirement because they will be afraid to spend money.

One of the biggest barriers to retirement planning is attitudes to aging.  The impact of negative beliefs about aging is pervasive – reaching into  every aspect of our life.  Research shows that negative aging beliefs can have a damaging effect on us, both physically and mentally.  It can severely restrict our perception of options open to us, including retirement planning.  “Ageism” portrayed in the media reinforces negative portrayal of the aging process, highlighting the elements that “decline” without counteracting that with the positive benefits of aging.

In contrast to such reinforced negativity, positive beliefs about aging have numerous benefits including longevity; enhanced knowledge, understanding and wisdom; improved capacity to handle stress; heightened creativity; and improved physical health.  Positive beliefs about aging also free us up to explore the many options available to us in planning our retirement. 

We can develop positive beliefs about aging by increasing our awareness of the pervasive presence of ageism while exploring positive images of aging portrayed in memoirs and stories of exemplars and by interacting with aged people in our family and social network.  With this kind of ammunition we can more readily challenge the assumptions behind negative stereotypes of aging.  We can also begin to explore options for ourselves as we begin to consciously plan for retirement.

One member of the community-based The Epic Retirement Club, Sam Sang,  maintains that we each have “retirement superpowers” – unlimited energy, instant skill mastery, endless travel.  Other members empathise the freedoms that they and other retired people enjoy.  This community sharing of real retirement experiences  contrasts sharply with the pervasive perception that retired people do not have the capacity to contribute to society, are unable to enjoy life and experience severe limitations.

Planning for retirement

Bec is motivated by the desire to help people better understand the choices they have by learning about what supports are available to assist with retirement planning and, in the process, to “figure our what’s really important to you.”.  To this end, she not only provides her Epic Retirement book and Flagship Course but also a 150 page, practical Workbook to “guide you through each module” of the Course.  Bec suggest that you undertake the Course and complete the Workbook with your partner or an “accountability buddy” who  could be a friend.

The Course and Workbook are structured around what Bec calls the Six Pillars of retirement – time, financial confidence, health, happiness and fulfillment and travel.  For each of these pillars, she provides a series of questions and points for discussion, along with quizzes and the space to record our own answers.  For example. Bec provides a basis for calculating longevity to highlight that we often have much more time in retirement than we envisaged based on old data – nowadays, people are looking at 30 or more years in retirement given increased longevity owing to medical breakthroughs, new health and exercise regimes and extensive lifestyle advice.

To assist us to develop financial confidence, she provides the means to calculate whether we have the financial resources to support a comfortable or modest retirement or whether we will be dependent on a Government pension.  A number of exercises in the workbook support this latter source of income.  Bec helps us to complete both the asset test and the income test to enable us to see whether or not we qualify for the Australian Government pension and related financial and health concessions.  For those who are on the borderline of the relevant pension cut-offs, she assists us with suggestions of how we might qualify for the pension in the future.

In relation to health, Bec offers suggestions for ways to improve health outcomes and longevity, including diet, exercise, building a daily routine, managing health risk factors and ensuring you undertake preventative testing at the recommended intervals.  For those of us who experience chronic inflammation, she strongly argues for the need to reduce inflammation by identifying and managing triggers (e.g. foods, environmental toxins and harmful stress).

Her discussion and questions concerning health and happiness are comprehensive and covers aspects such as transitioning to retirement, research about happiness, creating meaning, maintaining and developing relationships, epic pursuits and goals.

In relation to travel, Bec shares the idea that there are potentially three phases of retirement travel: (1) active and independent travel, (2) less active, slower pace travel with the possibility of assisted travel, and (3) travel closer to home (avoiding the rigours of international travel and seeking more comfort).

Reflection

My wife and I are completing the Epic Retirement Course and Workbook together.  We find that this approach is a catalyst for a number of important discussions, including what we will do in retirement; where we want to travel to (we have already been overseas a number of times); how we can create a comfortable retirement; what financial planning we need; what are our assets and overall financial position; how much we will need to live on; where we will like to live in retirement; how we provide for our children; and how to structure our wills.

Bec identifies 5 key stages of retirement: (1) prime time, (2) adjustment, (3) epic retirement, (4) ageing, and (5) frailty.  Even though my wife and I are at different stages of retirement (owing to a 10 year age gap), we are able to use the Epic Retirement Course and Workbook to work towards an agreed, shared retirement future.

Mindfulness practices can help us to develop positive beliefs about aging and contribute to our longevity (we have been married for forty years).  As we grow in mindfulness, we can broaden our retirement options, enhance our creativity and develop new skills relationships and travel options.

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Image by 🌸♡💙♡🌸 Julita 🌸♡💙♡🌸 from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group, and the resources to support the blog.

Managing A Flare-Up from Fish Poisoning

Flare-ups are a common occurrence with Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS) – triggers (such as food or chemical intolerance) can exacerbate existing symptoms of immune hyperactivity or be a catalyst for new symptoms to occur.  Managing these flare-ups is a constant challenge for someone like me who has MCAS, as their occurrence is often unpredictable and, sometimes, confounding.

Creating a story from a single object or event

At our October Creative Meetup, an online group for writers-with-chronic-illness, we were introduced to the idea of writing a story from an object.  Our facilitator, Jennifer Crystal, showed a video of Billy Collins reading his poem, Lanyard, as an example of how this is done.

The idea of focusing on an event or object is also illustrated by Melissa Febos in her book, The Dry Season, a memoir about her conscious choice of twelve months of celibacy after a tempestuous time of cyclical relationships that proved to be harmful to her health and self-esteem.  In particular, she focused on her “maelstrom”, a two-year toxic relationship with another woman that proved to be controlling and destructive and was the catalyst for her chosen period of celibacy. 

Throughout her memoir, Melissa revisits this event (story object) to highlight its impact and to serve as a benchmark against which to evaluate other potential relationships.  Her period of celibacy was designed to provide sufficient distance from the maelstrom to facilitate self-insight, overcome her fear, find herself again (having suffered from “the-need-to-please”) and to achieve peace with her experience of the maelstrom.

Creating my story of a recent flare-up

At our Creative Meetup, we were encouraged to write our own story using one or both of the following prompts:

  1. Make a list of five prompts you associate with your story. Pick one and write about it (poetry or prose) OR
  2. Write something (poetry or prose) that includes all five objects.

I chose to address the second prompt and drafted a poem around the five objects I identified that were associated with my recent flare-up:

fish, hives, rash, poisoning, pain

The poem that I have included at the end of this post is the outcome of my writing and reflection as well as the group sharing and discussion that occurred during the Meetup session.  Participants shared their writing and their vulnerability in stunning prose and poetry (given they had only 20 minutes to write their story). 

A flare-up from fish poisoning

My story began with having Red Emperor, a wild-caught fish, for dinner. I am allergic to soy so I avoid farmed fish that are typically fed on soy products.  I thought it would be safe to eat the Red Emperor as it is not farmed but wild caught in deep waters such as those off the coast in Northern Australia.

What I experienced, however, is an immediate reaction to the Red Emperor (unlike previously where I had eaten it without negative consequences).  My body reacted strongly this time – resulting in a bright red rash on both upper arms, accompanied by itchy hives and a burning sensation on my affected skin as well as night sweating and headache. 

This led me to do personal research on “fish allergy”.  What I established is that there are two major forms of fish poisoning:

  • ciguatera poisoning
  • scombroid, also known as histamine poisoning.

My first thought was that I had experienced histamine poisoning given histamine intolerance stemming from my MCAS chronic illness.  However, on further research, I established that the reaction is more likely to be caused by ciguatera poisoning.  The symptoms of each form of fish poisoning are similar but the causes differ substantially; a distinctive symptom of ciguatera poisoning is “extreme itchiness” which was my experience. 

Histamine poisoning is caused by bacteria developing on dead fish that have been stored ineffectively (e.g. not deep frozen or stored on ice).  Ciguatera poisoning, in contrast, results from the food chain which commences with small fish eating marine toxin produced by algae in reefs and being consumed by larger reef fish which are then consumed by humans.

Ciguatera poisoning is more common in fish that live in warm waters and “spend some or most of their time in reefs”.  Red Emperor is explicitly implicated in carrying this form of fish poisoning.  Freezing, cooking or cleaning do not destroy the ciguatera toxins.  The presence of ciguatera toxins are not visually detectable, nor can allergy to the toxin be detected by allergy testing.  

Recovery from ciguatera poisoning

A disturbing fact is that ciguatera poisoning symptoms can recur without further exposure to a poisoning source.  The likelihood of symptom recurrence is increased by drinking alcohol.   Recommendations for recovery include avoiding fish for at least 6 months and abstaining from alcohol for 3 months after eating the toxic fish.

A detailed article on ciguatera poisoning in the National Library of Medicine maintains that relapses in symptoms “may be triggered by consuming alcohol, nuts, seeds, fish, chicken, and eggs”.  The authors advise that “patients should be counselled to avoid fish, caffeine, alcohol, and nuts within 6 months of poisoning”.

The itch and burning sensation from ciguatera poisoning made it difficult to sleep despite the use of Dexeryl – “an emollient cream that reduces irritation, itching and scratching”.  Eventually, I had to resort to using Eleuphrat, a type of Cortisone cream, to reduce the itch and pain and enable me to sleep.

I have had a series of flare-ups since the initial contamination after eating Red Emperor.  The first was following a glass of wine; the second after eating a salmon and avocado sushi roll.  Others involve accidental consumption of egg or chicken.  Research has shown that farmed salmon, typically used in sushi, can lead to ciguatera poisoning because of toxins in the fish food. 

One of the problems associated with fish poisoning is that you can tolerate a particular type of fish at one point and yet at a later time react severely to eating it, sometimes with fatal consequences.  For example, a newspaper report recounted the case of a father-to-be who collapsed after eating barramundi at a restaurant and died five days later in hospital.  He had experienced tingling in his mouth a few years before when eating barramundi.  A Victorian health website identifies barramundi as one of the more common causes of fish allergy.

Reflection

It is easy to jump to a conclusion re the cause of symptoms without undertaking the necessary research and/or seeking medical advice.  The problem of accurate diagnosis of symptoms is compounded by cross-contamination and the commonality of symptoms (e.g. hives and rash) among various food allergies. 

For example, consumption of coffee can cause a rash and itchy hives resulting from histamine poisoning caused by impurities in coffee such as  “molds, mycotoxins, pesticide residues, yeasts, and other biogenic amines”.  Purity Coffee seeks to provide quality coffee beans and a coffee process to avoid these issues and enable people with MCAS and histamine intolerance to have their regular coffee.

We can be more mindful of the factors influencing our symptoms if we take time to research and reflect on our findings and related experiences.  As we grow in mindfulness, we can become more self-aware and conscious of what is impacting our body and develop creative ways of achieving recovery from ill-health.

I developed the following poem In reflecting on my experience with ciguatera poisoning:

The Flare-Up

Flaring up like a campfire flame,
fighting feverishly a toxic invader.

Redness spreading across swollen ridges,
a painful path of itch and burning sensations.

Awash in a sea of marine toxins,
overwhelmed by a challenged immune system.

Elimination diet a testing time,
complex interactions of food and drink.

Seeking answers through research and inquiry,
wild caught fish traced as the trigger.

Unanswered questions,
uncertain future,
unpredictable outcomes.

Where is my anchor?

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This post is provided for information purposes only and is not intended to replace personal medical advice provided by a trained medical practitioner.  Please seek advice from a qualified professional before deciding on treatments for yourself or other members of your family.  This article reflects my personal patient experience – MCAS and related diseases affect each individual differently.  I frequently share my research findings with my medical practitioner and this informs my treatment.

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Image by Thomas from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield- Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution-Non-Commercial -No Derivatives.

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Finding Stability and Predictability in Times of Uncertainty

In the previous blog post, I discussed a UCLA talk by Bhanu Joy Harrison on the topic of Unpredictability and Adapting.  Bahnu emphasised our constant mind-body search for stability and predictability despite continuously encountering uncertainty in our personal lives as well as the world at large. She maintained that we are constantly seeking “an island of coherence in a sea of chaos”. 

The reference to “islands of coherence” is based on the work of Nobel prize winning chemist, Ilya Prigogine, who stated that when systems move away from equilibrium and create chaos, “small islands of coherence” can “shift the entire system to a higher order”.  When applied to our inner world, this concept relates to our capacity through interconnectedness to develop stability and predictability that, in turn, provides us with “strength, calm and groundedness”.

Bhanu maintained in her UCLA podcast that mindfulness practices are a way for us to create our own “islands of coherence”.   On the InsightTimer website, she offers a range of guided meditations on topics such as slowing down, getting unstuck and managing anxiety.  During her podcast, she also  provided a guided meditation on supporting ourselves by creating “islands of coherence”.

Guided meditation – providing support and groundedness

Throughout the guided meditation, Bhanu encouraged us to trust our support. As a starting point, this trusting involved letting our chair support us by enabling our weight to sink into the chair. While being conscious of this support, we can let our mind focus on the power of gravity to hold our posture in place (not allowing us to fly into the air but to stay grounded on the earth).  We can sense the “grounding effect of gravity” on our body.

While being conscious of this groundedness, we can notice what is happening in our body – a slowing of our breathing, loosening of our muscles and bodily tension.  The aim is to drop from our brain into our bodies like dropping an anchor “into the bottom of a lake”.

If we want to contain ourselves bodily we can give ourselves a hug – placing our left hand on our right shoulder and then reversing the process.  Alternatively, we can “feel the solid edges of our body” by squeezing along the length of our arms.  I often found that joining the fingers of both hands together can have this grounding effect as I feel the sensations pulsing through them.

Bhanu reminded us  that “our body holds so much”, including the visceral imprint of trauma.  She suggested that one way to calm the body and mind is to hold our head with two hands – one holding the base of the skull while the other holds the forehead.   Again, she encouraged us to notice any change in bodily sensations, our emotions and our mental activity. 

Bhanu then suggested that we focus on our legs because our legs help us to carry a lot of weight embedded in our torso from the “intensity of life”.  Our body, especially our torso, is activated by stress and being aware of this activation through our legs can “help spread out that activation”.  In particular, exercises such as pressing our feet into the ground (together or alternating) and squeezing down our legs with our hands, can serve to reduce the activation in our torso by spreading the load.  Squeezing down our arms can have a similar positive effect.

Working with the predictable – breathing

Bhanu suggests that when we are overwhelmed by the unpredictable, in whatever form it takes, we can focus on the “predictable” things in our life.  A key element of this strategy is to focus on our breath because “our body knows how to breathe”, no matter what is going on in our life.  Mindful breathing is an important aspect of mindfulness practice and there are many ways to achieve this re-focusing.  James Nestor, for example, promotes intentional breathing as a path to improved health and longevity.

We can breathe with the earth, engage in lower-belly breathing, or rest in our breathing.  Richard Wolf argues that we can develop deep listening through focusing on our breathing which he calls “the sound of your life”.  He maintains that we can listen to our breath just like a musician listens to music.  He provides a number of ways of doing this including listening to the sound of our breath (the inhalation and exhalation), resting in the silence between breaths and breathing in time.

Mast Cell 360 offers breathing as one of the strategies to de-activate the body’s over-active nervous response to perceived “invaders” (food allergies and, in particular, high histamine foods).  For example, in the masterclass, Mast Cell Nervous System Reboot, the course creator, Beth O’Hara provides examples of  “alternate nostril breathing” as one of the strategies she employed to redress the histamine activation effects of Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS).  “Resonance breathing” also forms part of her holistic approach to MCAS and histamine intolerance.

Working with the predictable – alternative strategies

In addition to breathing practices, Bhanu offers other strategies that we can easily employ on a day-to-day basis to focus on the predictable and work to de-activate our bodies from the stress effects of the “unpredictable”.  These practices include:

  • focusing on the seasons of the year which are predicable, especially winter and summer whose arrival is often celebrated with special rituals
  • consciously viewing the sunrise and sunset occurring each day
  • observing the emergence of flowers in Spring, the fall of leaves in Autumn (Fall), the shortening of the day in winter and their lengthening in summer
  • noticing the sun rising early in summer and later in winter
  • thinking about the way you are greeted by your children and your dog when you return from work each day
  • observing the millions of stars that appear each night.

Bhanu suggests that these grounding practices can help us to find peace and calm in times of turmoil – they can become our “island of coherence” in the advent of chaos.

Reflection

Chronic illness is often unpredictable and can prove to be complex and difficult to resolve.  The uncertainty about its development and resolution and the lack of help from the medical profession can exacerbate the situation.  Chronic illness too is disruptive, impacting quality of life and self-identity.

The mindfulness practices proposed by Bhanu can help to manage chronic illness.  As we grow in mindfulness, we can better regulate our emotions, draw inspiration from people who have mastered their debilitating situation, and find creative ways to address our own limitations and constraints.

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Image by Kanenori from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield- Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution-Non-Commercial -No Derivatives.

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Adapting to Unpredictability

Bhanu Joy Harrison provided a meditation podcast  on Unpredictability and Adapting in September this year.  Her session was one of the weekly meditations and talks offered by UCLA Health.  Bhanu is an accredited meditation teacher and clinical social worker specialising in the resolution of trauma.  She integrates neuroscience with mindfulness practices to enable people to achieve greater joy, balance and resilience.  Bhanu provides classes, workshops and resources to assist people to manage the daily challengers of unpredictability.  Her website provides a series of guided meditations and she offers access to an app that serves as a journalling guide. 

Impact of unpredictability

Drawing on neuroscience, Bhanu maintains that our brain and nervous system is forever seeking stability and predictability as this provides us with an abiding sense of control and safety.  In our daily life, however, we have to deal with the unpredictability of our own health, our workplaces and interactions, our shopping and entertainment environments and our social and family encounters.  The unpredictability and challenge to our stability of these daily events can lead to stress, overwhelm and inability to cope.

In her talk, Bhanu pointed out how much we rely on past experience to predict what will happen in the future as a result of current events.  We look for reliability and steadiness in our life.  She contends that our past experience provides us with some form of scaffolding or framework that influences our perceptions and our predictions.  

Mindfulness as a toolbox for managing unpredictability

Bhanu contends that mindfulness practices progressively build our personal resources and provide us with a toolbox to draw on to manage unpredictable situations.  In contrast, mindless absorption of news and replaying of adverse events serves only to destabilise us and reactivate our stress response.

Bhanu argues that we often look to the past to seek out ways to achieve steadiness, comfort or groundedness.  Unfortunately, our past solutions typically involve short-term solutions which prove to be maladaptive in the medium to long term – solutions such as overeating, drinking excessive alcohol to numb the pain or discomfort, “seeking illicit pleasure”, increasing caffeine consumption or scrolling endlessly through social media to distract us from the challenge of the present moment.  

Drawing on her extensive experience with clients and the increasing body of research on mindfulness, Bhanu asserts that mindfulness practices undertaken with clear intention and self-kindness effectively create “a different input” for our nervous system than that created by our maladaptive solutions.  In her words, mindfulness is capable of enabling us to “generate a different kind of sensory, emotional and mental response” to unpredictability and the related stimuli such as fear, anxiety and sense of loss of control.

Bhanu argues for creating an “ever-growing toolbox of ever-adaptive and helpful skills” through mindfulness practices. She encourages us to develop a “big variety of options” so that we can resource ourself effectively when we encounter the  diverse challenges associated with unpredictability. Her suggestions for mindfulness practices include:

Bhanu argues that by developing a mindfulness toolbox, we are resourcing ourself for times when we are overwhelmed by the unpredictable such as a chronic illness diagnosis or the death of a loved one.  She provides the example of one of her clients who experienced a “tsunami of grief” to illustrate this point.  As Bhanu explains, when we experience grief our rational, analytical brain is hijacked by the amygdala and our lower brain. This shuts down our capacity to engage in logical thinking and solution generation.  We then need “an escape hatch out of lower brain structures” (limbic system and brainstem). 

Bhanu’s client developed an “escape hatch” in the form of a Mason jar where she stored pieces of paper recording “things that I can do in the moment” – simple things such as drink water, pat an animal, call a friend or relative or breathe deeply and slowly.  On the jar she placed a picture of a life-jacket to remind herself “to put her life-jacket on” by accessing her jar and the suggestions within that could help her “settle herself, come back to the present moment and ground herself”.

The jar proved to be a ready resource that was both physical and accessible and provided a choice of pathways back to mindfulness and groundedness.  It meant that she did not have to think in the moment about what resources she had available to her to access the stability and control provided by mindfulness.

Awareness of our “Circle of Influence”

Bhanu suggests that we think about our Circle of Influence – identifying the things that we can control and those that are outside our control. This then involves letting go of what we can’t control.

By way of example, Bhanu suggested that the things you can’t control include:

  • the weather
  • events beyond our country
  • the emotions or opinions of other people
  • traffic flow
  • natural disasters.

Unfortunately, we can spend a lot of time going over events beyond our control through obsession with the news, over-concern with other people’s views of us, and anxiety about potential natural disasters.

Bhanu indicated that one thing we do have control over is our choices.  For example, we can choose to be continually disrupted by “external noise” or we can spend time with relaxing music, enjoying nature or just being quiet.  We can choose to avoid foods that create a “flare-up” for us or indulge at our own expense. We can also choose how we respond to stimuli – recognising that there is a gap between stimulus and response.

We can choose to listen to our internal critic telling us that “we are not good enough” or “consciously shift to something else” that is positive and helpful.  Our choices extend to controlling our words and tone of voice – we can reaffirm that “I can control what comes out of my mouth”.  Our boundaries are also under our control if we choose –  for example, deciding when to say “yes” or “no”.  We can develop a mindset consistent with an “internal locus of control”– where we are not totally controlled by external events but believe that we have some influence on our environment, are willing to take responsibility for our actions and respond proactively to unpredictable events in our life such as chronic illness.

Reflection

In seeking to manage the unpredictable in our life we can learn from people like Jean-Dominique Bauby.  Despite suffering a massive stroke that left him unable to talk or move, he was able to create his memoir by blinking one eye to let his specialist nurse know word by word what he wanted to say.  His other strategies for gaining stability and control included humour and virtual travel.

As we grow in mindfulness through a range of mindfulness practices, we can enhance our personal resources and develop a readymade toolbox to achieve stability and control in times of unpredictability such as chronic illness or the death of a loved one.

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Image by Martine Auvray from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield- Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution-Non-Commercial -No Derivatives.

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Finding Inspiration When Living with Chronic Illness

I have previously written about the inspiration provided by Joni Mitchell and her remarkable life as a singer/songwriter despite experiencing multiple chronic illnesses.  Joni’s song Both Sides Now epitomizes her approach to chronic illness  – accepting both the dark and the light in her life.  Like many inspiring people she made the most of the light (the good things) in her life.  Joni was rewarded with multiple Grammy Awards and induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

During the recent online Creative Meetup (for writers-with-chronic-illness), our facilitator, Jennifer Crystal introduced a book by Jean-Dominique Bauby, titled The Diving-Bell & the Butterfly. This book is incredibly inspiring as it shows Jean-Dominique’s ability to make the most of what was a totally debilitating situation.  His book composed under extremely difficult conditions is replete with humour and a commitment to make the most of his devastating chronic illness.

At the time of experiencing his illness he was Editor-in-Chief of the famous Elle France – Elle being the “the  world’s largest fashion and lifestyle magazine”.   While in his early forties, when he was married with two children, he suffered a massive stroke, resulting in a condition known as “locked-in syndrome (LiS)” –  “total paralysis but still have consciousness and their normal cognitive functions”.  All he could do physically was turn his head and wink with his left eye.  Though he frequently experienced pain, he could not breathe, eat or swallow without assistance.

Jean-Dominque described his bodily condition as being “imprisoned in an invisible diving-bell”, while his mind was free to roam “like a butterfly”.  He used his very limited capabilities to revisit his memories and undertake virtual exploration of the world at large.  Though he often described his body as a “cocoon”,  he was not mentally constrained by its disabling limitations.

He used his imagination., for example, to picture his colleagues from 28 countries, striding behind their CEO on route to a major fashion conference where they would be discussing the metaphysical question “What is the ideal Elle woman?”.  Even though he had never been to Hong Kong, the site of the conference, he was able to picture the demeanour of his international colleagues and imagine the location and proceedings.

The Diving-Bell serves as a memoir of Jean-Dominique’s time in a Navy hospital after suffering his stroke.  It captures his shock and disorientation on waking from a 20-day coma to find that he was totally paralysed and unable to talk.  He shares intimate details of his hospital experience and his mental roaming with his uniquely dry humour.   

Communicating with locked-in syndrome

In his memoir, Jean-Dominique explains how he was able to communicate by virtue of his “Guardian Angel”, a speech therapist, who devised an alphabet with the letters of the alphabet arranged in order of the frequency of their use in the French language.  People, medical staff and visitors, could point to the letters in turn and he would wink to indicate that they had chosen the letter he was trying to convey.  This tiresome and slow process enabled him to express his discomfort, needs and wishes.  

The constructed alphabet was the method of communication that he used to dictate his book to Claude Mendibil who was transcribing his communications for publishing. Jean-Dominque stated that he frequently revised letter and words in his head and would memorise paragraphs to communicate them to Claude via this special alphabet.

In true humorous style, Jean-Dominique described his visitors in terms of their ability to utilize the newly devised alphabet to understand his communications.  There were the taciturn people, nervous and reluctant to get a letter or word wrong;  the impulsive who rushed in and anticipated what he was going to communicate (usually getting it wrong) and who saved him the effort of communicating by asking questions and answering them themselves; and the meticulous people who feared they would make a mistake and took things so incredibly slowly that it made an already tedious process more painful and demanding. 

Experience of medical professionals in the hospital

Jean-Dominique’s sense of being “locked in” was further aggravated by the callous treatment he received at the hands of some medical staff.  For example, an ophthalmologist arrived at his bedside unannounced and proceeded to sow together the eyelids of his right eye because the eyelids did not close in that eye – thus exposing his eye to infection  (as he subsequently learned from someone else).

Jean-Dominique described the ophthalmologist as brusque and arrogant with “a couldn’t care less attitude”.  He wondered (in his mind) whether such an uncaring medical professional was retained by the hospital to serve as a target for patients’ dislike of, or  dissatisfaction with, their overall hospital treatment. He himself frequently felt anger but kept it at a manageable level , ”like a pressure cooker”, to prevent uncontrolled release of this emotion.

There were also two orderlies who “unceremoniously dumped” him in a wheelchair (like a piece of dead meat).  Jean-Dominque’s way of managing his own maltreatment at the hands of some medical staff was to silently assign them descriptive names such as “the exterminator”.  He did, however, appreciate the care and concern offered by other medical staff.

Dealing with false rumours

Jean-Dominique not only had to deal with his locked-in syndrome but also with harmful rumours that circulated in Paris about his health condition.  As false rumours began to circulate, he decided to provide Bulletins to his circle of friends and associates (initially 60 people) to report on his life, his progress and his hopes.  He indicated that the first bulletin “repaired some of the damage caused by rumour”.  He heard that the City had “put him down for the count” or, at the very least, that he was in a “vegetable state”.  He was particularly critical of patrons of Café de Flore, “one of those base camps of Parisian snobbery that sent up rumours like flights of carrier pigeons”.  His friends overheard a conversation in the Café where he was being described as a “complete vegetable”.

His correspondence provided “gratifying results” in the form of return letters and the realisation of people that they could ”join him in his cocoon” through writing to him.  This resulted in a daily ritual whereby letters were opened for him and “spread out before his eyes”.  This proved to be a revelatory process about the character and personality of his contacts. 

Reflection

Jean-Dominique demonstrated that although you may be bedridden or severely handicapped, you can travel, at least virtually, by using your memory or intentional imagination. This mental roaming has been facilitated recently by the free release of drone images of multiple countries and scenic sites. I also have a gift from one of my daughters – a digital photo album that can serve to stimulate my memory of places I have visited including Paris, London, Bath, Rome, Lake Como, Turin, Venice and Cartagena.

In out Creative Meetup, after we were introduced to The Diving-Bell & the Butterfly, we were given two prompts for our reflection and writing:

  1. Even if bed-ridden (or compromised in any way),where do you travel in your mind?
  2. How has illness impacted your ability to travel?  You can write about a specific travel experience from the past or one you hope to have in the future.

As I reflected on these questions I became acutely aware that my present chronic health conditions severely restrict my capacity to fly long distances.   In particular, my multilevel spinal degeneration makes lying or sitting in one place for any length of time very difficult, sometimes resulting in sciatica, a condition I experienced previously following a trip from Milan to Hong Kong.  This realisation saddened me, but I resolved to take on board Jean-Dominque’s inspiring journey and undertake virtual travel journeys, aided by visual technology.

Mindfulness practices can help us to regulate our emotions, appreciate what we do have and can do and be more aware of nature and its capacity to inspire wonder and awe.  As we grow in mindfulness, we can find creative solutions to our limitations and constraints.

I composed the following poem when reflecting on our discussion and writing:

Finding Inspiration

There is inspiration everywhere,
if we seek to become aware.

Portability through podcasts,
audibility through audiobooks.

People creatively managing multiple challenges,
resolving restrictions and incredible constraints.

Driven by passion and purpose,
to rethink, reframe and redefine.

Sharing without stint,
shaping their environment.

Their agency hard-earned,
Look, listen and learn.

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Image by Pierre Blaché from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield- Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution-Non-Commercial -No Derivatives.

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

                          

Proactive Acceptance and Personal Research of Chronic Illness

I was very recently diagnosed with osteoporosis – an addition to my multiple chronic illnesses.  This diagnosis comes on top of existing chronic medical conditions including multilevel degenerative disc disease, exercise asthma, skin cancers, arthritis in my middle finger and MCAS (Mast Cell Activation Syndrome) with Histamine Intolerance (leading to multiple allergies/food sensitivities).  The existence of multiple chronic diseases prompted my medical practitioner to develop a Medicare-supplemented Chronic Disease Management Plan.

What I have learned from trying to manage my other chronic health conditions is that the way forward begins with acceptance of what is.  This is not a passive position but a proactive one entailing:

  • acknowledging the limitations imposed by your chronic illness
  • exploring the boundaries of the limitations (not accepting imagined restrictions or ones suggested by  a medical professional based on a limited perspective on your illness)
  • seeking expert and social support, e.g. the International Osteoporosis Foundation
  • redefining personal identity where that seems advisable
  • expressing gratitude for what you do have and can do
  • undertaking recommended testing
  • educating yourself about your medical condition – it’s precursors, progression and prognosis
  • researching healing modalities.

Why do personal research?

The reality is that medical practitioners, no matter how dedicated they are to your healing, are limited by time, training and discipline approach.   Very few are able to adopt a holistic perspective.  Given that chronic illness is typically complex, having a multisystem impact compounded by interdependency and interaction, a holistic perspective is often necessary to establish effective healing modalities.

Often medical practitioners, who are frequently time-poor because of the patient demand of their practice, adopt a symptomatic approach that just touches the surface of an illness and does not address the root causes.

I have experienced these limitations of medical practitioners and found that I had to supplement their perspective and approach with my own research and be an advocate for my own health improvement.  This personal research does not supplant the advice of a medical practitioner but supplements it, enabling you to ask, “What if…?”

My personal research in relation to osteoporosis

Following the personal research principle, I began to question why I was experiencing  osteoporosis when I had been exceeding the recommended intake of calcium for many years, mainly through Ostelin (Calcium and Vitamin D) and almond milk.  The question then arose as to how well my body was absorbing the calcium. 

In following this line of questioning, I learnt the following:

  • MCAS negatively impacts bone strength.  Dr. Lawrence B. Afrin (2013), international expert in MCAS, reports on research that shows that “premature osteopenia/osteoporosis is frequently found in mast cell disease patients”.  More recent research by David Harris (2024) shows that MCAS has a “direct role in bone metabolism” through the chemicals, such as histamine, released in the inflammatory response of MCAS.  He states that “this overactivation can lead to an imbalance in bone remodeling, favoring bone loss and increasing the risk of osteoporosis”.  So the focus on repair should include reducing histamine release through food control and anti-histamine medication/supplements.
  • My medical practitioner has given me a referral to an exercise physiologist to develop a weights exercise program which research shows helps to develop bone density and strength.  However, while this is important to undertake, it still addresses the symptom (loss of bone density), not the cause (potentially MCAS acting negatively on bone density).  To their credit, my medical practitioner had organised a bone density scan to identify the root cause of my degenerative disc disease and loss of height.  The scan established the existence of osteoporosis.
  • Exercise is an important part of the healing process for osteoporosis.  So my transition from playing tennis to playing pickleball, necessitated by arthritis of the middle finger on my right hand, is an important means to maintain an exercise regime and one that is less exacting but still providing weight-bearing activity essential for developing bone density and strength. There is also research that shows that people with osteoporosis should “avoid exercises with extreme spine curving forward, such as toe touches and sit-ups”.
  • I have previously written about the multiple benefits of Tai Chi and how it can improve your tennis game, as well as that of other racquet sports such as pickleball.  Tai Chi has been shown to improve bone health, being a gentle, weight bearing exercise.  This works in two major ways, (1) improving bone density and (2) improving balance and coordination (to prevent falls and related broken bones).  There are resources readily available to help people manage osteoporosis through Tai Chi such as Tai Chi for Osteoporosis (DVD by Dr. Paul Lam) and Tai Chi for Older People.

Further revelations from my personal research and experience

As I continued to research my chronic medical conditions, I discovered the following things that can impact my health:

Exercise anaphylaxis

Skin prick testing revealed that I have wheat allergy (among many other food sensitivities).  However, no medical practitioner mentioned to me that this could lead to what is known as “exercise anaphylaxis”.  Apparently, according to the Mayo Clinic, if you have a wheat allergy and you exercise “within a few hours after eating wheat” you can experience exercise-induced anaphylaxis. 

A holistic approach to MCAS incorporating nervous system regulation

Most practitioners who accept the existence of MCAS adopt a biomedical model which focuses solely on the body and the use of medications and supplements as the only healing modality.  Beth O’Hara, creator of Mast Cell 360, determined through her research and extensive work with patients that this approach adopted by most medical practitioners failed to address the nervous system, a key component of MCAS disease. Beth stated that righting the nervous system represented 50% of the necessary healing modality.  She was able to demonstrate through actual results that a healing modality for MCAS must include rewiring of three interrelated systems:

  • Parasympathetic re-balancing
  • Vagal nerve signalling
  • Limbic system re-regulation

To this end, Beth designed a masterclass titled Mast Cell Nervous System Reboot.  I have purchased this course and have been working my way through the science explaining the nature of MCAS and the underpinnings of Beth’s healing protocol. I am looking forward to undertaking the practices she incorporates in the course to calm the nervous system.   Her Mast Cell 360 website has multiple resources, including health coaches, for people experiencing MCAS and histamine intolerance.

Allergic arthritis

One of the things I discovered independently was the existence of allergic arthritis.  I had been wondering why the joint in my right middle finger was swollen whenever I experienced other allergic reactions.  Research has shown that allergies /food sensitivities, creating an inflammatory response, can aggravate existing arthritis and cause osteoarthritis in other parts of the body.

Low histamine foods – apples

Apples have been identified as a low histamine food.  I have found that I can readily tolerate Pink Lady apples without an allergic response.  However, I have also found that Red Delicious apples cause a serious reflux reaction, leading to a sensation of choking. 

High histamine foods – avocados

Avocados are identified as a high histamine food and can impact people who have a histamine intolerance.  However, research shows that avocados that are firm and not too ripe are lower in histamine than those that are soft and over-ripe.   This revelation was important for me as avocados have multiple health benefits and are a key part of my diet and are necessary to help me maintain my weight (which is a challenge given my restricted diet because of allergies/food sensitivities).


Reflection

The winter of my osteoporosis is yet to come as it is early days.  However proactive acceptance and personal research can enable me to maintain a summer perspective in relation to my chronic illnesses.  My research has highlighted things that I need to avoid, opened up new lines of inquiry, highlighted potential healing approaches and strengthened my ability to be an advocate for my own health with medical practitioners.

The more we grow in mindfulness through Tai Chi and other mindfulness practices such as mindful eating and mindful walking, the better we will be able to develop proactive acceptance, engage in personal research and find creative solutions to our chronic illness.

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This post is provided for information purposes only and is not intended to replace personal medical advice provided by a trained medical practitioner.  Please seek advice from a qualified professional before deciding on treatments for yourself or other members of your family.  This article reflects my personal patient experience – MCAS and related diseases affect each individual differently.  I frequently share my research findings with my medical practitioner and this informs my treatment.

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Image by Yana Vakulina from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield- Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution-Non-Commercial -No Derivatives.

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Managing the Seasons of Chronic Illness – Summer

In a previous post,  I discussed the season of winter in the progress of our chronic illness.  There I explored “wintering” as a way to move beyond the darkness, despondency, despair and debilitation that accompanies the experience of winter in the progression of our chronic illness.  Wintering, in this context, involves “letting the light in” through rest, renewal and regeneration.  In my accompanying poem about wintering, I explored what it meant for me during a particular period of darkness.

In our August Creative Meetup, Jennifer Crystal read an extract from her book, One Tick Stopped the Clock, as a stimulus piece for writing in our group of writers-with-chronic-illness.  The extract focused on the hope associated with the arrival of summer following a period of winter.  In the extract, Jennifer recounts her desperation in the face of her totally debilitating Lyme Disease.  At the time, she had a catheter feeding intravenous antibiotics through her arm and chest cavity to her heart.  She was grossly sleep-deprived, suffered migraines , battled a health insurance company for her reimbursement entitlements, and experienced brain fog.

Jennifer sought help from a therapist as well as a specialist in Lyme disease who was a member of ILADS (International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society).  Jennifer’s therapist, Michelle, spoke to her about her dreams that involved Jennifer water skiing.  In an earlier period, Jennifer was unable to water-ski but had been able to drive the boat for other water skiers.  The literal interpretation of her dream suggested that she was missing the ability to water ski herself.  However, Michelle suggested that a metaphorical interpretation was that the dream reflected “loss” in a broader sense – the loss of a positive and productive  life style that preceded Jennifer’s debilitation from Lyme Disease.

Michelle suggested that even though Jennifer should be in the “summer of her life” at age 27, the summer would come and the experienced winter of her chronic illness would pass.  The future onset of summer represented hope for a better quality of life.  Michelle questioned Jennifer’s disbelief in the possibility of experiencing “the summer of her life”.  Jennifer expressed her doubts when Michele said, “you can live a happy, fun, fruitful life once you are well”.  Jennifer has gone on to publish her book despite her personal hardships, and become a story coach and trainer, author of a weekly column for the  Global Lyme Alliance and facilitator for the Creative Meetup group, hosted by the Health Story Collaborative.

Creative Meetup Process – Writing Prompts

Following the reading of the stimulus material, we were invited to address one of the following writing prompts:

  • Write about something that you have lost as a result of chronic illness.
  • What have you replaced or how have you transformed this loss?
  • How would you describe the season of your current illness?

I decided to address these prompts together because they were interdependent.

The loss I focused on was my inability to play social tennis during the cold seasons of the year because of chronic arthritis in the joint of the middle finger of my right hand.  The cold weather aggravates the arthritis which is also aggravated by allergies (allergic arthritis brought on by MCAS).  However, I have been able to replace my social tennis with weekly social pickleball which also enables me to play more consistently because I play it indoors and am not subject to the vagaries of the weather (or exposed to cold winds).  While I still have to manage the arthritis in my finger, the impact of hitting the ball is not as great or painful as it was with tennis.

The Summer of my medical condition

When I thought about where I was up to with managing my current chronic health conditions, I thought of summer – a season of hope.  I have located a general medical practitioner who is an immunologist and very willing to explore a range of treatment options.  She is also willing to listen and not jump to conclusions. 

Pickleball has been a very effective and rewarding replacement for my social tennis.  The gains through pickleball are many and varied:

  • New knowledge and skills
  • The opportunity to continuously learn
  • The chance to try out new shots – experiment
  • The ability to build on existing competence in shot making and strategic play built up over many years of tennis (more than 60 years)
  • A new form of exercise and increased motivation to stay fit.

Pickleball has transformed my weekly social, physical activity so that it is not as demanding as playing tennis.  It also provides a range of new rewards:

  • Joy from experiencing new competence (intermediate level pickleball skills)
  • Developing new friendships
  • Fun with playing with different partners in a social environment (the requirement to “play nice”, rather than all-out competitively)
  • Social support from people who are also aged and experiencing physical limitations
  • The enjoyment of looking forward to catching up with my pickleball group and playing more games.

When I reflect on my current medical condition, I can appreciate that in many senses I am experiencing a summer of my chronic illness.  I have framed my present state as “summer” because of what I have achieved or am achieving:

Reflection

I’ve recognised that a prerequisite for managing chronic illness is acknowledging that there will be ups and downs, times of moving forward and other times of regressing – there will be winters and summers of our chronic illness experience.  For each of the seasons of our medical condition, there are strategies that we can use to heal and recover.  One of these is the process of writing.

If we can grow in mindfulness through practices such as Tai Chi, meditation and mindful walking, we can learn to reframe our situation, express gratitude for what he have and can do and access our creativity to explore healing options.  There is a lot of helpful information on the Internet that is readily available to us if we choose to look.  The real test is in the application of what we learn. 

Dexter Dunphy and Bob Dick, in their book Organizational Change by Choice, provide a relevant quote from an anonymous author (p. 126):

To look is one thing
To see what you look at is another
To understand what you see is a third
To learn from what you understand is something else
But to act on what you learn is all that really matters.

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This post is provided for information purposes only and is not intended to replace personal medical advice provided by a trained medical practitioner.  Please seek advice from a qualified professional before deciding on treatments for yourself or other members of your family.

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Image by Jürgen from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield- Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution-Non-Commercial -No Derivatives.

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Working with Emotional Energy

Lion’s Roar provides a deep resource base for developing an insight into Buddhism.  The website provides a full glossary of key Buddhist concepts, traditions and terms as well as an extensive library of audios (advice and meditations), in-depth articles and guides for meditations).

In one of the many audio resources, Sharon Salzberg , author and mindfulness meditation teacher, interviewed Buddhist teacher, Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche.  The discussion covered the topic, How to Work with Your Emotions.  Dzogchen Ponlop is the author of the classic book, Emotional Rescue: How to Work with Your Emotions to Transform Hurt and Confusion into Energy That Empowers You.

Emotions as energy

Hilary Stokes, PhD and Kim Ward, PhD point out that the word “emotion” derives from the Latin, “emotere” which literally means “energy in motion”.   They draw on the work of Barbara Frederickson, positive psychology pioneer, to show that challenging emotions such as fear, resentment, anger and frustration can constrict our thinking.  Because we tend to focus on the inherent threat of these emotions, we effectively block out new ideas and create barriers to building “resources and relationships”. 

Dzogchen Donlop stated that as a teenager he was angry and vengeful but eventually realised that he had a choice in how he worked with emotional energy.  Viktor Frankl reminded us that between stimulus and response there is a gap and in that gap lies the freedom of choice.    The energy of emotions can undermine us or empower us and we have a choice in how we manage the power of emotional energy..

Moving emotional energy

Hilary and Kim maintain that we can sense emotional energy moving through our body and it can be experienced either as expansion (e.g. feelings such as happiness, joy, calm) or contraction (feelings such as sadness, anger, envy or resentment).  While emotional energy itself is neutral in nature, it is perceived as either positive or negative based on our interpretation of the associated feelings and bodily sensations.  We ascribe meaning to emotional energy based on our inherent assumptions, life experiences and thought patterns (e.g. optimism or pessimism).

By their very nature as energy, emotions are “meant to be felt and released”, not “suppressed and ignored”.  Hilary and Kim argue that burying emotions rather than releasing them results in “low emotional intelligence and stress burnout”.

In the interview with Dzogchen Ponlop, Sharon Salzberg described a situation where she was participating in an intense meditation training course when the Buddhist meditation teacher challenged her about how she was dealing with her sadness at the loss of a friend.  She tended to bottle it up because she thought “negative emotions” were “not approved”.   However, the Buddhist teacher advised her “to cry your heart out” to release the energy of her emotions.  She was advised not to push her emotions away or to be “embarrassed by them”.  Instead, she was encouraged to “have a relationship” with her feelings.

Dzogchen Ponlop, in the interview discussion, suggested that we notice how energy of an emotion changes over time, it “never stays the same”.  He argues that when we experience an emotion we should not “judge it” or “conceptualize a storyline” – not try to work out how it arose.

Working with emotions to release emotional energy

Hilary and Kim maintain that bodily sensations provide the key to unlocking emotional energy, removing limiting thought patterns and overcoming stress.  They suggest that thought-based approaches are limited in shifting ingrained, suppressed feelings.  In their view, sensations provide reliable information about bodily and emotional states.  They point to the growth of somatic therapy to deal with trauma and adverse childhood experiences, including processes such as somatic experiencing.

Hilary and Kim advocate an approach to releasing emotional energy that they call “bodymind listening”.   They  argue that if you “allow your body to feel the feelings”, you will be able to access “insightful, accurate, and practical guidance” in the form of messages that can lead you to identify limiting thought patterns, facilitate release of emotional energy and heal your body and mind.

The process of “feeling the feelings” requires openness and curiosity (a mindfulness orientation) and suspension of rationalisations, justifications, judgments and “righteous protection”.  To this end, Hilary and Kim offer a meditation on Emotions are Energy for releasing stress, letting go of stuck emotions  and strengthening the connection between mind and body.

Reflection

Challenging emotions can be experienced as positive as they can serve to awaken us to a “sense of disorder” when our body-mind is seeking homeostasis.   Fear, for example, warns us of danger and is essential for maintaining life and survival.  Emotions, too, can open our hearts and enable us to express vulnerability and build relationships. 

I recently experienced anger and resentment over a particular incident at a sporting event.  I found that I kept playing the incident over and over in my head, developing justifications for my “righteous anger” and, in the process, intensifying my negative feelings.  This experience proved to be quite disturbing – upsetting my equanimity.

A reflection on resentment helped me to put the issue in perspective.  However, from the above discussion I gleaned that I need to “feel the feelings” (without the contaminating influence of the rational brain), in order to heal at a deeper level.

As we get in touch with our feelings and our bodily sensations, we can grow in mindfulness and develop a deepened awareness of our limiting thought patterns and access creative options for healing and personal growth.

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Image by Alexander Antropov from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield- Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution-Non-Commercial -No Derivatives.

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Mindfulness Meditation for Full Catastrophe Living

In the movie Zorba the Greek, Alexis Zorba contends, “I’m a man, so I married. Wife, children, house, everything. The full catastrophe.”   Jon Kabat-Zinn draws on this analogy in writing his landmark book, Full Catastrophe Living, in which he contends that mindfulness meditation enables us to “make use of the full spectrum of our experiences, the good, the bad, and the ugly”.  He argues that mindfulness meditation helps us to deal with “what comes our way” as part of the human condition and to do so in ways that are both healing and deeply nourishing.

In his book, Jon draws heavily on the mind-body connection to show how we can use our inner wisdom “to cope with stress, pain and illness” and demonstrates how mindfulness meditation facilitates this interconnectedness.  He contends that through mindfulness practices, we can experience not only joy and satisfaction but also suffering in a positive way that enriches our life.

In his book, he explains the benefits of mindfulness meditation, drawing on scientific evidence and the researched benefits of the Stress Reduction Clinic which had been operating for 25 years at the time of his writing, with “over 16,000 medical patients completing its eight-week program”.  His aim in writing the book was to make the practice of mindfulness meditation and its benefits readily accessible to people in everyday living –  contending with the vicissitudes of life in an ever-increasingly, fast-paced world.  To this end he describes in detail a range of mindfulness practices that can be employed by anybody as part of their daily living.

The nature of Mindfulness Meditation

Jon makes the point that in the Stress Reduction Clinic the facilitators don’t do anything for the patients apart from giving them “permission to live their moments fully and completely”.  He states that mindfulness meditation is “non-doing”, by “being in the moment”.   Through this process of paying attention to their minds and bodies – becoming fully in touch with themselves – patients come to terms with “the full catastrophe that can make life more joyful and richer”.

In the final analysis, participants in mindfulness meditation achieve a new way of seeing their situation, a “way of awareness” that is characterised by wholeness instead of fragmentation.  The challenge for participants is to “stop doing” and to “start being”.  Given the “non-doing” nature of mindfulness meditation, it is self-defeating to set a specific goal for the practice such as lower blood pressure, heal a specific illness or overcome reactivity.  Such goal-oriented behaviours are the product of a doing-culture.

Mindfulness meditation draws its healing power in part from addressing our thought patterns.  Jon points out the research that highlights how our thought patterns, beliefs, emotions and attitudes can “harm or heal”.   Our thought patterns are pervasive, impacting every aspect of our life as they:

  • lie behind our motives and choices
  • determine how we perceive the world and ourself
  • shape our level of confidence in our ability to achieve things
  • underpin our beliefs about how the world works and “what our place in it is”.

Research shows that thought patterns can impact our health and contrasts the positive impact of optimism versus the negative impact of pessimism.  It also highlights the power of self-efficacy (belief in your ability to achieve/succeed) and its capacity to influence your ability to grow and develop.

Mindfulness Meditation practices     

In Full Catastrophe Living, Jon highlights a range of mindfulness meditation practices that we can engage in at any time during our day.  He makes the point that the deciding factor in how beneficial the practices are is not how perfectly you do them but the regularity with which you practise.  Here are some thoughts on the anchors for each of the practices he mentions:

  • Breath – is fundamental to our existence, without it we are not alive.  Jon describes breathing as “the unsuspected ally in the healing process”.   The basic process he advocates  involves getting in touch with our breathing, focusing on the rise and fall of our abdomen or chest or the sensation of air entering and leaving our nostrils.  The aim here is not to try to control our breath but to be aware of it happening and noticing its character – fast/slow, easy/laboured,  deep/shallow.  Resting in our breath can be healing and relaxing.   Beyond this basic process of being in touch with our breath as it happens there are various techniques available to us at anytime to consciously vary our breath.  We can breathe with intention or adopt one of the breathing exercises advocated by James Nestor such as  resonant breathing or box breathing.  Alternatively, we can adopt “rhythmic breathing”, advocated by Richard Wolf as a form of mindfulness meditation. 
  • Sounds – listening to sounds as you meditate, “hearing what is there to be heard, moment by moment”.  It does not involve “listening for sounds” nor judging the quality, duration or resonance of what we hear.  Jon maintains that we can treat the sounds as “pure sound”  and simultaneously be conscious of the space between – the silences that occur whether we are listening to music or sounds in nature.  He encourages us to breathe the sounds into our body and “letting them flow out again on the outbreath”.  Listening to sounds can occur in any meditation posture – sitting, standing, lying down or walking.
  • Sitting meditation – Jon advocates this form of meditation as a way to “nourish the domain of being”. as a counter to incessant moving and doing. He maintains that we can employ several objects of attention (anchors) in the process of a sitting meditation, including our breath, sounds, our whole body or our feelings and thoughts.  Jon suggests that you can start this form of meditation by first being grounded in your breath so that you are not easily carried away by the content of your thoughts or feelings.  In relation to your feelings, he recommends that you observe your moods and associated feelings and thoughts “as they come and go”.  When focusing on thoughts he reminds us that they are “impermanent”, coming and going often at speed.  He says the challenge is to identify the “me” thoughts and to be able to delineate thoughts associated with anger or resentment,  greed or clinging.  Jon maintains that this type of mindfulness meditation is taxing and should only be done for short periods. 
  • Walking meditation – involves consciously “attending to the experience of walking itself”.  This may involve recognising the marvellous coordination of the whole body required to be able to walk or acknowledging with gratitude that you are able to walk at all (while there are numerous people who are unable to do so).  It could involve focusing on the sensations in your legs or feet but not looking at your feet.  Jon indicated that in the Stress Reduction Clinic, people walk in circles or in a straight line to avoid goal-oriented walking – focusing on the act of walking not the destination.  He suggests that when you pay more attention to the process of walking, “you appreciate that it is an amazing balancing act”.  Barriers we can experience in undertaking a walking meditation can include loss of balance, strong emotions and invading thoughts.

Reflection

What Jon describes in the above mindfulness meditations can be undertaken anywhere, anytime.  They can become a part of a daily routine and/or a spontaneous mindfulness practice in the midst of doing other things.  The more frequently we undertake routine mindfulness practice, the more we can grow in mindfulness and become spontaneously mindful of our bodies and our surroundings.

In Ella Ward’s novel, The Cicada House, her main character, Caitlin, comments that the wind through the trees sounds like waves.  After reading that comment, I spontaneously paid attention to the strong winds blowing  from the Bay through the trees to our back deck. As I focused on the sound of the wind amongst the trees, I could sense the sound of waves rising and falling.

My reflection on Jon’s discussion of mindfulness meditation led to the following poem:

Mindful Walking

Walking with intent,
process not destination.

Grateful for the balance and coordination,
grateful that I can walk.

Focusing on the sensations of feet and legs,
feeling pressure on the soles.

Listening to sounds,
hearing the birds,
above and below, in front and behind, to the left and the right.

The world of “doing” falling behind,
overtaken by “being”.

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Image by 춘성 강 from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield- Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution-Non-Commercial -No Derivatives.

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

To Care for Ourself is to Care for the World

Self-care is often considered to be narcissistic or self-indulgent in a fast-paced world where we have multiple responsibilities and ever-changing demands.  However, the reality is that in caring for ourself, protecting ourself from burnout, we are able to give time and energy from a place of abundance rather than from depletion.

In a previous post, I wrote about strategies suggested by various experts on how to manage ourselves in times of overwhelm.  The focus in that article was on the overwhelm resulting from external events and circumstances as well as from our own health situation such as chronic illness. 

In a talk given for UCLA Health, Diana Winston focused on the internal causes of “overwhelm”, namely, our own self-stories and patterns of thinking and doing.  Her talk, Taking Care of Myself I Take Care of the World, focused on what we can do to redress the frenzied state of our lives as we endlessly pursue multiple conflicting goals. Diana stressed the need to prevent personal overwhelm, exhaustion and burnout and offered strategies for addressing this modern-day challenge.

The internal messaging that drives us

We might be caught up in activism over climate change, addressing issues of domestic violence or working to help redress the growing levels of homelessness.  We might think that we must be doing something to help those in need and cannot rest until these needs are met. Diana cautions us that working in a frenzy is not going to enable us to make a “long-run, sustainable contribution”.  She argues that if we are operating from “depletion”, we cannot give to the world in a “real and meaningful way”.

Diana quoted Thomas Merton who talks about self-violence when people over-commit in the face of conflicting demands.  He argues that “frenzy” depletes our inner peace and “kills the root of wisdom that makes work fruitful”.   This raises the question as to why we work in a frenzy when such a state destroys both the rewards and productivity of our work. 

Diana suggests that sometimes this need to help everyone and “commit to too many people” comes from a sense of self-identity, needing to do something compassionate to feel validated.  It might also be that it makes us “feel okay” if we are doing something to help others, we feel useful and not “empty” or useless. Diana acknowledged that in an early period of trying to help everybody all the time, she was working from a sense of feeling “not enough”, her inner voice was critical of her output.

Meditation and reflection to reverse frenzy

Thomas Merton argues that “we are so obsessed with doing that we have no time and no imagination left for being”.  Diana maintains that we can recapture our sense of being-in-the-world through meditation and deep reflection.  In the process we can unearth our negative patterns of thinking and gain clarity about the way forward for peace and productivity.

Diana argues for scheduling “a time of not-doing” in our diaries so that we can become less frenzied and less focused on doing.  We can change our attitude from “running out of time” to expanding our time through delegation, asking for help and learning to act more productively and calmly by devoting some time to self-care.  We can then contribute to the world through “overflow’, rather than depletion.

Diana also argues for the process of self-resourcing, building “positive states of mind” through pleasurable activities.  This can involve forest bathing, meeting with friends, spending time in our garden, journalling, blogging, and engaging in compassion practices.  We can imagine beautiful places that have brought us joy or revisit activities such as pickleball that offer enjoyment and fun.  Tai Chi, meditation-in-motion, is another way to replenish our inner resources and develop our overall health and fitness.

When we don’t care for ourselves

When we get consumed by our work and frenzied activity we exhaust ourselves and operate from a state of depletion.  Burnout, for example, causes depletion on the physical, mental and spiritual levels.  We become tired and exhausted, overly negative and cynical and  lose a sense of meaning in what we are doing.

Diana points out that we can’t give to others from this state of “emptiness”.  Self-nurturing can rebuild “our bathtub” so that we can offer service and help from a state of “surplus” rather than deficit.  When we are in deficit, every small challenge appears large and adds to our depletion.  We become short-tempered, impatient and critical of others.  So many things are seen to “stand in our way”. 

Diana suggests that The Nap Bishop, Tricia Hersey, has a lot to offer through her focus on rest and relaxation.  In her book, Rest Is Resistance, Tricia promotes the idea of napping, being prepared to say “no” and upholding personal boundaries as ways to “free yourself from the grind culture and reclaim your life”.  She argues that in this approach lies true liberation and justice.

Reflection

When I think about self-care, what immediately comes to mind is my weekly glass of wine that I have to relax and wind down from the week.  I rationalise this aberration from my diet on the grounds that it helps me focus away from work and is restful.  However, with my chronic illness of MCAS, drinking alcohol is not self-care but self-harm.  When I really reflect on what alcohol does to my body and mind, I have to ask myself, “Why do I persist in having my one glass a week when I know it is injurious to my health?”

As I grow in mindfulness through meditation, reflection and mindfulness practices, I can gain a greater insight into what drives my behaviour and develop the courage to create change so that self-care becomes a priority.

As part of this reflection, I wrote the following poem to help me unearth my thought patterns and reframe wine as self-harm, not self-care.  Wine can no longer be viewed by me as a reward – it is a source of harm.

What is There About Alcohol?

What is the attraction?
like light to a moth.

It hurts my head,
makes my throat sore.

It damages my stomach,
strains my liver.

It aggravates my arthritis,
disturbs my sleep.

The pain outlasts the pleasure,
a mythical creation.

Is it for companionship?
Is it for conformity?
Is it for comfort?
Is it for control?

What do we see in this delusion,
where are the rewards?

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Image by Niels Zee from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield- Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution-Non-Commercial -No Derivatives.

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