What’s wrong with right now?

Posted on November 3, 2011 by Cynthia M Clingan

I have become acutely aware lately of how many moments I spend wanting to be somewhere else or at some time in the future. When I am in the mood to, and I remember to be present, it’s pretty easy to accomplish.

What’s more difficult and elusive is choosing to be present when I start to feel uncomfortable, to stay when I predict that something will be unpleasant, or when I determine that there’s nothing in this moment, hour, or day for me and I wish I could press a fast-forward button. Sometimes I wish I could fast forward through the whole week to Friday at 5pm. Sometimes I avoid doing what I should, and it hangs over my head and steals my peace even while I am doing something else.

With mindfulness practice, I have a growing awareness that whenever I wish to be somewhere else instead of fully participating in the present, I am missing my life. I can no longer ignore that I am losing the time I claim to care so much about, and feel such a shortage of. I understand this conceptually, and I can even get glimpses of what it would feel like to be present most of the time. So why can’t I get there more often? Well, I think I am moving toward being present more of the time, but here is what seems to get in the way…

  • Lack of acceptance of whatever is happening. It can be sneaky and subtle. It’s like when I have the thought “if I only didn’t have to do this stupid paperwork, then I could be home right now”, or “It’s not fair that I don’t get paid for paperwork, so I shouldn’t have to do it”. Since the only way for me to keep the job is to do the paperwork, and it behooves me to do it as efficiently as possible, these thoughts do not help and only hinder the getting it done.
  • Lack of consistent self care. I know that taking care of myself impacts how I show up in the world. For example, when I spend too long in front of the television in the morning and then I have to cram in my routine and barely peel into the office on time, it’s hard not to feel rushed, stressed, and wanting to get back home and away from the feeling, to spend more time in front of the tv! This is another level of not accepting – denying the need for adequate sleep, or meditation time, or time to pack my lunch and gather my things, or the real amount of drive time needed. Cramming it all in, ironically enough, means getting less out of my time because I spend so much of it rushing through to the next thing and wishing for the rushing to be over.
  • Intensity of physical stress reaction. All the things on this list are interconnected, but sometimes this one is triggered, and seems to come out of nowhere. The size of our stress reactions are partly a function of self care, having good boundaries, etc. Sometimes the fight or flight mechanism can be so intense that no amount of logic can prevail and we just want it to end, NOW! We can learn to work with these feelings, asking what they are trying to tell us and compassionately addressing them.
  • Lack of prioritization. The taking care of myself then leaves only so much time to do other stuff, and I still haven’t untrained this notion that I ought to be able to do more. I have improved an awful lot here by building in cushion and making sleep, exercise, meals and meditation a permanent part of my schedule, and acknowledging my individual tolerance for busyness, but it’s a fine line. There’s always more I want to do than I have time for. Ideally, we want enough action in our lives to stay interested and engaged, but not so much that we can’t be present for any of it. This is tricky because it’s individual AND a moving target – it looks more like continuously reprioritizing wants and needs and sorting out the right balance, rather than thinking we will achieve the magic formula and then just follow it forever.

Some questions I ask myself from time to time, and that are helpful when I am finding it especially difficult to be present:

  1. Is there anything I can let go of to free up time?
  2. What is the best thing I could be doing right now?
  3. How well have I taken care of myself the last week, two weeks, or month?
  4. How could I take better care of myself today?
  5. Am I getting enough play time?
  6. If I don’t want to do this, why am I here, doing it now?
  7. What matters most in the big picture, and is that where most of my time is going?
  8. What would it feel like to accept this moment exactly as it is?
  9. What if I were to let go and decide to be totally present right now?
  10. (If I feel desperate to get away from this moment) What feelings or needs are asking for my attention right now and how can I do a better job of acknowledging them in a compassionate way?

Everything is moving so quickly, and we’re all caught up most of the time in busyness and hurry. If we started to slow down a little, and find moments of pure presence, we would start to notice a shift. I have noticed it, and others who try to be more mindful and present in their lives notice it, too.

Where could you start? Absolutely anywhere. Eat one meal mindfully. Hell, just eat one bite mindfully. Be totally present for one conversation. Make a habit of only talking on the phone when you are talking on the phone. Refuse to do more than one thing at a time.

Other suggestions? Add ’em below and share how they worked!

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On Compassion

Posted on October 29, 2011 by Cynthia M Clingan

Procrastinating productively today…

Listening to a recording of Christopher Germer on compassion right now. Germer is a clinical psychologist interested in compassion as it relates to mindfulness and psychotherapy. He states research finds a greater link between self-compassion and happiness than between mindfulness and happiness. He says self-compassion is not a strategy to make pain go way, but rather something we give ourselves because we hurt. You can check out his book The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion or Sharon Salzberg’s book Lovingkindness for more on the subject.

Some definitions of compassion:

  • Bearing witness to your own suffering and responding with kindness and understanding
  • The fluttering of the heart in the face of another being
  • The point is not to throw ourselves away and become something better, it’s about befriending who we are already (Pema Chodron)
  • We stop fixing and start caring
  • We stop harming ourselves

It is not:

  • bypassing – it is opening to pain more fully
  • sugarcoating
  • complacent
  • pity partying
  • selfish – it is the foundation for loving others
  • exhausting
  • harming
I really like this excerpt of a poem Germer cited called Kindness, by Naomi Shihab Nye:
Before you know kindness
as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow
as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness
that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day
to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every where
like a shadow or a friend.
I am very interested in this topic, I think because of my experience of feeling there is something missing from pure mindfulness practice or insight meditation. I think this might be it. Stay tuned…more to come.
Can you find one way to be kind to yourself today?
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Free Adya talk Nov 2

Posted on October 25, 2011 by Cynthia M Clingan

Here’s something I try to catch whenever I can. It’s a live broadcast by Adyashanti. Adya is a contemporary spiritual teacher, and the broadcast is a radio satsang of sorts. It’s on Wednesdays, but not every week, so check the Cafe Dharma page when you want to see what’s coming up. There’s free audio or video streaming, and you can email questions that sometimes get answered.

I really enjoy listening to these talks. I always find  something relevant, and there’s a peaceful, relaxing quality to the delivery. You don’t have to sign up for anything. Just go to the Radio Adyashanti page here on Wednesday, November 2 and click the button to listen at 9pm EDT. You’ll usually hear some music until the talk starts, then about an hour and a half of talk and answering listener questions.

Enjoy the show!

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Pink Blues

Posted on October 19, 2011 by Cynthia M Clingan

Sorry I’ve been away. It’s not for a dearth of things to say, just out there doing things and less time to compose. The new motto for this month is “good enough is the new perfect”. All you recovering perfectionists out there might want to investigate this idea. I’m finding it helpful, especially for times when I’m feeling overloaded. It’s amazing how a perfectionistic attitude can make everything heavier than it needs to be, and dismiss so much that’s really GOOD. It’s easier to see this if we can wonder for a second what it would be like to let go of our expectations.

Anyhoo, I’m about to post something here that I recognize could make me unpopular, but I want the information to be available to those who want it. The subject of mammograms has come up for me 3 times in the last week, and I’m taking it as a sign that I might provide some balance to all of the breast cancer awareness being hoisted upon us with pink plastered everywhere: on NFL players, on the trees at the university, with television commercials, and on merchandise from athletic gear to coffee cups.

At my physical last week the doc asked whether I’d had a mammogram yet, and I told him “no”, that I didn’t really see a reason, based on what I understand from my research so far. He did not push, and surprised me by instead saying that there’s a lot of controversy over it right now. I do know that my gynecologist has a different view, and has been asking me to get a “baseline” mammogram ever since I turned 40, and I’ll be 43 soon. I also know that recommendation is her professional organization’s stance. I am not quite able to convince myself, though, that the risk of cancer from excessive radiation is a fair trade for discovering cancer with a procedure that has such a high rate of of false positives (and accompanying stress and misery), and misses a third of the deadliest cancers altogether.

I also have a client currently suffering through such madness, and it is heartbreaking to watch the amount of distress and lack of accurate information and medical support she is enduring in the process.

What puzzles me is how the major breast cancer awareness organizations have missed or decided to ignore the 2009 change in federal guidelines for mammography. Organizations such as the Susan G. Komen for the Cure stand firm in their recommendations for all women to have regular screenings starting at age 40. I cannot find good research to support such screening for women under 50, given their increased risk of cancer posed by that radiation exposure due to greater susceptibility of premenopausal breast tissue.

I recommend taking a look at this article on mammography from Mercola.com. I find him alarmist at times, but I do value having access to the other side of the debate regarding conventional medical wisdom, and the research he presents in this case is quite compelling. Here is Mercola’s synopsis of the info:

  • CAD computer software, commonly used to locate suspicious areas in mammograms, increase your risk of getting a “false positive” result, and has failed to improve the detection rate for invasive breast cancers. The benefit of its use is now in question.
  • Routine mammography has been conclusively shown to be useless in most women under the age of 50.
  • Based on the lack of scientific evidence supporting mammography as a safe and effective breast cancer detection tool, as of November 2009, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, a federal advisory board, changed their recommendation from annual to bi-annual mammography screenings, starting at age 50.
  • A noteworthy report in the British Medical Journal, comparing breast mortality rates in different countries before and after the introduction of routine mammography screening, shows that the screening “did not play a direct part in the reductions in breast cancer mortality.”

Just to be clear, the decision to get a mammogram is highly individual, and I am not telling anyone what they should or should not do. I know that I am not the type of person who jumps on a bandwagon, and even more so in the case of ones driven by fear, as this one seems to be. I have discovered that it takes a very long time for conventional methods, especially in medicine, to be updated to match the data. This can mean practice can be behind the science 10-20 years or more! If your doctor was trained more than 20 years ago, it’s also possible they do not have a holistic approach to medicine because they were not trained to view it that way, and they also may not keep up with the research. All of this means it’s up to you to: stay current about issues important to your health, not to expect your doctor to know everything, not to use the popular press as your only information source, and to use your informed gut and heart to decide what’s right for you.

Happy Thursday!

c


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Go With the Flow

Posted on September 7, 2011 by Cynthia M Clingan

Only two more days of beach time left.

Today was very windy and with two fronts coming in, the waves were very high and powerful. As I hung out in the ocean, I noticed how quickly the waves were taking me down the shore away from my chair on the beach. A throwback to my childhood days at the lake when my mother required that we stay in view, I suppose, the reason I always try to stay in front of my place on the beach.

Today the waves were so powerful, that no matter how hard I swam (and I swim fairly well), I could not overtake the current carrying me quickly down the shore. I kicked for all I was worth, just to maintain position, and could not do it. I would swim fiercely against the waves, and eventually alternate walking and swimming to get back to my place, being carried backward with every wave. When I tired, I would let go, and feel the swell of the wave and let it carry me where it would. The feeling of surrendering the flow was marvelous, effortless, graceful, and humbling.

The contrast of letting the waves carry me versus the feeling of fighting them was extreme, and it occurred to me that this scenario is much like life for many of us. We have an idea of what we want and where we ought to be, and no matter how much life tries to carry us a different direction, we fight and struggle and use everything we have to oppose it. It might be a job, a relationship, or our “ideal weight”, but it’s all the same idea. We choose to oppose life, insisting on what we want, and the price is exhaustion, desperation, and constant struggle. And we are taught from a young age that we can arbitrarily choose and pursue whatever we want (the American dream!), so the idea is deeply rooted in our very view of reality.

Do you feel like life is a constant struggle? Are you exhausted much of the time from trying to keep it all together? What would it be like if you started to allow life to carry you where it wants to go? What if you let go of the worries, the expectations of others, the need to please? Would you change jobs or stop trying to do so much? Could you allow the toxic relationship to end? Would you move to the country? What would happen if you followed the call of your heart to play music, make art, or learn to dance, cook, or hike? Sometimes an objective, outside observer like a counselor or coach, or a very good friend, can tell us where they see life trying to take us when we are too close to it and can’t see the forest for the trees. I encourage you to ask others what they see – it can be incredibly enlightening and helpful.

Part of my own shift involved allowing the calling to counseling to overtake my career in academia, despite everything in me that feared it and fought it every step of the way. It was an oddly placed idea, and I couldn’t explain why I was taking up a second degree, following this unrelated, path that competed for the energy I needed for my academic career. I just was moved to do it and couldn’t explain it or stop it. Now I can’t imagine doing anything else for a living. I didn’t “choose” it, per se, but nothing has ever felt this right. There are other shifts lurking, and I have no doubt they are coming. The first one has made it easier to imagine and have faith in those to come.

Where can you start? How about something small like getting more sleep? Or how about turning off the tv when the little voice inside says “this is noise”, and going for a walk, or calling someone, or reading a good book instead? What about taking the art class, or planning a potluck, or building the bookshelf you’ve wanted to for so long? You do have a choice – you can fight until you are completely exhausted, and then give in to life. It all depends on how long you want to struggle.

As I write this, I can still feel the motion of the waves trying to carry me down the shore. I find it immensely relaxing and comforting. Where are the waves of life trying to take you? What if you stopped struggling, multitasking, trying to control it all, even for a moment. What would that be like? Can you feel it, even just a little?

It’s called peace.

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What Do You Really Want?

Posted on August 31, 2011 by Cynthia M Clingan

Day 4 of the first 2 week vacation ever: it has been raining for 3 days and the weather folks say a system is brewing that is likely to go on for 6 or 7 days. Our friends here say the weather is NEVER like this. On Day 1 I got a couple of hours of beach time after pacing and angst over leaving my husband immobile on the floor with back issues. The sun hasn’t come out again since. I do all the cooking and cleaning for the first few days, trying to make the best of it. I take walks around the neighborhood only to be eaten alive by mosquitos and other bugs.

I was doing an okay job of keeping my spirits up, taking care of hubby and being supportive, and making the best of things. Until today. Until the news that our entire trip is very likely to be riddled with rain. Feeling trapped and helpless, I had a mini meltdown. I felt a permanent pout coming on. The “oh, poor me” cloud descended and I settled in for the ride. And then it ended practically before it began.

I accepted the probable fate and decided I didn’t feel like languishing today. Figuring, what the hell, the ocean is still there in the rain and I don’t get this close to it every day, I decided to go anyway. His back somewhat healed, we threw our stuff in the car after pacing and watching the weather channel for an hour, and headed for the beach. We set up the umbrella in the drizzle. I swam, and it wasn’t too bad, though not as warm as I prefer. The drizzle eventually stopped, and we read our books, and munched from the cooler, and swatted bugs under dark gray skies. We saw two dolphins surface about a dozen times, incredibly close to shore where I had been in the water.

In a previous life, I would not have been able to shake the disappointment of the shattered vision of my sun drenched beach time. Somehow, I allowed the initial disappointment, and then I could not sustain it. Something in me now doesn’t want to complain about it, can’t stay unhappy about it. It only makes sense to go to the beach in the rain, visit our friends, eat, explore, and appreciate the difference in the scenery. There was a time in the not-too-distant past when I might have wept with disappointment for the whole trip over something like this.

I guess deep down, what I must really want now is to be happy, and not focused on the unsatisfactoriness of life. It doesn’t have the forced feel of an avoidance of reality, or an effort to be positive. It’s effortless, I suppose, because of the obviousness of what I really want now. What I want more and more is to be present, to experience what is really happening, to catch the details, to experience everything as it is, not wasting time on what isn’t real. Insisting that life perform to my expectations has produced constant disappointment, pain, sadness, and anger. Allowing life to unfold has produced far more joy, contentment, and wonder for me than any of my plans and could have.

What a simple shift in perspective – from wanting things my way, to wanting to be present – and yet, how freeing! I don’t feel as cheated as it seems I should – missing out on the very long awaited, sunny beach time I had imagined for months. I just bring the bug repellent instead of the sunscreen and am thankful we don’t have to worry about sunburn. I marvel at the difference in the colors of the landscape in the rain, and how many others are playing in the rain, as well. I can’t explain it any better than that. I am amazed, and grateful.

It makes me think of that saying, “do you want to be right, or do you want to be happy?”. I would love to talk more with you about how I arrived at this way of seeing life. Comment below or give me a call.

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The Power of Belief

Posted on August 24, 2011 by Cynthia M Clingan

I have been reading a lot recently about the mind/body connection in my research on mindfulness and meditation, but also in other places, like literature about alternative medicine. EFT is one form of such alternative healing. Others include Reiki, acupuncture, and visualization. Another alternative method of interest to me right now is the Healing Code. The book by the same name discusses science supporting the mind/body connection (it occurs to me as I write this how ridiculous it is to have to state “mind/body connection” as though there is any doubt that they are connected! Unfortunately, the medical establishment isn’t quite there…). For example, there are experiments verifying the heritability of cellular memories of trauma. That’s right…you can inherit the effects of something experienced by your ancestors. Freaky, right?

Not so freaky if you have any exposure to quantum physics, or have an inkling of what Einstein was getting at late in his career.

This Healing Code theory which has reportedly worked for a ton of folks for everything from major depression, to toenail fungus, to cancer, is based on the notion that the body has the ability to heal itself given the right conditions (not so new), and that what may be preventing healing is destructive cellular memories and unhealthy beliefs lingering from a negative emotional experience from our past or that of our relatives (pretty far out!). The Center for Disease Control (a federal agency, no less!) finds that 90% of diseases that trigger a visit to the doctor are stress related, so in fact, I guess it isn’t that far out at all. The ACE study also found that adverse childhood experiences are correlated to incidence of all types of diseases, and that the relationship is dose-dependent (more bad experiences=more disease).

There’s a recent blog post by a mom with gluten intolerance that exposes new information indicating leaky gut syndrome is a factor in ALL autoimmune diseases. Leaky gut is thought to be caused by, among other things, adrenal fatigue, an effect of chronic stress. Conversely, addressing chronic stress seems to be a factor in reducing the severity of any disease you can possibly name, including psoriasis, allergies, and irritable bowel. There is evidence that mindfulness practices can alleviate everything from epilepsy, sleep disorders, and addiction, to depression, anxiety, and caregiver stress, just to name a few.

I have been experimenting with the Healing Code for my allergies (costs nothing but 6 minutes, 3 times per day), and it’s got me thinking about memories and beliefs, and how they contribute to the stress load. They are everywhere and they can be so subtle. In my own case, for instance, there’s my memory of the childhood misery of hayfever, of being told I was allergic to certain foods and accepting it as a lifelong sentence. What if I didn’t label myself as having allergies, as being “sensitive”, and automatically assuming I need medication to tolerate spring and fall? What if I no longer identified with that label, no longer saw a long list of environmental threats to react to? Would it make a difference? So far the Healing Code seems to be working. My ragweed allergies seem to be the mildest I’ve ever experienced, even though the season is in full swing.

This has me thinking about other beliefs, even more subtle ones, and the way they influence my life. For instance, anticipating that I must protect myself from certain people, or have recovery time after certain events because I am an introvert. I’ve been proven wrong on these automatic assumptions plenty of times, yet I persist in assuming that this label “introvert” is static, permanent, and I can predict my reactions based on it. In fact, sometimes I need less alone time, sometimes more, and sometimes none.

Even more subtle still – I am driving home from visiting family, and become predictably sleepy around 4pm, with the sun shining through the windshield, about an hour after eating a jumbo Payday bar and no lunch. I start calculating how long ’til I get home, how much time after that until I have to start cooking dinner, and whether I can delay unpacking to squeeze in a nap, and for how long. Then it occurred to me – this is all based on the presumption that I will still feel this sleepy when I get home! Then I realized that instead of just coping with sleepiness in the moment, I had unwittingly extended this discomfort beyond the trip, assumed I would be miserably tired all evening, grumpy, not get anything done, and maybe even become ill due to being so tired! I dropped the assumption, and none of those things turned out to be true.

So, what beliefs do you hold that are holding you back? Are you attached to something negative that defines you, that you don’t know what it would be like to live without? Do you believe you’re sick a lot? Not a morning person? Afraid of animals, heights, spiders? Do you hold a belief you’d be happier if you were ten pounds lighter, better looking,  had more money or a better wardrobe, or your hair was straighter, thicker, wavier, longer?

How about even more subtle than that, at a level below conscious thought – do you believe you shouldn’t be too happy, too wealthy, too successful? That people might not like you if you were? Or maybe you believe you aren’t allowed to relax, or to enjoy yourself, or to be happy unless you’ve suffered enough, or worked hard enough or long enough to deserve it. Maybe somewhere, there’s a hidden belief that no matter what you do, you just aren’t worthy of happiness, joy, or peace.

These beliefs can’t persist if they are exposed to the light. Take a look. I hope now you are at least curious about the ways your beliefs might contribute to creating your reality. Our beliefs about ourselves and the world predispose us to react to it in ways that reinforce our beliefs. The details are in a psychology lesson for another post, but rest assured that your beliefs do have the power to shape your world. Now the science even seems to suggest the cells in your body are programmed to respond according to what you believe.

If you thought you were creating your own reality every day, would you do anything differently? What kind of reality would you create for yourself? Feel free to share below. I’d love to hear from you.

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Superhuman or Barely There?

Posted on August 14, 2011 by Cynthia M Clingan

This quote has been floating around a lot of sites recently:

“When asked “What thing about humanity surprises you the most?”, the Dalai Lama answered:

“Man…. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.”
— Dalai Lama XIV

It’s on my mind because we spent time with a relative this weekend who is in severe pain, likely triggered by overwork. The triggering incident happened to be an hour’s worth of being bent over in the bean patch. Her back is very unhappy now. Hospital and drugs unhappy. She is very unhappy, and understandably in a hurry to be out of pain and be back to taking care of the farm. In such a hurry, even, that I am not sure she will be able to tolerate resting enough to truly allow her back to heal.

This made me think of my own growing awareness of my slowly increasing limitations and how I am continually challenged to accept the impermanence of my human form. I once lost use of fine motor ability in my right hand for about a week due to an entire weekend of intense gardening. I have sustained numerous overtraining injuries from running. I once pulled two all-nighters in a row to finish a paper and could not see the computer screen by the end due to blurry vision. I have denied myself proper sleep, nutrition, play, rest, fluids any number of times and paid dearly. For what? I am still not sure.

I have learned, with difficulty, how to listen, to take breaks, and to slow down. Others I know are not so lucky. Why do we do this? Where are we racing to? What will happen when we get there? Recent research says this is often about narcissism, low self-esteem, and a weak sense of self. Some of it is without our permission, programmed by media, societal norms, American values, and the myth of the self-made man (see Outliers for a new perspective on this idea). Sometimes we have internal scripts we aren’t even aware of that say “I’ll be happy when ________”, but as soon as we fill in the blank we become restless and set a new goal.

What if, instead of “just one more thing”, you said, “it will still be there tomorrow,” or, “the chores will always be there, so I will do what I reasonably can today”? What if you addressed only what is in front of you today, only what you can do today? Would you be less valuable, less competent, less anything? Are you afraid you won’t feel or be seen as above average, superhuman, or “better than” anymore?

Doing this means really looking at what you are doing. It means re-evaluating what you can get done in a day, asking for help with some of it, building cushion into your schedule so you aren’t always frazzled, and listening to your body when it tells you it needs something. It doesn’t mean you won’t ever be busy, but that busy isn’t your default state.

I have been doing it for a few months now, and I can say it definitely reduces stress levels. My quality of life has improved exponentially. It is still taking practice (old habits die hard), and I still have twinges of leftover guilt from my previously conditioned thinking. But, there are fewer bumps due to schedule snafus, more breathing room and time to think when “life” happens, more ability to be present in my own life and for the people I love as well as those I serve through my work. I prepare and eat real food more often, meditate more, work out less, and feel more connected to others. I am wrestling with the guilt I feel about not wanting to work 40-60 hours per week anymore, and about my past judgment of others who were lucky enough to have a 30 hour work week.

Now when I see commercials or other “self help” propaganda that promotes doing it all, having it all, or workaholism, it feels like a wrong note in piano practice. I just know now that it isn’t right. It isn’t sustainable. It isn’t really living. Women have especially been fed the “you can have it all” line. What isn’t often talked about are the tradeoffs of work compulsion – in health costs, and the costs to children, spouses, friends, and family. It’s promoted with slogans like “just do it” and hokey motivational posters with people hanging off cliffs and talking loudly about how much we have to do while standing in line to buy coffee. This rat race culture is even praised as an American trait by an insurance commercial you may have seen recently.

There is a growing sound of the call for sanity, the growing sound of a “no” to “more is better”. Leo Babauta is one of those voices promoting a more mindful way of life. It’s about saying no to what’s not real. We seem to have so much trouble with this little word, and Starbucks is all too happy to support our lack of boundaries. It’s about living life more mindfully, being more present, and focusing more on what is here, rather than perpetually living in what might be. Your life is calling. Will you answer?

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Free Online Talk about Mindless Eating

Posted on August 8, 2011 by Cynthia M Clingan

This series has already started, but I wanted to make you aware of the opportunity. The National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine (NICABM) has a weekly teleseminar series.

I try to tune in to these when I can. It’s free to listen to the interviews at their time of broadcast every Wednesday at 5pm EDT (this one runs Aug 3rd – Sept 7th) if you sign up on through this NICABM page. Go to this page to see the speaker list, or if you want a subscription that allows you to listen to archived sessions or read transcripts. I like these offerings because as someone interested in integrated health care, I get a no-risk introduction to some interesting ideas and experts, and their books, for further investigation. This week’s speaker sounds like a good one!

Aug 10: Brian Wansink, PhD

John Dyson Endowed Chair in the Applied Economics and Management Department at Cornell University and Director of the Cornell Food and Brand Lab 

Mindless Eating: How Environmental Cues Affect Our Food Choices

  • We Make 200 Food Choices a Day: How to Make the Right Ones
  • Food Psychology: Why We Eat What We Eat
  • The Mindless Margin: How to Lose Weight Mindlessly
  • Devious Experiments that Shed Light on Our Most Surprising Habits
  • How to Re-program Habits to Eat Healthier

Enjoy the show and comment below. Do you think it’s worthwhile content? What was the most interesting fact you heard?

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Failure IS an Option

Posted on August 6, 2011 by Cynthia M Clingan

Last year I had started to read on Dr. Mercola’s website and in other blogs about how interval training was showing benefits beyond traditional ways of exercising. I had heard about Fartlek training’s superior ability to improve fitness for runners some time ago, and I tried it occasionally with success. Most often it would include a sprint at the end of my 4 mile run, and then amazing fitness improvement for the next outing or two.

Now there seems to be indisputable evidence of the advantages of oxygen-deprivation exercise for health. This means working really hard, like 80% or greater capacity (until you are literally sucking wind) for short bursts, with short rests in between. You can do this with any exercise, but really only for about 8 reps before you are totally pooped. Dr. Mercola describes an easy technique for interval training called Peak 8, but others like Al Sears’ pace program include more variation. It seems like you can choose and change it up without loss of benefit. Mercola’s story is compelling, as are the twin study results from Al Sears, another proponent of such workouts.

There also seems to be mounting evidence against long distance cardio – shrinking heart and lungs and lower metabolism, for starters (Doug McGuff, Mark Sisson, Al Sears, Scott Abel, Matt Stone, Dr. Mercola, and many, many others on the subject). As a die hard runner (as in, I thought I would die if I couldn’t run forever) I succeeded in ignoring the information out there pointing to the dangers, until very recently. My physicals had started to reveal increasing “bad” numbers and decresasing “good” ones, and I had to take it seriously.

This approach to exercise is the exact opposite of the way I have exercised for a long time. Now, I can do anything, pick anything I want, and intentionally attempt to do it to an intensity that would cause me to fail in a specified time period (anywhere from 10 seconds to 4 minutes). So I am trying to fail, on purpose? Evidently this is the fastest, indeed, it now seems, the sustainable way to achieve peak fitness, as well as manage weight. (I love it so far. I do one Body by Science weightlifting workout and one Peak 8 workout per week – only 20 minutes each, and the rest of my activity is all fun stuff (walks, blading, biking, tennis, skiing, hiking, whatever).

The basis of this way of working out is that you are trying to fail: this is sooooo different than my approach to, well, everything! Oxygen deprivation means choosing weights and activities to intentionally be unable to continue past 8 reps. I am in the habit of choosing a weight I know I can lift 12 times, running a distance that I know I can comfortably complete, and avoiding the activities that I am not good at.

In life, I realized, I do the same thing, mostly playing it safe. I confess, I often have a mini-meltdown when confronted with having to do something where I have little ability to predict the outcome.  I have to wonder how much I have not achieved by only attempting what I am fairly sure I can succeed at, or at least not look like an idiot by trying. Even in my pottery class this applies – the teacher tells us we all try to save the lame little pot spinning in front of us, “playing it safe does not improve skills – only pushing the boundary of our skills can expand our range and create new skill boundaries”.

At the root, this seems to all be about fear. What will I look like? What will people think? What will it mean if an overachiever like me starts failing all the time? What if I look foolish? We try to avoid this feeling like the plague. Why is failure so terrifying? It’s quite a wake up call to realize I have been limiting what I attempt, just so I can feel better about myself. I saw a quote recently that said “if you want to double your success rate, you have to double your failure rate”. Hmmm. What to do with this new insight? I’m not sure, but I guess I’ll start with failing at exercise, and when I get the hang of it, I’ll get busy failing at everything else!

How do YOU play it safe and shortchange yourself in the process? What one thing can you start trying to “fail” at? I’d love to hear from you.

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