playing in heart land

When I play, which I don't do often enough (although I consider some of my cooking time play time), I am truly in the moment. Young children play all the time. That's what they do. It's their job. They learn by osmosis, through playful imitation of the adult world. Playing leaves the left side of the brain, the rational-analytical side, out of the equation, and stays in right-brain mode. Play is creativity and spontaneity, not calculated analysis. Games like chess or poker or truly competitive sports are not play because they are about left brain strategy, which involves thinking in words.

What makes play play is its state of mindfulness, which is absent of words. The younger children are, the more they exist in this state, not thinking about what they ate for breakfast or what they will play this afternoon. Martha Beck wrote in Finding Your Way in a Wild New World: "the way to cope with the increasing complexity of the wild new world is to play more." Her enlightened advice for dropping into the mindful world of play is to leave the words out - by the way, that's exactly where meditation is headed. "Words are the language of the mind, emotions are the language of the heart," a fellow grad schooler said to me in that regard. Drop the words, drop your beingness down down down - until you reach your heart. Here words don't exist. Words separate, words tag, they have their role, but we spend most of our time in word land and not enough in heart land.

Let's go on a journey to heart land and play.

a new medical paradigm

What if it weren't necessarily the microorganism that made us sick, but that healing depended instead on the condition and resilience of our own immune system, our constitution, our circumstances and how our body handles strains to our wellbeing? Liise-Anne Pirofski, infectious disease specialist at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, clarifies that a particular microorganism can harm one person and leave another unharmed. Too often, Dr. Pirofski says, we simply try to combat a certain microorganism with antibiotics or vaccines. Yet, we have not found vaccines against tuberculosis, malaria, herpes or fungal diseases. Instead, Dr. Pirofski suggests, as reported in the German news magazine Der Spiegel, researching how to strengthen the host. In essence, Dr. Pirofski proposes a radical paradigm change, away from the pathogen-as-culprit and towards understanding instead how to strengthen and heal the person. This goes against the grain of the Western medical paradigm that treats the perceived pathogen, and is more in line with the thinking of CAM, complementary and alternative medicine, that treats the whole person.

Ask not what makes you sick but how you can heal.

bad bad screen?

As a parent I know the predicament. Daughter on a screen again? Son on a screen again? "Read a book, go outside, do something else than this endless screen staring." Nag nag nag - and "When we were kids our mother sent us out after breakfast and we didn't come home until dinnertime," or something like that.        Fact #1: Times have changed. I used to spend hours occupying the one and only family phone speaking with my friends. Now, this happens on screen or on cell, and both are often the same device. We all wrote our homework by hand and handed a paper copy in. Now, the kids write their homework on screen and send it to their teacher via Google Docs. I used to look up recipes in a cookbook. My daughter looks them up on her cellphone and bakes with her cellphone for reference next to the stove. We used to go the movies, or rent one. Now the kids download it all. They never have to leave their bed. I still read a paper newspaper and paper books, but who does that anymore?

     Fact #2: Kids imitate their parents to learn and to feel grown up. And guess what they watch us do all day long? Typing on a keyboard and staring into a screen all day long, checking emails and social apps on our cellphones all day long, watching movies on our tablets at night, reading books on our Kindle readers, and using Google as an encyclopedia anytime and all the time (I love that part). Half of the population walks the streets with their nose in a screen and you hope they won't bump into someone or twist their ankle because they missed the curb. That's what the kids observe. That's what they want to do when they grow up.

there's hope yet

Watching the mainstream news you might just tear your hair out over the current state of affairs of the world, what with climate change, ISIS, the state of our environment and all those civilization diseases that afflict us. Enough to become depressed. Mainstream media knows what sells, and that is blood, gore and fear mongering. Things look gloomy from that perspective, indeed. I don't disagree that our world is in major disarray - environmentally, economically and culturally. But there is hope on the horizon and I am optimistic. Here is why.   I see all those new holistically oriented grassroots movements bubbling up here and there and everywhere. Barbara Kingsolver already stated in 2007, in her wonderful book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle that these kinds of holistic pockets are no longer limited to the two coasts, but are popping up all over the country.

Between the green living movement, the slow food movement and all its related efforts and awareness initiatives, climate activism, so many many environmental efforts, the localization movement, homesteading and the new farm movement, waste reduction, composting and recycling, alternative and homeschooling, cooperative living, alternative healing modalities, and then some, a cauldron full of new energy and ideas is bubbling.

Other than perhaps the tiny nascent environmental movement there was none of this when I arrived in this country in the early 1980s. This development has burst into the open on all fronts in just a quarter century. Amazing!  When you know where to look it is so exciting and encouraging! Be a part of it.

love your stress

Love your stress?? I'm not kidding.  Stanford University health psychologist Kelly McGonigal has put forth a radically different understanding of stress, which could not only save your life but also that of thousands of others.   The broader implications are in sync with what has been called "the biology of belief" (as in Bruce Lipton's namesake book), which says in a nutshell that your beliefs fundamentally shape your body's well- and illbeing. This is radical because it means that if you can change your belief you can heal your ailments (also see an earlier blog post about this). In alternative medicine this is actually not such a new concept. Deepak Chopra and Henry Grayson are just two of a long list of doctors and psychologists who profess just that. But back to stress in particular. In her TEDTalk McGonigal bases her theory on two studies about stress that run counter to what we have been hearing all these years.

The first point is that stress is not what makes you sick, but rather your beliefs that stress is harmful. Instead, she explains, the pounding heart simply prepares you for action, while the faster breathing brings more oxygen to your brain. The study showed that the blood vessels only constricted - and this is the potentially harmful reaction - if the subject believed stress was harmful. When the subjects did not believe that stress was harmful the blood vessels remained relaxed, like in moments of joy! McGonigle is telling us to see our stress response as helpful, not harmful, and knowing that stress is "your body helping you rise to the challenge."

The point from the second study is that stress makes you social because oxytocin, the cuddle and relationship hormone, but also a stress hormone, is released during a stressful situation, nudging you to seek support and surround yourself with caring people. Oxytocin protects your cardiovascular system because it helps to heal the heart cells from any stress damage. "Stress opens the path to the heart!"

Sooooooo: a. your beliefs transform your stress experience and b. relationships create stress resilience.  Wonderful news!

giving within your means

When I was (really) little my dad took me to a store just before Christmas and we bought a thimble as a Christmas present from me to my mom. And my mom took me to a store to buy with me a tiny leather coin purse in the shape of a mouse for me to give to my dad for Christmas. It was a lesson on giving within your means that has lasted until today. As a newly married many years later I was quite upset when my husband and I were coerced by his siblings to contribute to a new dishwasher for his mother, which was not within our means at the time and we had to scrape the money together. He comes from a family that believes in the direct relationship between the amount of money spent on a present and how much you love someone. I remember him telling me of selling his skates as a youngster to buy a present for Mother's Day, which still makes me sad.

I believe that it is the thought that counts. We all go through times where we have to watch what we spend. Nevertheless, it feels good to give and we want to express our love and appreciation. As a teenager I always made my own presents, needlework, crocheted items, sewn items. I love receiving homemade food items.   Whether it's a jar of honey from your own hives, homemade bread, sausage, mustard, herb infused oil or vinegar, cookies - I so appreciate such a present. I like crafted items, too - a pillow, napkins, a table runner. When my children were little and went to a small Waldorf kindergarten they made candles with applied wax motifs - beautiful. My 14-year old daughter is learning to sew and has made aprons, pyjama pants, tote bags, and much much more - all terrific low cost gifts with a personal touch. I used to receive coupon booklets from my children, such as for sharpening knives, emptying the dishwasher, or folding the laundry, all tedious jobs to me.  How about coupons for grown-ups for babysitting, cooking a meal, or running errands?

Lastly, the packaging can really make your gift shine and sparkle and makes it special. You can do so much with colorful tissue paper in a few colors, some sparkle, and some pretty fabric ribbon (I stock up whenever it's on sale at a crafts store). I have even wrapped presents in newspaper, which can look really cool, and I always recycle pretty ribbons and gift bags if they are in good condition.

a better world?

Are you happy with the current state of affairs? If the answer is yes read no further. If the answer is no, please keep reading.

Have you ever pondered how things get to where they're at? Do you believe it's the politicians' fault?  Or the corporations' fault? Or everyone else's?  Maybe you're not sure.

We like to blame because we don't really like to be responsible. It's easy that way. We're off the hook. However, that perpetuates the status quo. Change can only happen if we do something. Remember what JFK said so famously: "My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."  

If you are tired of your old job you need to do something in order to find a new one. You need to get your resume together, you need to put the word out, you need to research potential companies, and, most importantly, you need to formulate what this new job is supposed to look like. WHAT DO YOU WANT? If you put wishy washy out there, wishy washy will come back.   Imagining what your perfect job looks like in detail, and then focusing on only those companies that are suitable, will get you much better results than simply complaining that you don't like your job.

So it is with the rest of life. You have more power than you think. But you have to do something to effect change. And you have to imagine what exactly you want.

from me-age to we-age

What an amazing time we live in! Big cultural changes are happening as we speak, although it's sometimes a bit difficult to see them when you're in it. From a greater perspective it's been said that we are entering the Age of Aquarius, that our consciousness is evolving from the me-age to the we-age as we proceed into the new millenium.  And climate change is now forcing the issue and mandating that we unite across the globe to mitigate and address this biggest of current problems.

Culturally, there are already a lot of indications of a shift from the me-age to the we-age, and it's all been jumpstarted by the internet.   While spiritual people have always said that we are not separate, that it just seems that way, the internet now demonstrates directly how connected we all are - and this is nothing woo woo. Think of how the internet has changed our lives in the past two decades. "Knowledge is power," they always say, and that is what the internet has brought us with all this shared information right at our fingertips. It has led to so much more transparency and accountability, which empowers us all. Whether Wikipedia, free music sharing, free movie and e-book sharing (and yes, there are royalty issues involved that go way beyond the scope of this post), free college lectures, free internet help forums on anything and everything, it's all there for the sharing and taking.

On the service side there is the Uber car service and several spin-offs that circumvent the traditional taxi and car service net and lets riders contract directly with car owners for their transportation needs. The lodging site Airbnb circumvents the traditional hotel industry and lets homeowners share their homes for a fee directly with tourists.

Connecting empowers us.

climate marching

Our family climate marched this past Sunday 9/21 - yes, it's a verb now. And I think we must do this every year from now on until We The People get the message to our politicians to act now, not later, because later is too late. Together with 300,000 to 400,000 fellow protesters in NYC, and tens of thousands more in all corners of the world from Paris to Melbourne, from Berlin to London and Rio, we participated in what MIT researcher Jesse Jenkins calls "one of America's largest mass protests," and Amy Davidson from the New Yorker "the largest climate change protest in history."

It was powerful and emotional to experience so much synergy and togetherness on the single most important issue of our times, climate change, which, if we are successful in shifting, will propel us beyond the singularly profit oriented oil age into a more cocreative and aware age of earth stewardship.

From the perspective of our evolving human consciousness this is the first time in history that we are awakening to the incredible realization, empowering but also sobering, that we can actually change and steer our existence, that our consciousness and drive are what creates everything around us. We don't all have to become activists. But we all can do our bit to help this momentous evolutionary process along, whether by buying more organics, insulating your house, getting a more fuel efficient car, eating less meat and only the sustainably raised kind, buying less stuff and recycling more, voting environmentally aware politicians into office, and on and on.

I'd love to hear what you are doing to help since, as one of the signs said, "There is no Planet B."

pizza every night?

How boring. I'd rather eat something different every night. And from all over the world, too. We are so fortunate nowadays to have access to such a great selection of foods. We are exposed to so much diversity. Japanese sushi, Moroccan tagine, French snails, Middle Eastern mezze, downhome hamburgers, Italian pasta, Russian borscht, and on and on.... For that same reason, - enjoying diversity - , traveling is so eye opening because we get to see how other people live (and eat, and think). We need to get out of the house to learn to expand our vision because we learn through comparison. Comparison and juxtaposition show us alternatives, options, different ways of doing things. Only when we know what our options are can we begin to choose. Homogenization - a Walmart or Starbucks on every corner no matter how far from home we go, or pizza every night, or the same religion for all - makes us culturally poor and life dull.

But with diversity we must learn tolerance. You don't have to have sushi, but it's great that it's available for those who like it. Let's enjoy the possibilities and excitement that diversity affords us instead of hitting those with different opinions or preferences over the head. As Frederic the Great said, "Jeder soll nach seiner Façon seelig werden," or "each must live as he sees fit."