Helping Japan

The first thing many of us want to do after we absorb the news of a catastrophe like the tsunami in Japan and its aftermath, is reach for our checkbooks.  Money is important, of course, but where and when and whom it best serves need careful consideration.  For instance, after Cyclone Nargis devastated Burma, the country of my birth, I discovered that the most effective relief agency was The Merlin Group because they already had staff on the ground, familiar with the population and local conditions.  For the same reasons  I gave to Partners in Health after the Haiti earthquake.  This time, I also decided to wait until it was clearer where a relief donation could do the most good.  Apparently, I’m not alone in this: http://blog.givewell.org/2011/03/11/japan-earthquaketsunami-disaster-relief-donations/ Once again, the key is to target dollars to local groups.  http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/03/15/what-aid-makes-sense-for-japan/work-with-local-groups-in-japan

Check out what your community or congregational response is, and join it if it meets your criteria.   Here’s a list of agencies vetted by InterAction: http://www.interaction.org/crisis-list/interaction-members-support-japan-earthquake-response A useful article: http://www.interaction.org/how-help

‘Tis the Day After Christmas…

and through our abode,

there lingers a fragrance of cinnamon and cloves.

No stockings were hung here —

the children all grown,

gone to in-laws and ski slopes

with children of their own.

We’re done with the shopping

and decorating trees,

over the holiday stress

that once brought us to our knees.

But one habit remains

though many have flown,

the baking of bread

with the warm taste of home.

So bring on the butter, brew a fresh pot of tea,

’tis the Day After Christmas for you and for me.

One of my favorite memories of this year was a short period of teaching creative writing to elders at a retirement community.  The day I got the assignment, I also found a copy of Judith Viorst‘s wonderful Unexpectedly Eighty: And Other Adaptations at the library.  So I brought it in with me to a session and read the last poem in the collection: After Giving the Matter A Great Deal of Thought. Then, I asked the participants to write that line on the top of a piece of paper and continue on for about ten minutes.  We had such a good time with this exercise, no one wanted the session to end, and I have all kinds of new ideas about doing more of this work.  Creativity bubbles up wherever it can.  You just have to give it space and make it welcome.  Try this exercise for yourself.  It’s a great year-ender.

Here’s a post-Christmas gift for you lovers of poetry who have yet to subscribe to Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac:  click here.   I couldn’t live without this daily reminder that, as William Carlos Williams puts it: “It is difficult to get the news from poems, yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there.”

The Striking French

Driving to the first of two yoga teaching gigs yesterday, I listened to a report on NPR that Paris was all but shut down by unions striking against the proposed rise of retirement age from — get this — 60 to 62.   Flights were disrupted and even the Eiffel Tower was closed to tourists.  A few weeks ago, when the movement (if one can call it that) for status quo was just heating up, I heard a couple who had just turned 60, offer an argument you won’t hear on this side of the Atlantic so much these days, that they some how deserve to retire.  They felt they had paid into the pension funds and were fortunate that their pensions would not be threatened by the new law, if indeed it is passed.  In the background, one could hear the voices of their grandchildren for whom they offer care one afternoon a week because they enjoy it.

Contrast this to the desire of most Americans — I’m one of them –to continue to work and not only out of financial necessity, although that is certainly a factor given the sorry rate of saving and investments of many older adults.  The new MetLife Mature Market Institute Study finds “startling” the news that many Early Boomers plan to remain in the labor market.  But if you’ve been following this blog for any length of time, you know that we believe that money is not the only driver for the choice to continue to work.  We happen to think we will remain healthier for it — that alone is a good way to give back.  And unlike our French cohorts, we take a certain pride in continuing to contribute actively to society and to the well-being of future generations, including our own grandchildren, if we have them.   I admire many things about French culture — the food, the art, the joie de vivre, and the fact that the welfare of children is a national priority.  How they will reconcile childcare costs with an aging population that wants to be supported for 25 or more years is the question.  Send in the grownups.

Generational Warfare

Chair Yoga: Seated Postures for Everybody

When Michelle Obama does yoga as part of her recent President’s Council on Fitness initiative, you know yoga has gone mainstream.  In the 15 years I’ve been a practitioner (including the last 12 as a Kripalu Yoga-certified instructor), I’ve seen yoga grow from the culture of the ashram, dependent on the guru-disciple relationship, to a billion dollar industry of conferences, workshops, star yogis, fashion clothing, DVDs, books and the like.  Pick up a copy of Yoga Journal and the cover will likely feature a well-toned yogi in spandex performing one of the more difficult postures.  I love YJ for the useful articles and professional advice I usually find there, but I wonder how many people get turned off by those daunting covers.

“I can’t do yoga; I’m too inflexible.”  If I had a dime for everyone who says this when they discover what I do…  The reality is, people who sit in chairs most of the time (and that’s nearly everyone in the West) are likely to be inflexible, and not just in the body.  My Burmese grandmother grew up sitting on the floor, with her legs crossed yogi-style or hunkered down, with her arms wrapped around her knees.  In her eighties, she had the body of a much younger person, was up with the dawn to meditate, and active all day long.  She didn’t do frailty.

The sedentary lifestyle of our desk-bound, television-addicted population reinforces more of the same behaviors.  So the very idea of getting down on a yoga mat starts to sound more and more impossible.   But yoga has been evolving in other ways that open up its tangible benefits to more of the population, particularly older people who want to maintain good health, preserve their independence, and forestall the so-called diseases of aging.  It is no accident that some of the greatest yogi masters are robust well into their 80’s and beyond.

Last weekend, I became certified in Chair Yoga, a form that adapts many classic yoga postures to the seated position and makes the benefits of yoga available to a much larger population including older adults.  Chair Yoga, as developed by Lakshmi Voelker who has devoted most of her life and career to yoga, delivers the benefits of yoga, including flexibility, strength, improved circulation, and mental focus, to anyone able to sit in a chair, including those in wheelchairs.  In her three and a half day workshop at Discovery Yoga in St. Augustine, Florida, 23 eager students — yoga instructors, physical therapists, Reiki masters and others — learned seated variations of postures like Mountain (Tadasana), Half Moon (Ardha Chandrasana), Tree (Vrkshana) and the Warriors at varying levels of challenge.   We learned how to add 1- and 2-lb. weights to increase the fitness challenge.  And we experimented with double chair and partner-assisted postures.  We were encouraged to replace some or all of our personal practice with chair yoga to improve our skills as instructors.  The biggest surprise was not how well these postures could be adapted for the chair, but how physically challenging they are, even for the young and fit.

Even if you have a yoga practice and/or other fitness routine, there are times when mat practice is not feasible.  You can practice chair yoga at your desk at home or work, on the train/plane/bus or in a car (not while driving!)  If you are recovering from an illness or injury, chair yoga can help you resume your normal fitness activities sooner.  You can even do chair yoga while you’re watching television.  Don’t just sit there!

Sweating the Big Stuff

Sound familiar?  You are (blissfully) unaware of the aging process until one morning, you are standing at the bathroom mirror brushing your teeth as usual, and whoa! this strange person stares back at you.  Your eyes may be as sharp as ever, the expression in them the same, but your features seem to be slouching in a Southerly direction.  (French women seem to enjoy special dispensation from these facts of life.)

For some folks, women mostly but not exclusively, this new old face is enough to send ripples of panic through the whole body.  Before you know it, you’re Googling anti-wrinkle creams, Botox treatments, and/or face lifts.  (Yes, I admit I went as far as to check out the non-surgical options, see The Perricone Prescription.  The good news: it is based on an anti-inflammatory diet and boosts one’s general health and well-being.)   If you are past your fifth decade, you may personally know women (and maybe a few men) of a certain age who have submitted their tissues to the surgeon’s knife.  While I respect the right to make this choice, ‘nip-and-tuck’  isn’t in my future.

Of course, I’m not in the entertainment business where my wrinkles could directly affect my livelihood.  And I don’t plan to run for political office, ditto.  If Sarah Palin looked like Golda Meir, goes one recent joke, would we even be having this conversation?  The truth is, whatever we do cosmetically, we will all end up looking something like Golda Meir (or Mike Wallace) if we’re lucky enough to live that long.   But honestly, would you choose youth and beauty over a reputation for doing good work; passionate support of worthwhile causes; spreading joy; being trustworthy; being a good parent/grandparent/friend or any number of other qualities you value?

In The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, a baby is born old and grows younger each year until he ceases to exist.  The tragedy was that he was moving through life in the opposite direction from everyone else, including the love of his life.  It wasn’t so much an compelling story-into-film as a cautionary tale.   In the world of the imagination, maybe we can fool Mother Nature.  In real life, not so much.  The aging face that looks back at you by dawn’s early light is a reminder that it’s time.  Time to cultivate a sense of self deeper than your skin.  If we — especially we women, weren’t so caught up in how the world sees and judges us (our faces, our clothes, our homes), we might be putting more attention on things like, let’s see, the epidemic of violence against women; the threats to our basic rights to clean water, air, education, health care; what kind of world we appear to be leaving to our grandchildren.  We could be sweating the Big Stuff.

V-Day: A Movement to End Violence Against Women and Girls

The Center for Public Integrity

Not That Easy Being Green?

Well, easy no (Kermit, my friend), but possible.  You will have to make changes in how you live that seem so small they couldn’t possibly have an impact.  You will risk making friends uncomfortable.  You may be labeled Treehugger — like there’s something wrong with appreciating a reliable source of oxygen.  Don’t be surprised to learn that innovation will probably begin at the grass roots — hey, that’s us, particularly those of us old enough to remember when Global Warming was barely a blip on the radar.  If we keep working, our solutions and ideas will percolate up to those in power, or maybe we’ll create a new power base.

We have to embrace activism but without the us vs. them, blame-and-shame game that tends to alienate people when we can spare no one.  We need to “act as if what we want is already true,” to paraphrase a quote circulating in New Age circles.  Author and expert on the power of intention, Lynne McTaggart had a radical suggestion about the spill in the Gulf in the three-part teleconference series: The Gulf Call to Sacred Action.  She suggested to her listeners that we stop demonizing BP for this disaster which could have occurred at any one of hundreds of deep water drilling sites, and start imagining that BP engineers are successful at capping the leak.  And then, imagine that the massive cleanup that follows unites people and resources in unprecedented, effective ways.  McTaggart is best known for her research into the power of intention (The Intention Experiment, Free Press — Simon & Schuster 2007).  Other visionaries on the call: Deepak Chopra and Jean Houston.

We need to find, fund, nurture, and support people who are working on solutions:

Here are a few examples:

“It’s not that easy being green
Having to spend each day the color of the leaves…
But green’s the color of Spring.
And green can be cool and friendly-like.
And green can be big like an ocean, or important like a mountain,
or tall like a tree…”

Hands Across the Sands

Maybe you don’t think of yourself as someone who joins a rally in the street brandishing a hand-lettered sign and shouting  slogans.  Me either.  Whenever I get an email alerting me to a social action that requires me to actually show up, I find myself wondering if my physical presence really matters, say, at a rally with members of my congregation in support of affordable housing in my community.  I question whether I really need to drive down to Senator Bill Nelson’s office when I could sign a petition on line or fax or call him.  Not that those things aren’t important, too.  Then I remember what Gandhi and Martin Luther King accomplished by being willing to put themselves at risk, and I feel ashamed of myself for even hesitating.

There are some things that cry out for organized, apolitical action and the BP spill and all that it represents — corporate greed and malfeasance, hubris, folly — is one.  If you live anywhere near a beach, particularly in Florida, you can take a stand.  Chances are excellent that someone is organizing a  local Hands Across the Sands event on June 26.  As the name suggests, it will be a human chain lining the beaches at noon for 15 minutes, to express opposition to offshore drilling and support of clean, renewable energy.

The movement actually started in Florida on Saturday, February 13, when thousands of Floridians representing 60 towns and cities and over 90 beaches joined hands to protest the efforts by the Florida Legislature and the US Congress to lift the ban on oil drilling in Florida’s waters.  Florida’s Hands Across the Sands event was the largest gathering in the history of Florida united against oil drilling.  Thousands joined hands from Jacksonville to Miami Beach and Key West to Pensacola Beach.  On June 26, we’ll be at Juno Beach, wearing this DYI T-shirt.

If you’re landlocked, you can organize or get involved in a different kind of action.  Here is a list of other volunteer opportunities connected with the BP spill.

Other ways to get involved in saving the world.  If our generation doesn’t, who will?

Faith-based activism

The Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers

The Elders

Busier Than Ever

What is it about modern life that makes us take such pride in being busy?  The question occurred to me recently when I had a brief encounter on the street with a former colleague who told me she had been busier than ever since we parted company about a year ago.   I politely listened to her catalog of comings and goings, but I could not bring myself to get into the game of dueling packed schedules.  In fact, I didn’t get a chance and that’s just as well because a. it’s not a game worth winning, and b. what I do in any given day isn’t necessarily the most important thing to me.

On many days, I cannot give an accounting of where the time went, nor do I wish to.  This may seem an odd admission for a longtime journal keeper, but a good day for me is when I have paused to appreciate some aspect of my life, or noticed or learned something new, however minuscule.  (For example, I just a second ago realized that I have been misspelling the word ‘minuscule’ forever, and that I am so not alone in this that one online dictionary gives ‘miniscule’ as a ‘variant.’  Nice of them. )  At the end of my day, I feel I’ve lived it well if I exercised a skill or talent; connected with another human being in a meaningful way; laughed; moved my body; performed some small act that may possibly improve the world.  I live in the “smile at the neighbor even when you don’t want to” and  “pick up litter when you see it” scale of  things.  Minuscule, but meaningful…at least, to me.

I suppose it is no surprise that a workaholic culture would make a virtue of busyness.  But, we might well ask, as Thoreau did:  “It is not enough to be busy.  The question is: What are we busy about?”  In truth there is a dark, addictive side to busyness,  according to Sally Kempton, a teacher of meditation and yogic philosophy.   Click here for some ideas on the subject and antidotes worth trying.

I say, if you find yourself obsessed with schedules and constantly crunched for time, don’t compound the problem by bragging about it.  Try something radical: sit down and catch your breath, pick up a musical instrument or a sketchpad,  open a book, call a friend you have been meaning to talk to.  And if you are lucky enough to connect on that first try, let them know you have all the time in the world to talk.  It will be a gift to you both.

Check out:

The Slow Movement

Zen Habits

Live Longer, Lighten Up

With a headline like that, you’re expecting some dieting tips a la Dr. Mehmet Oz, right?  Nope.  What inspired this post were two things.

First, this morning, we took a walk along the beach and I found myself wondering who lives in these sprawling homes so precariously perched along the water as if challenging the next hurricane to take them out?  But the better question is why anyone needs that much space.  There are two double-wide homes in particular, next to each other, in competition perhaps.  I can’t help but think how much energy must go into maintaining this kind of lifestyle, not to mention the stress on the body/mind.

Second, when we returned to our relatively modest home seven miles inland, I opened up my laptop to Seth Godin’s blog and as often happens found a post that spoke to me.  It is built around an article about living more lightly from a devoted backpacker.  So, I’m looking around my desk and, yikes!  Laptop, printer/phone/fax combo, lamp, another phone, Rolodex, cup of pens, most of which I never use, stapler, holders for this and that, box of mints, post-it notes.  Then, the tangle of wires under the desk and the stack files of papers on the floor…let’s not even go there.  I’m nauseous.

One of the things you realize as you age is how little you really need to be contented.  In a warm climate, it’s even less: a pair of shorts, t-shirt and sandals and you’re dressed.  A piece of fruit, half a bagel and tea, and breakfast is done.  A good book, a good conversation, a walk in nature — what could be better?  Thoreau’s advice (Simplify!  Simplify!) rings louder in my ears these days, and I find myself less tempted by the life-is-beautiful catalogs that continue to arrive in my mailbox every week.

That said, I’m the last person to give advice on clutter, so just read the link and see if it opens up a space in your head like it did in mine — the right place to start.

The Changing Brain: A Review of Two Books about Neuroplasticity

by Susan Cooper, Windbridge Member and Community Advisor

All sorts of fantastic, remarkable, and hopeful brain adaptabilities were being explored by some inquisitive folks more than 400 years ago!  We can thank Descartes once again for slowing the scientific acceptance of reality.  It turns out that only recently have we returned to this subject and we now know that our “immaterial” thoughts do indeed have an impact on brain structure just as mind/body relationships impact so much of our lives.

Two books are competing for my “favorite” read about neuroplasticity at the moment:

The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science by Norman Doidge, MD (http://tinyurl.com/y9l6rrn)

Train Your Mind Change Your Brain: How a New Science Reveals Our Extraordinary Potential to Transform Ourselves by Sharon Begley (with a forward by the Dalai Lama and a preface by Daniel Goleman) (http://tinyurl.com/y88esqt)

The Doidge book is/was a New York Times Bestseller and Doidge was featured on PBS’s The Brain Fitness Program.  He is a psychiatrist and researcher on the faculty at the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research.  Begley is a science writer for Newsweek magazine, and her book reports on how cutting-edge science and the ancient wisdom of Buddhism have come together to reveal that we have the power to physically change our brains by changing our minds and behaviors.

The old Cartesian distinction between the mind and the brain (matter)—and the resulting idea in mainstream medicine and science that brain anatomy was fixed—is falling apart as the “power of positive thinking” gains scientific credibility.  Because the belief was that the brain could not change, Doidge claims that “human nature, which emerges from it, seemed necessarily fixed and unalterable as well.”  Now, however, a new array of possibilities for human adaptability is emerging.

Doidge reports the scientific discoveries in fascinating story after story of scientists, doctors, and patients who, without operations or medications, have made use of the brain’s ability to change.  Over the years, he has met many brain scientists working at the cutting edge who have shown that the physical structure of the brain changes with the activities and thoughts it performs… if one part fails, then other parts take over.  One scientist enabled a person blind from birth to see; another showed that thinking, learning, and acting can turn our genes on or off; and another was helping people who had had strokes years before and had been told they would never recover to change that diagnosis.  And get this: If you exercise to increase muscular strength 5 days a week for 4 weeks (doing fifteen maximal contractions, with a twenty-second rest between each) you will increase strength by 30%, but if you only imagine doing this—for the same periods—you will increase strength by 22%!  Imagination is funny, indeed!

Begley’s book reads like a detective novel.  It is the tenth book in a continuing series reporting on the dialogues arranged by the Mind and Life Institute (see http://www.mindandlife.org/).  Here, she reports on collaborations between neuroscientists, psychologists, philosophers, the Dalai Lama, and contemplatives (monks who have meditated for up to 55,000 hours in their life-times!!).  It speaks loudly and clearly to potential:  We have inner powers and we are in control of them!

The Dalai Lama, in his forward to this book, says, “I am grateful… to Sharon Begley for her artful work presenting this material accurately and attractively.  I am optimistic that the exciting discoveries related here have great potential to contribute positively to the betterment of humanity and the way we may develop our future.”  I, too, especially as I age, am grateful to Sharon Begley for this book about a hopeful new science that will allow me to stay young—at least mentally.

It was in 1986 that the first Mind and Life Conference took place in Dharamsala and was attended by people who encouraged initial dialogues between Buddhism and modern science.  It would appear that although these fields arose out of different historical, cultural, and intellectual backgrounds, they have an amazing amount in common.  Based on the teachings of the meditation adepts, the Dalai Lama wanted to know, from the scientists, if the mind could really change the brain.  Buddhism tells us that that any ‘fixed constraints’ can be overcome—through the right training.  The Dalai Lama was ready to “change Buddhism” if the scientists could disprove these beliefs.

William James, in 1890, said “organic matter, especially nervous tissue, seems endowed with a very extraordinary degree of plasticity.”  But his opinion didn’t count—he was not a neurologist.  In 1913, Ramon y Cajal, a Nobel Prize winning Spanish neuroanatomist, made it clear to his audience that “in the adult centers the nerve paths are something fixed, ended and immutable.” And this was the statement that scientists chose to believe for the next 90 years: the adult brain is hardwired, fixed in form and function, we are stuck with the hand we were dealt….no new neurons and no new functions…period.  As late as 1999, the journal Science reported that the current teaching was that neurons could not be replaced and neuronal networks (after injury, with aging, or in disease) could not be reestablished.  That is, the basic layout of the brain (as diagramed in anatomy textbooks) could not be changed.

But, now, we know otherwise.  Rehabilitation for adults who suffer brain damage from a stroke works!  Psychiatric diseases such as obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and depression can be cured.  And, although the adult brain is not as plastic as a child’s, it is much more adaptable than was ever thought.  In the last few years of the 20th century, discovery after discovery proved that brains have stunning powers of neuroplasticity.  They can be rewired simply through the actions we take, our thoughts and behaviors, and in the experiences we have in the outside world.  The size of different regions and the strength of connections can all change based on the actions we have take, the lives we lead, and the thoughts we think.

Ancient Buddhist training emphasizes the value of investigating reality and finding the truth of the outside world as well as the contents of one’s own mind.  Its teachings define a person as a constantly changing dynamic stream and this follows closely what has now been learned about neuroplasticity.  The idea that we are constantly changing means there is no intrinsic nature to the self or the mind.  We may be products of the past, but we always have had the opportunity to reshape ourselves.  And at long last, the scientists agree.

Read these books—both of them.  They will convince you that you possess the ability to do what you choose to do; it may take time and some effort, but you CAN do it!  We can train ourselves to be kinder, to pay more attention, to exhibit more compassion, and to be less defensive, self-centered, aggressive, and warring.  Now wouldn’t that be something!?!