Acupressure for Depression, or the video that almost cost a life

   

     We had a beautiful sunset this Wednesday.  I acutally followed it around town, trying to find the perfect spot. It started with a beautiful rosy glow over the library, then progress to the flame texture you see at left, then ended with beautiful streaks filling half the sky. It was so amazing, even the pictures I took facing east, just showing the reflected glory, were beautiful. This picture is my favorite. Check out the pink dove in the left corner made by cloud that dipped down and reflected the beauty.
     January and February are usually the darkest months of the year here in Northern Kentucky.  These are the months that I tend to teach classes like 'Taking the Sting out of Stress.' It's the time where everyone who can heads to the tropics for the sun or huddles indoors.
     Inspired by the sunset, I decided to write a post about hope. The last two years have been quite a challenge. When my youngest went to school, it was full time, year round. The three weeks he spent at home this Christmas was the longest he'd been at home for two and a half years. My oldest son graduated from UK and went on (gasp!) to have a life of his own. And my husband started doing international traveling. How dare they have lives of their own! And all at the same time.
     As my carefully constructed and nurtured family moved on, I found myself with a bit of time on my hand. Let's just say all the coping strategies I taught and used sporadically for the last ten years really came in handy.  In some ways I became my own student and in others I just fell on Divine Providence. Sure enough with techniques that I knew and friends that I love, it all worked out.
     So, inspired by the beautiful sunset and an uptake in viewership, I set out to make another YouTube video.  Little did I know what I was in for.  In the past few days, I received over a quarter of a million views on one of my videos. It is great, but also makes for an inbox I'd love to learn to keep up with (problem of sucess- one I've always prayed for). It was to be about acupressure for depression. Little did I know how much I'd need it in the making of the video.
     It was so easy. I knew what I wanted to say. I made simple drawings in 53Paper to illustrate. What could go wrong, right?
 Pinnacle Pro app on this device and 20+ on my old iPad 2. What could go wrong?

   I started the video three days ago. It took a few hours to work out the story line and pictures. Par for the course. I decided to use my new iPad Pro because, it's new, right? I had already made several videos with my
     Yes, I know its a leading question, but way too much fun to say to just omit. The answer was, everything.  I made the video. Twice. Then three times. Then four. But it just would not export to YouTube. After a day and a half more of working on (and failing at) Mr. Mohawk and his acupressure recommendations, I needed the treatment, not my viewing audience. I was ready to stab a knife right through Mr. Mohawk's third eye. I had to recreate the whole thing using a different app. I needed to find my peace in order to give up two days of work. So, I decided that each time I worked on a section of the video, as I listened to the voiceover or worked on a slide or went back, again, to the failed video to scavenge the body for bits I could use, I would use the acupressure points for a few minutes.
       I couldn't believe how calm I was. I just remade the video. Now, in the interests of full disclosure, I was only calm when no one added any extra input. My husband is thanking his lucky stars that he still has his head, but I didn't break the iPad, my computer, or anyone I hold dear. This is their lucky day. Just think if I was working on a post about karate...
    Here's the video. It saved my husband's life. I hope it helps yours.

Storyline Journal: Finding your "Why?"

     I'll admit it, I was lost.  In 2013, within a few months, my youngest son went off to college and I lost my office to a remodeling project.  All the labels I applied to myself- mother, teacher, healer- didn't apply in the same way.  It was so disorienting.

     Finding my "why?" was simple

when my boys were young.  Creating a family and raising future productive adults was easy to measure and very rewarding.  Now that they are those productive adults it became harder to see the worth of my days.  I could see it in the reflection of the boys lives, (as they were moving into new apartments and new jobs, they kept saying how they wished they had a wife to do the things that I do), but really, creating self worth from watering the plants and scooping the cat box was beyond me.

     Then along came the Storyline Planner.  It is a system of looking at your daily life that reveals the bigger picture.  In his book,
Art Before Breakfast: A Zillion Ways to be More Creative No Matter How Busy You Are, Danny Gregory put it perfectly:

"We all live in chaos. It’s the natural state of things. Physicists call it entropy—everything is always changing and unraveling and ultimately turning into cosmic mush. That’s why your desk gets cluttered and your calendar gets filled. It’s physics.
Creativity is the act of shaping the mush of the world around us into something—of creating your own order. I’m not talking about going crazy and compulsive with a label maker and color-coded files. I’m talking about having a vision of what you want things to be like and moving toward it."

    The Storyline planner shapes the mush of your life by letting you step outside and look at it as an observer.  In yoga we call it vairagya, non-attachment.  I can hear you saying, but how?  We'll take a quick look at the left hand page of the planner...

      You'll see there is room for three projects and a to- do list.  Now these projects are the big ones in your life, the ones that take six months to a year.  By filling this in for the past four months I discovered that many of the things I considered "my" projects were beyond my control.  Remember that office I mentioned in the beginning?  Clearly this is not withing my control.  Air hammers are so not my thing.

         My other big project is doing a handstand in the middle of the room.  Headstands have always been easy for me, but handstanding seems to be the project of a lifetime.   As I wrote this down each day it became clear that I wasn't really going for the handstand so much as I was looking for a feeling... the feeling of vigor, purity, focus, strength.  Who wouldn't want that?

     Here is my video with a bit more information about how to create your own order out of the cosmic mush using the storyline planner...

   

Habit RPG Review: Free Willpower in an App

     When everyone you greet says "long time no see"  you know that you have not been keeping up with things.  That is how I feel about my blog and YouTube channel.  I have not been keeping up with my friends.
      The long drought is ending because I found it!  The never ending source of free willpower, Habit RPG.  You may wonder, what is a 48 year old reiki master and yoga teacher doing with a role playing game (RPG)? Finding the fountain of youth, of course. Instant motivation and willpower galore.

drill instructor or Habit rpg, you decide

        I have had so many life changes over the past year and a half, I was wondering if I needed to hire my own private drill instructor to whip my life into shape.  While I was doing lots of good things or necessary things, it never really added up into something that I could see, taste, touch or measure.  In the quest to find new purpose, I stumbled upon lifehacker Patrick Allen's How We Work post    I love these posts. They are a great way to expose myself to the many different ways that people get work done.
           When Patrick said "I really dig HabitRPG for tracking how awesome (or lame) I am"   I knew I had to give it a try.

         I started with a few habits, a few dailies, a few to-dos.  You know, the things you should do, but don't.  Floss, clean the cat box, exercise, meditate.  Then it expanded.  Monday, water the plants. Tuesday, vacuum high traffic areas in the house.  Wednesday, polish shoes.  It goes on...
 

     I think I have become addicted to fake gold.   I may need an intervention.  It lets me buy healing diadems and armor for my 8 bit avatar.  When I'm good for a while, the game drops eggs and hatching potions so I can collect all 90 pets.
      Now I have challenged myself to a video and blog post a week, taking orders and sewing zafus (meditation cushions), cleaning the house top to bottom.  It is great!

      Though I posted on willpower back in 2012, I never realized how much the boring mundane life tasks used up my energy.  With more willpower in my back pocket, life is really looking up.  I think you should give it a try.  If you have any questions or want to share your success, please leave a comment below.  Not only do comments make my whole day, but if you put it as a task in Habit RPG, you can get gold for it!

Errors are Desirable

       "If you could give me advice about how to live my life, what would it be?"  The question arrived by email from my son last year and. in some ways, took over my life.  Here is the next page of my answer.
        Error is the first word in the quote from Ulysses and ironically (or, should I say, truthfully) the quote is in error.  I copied it from a secondary source without checking.  So my quote welcoming in errors is itself an error.  Life is so much fun if you pay attention!
        Now, I don't have a copy of Ulysses (and don't want to read it right now anyway) but from several sources on the web, I found this 'A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.'
       Interestingly enough, for my purposes, the misquote works better.  I don't think my son sees himself as a 'man of genius' so might just dismiss the idea as inapplicable.
       I just love the idea that errors are desirable.  In the TV show The Dog Whisperer each time the dog does an undesirable behavior, the host, Ceasar Millan, would say good.  He saw each moment as a teaching moment.  If the dog only behaved well around him, the visit would be completely wasted.  It's just like I tell my yoga students, pain can be a good thing because it tells you when to stop.
          The other errors on this page are legion.  It is the second thing I have drawn since what feels like kindergarten (remember how I talked about imbalance last week?).  Freeing up the hand and wrist, so comfortable in the structure a yoga arm balance, to move fluidly on the page was just not gonna happen.  I also had this idea that the walls had to be straight and the barrel vault circular so I traced something round (can't remember what) and used a ruler.  The result is fairly rigid, but I figure I have years of ugly drawings waiting to be released from me.  It should be interesting.
          I haven't looked at the page since I drew it mid June, so about a month and a half.  In opening the book today I found I really liked it.  Errors really are the portals to discovery after all.

When Life Catches Up to You

     There I was.... a good idea, a blank page and a (really) bad mood.
(Editor's note: if this ever gets published you know it is an act of Divine Providence.  Look what's sitting on my keyboard. Don't believe the guilty look on her face, she loves messing with me.  Meet Joy, the cat who owns the house we live in.  Hopefully with a bit of attention and appeasement I'll get the keyboard back.  Back to our originally scheduled programming.)
     I just wasn't willing to wait for the inner sunshine to break out, so I prayed for things to go well (the prayer on the inner cover) and dove into the Bible.  Where better to get life advice?
        In browsing through the psalms, number 99 struck me.  It just seemed right.  As I was copying it, I kept second guessing myself.  I made enough errors that I had to rip out the first page of my project.  Who came up with this psalm anyway?  I persevered, copied the darn thing, and put the book away for a week.
      When I came back to it later it seemed to fit my son perfectly.  It feels right again.

       Filling the blank space at the bottom was quite a task.   I knew what I wanted but have absolutely no drawing skills.  That is one of the purposes of this book. After all how do you get to Carnegie Hall?   Practice!
       The idea came from a blank day.  How often does that happen? The calendar was completely blank.  No husband, no kids, only the cat.  I had no idea what to do with myself.
As I meditated on this feeling of rootlessness I realized that the feeling was based on imbalance, both in my past and my present.
        I always used how I was serving others to order my day.  Running the boys to and from school, going to speech meets, making dinner, shopping, errands- these things do not a life make.  They are clutter.  Important clutter if you like to eat dinner and have a family, but they distracted me from the inner balance needed to set order to a day completely alone.
        If imbalance in life hurts, what does that look like?  I drew up several scientific balances, three chain configurations (and three types of chains).  The break in the word was obvious (im-balance, I mean, how imbalanced is that, right?)  The little crushed guy was my favorite part.  He just looks so surprised that life caught up with him.
       What did I do with my blank day?  Spent some time in Kindergarten, taking my crayons back.  It was great fun.  Go get some of your own and restore a bit of balance.

(Editors final note (I promise!)  Now we know God is real. Joy moved to her bed and is continuing to sleep even as I write this.  And there was great rejoicing...)

Begin All Things with Thought and Grace

   So, after a long hiatus, I'm back. It wasn't a case of writer's block.  In the blogger archives I have 19 unpublished posts and my journals are full, but somehow the material felt more personal, less something to share.  Also, my life has really changed in the past year.  My younger son is in college year round and my older one graduated and has a job in another city.
      I look at this time as a great exhale.  In yoga I teach to exhale first, making room for the air you want to inhale. Relax first, then engage the muscles you'd like to use. It has been strange watching this in my life.  The old  things are slowly moving out, revealing lots of interior work to be done, but also making room for the new.  It gives me the time to do some things I have always wanted to do like going on retreat.
      Retreats are like meditation, they make your life so much better, but it is so easy to put it off to some later time, some time when I have nothing to do...  In May I went on an art retreat at St. Meinrad's Archabbey. It was wonderful and is bearing interesting fruit. The first fruit is the journal you see in the picture.  It is a compendium of quotes, poems, psalms and life lessons.
      Last fall I received an email from my younger son forwarding a reddit post about the 25 things I wish my parents had told me.  He asked if we had anything to add.  I thoroughly enjoyed the post, but didn't feel like I had anything to contribute.  When I saw the notebook in the gift shop at St. Meinrad's in May, I realized my contribution just needed a different format, a journal not just an email.
      A few weeks ago I showed the beginnings to him and he recommended that I add the creation of the pages and notes to my blog, so here it is:

        The fox on the cover captured my imagination.  On Memorial Day, my son and I were walking through Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville, Kentucky.  Spending time together on Memorial Day got us both thinking about who we are and how we move in the world.  My son said the animal that best expressed his energy was a fox.  He is friendly, playful, and a bit tricksy.  As his friends would say, he's a "terrible person." In their parlance, someone that is fun to hang out with.

    On the inside cover is the best piece of advice anyone can receive.  "Every time you begin a good work, you must pray to Him most earnestly to bring it to perfection." Rule of St. Benedict prologue.
      Written over 1500 years ago, the Rule outlines how to live in community and it is still followed by monasteries around the world.  With this kind of testing for my first bit of advice, how could I go wrong?  Begin all things with thought and grace, allowing God to work through you to bring the work to its fullness. May this work be blessed and provide guidance.

Finding Your Why

         How is it that so often what we want to do, what we 'should' do is so hard?  Why is it that something we love uses up all of our willpower to just begin, much less finish?  For me the root motivation is always my "why?"  Why to get up in the morning, why to eat well, why to be kind to the telemarketer, why do anything at all?
        I wrote about the power of meaning in these three posts about ikigai (the Okinawan word for life purpose).  Somehow or another I just keep finding areas in my life that I have forgotten to apply this to.  Last week I discovered another neglected region.
       In January 2013, I became mostly vegan (here are my influences).  It was very intellectually satisfying and there is so much scientific evidence, but the buzz didn't last.  Another big factor is my commitment to the environment.  We have relatives living in New Jersey, and with each trip east there are more factory farms on the Pennsylvania turnpike.  Each time we travel, it reminds me of how detrimental this concentrated waste stream is to the local ecosystem (not to mention the animal suffering).  More about this here.  Again, day to day commitment was challenging.

     I had a major "Ahah!" moment last week when I was out running.  How do I see myself?  How do I make my life easier?  I'm not an environmentalist and my heart always beats my head in big decisions, so who am I?   I have always seen myself as an athlete and never heard the words "you can't" without saying "yes I can!"  I realized in the past I had read 3 books that provide my motivation.   Four days later, I purchased them and found my purpose again.
    Eat and Run: My Unlikely Journey to Ultramarathon Greatness by Scott Jurek is a voyage.  He takes us through is life (as quirky as our own) that leads to health and purpose without discounting the struggles to get there.  There is a recipe at the end of each chapter, but the most important part, for me, is the reality of his journey.  He lets us in on the physical, emotional and spiritual pitfalls he has encountered.  It is so approachable.

      My next book is Thrive: The Vegan Nutrition Guide to Optimal Performance in Sports and Life by Brendan Brazier.  He has an emphasis on live, easy to digest foods the are portable and flexible.  Even better, the healing foods are interesting, piquant and right up my alley.  All of the recipes that I have tried have worked well and are to my taste.  Once I read that if you get three recipes from a book, it is money well spent.  In this book I have tried many more and have liked them all.
    Running with the Mind of Meditation: Lessons for Training Body and Mind is the final book.  I love to move and I love to meditate.  Over the years I have learned that often I need one to do the other.  This book gives easy and practical motivations for creating the peaceful mind inside the moving body.  What I love the most about this particular book is that  Sakyong Mipham, the author, approaches running as the secondary condition, and meditation as the primary, a completely opposite approach from mine.  It is great to see the world from eyes that are different, but a mind that agrees with your own.

     I leave you with one last motivation for my going mostly vegan.  It is Dr Greger's 2012 presentation about the leading causes of death.  All of the YouTube videos are fairly poor, but I love the talk.  He makes me laugh and what more could you want on a talk about the causes of death?
     So, here are my reasons for this one decision.  What are yours?