Yonge and Bloor, downtown Toronto, Canada at approximately 2:00 pm. Thursday, June 21. I finish teaching ESL for the day and enter the Toronto Reference Library, a $5 Starbucks strawberry banana whey protein smoothie in hand, sunglasses resting on the top of my head and my First Aid for the USMLE Step 1 tucked under my arm. NPLEX 1 is in t-minus 45 days. Here we go…
A few days ago I was faced with the challenge of moving out of the third floor of Nonna’s house. This meant that I was going to have to complete the impossible task of squeezing the entire contents of an apartment-sized room into my modest-sized childhood bedroom.
I used to play in the laneway behind Clinton and Bloor, in Toronto’s west end. The laneway marked the arteries of my childhood world, directing me to the shops on Bloor, Honest Ed’s and Christie Pits park.
India’s homeopathic hero, R. Sankaran, developed a theory for dosing homeopathic remedies. Homeopathic remedies are substances that are highly diluted. It is thought that the more diluted the remedy the more potent the dose, because of the remedy’s ability to communicate with the body on higher energetic level.
In Alice’s world there was a pill to make you smaller and another to make you taller. In the world we live, however, we have pills that cover us for virtually everything – even racism. My pharmacology group recently presented an article on how blood pressure medication reduced racial prejudice by 66%. (An aside: perhaps more people should be on this medication.)
Resist the urge to play music, to instead settle on silence, the only sound being the bristle of brush strokes on dollarstore canvas board (you buy paint supplies on a student budget, after all). You hope one day to be able to afford Series 3 colours like aquamarine. For now, you work with cobalt blue.
I don’t know about you but the word “gratitude” carries a fair amount of guilt and resentment for me. Being citizens of privileged countries like Canada, we’re constantly told that we should be grateful, as in, “finish your food, there are starving children in Africa!”
This realization that we have certain things that others do not often results in guilty feelings about the facts of life that we’re not responsible for (directly) and cannot change. Gratitude, at least for me, has associated feelings of injustice and helplessness. It is almost as if that by admitting I am grateful for my food, my home, my family, my friends, etc., I am acknowledging the fact that I, more than anyone else, did not earn or deserve them and brings to light the possibility that these things can be taken from me.
When we talk about meditating on or cultivating a feeling of gratitude, the opposite is usually understood. We seek to cultivate gratitude precisely for the reason that we are, in fact, not grateful and are focusing on the negative aspects of our lives, the things we are not grateful for.
However, gratitude is not about guilt-trips or comparisons. It’s simply recognizing that we are all fortunate in our own way, helping us to see the full half of our glasses.
A classmate once showed a group of students and I a powerful and engaging visualization exercise based on recognizing the things to be grateful for in our lifes. I often struggle in meditation, especially the stricter Vipassana or Zen meditations, in which we are told to calm and focus the mind. It seems that more I try to focus the more I realize I am trying, pushing to make something happen and then the more I try not to try. And try not to try not to try. Until I get lost in a vast tangle of effort. (How can we exert the effort to find effortlessness?) I found with the gratitude meditation, however, my mind calmed, focused and participated in the meditation. My mind was free to conjure up images in a Freudian pattern of free association, and I simply had to acknowledge that I was, indeed, grateful for those things.
I started by sitting quietly and focusing on my breath, calming it, deepening it and quietening it. The first thought I began with was “I am grateful for my breath.” I began to feel a sensation of blissful relaxation as I reveled in the beauty, simplicity and luxury of my breath. Without trying to sound flakey, I found myself bask in the gratefulness for it. I moved on to other body sensations, gifts and functions – “I am grateful for my lungs, for my brown hair, for a body that can meditate and relax, for this cushion, for the way I can stretch, enjoy yoga, exercise and move outside.” I let my mind wander on to the next object, maintaining mindfulness by reminding myself to acknowledge the gratitude I felt towards these things: my home, my dog, my school, country, books, nature, loving family, the sun. Whatever came up, I recognized my gratitude for having it in my life.
The most therapeutic and eye-opening part of the meditation, however, was when my mind, as most minds do, began to wander to more negative aspects of my life, things that I wasn’t necessarily grateful for – my exams, work, stress, anxiety, family problems, school problems, uncertainty, long distance relationship, lack of money, etc. I then realized how, despite what I originally thought, I was actually grateful for these things. Negative experiences supplied the yin to my yang, they helped to balance and shape who I am and without these perceptibly negative times, I wouldn’t have faced the challenges and character-building situations that have made me who I am and led me to where I am.
Once I got the grateful ball rolling, the possibilities were endless. After a few minutes, I ended the meditation and left with a clear sense of relaxation and satisfaction for all that I have, both positive and negative.
I’ve noticed that cultivating gratitude is an important ingredient in overcoming addictions and dealing with mental illness. In the AA meeting I recently attended, I noticed a running them of gratitude and the need to thank the Higher Power on a daily basis. I once read a saying, “Image if you woke up tomorrow with just the things you thanked God for today.” Whether you are comfortable with the G word or not, I think this idea opens our minds to the many riches we may not realize we have (not just the food on our table that we should eat because of the Africans who may not have it) but the totality of our life experience.
We’ve all heard of the potential health implications of spending too much time wired in. Whether it’s the radiation from our cell phones, the arthritis that sets in our thumbs, the damage done to our interpersonal communication skills or the strain on our eyes, we’re constantly told about the negative health implications of our technological age.
However, as much as we hear these warnings, there is no chance that our electronic lifestyle is going anywhere soon. Wireless technology, the internet and smart phones are here to stay. They serve as essential tools for the rapid-paced society we live in. While I advocate taking an “electronic-free” day off each week to give your nervous system a break, I wonder if all this technology can actually have a positive impact on our health. Here are my favourite apps for Android and iPhone that can promote your health rather than hinder it.
1) Pocket Yoga: Of all the Android yoga apps out there, this one is by far my favourite. It’s
not free (it costs $3) but it actually takes you through a series of yoga workouts rather than just showing you a list of poses. The app gives you the option of choosing from three different settings (mountain, ocean or desert), three different workout lengths (30 minutes, 45 minutes or 1 hour) and three levels of difficulty (beginner, intermediate, advanced). When staying at my aunt’s cottage I roll my yoga mat out on the grass, put my phone beside me and get into the flow.
2) Sleep as Android (or Sleep Tracker for iPhone): The idea behind the mechanism of this app is that, when we sleep lightly we move around more than when we enter states of very deep sleep. With this app, you set your alarm and put your phone on your mattress while you sleep and the sleep tracker senses your movement throughout the night. Rather than being jarred out of a deep and comfortable sleep, your phone waits for you to enter a state of lighter sleep, up to half an hour before your desired wake up time, before sounding the alarm. Using this app has helped me greet the day with a less groggy disposition and makes me feel like I’ve slept more soundly. The sleep tracker also produces a graph when you wake up, giving you information about the quality of sleep you experience each night. Take advantage of the 14-day free trial and see how this app makes a difference in how you begin your mornings.
3) Meditation Oasis: These apps may cost $1 each, but are very relaxing, guided audio meditations. I listen to these audio meditations to help relax both my body and mind (especially after a stressful day) before going to sleep. They’re also very useful guides for those who want to start a daily meditation practice but aren’t sure how to begin or even for those who just need a mental break from study or work. If the internet is available, you can go online to the listening page at meditationoasis.com and choose from a free list of 43 different guided meditation podcasts for varying levels of expertise.
4) 8tracks: Whether you need a fast-paced playlist to accompany your daily workouts or some calming music to help you relax, 8tracks will have an awesome compilation of songs for your musical taste. We live in a visual culture and sometimes it’s therapeutic to turn off the visual stimulation, steep a cup of tea and listen to some soothing, stress-relieving music. You can download this free app onto your phone and browse through a variety of music playlists according to genre.
5) My Fitness Pal: This free app is a portable tool that can be used anytime for tracking your daily nutrition. You simply use the database to search for and enter in the foods that you eat each day. This app helps you track weight loss goals by giving you a personalized caloric intake target based on your age, weight, gender and activity levels. It’s also very useful for people with other diet goals, such as limiting sugar, increasing dietary fibre intake or consuming an adequate dietary intake of micro-nutrients (vitamins and minerals). By using this app you’ll have a more accurate view of your daily nutrient intake and will be motivated to make healthier food choices.
There’s always been something about the idea of Art Therapy that drew me in. I’ve always had a passion for creative expression and believe, based on my own personal experience, that the very nature of creating a work of art carries with it rich therapeutic value. While in Colombia this past summer when I had the opportunity to organize a series of weekend activities with the foundation I was volunteering with, Fundamor, a home for children with HIV/AIDS, I knew that an art therapy activity would have to have a central role in my plans.
The Vis Medicatrix Naturae, or the healing power of nature, is at the core of naturopathic philosophy. This power, present in all living things, is the blueprint for optimal health and well-being.