Glass Half Full with Leslie Krongold, Ed.D.

Category: Movement

Yoga, Dance, and other forms of exercise and recreation

  • Ha Ha, Hee Hee: Laughter Therapy, Laughter Yoga

    Are you feeling stressed out? With all that’s going on in the world — pandemic, civil unrest, job loss, hurricanes, wild fires — it’s difficult to avoid stress.

    Laughter therapy, or laughter yoga, might help alleviate some of the stress. It’s free. It offers numerous mental and physical health benefits. And it’s fun.

    In the field of psychoneuroimmunology, laughter has been studied and found to lower blood pressure, strengthen cardiovascular function, improve circulation, boost immune function, trigger the release of endorphins, and produce a sense of well-being.

    You’ll meet Annie Goglia, a certified Laughter Yoga Leader, who shares her story how laughter transformed her life. You can even join her, virtually, at her Laughter Club.

    To delve deeper into your exploration of Laughter Therapy, check out the Comedy Cures Foundation and Association for Applied & Therapeutic Humor.

    The University of San Francisco Osher Center for Integrative Medicine offers classes in Laughter Yoga as well as the Founder of Laughter Yoga, Dr. Madan Kataria.

    For more laughs, check out these podcast episodes: Life After Cancer, Laughter is the Best Medicine; and Put a Pink Ribbon on this Actress…

    Transcript

    welcome to glass half full with leslie krongold she shares her stories experiences and knowledge of living and coping with a chronic health condition learn about tools and resources and hear inspirational interviews that help you to live a life filled with quality and dignity with two decades of support group leadership leslie’s ready to help you make lemonade out of life’s lemons are you ready are you ready we can all use a little more laughter are you agreeing i mean this is a tough time and that’s coming from a normally optimistic person me most of you listening likely have some type of chronic health condition that presents challenges for you with every day living now if you are more vulnerable like me with respiratory issues or maybe a compromised immune system you’re on high alert during this pandemic even quote unquote healthy people are at risk and maybe you’ve also lost your job or your work hours have been cut or like me your spouse has suffered a job loss which impacts your household and then we’ve got a lot of civil unrest and maybe you’re in the path of a hurricane or the air quality is super unhealthy because you live near wildfires like myself jesus episode is about laughter what am i doing going on and on like this the fact of the matter is we are all stressed out and if you’re not stressed out what in the world is wrong with you okay so we’re in agreement right you’ve gotten stress i’ve got stress people across this whole world are all stressed granted some have a bit more stress than others i can’t even imagine what it’s like to have to evacuate my home because of fires on its trail it’s a totally different enough to crack and i don’t think laughter therapy is the best antidote not yet ironically and here’s how i bring us back to the topic two years ago i was scheduled to interview a nurse about laughter yoga she teaches laughter yoga and meditation at the university of san francisco’s school of medicine

    the day before our scheduled interview she sent me an email message that she needed to cancel because her cabin in lake county california was under evacuation orders for the fires the good news is that she’s fine i went to one of her laughter yoga sessions earlier this year pre-coded my intention was to return to her class again and reschedule the interview but that didn’t happen but i do have a guest and she’s in fact the very first person i experienced laughter yoga with

    there’s a field of research about after therapy this type of research lies within psych neuro immunology which is the study of the interaction between psychological processes and the nervous and immune systems of the human body i don’t know when this term psych neuro immunology was coined but the scientific research has found laughter to be really good medicine some of the health benefits include lowering blood pressure strengthening cardiovascular functions reducing stress hormones and improving circulation increasing muscle flexion oxygenating the body by boosting the respiratory system immune function by raising levels of infection fighting t cells disease fighting proteins called gamma interferon and b cells which produce disease-destroying antibodies triggering the release of endorphins the body’s natural painkillers and producing a general sense of well-being pretty convincing results don’t you think so with all of this stress upon us maybe we should try working in a little healthy so what is laughter yoga it’s a fairly recent phenomenon an indian physician madame kettarian developed an exercise routine he calls laughter yoga it’s a combination of laughter and yoga breathing laughter yoga practitioners do not use asana or yoga poses as part of the routine so if you can’t do a great down dog don’t worry dr catorius started the first laughter club in 1995 and today there are more than 20 000 free social laughter clubs throughout 110 countries

    my introduction on laughter yoga was several years ago i probably had read about laughter yoga and then i did a little research to find a local practitioner and that’s how i found annie golia my guest for this podcast episode i was facilitating a monthly support group for adults with neuromuscular disease we would meet at the kaiser permanente hospital in oakland california and annie happened to live nearby in oakland and she graciously joined us one sunday and led us through several laughter exercises it was not until many years later when i attended my next laughter yoga class at ucsf and during coven so far i’ve attended a couple of virtual laughter yoga sessions so anyhow here’s annie my first question and you know i don’t even know if i asked you this years ago when you came to the support group but how and when did you discover laughter yoga ah well i think it was 2005 or 2004 and i was living in the boston area and i i was very i was pretty shy when i was younger and as i got older i realized humor and laughter were things that helped me connect with people and get over that shyness and i i became quite the laugher and people with friends would tell me you should become a professional laugher or i knew you were in the room because i could hear you from from across the room so when so i thought well that’s funny professional laughter there’s no such thing and then i found out about laughter yoga some friend told me like there’s this thing that adults do and they get together and laugh together and i’m like that sounds spectacular to me so i joined a group and near where i live near boston and i loved it and then i moved here about a year later and i found a training and that’s and then i took a training with dr qatar it was the founder of laughter yoga and now i and then i also started to train other people to lead after yoga so that was almost 14 years ago is he in india or is he located in the united states he is in india he was then and originally he was in mumbai but now i believe he’s in the kind of silicon valley area of india and do you actually travel to india to city with him no no uh he does do trainings there but i at that time he would travel to the u.s to do trainings so it was near la and sierra madre oh okay and so previous to this when you said you were shy have you you know in high school or college done any kind of acting or improv or any of that not so much then uh i did i i think it was later on i got interested in when i was in my 30s i started to do storytelling and that’s before and after yoga yeah yeah and that really got me out of my shell a lot and then i started to take some improvisational classes too movement and storytelling improv so yeah it all kind of comes together in life together it’s very improvisational and playful and creative and brings all my fun stuff together so may ask what did you study in in college i was an english major

    not literature did you teach did you go and teach after that or i eventually i got a master’s in arts and teaching and i taught for less than a year and that was the end of that oh my god did you hate it it was very very challenging and it was really hard to find a decent job in teaching at that particular time especially in english and so yeah it just did i wasn’t suited to it so then i ended up doing a lot of human service jobs for many years once you started uh you know working on laughter on your own and then discovering laughter yoga how did it change your life i think it’s it’s it’s kind of sneaky it kind of sneaks up on you you practice it the more you laugh the more you laugh we like to say and there’s a lot of things in left yoga that are intentionally meant to help you bring laughter into your everyday life we call them values-based exercises so for instance there’s something called argument for argument and forgiveness laughter so we argue with laughter and then we forgive with laughter and that’s a great way to just remember when you’re having a disagreement with somebody in your life like is it more important for me to be right or is it more important to have a nice relationship with this person i think things like that and then also just just remembering that laughter is a possibility when things are stressful especially minor things for instance uh one time i was carrying a plate of spaghetti with sauce on it down to the dining rooms in the kitchen and i tripped and of course i was in a hurry i tripped and i ended up all over this bookcase bigness and and i was really bummed out because i thought oh my god this is going to take so long to clean up and like first i was really pissed and then i’m like but i could laugh and it was much more fun and so i did and it made cleaning it up much more enjoyable and then one of my housemates was there and that person also started to laugh when he saw what was going on and it just like made both of our days more fun because of laughter yeah and and other things like like one time i was taking my bike out of the garage and i was going backwards with my bike and i started to fall on my back and before i hit the ground i started to laugh and because of that i i really didn’t hurt myself i think it just relaxed me and wow yeah so it’s really useful that’s this laughter thing yeah i mean over the years i have read you know different articles and i know there’s even you know peer reviewed scientific research about the health benefits of laughter yoga or laughter therapy which i’m thinking is kind of synonymous isn’t it laughter therapy laughter yoga pretty much yeah i mean it can be just like kind of entertaining and fun but there is a therapeutic aspect of it absolutely when when did you become a practitioner how many years have you been you know leading people i started leading into in january of 2007. okay mars you’ve been doing it a number of years and have you met people with different types of health conditions where they were seeking it out as a therapeutic you know modality yes um well certainly people have come who’ve been feeling i don’t know about depressed but down you know feeling down and needing needing something to cheer them up i mean i think people come to laughter yoga because they feel like they need more laughter in their lives and so and some of those people may have some mental health issues and they’re also you know people just want to be healthier they want some mode a way of becoming healthier and relieving stress i think really mean stress is a big reason people come to laughter yoga and certainly there’s plenty of stress to go around right now and stress causes inflammation in the body it causes the body a lot of wear and tear and it can cause heart disease cancer dementia so all of those things you know it’s a great preventative and if you have those things it’s certainly useful to help heal so i’ve done it a lot for elders who have all kinds of health issues i’ve done it for people who are on dialysis there was a study that we did i was part of a study that actually went in and did laughter yoga for people while they were on dialysis to see if that would help them and actually you could see their blood pressure on the machine and you could sometimes see it like going down wow interesting now so they were hooked up to the machine yeah and experiencing a class a section of laughter yoga yeah yeah that’s amazing

    so you also do it in corporate settings right i have a little bit yeah and so is that are you brought into like hr and is it like some section of the staff and often it’s a manager who’s like i want to bring some stress relief or fun for the staff a way for them to cope with the stress of the job and so i try to always customize it for people so i find out what are these people’s stressors or challenges and also what do these people need to celebrate because life yoga is just about relieving stress it’s all also about learning to celebrate what we need you know and not just the big things in life but so important i think what one of the things i’ve learned from left yoga is celebrating the little things in life so we can say yay very good very good yay over like you know i i got up and took a shower this morning i mean i’m like it doesn’t have to be i’m still breathing it’s all relative though you know it is especially now in the pandemic exactly so so are there are there in your experience are there certain types of people that you find are more receptive i think there’s some people who’ve just decided for themselves i’m too serious i need more laughter in my life or i’ve got some issue and i think laughter would be good for me so there’s those people and then there’s the people sort of more like me who are like oh my god i want a place that i could just laugh like crazy and people don’t think i’m crazy you know um so i think those are the two biggest groups i think that come to us but and then there’s other people too but i think those are probably and is there any kind of generalization you can make about people that just don’t uh you know it’s just not they’re not their thing well i mean truth be told i i’m so i think you were the first experience of laughter yoga for me and then over the years i attended a couple of other sessions at ucsf yeah in person and then since the pandemic i’ve done a couple online classes and i don’t know how much you know about me but i embrace all modes of non-invasive healing modalities and for some reason it’s i’m i have not it just it doesn’t i mean i don’t have an adverse reaction yeah but i’m just not fluid with it yeah i think it depends totally on somebody’s openness and also on their personality i think some people just have a really hard time letting go and getting silly because i think silliness is really and feeling safe enough in the group is really really really important so i think that some people just you know i think it’s as as when we’re growing up we’re told when we’re told to grow up when we’re little what does that mean it means get serious get responsible it doesn’t mean have fun have a good life you know it means so we learn that being an adult means means getting serious and being responsible and those are not bad things to be but it kind of leaves out a whole other part of life so i think laughter local calls on us to have a more childlike approach and to see that to open up that side of ourselves to be silly to be playful and for some people that’s really hard i’m not saying you are like that but for a lot of people that is very challenging and they’re just like kind of frees up and they they’re like oh this is too silly for me or uh it’s too embarrassing um or it feels fake that’s the other thing i hear sometimes yeah i mean i’m you know i’m i’m open to still you know because every once in a while i come back and i’ve often wanted to do a podcast on it you know what works for me isn’t going to work for someone else and vice versa i mean they’re just um many different paths to hopefully the same goal of just leading a better life yeah but i tell people if they feel like that kind of sense of embarrassment or or inhibition to think about it as an exercise i’m doing an exercise for my health and hopefully elevating my mood as well because we still get that we still get the benefit out of it even if it’s intentional laughter even if we’re not laughing spontaneously so a lot of times i don’t feel like exercising i have to push myself to exercise and so this is a form of exercise and so i encourage people to take that bring that kind of experimental or decision of deciding to laugh because i know it’s good for my health and then often almost always people end up spontaneously laughing in the group there’s this sense of safety and sense of connection and and they say that actually most people laugh not because of humor not because of jokes but because they’re with a group of people they feel safe with and they’re just they’re just really kind of laughing just because they’re together that’s interesting so in the in the laughter clubs that you’ve been affiliated with is there a sense of community that’s fostered yes i i mean i i can’t speak for all laughter groups but i i do feel like the woman who ran the group that i went to in boston really worked on that and had regular people and and really tried to get people to share and connect with each other and i really tried to nurture that in my group so there’s regulars and then there’s new people we try to welcome the new people and that’s fine and but i do try to make sure people feel like they get to connect in a real way even if it’s um even if they’re there for the first time that they get to have this connection with a group that’s safe and enjoyable that might be the key for me you know is that in you know it did feel a bit like artifice but had there been more time where i actually got to know the people um and and the idea of like building that safety i mean because it is you know one it isn’t opening up to laugh freely and you know kind of that whole full-body jewelry experience is certainly yeah kind of intimate yeah it is oh absolutely it is and i tell people like to try to channel their their their childlike self that because when we’re kids we generally most kids don’t say oh i have to talk to this person to get to know them first before i want to play with them

    i have to know what work they do or where they live or whatever they just like let’s play let’s play and so i try to like encourage that like getting to know people on a different level than the intellectual one or the the verbal one it’s getting to know people on a very human level that’s that’s just like we’re two human beings together we can play together without really knowing each other on that verbal level so are you are you able to achieve that online now have you been doing that it’s more challenging somewhat more challenging but i’m amazed that we’re able to it does work for a lot of people and it we’re still able to do it yeah so i’m very grateful for that for everybody some people in my group don’t come to the zoom and then some people never come before and hop down and and love it on zoom so you know i can’t say you know it obviously is not for everybody but i’d say it works for a lot of people i mean everybody should try it you know no harm done no no no i don’t know anybody who’s died from laughing

    that’s a good testimonial

    and most people come out of it saying they feel both more relaxed and more energized yeah nice combination yeah no i definitely did feel more energized i mean because you are really exercising your lungs and the one i did online we were moving around a little you know so yeah it is uh oh yeah a lot of movement moving clapping um breathing a lot of yogic breathing and of course laughter and i also do uh when we have a we so we do these playful after exercises we get people to connect and laugh with each other and we also do um some warm-ups before that some physical warm-ups and towards the end we do a time when we just laugh for a minute or two because you really get more benefit out of a more extended lab more health benefit helps with the blood pressure helps with the immune system which we really need right now right yeah

    and as a natural pain reliever which is lovely and then uh at the towards the end i do a guided or eliza or i do a guided relaxation because it’s in the evening and we want to leave people in a peaceful place oh yeah that makes sense right you’re unwinding and gonna go to sleep soon so you want to come down a bit

    great well thank you so much oh you’re very welcome my pleasure yeah i feel like i haven’t bumped into you somewhere since kaiser yeah i think we did but i don’t remember where that’s another way i use laughter is because it helps my dog my memory when i forget something i laugh and it’s amazing because it kind of it cuts through the brain freeze and i can think better and i almost always remember it what it was i was forgot wow i recommend trying them oh man can you jar that that’d be good wouldn’t it yes you’d get an arp magazine you know you’d make a fortune

    hey guess what you too can experience laughter yoga with annie she has a groupon meetup i’ve provided the link in the podcast notes on the glasses website and if you’d enjoyed if you’ve enjoyed what you’ve heard in this episode i invite you to check out the other links on the glass apple website that are related to laughter therapy there’s an organization called comedy cures foundation that provides therapy therapeutic comedy programs for children and adults living with illness trauma depression and disabilities there’s the association for applied and therapeutic humor which is was founded by a registered nurse in the sev in the 80s 1980s meta organization provides and disseminates information about therapeutic humor and there are also links to the ucsf laughter yoga program and dr kitarya’s website so take care of yourself as best you can and when you’re ready consider exploring how some intentional laughter can help ease your stress thank you for listening to glass half full leslie invites you to leave a rating and review on itunes this helps spread the word to others dealing with chronic health issues for show notes updates and more visit the website glass half full dot online.online

  • “That is me; I still have my hands;” Positive Energy during a Pandemic

    That is me; I still have my hands, says the 4-year old girl after waking up in the hospital and being told by her mother that she had lost her legs. The little girl grew up to become Rumba with Tina. Tina Verduzco teaches a Saturday morning online dance class for BORP: Bay Area Outreach & Recreation Program.

    Tina and Cynthia
    Tina Verduzco, Cynthia Noonan & Freckle, Younger Tina

    Tina, along with several other online instructors, help this podcaster maintain positive energy and a healthy mind, body, and spirit during the shelter-in-place period.

    Cynthia Noonan, one of BORP’s Board of Directors, transitioned the in-person fitness studio in Berkeley, California to the virtual world where participants join in from across the United States and Mexico.

    You are invited to join this online community; check out the BORP class schedule as well as other accessible exercise program offerings including Dance For All Bodies and Wheelchair Dancers. If you just want to see what a BORP class looks like, here are a few recorded BORP classes.

  • Hug A Tree & Live Longer

    Hug A Tree & Live Longer

    This month we have both Earth Day and Arbor Day so it’s high time to be amongst the trees. Even if you are hunkered down in the safety of your home during the pandemic, you can still derive healing benefits from gazing out of your window at nature’s bounty. If your window faces man-made materials, there is science proving that a photograph of trees can impact you in a positive physical and emotional way.

    Verla Fortier, RN, author of Take Back Your Outside Mindset: Live Longer, Prevent Dementia, and Control Your Chronic Illness, shares some of the research she found about the healing powers of trees and nature. Diagnosed with systemic lupus, she was told to stay indoors to avoid the sun. And she did. Until she witnessed a noncompliant online support group participant.

    Katherine Chen, meditation teacher, talks about Bodhi Meditation and its connection to nature.

    If you can, go outside and hug a tree. And if you’re not sure what kind of tree you’re hugging, download a smartphone app:

    Transcript

    welcome to glass half full with leslie krongold she shares her stories experiences and knowledge of living and coping with a chronic health condition learn about tools and resources and hear inspirational interviews that help you to live a life filled with quality and dignity with two decades of support group leadership leslie’s ready to help you make lemonade out of life’s lemons are you ready are you ready yesterday was earth day and tomorrow is armor day did you realize that arbor day is a holiday when people are encouraged to plant trees it started in 1872 with a man named j sterling morton in nebraska when he proposed the tree planting holidays and i guess it took off my love of trees has grown over the last few years i had my first forest bathing experience i virtually met verla fortier who wrote a book about the healing benefits of trees i started practicing bhagwa meditation which involves walking around a tree and the past six weeks the trees around my neighborhood represent the greater world outside of my home on our daily walks i’ve grown to really love a few specific trees and i’m motivated to learn more about different types of trees last month human furla in the podcast episode coping with coronavirus trees yoga and essential oils today you learn more about her journey to wellness brother brother lives in canada and spent her professional career as a nurse i asked her what led her to become a nurse probably started when my i was in high school my dad was diagnosed with ms and quite quickly moved from one cane to two canes to then a wheelchair and he was just such a lovely guy that i wanted to be around him and help him my mom taught me how to transfer him you know from the back uh you know things like that and uh you know i would get him up and then brace his knees against mine and push his knees back so he could stand up and then get him into the chair and then we’d laugh and i remember him just swallowing taking some time and then saying you know you did a great job there good for you and then giving me a big smile and that that was so nice and that happened so often whenever i helped him with anything and uh was such a positive sort of it was a natural for me to go into nursing and my mom was the same way so there was three of us girls the whole family we all we all did very well with with his ms and with and we were happy to have him um like a little hot shot i started out in the hospitals and the technical side of things in intensive care and all that and then quite soon became well i went over to india and found out that healthcare was more about you know public health and shelter and food and water so when i came i was much more interested in primary care so i don’t know how things are set up but in canada the government pays for the health care so all the money goes to hospitals and then they’re very well funded and then the rest of it goes to uh doctor’s offices so my interest was in getting more of that money and resources back into the community where we all are and sort of enriching that brother moved up the corporate ladder in her career and also taught at a university i asked her when her health took a downward turn to tell you the truth i was not really aware of how i was feeling uh for a very very very long time i i remember that we were this happy little family um you know this nuclear family mom dad and two little boys in large home in suburbia and then one day my ex-husband walked out the door and i had two little kids and i knew that i needed to keep them in their home and in their community so i walked over next door to the university and picked up a an additional full-time position there so i was i loved it i mean i loved i loved all the work and looking after the kids but i was just looking after everybody else’s needs for 10 or 15 years i think and if i had symptoms i just only just i didn’t do anything but work and look after the kids and sleep and it really wasn’t until they were university age that i just felt profoundly tired and i just thought you know i was 63 i thought i’m just aging and i found it difficult to walk but i always had but when i went to the gym that worked that you know that helped and um but i had i was i wasn’t able i was 63 so i really wasn’t able to do my work anymore at the university i just felt too tired and so i thought i think i’ll just go home to my to my town so i retired early and i thought oh i just can’t wait to get there you know i was thinking of all these uh things i would do swim in the lake and lie in the warm white sand and walk in the woods and you know i was really looking forward to it um yeah and then then that’s when i got my uh diagnosis i was diagnosed with uh systemic lupus and on the my blood work showed that i was on the you know the serious side of that and and when i saw my doctor i was just going in for a routine i had this rash on my face and uh but then she long time and she kept finding more rashes that i’d ignored and then she found big bald patches that i’d been covering up and ignoring too on the top of my head and then she asked me how was my joints and nerve pain and i guess yes i had that and and then she reached for my hands and she said we’ll do biopsy blood work but we’re looking at systemic lupus and um and she said and stay out of the sun because that could symptoms so at that moment i was just um i felt like all my dreams were of retirement were shattered right yeah so i but go home yeah i did go home and then i stayed inside was diagnosed with systemic lupus and on the my blood work showed that i was on the um you know the serious side of that and and when i saw my doctor i was just going in for a routine i had this rash on my face and but then she long time and she kept finding more rashes that i’d ignored and then she found big bald patches that i’d been covering up and ignoring too on the top of my head and then she asked me how was my joints and nerve pain and i guess yes i had that and and then she reached for my hands and she said we’ll do biopsy blood work but we’re looking at systemic lupus and um and she said and stay out of the sun because that could symptoms so at that moment i was just um i felt like all my dreams were of retirement were shattered right yeah so i but go home yeah i did go home and then i stayed inside having read verla’s book i knew there was a happy ending i asked her how she came around to taking a chance and not following the doctor’s orders what convinced her that the outdoors had something healing to offer her remember the day leslie i was just lying in bed scrolling through i joined every online lupus support group i could and i was i’m so used to leading them that i wasn’t even used to being so i didn’t even comment or anything i just scrolled and uh people were talking this one day about how we were all inside feeling like vampires and we had to avoid the sun because they do tell lupus patients that and uh then there was this one healthy looking person pretty healthy who had lupus and she said ongoing outside so far so good i put on my hat and sunscreen and and i thought what and by this time i really didn’t care anymore i thought i don’t even care if i get it you know if i damage my dna or whatever it is i’m going to go so i just was angry it was high noon i grabbed my hat and slapped on a bit of sunscreen and headed out i didn’t care and

    i was walking for about five minutes and i started to just feel this relief you know i tell the kids it was like a in the pac-man game where you die and you get a new life i was just like powered up powered up and i i mean it just didn’t even feel real and i thought what first of all i didn’t want to go in again and then when i finally got in i remembered i had a bunch of nursing research skills and what anything in the universities that’s peer-reviewed on on trees or whatever so that’s when i started doing that and i kept going out regularly and then i just devoured the research the first piece of research i came upon was gregory bratman at stanford university and they were defining their terms and they were saying we’re going to look at this particular kind of thinking and it’s this thing called negative rumination and it’s the kind of thinking that goes what if um what if i didn’t get this disease if only there weren’t an epidemic why is my body breaking down why is this pandemic happening why do i have to be inside those kinds of questions and a parent regular kind of thinking that’s just the brain going haywire and they were tracking this and they said they wanted to know what happened if you go outside so they got a group and they put them in built um settings along a city street with just you know traffic and cement and then they put another group outside in around grass trees and shrubs in an urban environment and they found the people that were in the grass trees and shrubs just looking out on the san francisco bay area that they they had they did not have that broken record thinking it did not go to that part of the brain that i call the heartbreak hotel part of the brain it just did not happen whereas the people that were outside in the city streets that broken record thinking which we all have to some extent right it what i liked as a nurse is that they measured that part of the the brain they measured the blood flow that went there and when that blood flow goes there that’s when the thinking is activated but it didn’t so that that i loved and then those same researchers took it further and they said if this is happening within their that when we go outside we pay attention differently we softly focus on all kinds of things our eyes wander and that gives us our brain a break and when it’s getting a break it’s it’s resting and that’s what we need so that we don’t get that cognitive decline if we’ve got that that those thoughts circling around in our heads all the time the brain gets no rest and that leads to loss of shortened long-term memory loss of ability to concentrate loss of ability to problem solve and i think we all know this like when we’re worried about stuff we forget you know we we’re not paying attention we and just by going outside this don’t have to meditate or anything this just happens and so what they showed in the restoration theory it’s a real thing and when we go outside our brain rests revives and it improves our short and long term memory our ability to concentrate problem solve and learn new things and so that to me was huge because i was worried about dementia my mom had it um and it’s that kind of thinking where you look back and you feel embarrassed and this was a gift a gift i encourage you to read brother’s book which you’ll find the link to on the glass half full webpage she did a lot more research about the healing benefits of trees and green space earlier this year i signed up for a class offered at our local parks and recreation center called bodhi meditation i’ve never heard of this type of meditation but it sounded intriguing the practice essentially includes a circular walking around a pine tree alternating hand gestures and then there’s a seated guided meditation it was both energizing and relaxing unfortunately the class stopped meeting in early march due to the coronavirus i contacted the instructor catherine chen to ask her a few questions the version of this meditation that catherine teaches is named bodhi meditation because the leader of the organization is called grand master jin modi yet the practice is called energy Bagua

    actually Bagua is they all starting from Tao dal permited energy Bagua so and then chibagua and the regular bagua the same however and there’s some development they am differently for example energy Bagua has been benefit a lot of people to improve their health physical health and mental health in many ways around the world but a lot of a lot of different practices is aiming different because some people learning other practice they have a different goal for us our mission is to impart this body meditation technique and to help others to eventually improve their health and improve their happiness and so what is the role of trees in the practice of uh you know an energy bang or practice

    when we practice energy Bagua it’s actually is the philosophy of Tao with the young you know is the energy that of energy in our life and it’s also not the energy itself only it’s also the compassion the compassion towards yourself compassion towards others so when you practice energy Bagua is that you are actually a practice that with the nature you are kind of connect with the future and then you uh through the practice that kind of create a peaceful and very calm mind and that would benefit yourself physically at the same time and so when we did it in class because the weather wasn’t good you would always bring a potted tree what was your intention have you ever done it without a tree indoors or do you always you know bring some sort of potted tree inside we can see if two different two different aspects for example whenever we whenever we go to the nature when ever we go outdoor we see screen we see is the tree we see the flower the ocean the mountain that make people feel energetic feel good and and that kind of atmosphere and also the element of the future the nature is help us so when we doing energy Bagua we are feeling that we are join the nature and we also have the sense of connection with the nature and we do have the uh the people in occasion for example they travel to other country they of course couldn’t have a good tree that they choose to practice so a lot of them might be able to just do a few gestures in the hotel room but in the way they practice with the guided meditation and then guided the the way like when when i was practicing with you guys yeah that possible occasion that people don’t have a tree but they can still practice it’s first of all is the the matter of the mind and the nature and how you practice because meditation energy Bagua is seen as walking meditation is a state of meditation so when you’re practicing it if you don’t have a tree uh you have another way to practice but have a tree is preferable i would put that way well it was it was definitely a nice addition to learn more about bodhi meditation there is a link to a youtube video on the glassful website and i’ve also listed a few smartphone apps related to trees many of which Verla mentions in her book although many of us are still staying home and taking all necessary health precautions we still may have the opportunity to walk in green space around our neighborhoods of course this may not be possible for everyone if you live in an apartment building maybe you want to avoid elevators and being around people but there are studies that just looking outside your window at nature or even a photograph of nature can have a dramatic impact on your physical and mental well-being i invite you to be more intentional to make the time for this thank you for listening to glass half full leslie invites you to leave a rating and review on itunes this helps spread the word to others dealing with chronic health issues for show notes updates and more visit the website glass half full dot online glass half full dot online

    you

  • Coping with a Coronavirus: Trees, Yoga, and Essential Oils

    Coping with a Coronavirus: Trees, Yoga, and Essential Oils

    A retired nurse, physical and yoga therapist, and mental health professional offer strategies for coping with uncertainty, anxiety, and all those other emotions caught up in this season of the pandemic.

    Verla Fortier, author of Take Back Your Outside Mindset: Live Longer, Prevent Dementia, and Control Your Chronic Illness, speaks about her experience diagnosed with systemic lupus and the discovery of the healing power of trees.

    Tianna Meriage-Reiter, DPT, C-IAYT, and owner of the Mind-Body Movement Center talks about her new live streaming yoga classes available at her YouTube channel.

    Lee Greenstein-Wein, MSW, shares how specific essential oils can help with situational anxiety or depression. An earlier podcast episode features other healing benefits of essential oils.

  • Diabetes? Two personal stories about movement and plant-based diet

    Diabetes? Two personal stories about movement and plant-based diet

    Dianna Rowley, diagnosed with diabetes type 1, was a professional dancer. Although she had health issues in her childhood she wasn’t diagnosed until her early 20s when she experienced a major health crisis. Her journey to wellness and life balance includes a lot of exercise and movement with setbacks and successes along the way. Today she is a Health & Fitness Coach inspiring others with disabilities and chronic health conditions.

    • Dianna Rowley
      Dianna teaches Brain Fitness class.
    • Heather Brock
      Heather and Dr. Michael Greger

    Heather Brock was diagnosed with diabetes type 2 nearly three years ago. An endocrinologist put her on medication which caused an adverse reaction. Determined to find a better way to manage the condition, Heather began reading books about reversing diabetes. Inspired by physicians like Dean Ornish, Michael Greger, and Joel Fuhrman, Heather adopted a plant-based diet and reversed the disease. She highly recommends Mastering Diabetes and Chef AJ.

  • Pilates: Core Strength, Alignment, Pain Relief, and Neural Reconnection

    Pilates: Core Strength, Alignment, Pain Relief, and Neural Reconnection

    Practicing Pilates can be done on a mat or with any number of devices such as the Reformer. Shannon Knorr, a yoga and Pilates instructor, talks about therapeutic Pilates to help with body alignment, pain relief, and more. Julia Carver, a Pilates and Movement Therapist, works with veterans who have experienced PTSD and other trauma to help them with neural reconnection.

    For people with muscle weakening conditions, like muscular dystrophy, Pilates can help strengthen core muscles.

  • I Am Not A Pretzel: Accessible Yoga

    I Am Not A Pretzel: Accessible Yoga

    Any style of yoga can be made accessible and provide healing for someone with a physical challenge, someone experiencing anxiety and/or depression, or someone with a larger body.

    Three yoga teachers – skilled in making yoga more accessible – share their stories. Rose Kress, of LifeForce Yoga, experienced relief from years of anxiety and chronic pain when she began a yoga practice. Her teachings focus on mood management incorporating both yoga nidra and the use of mudras, or hand gestures.

    Erica Chaney, of Big Bliss Yoga, began her yoga journey in a restorative class where she felt like she learned to breathe more deeply. Today Erica’s teaching focuses on making yoga more accessible to people with larger bodies.

    Clarissa Hidalgo was first introduced to yoga by a fellow patient at a Multiple Sclerosis clinic at UCSF. Now Clarissa primarily works with private clients with a range of health conditions, i.e. fibromyalgia, degenerative disc disease, arthritis, cerebral palsy, as well as MS.

    To learn more about accessible yoga, check out this earlier podcast episode and the organization’s website.

  • Life After Cancer: It’s a Time of Reflection (3 of 3)

    In this third of a series podcast episode, Valerie Sans shares how her cancer experience had a dramatic impact on her life. After surgery and chemo treatment, she left a career of teaching to co-found a travel company, French Escapade, and explored alternative healing modalities including the Budwig Diet, homeopathy, immunotherapy, Beljanski Protocol, acupuncture, Papimi, and a more plant-based diet.

    For those of you unfamiliar with sophrology — which includes me — here’s an introduction. Valerie talks about meeting with a sophrologist as routine in the French healthcare system.

  • Life After Cancer: Reduce Toxins (1 of 3)

    Life After Cancer: Reduce Toxins (1 of 3)

    How does a diagnosis of cancer and treatment change a person? In this 3-part series you’ll hear different stories on how a woman – diagnosed with cancer (breast, thyroid, and ovarian) – experienced the changes.

    In part 1 Shannon Lee Knorr, a Pilates and yoga instructor, shares how her own yoga practice and teaching style changed.

  • My Beautiful Heart ????

    My Beautiful Heart ????

    An echocardiogram technician told me I have a beautiful heart and that got me going. What makes for good heart health? What role do genetics, lifestyle, and environment play?

    Dr. Erica Pitsch talks about the Framingham Heart Study, John talks about congestive heart failure and Mended Hearts, and Saurabh shares how yoga and meditation help his stress level and coping with myotonic muscular dystrophy. For additional tips on heart health, check out the Harvard Heart Letter.

    Earlier podcast episodes you may find of interest:

    Transcript

    Welcome to Glass Half Full with Leslie Krongold she shares her stories experiences and knowledge of living and coping with a chronic health condition learn about tools and resources and hear inspirational interviews that help you to live a life filled with quality and dignity with two decades of support group leadership Leslie’s ready to help you make lemonade out of life’s lemons are you ready are you ready every year there are a few diagnostic tests i need because of my myotonic dystrophy some of these tests are to monitor my heart because many of us with myotonic dystrophy have electrical conduction issues and eventually require a pacemaker a couple of weeks ago i was at my local Kaiser Permanente hospital getting an echocardiogram if you’re unfamiliar with this test it’s not painful it’s just a bit awkward you lay or lie half naked on your side the technician rubs something like Vaseline on your upper body and presses deeply with a probe while looking at a screen displaying your beating heart my session lasted for about 30 minutes

    Mary Lou, my echo echocardiogram technician, commented that i had a beautiful heart this was a surprise i didn’t interpret it as a flirtation but a great conversation starter i asked her what other hearts look like what made mine so beautiful she told me about dirty looking hearts from years of smoking she sees a lot of hearts and assured me that there are many differences i envisioned her writing poetry based on the beating heart she looks at for hours and hours each week later that day as i swelled with the news about my beautiful heart i realized valentine’s day was approaching and that’s how this episode came about i suspect the health of our hearts is due to many factors some genetics some lifestyle choices and some environmental factors we have little control over according to the American Heart Association ideal cardiovascular health is a combination of four healthy behaviors and three health measurements the behaviors are not smoking maintaining a healthy weight exercising regularly and eating a healthy diet the measurements include total cholesterol under 200 milligrams per deciliter blood pressure under 120 over 80. and fasting blood sugar under 100

    Not adhering to those guidelines can result in all sorts of problems including heart failure stroke diabetes and the list goes on in fact in a recent issue of the university of California Berkeley wellness letter there’s an article about the relationship between heart health and brain health many studies have found that cardiovascular risk factors in middle age are associated with the likelihood of developing dementia later in life back to the behaviors i don’t have anything to say about smoking or healthy weight but diet and exercise are something I can speak to

    You can probably find many dietary plans focused on heart health on the internet in producing some of the newsletters i read i found something about nuts this is based on a Swedish study that found people who snack on nuts three or more times each week had a lower risk of atrial fibrillation so add nuts to your diet in an Australian study with nearly 1 000 older women those that ate three or more servings of vegetables each day fared better than those who ate two or fewer servings each day the study also found cruciferous vegetables that would be like broccoli cauliflower those were the most beneficial one of my favorite newsletters is Dr. Andrew Weil self-healing a few years ago in an article titled rethinking dietary fats and heart health he gave a thumbs up to butter and a thumbs down to red meat and processed meats in terms of their impact on cardiovascular health in the tufts university health and nutrition letter i made a minute study with middle-aged men those who ate higher amounts of protein were at a higher risk of heart failure than those who ate less protein and i think we’re really talking about animal protein so maybe just maybe my heart is beautiful because i gave up meat over 30 years ago

    Enough about diet let’s turn to physical activity physical therapy professor Erica Pitsch at the UCSF school of medicine had this to say during a recent interview i’ve seen a lot of people that you know it was multiple diagnoses that have a good exercise ethic and they tend to fare better and there was actually a study number of years ago called the Framingham heart study which followed people for decades and people who exercise have less probability of dying of anything and was it in general thousands of people in the city yeah oh no in the us okay yeah great this is yeah it’s called the Framingham oh now i gotta google it now Framingham heart study but yeah no it’s it’s the exercise improves overall survival in general you can find the link to the Framingham study on the glass cellphone website as well as links to two previous podcast episodes with professor Pitsch one is about stroke survival and the other episode is all about balance and falling i admit it’s difficult to glean the best dietary advice from research since one month there’s a study that finds eating eggs to be nutritious and the next month there’s another study advising against eating eggs but with physical exercise it seems fairly conclusive that movement is key whether it’s walking working out at a gym or just remaining active in your home doing chores in 2017 there was the PURE study and PURE is an acronym for prospective urban rural epidemiology study it was written about by the American college of cardiology and the article library found that just 150 minutes of physical activity each week reduces cardiovascular disease and deaths so i mean ultimately you’re still going to die but during the study’s time there was an eminence of prolonged life when compared with a group of people not exercising for at least 150 minutes per week okay so that’s 22 minutes of exercise each day i can do that are you up for that challenge let that be your valentine’s day gift to yourself and your loved ones

    As i mentioned we don’t have complete control over all the factors that may result in heart complications my beautiful heart may have benefited from my father’s genetics because i know my mom’s genetics passed on the myotonic dystrophy gene

    For this episode i wanted to include a few people i know with heart conditions the first is John, a retired attorney in Oakland, who was diagnosed with congestive heart failure in 2017. I met John on a patient advisory council and Kaiser Permanente for the previous really year i had been declining in terms of my ability to breathe and my ability to walk in distance at all i used to be a backpacker and I could walk you know five or six miles a day with 50 pounds on my back at altitude and that was that was great it was one of my favorite things to do and gradually i began having less and less ability to walk until it got to the point where i really couldn’t walk more than maybe 100 yards or something without having to stop for breath so any one night i was in bed laying on my back and i felt that i didn’t i couldn’t breathe i mean i had to breathe but i didn’t have enough air so my wife suggested i go in which i should have done a long time ago but it just never occurred to me that i had a heart thing because I’ve always been healthy and right away they figured it out that i had what’s called congestive heart failure which means that the heart is not pumping efficiently so what that meant and why i felt an air hunger was that i had a lot of fluid in my lungs the heart wasn’t pushing the fluid throughout the body and my lungs were filled with fluid and that’s why i couldn’t get enough air to feel like i could properly breathe a lot of heart people with congestive heart failure they have to sleep at a recline or even sitting up for that reason so it’s a life-threatening thing it’s it’s it’s not uncommon and uh and they have a whole great big protocol at Kaiser to to deal with it and they have done that and I’ve been treated quite well and they put in a device which regulates my ventricles the lower chambers of the heart to get them to be synchronous which is one of my problems was they were beating a different time and then if I’m at a higher risk to go down with a with a heart attack so it has a defibrillator built into the device that i carry around in my chest with wires that go down into the heart to pick up the electrical information from the heart and put it into the computer and you know and it does its job and one of our advisory council meetings where we both volunteer at Kaiser John mentioned a group he attends mended hearts so i asked him about it you can go on their website it’s a national organization and it was started in Oakland by a cardiologist at Sutter hospital and i haven’t learned all the things that they do but the things that i have learned are they have a meeting once a month they bring in a speaker of some sort or some sort of a presentation sometimes it has to do with hearts and sometimes it has to do with something else like the last one was about you know life enhancement one of these life coach people and so she put on her talk that’s one piece of it the other piece obviously is that it’s a sort of an affinity group where people who have some kind of a heart issue go to meet other people who have some kind of a heart issue so that was actually the reason that i was interested in it was some peer contacts with people the third thing that they do is is they have a visitation program so you’re trained as a visitor you have to learn different things that they want you to know about like you know HIPPA rules and the things that you do and don’t say to a patient and you don’t comment on their treatment or whether that’s good or bad various things like that and so what happens is you sign up and you go like four hours a week and you just show up the nurses on the floor have already asked different people well there’s somebody from men at hearts coming would you like to talk to him or her and they say yes or no so once that’s happened then you show up and the nurse says the lady in room 13 wants to talk to you and that’s what you do is you go in there and just talk so it’s obviously a support kind of a thing but the idea behind it is that if you’re a person who has some heart condition and you’re in the hospital you’re an inpatient it’s really helpful to have somebody who’s also had some kind of a heart condition come and talk to you up here not one of the medical people i think that’s the biggest thing is the visitation

    i asked john how this experience has changed his life and what he now does to remain healthy they did a bunch of expensive things for me they did a catheterization where they run a camera on the end of a wire up into your heart and somehow manipulated around the different arteries to see whether there’s any kind of a blockage there was none i didn’t have any disease in my arteries so that was good because it wasn’t like okay well if you start eating this strictly vegan diet and leave out all of these different things which i really really didn’t want to do then you can you know maybe turn this around and i didn’t i wasn’t in that category they have a heart health nurse at Kaiser and she goes over all of the things that you should be doing and gives you a pretty extensive booklet about it you know like no salt and avoid this and that alcohol is one of the big ones no smoking that sort of thing so i now take about six seven pills every day that are for my heart to help it get work better not get better but work better and then when they put that device in my chest they told me that you know in around six months you’re going to start feeling a lot better and that is true i now I’m able to go to yoga twice a week for an hour and a half and today’s my yoga day and then I’ve started recently a personal training program at the y in an ideal case i’ll be able to go to the y three days a week and then i can use the swimming pool there and swim so i can have a lot of activity and i do have a lot of activity that’s what I’m doing right now and you know i just feel better i have more spring in my step people look at me and say there’s more color in my face my wife says well you’re standing up straighter and you don’t have a furrowed brow all the time and so yeah you look a lot better you know and that’s true i feel a whole lot better i don’t feel normal in terms of you know how i felt 10 years ago or but you know i do feel but for the fact that i that i tire easily i would feel pretty normal i don’t have any other issues during the day well thanks to modern medicine huh you bet yeah you bet and modern medicine has really come a long way i remember when i was growing up in the 70s hearing about so many men who died from heart attacks my own father had a heart attack close to 20 years ago he’s still thriving with the help of stents and drugs i also had uncles on my mother’s side of the family who died from sudden heart failure which was the common way people with myotonic dystrophy died which brings me back to the echocardiogram in kg and halter monitor i wear every year to see how my heart is doing in an earlier podcast episode all about adventure Rob who has myotonic dystrophy and his share of heart issues celebrated his recovery from cardiac surgery by climbing mount Everest now his story admit is a bit extreme but there are others in my patient community that are also thriving in spite of cardiac issues Saurabh who lives in San Francisco and works in the financial industry has a pacemaker he practices yoga and meditation to mitigate stress which exacerbates his heart condition and he also sees an ayurvedic practitioner as well as western doctors his treatment also includes an ayurvedic supplement called arjuna which is from the bark of the arjuna tree by the way ironically storm only lives a few miles from me but the phone connection had interference I’m trying to reduce some of the noise yeah so i was diagnosed with myotonic dystrophy in 2009 they pretty much had told me when i got diagnosed the most people who get this diagnosis tend to have heart issues and on the subsequent followers of cardiologists i had electrical conduction problems and they said they would need to follow up with me uh every six months yeah i was diagnosed with a problem called injured flutter initially which is irregular heartbeat and so i had to go and get a surgery done which corrected that but that led to a another form of irregular heart rate heat which is very common with people 60 years and older when i was 30 in that age as for literal population with atrial fibrillation i had to go on meditation because people with natural population tend to be at the highest stroke and i would follow up every six months around the heartbeat at some point time i started getting shot disease and my cardiologist suggested getting a photo monitor done for about two weeks and those two weeks the device that they put on me if i had a disease file which is supposed to press the button and when the results came out and i pressed the button when i was getting those dizzy spells they figured out that my heart was missing at that point time and because of the missing piece they decided to go in for the basement i don’t do a lot specifically for my heart health but i do things which try and be the healthier life overall this would also help my heart i exercise i do yoga and i also try and get some cardio exercises and uh you know i think the problem is the conduction problem so i definitely take that into account and not take my heart rate up too high when i exercise that you know i also meditate to keep stress away because i realize my regular beats were definitely [ __ ] up a lot around stressful situations so i meditate and that helps me manage my stress i did speak to an ayurvedic practitioner she suggested a medicine called arjuna which is supposed to protect your heart health in general use it as a substitute for anything in normal school um it’s easier to have it as a capsule there’s so much more to explore about the heart for example i wanted to include the role love and intimacy may play with heart health but i just didn’t have the time but i invite you to listen to an earlier podcast episode for valentine’s day with Dr. Danielle the link is on the Glass Half Full website and Dr. Sheypuk who holds the title of sexpert for the disabled community introduces the topic of dateable self-esteem the episode is called sassy in a wheelchair and now my valentine’s day gift to you

    thank you for listening to glass half full Leslie invites you to leave a rating and review on iTunes this helps spread the word to others dealing with chronic health issues for show notes updates and more visit the website glass half full dot online