A seated Tai Chi practice can have both physical and emotional health benefits.
Interview with Ralph Somack, PhD — Tai Chi Instructor
Tai Chi instructor, Ralph Somack, has taught tai chi to seniors, people with dementia, stroke survivors, people using wheelchairs and this week begins to teach a seated tai class to people who are blind or visually impaired. Somack, an octogenarian, continues to take on new challenges of modifying tai practices such as qigong, bagua, and Xing Yi for those who want to alleviate stress. In addition, Somack has seen his students benefit from increased self-esteem, ambidexterity, an Increased awareness of themselves as well as others, and a sense of where they are in time and space. To register for Somack’s online classes sponsored by BORP, visit this webpage for the Tuesday 10 am Pacific Seated Tai Chi class or here for the new Tai Chi class for Blind and Visually Impaired Participants on Wednesdaya at 10:30 am Pacific. You can watch videos of Somack’s classes. Here is an earlier Glass Half Full podcast episode about qigong and a short video about qigong.
A contemplative practice includes meditation, prayer, mindfulness, yoga, tai chi or qigong, journaling or anything that helps ground you. Some people use affirmations while others use music to help them ease into a more tranquil state.
Shameka Andrews (pictured above) shares her meditation experience with individuals and organizations and even at a local farmer’s market in upstate New York. Positive affirmations and mirror work have helped Shameka move through feelings of depression and isolation associated with having a physical disability,
Gareth Walker talks about finding mindfulness meditation and how it’s helped him cope with Multiple Sclerosis.
Mary Holt, RN, went through a mindfulness meditation training that changed how she works with patients and families dealing with neurological conditions like muscular dystrophy and Parkinson’s disease.
Melissa Felsenstein used sound meditation to help her move through depression and anxiety. Here’s a sample of Melissa’s work.
Molly Lannon Kenny, a yoga therapist and graduate of a program in Christian mysticism, discusses similarities between prayer and meditation.
Author Toni Bernhard offers her Buddhist perspective on meditation and how it has helped her deal with a chronic illness.
Believe it or not, this episode has nothing to do with the recent U.S. election. We’re celebrating the 100th podcast episode of the Glass Half Full. But feel free to celebrate our right to vote in a democracy. All good!
Short video from the Glass Half Full YouTube Channel
If you’re a recent Glass Half Full listener, you can now peruse the archives of evergreen content that fall into these categories:
Advocacy
Alternative Healing Modalities
Autoimmune Disorders
Cancer
Cardiovascular Disease
Caregiving
Coping
Disability Rights and Accessibility
General Health
Laughter
Mental Health
Movement
Music and the Arts
Nature
Neurological Conditions
Nutrition
Relaxation
Research
Social Support
Spirituality
Technology
If you’re running out of ideas on how to cope with COVID, check out this list of 50 different ways to spend your time in a safe and sane manner. If you’re in need of online accessible exercise and relaxation opportunities, check out this page.
To learn more about Judith Nangekhe Nk, the health service worker and caregiver in Kenya, here’s a video.
Please visit the Glass Half Full store. You can buy t-shirts, mugs, stickers, and even face masks with the Glass Half Full logo.
Transcript:
Hello and welcome to the one hundredth podcast episode of The Glass Half, I’m Leslie and I can’t believe I’ve been doing this for over four and a half years. Some people might reach their one hundredth episode during the first year. I guess if you put out two episodes a week, you’d get there, you know, a little more than a year. People do, I know, five days a week. What does that mean? I don’t want to do the math, but.
You know, you get to your 100th episode when you get there and and I’m here and I’m.
You know, four and a half years ago, my intention was to take what I’ve learned over, I guess at that time it was about 19 years of being a facilitator of support groups for adults with neuromuscular disease to sort of take that experience, the knowledge, my my desire to share resources and knowledge, share my journey as a, quote, unquote, patient with others. All of that was the catalyst for.
This enterprise called Glass Half Full on the name, the term, everybody’s familiar with the term, but it hasn’t been something I thought about a lot. But probably within a few days of deciding to do a podcast, I thought of the name. I thought, well, I really do think that’s my attitude maybe when I was younger was as positive. But certainly over the years, at some point, maybe in my 30s, things shifted and I started to see life. You know, as certainly more positive looking toward, you know, how to make the best of something, the proverbial lemonade out of lemons, and that was when I was diagnosed was in my mid 30s, so. Anyhow, I I would hope that kind of perspective resonates for you, that’s why you’re tuning in now for the first time or for the hundredth time, how many of you out there have listened to all 100 episodes?
I don’t know. I don’t know how many there are if if you’ve done it.
I would love to know and your reaction is one of the. It’s one of the things that definitely can increase is communication from people who listen to the show. And, you know, I in fact, I was thinking of some of the highlights of the last four and a half years, it has been really I mean, you know, imagine you’re creating something every couple weeks, putting it out there in the world and, you know, you know several listeners. I mean, at least I do from my patient community, some friends, but. It’s been really wonderful when people contact me, you know, total strangers and they tell me they listen to the show or they’ll talk about something they learned from a previous episode, you have no idea how significant that can be to me or to someone who’s putting stuff out there and not really making money from it and doing it because they have a passion. So I invite you to to let me know. And there are many ways to contact me. I’m not cloistered in the middle of the woods. I’m fairly accessible. So I thought of three big things and, you know, impacted me over the, you know, nearly five years I’ve been doing this. Well, one was certainly hearing from people who listen to the podcast, whether it’s email or Facebook comment on the Glass Half Full webpage. But I have been to places where I met someone.
And when they hear my name, they or they hear about Glass Half Full, they, you know, tell me they listen to it and they’ll hopefully, I don’t think is sure that they didn’t like this show. But that has been really great. Another great thing has been, you know, over the years heard about different patient organizations, patient leadership groups, advocacy groups. And I met a lot of people through Those are the people living with a chronic health condition or disability who are doing their own thing, whether it’s a podcast, a blog, they’re fierce advocates and going to Washington, you know, or their state capitals. There’s just a lot of very amazing people, inspiring people interviewed several of them, too. But just about a year ago, I won trip from this group called Wego Health, and it was a free trip to Las Vegas where I was with, I guess, about 20 other patient leaders. And it was a conference that I can’t remember seeing HLTH. Ostensibly, it has some kind of meaning as an acronym, I think. But it was it was a huge conference of, you know, movers and shakers in the health, medical, technology arena. And I never would have gone to this without winning a free trip because I think it was a twenty five hundred dollars. So that that was really cool.
Never would have happened without this podcast. And another thing I don’t think I’ve ever talked about. And this is just, you know, representative of meeting people you would never meet, I had taken over a meetup group for people with chronic health conditions. This is when, you know, pre-COVID, people met in person. And I it was I think it was meant as a support group. In any case, I took it over because I wanted to reach people with other conditions, you know, outside of neuromuscular disease. And I like doing field trips to in the San Francisco Bay Area. There are just so many amazing organizations and resources. So I was doing like field trips and it was online. But the you know, ostensibly you’re you’re connecting with people who live in your region so that when you actually do meet up in person, you know, it makes sense because you live near each other. Well, it turned out there was a woman who was part of this meetup group from Nairobi, Kenya, in Africa. And her name’s Judy. And I guess we chatted a little through meetup and she told me she was in Africa. And I knew well, she’s probably not going to make it to any of our in-person meetings. And somehow I can’t even remember how one thing led to another. But I felt that she was a health services worker.
She worked with people affected by HIV and AIDS. And I’m still I don’t know if she’s a nurse, but it sounds like she does a lot of nursing and administering of materials and education, so. We tried to talk, but at that time, maybe two years ago, her cell connection was really unreliable. But I worked on a video. It’s on YouTube, I think it’s called Judy: Caregiver. I did a video for her and she really appreciated it. And just recently, she asked if I can do another one. And she was able to provide audio files so it’s in her voice. And so that it just it just dropped last week. It’s on the Glass Half Full YouTube channel and. I think it’s Judy and her last name, which I can’t pronounce, but you’ll see it there just came a week ago. Anyhow, she’s using it to raise money through different churches in the West. I assume U.S. Canada, maybe Europe to English speaking countries raising money for the work that she’s doing in Nairobi, in and out, in and around Nairobi. So those are just some examples of things that never would have happened had they not started Glass Half Full. By the way, this is not scripted. If you if you didn’t know mostly I write a script because right now we’re at 18 minutes. And if I you know, if I’d written a script, I’d probably be at 12 minutes.
Oh, maybe 10. So just thought I’d do something novel. There’s a video, a short video that’s in five minutes showing. All these different images from, you know, almost all of the 99 podcasts and it’s on the website, it’s on the YouTube channel and I have a few actual video clips in it. One is part of an interview with Susan Jermey. There was an interview I recently did. She’s a comic and playwright. Another is a clip with Mike Muir, who is the great grandson of John Muir, and it’s at his ranch. If you listen to that podcast episode about three years ago, Mike, has he was diagnosed with M.S. years ago. I think he might have been a teenager he was definitely younger. And he he has this accessible ranch, horse, ranch, and he does carriage rides. And so he uses a wheelchair and the ranch is open, you know, for adventures, for all different kinds of people, kids and adults who use wheelchairs. And it’s, you know, accessible experience. So I have a clip from that. And then I have a clip from Melissa Felsenstein, who is a sound therapist, sound meditation practitioner. She uses gongs and crystal bowls and all kinds of different instruments. And the podcast episode with her, I think was about two years ago.
Andhow, she’s she’s still doing her thing and doing it via Zoom now. So I invite you to check out that video.
And in the course of putting that together, the video, I went through the whole archive of ninety nine podcast episodes. And by the way, most of these episodes are what you call Evergreen. They are. You know, they they’re relevant now, as relevant as they were when they were published, you know, three, four years ago, some of them are tied to events that have happened in the past. But it’s always been my intention to put together, to produce an episode that has lasting value, you know, so unless There was something, you know, we talked about and it’s now been proven to be not good for you, I can’t think of anything. I think, you know what, I do focus on alternative healing modalities, but nothing that is so far-fetched that, you know, in two years, somehow it’s been found to be not good. So anyway, the point is, if you haven’t heard a lot of the episodes, go back, check them out. And now there’s a feature on the home page where you can search by category. So, you know. I didn’t know how many different categories I would have, but I went through and I identified 21 categories. OK, so I’m going to tell you the 21 categories now. So if a couple of these pique your interest and you haven’t heard episodes relevant to this theme or category, go to the home page GlassHalfFull.online I found that online and check them out. OK. Drum roll please.
Advocacy, alternative healing modalities, autoimmune disorders, cancer, cardiovascular disease. Caregiving. Coping. Disability rights and accessibility. General Health. Laughter. Mental health. Movement, Music and the arts. Nature, Neurological conditions. Nutrition, relaxation. Research, Social support. Spirituality. Technology.
There you have it, 21 different categories, now some podcast episodes, you know, cover two or three of the categories. So they would come up, you know, in a few different searches. But it’s a drop-down menu. Hopefully it’ll make it easier for people to look at the
Archives, the library of episodes. Another thing that you find that’s new on the Web site is a link to a storefront, So over the past four and a half years, I’ve given away some Glass Half Full schwag, mostly mugs. I have had some T-shirts, a couple hats. But now you can buy whatever you want. You can buy a face mask with the Glass Half Full logo on it. And this is all through a company. I won’t name them. If you go to the website, check it out. But this is one way for me to capture a little revenue and for you to help promote the podcast and the concept. Of Glass Half Full and positive psychology, positive vibes. I really appreciate if you want to get any of your holiday gifts. I mean, imagine if you got each of your family members a mask. You’d be helping them with their health and you’d be helping me and hopefully helping other people who see the mask and think Glass Half Full, I want a piece of that. So. Spread the goodwill. Well, I don’t want to make this whole episode about promoting Glass Half Full, but what can I say? It’s a hundred. It’s you know, it’s that point where you want to celebrate and also continue to grow. So, you know, I’ve seen an uptick in downloads over the past few months.
I’ve been working on some SEO, which is search engine optimization, which is not fun. But seeing results does motivate me to do more of that. And really, if you if you’re not familiar with the term, it’s just tweaking things, you know, on the website with text and keywords that will help for searches when people go to the Internet and want to search for, you know, under a health condition or just a concept, maybe it’s, you know, November and they’re, you know, thinking about gratitude and they want to learn more about gratitude so they can practice gratitude. Well, will Glass Half Full come up in that search and gratitude? I don’t know. I’m working on it. I hope so, although gratitude is one of the themes I think I have gratitude covered under spirituality, which, you know, this is all in my head, too. And it’s not like rocket science. I could have gratitude as one of the categories, but I try to be a little more open ended with the with the categories, I didn’t want to have like 100 categories. So there is also a link on the homepage for accessible exercise. And I would say that accessible exercise as a resource is also a part of this other page I put together just a couple months ago at. I spent time on this 50 ways to cope with covid, so I haven’t been promoting that; it was a special feature for some groups, but now I’ve opened up, unveiled that it’s open to the world.
If you feel like you’re running out of creative ways to save your sanity during lockdown or, you know, the cases now are surging or the COVID cases are surging. And during these winter months, it’s going to be even more important to refrain from. You know, being in other buildings, being around a lot of people, we’re just taking our time, we want to protect ourselves. I have only been in one other building and it’s nine months other my house. And that was to, you know, Kaiser Permanente, the health facility I go to for some minor stuff just one time. So anyhow, what am I saying? That’s why I used the script. So 50 ways to cope during covid. I invite you to take a look at that article and accessible exercises, part of it, but so are a lot of other things. I am also doing covid had two speaking engagements, of course, via Zoom Virtual, but I wanted to share them with you. They’re listed on in the podcast notes for the 100th episode. So one is a presentation I did on nutrition and maintaining immunity during covid and that was for a Muscular Dystrophy Canada organization.
But it’s, you know, a YouTube video so anybody can watch it. And the other one, I’m very delighted to say, is that I was the keynote speaker at the Utah Program for Inherited Neuromuscular Disorders Family Conference, and that was just about, I think, three weeks ago. And then also on YouTube and I spoke about making social connections and talked a little about my background and what led me to become now a master of social connections. But certainly I’m as I would say, Malcolm Gladwell would say, I’m kind of a connector. At the end of that, toward the end of that presentation, it’s really focused on Zoom related connections and communities that I’ve become a part of. You know, during COVID that I wasn’t pre COVID, so I have talked for 24 minutes pretty much non-stop, can’t believe I did it and I only, I think, sipped water twice. I don’t know, maybe I should dispense with scripts altogether? Let me know what you think. How does this compare to my scripted ones? So thank you for being a part of this Glass Half Full ride. I hope you continue listening. I’m working on some very interesting episodes that several of them will happen before the end of the year and some won’t reach completion until early next year.
But, you know, keep tuning in and take care of yourself and celebrate!
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.
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.
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
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.
In 2018, a research study found that at least 36% of Americans were sleeping less than seven hours each night. Inadequate sleep can lead to a number of physical and/or emotional conditions. Some common sleep disorders include insomnia, restless leg syndrome, central or obstructive sleep apnea, and sleepwalking.
Have you perfected your sleep hygiene behaviors to achieve optimal rest and sleep each night? If not, perhaps you’ll want to hear what sleep specialist, Dr. Catherine Darley, has to say.
In addition to Dr. Darley’s advice, as well as the sleep hygiene tips I offer at the end of this podcast episode, check out this blog post on Brain & Life‘s website.
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 hello and happy new year to you happy new decade i was going to close out 2019 with this episode on sleep hoping you could use some of the tips during the frenzied holidays but i got to frenzied so now you can add this to your new year resolutions heck i’m always looking for new advice or research to help my sleep and rest routines i’ve been scrutinizing my sleep for a while now i’ve made changes to my daily rituals all with the intention of improving my night’s sleep i know sleep issues are common amongst my patient community amongst my friends pretty much across the western world there are many books about improving your sleep i’ve read many of them in the glass half full facebook group i did an informal poll asking people about their sleep there were four options do you have trouble falling asleep staying asleep waking up or is your sleep perfect the way it is well no one responded to the last option the majority of the respondents had trouble staying asleep and that’s usually my problem though here and there i have nights where i just can’t fall asleep at the end of this episode i’ll share some of my sleep hygiene tips with you everyone’s different so i don’t know if they’ll help you but i think i found a great guest for this episode her name is catherine darley dr darley is a naturopathic doctor and these types of doctors are guided by principles that include the healing power of nature they first try treatments that are of a lower force and have fewer side effects like behavioral or dietary treatments this happens before prescribing any pharmaceuticals and that philosophy certainly appeals to me i met dr darley at a day-long class she taught about sleep and mental health it was geared toward therapists counselors and nurses i was incognito she travels around the country teaching people about sleep research you can check out her website the link is in the podcast notes on the glass full website what is a sleep specialist so a sleep specialist is a physician who has not only the training of primary care but has also gotten specialized training in sweden as a student and there is actually an academy of sleep medicine which is part of the american academy of medicine and is it is it like a subset of neurology or is it just completely its own special it’s entirely recognized in its own right sleep medicine is actually a relatively new discipline of medicine compared to some others like cardiology or respiratory medicine the sleep annual sleep meeting has only been happening for about 27 years so it’s a relatively new discipline in light of some of the longer history of other disciplines yeah okay yeah it’s interesting i wonder if it’s a comment on society or where is our sleep has it just become progressively worse yeah i don’t know i think that you know it sleeps interesting to me in um you know in our social standing because even though we all sleep and we all must sleep it seems like it’s been an area that really hasn’t gotten much focus until the last 30 years or so and uh and that’s kind of surprising considering how essential and how basic it is but did we know how important it was you know more than 30 years ago did we just take it for granted i think it is taken for granted although there was certainly research being done since the 1940s if not earlier looking at sleep and one of the first when i first started getting interested in sleep was about 1991 in college and so i was doing literature reviews and reading research papers and at that point we knew that at least animals would die without sufficient sleep so i think that’s a pretty good indication of how essential it is and uh you know early 90s that’s a long time ago and the research i was reading at that point had been you know conducted in the 10 or 15 years prior to that so we’ve certainly known for a long time how essential it is so what did bring you into this field of expertise was it those you know that original that research that sort of lit a fire for you i have always found sleep very just personally interesting to me i’ve always been a pretty good sleeper and i’ve really my parents my household that i grew up in prioritized getting sleep and i’ve prioritized getting enough sleep and so i’m really very aware of what happens to my experience personally when i don’t get enough sleep and so that’s part probably of what motivated me i also when i was a kid i slept walked uh into the neighbor’s house when i was 12 which was a pretty um wow noteworthy experience and i think speak to my interest yeah so oh wait so did that run in your family or was that an anomaly or did you have an issue with sleepwalking my i don’t believe that sleepwalking ran in my family but i was a little bit of a sleepwalker that was the most extreme case or example of my sleepwalking but there were a few other times that i would sleepwalk and the last time was when i was in college about age 21. so how it ended abruptly i mean did you cause it to end abruptly by no i didn’t do any treatment it’s sleepwalking is something that people often outgrow it kind of peaks when people are around seven to twelve years old although certainly adults there can be adults who sleepwalk regularly but i’m not one of them okay that’s good because you you you spend time in a lot of hotels with the work you’re doing i’m sure that would be a little scary yes and for people who are regular sleepwalkers adults it can be distressing but it seems every magazine i pick up it doesn’t matter what kind of magazine there’s something about sleep and i’ve read you know a lot of books on sleep i attended your workshop i mean i’m just so intrigued about it but it seems like perhaps a lot of america is intrigued about it so i was wondering if you could tell me you know some of the statistics about sleep or or lack of sleep that contribute to poor physical sure i can and i want to comment on your your observation about many magazines now will have articles about sleep and that it’s something that’s really captured the interest a huge uptick in the amount of media interest and attention and public interest years ago so i think that’s a really positive sign for us improving our sleep on the other hand there’s some new research that evaluated americans sleep up to 2018 and found that 36 of americans are sleeping seven hours or is not enough sleep for adults most adults seven hours or less so that’s a increase in the percentage percentage of americans not getting adequate sleep and i think about it impacting five domains leslie i think i talked about this briefly in the course that you’ve got your physical health and and our quality of life and our kind of non-diagnosable symptoms to full-blown diagnosable anxiety depression as i think of our physical performance and mental performance so many people in america operate cars right which is a form of is absolutely impaired when you’re sleep deprived then there’s this cognitive performance things from simple memory all the way up to complex problem solving are going to be worse your performance will be worse in those areas if you’re not getting adequate sleep and then the fifth dome appropriately to them which can cause disharmony in your relationships and your social functioning basically i asked dr darley to tell me about other common sleep disorders especially insomnia we definitely want to be treating obstructive sleep apnea and there are other sleep breathing disorders is insomnia and we think this person’s uh insomnia is chronic if they’ve had it for more than three months which you know three months can speed by right and someone’s acute insomnia due to maybe a life event a good insomnia continues after that other categories would be movement disorders things like restless leg syndrome other categories are circadian rhythm disorders and this is a category that’s getting a lot more attention now as we learn how pervasive our circadian systems are throughout our bodies one population that really struggles with circadian issues is shift workers about 20 of americans do shift work where they’re commuting to work or working at times they would naturally be sleeping that can cause a big problem and actually increase cancer risk other two categories of sleep disorders are hypersomnias like narcolepsy and then the last category is parasol it’s where we see those more abnormal sleep features such as the sleep walking sleep eating those types of conditions one is you know roughly how common is sleep apnea and i recently read just a short little blurb that there are different types of sleep apnea can you you know elaborate a little on that so we think it’s somewhere between five and ten percent of men have sleep apnea and slightly lower percentage in women but i’d like to make sure that your listeners know that when women get through menopause and their post-menopausal at that point the rates of um be equivalent to the rates in men and it’s because estrogen has a protective function keeping the airway toned and as women go through menopause and no longer have such high estrogen levels their airway is more easily obstructed like men of their age so that’s something to keep in mind for women as they get older and yes there are another type of apnea is called central sleep apnea and the physiology of obstructive versus central sleep apnea is quite quite different what happens with obstruction of sleep apnea the brain is still telling the body to breathe so you’ll still see the diaphragm the chest rising and falling as the person tries to breathe but they’ve got an obstruction in their upper airway kind of right at the back of the throat usually but in central sleep apnea there’s a problem with the brain respiratory drive and the brain is not giving a signal to breathe and so the diaphragm actually will be still during these apnic pauses and they’re not even trying to bend again it may panel even attempt at respiratory effort the obstruction of sleep apnea is more common in people who have high bmi high body mass index but it’s not exclusively true and i think that we generally think that women tend to be more missed diagnosis of obstructive sleep apnea because they tend to be slimmer or smaller people and so we don’t want to just assume that someone who isn’t overweight doesn’t have obstructive sleep apnea because thin young women could have obstructed sleep apnea also it’s really not only is it the entire body habitus but it’s the shape of the airway so for people who have maybe a small or recessed jaw they’re going to be at increased risk people who may have a deviated septum and can’t breathe through their nose and so therefore they’re breathing through their mouth that increases their risk of obstructive sleep apnea or you know if they have a large tongue or enlarged tonsils making the airway more crowded it’s easier to obstruct you know we did you know year decades ago think of it more as a overweight person’s disease but now we know it’s really mostly impacted by the shape of the airway i asked for a bit of an elaboration on the circadian rhythm and how it impacts us so our circadian rhythm is several many systems in our body that help us stay entrained to the 24 hour a day that we’re seeing on our earth and it’s signaled mostly and it’s uh we’re entrained to the day uh environmental day by the time that we get bright light in the morning so you know sometimes people really focus on getting to bed at the same time and that that is the most important for sleep but i would suggest that actually getting up at the same time each morning and getting bright light as soon as you can helps in train your circadian rhythm and your sleep we want our circadian rhythm to be robust so that we are widely awake during the day and deeply asleep at night one of the things that is really confusing our bodies now in modern lifestyle is the amount of artificial bright light that we have available to us at night both on our electronics on the evening cell phones tablets computers tvs etc and then also just with the ambient lighting that we have in our homes and that is that actually causes a delay in our sleep hormone melatonin and it causes a shorter time of that root melatonin is being released each night so that can impact our sleep so in these uh winter months where you know we have less light and i often wake up here in northern california and i don’t have a clock in in the bedroom but i look and it you know i think oh my god it’s like 5 a.m but it turns out to be 8 a.m and there’s just you know like minimal sun and even you in seattle you know how do you how do you get that hit if it doesn’t exist naturally for some people they may choose to use a light box other people may choose to just get up you know even though it’s dark and maybe cold outside get up at the same time turn the lights on really actively start their day and then as soon as it’s light out a great practice is to go out for a walk 20 minutes of a walk with the bright outside light and for those of your listeners who are in seattle or other places that are known for being overcast and cloudy even on an overcast morning it’s going to be brighter outside than almost any indoor setting is going to be and that amount of light will really help clue to your body its day and switch into daytime physiology awake physiology and then i think the other corollary is to purposely be turning down the lights in your home and not only turning down the brightness of them but also switch to more historical types of light waveforms that people would historically be exposed to at in the evening which would be your yellow and think uh sunset or fire light or candlelight those kinds of hues of lighting so what i recommend is people set an alarm on their phone or something for an hour hour and a half before their bedtime and at that time they turn off all the lights in their home except for maybe one light which they’ve put kind of a yellowish hued relatively dim bulb in so they can still do their recreational wind down activities you know snuggling and talking with the family or reading a book or doing some gentle yoga or listening to a podcast or something but they’re not getting bright light they’re not getting blue light i was curious if jack and darling could give us more suggestions on how to improve our sleep hygiene nutrition and exercise have gotten a lot more media attention over the last 60 years than sleep has well if you just had the exercise and nutrition piece that’s not very stable is it you’ve got to have the sleep piece and then i think of some other some other pieces of a healthy foundation being positive social relationships loved ones that we can count on and that we and who have esteem for us and we have esteem for them another one would be joy having joy in our lives and then the sixth connection to nature and there’s lots of research coming out now about how nature improves our health and i know when i’ve been out nature or i exercise on a day my sleep my ability to sleep that evening is easier is enhanced so sleep hygiene is basically creating a lifestyle that promotes healthy sleep and a strong circadian rhythm uh and so there’s many many components of this if i was just going to choose out the top five components of sleep hygiene i would say i mentioned bright light in the morning for 20 minutes ideally in the first hour or two of getting up sooner the better after getting up the second one would be like i said earlier avoiding the blue light and the artificial light at night and replicating as best you can naturalistic historical lighting conditions which would be dim yellowish reddish spectrum of light would be deciding to give yourself enough hours of sleep because insufficient sleep syndrome is definitely the most common sleep problem that i see people having and it contributes to so many domains that can be negatively impacted the physical health the physical performance measures so the way that i think about this which i’m not sure that other people do is that if you are an eight hour sleeper and that’s the ideal amount of sleep for you that means you can have a 16-hour day and if you’re trying to have 17 or 18 hours of activity each day you’re not going to be getting the sleep you need and therefore you’re going to be having some domain and i encourage people to think about the question would you rather have a long day or would you like to have a good healthy day that’s shorter because you’re getting enough sleep and i’m not sure that people are thinking about it quite as explicitly or quite in those terms so that would be the third thing get enough sleep the fifth thing is your sleep hours to rest and sleep and don’t take your daytime rolls and responsibilities to bed with you i think that idea that we’ve probably all heard of leave a bet pad of paper and pencil at your bedside so if you have a good idea in the night you can jot it down i think actually that’s a horrible idea because it trains you to be on all the time instead of practicing some limit setting that it’s okay and it’s valid for me to stop taking care of my responsibilities and just rest and sleep and recover and be recharged for the next day when i can pick those up again so those are my recommendations and then the fifth one would be about probably exercise and just giving yourself enough wind down time between your active day or eating or exercise and turning lights out some people transition more quickly others need a little bit more time but you know kind of evaluating that for yourself and determining how much time you need to wind down so that you’re ready to sleep once you’re in bed regarding insomnia does this refer to something more than having difficulty falling asleep i asked dr darley about waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to fall back to sleep depending on what their problem is if they are aware of waking up gas with a gasp in the middle of the night or if a bed partner or someone sharing the room says that they’re snoring loudly or pausing in their breathing at night they definitely should be evaluated for a sleep breathing disorder if they’re having difficulty with intimates at the beginning of the night to fall asleep being awake in the middle of the night or waking up too early not refreshed not ready for their days insomnia can manifest at all those different points in the night that is something that should be addressed we know that the more episodes of acute insomnia that somebody has the greater their chances of having insomnia in the future so that would be important and then if they have restless leg syndrome where they’re feeling like they just have to move their legs in the evening and that movement uh or that sensation subsides when they move that would be an indication to go see a sleep specialist such high percentage of americans are not getting adequate sleep i would really encourage people to do an optimal sleep plan for two weeks where they’re really prioritizing getting the amount of sleep that they need and just then noticing how does it impact their health and their sense of well-being is it worth it to get more sleep does it really make a difference and how can you do that that’s what i would recommend and i think i ended with that leslie in our sleep class i’m wondering if you had the chance to do it and if so how did that work for you oh i know yeah the more i sleep the better i feel years ago i did my silver presentation i was doing for my patient in my disease community and i had you know impairment like maslow’s hierarchy of needs but it was based on my self-care routine and the foundation is sleep and getting a good night’s sleep is critical for my next day and a lot of what i do during the day is to lead to that optimal sleep experience so it’s based on exercise and winding down stimuli like lights and sounds i take a hot bath every night the only thing i do which is probably contrary to uh what sleep experts suggest is i i watch a little tv in bed i mean there’s you know there’s these recommendations that we make that are based on physiology but every person is an individual and has different success abilities i mean as we know we we’ve all got probably friends who can drink more and and handle it fine you know there’s you know we can give examples in any area of health where we see individual variability and so i encourage people to follow the rules and then if they find that they can break them in one area more power to you dr darley has certainly provided us with food for thought one thing i’ll definitely start doing is getting outside in the morning even if it’s overcast not mentioned in this podcast but we did talk about it during our conversation is starting a sleep journal or diary there are also online versions or apps to help with this dr darley believes it’s good to document and look for trends rather than relying on your subjectivity and another way to track sleep and include relevant data is to use a wearable device to sleep this wouldn’t be comfortable for me but my partner does it and can check to see how much sleep she got the previous night and at what time she may have awakened during the night i remember from my time receiving regular acupuncture treatments that when you wake up in the middle of the night i can point to issues related to different body organs this is all part of traditional chinese medicine so you might if you find that you’re waking up at a particular time every night you might want to consult an acupuncturist anyhow as i mentioned in my conversation with dr darley i am intentional during my day to create a fertile ground for restful sleep i exercise earlier in the day i eat frequent small meals with my last meal several hours before i’m gonna go to bed i do wind down and i limit stimuli such as lights and noise and i take a hot bath using essential oils like lavender which is known to have a relaxing effect and i also take a one to one thc a cbd tincture sublingually under my tongue about an hour before i anticipate falling asleep and this routine usually works but nothing is foolproof anxiety can still rear its ugly head and keep me awake or arouse me from asleep it’s all a work in progress so rest peacefully my friends and when you wake up well rested the next day turn one of your friends onto this podcast thanks for listening
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 classful.org
Need help with sleep? David — resident DIY expert — explains how to decarb, squish, and infuse cannabis. Unfamiliar with these terms? No worries. These terms, and more, are explained for the novice. Podcast episode, and complementary YouTube video, demonstrate the processes involved with creating cannabis tinctures and infusions for making edibles.
An earlier podcast episode features six people sharing how cannabis helps with their physical and/or emotional challenges including cancer, depression, muscular dystrophy, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, bone fracture, and bipolar disorder.
Once you’re familiar with the process known as decarbing, you may want to check out this podcast episode featuring a fine dining chef who prepares meals infused with cannabis.
Sound therapy has become a wonderful tool to access deep relaxation. For many, it is a gateway to meditation. Melissa Felsenstein of Inner Sounds Meditation shares her story of how playing crystal bowls and metal gongs helped her heal from symptoms of anxiety and depression. A self-proclaimed Nervous System Advocate, after several years of exploring these musical instruments, she now shares her process to help others.
Check out a video from this Summer Solstice Sound Bath.
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 welcome to the summer if you listen to the last podcast episode about nature i hope you’re now trying to get a daily dose of it vitamin n that is this past week i was quite fortunate to get this great double dose of vitamin and at the university of california’s botanical gardens in berkeley on wednesday i attended my first forest bathing led by a certified forest guide but the two and a half hour experience ended in a redwood tree grove and on thursday morning i found myself in the same grove i didn’t sleep there overnight and i was not kidnapped and taken there but i returned for a solstice sound math i would assume most of you listening out there have never been to a sound bath but it’s an experience i bet will come your way soon my first sound bath we always remember our first time right was nearly three years ago in july at a yoga studio in oakland california sound practitioner was melissa felsenstein and she is my guest for today’s episode so perhaps you’re wondering just what is a sound bath is it always experienced in nature and how is leslie able to read my mind
often i use wikipedia as my go to web page for a solid definition of something but there is no entry for sound math i’ll have to rely on my experiential knowledge so you know when you’re in a bathtub you’re enveloped in water for me this is a truly relaxing experience well in a sound bath you allow yourself to be enveloped by the sound not any sound like i don’t think any cdc concert would qualify but you know who knows melissa uses crystal balls gongs and chimes to create her sound math i’ve been to several sound experiences with different practitioners sometimes it’s called a sound meditation or sound symphony where other instruments in addition to bowls and gongs are used such as a harp wooden xylophone and even a human voice each sound experience is unique many factors contribute to the overall experience who is the practitioner what is the environment like if it’s indoors what are the acoustics like how close to the practitioner am i seated or am i reclined do i shut my eyes and let myself be carried away or do i remain seated so i can watch and listen on thursday i chose to have my eyes open it was a gorgeous sauce this morning in a redwood tree grove and i wanted to videotape portions of melissa’s performance best to keep my eyes and ears open for that what you’re listening to in the background is from that day in the redwood grove you can hear birds communicating in the background and actually when melissa stopped playing the bulls and gongs the birds really went crazy i think they were beckoning for an encore you can already tell i’m partial to melissa’s sound performances i’m a fan shall i say her journey to this work and you know and now after three years she’s making a living as a sound practitioner or healer anyhow her journey is what this episode is all about you can watch a video of the solstice sound bath on the glass half full youtube channel but it’s a best experience live a link to the inner sounds meditation website is in the podcast notes and that’s melissa’s website so i was introduced to sound as therapy in 2008 and i was traveling india and i was at one of those bazaars there was this big market i walked into one that i had i’d known about the tibetan bowls the metal ones they’re metal bowls that are handmade in tibet and in india this was in rajasthan so it’s the northern part of india and so i i went there i saw i saw this this shelves and shelves of metal bowls and i thought oh that’ll be a really fun thing to have and i started talking with the man the store owner and i kept kind of coming back to it like we were there for a couple of days and i kept just wanting to be around this man and just sort of talking with him and i helped him with his business card and some other things and we were just kind of becoming friends and eventually he told me that he used these bowls he used the sounds to help heal children specifically of different ailments and that’s what he was known for and i remember i had this moment like oh my gosh like i’ve always been interested in music i was a dancer so the idea of sound as a way to help people i was just so blown away and i thought and then he was showing me some techniques and i eventually bought a bowl from him and then i convinced him to give me his mallet you know he didn’t want to give me like his mallet but i really wanted his mouth i felt like he was infused with this like power you know and he was very reluctant but somehow i convinced him um and i uh yeah so i came home and i was so inspired from that trip and i thought i’m gonna become a sound healer and then i got home away from india back in the grind of los angeles and i was like that is a crazy idea like who who would ever want that you know i completely denied the dream like i felt the dream and then i i denied it and i was working a corporate job and i just continued and then it’s interesting how you know you have this little if it’s meant to happen it will happen right so i i said i said no and then of course you know a short time later it came back to me like a boomerang i think i just felt like it was just too wild you know and anyway so needless to say um a few years later uh my father fell mentally ill so he was dealing with bipolarism and he was on lithium but then the lithium was really hurting his kidneys and so he was abruptly taken off the lithium by a really bad doctor i don’t know you know someone is a certain way and then you have no idea what might happen really when they’re taken off their meds you just assume it’ll be fine kind of you’re like well what’s gonna change really well everything changed for him everything changed he became manic and he just never recovered he was manic for eight years until he died so uh in the beginning you know he was on the street and it’s interesting how the system i i’ve said this before but the system doesn’t really care that that person was an mit graduate on a scholarship i mean my father was brilliant he worked for hewlett-packard his entire career starting right when he graduated from mit just this really brilliant man very kind and soft-hearted and always taking in stray animals and just a very introverted introverted quiet genius and but the system doesn’t care it doesn’t care that what you were you’re just like another person you’re another number and so he was lost in the system of just mental hospitals and um all sorts of situations that i i don’t really want to go into too much too much detail because it’s um it’s painful but we’ll just say that it was it was a really bad time and so i was very close to my dad i’d say we both had this kind of wild adventurous self that we both understood and we were both a little bit weird and we liked like kind of things that were a little different from other people and he really encouraged me to be an art major he loved the arts he loved that i loved music he loved that i danced so it was really supportive and just i don’t know fun we were like pen pals during that you know my college years so anyway when he got sick um i was doing yoga i was doing kind of your typical exercise and but my nervous system was becoming so
it was becoming so severely imbalanced because i was so afraid all the time for my dad i was afraid for his health i was afraid for my mom’s safety i was afraid for everyone else’s safety he became kind of a dangerous man he became an angry man so um and his his own safety for himself and uh it just became too much you know there’s a certain amount of stress you can deal with but then when that stress keeps going like whether it’s a chronic illness right you understand that and just dealing with this something that’s relentless it doesn’t it doesn’t ever let you go and you don’t know what’s down the line you don’t know what’s down the line you have to become it’s very uneasy it’s unsettling you can’t ever get kind of grounded and feel confident or sure and i think about that like chronic illness or or cancer treatment and sort of my experience too there’s a lot of commonalities and i think a lot similarly this happens for everyone’s nervous system that’s under chronic intense stress you know basically like everyone else i stopped sleeping i was insomniac um because i just couldn’t rest my mind at night so that and then i stopped sleeping then i wasn’t able to eat and digest you know i could barely eat anything i was losing weight i felt sick all the time and bloated and it just felt awful i had migraines i had tmj i had teeth grinding and eventually it got to the point where i had like a shake as well like like and i was losing my hair i mean it was wow severe anxiety severe severe anxiety and as that started to compound i was also greeted with depression because you start to really feel down when you can’t get yourself healthy and you’re seeing you know i think depression it’s different from sadness i mean i was sad about my dad but depression is this there’s a quality to it that’s um so gray it’s so bleak and i could feel that with just this idea that tomorrow is going to look exactly like today right and when you look into the future and that’s all you see is a broken body and sadness grief you know at the time i didn’t realize i was grieving the loss of my dad right like i had lost my dad he was here but who he was was someone like completely foreign to me occasionally over those seven years i’d see this little spark and i’d remember who he was and he’d do a little joke or something and it gets me like teared up just thinking about god it was such a hard time um but was there also an element of fear that this could be your future oh yeah that’s a really good point yeah like i looked into my own future and i was like oh wow this could be it because i was still going to yoga classes and i remember being so like angry and i was very bitter a lot of the time because i was so um mad that my life was lost and my dad’s life and my family my family you know we were sort of broken up by the situation as any family would it’s very very hard to deal with mental illness i asked melissa about her reintroduction to the sound work how did she recapture that dream she originally had in india so i would go to these yoga classes and yoga had always been my savior it always been my refuge and i would sit in shavasana i would just steam i was just so mad because like i kind of felt like even that was taken from me like no matter what style of yoga i did it didn’t work i was doing acupuncture which i always felt exhausted by like i felt like it took something from me to show up to get there to receive treatment and then afterward i was always super tired reiki same thing i tried talk therapy i tried some western medicine i was basically just doing anything i could and i just i just didn’t have any extra energy for anything i was barely able to kind of just show up in my life and just kind of just get through the hours of every day so a few different people um encouraged me to take some time off and i and i did and one person actually said she was like you know i really she was my my therapist and she said i think you should like go to an ashram so i did i did and it was a brilliant move because they’re so disciplined there’s a lot of chanting and that’s kind of when i opened up to this other side of yoga that wasn’t just asana you know asana is the movement it was the chanting and then the meditation um and you know just kind of broadening out what what this concept of of yoga was and at the same time i was taking some classes around my neighborhood and i walked into this class and little did i know at the very end in shavasana she plays a crystal ball and i just had this moment where i could feel my whole body responding to the sound you know that deep deep relaxation and i could feel even my nervous system kind of calming down and it was really brief you know it was only like a minute or two and i just thought i don’t care why or how i’m just going to i walked up i was like what is this i didn’t even know what it was she’s like this is a crystal ball and i was like what and then i just bought them and i had them delivered and i taught myself how to play i bought i bought three of them from home shop in florida no they don’t make them there no no almost all the bowls are made in china actually but um so uh and they were delivered in like you know eight business days and i just unpacked them and just started to play them because i just at that point i was like i don’t care what it is i don’t care what tool it is because i i think i think the pivotal moment too wasn’t just how i felt when i heard the ball and i think it also was that it created hope for me a hope like that future that i saw before that we were talking about where every day is the same and you almost just want to give up you know it’s like why keep living why do i want to live i don’t want to live like this you know and i think a lot of people are confronted with that um often in our lives uh but so it brought me this tiny bit of hope like maybe it could be different maybe i could just try and use this so the sound came back to me under much more rough circumstances um and you know unlike some sound healers uh sound is taking off right now and there’s a lot of different healers out there but i think the thing that makes it slightly different for me was like it was necessary this wasn’t a choice it wasn’t like i like gongs these sound so pretty they’re fun they are fun they’re outrageously fun to play to feel it in your body as you play it’s amazing and i could see that draw but for me it was necessary like i had to do this every day if i wanted to become well again
i don’t know i just feel like the gongs what what they did for me i felt like you know i started for like a month or two with just the bulls and they really rewired my nervous system but i was missing the jump for my depression like i still couldn’t quite mitigate that and um i think the gongs really help with that because they take you into this ethereal meditative open space so when i got the gong it’s jupiter jupiter was the gong each of each of the gongs have a um they’re a certain note that’s aligned with the orbital properties of each planet and they have they have the base note and then they have two overtone notes as well that’s how they’re different from orchestral gongs which are not tuned at all so when i have eight gongs or something i can set them up to be very harmonious based on notes or feelings or dissonant you know but orchestral gongs you can’t do that they’re all just set they they’re tuned to sound pleasant but that’s about it so these are really special instruments and they’re so high quality they’re all made of an alloy of of metal oh okay so they vary in what they’re made of well depending on the maker yeah every maker has their secret recipe so piste’s got a recipe and meinel has a recipe and um nobody wants to give up their secret recipe because it’s a combination of different metals okay to make the sound and of course you know there’s also there’s gong gongs have been around for thousands of years um so there’s chinese gongs and tai gongs and burmese gongs and how did you know you wanted to go to gongs like yeah that’s that’s a good question i don’t know there was an intuition that just you know i did go to a few sound meditations at the time in l.a and i would go and i would feel this like distinct calling like if if i really really want to feel healthy i’m going to need this and i i think it was so it was intuitive but once i got it i did notice a big difference in my healing experience
it’s very hard to describe this the state of being
i always struggle with it on paper and through voice because it’s like a place that’s beyond time i don’t know it’s a place beyond words it’s a it’s a feeling it takes you into this almost like to the soundless place that’s where the gongs take you it’s like you’re you’ve got to prepare the the mind you got to create the pathway in into the silence and i think the gongs really help with that and when we can find silence in different ways rather than just through meditation which is so hard for most people including me i mean i became a meditator after i used sound as meditation as a meditative tool but um so we all struggle with sitting there you know and in yoga they they have you do pranayama first so that way you can do a little breathing technique and then hopefully get your mind ready well in the same way that’s what the sound is doing the sound is stimulating your mind it’s stimulating your senses it’s stimulating your cells it’s vibrating everything it’s unpredictable the gong i don’t even know how it’s gonna show up you know some days i do a hit that i’ve done a million times and it just looks like crazy um so it’s very unpredictable and so the mind can’t um the mind relaxes in that actually it doesn’t it doesn’t grasp it’s not able to grasp to rhythm you know it sort of has to deal with unpredictability which is good because it makes it more flexible but the the sounds i think or this is what i know the sounds of the gongs
are trying to prepare your mind for the sounds without the gongs to prepare it to kind of clear those everyday thoughts out of the way with sound because it takes over just it’s not going to let you spend a lot of time thinking about your grocery list
melissa explains how her playing of the gongs was a healing process remember she was doing this on her own still the gongs and the crystal balls were tools for her own healing also getting a lot of strength from that space too right resiliency you kind of feel like you can get through these difficult points of our lives and you know my dad’s story you know as as i got better and better and better you know dad got worse so you know right as i was launching my business my dad was dying you know so um and i’m smiling right now which no one can see uh and it’s because you know he brought me the biggest gift like would i have found this if everything had stayed the same probably not or maybe it would come to me in a different way we don’t know um if you’re meant to do it apparently it comes back again again yeah but uh yeah i mean his he’s he’s he’s an inspiration for it and also i really felt like the sound as therapy and for myself really expanded my capacity to just handle more you know and so even though dad was going through so much i felt very robust and i let go of the need for him to be the way he used to be and i accepted who he was and i accepted his own karma if you believe in that his own path like i can’t change that it’s what his soul needs and i can just support him with love and kindness and caring and it really having those kind of realizations helped immensely with the guilt and the pain
and i’d say i really started to feel better about a month into it and then really powerful changes in the nervous system three months later and i’d say the depression was really reigned in and sort of obliterated probably six months into it wow so yeah within a year i was already doing really i was a really different person and over the years people were like wow you’re so less gritty like you’re so much more soft i used to be really kind of intense and kind of feisty so it’s it’s it’s changed my pulse you know it’s changed my own vibration and and um but it was you know i started out with myself and i remember my friends they were like what have you been doing you seem different and i was like well i was kind of embarrassed about it i was like well i kind of do this stuff with sound and they’re like what i’m like they’re like that sounds cool like they’re all into it you know and i was like i don’t know and they’re like we should you should you should play for us and i was like i don’t know about that it really like i was pretty reluctant to share um for many reasons you know i kind of felt like well what kind of person is a sound a sound practitioner i’m even afraid to say healer it just feels too heavy what kind of person is that like who does that you know and i’m like that’s not me i like to eat hot dogs and hamburgers bacon i love bacon god if i could have that every day i would and i love to like drink wine and i i’m very standard in many ways just like i’m just a normal chick like you know who is this and so i was very um embarrassed and even when i first moved here you know that was a three years ago i launched my business full-time after doing a few of those events you know and then kind of growing a little bit in la but but i knew i just knew i needed to come here i need to come back home this is where i’m i’m bored i was born in south bay and now that melissa’s been sharing her healing tools with others for over three years she’s learned a lot about the instruments and how people respond to her performances i asked her to elaborate on this it’s organic and you’re really like for me i’m just listening i’m listening so intensely to wait and sort of find the sound that’s special because every sound meditation has several of them and it’s a it could be a rhythm it could be especially with the gongs the bowls are interesting how they show up every time too a little different but the gongs they definitely have their own
individual way to them for each one and so i’m just searching i’m looking around and just trying to find okay where’s that nice and i hear it and i’m like oh what’s that what’s happening here and i’m like oh that’s exciting you know even after years and years and years and years of playing i have those moments every time or where one gong who normally plays very dark and deep is showing up right what’s this about what happened and i’m sure you could go into all sorts of like um the physicists are always like well it’s the temperature of the room and this and that but really i i think there’s something more to this that’s um less scientific and less rational because i could have the same exact two gongs playing for a private session and the person changes but nothing else does and they show up differently and i think that’s also me as a practitioner because like i said i i’m intimate with these instruments they were a big part of who i am and who i’ve become and i have a great respect for them so i’m really i could there’s many people who just want to you know aggressively go at the gong because it’s so exciting it’s so stimulating and it’s fun as a player it’s fun but as a recipient it can be create a lot of intensity and i’ve heard so many people go to these other experiences and say i hated it you know i will never do it again i found that to be like i was panicked the whole time and it’s because your nervous system you know doesn’t understand these sounds and they sound scary and they it just goes into fight or flight so as a player i’m very aware of that and because i’m a nervous system advocate and i’m trying to re-teach people how to relax i’m trying to calm their nervous system down and to clear their minds that’s my intent it’s like a healing environment i am mitigating the gongs quite a bit you know what i mean i i’m really working with them from that standpoint it’s almost like they know that that’s what they need to do and i know that’s what i need to do so but they will play very very very differently and we’re talking like nothing else in the environment has changed so you have to wonder well what is that about well it depends it depends how scientific you want to be or if you want to be open to you know the potential that there’s some greater forces happening that affect how they show up but it’s this idea that this is what i mean by there could be something more and i think there is i’m saying could because i’m being a coward well do you think the energy of the people yeah okay i think so the energy of the people that i understand right you do but you know the average person i don’t know um but yeah the energy of the people um and i get a lot of intuitive because i’m going into a very meditate meditative state i get a lot of intuitive hits as well about people so about like a stranger i don’t even know them but as i’m playing you know there’s a rhythm and there’s a feeling and i’m like oh
i had a few questions from melissa that were less about her journey and more about the science behind the use of sound as a therapeutic tool i asked her to talk about brain entrainment a term i wasn’t familiar with but is often mentioned in this line of work so entrainment is the ability for our brains as animals as humans um and animals to synchronize and so this is how large fish can swim together as one organism or if you’ve ever seen a huge group of birds and they’re might and they’re they’re turning like a mass and it’s not because they’re talking to each other like let’s make a left no it’s because they’re entrained they’re near each other and they’re synchronized two heart cells placed near each other but not touching synchronize pendulums synchronize together um in a conversation actually there’s entrainment with body language so if i were to sit here and put my my chin on my hand you might eventually do that if i rub my nose you’re gonna rub your nose actually that happens every time because people are worried about like is this the whole mirror neurons yeah it’s mirror neurons yeah and yeah entrainment so um in this case your brain waves are synchronizing with the sound waves and the sound waves have tons of properties that induce deeper states of slower slower brainwave states or deeper states of relaxation some of it’s the tonal qualities they have high tones and low tones going together they have very low frequency tones as well that can help they aren’t pure notes so they’re normally flat or sharp by a random amount as your your brain receives these tones it entrains and naturally starts to slow down and it’s through that process that you can go into these deeper states so you can drop into the beta state you know relax tape and the theta lots of people drop into delta as you know so delta brainwave state is deep deep sleep so it’s the kind of sleep that you get after like massive travel right and you’re so tired and you’re like oh my god i’m exhausted boom and then 12 hours later you wake up so it’s like that but imagine getting that in just a one hour experience and say you get 45 minutes of it and it’s rich sleep
my belief you know there’s been a lot of connection around sound healing and cancer treatment my feeling is you know with some of these conditions fibromyalgia chronic pain conditions where our sleep is affected i really it’s extremely nourishing because it’s that rich rich sleep and they find that people are falling asleep and sleeping eight hours but we wake up and we’re tired and there’s disputes about that right maybe it’s you’re waking up at the wrong time of your cycle of your sleep cycle but there has been some research um of late that says that actually it’s you’re not getting delta because we go to sleep and we’re thinking about all these things and we’re stimulated by the ipad and whatever else that we’re using which i’m guilty of and many others right we’re we’re on the line or we’re reading a book or something and we’re too stimulated and we sort of fall asleep thinking about our to-do list and then we wake up thinking about our to-do list and we’re not rested because we’re not actually getting that sleep but you can train your brain and that’s what the sound does so it’s cumulative so each time people they come to the sound meditations and their brain through neuroplasticity which is so amazing right we used to think that your brain was done growing at like 17. and now we know oh my god brains are changing all the time all the time and so you can get better sleep i mean i’m proof of it right like you can restore your entire nervous system from you know it was [ __ ] before to like robust and healthy and healthy immune system and everything just with sound that’s what i did but it’s not some kind of snake oil it’s through science you know if you can get into these delta brainwave states and your brain also starts to learn about the theta brainwave state which is so hard to describe that was the space i was talking about you know inner space a place that is boundless it’s free every time i walk in i it just gets bigger you know there’s so much space in there and there’s so much beauty and it’s a feeling um but your brain starts to get used to it it starts to unlock and become more comfortable with these states that we’re becoming less and less aware of and our ability to get into them on our own is becoming harder and harder simply because we’re being pulled in so many directions right like technology has been great but now we’re always kind of multitasking and the brain necessarily wasn’t made for that or the nervous system the nervous system hasn’t really improved in the way that technology has right it’s an old system so your nervous system doesn’t realize like oh actually i’m not being chased by a bear i’m just late to a meeting like it could be worse right it can’t differentiate but and the body responds in the same way either way and that’s where we get destructive with stress that’s when stress becomes destructive but there’s ways that are easy have no side effects you know sound has no side effects it has only benefit and you know when i said in the very beginning i was doing these other modalities and i felt like they took away from me and i had a private client say the same thing and he so beautifully said he’s like when i come to sound it always feels like it gives to me it doesn’t take it just gives and i love that about it as a therapeutic tool i hope you enjoyed this episode perhaps you might consider exploring this healing modality by attending a sound bath in your area or even trying to see how you react with different sound tools watch the youtube video segments on glass apple’s channel to learn more and check out melissa’s website thanks for listening 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 last half full dot online
Baxter Bell, MD with yoga students in a restorative pose
Baxter Bell, MD is not just a family medicine physician, he’s also a certified acupuncture practitioner and yoga therapist. Together with co-author, Nina Zolotow, they wrote the book, Yoga for Healthy Living: A Guide to LIfelong Well-Being. Baxter talks about his journey and shares insight about what aging people care most about — increasing one’s health span, maintaining independence over time, and cultivating equanimity. The thousands of people that have attended his trainings or follow his blog are concerned about cardiovascular health, brain health, and stress management. Yoga can assist with each of these.
Asana: In yoga, an asana is a posture in which a practitioner sits; asanas are also performed as physical exercise where they are sometimes referred to as “yoga postures” or “yoga positions”. Some asanas are performed just for health purposes. Asanas do promote good health, although in different ways compared to physical exercises, “placing the physical body in positions that cultivate also awareness, relaxation and concentration.” (Wikipedia)
Savasana: corpse pose; is an asana usually done at the end of a yoga practice in which practitioners lie flat on their backs with the heels spread as wide as the yoga mat and the arms a few inches away from the body, palms facing upwards. (Wikipedia)
Pranayama: breath or life force; the word is composed from two Sanskrit words: prana meaning life force (noted particularly as the breath), and either ayama (to restrain or control the prana, implying a set of breathing techniques where the breath is intentionally altered in order to produce specific results) or the negative form ayāma, meaning to extend or draw out (as in extension of the life force). (Wikipedia)
If your interest is piqued, check out these earlier podcast episodes on resilience and equanimity.
Gareth Walker, in northern England, works as a police officer and has progressive multiple sclerosis. His daily practice of mindfulness meditation enables him to navigate the physical and emotional difficulties of living with a chronic health condition.
To learn more about Gareth Walker and his practice, visit his website, Everyday Mindfulness.
Transcription
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
hello and welcome to today’s podcast last year i read a book called cure a journey into the science of mind over body it’s written by a woman named joe martin chant who lives in london has a phd in genetics and microbiology and works as a science journalist in the book she explores several healing modalities that are more alternative than western medical treatment and pharmaceuticals each chapter is a dive into an area such as hypnotism virtual reality aromatherapy or mindfulness meditation i love the book the author approaches these subjects skeptically and seems to walk away perhaps not a convert but somewhat enlightened my guest for today’s podcast episode is someone she interviewed for the book but before i introduce our conversation i want to tell you my small world story associated with this book the last couple of years each time i visited my neurologist at stanford university i noticed his office was opposite the center for integrative medicine i asked my doctor about the center and he knew nothing about their work so i went inside their offices to investigate apparently most of their work is with cancer patients i talked with the receptionist about my rare disease how i experienced chronic muscle pain and after securing a referral for my neurologist i could get an appointment with one of the doctors i think there was a three or four month wait when we finally did meet there was a discussion about my condition and what they offer which was mostly acupuncture since it takes an hour for me to get to stanford and there are good acupuncture clinics in my community i declined but the doctor did suggest i make an appointment with another doctor at the center who’s not theirs regularly and specializes in hypnosis so i did and the wait was a few more months now i know nothing about hypnosis other than what we see depicted in popular culture i was intrigued and as many of you probably share i’m always open to non-invasive ways to cope with pain and discomfort well the appointment was last year and it was during the time i was reading the cure book and i bet you thought i was going off on a wild tangent right well it turns out that the doctor was waiting to see daniel spiegel he’s in the book and he’s a world renowned expert on hypnosis i didn’t know that i had the appointment and i was reading the chapter just about a week before the appointment and i you know discovered that so i was really psyched but unfortunately when i met with him we went through these little uh tests and everything and it just so happens i’m part of the i don’t know about 10 of people that can’t be hypnotized i don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing anyhow now back to this podcast episode gareth walker lives in northern england and has multiple sclerosis joe marchand the book’s author contacted the multiple sclerosis society in england and asked if they knew of anyone practicing meditation and they all knew of gareth and now you will too when were you diagnosed with ms and how did that happen i was diagnosed about
eight years ago now
it happened um i got blurry vision in my left eye um so obviously went to the doctors and several tests were done the first they thought it was conjunctivitis but the drops they gave me didn’t clear it up the opticians couldn’t find anything wrong so eventually i went for an mri scan which is when um the bomb went off really i was told by a neurologist that there was damage to my optic nerve and that could be a precursor to ms it may not be go away and live your life and and hope that you don’t have ms but unfortunately i do and um about six years ago the symptoms started to accumulate and they’ve been going on since then and it’s pretty certain now that i have um progressive ms and i don’t really have relapses the condition just keeps getting worse to the point where i’m in a wheelchair now oh i didn’t realize that so and you’re able to to still uh work but in a different capacity you’re a police officer that’s correct i’m a police officer and luckily it’s a big organization i work for and a desk job has been found i’m still doing kind of detective work and and still researching things but it’s all computer-based now so what were some of the first ways that you tried to mitigate or alleviate symptoms did you try certain part you know drugs that were helpful i kind of got myself in a bit of a um
depression’s not the right word but i was in a bit of a thug and um i was really down about the diagnosis and i remember my mum gave me a a book the book wasn’t really relevant it was kind of a self-help book and it and it just kind of got me thinking come on you know that this is life this is what’s happened to you and you’ve gotta you’ve gotta start doing something about it and i i went away and did research and things like that and eventually i came across um a website um from an australian doctor who’d got ms and he recommended a series of lifestyle changes um to give yourself the best possible chance with the disease that the lifestyle changes were diet exercise and one of one of the aspects of the regime was meditation but i had no clue what meditation was about and so suddenly gave me a recommendation somewhere for a book the book is called wherever you go there you are by jonkerbat zinn and so i picked up this book uh and it just so happens that junk about zinn is the um pioneer of secular mindfulness in the west he i think he’s a buddhist and he’d stood it he’d studied it from a buddhist view and but but realized that there was a lot in this that could be brought to people um in in the west and so he stripped the religion out of it and um started teaching uh mindfulness classes mindfulness based stress reduction uh this book rang very true with me um and i started meditating and and that was where it all started
meditation is it’s so many things and and often people are confused between well what is mindfulness and what is meditation and they try and they feel like they’re not doing it right did you go through that sort of struggle at the beginning yeah and i think everybody who starts meditating does you know what what happens if i get an itch while i’m meditating what am i supposed to do uh i i’m i’m a bad meditator and that i can’t keep my mind still for a second you know everybody has these kind of thoughts but eventually over time the the benefits start to bed in and mindfulness itself it it’s become kind of a a way of life meditation is the it just brings about more mindfulness um you can do mindfulness the person walking down the street can do mindfulness we can all do mindfulness if you if you’re sat at the beach and there’s a particularly beautiful sunset you’re gonna be looking at the sunset you’re being mindful right there but the problem is sustaining mindfulness do you drive leslie i do not not very often but i do and i i don’t know if you’ve ever been on a journey and you you pull onto your drive and then you think i don’t remember anything about that journey at all right right and that’s because your mind was elsewhere you are on autopilot thinking about the argument you had with your partner the day before are you thinking about the meeting next week that you’re really worried about and the mind is such a restless tumultuous place uh it it it’s always wanting to go here there and everywhere and it’s easy to get sucked into the stories that it it generates for meditation helps you see the mind for for what it is and helps you bring yourself back from these storylines and the effect is life-changing so i understand you started with a five-minute daily practice is that correct uh yeah that’s great so would you did you create a place an actual location at your home or your work or were you able to take the five minutes in any sort of setting at first um i used to try and get myself to a quiet place in the house where i wouldn’t be disturbed now it’s just anywhere and everywhere and do you have the ability to do it if you’re in a room with other people
yeah and you can be um you can be mindful at any moment in your life you in in a room full of people you just listen to the sounds around you listen to the people that are talking to you and listen to the distractions there was a um a really good meditation one day out fairly early on in my practice and i was meditating and um my son was very very young at the time uh burst into the bedroom and i and at first i started to become irritated oh you’ve you’ve interrupted my meditation and you know starting to get angry and then i managed to pull myself back and i thought what hang on a minute my son is the meditation he is the moment right now and instead of meditating on my breath i meditated on him and um he gave all my attention to him and that was quite a revelatory meditation that day
so can you tell me about any of the physical and emotional changes that have taken place since you started your practice of mindfulness and meditation
and i’m not sure that there have been any physical changes emotionally um as human beings we are emotional creatures but um mindfulness allows you to ride the roller coaster of emotions i i can see anger i can see anger coming and i just allow it to come and i don’t get sucked in by it and allow it to come and i allow it to go and then i think and try and react respond rather than react to the emotion
at the time i was off work due to the ms um and i was thinking that maybe website design would be a career that i could do without the use of my legs i’d be able to sit at a computer and do it i was thinking about providing my for my family and what if i had to be retired from the police and it was a time when i was just starting to notice changes from mindfulness and starting to feel better about myself so i just bought a domain name everyday mindfulness and just started messing around really and i set up a twitter feed and right at the very beginning i i just started tweeting my daily observations of mindfulness really and i saw that i was getting so many retweets and and the account was growing really really quickly and it’s just come from there really i added a forum to the website where people can come and chat and get guidance about the practice and
that the website has just crack kind of grown organically really but mike but as it happens mindfulness has got me in such a good place that i’ve been able to return to my old job so it it has had a physical effect on you
and i’m able to deal with the um physical ms provides a lot of physical difficulties and um mindfulness allows me to navigate them um much better i remember one time at my old house it was um a victorian house with a very steep set of stairs and i was starting to have mobility difficulties um and getting up the stairs was getting harder and harder at the beginning when mindfulness was just starting to kick in i remember a time and i had to go upstairs and i just noticed my mind was oh it’s going to be so hard getting up the stairs and i realized that’s in the future my mind’s in the future there just take it one step at a time and i found that it was so much easier
sort of that be here now so it’s like that book be here now you know where you just try to be in the moment without reliving the past or or fearing the future that is mindfulness yeah it’s so hard i mean it is uh it is a hard um thing for a lot of people but it’s always hopeful to to hear stories about how people are able to sort of develop a whole new
habit
i don’t think you can make somebody meditate they have to want it for themselves and they have to there’s a certain amount of dedication that is required at the start and you need to meditate every day i think um and then eventually your practice begins to get off the ground and doesn’t have to be so rigid i don’t like to i don’t advertise really that i’m into mindfulness there’s still a bit of stigma you tell people you meditate they think you’re a caftan wearing hippie and and i think it’s becoming more and more mainstream but i don’t generally tell people other than close friends and family it has an effect on me at work has an effect all through my life you know you’re you’re going down the corridor and your boss gives you a funny look and in the past boom the mind starts going did he not like the report that i wrote yesterday is he displeased with my work and the mind starts going but with mindfulness i can see those thoughts and i can pull myself back from them
should try meditation leslie it’s fantastic well i actually i i have been practicing uh yoga for many years so i do um you know shavasana at the end yes that is a meditation and i am not a um i don’t adhere to one type of meditation i’ve you know explored uh creative visualizations i go to a lot of different workshops and something that i really like a lot is they call it sound bath um it’s where someone you’re you’re in a restorative pose like shavasana and there is a person playing um bowls glass bowls uh or different instruments like gongs and for me it’s very powerful in terms of um being able to meditate and get to a a point of pureness and oneness i feel in me and it’s also visceral the sound does amazing things to my body so i find it healing in that way but it’s not something i do every day and consistency is uh important i think um there was um a period in my early practice i was quite lackadaisical some days i meditate some days i wouldn’t and then i was going a holiday a two-week holiday in spain and i thought no i don’t need to meditate i’m going holidays my holiday and so i didn’t meditate for the whole two weeks and then i did a meditation um i think the first day i came back and i noticed how much more untidy my mind had become and at that point i thought right i’m really gonna knuckle down and do this every single day and i did it i did every day and i increased my practice a bit and and from from then on i really began to notice the benefits well it is something i aspire to i’m always um i think it’s important for me um with a chronic health condition to try to remain open and see myself as growing and learning constantly because sometimes things that have worked for me in the past no longer continue to work and i have to open up to another path another way of seeing things so so i am inspired by your by your journey and um you know i i i will continue to explore different ways to meditate and i know when i’m
i’m mindful i mean it’s a it’s all it’s quite palpable and then i know when you know i’ve got that monkey mind which i don’t know if we can ever totally escape completely you can you can never totally escape i i some days i sit and it’s it’s chaos up there there are thoughts floating about hitting me from every single direction and some days i sit and it’s a much calmer place that’s the nature of the mind and there’s and then knowing that you had that day a couple days ago that felt good where you were able to escape the monkey mind i hope gives you know gives the hope continued hope that you will have those again you know you you don’t get mired in that that downward spiral the uh the only constant is change right right you don’t have to meditate to breath as well i’m i’m a big sound freak as well i my normal method of mess meditation is headphones on listening to music oh okay so what kind of music um it’s generally ambient stuff so nothing too vigorous okay that’s good to know because i as sound is um is very powerful for me you know that’s helpful because some and and sometimes i don’t know if you’re ever explored essential oils a certain uh essential oil can help me uh deepen and relax my body and be that sort of um uh transition into a a uh clearer state of mind a quieter mind so all factory sense uh helps me too you can meditate on smell too yeah
well so gareth this has been wonderful i am i wouldn’t did you have anything you wanted to say that i didn’t ask you about anything to share um only come along to my website have a look
www.everydayhyphenmindfulness.org 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
You should try meditation…savasana at the end is a meditation. I’ve explored creative visualization…I like sound bath…consistency is important, I think. There was a period in my early practice. I was lackadaisical. I was on a holiday in Spain. My mind had become untidy…I need to do it every day. I increased my practice. I talk about monkey mind…some days I sit and it’s chaos up there. And some days I sit and it’s a much calmer place. the only constant is change…you don’t meditate to breathe. I’m a big sound freak. My normal method is with headphones listening to music…ambient stuff…nothing too vigorous. Sound is powerful for me. I talk about essential oil…can help me deepen and relax my body and transition into a quieter mind. You can meditate on smell too. Come on my website and have a look…
Gareth Walker, in northern England, works as a police officer and has progressive multiple sclerosis. His daily practice of mindfulness meditation enables him to navigate the physical and emotional difficulties of living with a chronic health condition.