Glass Half Full with Leslie Krongold, Ed.D.

Tag: mindfulness

  • Starting a Contemplative Practice

    Starting a Contemplative Practice

    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.

  • Taking a Break

    Well, not really. No podcast episodes for the month of May due to a very bad computer. Naughty as heck. She/he could have reminded me of their age (6 years!) and I would have paid attention…treated her/him as a respected elder…gone easier on her/him. But no! Poof!

    So, I’m waiting on a new one. And like everything else now, it’s moving slowly…from China, or Japan. Who knows? Not much else I can do but wait.

    But for YOU…I’ve got some YouTube videos: Quarantine Life, videos related to Movement & Exercise, or a cooking demonstration for those with swallowing difficulties.

    Maintaining a regular exercise routine has been vital for my mental and physical health during quarantine; I put together this list of mostly free or low cost online resources.

    I’ve written a few COVID-19 blog posts: How I Cope with COVID-19 and How I Exercise at Home with Myotonic Dystrophy. I’ve even participated in two webinars related to maintaining good nutrition during the pandemic: Food Preparation for the DM Community and Practical Strategies for Eating Well and Keeping Immune System Strong during COVID-19.

    If you want some evergreen, relevant podcast episodes, you might consider starting a mindfulness or meditation practice. Or prayer as a healing modality, which I believe can be akin to meditation.

    So many things can be therapeutic; you know laughter can be the best medicine? Have you considered Sound Healing? I’ve seen several practitioners taking their work online.

    My mental and physical clarity is enhanced by my daily walk through nature. Even if it’s just around the neighborhood. Every day I discover new natural and human-made curiosities.

    One of my natural relaxing remedies — and the most downloaded episode of Glass Half Full — is explored here.

    I hope you’re taking good care of yourself. Personally, I’m in it for the long haul; I’ll wait for that vaccination. I’ll miss hugging, traveling, and eating in restaurants but…I’d like to be around for awhile. Take care XOXO

  • Mindfulness as a Disease Management Strategy

    Mindfulness as a Disease Management Strategy

    Being diagnosed with a chronic, debilitating disease can certainly bring stress to one’s life. In fact, that stress can be significant enough to be called trauma.

    How one handles this stress varies. Some people have amazing coping capacity and are hard-wired for resilience while others have more difficulty. None of it is easy.

    Mary Holt, a Registered Nurse with a Master’s Degree in Counseling Psychology, shares her journey of loss and recovery and the profound impact a mindfulness meditation practice has had on her life and work. She brings this practice to the clinics where she helps patients and their families with neuromuscular and Parkinson’s disease.

    Mentioned in this podcast episode is the annual International Rare Disease Day organized by NORD. Here are two relevant podcast episodes: Rare Disease and the Need for Research and It’s Not that Easy Being Rare.

    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 listeners we’re nearing the end of february which means it’s almost international rare disease day i have a rare disease do you there are over 6 000 rare diseases i know i’ve met people with a disease so rare that they’ve never met anyone else with it i can’t even imagine what that would be like recently at my monthly support group we had a family joined us who had never met people outside of their family with myotonic dystrophy if you’re diagnosed and you live in or near a heavily populated city you will hopefully not have to wait too long before you meet others with the disease we have a patient advocacy organization that has an annual conference and this conference has given me the opportunity to meet others with the condition who live throughout the us and other parts of the world we’ve had people in the conference come from new zealand south america and of course you know a few european countries so rare disease day celebrated on february 28th is a day of advocacy getting out in the public to let others know about your disease last year a group of us met at senator dianne feinstein’s office in san francisco this year we’re joining others with rare diseases at a local museum and park so check the gospel website for links to learn more about rare disease day maybe there is an event happening in your neck in the wood and i will also include a couple links to podcasts that i did specifically about rare disease day today though is not about rare disease as i mentioned i’m part of a patient advocacy organization which meets in person annually usually in a different location throughout the country and last year we met in philadelphia and one of the sessions i attended was titled mindfulness as a disease management strategy now you can just imagine how that piqued my interest unfortunately the session was less than 45 minutes but i could tell the presenter had more to offer so i introduced myself gave her my podcast calling card it’s actually a postcard um if you want one let me know anyhow she and i recently had a chance to talk mary hope is a busy woman she works at two different philadelphia clinics and has a private practice in addition to her academic work she’s a registered nurse and has a master’s degree in counseling she has a lot of lived experience mary was a caregiver for her husband and experienced his loss at an early age with two young children to raise she’s also been in recovery from alcoholism for a number of years i have always worked in my nursing career uh with chronic pain and chronic illness that kind had always been my path and then there were actually a series of events that had happened personally in my life and i had not been working for a time while i was pregnant with my second child and yeah it was just knew i had to get back into the workforce my husband had become quite ill and i you know of course he was not able to work so i really had to kind of get back into the workforce um you know kind of help provide for us in a sense in my two children so i saw this job posting that was for a nurse coordinator i loved always being able to kind of have that integrative model so i love the coordination piece and it was neurology so it was it was the mda als center of hope um and at that time it was at diversity in philadelphia and that was back 2005 and then i started there as a nurse coordinator full time and i was probably seven years or so and had had a master’s encounter with a specialization in psychological trauma and bereavement so working with people that had you know a focus of course of chronic illness terminal illness that was really one of my passions so when the mental health specialist left that center then i kind of moved into that role in terms of being able to support the patients and the families yeah all throughout the journey really from time of diagnosis or from the time that we you know began with them and then journeying for as long as they stayed with us you know for a number of years the rest of my time my other full-time work i actually do three things so my other full-time work is working with parkinson’s and i’m a nurse educator a clinical educator with that population so i work with people that have parkinson’s and their families and i work with physicians movement disorder specialists and i do educate food i teach the families and the patients how to use a particular medicine medication and injectable medicine for parkinson’s and really how to live well you know as best as they can with their parkinson’s and then outside of that i am also i have a private practice in terms of life coaching speaking mindfulness practice and things like that so i’ve always had a desire to have uh and my you know goal still one of my goals is to be able to do that more to be able to reach people in a way that to have a greater impact in terms of helping people so i when i was working originally with a neurology team and during that time i had had a meditation practice of my own i’ve been sober for a bit over 12 25 years and i’ve had a meditation practice of my own for a number of years and when i was at jefferson i was working with chronic pain patients and they had a center for uh integrative medicine so i went there and i took a mindfulness course a mindfulness meditation it was actually a stress management course and at that time i fully impacted and shifted my whole experience in my own life my professional work my recovery my own personal health in such dramatic ways that i went on for more training and really have been teaching and doing that practice and really focusing a ton of my work professionally around stress stress management and how it relates to our health and also how mindfulness can be a foundational piece of that in terms of helping people live well in the midst of chronic illness and terminal illness so what is psychological trauma when it’s boiled down it is trauma if we look at just trauma in and of itself is something whether it be an experience a situation or an event that overwhelms the system right overwhelm the system physically of course it could overwhelm the system of course which is my my specialization psychologically and mentally emotionally spiritually as well so that can come from a certain particular event it can also come from chronic exposure to certain things whether they be you know external or potentially internal you know somebody is chronically experiencing anything you know negative perceived as negative to the point where it over overwhelms our ability to kind of integrate our experiences on a healthy level for us to be able to function kind of day in and day out in a healthy way yeah because when i hear the term trauma i think of people with ptsd or um some sort of sexual abuse i generally might and i’m not you know a professional in psychological or mental health but i um i think of it as like an incident or series of incidents that are traumatizing but the way you’ve defined it it sounds as if just the diagnosis of a progressive chronic illness can serve as trauma

    absolutely yes absolutely i’ve experienced that with people you know when we say in particular when we you know potentially give somebody the diagnosis of als or something um what can happen is that i mean on the flip side of this too i you know i don’t know if we’ll talk about it but is also the amazing resiliency of the human spirit in terms of being able to you know kind of integrate and wrap our brains around certain things and being able to function in the midst of these kind of crises these crises that happen in our lives but you know when somebody is you know faced with a situation that is in many ways i’m going to say potentially but can many ways alter their existence and how they perceive that it can absolutely be traumatic i was actually just this weekend i was working with our team our multidisciplinary team and in terms of the and talking about the effects of you know continually working with the population of you know in neuromuscular conditions and neurodegenerative conditions that you know it is a traumatic environment because we’re continually working with emotions that may arise from time to time such as frustration powerlessness not being able to make an effect potentially loss grief sadness you know and that can be incredibly distressing to the you know our mental capacity and our psychological capacity to be able to manage so how do you define resilience so i would define resilience as the amazing capacity which always seems to surprise me the amazing the amazing capacity of the human being and the human spirit to be able to integrate and rise above

    what may be perceived as incredibly negative circumstances and find meaning continue to move forward um serve continue to serve in some way not that all of these are necessary but these are the things that i see in the people that i work with and the families that i really tiny amount like couldn’t even fathom what it’s like yet you are serving the world rising above taking your experience and helping others that is to me incredibly resilient because some people fold i also see a lot of people fold and i don’t believe that there’s a good a right or wrong necessarily we all do with the capacity that we have um but when you ask about resiliency it’s definitely i think you’re a living example of that so the session you read at the conference this year how i met you was titled mindfulness as a disease management strategy so i think we’ve led up to this right you talked about how mindfulness helped you and you your training and i’m assuming you’ve implemented it in all the work you do does a mindfulness training or does it as a strategy help build resilience for me personally you know mindfulness is kind of a buzzword around healthcare around the corporate world somewhat um and it really is a way of it really is a way of relating to the world you know i mean when i so i practice minds when yes there are strategies within mindfulness and from the bigger scheme it really is a way of relating to our life and our life experiences and ourselves and others um so it definitely can build resiliency because what mindfulness gives us is number one it gives us awareness so i’m not a and the other thing i want to say is it’s a practice so it’s something that is certainly cultivated over time i am absolutely not an expert it is something i practice every day um every moment of my life that i can become more aware so it gives us an awareness so we’re not just acting on autopilot so we have some sense of you know when we’re going down the rabbit hole per se so it gives us awareness and then it has this underpinning in terms of non-judgment and compassion so it offers me the opportunity to meet my life and my life experiences to number one become aware of my you know how i’m perceiving something and how i’m relating to it and then it gives me ways of coping with openness and non-judgment and compassion for self for others and for kind of life as a whole which is simple in words yet incredibly in light so yes it can 100 yeah build resiliency how do you do that in the clinic setting i mean i i’ve been to the interdisciplinary clinics in san francisco and at stanford you know for my disease and i imagine they’re kind of similar and you know i went for years i haven’t gone recently but i had a pt who i saw you know uh every year for many years and one of the last times i saw her and unfortunately she had to leave the clinic she moved away but she started talking about mindfulness meditation and i was blown away because it was such a departure from anything she spoke about before so i’m wondering you know is it something that the other clinicians are talking about too or is it just you that’s actually yeah that’s a great question so it is um it just depends on everybody’s level of comfortability uh in our life right now it’s not something that everybody talks about people they are becoming more aware of it and more i would say open to it you know whether that is because of you know kind of what i do you know i talk about there so i would love to see it one day as kind of a standard of care um interesting and really offering people ways to manage you know all of i mean you think i’m just thinking about the physical therapist so if your physical therapist is there talking about mindfulness meditation that shows huge kind of integration to me that says you know there’s a lot of integration there in terms of what can help support you that she’s not just just addressing you linearly right with a solo focus you know acknowledging the fact that you are simply as a being right you have a mind you have a body and you have a heart so how then can we because they don’t none of them operate individually so how is it then that we can take our health care management and also approach people you know i really meet people in the sense that you know that we each really do have the capacity within ourselves to kind of answer all the questions that we have and we do have the resources within us um whether we need to find some more outside but we really do have a that within us so i meet people hopefully with that uh intention that you really do have everything that you need um and my role with you is then just to help you uncover that and get clear what’s your relationship with yourself you know that’s a big thing so when i’m seeing people in clinic a lot of our conversation is around um what’s the you know what is the relationship with the illness you know a lot of people are you know fine you know quite they they’re angry they’re and those emotions sometimes are controlling them in ways that they are not even aware of and impacting choices that they make choices that they don’t make whether they’re going to use their walker or not use their walker whether they’re going to accept a feeding tube or not accept the feeding tube so how to how how help them explore the reasons underneath that why is it that you don’t want to use the walker when you’ve fallen three times right no not in a fault-finding way but just to help them explore that oh you know it means that um you know that much worse in my illness or i’m giving into it or you know what will people think of me i’m weak you know all sorts of things so um yeah so i really try to help them you know to provide a space for that to arise because the body does hold you know there’s a book called the body holds the score or keeps the score and it really i mean you know our bodies just like it needs to you know all these negative emotions they all kind of you know they can i mean whether we’re giving a space for them or not they need to come out some way right so especially people that have physical conditions you know like you all the people that i work with i i stress that it’s even more so important and myself you know i it is more so important if we already have a physical condition or a medical condition that we you know somehow manage the stressors and you know negative emotions in our lives when they arise because our body is already kind of working somewhat double time um you know to manage and you know negative emotions build up or not given space can just impact that in a profound way there’s a lot of research around that as well in terms of the cascade of events with the you know neural chemicals that kind of run through our body so i hope to just meet people you know i hope to just provide a space where people feel that they can uh you know be real and really explore what they need to so then they can make the best decisions that they can you know for themselves whether it’s using the walker or not using the walker having the feeding tube or not having the feeding tube so a lot of my work in the clinic is around life choices all the choices we have to make yeah i invite you to check out mary’s website especially if you live anywhere near philadelphia she teaches a variety of classes i wish i could take thanks for listening i hope you’re able to take away something you heard in today’s podcast and apply it to your life take care of yourself and i i hope to see you online in our facebook group on youtube instagram or on the glass f4 website 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.online you

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

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

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

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

  • Self-Care Challenge Month 4: Emotion Regulation

    Sometimes I see Facebook posts from high school classmates reminiscing about the “good old days.” I did have some unbridled fun back then but I far prefer my adulthood. Even with a chronic health condition. Back in high school and college my emotions ran the intensity gamut from I’m on top of the world to If I only had a gun, I’d end it now! And that could be within the same hour. It was exhausting.

    I knew nothing about regulating my emotions. I felt…deeply….and often. Anger was no stranger to me. Anger easily led to sadness which could take hold of me for awhile. I was depressed intermittently throughout both high school and college. I tried anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medications to help regulate my moods. It offered some relief but the side effects were annoying.

    Eventually I developed tools to help manage my emotions. I don’t mean I got rid of them, I just felt them a little less intensely and I was able to achieve a sense of balance more easily.

    So how does one begin to regulate their emotions?

    I think the first step

    is an awareness…developing a mindful attitude about an emotion. Realize what that emotion is and how your behavior has changed. You are not that anger, sadness, or ecstasy. Or at least that’s not all of you. Try to step back and see it. Examine what has led you to that feeling. Realize that this feeling is temporary and that you will experience this and other emotions again.

    As I developed a more refined self-care regimen with my diet and exercise, I realized that not only was my physical health impacted, but so was my emotional health. What we feed our bodies also affects our emotional selves. I’ll explore these connections in our Facebook group during the month of September.

    To help you get a perspective on your emotions, use the Health Storylines app to monitor your daily moods, food intake, and physical activity. Be diligent for a couple of weeks and then download a report to see if you detect any patterns. Remember to track any medications you take as well.

    I am definitely not an expert on this topic but over the years, and a steady practice of yoga and mindfulness, I have become more resourceful in regulating my emotions. I look forward to hearing about your experiences.

  • Multiple Sclerosis & Mindfulness Meditation

    Multiple Sclerosis & Mindfulness Meditation

    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.

    Walker was first introduced to a mindfulness practice when reading Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life by Jon Kabat-Zinn. Walker is featured in Jo Marchant’s 2016 best-selling book, Cure: a journey into the science of mind over body.

    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…

  • Author Toni Bernhard talks about her books, Buddha, pain, mindfulness, breast cancer, and compassion

    Author Toni Bernhard talks about her books, Buddha, pain, mindfulness, breast cancer, and compassion

    Author Toni Bernhard was a law professor for 22 years at UC-Davis until she had to retire due to a viral infection which evolved into a chronic debilitating illness. In this episode Toni talks about her Buddhist practice, mindfulness and compassion and how they’ve helped her cope with chronic pain and breast cancer. And, of course, how she came to write three books — How to Be Sick: A Buddhist-Inspired Guide for the Chronically Ill and Their Caregivers, How to Wake Up: A Buddhist-Inspired Guide to Navigating Joy and Sorrow, and How to Live Well with Chronic Pain and Illness: A Mindful Guide.

    Check out another podcast episode with Toni talks about gratitude as it relates to the Four Sublimes States of Buddhism. 

    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

    hello and welcome to this podcast if this is your first time listening and you enjoy this episode i hope you’ll check out the first 21 podcast episodes or the ones that interest you the best way to gauge what’s discussed in each podcast is by the title as well as the tag words that appear to the left of the podcast notes and you’ll only find the podcast notes and tags on the website glass half full dot online the tags for the previous episode were goals hope multiple sclerosis myotonic dystrophy and parkinson’s disease now those tags and the title don’t resonate with you you might still want to try listening to the episode i just wanted to give a plug to these other episodes i’m quite fond of them so let’s chat about this episode several years ago i found the book how to be sick i can’t remember how i found it if i’d read a review or was just intrigued by the title but i’m glad i found it although the author tony bernhard didn’t have a similar diagnosis as mine i still found so much of what she spoke or rather wrote about to relate to i’m recommending the book to people in my support group and even had it featured at one of the annual conferences for my community of adults with neuromuscular disease and then last year i started this podcast as you may realize i’ve interviewed a lot of people i’ve known people with chronic health conditions and people who work with a healing modality if i stick to people i know well my podcast days will be numbered so i knew i had to reach further so i started trying my best to contact authors and others who have inspired and taught me tony bernhard was one of the first people to respond quite openly to my inquiry not everyone i’ve tried to contact responds unfortunately before tony and i spoke though i wanted to make sure i’d read her most recent book how to live well with chronic pain and illness soon after i read the book we spoke via skype in december unfortunately when we spoke um i had a cold so i sounded a little froggy the good news is i’m feeling a lot better but my voice lives on and apparently there are no audio filters that can zap out a cold i hope you enjoy our conversation so my first question was really i wanted to ask you how you would characterize the three books that you’ve written how to be sick is the first book and it’s the first and the third books address chronic illness although i have to tell you that many people have read how to be sick who are perfectly healthy and have found it very helpful and i think the reason is the difference in the organization how to be sick is organized around practices and a kind of philosophy of life to help people with coping with chronic pain and chronic illness and so because the prac but the practices are helpful to anybody and so a lot of people love that book even though they don’t have health issues the third book which is also which is how to live well with chronic pain and chronic illness is organized differently it’s organized around the various problems that people encounter and how to best deal with them um and so there are chapters on isil isolation and loneliness there are chapters on how to deal with people who don’t understand who don’t believe that you’re disabled or sick or who don’t understand and aren’t supportive so and there’s a chapter on being young and being chronically ill so it’s it’s like 42 different challenges that people face so they’re similar in that they both discuss coping with chronic illness finding a measure of peace in your life but they’re just organized differently the middle book is actually i think of it as an introduction to buddhism book of all things i’ve been practicing buddhist for 25 years i don’t for me it’s a practical path not a religious one the buddha was a human being like like you and me and he came up with some very important or helpful insights into life and came up with a lot of practices and so uh how to wake up how to wake up a buddhist-inspired guide to navigating joy and sorrow really sets forth my understanding of his teachings and the reason i got the i i didn’t originally think of it as an introduction to buddhism but many buddhist teachers are using it that way so because it covers the basics now because i all of my books are written from personal experience and i always use stories from my life or stories people have told me to illustrate the points or the practices there’s a lot about chronic illness in how to wake up because i wrote it while i was ill so a lot of the examples in there um so in that sense all three books are about chronic pain and chronic illness how did your buddhist practice prepare you for living with a chronic illness and do you ever imagine how differently you would have handled everything if you didn’t have this 25 years of practice yeah well it’s interesting because at the time i got when i got sick i got a viral infection which turned into a chronic illness 15 years ago um i’d already been a practicing buddhist for 10 years that’s where i get my 25 years at first i i really turned away from all that i’d learned because i was so uh i was really traumatic to have my life turned upside down by this unexpected illness that forced me to retire early from from my job and made me pretty much housebound and some days bed bound buddha the buddhist teachings just i didn’t see the relevance and that’s how how to be sick came about because four to five years into the illness i began to use many of the buddha’s teachings to help me cope with what was happening and that is what eventually became how to be sick and uh you asked how his teachings have helped well i could talk for an hour ago just say a couple things one is that the buddha was very upfront about the human condition and that’s why sometimes people say oh that first noble truth is life is suffering what a pessimistic religion that is but all the buddha was doing was telling us the chapter and how to be sick that talks about this is called the buddha tells it like it is and what he does is to say you were born and this is actually all in the first noble truth this life is suffering is not the right translation he says you know you’re born and so you are subject to certain uh life events including uh illness and growing old and being separated from those you love either by distance or by death and so he was very oh and he also said getting not being a not getting what you want that’s where complaining comes in right or getting what you don’t want that certainly happened to me when i got sick and he said this is something that happens to everybody when i went back to his teachings that was the first thing that resonated so strongly for me was it’s as if somebody from 2500 years ago someone understood what i was going through and was saying well this is a part of being alive is that sometimes bodies get sick and actually i mean it happens to everybody just in different ways and this is how it’s happening to you there’s nothing wrong with you and that was the initial eye opener for me because i would have had been blaming myself for not recovering and this is a very common thing i’ve discovered with people who write to me about my books they’re they feel released by my writing from self-blame they’ve been directing it themselves over these circumstances that they don’t control and then happen to everybody and it’s what i had been doing the first years of my illness until that light bulb went on and i realized that this was just a normal part of life and this is how it happened to me and i needed to learn to live gracefully and purposefully with it or i was going to add another i was going to add a layer of mental suffering to the physical suffering that i experience every day so that was the initial insight well that brings up the question about the three components of physical discomfort could you just elaborate on that i found it very insightful look at pain with this sort of categorization or or segmenting i do find it i i find it helpful myself in dealing with pain i there’s two different ways i segment it and the first is what you’re referring to these three components of physical discomfort and what is interesting is that two of the three are mental the discomforts in the body so of course the first is the unpleasant sensation in the body itself whether it’s pain or aching or fatigue and the second is our emotional reaction for that physical discomfort which is often frustration anger it could be fear irritation self blame that kind of thing and the third so there’s that initial emotional reaction and that that’s kind of the buddha’s uh getting what you don’t want and so you react against it and the third are the stories that we start to spin that are related to the physical discomfort and this emotional reaction and so if i have a day where i’m experiencing a lot of pain the stories that it’s one thing to just be able to say i’m experiencing pain it’s unpleasant what can i do to make this day as manageable as possible but instead what we tend to do is start spinning stories and that’s where the real mental suffering resides like this pain will never go away i’ll never have another pain-free day i’ll never be able to do anything useful in life because i’m always in pain those stories that we spend and actually there’s buddhist teachers and often say the suffering is in the stories and i certainly find that to be true in my life so those are the three components of physical pain and sometimes uh i don’t put this in the book because i i’m really not writing uh this this last book is a buddhist book it’s just that i’m so influenced by buddhism of course but in buddhism that’s known as the second arrow the first arrow is you’re experiencing physical discomfort or particularly pain is what we’re talking about here that’s the first arrow the second arrow is that is the mental overlay the second and third components that reactive mind that reacts in anger or frustration instead of being able to say oh yes pain is present pain is present and not react to it because it’s those reactions that set off the stories so number two and three are we often called the second arrow the unnecessary arrow now having said that i don’t put me on a pedestal i i’m uh you know i have to work with this every day

    it’s not that easy uh simply be mindful of physical sensation and not start spinning the stories but with practice you get better at it and you’re able to say well this is what’s going on right now let me not make more let me not start predicting a future which may not eat which is unlikely to come you know most of our predictions about the future don’t spin out the way we’ve predicted them it takes practice it’s really a mindfulness practice in the sense of becoming aware you know when people talk about mindfulness there’s usually an emphasis on what’s outside of ourself be mindful of the of the trees and the sound of the birds and i’m kind of changing subjects here but for me the the true value of mindfulness is to become aware of what’s going on in my mind that’s where the mental suffering is that’s where that the the uh that’s where i make things worse for myself it’s interesting for me to see the language for this because i’ve always felt that i what i try to do when i have pain i know it’s exacerbated by the anxiety that i experience about it and that anxiety could be you know i could use the words you use about separating it into you know the emotional reaction and then the the fear and everything that i’m predicting this is my future a new baseline etc and when oh i know that one right the baseline yeah yeah so it’s it’s it’s trying to really become for me my experience is just become trying to really identify okay this is the anxiety if i can control the anxiety i will still have the pain but it won’t be exacerbated because that’s where it becomes kind of unbearable for me yeah and you know that and that’s exactly what i’m talking about doing leslie and it’s another reason it’s helpful is that um that that kind of emotional reaction can actually exhaust exacerbate the physical symptoms because we tighten muscles sometimes we tighten muscles around the point of pain and so then we’ve got secondary pain from that or so you know emotions are felt in the body so it’s not i’m not the the separation body mind is artificial to some extent it’s certainly helpful to talk to be able to distinguish them in that way but it’s also true that when we learn to recognize how we’re react or how our emotional reactions are making things worse for us that also helps us relax our bodies and so that can help with pain too the afterwards certainly caught me by surprise and it was you know of course sorry to to read about your diagnosis and i wondered if this experience going through i guess different treatment and such and having an acute illness has given you a different perspective and will you be writing a book about it well here’s what i’m doing i’m not right yeah you mentioned the afterward i should explain that it was two years ago actually almost exactly that i was diagnosed i had a lump removed from my breast and and went underwent treatment and um the prognosis is good but i had just finished polishing the manuscript with my editor uh for the book that you just read when i got this diagnosis and i actually called her up and said well we can’t publish this book it doesn’t it’s not truthful anymore because now i have breast cancer to throw it out and start over and she’s we talked about different options and what we decided was to just include an afterward that talks about it’s just three pages that explains what happens and says a few other things about it so a few months ago my publisher asked if i would do a new edition of my first book how to be sick which has was published six years ago i jumped at the opportunity because what i’m doing is revising and expanding it in several ways one is to include mental illness because i’ve had a lot of people write to me about how my books have helped with that even though i didn’t set out to address that and another thing is that i’m able to add some practices and some other ideas and in that i do talk about when i give examples or explain how these things have worked for me i talk about the breast cancer and the worries and the fears and the dealing with side effects of medication and all that kind of thing so i am writing about it and it will show up in that book in two years because the publication date is fall 2018. that it takes a while from the inception to actually get all to do all the things involved in getting a book published which i knew nothing about before i entered into that stream and i have written i wrote one piece about it for psychology today i will be writing about it actually breast cancer is best thought of as a chronic illness because it’s i didn’t realize this but it’s ongoing in the sense that after you initial treatment then there are medications to try to prevent recurrence and those medications have side effects that can lead person to have to weigh quality of life against how much they do a statistical analysis for you that tells you if you take this pill it will reduce the risk of recurrence a certain percentage and there are women who decide to go off the pills because uh they have diminished their quality of life to the extent that they’d rather take the risk and that’s an individual decision hopefully you have an oncologist who is supportive of discussing that with you and weighing the pros and cons some of them just want you to take the meds

    but hopefully you have someone who understands how difficult it can be so it’s it’s been two years i’m still a breast cancer patient i just saw my doctor uh last week actually so the only thing that i would that i wish we had time to talk about are some of the practices that are that can that come under a heading of that are called the sublime states in buddhism wishing others well compassion feeling joy for others when they’re happy and equanimity those are the four sublime states and i spend every one of my books emphasizes them because when i started my little buddhist wrap by saying the buddha tells it like it is and some people find that depressing well the good news is that we can overcome so much of our fears and frustrations through these positive practices cultivating friendliness towards others and toward ourselves compassion which means reaching out to others and to yourself when you’re suffering being being kind to yourself people write to me about my books who people who are chronically ill the most common thing they say if i were to keep track i just know from reading the emails is that until they read my books it never occurred to them to treat themselves with compassion to be kind to themselves they thought they didn’t deserve it well if you don’t deserve i mean if you’re not going to be kind to yourself who is i there’s in my view there’s never a good reason not to treat yourself kindly it doesn’t mean you can’t learn from mistakes but to allow yourself to live in a state of self-judgment self-blame it just makes a difficult life worse and so it’s really important to cultivate compassion and kindness an equanimity which refers to equanimity as a sta a balanced state of mind in which you accept that life will be a mixture of joys and sorrows and successes and disappointments and being able to accept that with grace whether it’s the results of an election how you feel this particular day to be able to say oh i really feel awful today well okay that’s how i feel today sometimes some days people feel awful and to be able to accept that without bitterness and also just with some historical perspective that life has always been this way for everybody a mixture of joys and sorrows so that’s kind of a short version of equanimity so that that’s the only thing we didn’t talk about or some of these positive mind states that that are helpful to cultivate and i write about them in all of my books well actually it’s funny i did have a question about the the three i don’t know attitudes that you cultivate and and equanimity was the one that was uh most interesting because well one it’s not a word that i mean i’ve heard the word but i wasn’t i’ve never used it so it was um it was very interesting to read about and i was going to ask you that so i’m glad you brought it up good good yeah well that’s just the translation of a pali term pali being the language the buddha spoke the term is upeka and it’s been translated into english as equanimity which is given what how it is described it’s a good translation if you look equanimity up in the dictionary you’ll find it says you know basically a balanced state of mind being able to ride lives life’s ups and downs without being tossed about and it’s also something that is a something you have to work on every day i mean if i were if i were equanimous 100 of the time oh i’d consider myself enlightened that would be good enough for me well we could just keep trying yes yes try or there’s a zen teacher who has the expression keep a try mind i love that and i just love that well thank you so much tony it’s been a pleasure to to speak with you and i really appreciate the two books i’ve read and i will read your other one good good yeah i think you’ll enjoy the other one it’s an easy read because that i don’t know turns out that’s the way i write a very conversational style so i i’m glad you’re you’ll have a look at it

    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 dot online.online