Soulful Healing

Hi everyone!  I’m so glad to be back here at my computer, typing away on this blog.  I hadn’t intended to take two weeks off from blogging, but my health had other plans.  I’ve been fighting off a couple of bugs and needed time to rest and recuperate.  When I wasn’t sleeping or otherwise resting in the past two weeks, I spent a good amount of time with my plants.  Nurturing the growth of plants and flowers is a wonderful way to develop our own healthy habits.  Since I’m based in Los Angeles, many of my mindfulness and healing suggestions are centered around the challenges of urban living.

I grew up in a small town, where there is plenty of land and space and trees and other green stuff.  My parents still have an extensive garden with seasonal vegetables, fresh herbs, and shockingly colorful flowers.  So I grew up appreciating green spaces and that sticks with me today, even in the urban landscape around me (just last night, I saw wild clover growing around a tree near a favorite restaurant and got excited!).  Having a lush garden can be difficult in the high density housing most of us in urban places occupy.  Unless, that is, you happen to be lucky to have a house with a good chunk of land (and that’s hard to come by even in this low real estate market).

Regardless of how much land surrounds your current residence, you can still keep a few plants around to help lift your mood.  I have several potted plants, some for indoors and others for outdoors, including a small herb garden.  If you enjoy cooking, fresh herbs are really the bee’s knees.  They taste more vibrant than the dried kind you’ll find at the grocery stores and, with the right amounts of water & love &  sunshine, they are endlessly renewable.  You can stop spending $3 each for a plastic box with two sprigs of thyme in it, and either buy a few herb plants or grow your own from seed.  And think of how great it will be next time you need parsley to flavor a dish and don’t have to buy a huge bunch of it, most of which will go to waste.  Growing your own herbs is more affordable, better for your taste buds, and will add that spark of new life to your kitchen or patio.

If fresh herbs aren’t your thing and the idea of growing things is intimidating, you might try getting some succulent plants (think cactus) that don’t need a lot of water or hardy, tropical plants that are hard to kill even if you ignore them for weeks.  Go to your favorite nursery (not the baby’s room…  the place where they grow and sell green things) and ask what kinds of plants might be good for your lifestyle.  There are also lots of “kits” these days where you can get a pot, soil, starter plant, and instructions all in one.  There are also ingenious indoor gardening set-ups that can have you growing even things like tomatoes right in your own kitchen.

Lastly, if you want to hone your gardening skills but don’t have the space for it, you might check out a local community garden.  These gardens that are tended to by any group of people are a great way to develop new friendships, preserve open space in increasingly urban communities, and be able to grow your own food even when you live in a small apartment.  Community gardens also help educate children about where food really comes from and they often help low-income communities and food banks improve access to fresh, healthy, affordable fruits and vegetables.  To learn more about community gardens in your area, check out the following resources:
– Los Angeles Community Garden Council
— American Community Gardening Association
— Capital District Community Gardens (upstate New York)
— GardenWeb

Here’s to your health and wellness!  Happy gardening!

Hi all!  What’s that?  You’re surprised I’m posting a third blog this week?  I know, me too!  This one, though, is a guest blog for the Serenity Week over at Everyday Bliss, by Kathy Sprinkle.  Be sure to check out her other posts on the 13 virtues of Bliss.  Happy Friday!

About three weeks ago, I injured my ankle playing tennis.  I knew well enough to use the combination of rest, ice, and elevation to decrease the swelling and allow it to heal.  I even got myself a neoprene brace to help keep my ankle stable.  But I jumped the gun a little and after a bit more than two weeks post-injury, I started walking around normally on my ankle.  It promptly swelled back up again and started hurting.  I went to the doctor just to make sure I hadn’t really messed it up.  There I received confirmation that I had not given my ankle enough time to fully heal.  Turns out that my ankle has a minor sprain and I would have done well to continue resting it.  Yet another reminder to slooooow doooowwwwwn…  It’s challenging to allow ourselves to be right where we are and love the present moment, so here is this week’s mindfulness tip to help you out:

1)  This takes the mindful walking concept a bit further.  When walking around this week, focus your attention on each step.
2)  Label each of your steps…  left… right… left… right… and make an effort to slow your pace
3)  Once you’ve settled into a slower rhythm, bring your attention to your breath
4)  Match your breath to your steps, at a rhythm that works for you, breathing in for an amount of steps that seems reasonable to you, then breathing out to the same number of steps
5)  Notice your thoughts and physical sensations as you practice this, remembering to release each observation without judgment

Wishing you a health-full week and plenty of time to rest!  Be well!

Ahhhh, multi-tasking…  The bane of the modern age.  Whether you work at home or a bustling office, you are no doubt frequently called upon to multi-task:  working on one project, the phone rings, someone asks you for something, you need an answer from someone else, you’re hungry and start eating while doing five other things.  No wonder so many of us have a hard time sitting still!  We have no idea what to do with ourselves unless our toes are tapping or keyboards are clacking.

I often hear friends and colleagues say that they “just have ADHD” and can’t do one thing at a time.  My guess is that most do not actually have ADHD (unless of course that has been properly diagnosed by a clinician), but are instead suffering from our cultural phenomenon of too much at once.  While multi-tasking seems to be a sensible solution to having a lot to get done, I propose a better way.  Doing many things at once means you have several incomplete tasks all going at the same time, so where in there is room to see any one thing to its full completion?

In your daily life this week, try the following:

1)  Select one task and choose to mindfully start & fully finish it.

2)  When your mind wanders to all your other tasks, keep bringing your attention back to the task at hand until you are finished with it.

3)  If someone interrupts you with a question or task, try gently explaining that you are working on something else and let them know when you expect to be available.  You may need to practice other mindfulness skills if the person in question is a demanding boss or hungry child or someone with a true emergency!

4)  Allow yourself to move on to the next task only when the previous one is done or you reach an impasse that cannot be quickly resolved (as with test taking, sometimes it’s better to skip something and come back to it when you’ve had time to think).

Enjoy the sense of accomplishment that comes with truly completing each item on your to-do list this week!

I got pulled over by a police officer on Monday for engaging in a classic SoCal activity…  The California Stop.   I was so caught up in my thoughts (about life, work, what I was going to have for lunch) that when I saw the flashing lights behind me, I had no idea why I was being pulled over.   I thought maybe I’d been driving too fast, but I was only going 32 in a 35 zone.   Not too slow, not too fast.  This left me completely confused.  Since I haven’t been pulled over since probably 1996, it was pretty nerve-racking.  Heart pounding.  Hands shaking.  Shallow breathing.  Because we were on a narrow road, the officer asked me over his loudspeaker to make the nearest right turn.   More heart pounding.   Once we were safely pulled over, the officer approached and just voluntarily told me what he’d pulled me over for.   I’m glad he didn’t ask.   I would’ve failed that quiz.

I was genuinely shocked when the officer explained.  Again, I was so consumed in my own internal world that I couldn’t even remember having traveled through the stop sign.  Does that ever happen to you?  Somehow you get on auto-pilot and can’t remember several minutes of drive time.  It’s more than a little concerning when you realize that we’re not paying attention as we hurl our bodies forward at high speeds in metal contraptions.  It’s a recipe for disaster.  And I won’t even get into the phenomena of cell phone talking & texting while driving.

So now I have a ticket (my first one EVER) that I have to pay.  I won’t fight it because I know I wasn’t paying attention and I’m sure the officer is correct in his observation of my rolling stop.  Even though I’m normally a careful driver, I’ve rolled through many a stop sign in my life.  Getting a ticket for this was only a matter of time.   Needless to say, this experience was a great reminder for me to slow down and pay attention.  It is so easy to get distracted by all the tasks on our to-do lists, that we just put ourselves on auto-pilot, whether while driving or working or interacting with others.  Since Monday, I’ve rededicated myself to mindful driving.  It’s a challenge, this breathing and planning ahead and making full, complete stops at all the stop signs.

Really, that’s all mindfulness is.  Slowing down.  Attending to our surroundings.  Breathing.  Noticing.  Actively choosing what to do next.  The next time you find yourself about to roll through a stop sign or do seven things at once or interrupt someone because you weren’t really listening in the first place, I invite you to slow down and bring some careful attention to your choices.  Take a moment to pause and breathe, bringing your full consciousness to your next action.  I know it’s a challenge and that just when you think you’re doing well, something happens to remind you of the importance of really paying attention. But who are we if we allow our auto-pilot to make all our decisions for us?