Read our article entitled Hope Amidst the Rubble: How a non-profit is working to make life better in Haiti, two years after a devastating earthquake.

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Maria and her children waited in line with 400 others for our clinic gate to open at 8 AM. Our 5 doctors and 2 nurses were each waiting with their interpreter at 7 little tables in the one room church.

Maria was quiet and looked very sad. Her unhappy marriage was causing serious sleep problems. Medication made her feel bad and didn’t help. Her 7-year old daughter had warts on her hands and her 4-year old son was grinding his teeth during sleep.

This was my first mission trip. I had been told that our main service would be touching and loving our patients since our medication supply was insufficient to meet the needs of the people in this impoverished community. Stress-related conditions are common among these farm workers raising bananas, cocoa and other tropical foods. Maria and her children had symptoms often associated with stress.

I encouraged Maria to return to her beloved jogging for exercise and explained that her sleep might improve. But I also offered her another form of movement to help manage stress. To the amazement of my team members and the other patients, Maria and I stood up and practiced ‘shaking meditation’ together. “Relaxing the jaw, relaxing the shoulders, feeling the sensations in the body from head to toe”. Maria smiled. Her children smiled. Everyone smiled.

Maria agreed she could find 15 minutes of personal time each day to do 3 things- 1) ‘shake’ for 5 minutes (longer if she had time), 2) simply sit and watch her breathing for 5 minutes, and 3) write down her feelings and emotions for 5 minutes. I also suggested she ‘shake’ every day with her children, but not as a substitute for her own shaking for herself.

Then using the power of suggestion, and with my most skillful and professional demeanor, I applied hand sanitizer to her daughter’s warts with a Q tip, covered them with a bandaid and advised her to repeat this procedure each day for 2 weeks.

A health professional’s portable toolkit of mind body skills is important for our own personal self care as well as our work with patients and clients, at home and abroad.

I will call soon to assess the impact of touching, loving and shaking in Ecuador.

The other evening, I made myself a cup of delicious raw tomato soup in about 30 seconds. To replicate this soup, it will be necessary to have on hand:

One huge, truly ripe, exquisitely delicious, organic tomato (I used a sunshine yellow heirloom.)
A splash of very good, extra virgin olive oil
A thumb-sized piece of fresh ginger root

Woosh up in your blender*. Done. And infinitely better than expected! A testament to simplicity, and the exceptional results that can occur when you use superb quality ingredients.

What’s your easy masterpiece?

*I confess, mine is a Vitamix. Perhaps there are others as good, but I haven’t met them yet.

Around two weeks before the start of any school vacation, the Counseling office experiences a cyclical peak of drop-in students. An influx of mostly third graders appear at my door with tears streaming down their cheeks, runny noses, and words that are difficult to decipher between hiccup-like breaths and broken syllables.  They are usually accompanied by a friend who guarantees their safe passage to my office then departs, with the I’ve-been-there-too look and a silent nod saying it’s going to be okay.

Larry hurt my feelings at recess. My dad left on a business trip this morning and I really miss him. Meagan won’t play with me and I’m afraid that she doesn’t want to be my friend anymore.

Infinite variations of feeling hurt by something that someone else says or does, missing a loved one, communicating in friendships and relationships – are situations that we start to learn to navigate as children. But, when we are tired, run-down, over-stimulated, overscheduled or depleted, it is much harder to stand on firm ground and approach ourselves, as well as others, from a place of strength.

So, what do you do with a third grader in this vulnerable situation?  We practice soft belly breathing, which slows down and relaxes the body and the mind. We draw. We infuse a piece of paper with shapes, images, and colors so that the paper can hold all of our worries. We make a list of things that we can do to nourish ourselves– e.g., hug my mom, read in my bed under the covers, talk to a friend, etc.  And, we always find at least one thing that we are doing well or that we like about ourselves or our life: I run fast. I like the color of my eyes. I am a good friend.  We put our self-care plan, with its various tools, in place and carry on.

During the more intense moments in life, remember to channel your inner third grader. Cry. Ask for support. Breathe. Color. Write. Be gentle. Appreciate.  Create a plan. As the cycle ebbs and flows, you’ll do fabulously.

Both my home & office laptops developed crippling problems within one week. Well, hello, Universe!

My office computer recovered. But I found myself in an Apple store, after a discouraging meeting with the tech at the Genius Bar, having a serious discussion with a young saleswoman about purchasing a new mac. I happened to mention that I had started experimenting with unplugging for long stretches of time– leaving my cell phone behind, limiting my computer time… She stopped what she was doing and stared at me, stunned. “I could never do that!” she said earnestly– her eyes repeatedly returning to mine, questioning, fascinated.

As a longstanding educator and researcher in the field of aging, I have seen a dramatic transformation from a focus on “what’s wrong” as we grow older to “what’s possible”!  I see this not only in my professional life but in connections with amazing elders such as 91 year- old Erica Leon, a Holocaust survivor who emigrated to Los Angeles from Hungary in her 70s and started painting when she re-connected with her long-lost fiancee from before WWII who was an art instructor!  Now arthritis inhibits her ability to paint, but not to write poetry or to Skype her family daily in Hungary.

Erica’s positive perspective on life shines in her life story written at age 80:

You just have to discover the beauty and love in life. There is no sunshine, without shade. And no shade without sunshine. Everything is gray when we don’t have both of them.

We cannot enjoy constant happiness. We’re only aware of the difference when we compare it with our troubled times. The shell has to suffer to produce the pearl – and so it is with our soul. Suffering makes it valuable.

Many times what seems to be bad – turns out to be for our benefit. We just have to wait and see.

Another inspirational elder and progenitor of Conscious Aging is Ram Dass, author of Be Here Now, Still Here, and Be Love Now.  In July, 2011 interview, he shared about the importance of seeing people as “souls” rather than “roles” –especially important when illness strikes and we may depend on others for assistance.  I recently discussed with him that being cared for and providing care creates a partnership, and that gratitude for being helped and gratitude for having the opportunity to serve is uplifting to all involved.  So aging is not just about what happens to our bodies but how we embrace the opportunity to grow, to live with “what is”, and to appreciate the gift of life and the inevitability of death.

To learn more about Conscious Aging and the related movement of Positive Aging, click here.

To paraphrase a CMBM alum, “When I heard The Center for Mind-Body Medicine would be offering a seminar called ‘Mind, Mood & Food’ at Kripalu, I felt like the heavens were bringing all my favorite things together.” The “trifecta”, as I like to call it, was a beautiful blend of relevant material taught by engaging faculty in a setting where what was being taught could be practiced. Imagine learning about foods that support brain health and then going to Kripalu’s dining hall where those foods are waiting for you on an abundant buffet. Picture completing a moving meditation with Jim Gordon and then going to Yoga Dance during a seminar break. Kathie Swift spoke about the benefits of being in nature for brain health, and I’m convinced Mother Nature was a seminar participant as the weather was perfect for walks to the lake. It was seventy degrees in mid-March in the Berkshires!

Mark Pettus, Jay Lomard and Chuck Parker offered a wealth of knowledge and fantastic synergy as they fed off each other’s energy and complemented each other’s work.  A big round of applause goes to the hard-working staff at Kripalu. They were wonderful to work with and jumped right in to run the program like a well-oiled machine. Mind, Mood & Food at Kripalu is definitely worth a repeat!

What nourishes you?

My list includes nature walks, cooking with my sons,  laughing with friends & colleagues, meditation, a good book, our farm market, summer feasts, the National Gallery of Art, the ocean….

Lots of big reports have been coming across our screens lately, and here are several that might interest you:

- Integrative Medicine in America: How Integrative Medicine Is Being Practiced in Clinical Centers Across the United States

 Sponsored by The Bravewell Collaborative, the report  ”…provides current data on the patient populations and health conditions most commonly treated with integrative strategies.

In a survey of 29 U.S. integrative medicine centers, 75 percent reported success using integrative practices to treat chronic pain and more than half reported positive results for gastrointestinal conditions, depression and anxiety, cancer and chronic stress.

‘With chronic health issues costing the U.S. economy more than $1 trillion a year, it’s essential to find the most effective ways to treat and prevent the most prevalent conditions,” said Donald Abrams, MD, co-author of the report and professor of clinical medicine at the University of California San Francisco. “This report demonstrates how an integrative approach is being used to improve patient outcomes.’ “

To obtain downloads of the report, an executive summary, and a presentation, click here.

- Annual report to the nation on the status of cancer, 1975–2008, featuring cancers associated with excess weight and lack of sufficient physical activity

The report is co–authored by researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries, the National Cancer Institute, and the American Cancer Society. It appears online in the journal CANCER, and will appear in print in the May issue.

The report specifically finds continuing declines in cancer death rates since the early 1990s, but offers a warning on the effects of excess weight and lack of physical activity on cancer risk.

For report highlights, visit the CDC website here.
For a US News & World Report Health article, click here.

Yesterday, I had an incredibly powerful yoga class. I spent the entire class practically wtih my eyes closed. It wasn’t intentional at first but then had great meaning for me. We started with a little flow and then stopped with eyes closed to “set an intention” as my teacher says. I closed my eyes and had some tears come out. I decided on this early early morning (I do yoga at 6 AM), I was going to search inward for the light, for the joy. That I could not attach to finding that in the stressful situations before me. That no matter how Zubin does on the steroids or if and when he deteriorates to a wheelchair, that no matter how he does in school or if we feel we get what we need there, that joy is not something I can wait for from these things. I have to search inward and get joy from within. And so I closed my eyes and set my intention, to search for the light and peace within.

And so that is how I did my yoga yesterday morning. In darkness. But it was so peaceful. When thoughts came to trouble me, I was right there with them instead of looking at them from the outside. When emotions bubbled up, I felt closer to them in awareness. I lost my balance more often with my eyes closed but it was powerful to find my balance only from within and not from focusing on any external landmark. And mostly, it was so quiet. There were little distractions, not distractions of others doing poses differently than myself, of my teacher walking around, of watching my own body in a pose. It was just quiet and dark….But filled with so much light and peace…

Editor’s note: This post was originally published Oct. 27, 2011 in Dr. Sethi’s Mindful Mothering blog. She is the mother of three, and her middle child, Zubin, has Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, a fatal diagnosis. In her blog she finds “a place to release the joys, sadness, and triumphs that I have found through mothering.”  All of us at the Center wish her a very happy birthday today!