Cara Bradley hosts a weekly podcast series called On The Verge, short blasts of advice and essential practices and strategies to shift from “crazy busy” to living with more clarity and vitality.
Are you one of the millions that seek mindfulness practices to feel calmer and more at ease? Do you hope meditation will settle your thinking mind? In this episode Cara explains how breath training calms your nervous system and ultimately works to settle a busy mind.
Cara explains that when your body feels sluggish, your mind feels sluggish. When your body feel tense, there’s a good chance your mind will feel tense too. On the other hand, a calm body often reveals a calm mind. In other words, the state of your body reflects the state of your mind.
Welcome to On The Verge with Cara Bradley, weekly blasts of no-hype advice and essential practices to settle down, show up, and shift from crazy-busy to high-definition, high-voltage living.
I talk to a lot of people about meditation—a lot. A lot of people tell me “I’ve tried it, I know I should do it; I can’t stop my mind from thinking. I’ve got such a busy mind. What can I do? How can I do it? I can’t find the time.”
I’ve taken this all and really digested it because I feel like this mindfulness trend, this wave where everyone is now speaking about mindfulness practice, about the need to meditate, about the benefits of meditation—But I feel like most people don’t understand why. Why do I actually want to meditate. Why would I want to sit down for 15, 20, 30 minutes and follow my breath—what is that doing? I might feel a little better afterward, but really, why? And so I hope to answer some of those questions for you today. We’re also going to practice.
Why Do People Want to Meditate?
Why do we want to meditate, what does it do for us, what’s really happening, what is the purpose! Here it goes. What we’re really trying to do is to stabilize—to stabilize our nervous system. So what happens when we sit down for a few moments when we take a few deep breaths, as we’re going to do later on, is that we start to stabilize or balance our autonomic nervous system. Now you may remember some about your nervous system from biology in high school. Probably not. Some of you may be technical experts on the nervous system but I’m just going to give it to you really simply. We have these responses in our body. We’re either on heightened alert, stressed, kind of perched, right at the edge of our chair, ready for the next shoe to drop… or we’re relaxed, so relaxed that we’re sleepy, or asleep. But when we’re balanced, when those two responses are balanced, we feel clear and energized.
When we are simply humming along, sometimes heightened, sometimes relaxed, but really humming along right down the center, the midline, we feel awake and at ease. And that truly is the meaning of being mindful. Being alert to what’s happening but at ease in the moment.
But because of our conditioning in our society, we’re rarely there. We’re most of the time perched, stressed, heightened, right at the edge of our seat waiting for that next news alert, waiting for the next post that pisses you off on social media, waiting for the next confrontation. So we stay heightened, we stay stressed. We stay in this heightened state of alertness and this is very unhealthy as we all know. The stress response, a chronically stressed body, is incredibly unhealthy on all dimensions and at all levels of our system: physiologically, mentally, and emotionally. So why we meditate, why would we want to practice mindfulness meditation or some other form, is truly to stabilize and settle your nervous system, to bring your body into a more balanced state of being.
So when we balance our breathing—and the breathing is really the best gateway for doing this—balancing your breath is the entry point for settling your nervous system and ultimately calming your mind. So stabilizing our nervous system through breath, through rhythm, through movement as we teach at Verge Body Mind, helps you to come into a more stable and settled state of being. When you’re settled and stable, your mind will naturally calm down. Our mind produces thoughts, our brains produce thoughts, our nervous system has the synapses that are constantly firing such as seeing, hearing, smelling, feeling, tasting, thinking—it’s all the same stuff. Our nervous system produces these responses to our environment and produces these synapses, these little soap bubbles of experience that sometimes comes as a smell, and sometimes comes as a sight, sometimes comes as a thought. When our nervous system is agitated, naturally those synapses, those experiences are going to be agitated. When our body is agitated, our minds will be agitated. Our thinking will be more frenzied and frazzled. When our bodies are calm, when our nervous system is balanced, those neurosynapses will be more steady or be calmer, more settled.
Meditation simply means to become familiar with your state of being in this moment.
So we meditate and we can meditate, FYI, by walking in rhythm, by swimming, by gardening, by sitting down, and following your breath. Meditation simply means to become familiar with your state of being in this moment.
The Benefit of a Seated Meditation Practice
So I want to talk to you today about why you would want to do a seated meditation practice because I know many of you have tried. I talked to a lot of people who desperately want to feel better, who desperately want to slow down their busy mind so much to the point that they’ll do anything to feel more at ease and more peaceful in their everyday life. By practicing a seated meditation practice, even for five minutes as we’re going to do today, you can start to stabilize your nervous system, helping you to settle your mind and quiet the chatter.
You know how to settle your body if your heart is racing really fast. So, say something happens out of the blue: Somebody cuts you off on the highway in a way that just startles you and sends you into this stress mode where your body is on heightened alert. You know what to do, you know how to settle yourself. You calm yourself by deepening your breath. You just do it; we all do it. Babies know how to settle themselves. Children know how to go into a child’s pose and settle themselves. We instinctively know how to settle our bodies and our minds but we’ve just become so conditioned to being in this heightened state of alertness and stress that we’ve forgotten. So a seated meditation practice, it’s like lifting the heavy weights at the gym. The walk is amazing, the walk in the woods, the yoga practice, incredible, but sometimes just sitting down and following and balancing your breath for a few minutes it stabilizes you directly, immediately, and profoundly.
We instinctively know how to settle our bodies and our minds but we’ve just become so conditioned to being in this heightened state of alertness and stress that we’ve forgotten.
Today, I want to just give you a little bit more fuel, a little bit more understanding as to why you want to take those five, 10, 15, 20 minutes every day to train your brain in how to be in this alert and easy way of living more often. Even in challenging situations you can learn to access this alert, easy way of being we call “the mindful state of being” where everything you do you do better, by the way. So there’s a reason for wanting to be there because not only do your physical systems hum, your hormones balance, your body feels more at ease and brighter, but your mind is clearer. The chatter is less frenzied so that you can get underneath all those repetitive thoughts and start to connect with the wisdom that’s emerging in every single second of your life.
So we want to tune ourselves, tone ourselves, train ourselves to hum in this balanced way so that we can access that intelligence that’s underneath the mental chatter that’s underneath the busyness.
So first we need to settle the muddy waters. And that’s what a seated practice—and other practices—but the seated practice can do for you. It’s why you’d want to get up in the morning and sit down for five or 10 minutes: to stabilize your nervous system, to quiet the chatter, to settle your mind, to prepare you for an amazing day of insight, creativity, and connection.
Practice: 5 Breaths of Mindfulness
We’re going to try a very simple practice. It’s a simple seated practice, in which we’re following our breath, counting our breath, and then pausing after five breaths to sense what it feels like to be stable, to be settled, to be available for that “source intelligence,” for that deep wisdom, for the direct experience to emerge.
Begin in a seated position.Place your feet to the floor. Place your hands on your knees and sit upright in a relaxed but alert way.
For a moment, notice your body: Notice your feet on the floor, your seat on the chair, your hands on your thighs, perhaps your upper back leaning against the chair. Notice your head in space as it finds its way to alignment on top of your shoulders and your spine. Just notice your body in space, in this moment: the experience of being in your body.
Now, notice any sensations that may be arising: Notice tingling, coolness, heat, throbbing, pulsing. Coming into your body in this way brings you more into contact with the present moment; as we drop from thinking to being, we shift into a more experiential state. We’re actually living in the moment.
Shift your attention to your breath, to your experience of breathing. What does it feel like to be breathing right now?
We’re going to start counting our breath. We’ll take five breaths. By counting our breaths, it holds your mind in your breath in this moment. So for the counting, open your eyes just halfway. Find a spot on the floor in front of you. Fixing your gaze helps you to stabilize when your eyes flitter about, your mind is flittering about. So just by lightly setting your gaze at one spot, it can help anchor your mind to this moment.
We’ll begin by counting five breaths. I’ll take you along for the first round and then I’ll leave you alone for the next few rounds. So together: inhale, exhale, one. Inhale, exhale, two. Inhale, exhale, three. Inhale, exhale, four. Inhale exhale, five.
Pausing now, keep your eyes open and notice your body, notice your surroundings. Notice any sounds, sensations, smells, tastes, thoughts. Notice what it feels like to be you right now. Recognizing presence recognizing what it feels like to be alive in this moment below the chatter, beyond the thinking; you and you alone in this moment.
And now once again fix your gaze. And we’ll begin again counting five breaths. So do this on your own right now. Stay with it.
After your five breaths, once again notice—so glimpsing what it feels like to be right here in your body, in this moment, showing up fully for your experience. If a thought comes, let it come, let it go. If a smell comes, let it come, let it go. A sound? Same thing. We’re allowing life to move. Not trying to fixate or stop anything from happening yet experiencing the aliveness, the emerging aliveness, the emerging intelligence that’s arising in every single second of our lives. What does it feel like to be in your body, in this moment, right here, right now.
Repeat one more round of five breaths. Set your gaze, bring your attention back to your breath, and begin counting.
When you’re through with your five, release: release this seated position; just wiggle your arms, wiggle your toes, maybe move your spine about, lift your gaze, lift your chin and look around.
Notice your experience right now. Noticing how your body feels in this moment, how you feel, how your mind feels. Do you feel brighter, lighter, more at ease more alert? If you do, yes! Awesome. If you don’t, that’s OK, too. By settling and steadying our mind on just five breaths, we start to shift our nervous system from being in this alert or this rather perched, stressed, agitated, on-guard state to being more open and at ease and awake in the moment to everything that’s arising. As we start to settle the water, as we start to stabilize our minds, the chatter, we’re able to then discern and sense and experience a deeper level of knowing, a deeper source of information, a more natural emerging intelligence that’s arising constantly in every second.
So why do we meditate? Why do you want to? Why do you need to? Why should you? It’s to stabilize. It’s to stabilize your nervous system first through breath awareness and when you do that, when you calm your nervous system, you calm your body, which calms your mind, which opens you up to the source, to this floodgate of genius, of brilliance, of aliveness. That’s why you meditate.
Grounded in the belief we are all unique beings, we begin each new client with a meticulous bio-mechanical evaluation, assessing each joint in its relationship to the movement of the body as a whole. Our therapists are skilled at reading the unique story your body tells, and treating everything from the bottom of your foot to the top of your head.
Bodywise Physical Therapy is located in Portland, Oregon. The Bodywise approach is wholistic, individualized, and can benefit people of all fitness levels. While Bodywise has always specialized in general orthopedics, spine rehabilitation, and sports medicine, they have evolved into a truly wholistic practice integrating Hands-on treatments with Mindfulness, Pilates, Trauma Release Exercise, Womens Health and Lymphedema.
https://www.becomebodywise.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/physical_therapy_portland_oregon_pilates.jpg251735bodywisehttp://www.becomebodywise.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/bodywise-physical-therapy-portland-oregon-logo-icon-sm.pngbodywise2017-12-06 22:24:002017-12-06 22:24:00Jumpstart Your Mindfulness Practice in 5 Breaths
DO YOUR HOLIDAY family gatherings feel ripe for an appearance on Overheard LA? Maybe your visits home conjur up scenes worthy of an emo indie film or the flight your currently on is as salty as your grandma’s gravy. What ever the case — we get it. In a season full of feelings, might we suggest amping up your sense of humor?
Dr. Mike Miller is the author of Heal Your Heart, a compendium of compelling medical research that points to the benefits of positive emotions. Dr. Miller — who is also part of Pressed Juicery’s Medical Advisory Board — is known as a leader in the fields of preventive and behavioral cardiology. We’ve been blown away by his “Positive Emotions Prescription” that confirms the benefits of just about every form of mind-body wellness we love.
Enjoy this excerpt from Heal Your Heart below. In it, Dr. Miller reminds us of the power of laughter – not just to improve our mood, but our health and longevity too.
You could say that your brain chemicals “cross talk” with your heart chemicals, resulting in a mind-to-heart connection. It’s a beautiful process that highlights the mind-body connection, and more specifically, the interrelationship between emotions and the vasculature. Our studies were the first to show a direct connection between positive emotions and blood vessel expansion, strongly supporting the release of nitric oxide, and thus the host of healthy cardiovascular responses nitric oxide confers.
You really can laugh your way to health and well-being. Laughter has been shown to improve sleep, and people who get adequate sleep experience lower stress, improved memory and focus, and decreased effects of heart-damaging insomnia.
Let’s take a look at some of the best benefits of laughter, beginning with cardiovascular benefits and moving on to healthy effects on weight control, sleep, memory, and social connection…
LAUGHTER CAN PREVENT STROKES.For years, medical schools taught that regardless of lifestyle, human blood vessels progressively stiffen and narrow over the course of a life span, aging until one suffers a debilitating or fatal cardiac event. This stiffening or hardening of the arteries—commonly known as arteriosclerosis or atherosclerosis—was assumed to be a natural consequence of aging, as plaques containing cholesterol built up in the arteries, narrowing the arteries and making them stiffer. The narrow, stiff arteries impede blood flow and produce angina over time, and in the worst-case scenario, pieces of plaque can break off and create a full blockage, resulting in heart attack or stroke.
The results of arteriosclerosis are undisputed. But as we’ve seen, research studies are overturning the outdated explanation of “naturally” deteriorating blood vessels. In reality, one of the main causes of arteriosclerosis actually has a great deal more to do with our old enemy, stress—that ubiquitous and underappreciated risk factor.
We now know that experiencing positive emotions directly affects vascular health and that through the power of laughter, you can reduce the deterioration of your blood vessels. In effect, experiencing positive emotions that include laughter may help to maintain the youthfulness of your blood vessels in much the same way that sun-screen protects your skin—but without the chemicals, of course!
LAUGHTER LOWERS BLOOD PRESSURE. Most of us can rattle off a short list of factors that contribute to high blood pressure: high sodium intake, smoking, obesity, and lack of exercise. But the single most overlooked reason for hypertension is stress. If stress can cause your blood pressure to rise, can laughter that reduces stress also reduce your blood pressure?
In a 200-person study conducted in India and presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Hypertension in 2008, 100 healthy adult men and women participated in seven sessions of laughter yoga over 3 weeks. At the end of the 3 weeks, laughter yoga participants had lower systolic and diastolic blood pressure, lower levels of cortisol (a stress hormone), and less perceived stress than the control group.9 They experienced a similar reduction in systolic blood pressure (approximately 5 to 7 mm Hg) as the Japanese study found.10 It’s important to note that the Indian study’s subjects’ average blood pressure before and after the laughter phase (128/82 mm Hg versus 121/79 mm Hg) was not in the hypertensive range, and it would be important to repeat these studies in men and women with high blood pressure.
Still, these results are remarkable, as you could expect a similar reduction in blood pressure if you took a blood pressure medication, followed a low-salt diet (less than 1 teaspoon of sodium per day), or lost 10 pounds.If the entire US population achieved a drop in blood pressure of just 5 mm Hg, the risk of heart attacks or strokes would be cut by 5 to 15 percent. Translation? Even with a conservative estimate, that’s as many as 30,000 lives saved per year. These results alone are enough for me to prescribe laughter to all of my patients and to enthusiastically recommend it for everyone. But if you’re still not convinced, read on.
LAUGHTER TORCHES CALORIES + CRAVINGS.Laughter is great exercise. Researcher Maciej Buchowski and colleagues at Vanderbilt University found that laughing for 10 to 15 minutes can burn up to 40 calories. The reason appears to be the increased work of numerous muscles in the face, throat, and abdomen that are used during hearty laughter.
There’s also evidence that laughter can reduce binge-eating. Following a laughter therapy program allowed author Katie Namrevo to lose 35 pounds, diminish her stress-induced cravings, and gain more energy to pursue aerobic activities. She describes her experience in her 2004 book Laugh It Off! Weight Loss for the Fun of It. Mary Dallman, PhD, professor of physiology, and her colleagues at the University of California, San Francisco, have proposed that under chronic stressful conditions, people are subconsciously drawn to comfort foods. These foods, which are characteristically high in fat and carbs, in turn suppress the activity of the stress hormone cortisol. Laughter terminates this vicious cycle. The result is that regular engagement in laughter may result in significant changes in body weight that can reduce the likelihood of insulin resis-tance, diabetes, and heart disease.
LAUGHTER X SLEEP.It was once thought that high levels of the stress hormone cortisol produced insomnia, but a 2003 study suggested that the opposite is true: Chronic insomnia—which is often caused by chronic stress!—produces higher levels of cortisol.
In a Korean study of 109 men and women over age 65, research-ers found that just four laughter therapy sessions over a 1-month period were associated with more restful sleep as well as reduced feelings of depression. Insomnia is so common that nearly one out of every two people complains of poor sleep habits! But the sad reality is that not only does insomnia adversely affect our productivity and emotional state, it also increases our risk of depression, hypertension, metabolic syndrome, and heart disease. My medical advice? Before bedtime you should turn off the stressful news and look for comedy or lighthearted reading.
LAUGHTER X MEMORY.Here’s a fascinating fact: The right frontal lobe of the brain processes information related to memory and is also associated with the ability to appreciate humor. One can say that humor and memory work hand in hand, as studies have shown that people remember things that are perceived as humorous.
Because the brain processes that control humor and memory are closely linked, you can rely on humor as an aid to improve your memory. Humor helps your mind create visual images that become useful as a creative strategy for memory enhancement. When you recount incidents that occurred long ago, you likely find that vividly funny details jump readily to mind. My own experience in a summer job showcases this benefit of memory working in concert with humor. Numerous studies have concluded that humorous material tends to be recalled more readily than nonhumorous material, and memory books encourage readers to use humor as an aid in recalling lists of information. Some of my most effective teachers were also dynamic and funny.
LAUGHTER X RELATIONSHIPS.During prehistoric times, when our language was in its infancy, it is likely that laughter became an important and adaptive socialization skill. In fact, communication through laughter may have been an early test of survival of the fittest because early humans who did not engage in group laughter were likely to be alienated and left to fend for themselves. Even today, laughter is an important and early socializa-tion skill.
Laughter becomes essential for participation in groups and for achieving social acceptance. It not only relaxes us, it also signals others that they can relax around us. Laughing is a highly effective form of communication and it facilitates connection.
Laughter is also a key ingredient in successful relationships, yet people often underestimate its importance. Research by my colleague Robert Provine, PhD, pro-fessor of psychology at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, has shown laughter’s important role in mating. On average, females laugh more than twice as much as males, while males are more likely to try to be amusing. The female’s laughter serves as a primary barometer in strong relationships, and the earliest hint of a problem in the relationship is when a woman no longer finds her partner funny. According to independent findings of psychologists Dr. John Gottman and Dr. Michelle Golland, the most important predictor of divorce is the absence of laughter in a marriage.Partners who recognize this important clue at an early stage can increase the likelihood of resolving underlying conflicts before any dis-harmony spins out of control. Doing so may save the relationship while also protect-ing the heart health of both partners—divorce is widely known to be one of the most stressful experiences people can endure.
It is absolutely clear that laughing with others—in love, in the workplace, or in any social situation—reduces tension while improving morale, cooperation, and cardiovascular health. So schedule time with your funniest friends, or reach out and reconnect with fun-loving friends with whom you’ve lost touch. Strong bonds are formed and strengthened when people laugh together, and laughter is always a more enriching experience when it’s shared with others.
Laughing promotes whole-body health, it relieves stress, it enhances memory, it facilitates social connection, and it’s simply fun. Yet for some of us, laughter doesn’t occur on a daily basis. While the average 5-year-old laughs as many as 300 times a day, the average adult laughs a paltry four times a day. Our lives are busy and often stressful, and not all of us have the built-in advantage of living with a funny person or having a close friend or colleague who’s particularly funny. This means that most of us are going to have to be quite intentional in seeking out our daily dose of laughter.
To lighten up each day, you can make small changes that relieve tension, release you from inhibitions, and foster positive emotions that become a platform for laughter. Here are a few tips I prescribe to my patients to help them find and create more laughter in their lives…
BOOKMARK IT Keep links to humor bookmarked, and then the moment you find yourself in need of a laugh—that is, in need of stress relief, an energy boost, and a heart-healthy dose of endorphins and nitric oxide—click away. Try: YouTube, The Onion, CollegeHumor, Reddit
GET THE APP Developers have designed dozens of apps to elicit laughter, and with everything from recordings of laughing babies to storehouses of jokes accessed with a tap of a finger to one-line “zinger” generators, there’s something out there that will appeal to every sense of humor. Try: “The Gift of Laughter”
Grounded in the belief we are all unique beings, we begin each new client with a meticulous bio-mechanical evaluation, assessing each joint in its relationship to the movement of the body as a whole. Our therapists are skilled at reading the unique story your body tells, and treating everything from the bottom of your foot to the top of your head.
Bodywise Physical Therapy is located in Portland, Oregon. The Bodywise approach is wholistic, individualized, and can benefit people of all fitness levels. While Bodywise has always specialized in general orthopedics, spine rehabilitation, and sports medicine, they have evolved into a truly wholistic practice integrating Hands-on treatments with Mindfulness, Pilates, Trauma Release Exercise, Womens Health and Lymphedema.
https://www.becomebodywise.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/physical_therapy_pearl_district_53.jpg251735bodywisehttp://www.becomebodywise.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/bodywise-physical-therapy-portland-oregon-logo-icon-sm.pngbodywise2017-12-04 20:59:272017-12-04 20:59:27LAUGHTER REALLY IS MEDICINE: HOW TO LAUGH OFF HOLIDAY DRAMA
As a young dancer, I was dancing up to eight hours a day. I was determined and hardworking—fully dedicated to an art I loved.
The only problem? I had pain in my hip that was preventing me from lifting my left leg into a full extension. The pain became stiffness that gave me a limp when I walked, and the stiffness turned into loss of feeling in that leg. That was just the first in a series of injuries that forced me to take time off from dancing. Read more
https://www.becomebodywise.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/pilates_physical_therapy_pearl_district.jpg250735bodywisehttp://www.becomebodywise.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/bodywise-physical-therapy-portland-oregon-logo-icon-sm.pngbodywise2017-11-29 23:48:582017-11-29 23:48:58Why Pilates Was The One Thing That Finally Healed My Lifelong Injury
Jumpstart Your Mindfulness Practice in 5 Breaths
/in Uncategorized /by bodywiseArticle by Cara Bradley | Found on Mindful.org
Cara Bradley hosts a weekly podcast series called On The Verge, short blasts of advice and essential practices and strategies to shift from “crazy busy” to living with more clarity and vitality.
Are you one of the millions that seek mindfulness practices to feel calmer and more at ease? Do you hope meditation will settle your thinking mind? In this episode Cara explains how breath training calms your nervous system and ultimately works to settle a busy mind.
Cara explains that when your body feels sluggish, your mind feels sluggish. When your body feel tense, there’s a good chance your mind will feel tense too. On the other hand, a calm body often reveals a calm mind. In other words, the state of your body reflects the state of your mind.
Welcome to On The Verge with Cara Bradley, weekly blasts of no-hype advice and essential practices to settle down, show up, and shift from crazy-busy to high-definition, high-voltage living.
I talk to a lot of people about meditation—a lot. A lot of people tell me “I’ve tried it, I know I should do it; I can’t stop my mind from thinking. I’ve got such a busy mind. What can I do? How can I do it? I can’t find the time.”
I’ve taken this all and really digested it because I feel like this mindfulness trend, this wave where everyone is now speaking about mindfulness practice, about the need to meditate, about the benefits of meditation—But I feel like most people don’t understand why. Why do I actually want to meditate. Why would I want to sit down for 15, 20, 30 minutes and follow my breath—what is that doing? I might feel a little better afterward, but really, why? And so I hope to answer some of those questions for you today. We’re also going to practice.
Why Do People Want to Meditate?
Why do we want to meditate, what does it do for us, what’s really happening, what is the purpose! Here it goes. What we’re really trying to do is to stabilize—to stabilize our nervous system. So what happens when we sit down for a few moments when we take a few deep breaths, as we’re going to do later on, is that we start to stabilize or balance our autonomic nervous system. Now you may remember some about your nervous system from biology in high school. Probably not. Some of you may be technical experts on the nervous system but I’m just going to give it to you really simply. We have these responses in our body. We’re either on heightened alert, stressed, kind of perched, right at the edge of our chair, ready for the next shoe to drop… or we’re relaxed, so relaxed that we’re sleepy, or asleep. But when we’re balanced, when those two responses are balanced, we feel clear and energized.
When we are simply humming along, sometimes heightened, sometimes relaxed, but really humming along right down the center, the midline, we feel awake and at ease. And that truly is the meaning of being mindful. Being alert to what’s happening but at ease in the moment.
But because of our conditioning in our society, we’re rarely there. We’re most of the time perched, stressed, heightened, right at the edge of our seat waiting for that next news alert, waiting for the next post that pisses you off on social media, waiting for the next confrontation. So we stay heightened, we stay stressed. We stay in this heightened state of alertness and this is very unhealthy as we all know. The stress response, a chronically stressed body, is incredibly unhealthy on all dimensions and at all levels of our system: physiologically, mentally, and emotionally. So why we meditate, why would we want to practice mindfulness meditation or some other form, is truly to stabilize and settle your nervous system, to bring your body into a more balanced state of being.
So when we balance our breathing—and the breathing is really the best gateway for doing this—balancing your breath is the entry point for settling your nervous system and ultimately calming your mind. So stabilizing our nervous system through breath, through rhythm, through movement as we teach at Verge Body Mind, helps you to come into a more stable and settled state of being. When you’re settled and stable, your mind will naturally calm down. Our mind produces thoughts, our brains produce thoughts, our nervous system has the synapses that are constantly firing such as seeing, hearing, smelling, feeling, tasting, thinking—it’s all the same stuff. Our nervous system produces these responses to our environment and produces these synapses, these little soap bubbles of experience that sometimes comes as a smell, and sometimes comes as a sight, sometimes comes as a thought. When our nervous system is agitated, naturally those synapses, those experiences are going to be agitated. When our body is agitated, our minds will be agitated. Our thinking will be more frenzied and frazzled. When our bodies are calm, when our nervous system is balanced, those neurosynapses will be more steady or be calmer, more settled.
So we meditate and we can meditate, FYI, by walking in rhythm, by swimming, by gardening, by sitting down, and following your breath. Meditation simply means to become familiar with your state of being in this moment.
The Benefit of a Seated Meditation Practice
So I want to talk to you today about why you would want to do a seated meditation practice because I know many of you have tried. I talked to a lot of people who desperately want to feel better, who desperately want to slow down their busy mind so much to the point that they’ll do anything to feel more at ease and more peaceful in their everyday life. By practicing a seated meditation practice, even for five minutes as we’re going to do today, you can start to stabilize your nervous system, helping you to settle your mind and quiet the chatter.
You know how to settle your body if your heart is racing really fast. So, say something happens out of the blue: Somebody cuts you off on the highway in a way that just startles you and sends you into this stress mode where your body is on heightened alert. You know what to do, you know how to settle yourself. You calm yourself by deepening your breath. You just do it; we all do it. Babies know how to settle themselves. Children know how to go into a child’s pose and settle themselves. We instinctively know how to settle our bodies and our minds but we’ve just become so conditioned to being in this heightened state of alertness and stress that we’ve forgotten. So a seated meditation practice, it’s like lifting the heavy weights at the gym. The walk is amazing, the walk in the woods, the yoga practice, incredible, but sometimes just sitting down and following and balancing your breath for a few minutes it stabilizes you directly, immediately, and profoundly.
Today, I want to just give you a little bit more fuel, a little bit more understanding as to why you want to take those five, 10, 15, 20 minutes every day to train your brain in how to be in this alert and easy way of living more often. Even in challenging situations you can learn to access this alert, easy way of being we call “the mindful state of being” where everything you do you do better, by the way. So there’s a reason for wanting to be there because not only do your physical systems hum, your hormones balance, your body feels more at ease and brighter, but your mind is clearer. The chatter is less frenzied so that you can get underneath all those repetitive thoughts and start to connect with the wisdom that’s emerging in every single second of your life.
So we want to tune ourselves, tone ourselves, train ourselves to hum in this balanced way so that we can access that intelligence that’s underneath the mental chatter that’s underneath the busyness.
So first we need to settle the muddy waters. And that’s what a seated practice—and other practices—but the seated practice can do for you. It’s why you’d want to get up in the morning and sit down for five or 10 minutes: to stabilize your nervous system, to quiet the chatter, to settle your mind, to prepare you for an amazing day of insight, creativity, and connection.
Practice: 5 Breaths of Mindfulness
We’re going to try a very simple practice. It’s a simple seated practice, in which we’re following our breath, counting our breath, and then pausing after five breaths to sense what it feels like to be stable, to be settled, to be available for that “source intelligence,” for that deep wisdom, for the direct experience to emerge.
For a moment, notice your body: Notice your feet on the floor, your seat on the chair, your hands on your thighs, perhaps your upper back leaning against the chair. Notice your head in space as it finds its way to alignment on top of your shoulders and your spine. Just notice your body in space, in this moment: the experience of being in your body.
Now, notice any sensations that may be arising: Notice tingling, coolness, heat, throbbing, pulsing. Coming into your body in this way brings you more into contact with the present moment; as we drop from thinking to being, we shift into a more experiential state. We’re actually living in the moment.
Shift your attention to your breath, to your experience of breathing. What does it feel like to be breathing right now?
We’re going to start counting our breath. We’ll take five breaths. By counting our breaths, it holds your mind in your breath in this moment. So for the counting, open your eyes just halfway. Find a spot on the floor in front of you. Fixing your gaze helps you to stabilize when your eyes flitter about, your mind is flittering about. So just by lightly setting your gaze at one spot, it can help anchor your mind to this moment.
We’ll begin by counting five breaths. I’ll take you along for the first round and then I’ll leave you alone for the next few rounds. So together: inhale, exhale, one. Inhale, exhale, two. Inhale, exhale, three. Inhale, exhale, four. Inhale exhale, five.
Pausing now, keep your eyes open and notice your body, notice your surroundings. Notice any sounds, sensations, smells, tastes, thoughts. Notice what it feels like to be you right now. Recognizing presence recognizing what it feels like to be alive in this moment below the chatter, beyond the thinking; you and you alone in this moment.
And now once again fix your gaze. And we’ll begin again counting five breaths. So do this on your own right now. Stay with it.
After your five breaths, once again notice—so glimpsing what it feels like to be right here in your body, in this moment, showing up fully for your experience. If a thought comes, let it come, let it go. If a smell comes, let it come, let it go. A sound? Same thing. We’re allowing life to move. Not trying to fixate or stop anything from happening yet experiencing the aliveness, the emerging aliveness, the emerging intelligence that’s arising in every single second of our lives. What does it feel like to be in your body, in this moment, right here, right now.
Repeat one more round of five breaths. Set your gaze, bring your attention back to your breath, and begin counting.
When you’re through with your five, release: release this seated position; just wiggle your arms, wiggle your toes, maybe move your spine about, lift your gaze, lift your chin and look around.
Notice your experience right now. Noticing how your body feels in this moment, how you feel, how your mind feels. Do you feel brighter, lighter, more at ease more alert? If you do, yes! Awesome. If you don’t, that’s OK, too. By settling and steadying our mind on just five breaths, we start to shift our nervous system from being in this alert or this rather perched, stressed, agitated, on-guard state to being more open and at ease and awake in the moment to everything that’s arising. As we start to settle the water, as we start to stabilize our minds, the chatter, we’re able to then discern and sense and experience a deeper level of knowing, a deeper source of information, a more natural emerging intelligence that’s arising constantly in every second.
So why do we meditate? Why do you want to? Why do you need to? Why should you? It’s to stabilize. It’s to stabilize your nervous system first through breath awareness and when you do that, when you calm your nervous system, you calm your body, which calms your mind, which opens you up to the source, to this floodgate of genius, of brilliance, of aliveness. That’s why you meditate.
Bodywise Physical Therapy is located in Portland, Oregon. The Bodywise approach is wholistic, individualized, and can benefit people of all fitness levels. While Bodywise has always specialized in general orthopedics, spine rehabilitation, and sports medicine, they have evolved into a truly wholistic practice integrating Hands-on treatments with Mindfulness, Pilates, Trauma Release Exercise, Womens Health and Lymphedema.
LAUGHTER REALLY IS MEDICINE: HOW TO LAUGH OFF HOLIDAY DRAMA
/in the brain /by bodywiseArticle Found on Chalkboard Mag
DO YOUR HOLIDAY family gatherings feel ripe for an appearance on Overheard LA? Maybe your visits home conjur up scenes worthy of an emo indie film or the flight your currently on is as salty as your grandma’s gravy. What ever the case — we get it. In a season full of feelings, might we suggest amping up your sense of humor?
Dr. Mike Miller is the author of Heal Your Heart, a compendium of compelling medical research that points to the benefits of positive emotions. Dr. Miller — who is also part of Pressed Juicery’s Medical Advisory Board — is known as a leader in the fields of preventive and behavioral cardiology. We’ve been blown away by his “Positive Emotions Prescription” that confirms the benefits of just about every form of mind-body wellness we love.
Enjoy this excerpt from Heal Your Heart below. In it, Dr. Miller reminds us of the power of laughter – not just to improve our mood, but our health and longevity too.
You could say that your brain chemicals “cross talk” with your heart chemicals, resulting in a mind-to-heart connection. It’s a beautiful process that highlights the mind-body connection, and more specifically, the interrelationship between emotions and the vasculature. Our studies were the first to show a direct connection between positive emotions and blood vessel expansion, strongly supporting the release of nitric oxide, and thus the host of healthy cardiovascular responses nitric oxide confers.
You really can laugh your way to health and well-being. Laughter has been shown to improve sleep, and people who get adequate sleep experience lower stress, improved memory and focus, and decreased effects of heart-damaging insomnia.
Let’s take a look at some of the best benefits of laughter, beginning with cardiovascular benefits and moving on to healthy effects on weight control, sleep, memory, and social connection…
LAUGHTER CAN PREVENT STROKES.For years, medical schools taught that regardless of lifestyle, human blood vessels progressively stiffen and narrow over the course of a life span, aging until one suffers a debilitating or fatal cardiac event. This stiffening or hardening of the arteries—commonly known as arteriosclerosis or atherosclerosis—was assumed to be a natural consequence of aging, as plaques containing cholesterol built up in the arteries, narrowing the arteries and making them stiffer. The narrow, stiff arteries impede blood flow and produce angina over time, and in the worst-case scenario, pieces of plaque can break off and create a full blockage, resulting in heart attack or stroke.
The results of arteriosclerosis are undisputed. But as we’ve seen, research studies are overturning the outdated explanation of “naturally” deteriorating blood vessels. In reality, one of the main causes of arteriosclerosis actually has a great deal more to do with our old enemy, stress—that ubiquitous and underappreciated risk factor.
We now know that experiencing positive emotions directly affects vascular health and that through the power of laughter, you can reduce the deterioration of your blood vessels. In effect, experiencing positive emotions that include laughter may help to maintain the youthfulness of your blood vessels in much the same way that sun-screen protects your skin—but without the chemicals, of course!
LAUGHTER LOWERS BLOOD PRESSURE. Most of us can rattle off a short list of factors that contribute to high blood pressure: high sodium intake, smoking, obesity, and lack of exercise. But the single most overlooked reason for hypertension is stress. If stress can cause your blood pressure to rise, can laughter that reduces stress also reduce your blood pressure?
In a 200-person study conducted in India and presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Hypertension in 2008, 100 healthy adult men and women participated in seven sessions of laughter yoga over 3 weeks. At the end of the 3 weeks, laughter yoga participants had lower systolic and diastolic blood pressure, lower levels of cortisol (a stress hormone), and less perceived stress than the control group.9 They experienced a similar reduction in systolic blood pressure (approximately 5 to 7 mm Hg) as the Japanese study found.10 It’s important to note that the Indian study’s subjects’ average blood pressure before and after the laughter phase (128/82 mm Hg versus 121/79 mm Hg) was not in the hypertensive range, and it would be important to repeat these studies in men and women with high blood pressure.
Still, these results are remarkable, as you could expect a similar reduction in blood pressure if you took a blood pressure medication, followed a low-salt diet (less than 1 teaspoon of sodium per day), or lost 10 pounds. If the entire US population achieved a drop in blood pressure of just 5 mm Hg, the risk of heart attacks or strokes would be cut by 5 to 15 percent. Translation? Even with a conservative estimate, that’s as many as 30,000 lives saved per year. These results alone are enough for me to prescribe laughter to all of my patients and to enthusiastically recommend it for everyone. But if you’re still not convinced, read on.
LAUGHTER TORCHES CALORIES + CRAVINGS.Laughter is great exercise. Researcher Maciej Buchowski and colleagues at Vanderbilt University found that laughing for 10 to 15 minutes can burn up to 40 calories. The reason appears to be the increased work of numerous muscles in the face, throat, and abdomen that are used during hearty laughter.
There’s also evidence that laughter can reduce binge-eating. Following a laughter therapy program allowed author Katie Namrevo to lose 35 pounds, diminish her stress-induced cravings, and gain more energy to pursue aerobic activities. She describes her experience in her 2004 book Laugh It Off! Weight Loss for the Fun of It. Mary Dallman, PhD, professor of physiology, and her colleagues at the University of California, San Francisco, have proposed that under chronic stressful conditions, people are subconsciously drawn to comfort foods. These foods, which are characteristically high in fat and carbs, in turn suppress the activity of the stress hormone cortisol. Laughter terminates this vicious cycle. The result is that regular engagement in laughter may result in significant changes in body weight that can reduce the likelihood of insulin resis-tance, diabetes, and heart disease.
LAUGHTER X SLEEP.It was once thought that high levels of the stress hormone cortisol produced insomnia, but a 2003 study suggested that the opposite is true: Chronic insomnia—which is often caused by chronic stress!—produces higher levels of cortisol.
In a Korean study of 109 men and women over age 65, research-ers found that just four laughter therapy sessions over a 1-month period were associated with more restful sleep as well as reduced feelings of depression. Insomnia is so common that nearly one out of every two people complains of poor sleep habits! But the sad reality is that not only does insomnia adversely affect our productivity and emotional state, it also increases our risk of depression, hypertension, metabolic syndrome, and heart disease. My medical advice? Before bedtime you should turn off the stressful news and look for comedy or lighthearted reading.
LAUGHTER X MEMORY.Here’s a fascinating fact: The right frontal lobe of the brain processes information related to memory and is also associated with the ability to appreciate humor. One can say that humor and memory work hand in hand, as studies have shown that people remember things that are perceived as humorous.
Because the brain processes that control humor and memory are closely linked, you can rely on humor as an aid to improve your memory. Humor helps your mind create visual images that become useful as a creative strategy for memory enhancement. When you recount incidents that occurred long ago, you likely find that vividly funny details jump readily to mind. My own experience in a summer job showcases this benefit of memory working in concert with humor. Numerous studies have concluded that humorous material tends to be recalled more readily than nonhumorous material, and memory books encourage readers to use humor as an aid in recalling lists of information. Some of my most effective teachers were also dynamic and funny.
LAUGHTER X RELATIONSHIPS.During prehistoric times, when our language was in its infancy, it is likely that laughter became an important and adaptive socialization skill. In fact, communication through laughter may have been an early test of survival of the fittest because early humans who did not engage in group laughter were likely to be alienated and left to fend for themselves. Even today, laughter is an important and early socializa-tion skill.
Laughter becomes essential for participation in groups and for achieving social acceptance. It not only relaxes us, it also signals others that they can relax around us. Laughing is a highly effective form of communication and it facilitates connection.
Laughter is also a key ingredient in successful relationships, yet people often underestimate its importance. Research by my colleague Robert Provine, PhD, pro-fessor of psychology at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, has shown laughter’s important role in mating. On average, females laugh more than twice as much as males, while males are more likely to try to be amusing. The female’s laughter serves as a primary barometer in strong relationships, and the earliest hint of a problem in the relationship is when a woman no longer finds her partner funny. According to independent findings of psychologists Dr. John Gottman and Dr. Michelle Golland, the most important predictor of divorce is the absence of laughter in a marriage.Partners who recognize this important clue at an early stage can increase the likelihood of resolving underlying conflicts before any dis-harmony spins out of control. Doing so may save the relationship while also protect-ing the heart health of both partners—divorce is widely known to be one of the most stressful experiences people can endure.
It is absolutely clear that laughing with others—in love, in the workplace, or in any social situation—reduces tension while improving morale, cooperation, and cardiovascular health. So schedule time with your funniest friends, or reach out and reconnect with fun-loving friends with whom you’ve lost touch. Strong bonds are formed and strengthened when people laugh together, and laughter is always a more enriching experience when it’s shared with others.
Laughing promotes whole-body health, it relieves stress, it enhances memory, it facilitates social connection, and it’s simply fun. Yet for some of us, laughter doesn’t occur on a daily basis. While the average 5-year-old laughs as many as 300 times a day, the average adult laughs a paltry four times a day. Our lives are busy and often stressful, and not all of us have the built-in advantage of living with a funny person or having a close friend or colleague who’s particularly funny. This means that most of us are going to have to be quite intentional in seeking out our daily dose of laughter.
To lighten up each day, you can make small changes that relieve tension, release you from inhibitions, and foster positive emotions that become a platform for laughter. Here are a few tips I prescribe to my patients to help them find and create more laughter in their lives…
BOOKMARK IT Keep links to humor bookmarked, and then the moment you find yourself in need of a laugh—that is, in need of stress relief, an energy boost, and a heart-healthy dose of endorphins and nitric oxide—click away. Try: YouTube, The Onion, CollegeHumor, Reddit
GET THE APP Developers have designed dozens of apps to elicit laughter, and with everything from recordings of laughing babies to storehouses of jokes accessed with a tap of a finger to one-line “zinger” generators, there’s something out there that will appeal to every sense of humor. Try: “The Gift of Laughter”
WATCH FOR IT Check out the American Film Institute’s 100 Funniest Movies, or this list of 100-plus funniest TV shows. Or this list of 290 comic novels.
Bodywise Physical Therapy is located in Portland, Oregon. The Bodywise approach is wholistic, individualized, and can benefit people of all fitness levels. While Bodywise has always specialized in general orthopedics, spine rehabilitation, and sports medicine, they have evolved into a truly wholistic practice integrating Hands-on treatments with Mindfulness, Pilates, Trauma Release Exercise, Womens Health and Lymphedema.
Why Pilates Was The One Thing That Finally Healed My Lifelong Injury
/in pilates, rehabilitation /by bodywiseArticle by Erica Bloom | Found on MindBodyGreen
As a young dancer, I was dancing up to eight hours a day. I was determined and hardworking—fully dedicated to an art I loved.
The only problem? I had pain in my hip that was preventing me from lifting my left leg into a full extension. The pain became stiffness that gave me a limp when I walked, and the stiffness turned into loss of feeling in that leg. That was just the first in a series of injuries that forced me to take time off from dancing. Read more