Meditation – Page 5 – Andrea Arthur Owan

Coping with COVID: Emotions and Grief Relief

Do you feel as though you’re being overwhelmed by your emotions and are barely able to cope with the COVID crisis that’s unhinged your world?

If you answer “yes” you’re not alone. Even the most “together” of us are experiencing a whirlwind of emotions. Emotions we don’t understand and are struggling to handle.

Do any of these feel familiar?

Anger
Fear
Isolation
Disillusionment
Anxiety
Sadness
Self-blame
Guilt
Apprehension
Suspicion
Hyper-vigilance
Scared
Separation
Depression
Pain (physical)
Numbness
Doubt
Dread

All of the above are classically categorized as “negative” emotions.

What about any “positive” emotions you might be feeling? Like:

Joy
Peace
Gratitude
Understanding
Compassion
Motivation (to help others)
Trust (in faith, family, friends)
Deepening faith
Generosity
Empathy
Conviction
Patience
Kindness

Importance of validating Emotions—

You’ve likely heard when you were a child that there are “good” emotions and “bad” emotions, or at least gotten that impression based on something a parent or family member said or implied.

As a grief recovery chaplain, I’m going to tell you that it’s a travesty and healing hindrance to label them that way.

Why?

Because emotions just are. They’re feelings. And feelings aren’t good or bad. They are normal reactions to outside or internal stimuli—like death, loss, change, trauma, physical illness or injury, and shock.

When we label emotions good or bad, we often try to dismiss them or accentuate them. Other people may help us in that dismissing or accentuating (playing into) process; and they may shut us down from sharing or expressing them. But I’m going to encourage you!

Validate your feelings even if no one else will.

When you validate your feelings, you’re better able to identify those emotions and the root cause for them, evaluate them, and avoid being hampered by them or stuck in them.

We validate our emotions without letting them rule our lives.

Emotions are innocent. We must try to avoid making value statements about them, and thinking or making value statements about the emotions others experience.

Because that’s where things tend to go wrong—when we either demean our emotion or get stuck in an emotion and can’t let go of it.

Your varying emotions will come and go. That’s normal. Having an emotion doesn’t mean something is wrong with you.

But they can overtake you in a variety of ways.

And dismissing or hanging on to them can cause short and long-term problems.

Emotions and Physical Symptoms—

Emotions, and the mind-body neurochemical reaction to them, often trigger physical symptoms—headaches, backaches, stomach issues, sleep disturbances, inability to concentrate, allergies, asthma, and a host of other ailments.

The mind and body are really interconnected, and rarely does something happen in one system that doesn’t cause a chain reaction in the other. Perceived external or internal threats can take over every cell in our body.

Who hasn’t experienced a situation where abrupt fear hasn’t caused our heart rate to skyrocket, our blood pressure to sore, and our breathing to race?

It’s the old term many of you are familiar with: psychosomatic. Brain and body.

And many of the stresses we’re experiencing right now in this COVID19 crisis can dredge up emotions from old wounds and events we thought we’d healed from or moved past.

The purpose of validating our emotions—

As Dr. James Gordon, author of the book The Transformation, points out, there is a process to validating and understanding our emotions and dealing with them.

The first step is to pay attention to your emotions.
Then clearly see the messages they’re bringing to you.
Work with what the emotions can teach or reveal to you.
See what ways you can grow through and beyond the emotion to heal.

As I noted above, it’s not a good idea to try to suppress your emotions. When we do that, we usually end up creating more physical and psychological problems for ourselves.

What we can do is use our imaginations and creativities to discover what to do with these emotions. Keeping a journal helps in this process.

So how can we best identify, validate and respond to these wild emotions?

At the end of this post, I’ll give you several tips for validating and releasing your emotions and the stress they can cause. I’ll give you several tips today and more in the following weeks.

To keep you from getting stuck in your emotions.

What does validating emotions have to do with grief?

Many of us are experiencing grief right now, and we don’t know it.

We can recognize grief by identifying and validating our emotions.

How do we know it’s grief?

To understand the answer to that question, let’s look at the definition of grief The Grief Recovery Institute experts provide us:

Grief is the conflicting feelings caused by a change or an end in a familiar pattern of behavior.

Changes in living arrangements—lockdowns, quarantines, new environments.
Loss of familiarity—schedule changes, loss of daily or weekly gatherings
Tangible or intangible losses, obvious or hidden—family members, friendships, belongings, jobs.

As C.S. Lewis so poignantly noted in his book A Grief Observed:

“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing.

At other times it feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting. Yet I want the others to be about me. I dread the moments when the house is empty. If only they would talk to one another and not to me.”

Do any of these emotions and sensations sound familiar to you?

We have a sense of numbness, a decreased ability to concentrate. Maybe a decreased ability to care about anything going on around us. A struggle to get up, maintain a schedule and slog through our boring, same-old, same-old day.

Maybe our eating habits have gone awry. We have no appetite, or too much of one. We nibble and snack and indulge out of fear or boredom. Because we have nothing to do, no more reason to maintain a healthy weight. Or no motivation to do it.

I’ve noticed on some of my ZOOM calls that people aren’t paying as much attention to their appearances. They can’t get their hair cut. They’re not interested in showering. For weeks makeup has languished in a bathroom drawer. They’re living in underwear or clothes they haven’t changed or washed in days.

But they’re washing their hands raw and sanitizing every surface in their homes several times a day.

They’re overwhelmed by their emotions and their bodies’ responses.

Something unordinary occurred, and the body responded to the “conflicting feelings caused by a change or an end in a familiar pattern of behavior.”

We’re responding to painful—sometimes overwhelmingly so—information and a pandemic that no action could have fully or properly prepared us for.

Even though countries have experienced pandemics before, little can prepare us for the emotional reactions we each have to this particular pandemic, and how it’s being handled.

It’s important to remember that these responses are normal.

It’s okay to have them. It’s when we don’t have them that we should worry.

Dealing with emotions and grief: focusing on small, correction actions—

Over the next several weeks, I’m going to give you some tips to help you uncover, validate and deal with emotions and your changes and losses. Confront your grief and heal.

But before we delve into this arena, we need to cover several bases.

First, please don’t ever compare your loss with someone else’s; and don’t allow someone to compare her grief to yours.

Everyone handles her loss in her way. There is no “larger” loss to make yours seem small; no “smaller” loss to make yours feel larger or more significant.

A loss is a loss. Depending upon our ages, life experiences and faith, each of us handles our losses differently. Don’t ignore them and don’t grade them.

Don’t expect time to heal you, or others. It’s not time that heals (a common statement and fallacy). It’s actions that bring healing.

The Grief Recovery Institute experts say,

“The false belief that time heals is probably the single largest impediment to recovery from loss of any kind.”

Instead, remember that:

“Recovery from grief or loss is achieved by a series of small and correct action choices made by the griever.”

For me, seeing a baby girl reminds me of my precious baby Victoria, and that memory still brings stabbing pain to my heart. The brain remembers, and it doesn’t ask permission before releasing memory chemicals of and pain response into my system. Sadness, remorse and regret automatically overtake me. If I allow those emotions to overwhelm me, depression will drip through my system until I’m overwhelmed by it.

But if I don’t try to stuff it and, instead, acknowledge it, note it, validate it and remind myself that sadness is a perfectly reasonable reaction to still have to my daughter’s death—and the trauma surrounding it—I’m okay.

I’m acknowledging I’m normal.

Like that event, I think many of us are going to be taking small, correct—healing—actions after this pandemic is long gone and parsed out in the history books.

Understand that grief is a normal and natural reaction to any loss. It’s not a “pathological condition nor a personality disorder.”

But in the heat of a crisis, don’t be surprised if you find yourself having odds thoughts, performing odd behaviors, having odd dreams, or saying unusual things.

A couple of weeks into our quarantine, I had a PTSD nightmare I thought I’d never have again. It had been years since my last one. But there it was again. Not as intense. And, actually, it provided a happier ending.

And the funny thing about it was that I was in a light sleep and knew I was having it. And this time I didn’t seem to want to run away from it.

Most of us have grown up with a multitude of myths that only hamper our emotions and grief responses.

In the following weeks, we’ll look at those and see how we can correct them. Further help for validating our emotions and healing.

Facing realities—

Normal isn’t normal anymore. And that may be part of the bigger emotional problem.

For better or worse, any kind of change is stressful, and our brains react accordingly. Stress hormones get dumped into our body systems, and our bodies respond. Adrenaline pumps. So much adrenaline that we might get wiped out from system overload.

For most of us this pandemic and the resulting lockdowns, job losses, massive schedule and life upheavals have been traumatic. And our brains (and bodies) are trying to process all of it, at one time. It’s not healthy or productive to try to ignore it or wish it away.

We may be looking at a new paradigm that will take time to become familiar and comfortable with.

I want to provide the tools and resources you need to survive this storm and thrive!

Invitation—

I invite and encourage you to use the following tools to identify and validate your emotions and not allow yourself to get stuck in them.

Keep an emotions journal—

One way of validating and responding is by keeping an emotions journal.

There are big benefits to jotting down your emotions on paper, even if your emotions flip flop wildly throughout the day.

And now’s a perfect time to start keeping one.

Seeing them written down in a journal helps validate them. It makes them real and manageable. And it tells you a lot about you and your present needs.

Many of us don’t have any place we can vacate to—alone—right now to assess and decompress. To blow off steam. To weep over losses and unknown futures. Although locking yourself in a bathroom and turning the radio up REALLY loudly might suffice.

Having a journal, or even loose paper you can keep together as a journal, is effective in noting how your emotions change throughout the day, and how you can validate and respond to them.

Learn to breathe and release—

Learning meditation-type breathing techniques is invaluable for allowing the release of emotions. It allows us to be more fully aware, moment-by-moment, of how our what emotions might be lurking just below the surface and affecting us physically or psychologically.

Breathing can also tune you in to just how quickly emotions can come and go. And we can use our imaginations and creativity to learn what to do with our emotions.

You can find a lot of meditative breathing techniques on line. I’ve included some here for you. They can be done lying down, sitting or standing. The process generally involves breathing in slowly, deeply through your nose and exhaling slowly and completely through your mouth, making sure you are using your diaphragm to fill your lungs and allowing your stomach muscles to relax, or soften.

Try to put away any distractions, like ringing phones, when you do these exercises, although when you get good, you will be able to perform them in a busy environment.

Once learned and frequently practiced, they can be very effective at slowing your breathing and dropping your heart rate and blood pressure.

Rather than thinking of breathing exercises as emptying your mind, I like to have my clients and patience just become aware of the emotions they are feeling, without casting any judgments on them. And becoming aware of how these emotions affect your body: tension, stress, and shallow breathing are frequent side effects of out-of-control emotions.

Five to ten minutes should be adequate. If this type of breathing is new to you, just starting with a couple of minutes can be enough.

After your breathing, note what emotions emerged and any accompanying thoughts you had with them. Don’t dwell on them. Just note them. You can spend time analyzing them later.

In the first video, Dr. Andrew Weil gives a great, brief presentation on the benefits of breathing modulation and its effects on illnesses. He says it’s the constancy—regularity—of doing these exercises that result in dramatic changes.

In this next video, Dr. Weil teaches yoga breathing.

This City of Hope video provides a little more in depth breathing and imagery. The video below is longer and includes a guide imagery technique too. Just doing the breathing exercises for several minutes is enough for now.

And now we can move on to another tool.

Draw your emotions—

Any kind of drawing—putting pen or pencil to paper—can stimulate the brain and creativity.

And emotions can be expressed through drawings. Even childlike ones. So don’t think that you have to be an artist to utilize this tool.

Grab several pieces of paper and crayons or markers.

Do the drawings quickly, with no more than several minutes spent on each. The drawings are simply about self-discovery.

Drawing #1: Draw a picture of you right now, the emotions you feel. Stick figures. Representative symbols. These aren’t complicated or necessarily detailed.

Drawing #2: Draw yourself and your biggest problem. The problem might be represented by a shape, a color, a word. What kind of emotions trigger this drawing?

Drawing #3: Draw yourself with your problem solved. How does the solving make you feel? Those are the emotions your want to recognize.

Dancing or shaking—

Free dancing and body shaking are wonderful ways to identify emotions and express them.

When I was using movement gymnastics with my elementary school classes, I’d give each student a colorful scarf to dance to music with, run around the gym with. Dance with. Because they were less inhibited or self-aware, the kindergarten students were a joy to watch.

They stopped watching each other and just went with the movements their little bodies were dying to exhibit. They choreographed their emotions, their joys, their delights, their inhabitations. Their creativity. They danced and moved to their emotions.

They loosened up and released. They laughed and shouted.

Shaking can do the same thing.

This video offers a great teaching.

I hope you find these suggestions helpful.

NEXT WEEK: we’ll look at the myths of grief that hamper our long-term healing, and I’ll give you more tools to release and validate your emotions.

Until then,

keep breathing, dancing, and drawing. And remember that in any situation, we can make our life better and more fulfilling.

See you back here next week!

Blessings,

Andrea


Andrea Arthur Owan, M.S., A.T., R., is a fitness pro, chaplain, and award-winning inspirational writer. She works and writes to help people recover from trauma, grief and loss and to live their best lives — physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

Coronavirus: Fear, Quarantine, Freedom and Peace

Is Coronavirus fear driving you to rebellion and protest or forcing you to hide—fearful and anxiety-ridden—indoors?

Fear drives us to do some pretty irrational things—like reacting rather than thinking and acting prayerfully, intelligently, and purposefully; throwing all caution to the wind and taking unnecessary chances; or—in this case—driving us to turn our homes into quarantine cells.

Where are you right now?

Reacting, thinking and planning?

Hiding, or rebelling?

Paralyzed by fear or crying for freedom?

And why?

Stopping and thinking COVID-19 fear through—

Now, maybe more than ever in some of our lives, it’s critical for us to make the right decisions. The stakes are high.

Unfortunately, with all the conflicting data we’re bombarded with (if you’re paying attention to the bombardment; which, by the way, only heightens the fear), it’s difficult to know who to listen to. What to believe.

While God tells us it’s important to have a multitude of counselors, varying and conflicting opinions abound. We’re not sure who those wise counselors are that we should heed right now.

Our orderly worlds have been destabilized, and we’re searching for ways to right them again.

But there are stakes involved. For everyone.

What are the stakes for you?

Individual and Collective Considerations—

Each of us needs to look at our individual situation. How can we best get through this time emotionally, physically, spiritually and financially?

To figure that out, here are some of the serious questions we might ask ourselves:

Am I out of work and needing to support our family?

Do extended family members need physical or emotional help?

Do I and my family need help?

If my income is stable and I’m able to work from home, is it worth forcing a return to normal—maybe too quickly—and risking exposing high-risk friends, family or feeble elderly to my (possibly) asymptomatic condition? Risk getting the vulnerable sick.

Could my outdoor protests risk taxing an already-overwhelmed hospital and exhausted medical staff? Am I showing by my actions that I don’t really care as much as I say I do about those front line workers? Or my neighbors.

Do I have that “elective” cancer surgery when delaying it puts me at even greater risk of waiting too long and succumbing to the cancer—that didn’t go on hiatus for the virus?

Or maybe you’re thinking:

I’ve examined all my options. I didn’t qualify for a small business loan, or got turned down, and I need to work to provide for my family. That relief check is only going to take me so far.

I really want to go to the beach, and the Constitution guarantees my right to peaceably assemble there with my like-minded friends.

I have a right to assemble, so I’m going to show up at the governor’s mansion armed to the teeth with a show of firepower force to prove it. Intimidation. That’s the ticket.

In his first letter to Timothy, (1:2-3), the Apostle Paul says that we need to pray for our leaders so we can live peaceful and quiet lives. That’s the main goal here.

Living in peace.

Paul says that goal is good and pleases God our Savior.

I can live in peace as long as someone allows me to earn wages to support myself and my family, pay whatever taxes the government extracts, travel to, from and when and where I desire, and be allowed to worship and practice my religion “in godliness and holiness.”

I’m not making a political statement here. And I’m not going to divulge what I think about the lockdown and quarantine “laws.”

What I am encouraging everyone to do is to ask themselves the right questions:

What is my personal situation; and what are the stakes?

Know what they are for you, and for your community.

We are individuals with rights. But we are also part of a larger tribe. Americans like to think of themselves as country-driven, until something runs up against their personal rights and independence.

What to do about our paralyzing COVID fear?

This isn’t about “us” versus “them.” And it isn’t about shaking our fists at the virus, or the authorities, and demanding our rights.

This is about seeking out the omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient God who loves us, knows all about the ins and outs of this virus, cares for our pain and fear, and wants us to enjoy peace in the midst of this storm.

I know that’s sometimes easier said than done. But it’s the truth. If we earnestly seek out God and ask, He’ll gracious give us the kind of peace we need to get through this.

Why should you ask for and receive peace?

We should ask God for peace because research indicates that those who enjoy that personal, calming and fulfilling relationship with the Lord—particularly followers of Jesus Christ—are suffering less anxiety, fear and depression during this COVID “crisis,” and the unbelievers are suffering more.

We can win this fear battle. We can tamp down reactive rebellion. If we’re able to stay home, we can view it as a time of rest and joy rather than a time of prison.

How do I know that?

Because I had to experience something similar to this 25 years ago.

Assessing my personal stakes—

A little over 25 years ago, I was confined to bed during my pregnancy with my younger son. Completely confined. No getting up and meandering into the kitchen for a snack. No sitting up to relieve the hip and backache.

No freedom.

And I couldn’t even lie flat. My legs, pelvis and chest had to be propped up higher than my head to relieve the pressure on my cervix, which had been sewn shut after I went into premature labor at 22 weeks.

For three months I was only allowed to get up to walk to the bathroom—four steps away. The only exercise I got was contracting my calves to point my toes to reduce the risk of getting blood clots in my legs. I gingerly maneuvered my increasing bulk from one side to the other to avoid getting pressure sores on my hips.

Because my digestive tract shut down a week into the quarantine, my meals were reduced to canned spinach, orange juice, sauerkraut juice, and Ensure. (Yum!) My husband bought it by the carton loads.

I was scared I was going to lose another baby to a high-risk pregnancy problem.

But I was determined to give it my best shot. I counted the cost—the stakes.

They were very high indeed.

Stay in bed and improve my chances of giving birth at full term to a healthy baby.

Or push the envelope, get up when I felt like it, and risk losing it all.

Four months didn’t seem too long, until I parked myself in that bed.

Every day I put a one-day-more check mark on the little pocket calendar propped on the table next to my bed. I counted the number of days I’d successfully lain there, and the number of days remaining. I noted those on the calendar too. If I made it through a morning and into the afternoon, I was overjoyed. One more minute, one more hour, one more day improved the chances.

Alone every day in a big house on four acres in avocado country. I’d eagerly await my husband and four-year old son’s arrival home, to chat with them for a half hour, until they dispersed to do other things. We had no cable TV and only two major channels that always snapped off to bug races by midnight, sometimes the hardest time to be with myself. I watched the entire O.J. Simpson trial. Got to be familiar with his lawyer Johnny Cochran and the rest of the circus. It wasn’t the most inspiring five hours a day, but it kept me entertained.

I couldn’t even enjoy the outside.

Or see it.

The only window in the room was behind my bed, and I couldn’t sit up and look outside.

The French door to the outside had a window it, but it was covered with blinds that didn’t flip open. They could be rolled up, but because the afternoon sun shone in the room and heated it up too much, the blinds remained closed. The only thing I could see through the slats was a little sun during daylight, and a sliver of moonlight at night.

Day after tedious day, I did the same thing. It became a ritual. A ritual I clung to. It was the only thing giving me any sense of stability and hope.

Within a month I thought I was going to go nuts.

And the longer the time went on, the more fearful I became. In spite of the better odds, my anxiety became more pronounced. Depression settled in at night.

Around the third month, the panic attacks started.

I’d never had a panic attack before. It was frightening.

And it nearly drove me out of bed.

And if I had gotten out of it, I likely would have lost the battle.

And that’s what could happen to us during this pandemic.

We could get out and return to normal too soon. Test too much of the waters. Not see the rip current beneath the surface ready to sweep us away from safety.

Or—after informing ourselves to the best of our ability, taking counsel, and praying fervently —we could determine in our heart to do what we have to do. Maybe return to work; open our family business to willing customers.

Whatever that is for us, and for our family. And for our community.

Striving, in as much as possible, to live at peace.

How do you confront fear and keep going in spite of it?

Staying in bed like that was tough, and lonely.

My doctor reminded me during my check-in phone calls with him that it was a tiny portion of my life to sacrifice. I knew he was right.

But when it was all over (I made it three out of the ideal four months and gave birth to a six and a half weeks premature baby boy who is now six-feet tall and finishing law school), he shook his head and said, “I don’t know how you did it. It must have been shear determination.”

I smiled and shook my head. “No. Determination had nothing to do with it. If it weren’t for God and the heavenly encouragement He gave me through different sources—friends, motivational tapes, and uplifting messages on Christian radio—I would never have made it. I would have gotten out of that bed a long time ago.”

He simply nodded. As though he was in awe.

Coronoavirus-19 is an individual problem, and a community problem—

During this pandemic of worldwide “we,” we stand both alone—sometimes in isolation—and together.

As Christian artists for King and Country, Tori Kelly, and Kirk Franklin sing in their recently released song “Together,” (filmed during quarantine from each of their homes),

we will fall together,

or rise together.

But it may be the individual decisions that cause either one of those scenarios to happen.

What are the stakes for you?

They do affect all of us.

Invitation—

Have you spent a lot of time in prayer, reflecting on this pandemic and what it means for you, your family, and your community?

What is God saying to you, and what are you going to do about it?

What is the hardest part of the quarantine for you?

What lifts you up, makes the quarantine easier, and reduces your anxiety and depression?

May God give you the knowledge, wisdom and discernment you need to answer all of your coronavirus questions and dispel your deepest fears.

Until next time,

May God protect and guide you, in all ways.

Andrea


Andrea Arthur Owan, M.S., A.T., R., is a fitness pro, chaplain, and award-winning inspirational writer. She works and writes to help people recover from grief and loss and to live their best lives — physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

13 Drug-free Ways to Conquer Depression Using The Mind-Body Experience: Part I

If you suffer from or know anyone who suffers from depression, you know how debilitating it can be. Suicidal tendencies, sleep disturbances, nutrition problems, weight changes, and substance abuse are only some of its side effects. The financial toll it takes on society is huge. The toll it takes on people physically and and spiritually is immeasurable.

And an astounding statistics about depression? A Medscape report noted that between 15 and 20 percent of people are affected by this mental illness.

But depression is complicated. It’s often difficult to get a handle on its root causes. You might have genetic vulnerability, a significant life stressor, be taking a depression-triggering medication, experienced a serious and debilitating illness, or an injury. Depression can be a surgery side effect. And it can occur as a side effect of painkiller or drug dependence, or be caused by the use of these substances.

Do you know that it can cause long-term damage to both the brain and body?

What is the brain connection to depression?

Numerous conditions can affect your brain and its mood-regulating process. Grief after the loss of a loved one or a major life-changing event—moving, changing jobs, having a child—can start the depression ball rolling. If not addressed quickly, it can roll out of control.

An August 2019 Bridges to Recovery article covered how major depression affects the brain and body. The article covers the memory decline and sleep-disturbance link between the hormone cortisol (which is released when you’re under stress); the disturbing findings that long-term depression sufferers have 30 percent more brain inflammation than their mentally healthy peers; and the link between hypoxia, or reduced oxygen, and depression.

Those are staggering statistics that have tremendous health consequences.

How can we better deal with, overcome and prevent this threatening illness?

Treating depression—

The toll depression can take on your body is significant. But there are alternatives to taking anti-depressants, which can also have their own negative consequences.

Powerful, effective drug-free alternatives exist that you might want to explore, or use with your prescribed medication to enhance results.

These alternatives are listed under a treatment category referred to as mind-body medicine.

Depression and Mind-Body Medicine—

Mind-Body Medicine is becoming more popular and mainstream, and you may have heard the term and been wondering exactly what it is and what it could do for you or a loved one.

In a nutshell, Mind-Body Medicine is integrative medicine—medicine that takes the whole person and her lifestyle into account—it helps you control your physical and emotional responses to the world around you.

The Center for Mind Body Medicine defines it as medicine that “focuses on the interactions between mind and body and the powerful ways in which emotional. mental, social and spiritual factors can directly affect health.”

It cannot be emphasized enough that the brain is connected to the body, and vice versa. So if we want to have overall, optimal health we must strive to be whole body connected.

A question you might want to take time to ponder is:

“You might be taking care of your body but what about your mind?”

Maybe you’ve recently noticed that you aren’t taking care of your mind, or paying much attention to it outside of knowing what you’re thinking or worrying about at any given moment. Many of us know it’s up there, somewhere above our shoulders, but some of us don’t know what to do with it. Instead of trying to exert control over it, we’re more likely to let it control us. The results can be rapid heart rate, sweaty palms, anger, frustration, fear, and depression.

Mayo Clinic’s Dr. Amit Sood has pointed out that

“Impressive advances in neuroscience research have brought to our attention a startling and exciting discovery—the mind can change the brain.”

Thankfully, after decades of research, scientists have discovered that our amazing brains do have what they call plasticity— the ability to change throughout our lives. Our brain can be soothed and coerced into being more completely engaged. We can become more resilient, happier, more thoughtful, purposeful or intentional.

Many of the techniques I’m going to give you I learned as an undergraduate and grad student. I’ve tried them, applied them, and researched them. They can work, when you practice them properly and faithfully.

I’m going to address 13 activities. With so many, I’ll be breaking them into three posts, so let’s get started today on the first five:

Biofeedback, Guided Imagery, Meditation, Muscle Relaxation, and Music Therapy.

At the end of each section, I’ve provided YouTube video of the activity for you to learn more, participate in or practice.

Biofeedback for Depression—

Physical therapists, athletic trainers, coaches and psychiatrists have used this technique for years. But what exactly is this technique that’s been effective in 150 medical conditions?

Biofeedback is used to help your mind control your body.

But just what in your body are you trying to control?

You’re trying to control involuntary (reflexive) responses. Bodily functions you don’t typically have control over, like blood pressure, muscle tension and heart rate. And a lot of tension can translate into a lot of muscle and joint pain.

How does biofeedback work?

Electrical sensors are placed on different body parts/areas. These sensors then give you audio or visual feedback on your heart rate or how much muscular tension you have in that particular body part.

Then you’re taught how to focus on and “feel” the tension, cause the tension to occur (through voluntary contractions), and then release the tension by deliberately allowing, or causing, the muscle to relax. Patients can lower their breath rate, heart rate and blood pressure using this technique.

You also learn to recognize exactly where you “hold” tension in your body.

When you become more sensitive to your triggers and body tension areas, you are more able to control and overcome the tension when you encounter stressful or stress-triggering situations.

If you’re interested in giving this a try, find a trained biofeedback therapist in your area. You shouldn’t go at this alone, unless you want to snag a book at your local library and try it without the feedback machine bells and whistles. You won’t do any harm trying it this way.

Guided Imagery for Depression—

What makes you relax and smile? Where’s your happy place? A walk in the park? A stroll along the beach? A forest hike?

Guided imagery involves thinking of a personally pleasing scene, vision, or pleasant memory. Then imagine yourself plunked down in the middle of it, with all 5 senses engaged to “experience” this intentional daydream. This relaxation technique is called guided imagery, or visualization.

Try laughing or smiling during your visualization exercise and notice the relaxed, happy (or happier), and contented feeling you’re experiencing. That’s those happy hormones (endorphins) being released into your body, just like they’re released during exercise or crying. Mayo Clinic calls it “an important tool in treating a variety of health problems.” (If you want to give the smiling or laughing affect a try, go ahead and smile or laugh right now, as you’re reading this, and see what kind of feelings that result.)

This is what else Mayo Clinic has to say about it:

“Researchers using positron emission tomography (PET) scanning have found that the same parts of the brain are activated when people are imaging something as when they’re actually experiencing it…Vivid imagery sends messages from the cerebral cortex to the lower brain, including the emotional control center of the brain. From there the message is relayed to the endocrine and the autonomic nervous systems, which affect a wide range of bodily functions, including heart, expiration rates, and blood pressure.”

The endocrine system is a collection of hormone-producing glands. Some of the body systems these hormones control are metabolism, growth and development, tissue function, sleep, mood, sexual function, and reproduction.

The autonomic system is the part of our nervous system that regulates the control of our internal organs and some muscle function.

How’s Is Guided Imagery Done?

First: Relax.

It’s important that you have no distractions, so leave your cell phone in another room and put an “I’m Visualizing Right Now” sign on your closed door!

Put on loose, comfortable clothing and sit or lie in a comfortable, quiet spot. Start with deep, slow breaths in and out through your nose.

Second: Breathe.

Now really concentrate on your breathing. Slowly fill up your lungs and pay attention to the stress leaving your body when you exhale. Think of exhaling your stress away. Don’t allow random, distracting or negative thoughts to permeate your mind or interfere. (This will undoubtedly occur, but it will get better or easier to control with each session.) When you’re done dispelling thoughts, return to focusing on your breathing.

Next: Visualize.

Now comes the fun part! Intentionally choose a desired image and focus on it. It could be an event, location or person. If your mind wanders, bring your focus back with a slow, deep breath. (If you have difficulty conjuring up a scene, choose a pleasing photograph or picture to look at.)

Finally: Affirm.

Select a positive word or phrase to connect to your vision. This will serve to create a positive image that will be stored by your brain, easily recalled later, and provide your brain and emotions with positive thoughts and feelings. Some practitioners think that attaching a word to your feelings helps to engage both sides of your brain.

One of my favorite places to visualize is Waikiki Beach, hearing the waves crash onto the beach, envisioning the moonlight on the water, holding my husband’s hand as we stroll along the beach at night.

If you’re suffering from grief due to the loss of a loved one, it may help to envision a happy time you spent with them.

If you have a moment right now, even if you’re sitting in a chair to read this, stop reading and give guided imagery a try. It doesn’t have to take more than five minutes, and you may be surprised to feel your breathing slowing down.

Meditation for Depression—

Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary defines “to meditate” as: “to spend time in quiet thought for religious purposes or relaxation.”

Other definitions include: to engage in contemplation or reflection; to engage in mental exercise (as concentration on one’s breathing or repetition of a mantra) for the purpose of reaching a heightened level of spiritual awareness; to focus one’s thoughts on, to reflect or ponder over; to plan or project in the mind.

One of mediation’s many synonyms is “to chew over” which is what its definition is in the Bible. When we’re told to meditate on God’s word, we’re being told to chew on it, like an animal chewing its cud, regurgitating it over and over; or to work on it like a lion shredding its prey so we can possess it, understand it, be changed by it.

Recent research indicates that the most beneficial part of meditating can be the breathing techniques associated with it. It’s also one of th easiest and most portable activities that can be done just about anywhere.

So whether you’re meditating to clear your mind, or meditating to really concentrate on something, you’ll find benefits.

How To Start

Like Guided Imagery, meditation begins with a quiet place, controlled breathing, and dispelling distracting thoughts. Then choose a word or verse on which to concentrate.

When I’m sitting on the floor of the small sitting area off my bedroom, in front of a lighted candle that emits a subtle scent of hyacinth, my favorite thing to concentrate on is a person.

When I repeat the name, “Jesus,” and think of all of His beautiful attributes, my heart, body and mind are filled with joy, peace and love. (A mind-and-body-transforming, heavenly love.) I’m brought to a state of physical relaxation, mental calmness, alertness, (yes, you can simultaneously be calm, relaxed and alert!), and psychological balance. These are all benefits of meditation. (Concentrating on and repeating a word or verse from Scripture also gives me the same effect.)

So, when people tell you that in meditation you need to first “empty your mind,” that’s not necessarily true. You need to first lay aside distractions and banish those from sneaking in your mind’s door, then intentionally choose what you will allow to enter in to that delicate, impressionable space.

While your goal is to empty your mind of the stress and concerns, you don’t want to just empty your mind and allow any old thought to come in. You want to think deliberately, try to gain control over your thoughts.

But don’t judge yourself harshly when negative or distracting thoughts rush in, as they so often do. Just acknowledge them and then discard them. Don’t dwell on them. You can transform yourself by renewing your mind.

Meditation benefits—

Meditation has received rave reviews by researchers because it’s been shown to reduce anxiety, reduce blood pressure, improve attention, improve sleep, decrease chronic pain, improve blood sugar level control, and decrease job burnout. It can even help you achieve sleep at bedtime. At the very least, it helps you manage a hectic, stressful life!

If you desire a meditation training aid, like directions or music-to-meditate-by, go to www.mayoclinic.com and search for “mediation.” Or simply Google, Mayo Clinic Meditation, which will lead you to videos, tablet and smart phone apps.

Progressive Relaxation Therapy for Depression—

I love this one! It’s easy, quick and helps reduce depression, anxiety, muscle tension, stress, panic disorder, and high blood pressure and improves concentration.

Getting Started

First, remove your glasses or contacts and loosen any tight clothing and choose a chair or floor in a quiet place. Remove your shoes.

Starting with your feet, deliberately tense your feet muscles and hold the tension for 5 seconds. Then slowly relax the muscles and keep them relaxed for 30 seconds. Feel the tension leave the muscles as you relax.

Repeat this tense-and-hold one more time with your feet and then move up to the legs (calf area). Repeat the 5 seconds of tensing and follow with the 30 seconds of relaxation two times, as you did with your feet. Then move up to the thighs, pelvis, abdomen, chest, hands, forearms, arms, neck, face and head, following the same 5-second tense and 30-second relaxation structure.

At first, don’t be surprised if you have some difficulty isolating the specific muscle groups. But keep trying! You’ll find success soon enough and reap the benefits.

Aim for a 10-minute session. Muscle Relaxation can be done anywhere. It helps reduce stress and relax the mind in seconds! It’s also often used in conjunction with Biofeedback.

MUSIC THERAPY for Depression—

Do you like to listen to music? It turns out that music has one of the most powerful effects on the mind for memory and people and event association.

But how can it be used for therapy?

Music therapy was first recognized as a bonafide treatment back in 1945 when musicians treated injured United States military personnel. It’s now used in a variety of ways to improve mental and physical health. Patients may listen to a particular piece of music and then discuss how it affects them. It can also be used to achieve a state of relaxation.

Studies have shown that music therapy improves students’ sleep quality and reduces pre-exam anxiety.

Your choice of music can relax your overactive mind and help you concentrate on the subject at hand, or energize you. You can select the genre and tempo based on your mood or activity, or the mood you wish to achieve.

Music therapy can revive your spirit, get you up and moving, and, for some people, actually reduce pain and suffering. Ever undergo an MRI? The music you can select to have piped in through head phones they place over your ears to drown out the horrid noise can settle your nerves and queasy stomach and make it seem as though the exam is shorter than it really is.

So don’t forget about music as an important part of your healing process. It can be combined with other treatments, like visualization, to optimize and enhance results.

It can improve mood, reduce heart rate, blood pressure, and anxiety. And some anti-depressant medications actually work better with music therapy!

Wrap-up—

I think you’ll be pleased with the positive effects you’ll receive from these mind-body exercises, and they’ll become an integral part of your stress and depression-fighting medicine toolbox. If you have any questions about them or difficulty performing them, please don’t hesitate to respond in the reply box or send me an email at: andreaarthurowan@gmail.com.

Or let us know how these techniques have benefitted you!

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NEXT TIME: Fighting depression with Pilates, Relaxed Breathing, Tai Chi, and Yoga.

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Until then,

don’t give in or give up, and fight the good fight against this debilitating illness!

Andrea

 
Andrea Arthur Owan, M.S., A.T., R., is a fitness pro, chaplain, and an award-winning inspirational writer. She works and writes to help people recover from grief and loss and to live their best lives — physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

(Some information and quotes for this post were taken from Mayo Clinic Guide to Alternative Medicine, published by Time Home Entertainment.)

How to Start Your Year Right, With a Personal Retreat

Are you feeling a little post holiday-letdown melancholy? Today I’ll give you a tip on how to combat it.

I was feeling a whole lot of letdown. Because we’d been remodeling our home, the decorations and tree went up just days before Christmas, and then it all seemed to be over so soon. And I was trying to extend the festivities. The emotional, feeling part of them.

Our holidays were unexpectedly full and joyous, and I was still trying to live on the happy fumes. The house became eerily quiet after our kids and their wives and sweethearts departed. My heart ached over the feeling of loss, and I didn’t want to let go of their happy, energetic presence. Their spirits still lingered in the house.

But the outside world was busy moving forward and trying to drag me (and other reluctant earthlings) along with it. Even when I found myself out grocery shopping January 2, I was in a happy, festive mood. Everyone else in the store, though, seemed anxious and grumpy. The store was packed with edgy people, all getting in one another’s way. Couples were yelling at each other about taking too long to find a particular food.

When I arrived at the checkout counter, the young woman and I struck up a conversation. The topic of the stressed out and angry clientele came up. “I know,” she said. “It’s awful. I don’t like it. Everyone seems upset.” She went on to say how happy and relaxed she felt and the customers were chipping away at that.

And that was on January 2, the second day of the New Year!

The second grocery store I wound up shopping in was already hawking Valentine’s Day chocolates, not too far from their deeply-discounted Christmas ware. Home improvement stores were already displaying their spring and summer items.

But I’m determined to ease into 2020 a bit more slowly and intentionally divest myself of the holiday trappings.

So last week, I took some action.

While some of our decorations were beginning to disappear from our shelves and walls, the Christmas tree was still full. And I decided to use it to my advantage last Thursday.

My intentional retreat day—

I had planned a full-day retreat, a day to seek God’s direction. To read, pray, sing, praise and zero in on life and where I was headed—or should be. Not just for this year, but potentially for the next five to seven years, or entire decade (since we just started a new one).

I originally had a grandiose idea of going to a local botanical garden, to wander along their winding desert paths and sit on a bench to read and write in my journal. I thought the peaceful surroundings would give me just the jolt and inspiration I needed to receive a word from the Lord.

But my budget and unexpected cold, cloudy and windy weather disrupted those plans. So I enjoyed a warm-up sojourn around our hilly neighborhood and then settled down in our library with my Shetland sheepdog, Dolly, in front of our library fireplace.

And I turned on the Christmas tree lights to add an atmosphere of joy and promise.

The results—

After a day of reading voraciously, praying, and filling pages of my journal, I finally felt ready to bid adieu to the holidays, tuck the precious memory of them into my hart, box up the tree and ornaments, and step firmly into the new year, and decade.

What a retreat day can do for you—

Taking that time helped me focus and open myself up to possibilities and hope. It helps you slow down, extract yourself from the world and its incessant, tiresome demands, and focus on the important stuff. I would highly recommend to everyone that they take a retreat day before we get too much further into the year and other demands or allow well-meaning people take you in directions you hadn’t planned on, or shouldn’t be going.

The time leaves you refreshed and excited. Content. More focused, purposeful and intentional. And that gives you a feeling of control, something so important to our emotional well-being.

Now my husband is trying to figure out when he can take his own personal retreat day, something that always recharges his emotional, spiritual and physical batteries.

Planning and taking your own personal retreat—

Try to block out an entire day. But if you don’t have the luxury of a full day, then block out a 4-hour time period in the morning or afternoon.
Turn off your smart phone and stash it someplace where it won’t be a distraction or temptation. Turn off your computer and any other electronic devices.
Make sure you’re by yourself and won’t have to endure interruptions. If you have babies at home, hire a babysitter and head out to a favorite place to enjoy your retreat, preferably someplace quiet. Ask your spouse to take care of the kids for a day. If you’re choosing a Saturday, have your husband/wife take the kids to the zoo, the movies, or a kids’ museum so you can retreat uninterrupted. You need to be able to focus on what God’s saying to you without worrying about distractions.
Grab your Bible, journal (or notebook/paper), and a pen, prayer beads, and anything else that will help you focus on God, your relationship with Him, and the direction he wants you to take this year.
Write down the activities that make you happy, the ones that really recharge and satisfy you. Make a mental note of doing more of those this year. Pencil them into your calendar for January to get a kick-start.
Identify your strengths and weaknesses, and brainstorm how you can utilize your strengths and dilute your weaknesses.
Make some notes on the tremendous blessings in your life, including people, events, work, etc. Thank God for those.
Identify the things in your life that are time-wasters and energy-drainers. What are you doing just because someone else wants you to do it, or because you feel guilty if you don’t. If you must do them for a good reason—like maintaining the family finances or health—ask God to give you a heart for them. Otherwise, make a point of releasing yourself from these wheel-spinning activities.
Identify what areas of your life you could change in order to give yourself more freedom and joy. Does your home need a thorough run-through, to throw out old clothes, unread and will-never-read books, and dust-gathering knickknacks that don’t fall into the family heirloom category. How can you simplify your life, and what can you do to achieve that goal?
Identify those people in your life that you’d like to spend more time with and develop a plan on how to achieve that goal. What individuals or groups do you want to nurture friendships with?
Choose any area of your life and pray about how you might make it more enjoyable or prosperous.
Identify areas God wants you to expend your energies. Remember that His yoke is easy and His burden is light!
Pick out some Bible verses to pray, personalize, and write down, and post in conspicuous places in order to remind you of your focus.

Will all of your plans come to fruition by December 31? Probably not, but as God reminds us, people perish without a vision.

Our (my husband and my) year will be focused on getting out of all debt, gaining freedom and preparing for retirement in the next five to seven years. For us, that means we have to forgo our coveted travel (even to the Northwest to visit our boys and daughter-in-law).

Since travel is one of our high-priority activities, it’s going to be tough. But we’re already looking forward to the possibilities and rewards, and are experiencing a new sense of freedom and control. It’s triggering ideas for alternative, scaled-down, budget-friendly activities. And it’s a great place to be in a marriage.

Now it’s your turn. You’ve got 18 days left in January. Pick out a day and get refreshed through a retreat! Face this year with joy, promise and expectation.

Until next week,

May your new year, and decade, get off to a great and promising start!

Andrea


Andrea Arthur Owan, M.S., A.T., R., is an award-winning inspirational writer, fitness pro, and chaplain. She writes and works to help people live their best lives — physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

Helping Others Deal With Grief Over the Holidays: Part IV

I had to make a difficult phone call yesterday.

Last night, after a day of work and an evening church meeting, I called my aunt.

Normally I would look forward to calling her because I love chatting with her. We’re like-minded, she’s sharp, she has some great life stories to tell, and she’s got a great sense of humor. We’ve gotten really close over the past ten years, especially since the untimely death of her only daughter, Jan, who fought valiantly and then succumbed to ovarian cancer ten years ago.

But yesterday’s call was difficult because it was the 40^th anniversary of the death of her son Jeff, my beloved cousin and Jan’s older brother, who was killed in a tragic car accident on the icy roads in Northern California—on his way south to their home near Anaheim, California, for Christmas.

It was a devastating day. And I called her to let her know I was thinking about her.

A mother never forgets those days. Decades don’t remove the pain and regret.

She knew what I meant when I told her I just wanted to let her know I was thinking about her. And she thanked me and told me she appreciated it.

Then we had a really nice chat. As we talked, her spirits seemed to perk up. We caught up, laughed and loved through the satellite connection.

It was a sweet time. But the reason behind our special connection on yesterday’s date, December 16, was heartbreaking.

Is someone in your circle suffering loss or grief?

Does someone you know need an “I’m thinking about you today,” call? Who do you know that’s been suffering a loss of a loved one, a divorce, an estrangement from a spouse, parent or child? Who around you needs to know that someone is thinking about them during this time of extreme joy and extreme loneliness?

Reach out and connect, some way, with them today. Even a simple call can do wonders for a grieving person’s spirit. On Christmas Eve, or Christmas Day. Make sure the grieving in your circle of friends or acquaintances are watched over and loved during the holidays.

NEXT WEEK: Helping you deal with your own grief during the holidays.

Until then, reach out and connect.

Blessings,

Andrea


Andrea Arthur Owan is an award-winning inspirational writer, fitness pro and chaplain. She writes and works to help people live their best lives—physically, emotionally, and spiritually.