The Body is a Microcosm of the Universe

photo by Arnaud Mariat

The body is a microcosm of the universe. The universe expands and contracts and so, too, does the body. In spring and summer we feel the expansion of the season opening us up as the world itself opens with leaves and flowers. In fall and winter the life force of trees contract back into their trunks, the animals hibernate, and we humans find rest and self-reflection. Every breath contains an expansion and a contraction. On the inhale our lungs fill, expanding our muscle fibers, compressing our organs with air. On the exhale our lungs contract, like a pump moving qi and blood through the body. 

From the tiniest microorganisms to the ocean that holds them, we are all interconnected and the matter that makes up our bodies is responsive to the same rhythms. Heat expands us and cold contracts us. Joy expands us and fear contracts us. 

During dark times, expansion and joy may be hard to feel. How do we find joy when violence is so present in the lives of people we care about? How do we find joy when the planet is hotter and less hospitable each year, when our leaders and temperaments drive us further from each other, and when desperation, poverty, trauma, addiction, violence and pain all feel so tangibly close to us? When I ask these questions, I try to remember that we are a microcosm of the universe. That we cannot just contract, we must expand. I know this but often do not feel it. And yet time spent in nature, with loved ones, engaged in community building and creative expression can remind my animal body how to feel joy and interconnection.

“I don’t use joy to bypass or to cover up, I use joy to hold everything. That way you stay connected. I can experience joy and also still understand that there are real struggles happening right now for a lot of folks, including us. It doesn’t bypass anything but it gives me the space not to be overwhelmed by suffering.”

- Lama Rod Owens

Contraction can look like a lot of things in the human system: fear, hoarding, self-protection, an inability to see beyond one’s own life experience and reality. It can make people do unkind things and behave aggressively. It is also a natural energetic response of the body.

The goal is not to deny ourselves these natural responses, but to identify them and work with them.

Autumn is the beginning of the contraction of the natural world, and it continues to contract into the winter months. We find ourselves seeking more rest and quiet. As a society we assign judgement to these natural rhythms. We tend to prefer expansion and expansive emotions like love, joy and contentment. We like spring and summer, youth and beauty, the building up but not the breaking down. We like order, not entropy. But that is just simply not how the universe works. We need grief, fear and rage. We need aging, death and destruction in order to have balance and to foster new beginnings. All these energetics are equally accepted by the natural world. Animals don’t resist aging, in fact aging is the privilege of those who have survived. 

If my body is a microcosm of the universe, then tending to my body and those in my immediate sphere is tending to the universe. Loving those close to me, loving myself is sending love into the universe.

photo by Dingzeyu Li

If you want to awaken all of humanity, then awaken all of yourself. If you want to eliminate the suffering in the world, then eliminate all that is dark and negative in yourself. Truly, the greatest gift you have to give is that of your own self-transformation.
― Lao Tzu 

Working on the attachment patterns, traumas and defenses that inform our actions helps ease the trauma of the world. It sets an example of how the world could be. It interrupts the inheritance of those patterns. When I care for myself, I am kinder to those around me. When I tend to my needs, I can show up for the needs of others. When I am intentional with my choices, I live by my values and therefore deepen them and strengthen the impact and example I offer the world in a ripple effect. We all have that power. 

As Prentis Hemphill talks about in their new book, What It Takes to Heal (highly recommended), not tending to our own relational wounds can negatively impact our community work. But when we do the hard work to heal our own insecurities and past traumas we can create reparative experiences for ourselves and others, building community that is much closer and more reliable. 

Have you ever had the experience of feeling afraid to bring up an issue with a close friend, partner or colleague (contraction), but when you do it is received with love and gratitude (expansion)? When we work on our deepest insecurities and pains, we can say, “Thank you for bringing this to my attention, I’m going to think about it and figure out how I can show up better next time,” instead of getting defensive or reactive. Being on the receiving end of kind openness allows deeper connection and safety in relationships, however close or casual. This is one example of how tending to ourselves really does have a larger impact. 

As I age, I accept contradiction as more of a given than an exception. When we make peace with contradiction, we can accept, love and appreciate the patterns of the universe, the expansion and contraction and the great unknown of our reality just as it is. Simultaneously we can want it to be better, safer, kinder, more generous, more enlightened and more peaceful. I’m not saying give up your activism, your effort, your hopes and dreams and accept the world as it is. Quite the opposite. Think of every moment as your activism. Every moment is an opportunity to be kinder, more generous, more joyful and more expansive. But we have to care for ourselves to be able to achieve that kind of openness. And it won’t happen all the time. The weight of the world will pin us to the floor with sadness sometimes. That’s okay, too. 

“Over time, I have come to understand that social transformation (the push for more just systems and policies) and personal transformation (healing our own trauma and reshaping our relationships) have to happen together. Not one or the other, but both. We neglect ourselves or our growth in our rush to change what is external. When we do, we fracture, and succumb to what we are unwilling to face.”
– Prentis HemphillWhat it Takes to Heal

Relative and Absolute

In the timeline of the universe, I am a small being alive for such a little blip of time and I can’t really understand the direction in which everything is moving or the “point” of it all. Yet in my own lived experience, I have so many thoughts and feelings and such grief for the way humans treat each other and the planet. 

Our human minds desperately want to understand the nature of the universe, but it is so vast that understanding simply isn’t possible. It is one of the many contradictions we live with. Our only choice is to make a narrative around ourselves and our reality, because that is how our brains work. We need an ego, an identity and a life story to survive the day-to-day, but it also limits and isolates us from the truth of our interconnectedness. Can we accept that this is only a simplified, story-book version of reality? That in fact we don’t really understand how it all works? 

What might be helpful is to share with you the theory of relative and absolute. In the absolute, everything is just as it should be and the ways of the universe are a mystery I can accept. The universe expands, the universe contracts and every piece of matter in the universe responds to that rhythm. 

In the relative, I see human suffering everywhere and I want things to be different. My own suffering is sometimes intolerable. But when I meditate, sit in nature, soak in a hot bath or take psilocybin, I have momentary reprieves from the relative and can blissfully suspend in the absolute; in connection and solidarity with everything. My time in the absolute offers perspective for when I come back to the relative, as painful as that return can be. I have accepted that the ways of the universe are far beyond my human comprehension. Even our own human nature defies understanding. We spend most of our time in the relative, in the reality we have created, and that reality brings with it a lot of suffering.

Let the absolute be a resource. Let it hold you when suffering feels too big for your one human body to hold. You are not alone, and it isn’t your singular job to undo the painful systems of the world. Put your feet on the earth, shout into the trees, watch the sun rise and set, and spend time around other humans you can confide in. To feel the enormity of the universe and to let our pain be held by it allows us to expand and let go of what holds us back.

Recently I asked a Buddhist teacher, “Is it human nature to cause suffering?” And he asked, “Do you care about deeply connecting with others?” And when I nodded, he said, “Then, yes.”

photo by Aiden Craver

Self-Care as Medicine for the World

Peter Levine, psychologist and daddy of the Somatic Experiencing method of somatic therapy, defines trauma as a loss of connection. Whether it’s a lack of safety in one’s own body, fears that interfere with close human relationships, or dissociation that keeps us out of the present moment, trauma shows up in our lives by emulating a past survival skill —probably acquired in infancy or early childhood — that got us through a hard time. That pattern may no longer be serving us, but it is what we know and have relied on. But as Gabor Maté reminds us in this beautiful podcast, trauma isn’t what happened to you. If it was, you’d be stuck with it forever because it’s in the past. Trauma is what your body did to survive what happened to you. That means it is a pattern in your body and can be worked with, changed and even released. Connection can be reestablished.

Questioning those survival patterns can be very uncomfortable because we have relied on them so deeply in the past, but it also leads to an expansion into new ways of being. These survival skills have leached into our political systems and institutions, prioritizing certain populations and their needs over others. It is a world-wide problem that shows up in ethnic cleansing and genocide, caste systems, slavery and hierarchies that still exist in every society. Changing established systems can feel daunting or even impossible. But as Resmaa Menakem points out in his book My Grandmother’s Hands, 

Our bodies have a form of knowledge that is different from our cognitive brains. This knowledge is typically experienced as a felt sense of constriction or expansion, pain or ease, energy or numbness. Often this knowledge is stored in our bodies as wordless stories about what is safe and what is dangerous. The body is where we fear, hope, and react; where we constrict and release; and where we reflexively fight, flee, or freeze. If we are to upend the status quo of white-body supremacy, we must begin with our bodies.

Menakem is talking about expansion and contraction of the body. To consider our body a microcosm of the universe and to commit to undoing certain contractive survival mechanisms in our body that no longer serve us or our communities is a great undertaking. Our survival patterns have kept us alive, but they often keep us defensive and isolated, afraid to connect deeply with others or pursue our life’s work. Undoing this means facing what got us there in the first place, often the darkest parts of ourselves and our life story. It means being curious about what is underneath the patterning and asking for help from practitioners who hold space for that kind of transformation, but also from our communities and families as we commit to addressing our own personal human suffering. 

When I identify and let go of my survival patterns, I get a little break from the relative and can fall back into the gentle, loving arms of the absolute. In this space I am connected to every human being, every blade of grass, every star and planet in the sky. I am with all the ancestors who have come before and those yet to be born. That space takes a lot of letting go to reach. I must detach from my long to-do list. I have to release the worry that I hurt someone’s feelings or they hurt mine. These are relative matters of my small human life. They also keep me from a sense of interconnectedness. When I return from my moment in the absolute, the survival patterns return, as do the to-do list and the worries, but they have less of a grip on me.

Life in the relative is complicated, distracting, overwhelming. It isn’t so easy to know how to prioritize our needs or even know what they are in the moment. And all of that keeps us from the absolute. Which keeps us from remembering that the body is a microcosm of the universe. 

photo by Annie Sprat

The contraction of winter can be an ideal time to reflect on the patterns that don’t serve our minds or bodies anymore. With short days and long nights, there’s the invitation to stay home, and sit and observe memories of the day’s challenges. When a negative feeling comes up, give yourself permission to sit with it, instead of brushing it away. See if you can feel where it lives in your physical body. Amazingly, just paying attention to the feeling can allow it to dissolve, or perhaps help you gain insight into how and why an unwelcome moment happened. This is an active way to invite more kindness into your body, and subsequently, the universe. 

From the Buddhist practice of Metta, or loving-kindness, I share the words said by thousands everyday: May you be happy. May you be well. May you be safe. May you be peaceful and at ease.

“My body is this expression of the natural world and just like the natural world, my body is also asking for balance. What does a natural balance mean for me? …It’s individual and collective. The collective reflects the individual and individual reflects the collective... Beginning as individual work, I have to figure out what my balance is and then I connect or expand into the collective… I can’t support and lift the collective if I’m not doing my work first.”

- Lama Rod Owens

Resources:

I recommend all these books, many of which have helpful exercises and a few of which can be listened to as audiobooks on Spotify. Fortunately for those with shorter attention spans, most of these authors also have deep and meaningful podcasts that I have also listed (some of) here. Happy reading, listening and practicing ☺

Prentis Hemphill:

Becoming the People Podcast

What it Takes to Heal; How Transforming Ourselves Can Change the World

Resmaa Menakem:

 My Grandmother’s Hands Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies

Podcast: “Notice the Rage, Notice the Silence” On Being with Krista Tippett

Lama Rod Owens:

Love and Rage

Podcasts:

 A Radical Anger

Fat Joy with Sophia Apostol

Gabor Maté:

 The Myth of Normal; Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture

Peter A. Levine:

 Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma: The Innate Capacity to Transform Overwhelming Experiences

Life is a Spectrum

The Summer Element

In one sense, summer is the easiest season to write about. Its lessons and intentions are about joy and connection, laughter and exaltation. It’s about the full expression of our most authentic selves. Summer is the season when we are most open and available to the world around us. It is the most yang of all the seasons; full sun, long days, short nights, full blooms and open hearts.

Every summer day between June 21st and September 22nd is its own unique day and, as we move through the season, palpable change can be observed. At the summer solstice, we still experience cloudy skies and rain here in the northwest. The trees and grasses are lush and bright green. On June 21st the sun sets at 9:11pm and it won’t get dark until after 10 (and will only be dark for seven hours). By the fall equinox the grasses are dry, the trees look parched and there’s an edge to the air suggestive of fall. The sun will set at 7:07 on September 22nd and we will already be preparing for the cold season.

I bring this up because everything about the natural world, including us, is in a state of constant change. We are always recycling cells, transforming food into energy, making more little folds of wisdom in our brains. We are ever-evolving creatures.

June is the perfect month for Pride because we already have the inclination to wear our hearts on our sleeves this time of year. More glitter, more color, more individuality starts to spark. We desire to present ourselves in our full beauty and vitality because that’s what the natural world is doing. We are drawn to each other because this is the time of year to make genuine human connections or deepen the ones we have. This is the time you want to linger sitting in the grass deep in conversation, or have one more loop around the block in a slow stroll, stretching out the night just a little bit longer.

Heart and Kidney Connection

One of my favorite philosophical pillars of Chinese medicine is the heart and kidney connection. The basic idea is that your Kidneys represent your DNA, destiny, life’s work, the agenda you’re born into this world with — whatever you want to call it. The Heart, on the other hand, lives in the moment. Every beat is fresh and new. The Heart is what immediately reacts to the incidents and interactions in our day-to-day lives. When those two organ systems are in good communication, a feedback loop is created. The Kidneys gently guide the Heart and our sense of overarching purpose. Likewise the Heart gives feedback to the Kidneys, always updating the sense of our place in the world, learning new things to deepen our work and keep it relevant. This feedback loop is how we can make sure we are doing things for the right reason: neither too spontaneous or impulsive but also not too inflexible or stuck in a previous version of ourselves.

The emotion most often associated with the Heart is joy, and the emotion associated with the Kidney is fear. While that is a vast oversimplification of the complexity of elemental medicine, one can see how too much joy leads to problems, and too much fear does the same. There is healthy joy and there is healthy fear. But when one takes over, imbalance ensues. These emotions should balance each other. With too much joy a lack of grounding or responsibility results. Too much fear and we live trapped in our smaller survival selves worrying about too many “what ifs.” It can instill a fear of change and a lack of personal evolution.

While it has always been important to stay open-minded and flexible, our ability to adapt is more essential now than ever. Our world and society are changing rapidly as many systems our society has relied on are breaking down rather chaotically. If we hold on too tightly to one philosophy or way of living, we will be putting ourselves and our relationships in peril. The human mind loves to categorize to allay its fears. Is this food good or bad? Is this new person a friend or an enemy? We decide so quickly we may not even notice a decision has been made. But we can evolve to be bigger than that. What if our ability to quickly categorize and identify threats is keeping us small and inhibiting our individuality? The rigidity of categorizing people based on old perceptions and biases only does us harm in the end. And it separates us from the evolving nature of our authentic selves.

Life Is A Spectrum

Our tastes and preferences are often subtly changing. What fashions we choose, what flavors bring us joy. As we deepen our knowledge and compassion our behavior mutates too. It makes logical sense that our identities shift over a lifetime. There can be a lot of insecurity in this new way of being but there is also freedom. As someone who’s never resonated with or enjoyed being put into categories, I love the freedom to define myself. I love the idea that my identity can change as I change and evolve. Burn the boxes! Let’s free ourselves to be who we are and challenge others to make space for the in-between. Because life is, and always has been, a spectrum.

My friend and skilled herbalist Rae Swersey once drew a chart for a training we were doing on inclusivity in clinical practice. There were three lines, one labeled “Gender Identity,” one labeled “Gender Presentation” and one labeled “Sexuality.” On one end of “Gender Identity” Rae wrote “masculine” and on the other end “feminine.” They wrote the same for “Gender Presentation” and for “Sexuality” they wrote “gay” on one end and “straight” on the other. Rae then took a pen and began to mark up the chart. “Today, a person might be here on the gender identity line,” they said while making a mark on the line. “In gender presentation they might be here,” and they made a mark on that line. “And today in sexuality they might be here. But this chart changes over time. It can be different every day for some people. Or even every hour. Because gender is a spectrum, as are gender presentation and sexuality. You are not stuck in a box, there aren’t even any boxes. They’re made up. The binary is imaginary.” This perfect summation overwhelmed me with relief.

I think about these assumed binaries all the time. I see how I move around on that chart day-to-day, year-by-year. It is a joy to make no assumptions about people I meet or see on the street. It is a privilege to hold open and unassuming space for patients to be who they are in every way. And when I am met with that kind of openness from others, I feel at home. Allowed to define myself by my own authenticity and not societal expectations.

The Binary is Imaginary

Queer, non-binary, trans* and gender queer people have existed since time began, in every culture. It’s not a new thing. It’s not a trend. About 1.7% of babies are born intersex. According to Amnesty International, “Intersex is an umbrella term used to describe a wide range of natural variations that affect genitals, gonads, hormones, chromosomes or reproductive organs.” People may believe everyone is born strictly male or female, but that has never been true. Intersex variation is only one of the many ways the binary is exclusionary. In ancient cultures gender queer people were often seen as sacred, viewed as healers or people with one foot in each world. What would our world be like if we held the same reverence for the authentically uncatergorizable?

Venus, photo by Steven Miller

Once you recognize that gender is a spectrum, it’s obvious sexuality is on a spectrum, too. Terms like “pansexual” loop the concept of the spectrum into language. You are allowed to define your own gender and sexuality and that definition can change throughout your life or even day-to-day. You are allowed to be attracted and fall in love with people across a gender spectrum.

Yin and Yang

Another important pillar in Chinese medicine philosophy is that the separation of yin and yang means death. Everything in the universe is on this spectrum between yin and yang — nothing is 100% one or the other. This is one of the reasons why Chinese medicine is so fitting for people who find themselves uncategorizable. It is a medicine without societal judgment, one that acknowledges the necessity of every phase of life, every season, emotion, and all parts of the spectrum that create balance. Our world requires death and decay to create life and growth. It needs yin qualities to balance the yang. No body or ecosystem functions without a balance of the two. Everything is on that spectrum.

I hope this perspective offers a feeling of freedom and openness. Our flexibility and adaptability define our strength as a species. I leave you with a poem from writer and activist Alok, whose journey to self acceptance is a gift to us all.

I BELIEVE THAT I CAN FALL IN LOVE WITH EVERYONE IN THE WORLD. I BELIEVE I NEED OTHER PEOPLE TO FIGURE OUT MYSELF. I BELIEVE THAT OTHER PEOPLE ARE JUST AS COMPLEX AND CONTRADICTORY AS ME. I BELIEVE EVERYONE HAS A FUNDAMENTAL DIGNITY AND WORTH SIMPLY FOR BEING. I BELIEVE WESTERN INDIVIDUALISM IS KILLING US. I BELIEVE THAT WE SHOULDN’T HAVE TO BE IN ROMANTIC LOVE TO BE CARED FOR. I BELIEVE THAT CARE IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN CRITIQUE. I BELIEVE FRIENDSHIP IS SACRED. I BELIEVE THAT I AM AFRAID OF DYING ALONE. I BELIEVE LONELINESS IS A FORM OF INTERNATIONAL EMERGENCY. I BELIEVE THAT WE ARE MORE CONNECTED THAN EVER BUT HAVE NEVER FELT MORE ALONE. I BELIEVE WE SOMETIMES USE IRONY BECAUSE WE ARE AFRAID OF INTIMACY. I BELIEVE IN INTERDEPENDENCE. I BELIEVE THE WAY THAT WE HAVE BEEN TAUGHT IS TO USE, AND NOT TO NEED. I BELIEVE NEEDY PEOPLE ARE HONEST PEOPLE. I BELIEVE FEELING IS ONE OF THE MOST DANGEROUS THINGS I HAVE EVER DONE. I BELIEVE SADNESS IS A FORM OF CONSCIOUSNESS. I BELIEVE WE SHOULD BE ABLE TO CRY IN PUBLIC. I BELIEVE DEPRESSION IS NOT MY FAULT. I BELIEVE WE WERE MEANT FOR SOMETHING MORE KIND AND JUST THAN THIS. I BELIEVE KINDNESS CAN BE A FORM OF JUSTICE. I BELIEVE I AM HEARTBROKEN NOT BY ONE PERSON, BUT BY THE WORLD. I BELIEVE THAT STRANGERS ARE POTENTIAL FRIENDS. I BELIEVE THAT STRANGERS ARE POTENTIAL FRIENDS.

-Alok

“Strangers Are Potential Friends”

Rest as Resistance

Seattle in winter snow, photo: Steven Miller

Yin and Yang

When Yin and Yang are in balance, there is a lovely interplay of the substantial and the immaterial. In the natural world that looks like a balance of sun, water, nutrients in the soil and wind that allow plants to flourish. In the human body it means our blood and fluids circulate through the vessels to nourish our skin and senses, bring warmth all the way to our toes and fingertips and give us the stamina to get through an energized day and a restful night. 

Yin and Yang are interdependent, which means that one without the other is actually impossible. Even a rock, the perceived embodiment of Yin in its stillness and solidity, has movement to it if you watch it long enough. Most rocks were either molten lava or air or water particulate that settled and condensed. Rocks evolve their form over time. Even rocks have a Yang phase. 

When Yin and Yang fall out of right relationship, we start to see problems pretty quickly. In the human body, when Yang is no longer in service to Yin, it can look like headaches, high blood pressure, anxiety, hot flashes, fevers, uncontrolled anger, acid reflux, hyper-vigilance, and pain in the neck and upper shoulders. When Yin dominates, you may not want to get out of bed, may have sluggish digestion, depression, fluid accumulation, cold extremities, low metabolism and a flat affect. 

A Yang-Dominant World

Our world is currently undergoing a change in which Yang dominates, causing the glaciers to melt, forest fires to burn uncontrollably, and temperatures to rise. This creates chaos for plants and animals. There are more bugs and disease destroying trees, and epidemics that proliferate through human populations. Migratory patterns of birds are being disrupted, coral reefs continue to die off, and animals struggle to find food and water sources. 

Outside my office window one hummingbird has started hoarding the feeder, chasing off any others that come along. The feeder is consistently stocked with sugar water and, for the last many months, hummingbirds have been stopping by sometimes three at a time to feed from it. Now the little bully chases off any other bird that gets too close. He isn’t even eating from the feeder most of the time, he just stands guard, puffing his red chest when another bird comes within range, darting after it like an angry bullet. Finally I get sick of watching this hoarding play out and take the feeder away. When Yang is not of service, it often looks like this level of aggressiveness that ultimately benefits no one.

In human society an overabundance of Yang, when it falls out of service to Yin, looks like toxic masculinity, over-controlling governments, war, and hoarding of resources. Without enough Yin, there is a sense of scarcity of substance and an overabundance of movement that is chaotic and disruptive. Yang-dominant symptoms are often parallel with the fallout from living with chronic stress in a sympathetic nervous system state of fight or flight. That Yang aspect of the sympathetic nervous system must be balanced by the parasympathetic “rest and digest” for our bodies to function and thrive.

Unfortunately, our life styles and habits in the West mimic this imbalance of Yin and Yang. Capitalism values productivity over rest and general wellbeing. Within the context of capitalism, there is no value placed on contentment, beauty or health unless it can be commodified. 

Health During Climate Change

We are directly impacted by the climate in which we live whether we know it or not. Not just because the extremes of heat or cold and rain or wind influence our daily choices, but because the nature of our systems is to reflect the same patterns as the seasonal and climatic patterns around us through resonance. Our bodies are a microcosm of our world, following the same rules and patterns. When the weather dries out the plants around us, giving them that thirsty, dusty look, our own skin and sinews become hot and dry. When the earth is boggy and damp, we experience our own sense of being weighed down and sluggish. 

Climate change has created a sense of chaos in the climate that we also feel in our bodies, in our political systems, and in our thought patterns and choices. We cannot help but be influenced by the changing of our world. Our bodies evolved to adapt to our surroundings to maximize survival, and adapting to a chaotic world can create chaos within us. 

A direct result of climate change is that temperatures across the world have risen steadily since the late 1800s.

• Earth’s temperature has risen by 0.14° F (0.08° C) per decade since 1880, and the rate of warming over the past forty years is more than twice that: 0.32° F (0.18° C) per decade since 1981.

• 2020 was the second-warmest year on record based on NOAA’s temperature data, and land areas were record warm.

• Averaged across land and ocean, the 2020 surface temperature was 1.76° F (0.98° Celsius) warmer than the twentieth-century average of 57.0°F (13.9°C) and 2.14˚F (1.19˚C) warmer than the pre-industrial period (1880-1900). *

* https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-global-temperature

Every small change in temperature has an exponential impact because of the way the plants and creatures of the earth evolved to interact with our environment. The changing temperature impacts bird migration, food sources, insect populations and much more. Each of these changes in turn influences other animal and plant populations and as that thread unravels the effect is staggering. 

In our own lives similar imbalances are created by technology. Beginning with the industrial age and the invention of artificial light, we have been able to defy the cues of nature and distance ourselves from the rhythms of the natural world. The sun and moon have a diurnal and nocturnal patterning, but our technology does not. Our phones, televisions and other screens distract us from listening to the cues of our bodies, the days and the seasons.

I wish there was an easy answer for how to live well in chaotic times. Perhaps it helps just knowing that if we are seeing and feeling chaos, we are perceiving reality. Perhaps it helps to remember that for better systems to form, outdated ones need to break down. 

The breaking down phase can be messy, if not embraced, and it’s not something we Westerners prefer. We like growth and avoid decay and death. Our media prefers youth to old age. We talk endlessly about food but cover up our burps and flatulence and would rather not discuss defecation. We prefer spring and summer to fall and winter, and yet we need all of these phases of every day, season and lifespan. Comfort with the breaking down phase prepares us for our own old age and death. It’s like The Tower card of the tarot: the only way to avoid a great fall is to embrace the change around us. Decay reminds us that the atoms that comprise our bodies came from the stars and will be recycled into new beings at our passing. 

While we are alive, we have the choice to bring Yin and Yang into balance in our own lives. We get to choose to counter the superficiality, overstimulation, technology, stimulants and artificial light with depth, rest, nourishing food and quiet time away from our phones and computers. We can choose to meditate, be comfortable in silence, and tune our senses into the more subtle offerings of the world. The choices each of us make impact our day, our moment and our body’s ability to rest and rebalance. The influence goes beyond that, and impacts the world around us in ways we can barely comprehend, because we are inextricably part of a larger eco-system.

For more on Covid-19 and climate change, I recommend this video by Dr. Edward Neal: https://vimeo.com/neijingstudies

A cozy window nook surrounded by bookshelves, photo: Clay Banks

Rest as Resistance 

I view rest as resistance to the idea that you are only valued by what you produce. Meditation is protest. Naps are an anti-capitalist act. When we are well rested and nourished and our Yin and Yang are balanced, we have more capacity for kindness and love. Choosing love and kindness over judgement and fear actively dismantles the white supremacist system. This time of year our bodies want to engage with down time, introspection, deep dreaming, and rebuilding our resource-wells. I encourage you to embrace that. Allowing your body to slow down is a deep act of caring.

Rest isn’t what we’re socialized to do. We are made to believe our habits, schedules, rituals and bodies should remain the same year round and that our productivity defines our success. But to witness the world around us change with the seasons is to recognize we need to adapt our own habits to stay in sync. There is no price that can be put on a well balanced life, no way to measure a joyous surge in the chest, a full-bellied laugh or a moment in quiet presence. Celebrating the winter season and all it represents is about balancing ourselves so that we can show up for whatever the future brings.

A Love Letter to Hip-Hop

“I do feel like there's something special about hip-hop, though, that I'm always trying to get at in my music. And it's not about a sound. To me it's about how honestly and vulnerably I'm willing to tell my story in the music itself and what telling that story could do for people with similar stories, for people who have never heard of such a story, for the whole world.”

- DoNormaal

This is a love letter to hip-hop.

If you are not a hip-hop fan, I implore you to hear me out. Hip-hop is the perfect subject for this seasonal transition between spring and summer. Spring is characterized by creative energy, reaching up like the growing plants, transforming anger into creativity and empowerment. Summer is the fire element season, it’s about community, reaching out to others, connecting and lifting each other up. And then we have hip-hop, a genre that does ALL of that. 

Hip-hop has its share of controversy over misogyny, glorifying violence and drugs, homophobia, posturing and money-praising. I don’t deny that these themes show up, even in some of my favorite songs. But so many hip-hop songs have commentary about those very things cleverly woven into the lyrics. And so I request this: if you are going to judge hip-hop, know it for all it has to offer and judge it on its own terms. These criticisms, however true they may be, don’t take away from the lifeline hip-hop dangles to so many. Hip-hop offers an education to listeners who have lived very different lives because it doesn’t shy away from the deep, dark places artists are willing to plunge into and illuminate. 

It may well be coincidence, but I’m amused to observe the number of well-loved hip-hop artists born this time of year — as the fire and wood elements combine — like Princess Nokia (born June 14th) calls out in her song “Gemini.” From Tupac Shakur to Biggie, to Ice Cube (in fact 4 of the 7 members of NWA are Geminis), to Lauryn Hill, Andre 3000, Kanye West, Macklemore, Kendrick Lamar — there are numerous artists born this time of year who embody the creative, community-oriented nature of hip-hop.

Hip-hop knows its history, with rappers’ lyrics including references and shout outs to the artists that came before. Tupac Shakur, who was killed in 1996, is still prominently featured in hip-hop tracks. His personal narrative, socially aware themes and vast knowledge of literature, religion, philosophy, music and political and social movements come through in his music and inspire many to this day. And he himself was often shouting out to the voices that inspired and taught him, like in his hits “Old School” and “Representin’ 93” where he names tons of artists including early hip-hop icons Grandmaster Flash, Doug E. Fresh, Big Daddy Kane, A Tribe Called Quest and Melle Mel to his contemporaries like Queen Latifah, Too Short, E-40, and Scarface.

“I'm not saying I'm gonna rule the world or I'm gonna change the world, but I guarantee you that I will spark the brain that will change the world.”

–Tupac Shakur

Inspired by Tupac, Kanye West and other artists that took lyrics in a more personal direction, mainstream hip-hop itself has become more personal and artists have felt more at liberty to open up about their own lives and struggles. They’ve used music as a platform to lift up their communities, to communicate their people’s history through storytelling, and to elevate Black music in all its genres through sampling. 

“My teachers told me we was slaves
My mama told me we was kings
I don't know who to listen to
I guess we somewhere in between
My feelings told me love is real
But feelings known to get you killed
I feel as if I'm misconstrued
I spend my moments missin' you
I'm searchin' for atonement, do I blame my darker tone?
I know somethings are better left unsaid and people left alone
Pick up the phone
Don't leave me alone in this cruel, cruel world”

-Vince Staples, Summertime

Hip-hop is a place where Black men can publicly talk about their feelings. That in itself feels revolutionary. Through rapped narrative Kendrick Lamar tells of his personal evolution through his albums; his friends, family and guest artists accompanying him on the journey through skits, lyrics and voicemail messages. At the end of “Sing About Me, I’m Dying of Thirst,” Maya Angelou appears as a benevolent stranger come to shake Kendrick and his friends out of a violent, anger-fueled plan to avenge the death of a friend on his autobiographical album “good kid, m.A.A.d city”.

Lil Wayne talks about his suicide attempt at the age of 12 in “Let It All Work Out”:

“I found my momma's pistol where she always hide it
I cry, put it to my head, then thought about it
Nobody was home to stop me, so I called my auntie
Hung up, then put the gun up to my heart and pondered
Too much was on my conscious to be smart about it
Too torn apart about it, I aim where my heart was pounding
I shot it, and I woke up with blood all around me
It's mine, I didn't die, but as I was dying
God came to my side and we talked about it
He sold me another life and he made a prophet”

Through listening to hip-hop I have come to understand the Black American experience better. It has been a huge part of my self-education as a white person who believes in racial justice. And while listening to hip-hop I have come to better understand and admire hip-hop itself. There are deep metaphors, double entendres and moral lessons that loop back on themselves if you take the time to listen for them.

Hip-hop is its own best promotion in more ways than one. For instance, I can listen to one of my favorite artists, A$AP Rocky’s song “A$AP Forever Remix” and hear guest artists like T.I and Kid Cudi and background vocals by Khloe Anna. The song begins and ends with Moby’s 2000 electro hit “Porcelain,” it gives a shout out to Frank Ocean and his stellar (although technically more along the lines of R&B) album “Blonde,” it pledges loyalty to Rocky’s hip-hop collective A$AP Mob, shouts out “R.I.P.” to some fallen friends and even mentions a couple fashion designers. I have discovered many of my favorite rappers when they have performed guest verses or gotten shout outs from artists I already admire. It’s one of the many ways hip-hop artists lift each other up, promoting lesser known artists by featuring them on a song or showing up on their album.

A.$.A.P. Rocky

A$AP Rocky, whose given name is Rakim after seminal rap duo Erik B. and Rakim, spent most of his youth living in homeless shelters with his mom and older sister after his father was jailed and his brother killed. He sold weed and crack to get by, doubling down on his hip-hop career as his way out. Now he is a legendary rapper and producer, but he speaks of his past and his transition from poverty to wealth and fame with lyrics like “I remember I was pooring, I was young and living homeless, Now I rock the Ricky Owens ($700 shoes), eyes looking like he rolling.” 

And when I say hip-hop promotes Black music, I don’t just mean it promotes hip-hop. Soul group the Isley Brothers have been sampled 912 times in some of the most well known and loved hip-hop songs. Soul, Rock, Electric, Jazz, Classical, Doo-Wop, R&B and Reggae are just some of the genres frequently used and sampled on hip-hop tracks.

J. Cole (Jermaine Lamarr Cole) starts out with something akin to posturing in his hit song G.O.M.D., rapping about money, guns and bitches. But then you start to think maybe it’s a parody when he breaks down, lamenting the two people fame has divided him into:

“Lord will you tell me if I changed, I won't tell nobody
I wanna go back to Jermaine, and I won't tell nobody.”

Then he continues, “This is the part that the thugs skip.” Breaking the song in two and perhaps distinguishing this song from gangsta rap, he then plunges into a verse about relationship struggles and feelings. I loved this song (indeed it was my most listened-to song of 2020, beloved for its geministic two-part nature) long before I watched the award-winning music video made to go with it, where Cole takes it to the next level with a narrative of a slave uprising and the unity of Black people it promotes. Hip-hop takes ownership and transforms language, parody and stereotypes that have been used to harm Black people and keep them down.

Kendrick Lamar speaks of imposter syndrome and inner-conflict in his skit-like song “u”, where he locks himself in a hotel room with a bottle of liquor and battles it out, screaming, calling himself a sell-out for leaving his community in Compton in pursuit of hip-hop fame. He comes back again and again to the line “loving you is complicated” about self-love despite all his feelings of failure and guilt. This is indeed the theme of his entire album “To Pimp A Butterfly,” as he figures out how to show up for his community in a new way.

Kendrick Lamar by Batiste Safont

But of course hip-hop isn’t just a voice for men. Female, Queer and gender-non-conforming hip-hop artists have been there since the very start, molding and evolving hip-hop into the brilliant genre-bending entity it is today. These voices, and especially those of Black and Brown-identified women, queer and GNC folks have been pushed to the margins of music since long before Nina Simone was denied a place at the Curtis Institute of Music. The reclamation through hip-hop is a glory for the ears and the mind.

Megan Thee Stallion lifts other Black women up with her lyrics and her whole vibe. She says: “We need to protect our Black women and love our Black women, 'cause at the end of the day, we need our Black women. We need to protect our Black men and stand up for our Black men, 'cause at the end of the day, we're tired of seeing hashtags about Black men.” But she sees how threatened men are by women’s sexuality.

Following in the footsteps of Boss, Lil’ Kim and Foxy Brown, she and fellow rapper Cardi B rocked the world with their number one billboard hit “WAP” about female sexual empowerment and sex-positivity. “I know this about me,” she says. “This is my pleasure, this is my vagina; I know this vagina bomb. Sometimes you just got to remind people that you're magical and everything about you down to your vagina and to your toes is magical.”

“Even if it's me rapping or if it's me having a conversation with somebody, I'm going to make you feel like you are that bitch. Because you're already that bitch—you somehow just need it stirred up for you. It's like, when you put the Kool-Aid in the water and it all fall to the bottom. But when you mix it up with the sugar, now it's Kool-Aid. You just need somebody to stir it up for you. That's me.”

- Megan Thee Stallion

At 26 Megan Thee Stallion has already lost both her parents. Her father, who she described as her best friend, passed away when she was 15; and her mother, also a hip-hop artist who brought Megan to recording studios instead of daycare and who was her number-one-fan, died of a brain tumor in 2019. These are real stories of American Black people and Black families and what a burden systemic racism and lack of opportunity adds to their lives. The courage and resilience to overcome all these obstacles (or be weighed down by them) is ever-present in hip-hop.

Big Freedia headlines this year’s virtual Seattle Pride. Photo by Lee Kowarski

Artists like Big Freedia and Katey Redd have received international acclaim and brought acceptance of gender non-conforming identity through New Orleans-based Sissy Bounce. Kevin Abstract speaks of the conflict he experiences being Black and gay in “Miserable America”: 

“My best friend's racist
My mother's homophobic
I'm stuck in the closet
I'm so claustrophobic”

Hip-hop is arguably the most popular music in the United States today. It has such a powerful influence over American culture, especially in younger populations, that to understand it is to be let in on a secret that’s not very secret, but that you don’t want to miss. The more controversy a song has, the more attention it gets. Lil Nas X’s video for the song “Montero,” a sexy, gender-queer, Heaven to Hell stripper pole feast for the eyes has been viewed on YouTube over 250 million times since its release three weeks ago. The video is both a commentary on the power of fear and a reclaiming of it. It has given permission for other Queer young people to not be afraid. 

What moves me about hip-hop is the universal truth in so many of the themes. Fear, loyalty, danger, violence, pain, conflicting emotions, complex identity. Although life circumstances and privileges vary greatly between people, we can all relate to the feelings at the root of so many hip-hop songs. 

Queer hip-hop artist DoNormaal incorporates a number of genres and styles into her totally unique music and performance. She says of her brilliant album, “Third Daughter:” “I’m always in between things, because I'm a twin, and I'm a Libra, and I'm black in a white world, and I'm a woman who loves being a woman but sometimes feels the ways and does the things society says only a man feels and does. I feel the yin and yang within me strongly, and everything that comes from their union, and that's very hard in a world that at every corner is asking you to select an option. This album is my option.” To see her on stage is to be mesmerized by all these sides of her simultaneously through each song. She says “I could never be loyal to any one way of identifying because I've never come across one that's fully incorporated all that is me. That's why I write—to explain.”

As many of us attempt to make reparations for the racist origins of this country and the perpetuation of those values that have benefited some of us for generations and continue to, one of the steps is to stop talking and really listen. This past year with all its terrible, visceral examples of inequity has reminded many of us that to educate ourselves we must first try to understand. And not judge what we hear, but really take it in. In this regard hip-hop is an incredibly generous offering, should you choose to accept it.

I would love to share with you the very exciting history of hip-hop and how almost every other genre of music was involved in its creation, how it came out of an underground scene, a desire for justice and change and how it has sparked political and social uprising. But there are people much more qualified for that task. I’m just a fan who sees hip-hop and its important and educational role in societal healing through my own lens. Here are some resources for those of you wishing a more in-depth exploration of hip-hop and more about the music in the artists’ own words:

Articles

How hip-hop helps anxious people

Sex-Positive Women in Rap

The Influence of Lil Nas X “Montero”

Kendrick Lamar and “u”

Interview with DoNormaal

More about Megan Thee Stallion

Hip-Hop and Psychiatry

How Hip-Hip is Lifting the Stigma of Mental Illness

Podcasts

Bottom of the Map

No Skips

More Hip-hop Podcasts

Shows

Hip-Hop Evolution on Netflix

Books

Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop By Jeff Chang

Go Ahead In The Rain: Notes to a Tribe Called Quest By Hanif Abdurraqib

Holler if You Hear Me: Searching for Tupac Shakur By Michael Eric Dyson

Original Gangstas: Tupac Shakur, Dr. Dre, Easy E, Ice Cube and the Birth of West Coast Rap By Ben Westhoff

Intentions in the Season of the Water Element: Reap What You Sow

I’ve just purchased my seeds for next spring’s garden and I’m excited to be growing shiso and two kinds of parsley this year. As an action and a metaphor, this is the time to gather your seeds.

Many of us groan when we hear the question “Did you make any resolutions this year?” Looking over my 2020 goals I have to laugh. While I actually reached a couple of those goals, the majority of them got cast aside. Reality is completely different than it was when I set those goals. Things that felt important then feel less so now. Goals of 2021 begin something like: “hug parents and friends in 2021,” which of course is out of my hands. But it goes deeper than that. How do we change a society one person at a time? How do we each accept accountability and responsibility for our role in perpetuating oppression and ending it? And how do we do anything about it in the midst of a pandemic and quarantine?

It’s easy to make goals and harder to fulfill them. I, for one, am guilty of being unrealistic - fantastical even - about what I am capable of doing with my time. So I’m hoping to be more humble with my goals this year. But I also want them to be deeper, because my vision is clearer than it’s ever been. 

Some of my goals are common like “exercise 4-6 times a week” because I know when I take care of my body and mind, I am a more patient, present and loving person. Some of them are exploratory, like “learn more about time space theory and how it relates to Chinese medicine.” And some are about a slow and steady building of knowledge, like “separate your seedlings, or you will grow a bunch of tiny, crowded vegetables like last year!”

Each book, article, and essay I read from a voice of the underserved, underseen, and undervalued teaches me more about my own role in undoing a system of oppression. One thing I’m proud of about the goals I set for myself last year, is that I’ve learned a lot more about how to spend my money. We live in a capitalist society, so our money is our voice. Our money is our intention. If you sport a “Black Lives Matter” slogan anywhere in your life, I hope you are also making an effort to spend your money at Black-owned businesses that are struggling during the pandemic even more than their white-owned counterparts, support organizations and legislature that improve the lives of Black folks, and educate yourself via Black media, literature and history. See the bottom of this article for resources on how to support Black businesses and Black lives.

Goals are easy to set but hard to fulfill. I talk about this all the time with patients. When people come to see me they usually have a sense of what needs to change in their lives. If they’re coming in for body pain, they know they need to stretch and exercise more. If they’re having digestive issues, they know the foods they should be avoiding to feel better. If they’re having sleep issues, they know they need to take space from screens and true crime shows before bed. We talk about details and new ideas, but the baseline goals are already intuited by the patients themselves. Still, even knowing these things, realizing goals can be difficult.

It’s important to understand the true intention of the goal and see if we feel good about that. Which goals come from something to prove and which from a genuine desire to make life better for ourselves and others? 

For example, I want to drink less caffeine. I’m a pretty wired person, I don’t need anything to hype me up and I notice digestive problems, sleep problems and anxiety as side effects of caffeine consumption. So I know that my reasons behind this goal are sincere. Then I look at why it’s hard for me to do. 

1. I like the ritual of tea in the morning.

2. I’m defiant: I already gave up coffee, which I loved, just let me have my black tea, okay?? And then another reason has become evident:

3. I love the taste of black tea with cream and honey. It brings joy to my senses and starting the day with a book and a cup of tea sets me up for a good day. So now I’ve picked apart the goal and what is holding me back and I’m trying to come up with a realistic solution. As much as I’m sure it would be good for me to also give up honey and cream, that isn’t the goal and it’s part of the reason I love the caffeine. So lately I’ve been trading off between low- or no-caffeine options instead of black tea, but allowing myself to have the cream and honey. And I find that this is okay. Perhaps at some point I will give those things up, too, but not yet. 

If we spend the time to pick our goals apart and see what our reasons are, what we have resistance to, and what we are just fine without, sometimes the goal can be reached without much stress. 

Often the reason I can’t meet all my goals is that there simply aren’t enough hours in the day. So I remind myself there are seasons for things – literal seasons and also figurative ones. I’m more athletic in the spring and summer. I love to walk and bike and kayak. I just do less of those things in the winter. I love to read books, but I tend to do less of that in the summer. Could that be okay?

Oftentimes realizing goals benefit from a ritual. A longing for ritual is one of the distinctions that make us human. Mostly we think of ritual in a religious or spiritual context, but we are performing rituals all day long. Food is a ritual, grooming is a ritual, bedtime is a ritual. This winter we are deprived of many of the joys and comforts we are used to, so I am thinking about how to create more ritual in my life as an act of savoring what I do have. I also think rituals help us to incorporate our goals into our day-to-day behavior.

For those with a goal of meditation, 10 minutes of meditation before bed can become part of the ritual of tooth brushing, picking out clothes for the next day, stretching, setting the alarm clock. A breakfast ritual can involve taking your Chinese herbal formula or supplements as the greens steam or the eggs cook. Or set an intention for the day while sipping a cup of (in my case decaffeinated) tea.

Ritual is intentional. So much of what we do on the day-to-day can be done without intention or even presence. But then we miss the opportunity to bring intention and meaning into the way we do the dishes or walk the dog. Grooming is an opportunity for self care and self love. Cooking is a way to nourish ourselves and our pods. Finding creativity in the way we approach our outfit choices for the day or our kitchen organization expresses our unique identity and moves liver qi that is constrained by all the sitting and stressing we are doing during the pandemic. 

It seems that goal-setting has to be approached in the same contradictory way we should probably approach our lives: we must set expectations and steps to reach our goals, while also being wildly flexible about outcomes and accepting of all the unexpected things in life that come along. One of my lifelong favorite quotes is by John Lennon: “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”

Balance must be found between being so goal-oriented that you miss out on what life has to offer and just letting life cast you about as though at sea. Some focus and orientation is necessary. Some drifting and spontaneity is crucial. 

We have to be willing to let life lead us. We have to have the intuition to say: I don’t know where the path is leading, but I am reasonably certain that it is the right path and so I am going to put one foot in front of the other as long as it feels right. And, if I’ve taken a wrong turn, I recognize it, regroup and carry on without guilt or shame. A reasonable amount of uncertainty is inherent in any plan – when we see that this is an offering and not a flaw, life becomes more of a dance and less of a struggle.

Back to resolutions, goals, ideas, whatever you want to call them. Whether we believe in a higher power, destiny, the cosmos, or sheer willpower, we all have a course to follow in this life and in doing so we leave our little mark on the world. What it all means is for each of us to figure out individually. But we feel good when we are challenged to use our strengths to benefit the world around us and to lift ourselves up in the process. And each of us knows there are lots of intentional little actions we can take that help us stay on our path. This time of year offers a check-in on how we are doing with our big dreams, our little goals and our daily rituals. Together these perspectives shape our thoughts and our actions. This is how we can affect change for ourselves and the greater good.

Resources to Support Black-owned Businesses:

https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/a33561639/black-owned-businesses

https://seattlegreenbook.com

Black-owned independent Bookstores: 

https://lithub.com/you-can-order-today-from-these-black-owned-independent-bookstores

https://www.oprahmag.com/entertainment/books/a33497812/black-owned-bookstores

https://blog.libro.fm/black-owned-bookstores-to-support-right-now-and-always

 and Black Lives:

https://www.seattleworks.org/covid-19_resources

https://blacklivesseattle.org

https://blackvotersmatterfund.org

Black Media:

https://open.spotify.com/show/3rInLkkAglRgLWZoa5cmlU

https://www.whereweconverge.com/

https://medium.com/praytellagency/10-black-media-outlets-you-need-to-know-1727f3ed413e

https://www.journalism.cuny.edu/2020/11/mapping-black-media

Rethinking Success in the time of Covid19 and Black Lives Matter

This week I feel like a failure. In most measurable ways, my business is only limping along. My house is a mess. I stay at the very edges of rallies or marches if I go at all. Some days I’m too exhausted to have conversations with the people I love. I want to sit in a bathtub with a book and forget the world. 

But I won’t. I can’t. Instead I am rethinking the definition of success, the definition of failure and everything they imply.

It started with Covid19 and the sacrifices we’ve all had to make. I closed my acupuncture practice for two months in accordance with “stay at home” ordinances for Washington state. I had to move to a new, more expensive location to make space for social distancing. I bought hand sanitizer by the gallon, wipes, sprays, sanitary polyester sheets, table paper, and an air purifier. Now I see fewer patients in a week to allow for time between departures and arrivals, 15 minutes with the windows open to air out the space and spray everything down. The cleaning is exhausting, not to mention holding space for all the uncertainty, transition, and grief.

I have never bothered much with traditional definitions of success for my life, prioritizing community connection over individual achievement and rich life experience over financial riches. And yet the bills still have to get paid, and a lack of money for basic needs and “what-ifs” causes ongoing stress. We all must calibrate our investments and achievements to determine what in our lives feels fulfilling or “successful” and what doesn’t. We must be able to set goals and reach for them.

As a small business owner certain models of success have felt necessary to measure profits and losses and determine how to run a “successful” business. One could easily get sucked into a model of weighing successes and failures by numbers on a page. But these models have never been fair when you consider that our country has not allowed equal access to opportunity. Nor can Capitalism measure our quality of life – there’s no value given to a perfect sunset or a deep kiss or time spent in the presence of kindness. Capitalism only knows the value of profit. 

As I counsel patients during their acupuncture sessions, I hear myself saying the same thing a lot. “No, no, no, we are in Covid times, you CANNOT hold yourself to the same standards as before.” In Covid times getting out of bed in the morning can be considered productive. Getting through a stack of dishes might be the crowning achievement of the day. Remembering to eat. Going to work and coming home in one piece. Allowing yourself to feel immense grief, to cry, to rage, THAT might be your success.

We have to make different decisions than we did before. Moral fatigue is real. We do not have the same therapies and distractions to nurse us through a hard week. We might not get the scientifically proven medicine of daily hugs from the people we love. We don’t get to feel the vibrational healing of live music or spend an afternoon browsing books, surrounded by the sweet, dusty smell of a used bookstore. We’ve all had to give up so much of what we love and find a way to survive through the fear and uncertainty. We are more aware of our priorities. There are things we miss desperately from our lives and other things we hardly notice are gone. 

“If you dare to struggle, you dare to win.”

- Fred Hampton

When police officers in Minneapolis brutally killed George Floyd over a counterfeit twenty-dollar bill on May 25th, all the pain and rage and fear that has been riding close to the surface, that has always been there, erupted. People are tired of living in racist America. People of Color are tired, but white people are tired, too. Because a racist system- a system dependent on keeping people down- is a betrayal to our humanity. ALL our humanity.

To put it bluntly, American capitalism currently functions as a system where for white people to succeed, People of Color must fail.

As Ijeoma Oluo says in her essential book So You Want To Talk About Race, “Racism in America exists to exclude people of color from opportunity and progress so that there is more profit for others deemed superior. This profit itself is the greater promise for nonracialized people- you will get more because they exist to get less.”

An in-depth study published in 2018 revealed that there is a connection between income and happiness. Making less than $60,000 a year impacts the emotional wellbeing of the individual on a day-to-day basis. But making more than $95,000 a year also had a negative impact on overall satisfaction for many. More is not always better.

To paraphrase, this system was set up for some people to fail, so others could succeed MORE. But we can ALL succeed, if we are willing to change the system. If we focus only on individual success, reaching higher and higher beyond what we need, we miss the collective nature of being human. We actually suffer from taking beyond what we need. And watching other people fail injures our humanity. It is a betrayal of our good hearts.

We say “Black Lives Matter” because the laws and practices of this country have told us that they do not matter. We say “Black Lives Matter” because everyone deserves access to a healthy, satisfying life. We say it because Black lives have been sacrificed to better others’ lives. The foundation of this country is built on the labor of Black bodies and until we acknowledge that wound and the generations of trauma since slavery- and begin to repair- there will never be equal access. 

Images from the garden at the former Capitol Hill Occupied Protest in Cal Anderson park. The garden continues to thrive and offer hope.

There’s a reason the acronym BIPOC has been used so much lately: Black and Indigenous folks have suffered immensely for centuries in the United States. This country is founded on the genocide of the First Nation people. It’s just a fact. Until acknowledgment and reparations are made to the existing tribes and descendants, there will be unrest. No one can go back in time and fix this. No one is asking us to. We must move forward by owning our history. By looking it in the face and saying “never again.”

BLM in flowers

I come back to my own personal definition of success, to the awareness that a lot of my visible successes have been made possible by white privilege through the generations of my family tree. Even my poor, immigrant ancestors fleeing pogroms in the Ukraine had white privilege when they got to this country. Allowing myself to fall into a capitalist view of “success” and “failure,” to ignore the context in which my success exists, is to turn my back on my work as an antiracist white person.

The questions I’m asking myself are these: If I genuinely believe in ending racism and white supremacy in America, how can I change to include antiracist work in my idea of success? In my business model? In where and how I spend my money? What am I willing to give up or share so that others can have a seat at the table? 

This is a pivotal moment in time. Living through a pandemic is already rewriting our imaginations. There is no going back to “normal,” and that is probably a good thing. We are adaptable creatures and we are evolving to meet the moment. Our innovative imaginations are piqued and poised. This moment feels ripe, should we choose to accept the invitation, to transform into a more equitable society. What better time to dismantle systemic racism in America?

I made some major changes to my life when Trump was elected. I vowed to live more intentionally, to prioritize the voices and struggles of People of Color, to spend money more intentionally, to be kinder to strangers and to celebrate the joys found in the arts and the natural world. Now I want to take that to the next level. 

Here are some simple things I’m doing: 

Following POC-led organizations on social media, showing up to their events, taking advantage of their educational opportunities, donating money to them, and promoting their messages.

Supporting Black-owned/POC-owned restaurants, shops and businesses when I need/want to buy something (this is especially important during Covid times when most businesses are struggling).

Learning news and information from Black media.

Educating myself on local issues that impact communities of color, signing petitions, showing up at virtual city council meetings, and holding local politicians and public institutions accountable.

Donating money and passing on information to support BLM protesters.

Donating my skills and labor when and where I can.

With no end in sight, this is a journey we are all on together and there are a myriad of pathways to move forward. And we must move forward. Maybe it starts with asking challenging self-directed questions, or having difficult conversations with friends and family. These are polarizing times, and ideologies seem more firmly entrenched than ever. Still, calling out casual racism is important work that helps end the silence that allows biases to persist. Or as I often see it referred to these days, “calling in,” welcoming people to a more inclusive way of thinking, speaking and acting.

Some days the revolution feels exhausting, so I bury myself in fiction, in elegant strings of words, the bliss of a book. But since Trump was elected, the books I choose are written by People of Color. So even as I take a break, I am reading stories and building my understanding of the variety of our lived experiences as humans. I buy these books from independent bookstores, mostly Black-owned, or get them from the library to support their circulation.

For this movement to have a lasting impact we have to make it sustainable. We have to take care of ourselves and each other. We have to remember that joy is a tool of the revolution. That kindness has a ripple effect. 

If you are a white person who believes in change but you don’t feel comfortable putting yourself on the front line or even leaving the house, there are still great opportunities to be effective and involved. You can donate money to individuals, businesses and organizations run by People of Color. Or read books written by People of Color. Educate yourself. Learn the true history of this country. Start to learn your own biases and consider ways you could change your choices to be more inclusive, even if they make you uncomfortable at first. There are SO many incredible resources out there, many of them free.

If just getting through the day is your success right now, don’t worry. There’s time. 

Here are a WHOLE BUNCH of resources. Don’t get overwhelmed, just take it bit by bit.

Why we have to say “Black Lives Matter”:
The Case for Reparations

This Land Was Our Land

The 1619 Project

To help people of color during Covid19:
Covid19 Mututal Aid

WA-BLOC

Covid19 Mutual Aid Volunteering

Survival Fund for the People
Minority-owned businesses of Seattle: https://intentionalist.com/

Black-Owned Businesses in Western Washington: WW Black-Owned Business List

Black-owned bookstores:
Independent Black-Owned Bookstores

Black-Owned Bookstores to Support Now and Always

Books:
So You Want To Talk About Race  by Ijeoma Oluo

Me and White Supremacy by Layla F. Saad

The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander

White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo

Men We Reaped by Jessmyn Ward

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Sway, Unraveling Unconscious Bias by Pragya Agarwal

Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X. Kindi

Survival Math: Notes on an All-American Family by Mitchell S. Jackson

Emergent Strategy by adrienne maree brown

Assata: An Autobiography by Assata Shakur 

EVERYTHING James Baldwin ever wrote

And SO many more

Podcasts:

Embody the Revolution

The Breakdown with Shaun King

Octavia's Parables

Bailout Funds:
National Bailout

NW Community Bail Fund

Understanding what “Defund the Police” means:
https://www.thecut.com/2020/06/what-does-defund-the-police-mean-the-phrase-explained.html

https://www.aclu.org/news/criminal-law-reform/defunding-the-police-will-actually-make-us-safer/

https://www.sierraclub.org/washington/blog/2020/06/why-we-support-defundspd

Black media to follow and support:
https://www.whereweconverge.com/

https://www.shaunking.org/

@_theupnup

BIPOC-led (mostly) local organizations and causes to support:

WA-BLOC

No New Youth Jail

Washington Therapy Fund

https://blacktrans.org/

https://blacklivesseattle.org/

https://gotgreenseattle.org/

https://africatownseattle.com/

BIPOC Organic Food Bank

Black Star Farmers

Creative Justice Northwest

Therapy for Black Women and Girls

grassrootslaw.org

Resources for protesters: https://blacklivesmatters.carrd.co/?fbclid=IwAR0Fff7Klp7khSrxX-JGufEzeAG6f61z2BVm_Cp4GguQMM6PB8zp5JVzTVE#protesters

Black naturalists, herbalists and gardeners:
Black Star Farmers

Black Plantfluencers and Gardeners

Black Farmers Collective

Black Birders Week

https://www.masterclass.com/classes/ron-finley-teaches-gardening

And, If you’ve made it this far, here is a video for inspiration. NW Tap Connection is an incredible dance studio and resource in South Seattle. Please donate money to them if you can. They, like all of us, are just trying to get through the pandemic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fr-FyI-3wZ0&fbclid=IwAR0ZsDcVFY1p3yE2uh-0c3E9BHu8RqI_3zTPx0sEoHdjbtLht00xX8qLbBw

“If you dare to struggle, you dare to win.” -Fred Hampton. Take Care.

Strategies of Treating COVID19 and the Metaphor They Provide

Yesterday I read a graph that predicts Seattle, where I live, will have our peak of Coronavirus cases from April 7th-21st. It varies city-to-city, state-to-state and country-to-country depending on when the disease arrived and how (or if) it is being contained. So I know this will get worse before it gets better. The fear we are all living with is real.

I read another article that said people are scared of the coronavirus but they are more scared of what is going to happen to the economy. There are so many unknowns. I have been out of work for almost 2 weeks. When I walk my dog around our bright and bustling  neighborhood, there are few people on the street. Restaurants are boarded up. “Rent Strike” signs are everywhere.

I don’t know which to be more scared of either. 

My offering here is information in the hopes of keeping people healthy and out of the hospital so those that really need that level of care and equipment have access to it. So that we can get through this efficiently, with as few lives lost as possible, and quickly, so we can get back to the interactions that allow us to work, socialize and thrive.

TCM treatment of COVID19

In a webinar I listened to recently on how to treat COVID19 with Traditional Chinese Medicine, highly esteemed acupuncturist, Chinese herbalist and western pharmacologist Dr. John Chen began the lecture by talking about epidemics. He pointed out the number of epidemics present in the last 2000 years of China’s history- roughly 320 large-scale epidemics in 2000 years. That’s one every 4-6 years. Most of them fizzle out before they reach pandemic proportions. Some don’t. 

COVID19 does not impact everyone in the same way, although it has key symptoms that allow us to understand its characteristics and disease progression. Like acupuncturists have been taught to do with any illness seen through a Chinese medical lens, we must make a pattern diagnosis based on signs and symptoms. 

Based on the observation of SARS-1 and treatments that were effective during that outbreak, much has been inferred about how to effectively treat SARS-2. The cellular structure of the two viruses is similar, as is how it attaches to and enters host cells. There is a lot we do not know about SARS-CoV-2, and the variation between the two viruses, but in Chinese medicine individual diagnoses can be made based on symptoms. Beneficial treatment principles are applied even with the unknowns.

There is no cure for COVID19 or vaccine for SARS-CoV-2. COVID19, or “Coronavirus disease 2019” is the name of the disease, caused by the virus SARS-CoV-2 or ”Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2” . With western or Chinese medicine, we can only treat the symptoms and support the patient.

There are four phases to the disease progression, beginning with prevention and ending with recovery. The middle two, early-stage and pneumonic stage, represent the active phases of the disease, where most symptoms are experienced. My hope is that this article will offer some insight into each of these four phases and what you can do to take care of yourself and your loved ones to prevent getting sick, if you do get sick and as you recover.

I can’t help but draw a parallel between the phases of disease progression and the impact COVID19 is having on the world around me. We are still in the preventative phase here in the United States, doing everything we can as a society to set ourselves up for the best possible outcome medically and economically. We keep our distance. We wash our hands. We share informative articles and buy gift certificates or take out from our favorite restaurants. We apply for unemployment or set up home offices. We learn about telemedicine and virtual dance classes. We hope our government will freeze rent and mortgage payments, offer assistance to small businesses, stop displacing people living without homes. We hope prisoners in jail for minor offenses will be released or sent to house arrest so they can protect themselves.

Soon we will enter the active phase, where our population will reach its peak of known and active cases and we will do everything in our power to keep the number of deaths as low as possible. This will be dependent on the medical system and it will be heavily taxed by the demand. There may not be enough ventilators, masks, gowns or beds. We don’t know what that will look like yet.

Then will come the Recovery Phase. It is unlikely that “normal life” will look the same as it did before. Fear changes us. Not all businesses will reopen. Not all workers will be rehired. But through mutual aid efforts, many new networks are being formed. Those will remain once we can come face to face again. Once homeless camp sweeps have been halted, unemployment benefits have been expanded and minor offense prisoners have been taken out of the prison industrial complex, they can’t tell us it can’t be done. We can’t unsee what we have seen. It is impossible to know the outcome of this, but we can be compassionate and tender as we recover. We can treat our society as a person in need of nourishment and strengthening. We can be stronger, eventually, and more informed because of all we have been through.

Prevention Phase

There are three main strategies in how to prevent SARS-COv-2 from spreading. 

1. Try not to be exposed to it. That means social distancing and distance from potential fomites, the objects that may carry the virus. 

   The virus is thought to travel most effectively from infected droplets that are sneezed or coughed into the air and land in mouths, noses and eyes or are inhaled into the lungs. It is also possible for the virus to live on objects that are touched by hands that then touch mouths, eyes and noses. 

   To do: keep 6 feet from anyone who is not in your “unit” whenever possible. Wipe or spray down groceries and other objects that come into your home with a disinfectant wipe, rag, spray or bleach water.

2. Wash your hands, wash your body, wash your hair, change your clothes when you get home if you have been around other people. 

   I know this is a tough one because not everyone has access to sanitary conditions. So those of us who do must do our best for everyone.

   Saline nasal rinses or neti pot use can help wash virus cells out of your nose and keep the mucus membranes moist.

3. Do your best to make your body inhospitable to the virus. Hydration is extremely important for many reasons and can be protective. Sleep, nourishing food, a minimum of sugar and processed food, exercise and joy are essential for a healthy immune system. 

If you have known vitamin or mineral deficiencies, be sure to keep up on your supplements so your body is not taxed. Stress will always bring down the immune system and stress comes in many forms, including when the body does not have what it needs to function and thrive. 

Generally most people will benefit from taking Vitamin D (especially if you live in the PNW and/or have more melanin), Fish Oil (high-quality only), Vitamin C and a probiotic or probiotic foods, in addition to a nourishing diet with plenty of vegetables and protein.

• Acupuncture points: The intention of this protocol is to strengthen the immune system, help alleviate early symptoms and shorten the duration of the virus. This is the protocol that was done for many at-risk patients in Wuhan, alongside the use of western medicine. Moxa was used on the points, but you can use acupressure to stimulate them if you have not been trained in how to use moxa.

  *hint, a “cun” is around an inch, or the distance between the first and second knuckle on your index finger

• ST36 –bilateral with moxa for 15 minutes twice a day, in the afternoon and evening

• REN6- once a day with moxa for 10 minutes in the afternoon or evening

• REN12- once a day with moxa for 10 minutes in the afternoon or evening

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Herbs: There are a number of good western and Chinese herbs and herbal formulas that benefit the immune system, but I believe in diagnosis and treatment based on the individual. In my training, immune-building formulas are modified for each person, especially if they have pre-existing or autoimmune conditions. Please contact me if you are curious for more information.

See the CDC website for more preventative information:
CDC website

and Kate Paxton, CNM, CPM’s Home Care and When to Seek Help Guide for more:
Home Care Guide

This article I wrote on seasonal changes offers some suggestions for foods that are nourishing to the lungs and immune system:
Article

Early Stage

Signs and symptoms of early stage COVID19 are very similar to those of a cold or flu: fever, dry cough, sneezing, nasal symptoms, shortness of breath, lethargy, muscle pain. You may not know which it is and that’s okay, just avoid exposing anyone and take care of yourself. Because there is still limited testing and we are trying to keep people out of an overburdened hospital system, do as much home care as you can, but call your doctor if you are concerned. If you are in the high-risk category, do not hesitate to call your doctor if you are having symptoms.

In Chinese medicine this phase is called wind-cold or wind-heat. The understanding is that the disease is still in the exterior layers of the body. The muscles and fascia are affected but the virus cells have not made their way deeper into the organs of the body. 

• Home Remedies: This is a good time to drink lots of fluids, have ginger, cinnamon, lemon and honey tea, eat miso soup and other warm, fluid-based and easy to digest foods.

• Essential Oils: Essential oils like peppermint, eucalyptus, tea tree, clove and fir can be dissolved in salt in a bath, or inhaled by putting a couple drops in boiling water and leaning over the steam. You can diffuse them in a room for prevention or to treat early stages of cold, flu or coronavirus symptoms

• Acupuncture points: The purpose of these points for mild or moderate conditions is to reduce severity of symptoms, shorten the duration of the illness and alleviate emotional burden. Apply moxa to LI4 and LV3 bilaterally for 15 minutes or apply pressure, moxa ST36 bilaterally for 10 minutes or apply pressure. Do this twice a day, once in the morning and once in the afternoon

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ST36

Chinese Herbal Formulas: Several herbal formulas prove to be very effective at mitigating symptoms of the early phase of COVID19, but you should be under the care of a licensed practitioner while taking them

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Pneumonia Phase

This phase is marked by disease progression leading to more internal symptoms. The virus has made its way to the lungs, where mucus and phlegm have built up, making it harder to breathe. 

Signs and symptoms of the pneumonia phase vary with severity, but are marked by more difficulty breathing, potential digestive symptoms, irritability, chest and abdominal distention and eventually can lead to fibrotic damage to the lungs and other organs and at its most sever, organ failure and death.

This is the phase that may present like a bad cold or flu for some, and may require emergency medical intervention for others. Do not hesitate to call your doctor or clinic if you are having severe symptoms or have pre-existing conditions. 

Continue with the previous acupuncture points if symptoms are mild. Check in with your acupuncturist or herbalist for a formula that fits your symptoms and disease progression and call your doctor if symptoms start to worsen.

From Kate Paxton: Monitor for emergency signs: if you can't keep your fever below 102F with Tylenol, you have new-onset shortness of breath, new-onset difficulty completing a sentence, coughing more than 1 tsp of blood, new pain or pressure on chest (other than pain with coughing), unable to keep down liquids, or ongoing diarrhea that leads to dehydration, dizziness when standing or mental confusion (less responsive or very confused with conversation). Wear a mask and call ahead to let them know you’re coming.

Effective acupuncture points vary greatly depending on how the disease manifests and therefore I urge you to consult with an acupuncturist if you are interested in a personalized diagnosis, herbs and point prescription for moderate cases. Severe cases should be treated in the ICU.

Recovery Phase

There are a lot of statistics about how many people are released from the hospital after treatment for COVID19, but not a lot of information about the condition they are in when released. Some patients have experienced irreversible lung damage while others fully recovery. The recovery phase will also vary, but the treatment principles of nourishing the lung yin and qi will apply to everyone. We all know how long it can take to recover from a bad cold or flu. The body has to rebuild its resources. 

Signs and symptoms may include a dry cough, shortness of breath, shortness of breath with exertion, chest stuffiness, dry mouth and weakness

During this phase, nourishing the deep resources of the body will be important

• Herbs: Chinese herbal formulas during this phase focus on astringing and preserving the body’s resources, nourishing the fluids and yin tissues of the body and rebuilding the qi that is depleted from fighting off the virus

• Acupuncture Points: Points for recovery represent the four phases of illness. Moxa all points for 15 minutes once a day or apply pressure: DU14, BL17, BL13, ST36, LU6

• Congee: Congee is a rice porridge traditionally used to treat the infirm. It is a flexible recipe that can use any grain and water cooked at a low temperature for a long time. Different additional ingredients can be added to congee to nourish the body. Find a simple congee recipe with ingredient suggestions here: Congee Recipe

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• Rest: It is tempting when one has been sick and restricted for a long time to jump back into life as it was. But that can exhaust us further and lead to more illness and weakness. Resting and slowly easing back into activity is advised.

  Recovery for our economy and our spirits may be slow, too. There will be a new normal and we don’t know what- or when- it will be. My hope is that we grow from this. Some of the serious dysfunction of our society is being exposed and we can never unsee it. But we can all work to change it. Perhaps this will be the call we all answer.

  I will be keeping the homepage of my website updated with resources in many forms. Please check there regularly if you like: Twelve Rivers Medicine. I am here for you! Reach out with questions: twelveriversmedicine@gmail.com

Remember to Breathe: Lung and Kidney Connection

Breathing is how we let the world in. It is our moment-to-moment interaction with the world. We take in air. We take in the tiny particles of the world. We release our breath, we send little bits of ourselves into the world. 

To understand Chinese medical philosophy you must understand that everything is happening to us at every level all the time. There is no division between our bodies, minds, psyches, spirits and emotions. We are one intertwined, integrated being. This is not how western society teaches us to think about the body. WE DON’T EVEN HAVE A WORD FOR IT! For the whole self. The being. We say body. We say mind. We say spirit. What is the word for all of them?

Words are powerful. Without a way to talk about something, we have trouble conceiving of it. Without a word for the whole integrated being, it is hard to believe that we may fix a physical problem with an emotional release. That our chronic, physical pain may be a crisis of the spirit.

Something as simple as remembering how to breathe can release held patterns of trauma, stress and anxiety in the body. By releasing physical stress, we can release stress on all the levels.

Breathing is something everyone has access to. You don’t need a prescription or insurance or money or even very much time to practice good breathing techniques. I have heard miraculous stories of healing through breathwork. 

Most of us hold our breath when we are stressed. We take shallow breaths, we sit in positions that are not conducive to breathing deeply. We have not trained our bodies to completely fill and completely empty our lungs automatically, and they have forgotten, and so they default to shallow, interrupted breathing.

Shallow breathing is a mechanism of the sympathetic nervous system. It is a stress mechanism, a fight or flight mechanism. It prepares us for and helps us interact in dangerous situations, whereas deep breathing actually brings on the parasympathetic nervous system. It calms, settles and regulates our systems to heal, digest and sleep. It’s a way you can tell your body that you are safe.

Here are a few breathing techniques to practice and explore. Most of them involve regulating the breath first, by beginning to breathe through your nose and evening the breath so there is no break between the inhale and exhale, which are of equal length. Then you can begin the more specific breathing techniques.

2 to 1 Breathing

This is a simple one. When taking deep breaths, try to extend your exhale to be twice as long as the inhale. Imagine you are trying to get every bit of air out of your lungs. Imagine as you exhale you are rooting into the pelvic floor, that space between your sitz bones and your public bone. Exhalation directly stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system and therefore lengthening the exhale brings relaxation to the body. You can count the length of your total, even breath and then adjust it so that the length of the total breath is the same, but the inhale is half the length of the exhale. For more information, check out this article by Yoga International.

4-7-8 Breathing

This method of breathing was developed by integrative medicine pioneer Dr. Andrew Weil based on ancient yogic pranayama breathing technique. The intention of this technique is to boost the oxygen in the lungs and other organs by holding the breath. Because the mind has to focus on the breathing method, it is harder to fixate on cyclical thoughts and worries. This is an especially good technique for people who worry and over think at night and have trouble falling asleep as a result. You can practice 4-7-8 breathing while sitting or lying down:

1. First, let your lips part. Make a whooshing sound, exhaling completely through your mouth.

2. Next, close your lips, inhaling silently through your nose as you count to four in your head.

3. Then, for seven seconds, hold your breath.

4. Make another whooshing exhale from your mouth for eight seconds.

This constitutes one cycle of breath. It is advised to use this technique for a minimum of four breath cycles.

For more information on 4-7-8 breathing, check out this article and video by Dr. Weil. 

Humming Bee Breathing

I like this one because two technique that stimulate the Vagus nerve and therefore bring on the parasympathetic nervous system in addition to deep breathing are vibrations of the throat and stimulation of the tragus, that little flap at the opening of the ear. This breathing technique employs both of those strategies. Humming bee breathing can help release frustration, anxiety and anger. It is known to relieve stress at the temples and forehead, which may help with tension headaches.

1. Choose a comfortable seated position.

2. Close your eyes and relax your face.

3. Place your first fingers on the tragus cartilage that partially covers your ear canal.

4. Inhale, and as you exhale gently press your fingers into the cartilage.

5. Keeping your mouth closed, make a loud humming sound.

6. Continue for as long as is comfortable.

Most people understand how the lungs work, but there are other organs and tissues that are essential to healthy, efficient breathing. Breathing is what oxygenates our blood. Oxygen is essential for the functional physiology of our cells and therefore weakened or ineffective breathing can impact overall health very quickly.

The Diaphragm

The diaphragm is a bit of a mystery to many people. It is a muscle located below the lungs and its expansion and contraction is what allows the lungs to inhale and exhale. It is the prime mover of tidal air. The diaphragm is also crucial in keeping gastric contents from refluxing into the esophagus, so it plays a key role in digestion as well. A weak or dysfunctioning diaphragm can lead to all kind of health problems.

Diaphragmatic breathing can help strengthen the diaphragm and slow breath rate, therefore reducing the workload of breathing. Do you have heartburn or acid reflux? Try this method!

1. Lie on your back on a flat surface or in bed, with your knees bent and your head supported. You can use a pillow under your knees to support your legs. Place one hand on your upper chest and the other just below your rib cage. This will allow you to feel your diaphragm move as you breathe.

2. Breathe in slowly through your nose so that your stomach moves out against your hand. The hand on your chest should remain as still as possible.

3. Tighten your stomach muscles, letting them fall inward as you exhale through pursed lips. The hand on your upper chest must remain as still as possible.

It is recommended to spend 5-10 minutes practicing diaphragmatic breathing up to four times a day. When you first learn the diaphragmatic breathing technique, it may be easier for you to follow the instructions lying down. You can challenge yourself by trying this technique while sitting upright or placing a book on your abdomen.

For more: https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/9445-diaphragmatic-breathing

The Intercostal Muscles

The intercostal muscles are located between the twelve ribs and build the chest wall. They expand during each inhale and contract during each exhale. Like any muscle, practicing full range of motion allows maximum flexibility, and the more flexible the intercostals are, the more capacity you have for breathing and the smoother the function. Space between the ribs allows more room for the lungs to expand and for the qi of the heart and pericardium to flow freely. Stretching techniques that open the chest and back of the ribs, and that stretch the sides of the body, allow for more comfortable, expansive breathing.

Qi receptivity

In Chinese medical theory, breathing is a function of the lung organs, but healthy breathing also relies on the kidney qi to grasp the lung qi. When this interrelationship is out of harmony, one can experience shortness of breath, wheezing and shallow breathing, or a stifling feeling in the chest. Although the lungs are taking in air, the kidneys are not receiving it. 

You can practice breathing into your kidneys, which are located behind your lowest ribs in back. The right kidney rests a little lower, behind the 12th rib, and the left is a little higher. Sending your breath to the back of your 11th and 12th ribs helps facilitate qi receptivity.

Breathing is how we take the world in and qi receptivity is how we integrate it into our being. In a stressful, over-stimulated existence we can forget how to breath. But practicing these techniques actually retrains the brain. The body, in its inherent wisdom, will remember what you teach it. We are adaptable creatures and we become what we practice.

For more types of breathing techniques to explore: https://www.healthline.com/health/breathing-exercise

Photo Credits: Florian Glawogger, Jorge Ibanez, Jaco Pretorius, Daria Volkova, Trust “Tru” Katsanda, Valeriia Bugaiova

Mindlessness: A Message from the Earth Element

The mindfulness movement is big right now, and thank goodness for that. But it isn’t new. It’s the basis for Buddhist practice and has been pondered, pontificated and practiced for thousands of years. I happen to feel that “Mindfulness” is a misnomer. Our minds are too full already. They take over our lives too much. I prefer to call it “Mindlessness.” 

If we could all focus on our bodies, our senses, our lived experiences of sensuality and joy, perhaps we would suffer less. Or, even better, regard our suffering differently. There will always be suffering. It is a guarantee of our human existence. We are guaranteed to suffer, grow old, experience pain, lose everyone and everything we love and eventually die. But in the mean time we have access to so much beauty and joy if we can help ourselves see it.

If I could choose an acupuncture point or mix an herbal formula or compound a pill that would end the phenomenon of overthinking, I’d retire young, knowing I’d changed the world for the better. I’d probably win some major award. Something humanitarian. It would be a quick fix that could propel us past the self-obsession/self-criticism game, something that would allow us to invest our mental energy into more meaningful endeavors. 

I have many theories as to why we are this way. The most simple, is that in our Paleolithic lives, the ones that humans lived for 2.5 million years before we very recently found ourselves existing in the lifestyles that we now inhabit, our negative bias- our brains’ ability to seek out danger and obsessively figure out how to avoid it- kept us alive. Now it mostly makes us feel crazy, caught in the maze of our minds. It makes us isolate ourselves from the people we love, beat ourselves up for not being perfect, and generally obsess over things we have limited control over. 

The good news? We have the power to change how our brains work. The bad news? It’s hard and takes dedication. 

Late summer is the season of the Earth element, the digestive system and colors that range from orange to yellow. It is the harvest season, cast in a golden light. The energetic of the earth element is circular. As the earth itself rotates, so does the earth element in each of us. It represents boundaries, nourishment of self and others, the intellect, and literal grounding. The earth element out of balance contributes to obsessiveness and overthinking. The mind that cannot help but chew continuously on a thought. The idea that keeps circling back again and again, digging itself deeper.

The more we practice thought patterns, the more comfortably those neural synapses fire. It’s why practiced movements in our bodies become natural. But to change mental patterns, we have to work with the muscle memory of our brains. We have to practice good thinking hygiene. We have to remember the world around us and connect with it. We have to keep our perspective.

I asked my brilliant community what they do when they are overwhelmed with thoughts. Rather than me, an “expert,” telling you what to do, I’d rather suggest that we all have an intuitive sense of what we need to move through that stuck place. Even if that feels hard to access while you’re immersed in it, and even when intuition and fear/instinct feel hard to differentiate.

Valerie says: Meditation. Exercise. Mindfulness. Being aware that I am not my thoughts. Using imagery like a gust of wind blowing away the negative or excessive thoughts. Or clipping the thoughts like flowers.

Jensen says: Run. Exercise. Any type of intense physical exertion. It allows you to either completely forget your vexing issues while you concentrate on the demanding task-at-hand, or conversely analyze an issue while you avoid thinking about the physical discomfort. Either way, you come away feeling better.

Tobi says: I practice somatic exercises as well as refocusing and redirecting, not only my physical line of vision, but sounds and smells. Breathing into what ever I am experiencing in the moment

Zoe suggested gardening and this meditation I had never heard before that made me laugh and also let go.

Jessica says: I have a 20 min dance playlist, that is guaranteed to make me dance, and I dance, for at least 1 song

Emily says: Talk to someone you feel safe with, who just listens and doesn’t try to change your thoughts

Webster says: I discovered singing is good for overriding internal monologues

Megan and Caroline agree about journaling.

Li says: stop judging the feeling, and breath into it, see what giving it a little more space does to free it up

Erin says: I lift really heavy weights. It helps me get grounded

And of course Lilly and I say acupuncture. I’m copying all of these quotes because they begin to suggest something that Brooke brought up when I asked her, which is the polyvagal theory. She put it very clearly when she said, “story follows state.” She continues, “Essentially if we calm our nervous system the story falls away. The story is a result of our nervous system telling us we are unsafe and our mind trying to figure out why.”

And this is such an important point. We are narrative creatures. If something happens, we want to know why. We want to make sense of things, and to do so, we weave our life’s happenings into a story. It is a mechanism of the brain we have little control over, but when we see it for what it is, the story has less power. We begin to train ourselves to drop the story mid-sentence.

Cyclical thinking centers itself around a story we’ve made up to explain why our autonomic nervous system, the unconscious one that reacts and responds to the world around us- sympathetic “fight or flight” or parasympathetic, “rest and digest”- feels heightened. When often the story should go like this: “I waited too long for breakfast” or “I stayed up too late watching shows” or “I’m worried about not having enough money to pay the bills” or “I almost got hit by that car.” It goes like this: “That person hates me” or “I said the wrong thing during that conversation” or “Maybe this relationship isn’t right for me.” 

““Modern life for the average human is full of imaginary lions, stressors that keep our bodies out of optimal balance, and full of inflammatory chemicals.””

— -Victoria Albina, FNP-c, MPH

And then we fixate, elaborating the story, detailing it so it stretches from our past to our future, distracting us from our present. What’s brilliant about what everyone said in response to my question, is that all of those things calm and settle the autonomic nervous system. When we are no longer in “fight or flight” mode, we don’t need a story about why we feel the way we do. The story falls away. We can get back to “rest and digest”. 

Let’s talk about how to get the nervous system regulated in difficult moments. I will defer to my dear friend and stellar practitioner Victoria Albina, who wrote a whole article on how to regulate the vagus nerve, which is the cranial nerve responsible for stimulating our organ systems to function properly and is the most direct way to turn on the parasympathetic nervous system.

“Stress” and “Inflammation” are household terms now, inevitabilities of how most of us live. The work ethic and food industry in the United States have changed dramatically over the last 50 years in a way that negatively impact both. Systemic oppression and injustice have created stress and therefore inflammation in our society since its beginning. We only have so much control over those things. When able to, finding a healthy, grounded lifestyle within these systems is helpful. But we can also take a shortcut, by stimulating the vagus nerve directly when we can. I encourage you to read Vic’s article in full, but I will list a few things that stimulate the vagus nerve to intrigue you: 

• Singing, chanting and gargling: vibration to the throat stimulates the vagus nerve

• Meditation

• Exercise: movement stimulates the digestive system and encourages food waste to move through

• Deep, slow breathing: everything speeds up when we are stimulated, making us feel an urgency that isn’t actually there a lot of the time. Slow breathing stimulates the vagus nerve but it also slows us down so we can make a conscious, good decision instead of a quick one

• Yoga: sun salutations specifically stimulate the vagus nerve

• Acupuncture: it’s proven to stimulate vagus nerve function 

• Massage: even self massage to the feet, neck muscles and abdomen stimulates the vagus nerve

• Cold water or air: exposure to cold slows everything down and brings on the parasympathetic nervous system

In Chinese medicine, the link between the gut and the brain has always been known. The digestive system helps us digest food and information. The intellect is paired with the digestive system as our way of integrating the external world in a way that nourishes our internal world. Now it is finally proven by Western science that our digestive health is a major factor in our mental health. The vagus nerve has a major impact on digestive health and letting go of the stories that no longer serve us. 

Next time you find yourself mid-story, within a long narration about why you’re feeling bad, consider just letting it go. Take a walk, breathe deeply, make up a silly song, dance around the room, stop and notice the world around you. There doesn’t need to be any judgment about the story. You can even thank your brain for keeping you alive and tell it lovingly to shut up.

Photo credits:

Bryan Minear,  Ashley Batz, Tachina Lee, John Arano, Jason Rosewell

Life’s Work: Wisdom of the Water Element

It seems likely that each of us has some important work to do in this lifetime. And I don’t mean the capitalist-style, work-your-butt-off-make-the-money-til-you-die kind of important work. Our work might be creative. Or invisible. It might be transformative. It might not show up in our lifetime, lost in the stream of a shifting, changing world. Our work might be about learning how to love deeply. Or making beautiful things that enrich other people’s experience of being alive.

The winter season is associated with the water element. The water element is from where we are born and to where we return when we leave this life. You could call it the collective subconscious. You could call it the deep creative force, the subconscious movements of the universe. Some might call it god. The void. The great unknown.

When you return a drop of water to a puddle or an ocean it immediately becomes one with the other drops of water. It effortlessly belongs. Our experience of life as individuals is mostly an illusion, and one that causes a lot of pain. Everything in life is interdependent, and if we really think about it, almost nothing we touch or use escapes the dependence or influence of others.

Even if you grow your own food, the soil, sun, rain and air are integral to the existence of that food. We are never in isolation. Our cells, our vibrations influence each other. We are always having impact on each other. Some of this is obvious, some of it is very subtle.

Life’s work is always a collaboration. We are always working with, for and about others, even when it seems solitary. What each of us channel is something we are all connected to.

Although the winter season tends to inspire a kind of hibernation and we might find ourselves being less social, the energy of the season encourages us to take care of ourselves as part of the seasonal cycle that impacts all living things. It is the time to root deeply. Just look to the natural world if you are unsure how to feel harmonious with the winter season.

An inward energetic doesn’t have to mean isolation. It offers the time and space to connect with the deeper layers of ourselves and there I think we find that our pains and joys are collective. The human experience, our genetic make-up, even, is far more shared than different. Which is why when people are suffering in the world, we all suffer and why individualist greed and hoarding of resources is so misguided.

We each have our own path, at times direct and at times winding and mysterious, but all paths are interwoven. Winter is a good time to connect with our water element and ask ourselves if we feel we’re on our path, to set intentions to be doing our life’s work, to dream deeply of all the things spring and summer energy will help us manifest.

I’ve never been someone to fixate on the “meaning of life” or the point of all this. Of course there are certainly times I want to know why things happen the way they do, what the lesson is to be learned from misfortunes and pain. And I wonder if some of what we are playing out is what has been passed down to us genetically. Is my tendency to focus on what isn’t working out in my life (called the “negative bias”) part of the strategy humans used to survive as defenseless beasts in a world of prehistoric predators? Is my anxiety there in part because my great grandparents fled the Ukraine to avoid anti-Jewish pogroms? How much is passed down through all our human genes and how much is more personal, more familial?

What is Karma? What is a legacy? What is destiny? What is it to you?

In Chinese medicine the idea of destiny is related to the water element, the organ systems of the Kidney and Bladder and the winter season. Our destiny or life’s work is thought to reside in those aspects.

A basic physiological understanding of Chinese medicine is that the interaction between fire and water is essential to our health and well-being. This plays out in many body functions, and is a great example of the interplay of yin and yang, but what I’m going to focus on is how it plays out in terms of this question of our life’s work.

The Kidneys are thought to house our blueprint, our destiny, our DNA. How this plays out in our lives, that’s up to the Heart, an organ system of the fire element.

The Heart is like the authentic you that shows up for every moment. The Heart is the true self, which is changing all the time, so it lives fully in the present. In a healthy relationship, the blueprint of the Kidneys is guiding the course of our lives and the authenticity of the Heart is in turn influencing that blueprint and the path we are on. In balance, they keep us on track to having a deep, meaningful life while allowing flexibility, growth and new understanding about how we can best contribute to the world.

You see why this concept feels relevant to our life’s work. Finding a balance between the talents, skills and interests we have with the work that needs doing in the world’s present circumstance ultimately leads to fulfillment of the Kidneys’ desire and satiates the Heart’s authenticity. We call this Heart and Kidney communication. A common diagnosis in Chinese medicine is “Heart and Kidney not communicating” and this can lead to problems of a physical or spiritual matter. Or anywhere in between.

You could look at the Kidneys as the genetics and the Heart as the epigenetics. Genetics refers to our genes, the tangible material that is contained within our cells. Epigenetics refers to what actually shows up, why certain genetic material gets turned on and not other genetic material. Although epigenetics as a concept has been around for a long time, it didn’t start getting mainstream attention until the mid-90s. A lot remains unknown about why people with the same genes manifest them differently. You can have a marker for cancer or Alzheimer’s but never get it.

What’s cool about epigenetics, is that it is malleable, reversible and ultimately more within our control than just what genes we were born with. Everything is not predestined. We get to make a lot of choices about how our physical, substantial beings evolve throughout our lifetime. That’s based on lifestyle, environment, diet, exercise, relationships, meditation, creative and emotional expression, stress. It’s based on everything that isn’t just what we were born with. So essentially, in the “nature vs. nurture” debate, the answer is always both. They are inseparable. How we live determines what of our genetics manifest.

Because of the brilliant nature of the language of Chinese medicine, it is assumed that whatever happens to us, happens on all of our levels. Physical, mental, emotional, spiritual. There isn’t even language for separating those layers of our being.

This means that if someone is denying their true, authentic nature, unable to show up for the moment, they might become sick. If fear is allowed to control a person, preventing them from moving forward on their path, fulfilling their life’s work, they may experience physical pain. Some people who are chronically stressed develop heart disease. Under chronic stress, who is really able to honor the Heart by showing up as their authentic self? And so the Heart becomes sick. If a lifestyle is careless or unrewarding, it may increase the likelihood of disease manifestation. And likewise, an illness might be our way back to the path. It feels like a punishment, this pain and suffering. But as Buddhism teaches us, pain and suffering are an opportunity for transformation. And opportunity to really show up for your life.

I’m starting to believe my path is meant to be a wandering one. I have many passions, hobbies, communities, interests. Sometimes that makes me think I’m flaky or unfocused. Can’t I just pick one thing and get really good at it? The answer is no. That has been frustrating in the past, and it still is, but I see how all of my different interests influence each other in an expansive way.

My legacy isn’t going to be a piece of music that gets played for hundreds of years after my death. It isn’t going to be a building that I designed or built. But I like to think it will be a slow and steady presence, a vibration of compassion, deep thinking, healing, inspiration and joy that impacts the people around me and then gets transformed and passed on. That might be the most I have to give to the world.

These words, seen or unseen, might be my legacy. There’s only so much control we have over that anyway. But when I show up with my authentic self, when I’m present and compassionate with the people around me, all the disjointed parts of my life make sense. I don’t feel the loss of a major, definable, direct purpose. And if I happen to write a prize-winning novel that’s read for centuries, well that wouldn’t be a bad thing either. But it will be a story based on everything I’ve learned about being human through all the different paths I’ve wandered. It will be something about the human condition that hopefully most people can relate to. It will be because I showed up with my authentic self.