Your Struggles Are Still Legit!

Dealing with a Common Psychological Side Effect of Caregiving

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When you have a loved one who’s struggling with a genuinely life-threatening illness, there’s a tendency to sublimate your own struggles and difficulties on the grounds that they don’t measure up. I mean, yeah, you may be busting to make a deadline or dealing with a seemingly insurmountable obstacle in your life. But it hardly rises to the status of cancer, heart disease, or (fill in the blank here), does it? You may feel guilty for even countenancing these things as problems, considering the magnitude of what this other person in your life is going through. As a result, you shove them down into your subconscious and try to proceed as if they aren’t there.

The problem with this strategy, of course, is that buried anxiety has a tendency to come back--in a more virulent form--to bite you and your recovering loved one.

Ever since Freud’s groundbreaking work on the subconscious mind went mainstream, more and more people have come to understand the remarkable power this region of consciousness exerts over body, mind and soul. Anxiety and depression buried beneath the surface do not disappear; rather, they tend to fester and have deleterious effects on one’s mental and physical health.

When your mind and body are under attack from virulent strains of small, buried griefs, your ability to be of any use to that person who’s fighting a disease is compromised. So it only makes sense to embrace your problems and struggles, to talk about them, to let them heal through communication with other people. And that includes the person you’re most concerned about! If she’s a compassionate, understanding person (and suffering can have that effect on people who are open to finding the good in the bad), she’ll be just as interested in what’s eating you as what she’s up against. In fact, serving as a listening ear for you may have a healing effect in itself: her mind can focus on someone else for awhile, and that can be great for one’s health.

So don’t be afraid to talk about what’s bugging you, just because someone you care deeply about has a “more important” problem. As James Taylor said, “Once you tell somebody the way that you feel, you can feel it beginning to ease.” Great advice, worth taking to heart!

Everyday Epiphanies

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We’ve all experienced them: those flashes of recognition in which we suddenly perceive
something familiar in an entirely new light. Simply by being open, sensitive, and receptive, we can make these epiphanies--­­usually understood to be rare phenomena­--­ nearly everyday events. And experiencing them on a regular basis need not by any means cheapen their significance.

There is probably nothing quite like a mindfulness meditation practice to place us in the
receptive mental state that leads to these deeply life-­affirming realizations. Meditation turns down the noise in one’s mind, allowing these wonderful experiences to occur frequently and with clarity.

Probably the most significant epiphany I’ve experienced recently is the deep realization of the fact that we are literally made of the remnants of exploded stars. When stars die, they explode, sending out in all directions the elements that make life possible. The iron in our blood, the calcium in our bones, the electrons that form thoughts in our brains; these all once resided within the stars. Carl Sagan used to refer to this as our being “made of star stuff.” Such a beautiful and profoundly poetic idea:­­ that we are indeed one with the universe at a molecular level!

This epiphany leads naturally to another: that we are all part of the web of nature; that
everything is interconnected. The Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hahn gave his monastic order the name The Order of Interbeing; he explains the concept as follows:

"In Buddhism the most important precept of all is to live in awareness, to know what
is going on…to be aware of what we do, what we are, each minute. When we are totally mindful—in direct contact with reality, not just images of reality—we realize that all phenomena are interdependent…endlessly interwoven."

You and I are parts of exploded stars as well as parts of one another. There is no such thing as a completely independent self;­­ all selves are composed of non-­self elements. When we come to understand the oneness and interwoven nature of all things, compassion for other selves becomes as natural as breathing. Concern for the environment grows out of the deep realization that we are the environment, and the environment is us. If we poison it, we poison ourselves. When we nurture it, we nurture ourselves, and all other selves as well.

Living in a state of ongoing mindfulness, which is the natural, everyday outworking of our
meditation practice, produces these flashes of insight in the midst of the ordinary and the
mundane. They can come while we are preparing food, washing dishes, caring for our
families, doing our work, and enjoying our free time. Everyday epiphanies are what I am
most grateful for in this, the season of gratitude.

'Tis the Season...

...for Walking Meditation!

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Autumn has come to our little town by the Chesapeake Bay. The air is chill, the leaves are a symphony of colors, and the time has come for some serious walking meditation.

What’s walking meditation? It’s simply meditating while walking. It’s all about finding your stride and letting it take the place of your seated position during sitting meditation. Walking peacefully and in touch with the beauty of our surroundings, we fall into a rhythm, our feet making gentle contact with the earth. We become aware of everything: our breath, our heartbeat, the earth and sky. We take in the distinctive aromas of fall, the dappled sunlight, the bracing chill of the late October air.

The object is not to achieve anything; we simply want to be aware: aware of what is happening inside us and all around us. Some walking meditation practitioners count their breaths and cultivate an awareness of how those breaths grow deeper and longer throughout the walk. Others sync up their steps with their in- and out-breaths, silently repeating a mantra all the while. Others find that this distracts them too much from the beauty of their surroundings: they miss too much by over-concentrating. On the other hand, you don’t want “monkey mind” to set in, letting your thoughts fly to the future and the past. Whatever keeps you rooted to the present moment is recommended!

In this, my favorite season, it’s very important to me that I not miss any of the sights, sounds, and smells unique to this time of year. I’m reminded that the leaves of the trees are beautiful in death, and that death is not extinction. Rebirth will occur in the spring; like the leaves, I will eventually fall to earth, providing food for new life to grow. Seen in this way, a death can be as beautiful as a birth. All this I’ve intuited (and it’s become undeniably real to me) while doing walking meditation on autumn days near the Chesapeake. Autumn afternoons and evenings are like poignant poems; they are to be savored, and are made even sweeter by the knowledge that winter is close on their heels.

Copyright Ⓒ 2013 by William K. Ferro

All rights reserved

Samhain Approaches!

The Precursor to Halloween

What are the roots of Halloween? How did the celebration get started?

It all began with the pagan celebration of Samhain, a word meaning “Summer’s end” in the Brythonic branch of Gaelic. The pagans of the British Isles saw the date as the official end of summer, and one of several “thin times” of the year. By “thin,” they meant that the veil between the world of the living and that of the dead was more porous than usual; spirits could easily pass through the veil and interact with the living. This, and the fact that some in these agrarian communities might or might not survive the winter (depending on how successful the harvest had been) accounted for the death-related themes of the holiday. This obviously continued in the Halloween (All Hallow’s Eve) holiday that Samhain preceded.

When the tribe gathered around the bonfire on Samhain night, the flames

would attract bats. With the fire being the only source of light, they resembled capering spirits, reinforcing the belief that the spirits of the recently dead were crossing over into the realm of the living. While the pagans worshiped gods and goddesses, there were still strong remnants of ancestor worship among them. They believed that the spirits of family and friends had to be appeased to ensure good fortune-- something that could easily be a matter of life and death. This is where the practice of going from house to house and asking for treats came from: children (and not a few adults) would offer to make sacrifices to the gods and the recently dead on behalf of each household they visited in exchange for treats.

When Emperor Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire (outlawing pagan practices in the process), the Church appropriated Samhain and turned it into All Hallow’s Eve, a Holy Day of Obligation when Christians were to appeal to the saints for the quick release of their deceased loved ones from purgatory. The house-to-house begging that would eventually become known as trick-or-treating took on this new aspect: the children at the door promised to pray for the release of the household’s recently dead from purgatory in exchange for “soul cakes.”

The death-related themes have persisted into modern celebrations of Halloween. It is the one day of the year when we are allowed to mock death and make it entertaining. If you were to put up the traditional funereal Halloween decorations outside the house any other time of year, you would run a real risk of being arrested!

Copyright Ⓒ 2013 by William K. Ferro

All righs reserved

A Blending of the Ancient and the Cutting-Edge

A Glance at Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy

Image from pro-psychcentral.com

Most of us have heard or read about the efficacy of meditation in the treatment of depression. In fact, it’s probably a safe bet to say a great many of us have experienced it firsthand. But how does it work? What can psychology and the other cognitive sciences tell us about the effect of mindfulness practice on the mind of someone who’s chronically depressed?

Recently a team of psychologists at Oxford University staged a study to answer precisely this question. Their results confirm that combining ancient forms of meditation with current cognitive behavioral therapy can indeed benefit depressed individuals-- even those whose depression is recurrent and severe.

The Oxford team have dubbed this new approach Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), and have published their inital findings in the Journal of Behavioural Research and Therapy. In the study, 28 patients who had suffered from depression and suicidal thoughts in the past and were currently experiencing symptoms were randomly divided into two groups. One group received traditional therapy and treatment, while the other were introduced to Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy as well. A statistically significant number of participants in the MBCT group experienced a marked reduction in symptoms, while the control group’s responses to therapy were in the normal range.

MBCT includes mindfulness meditation tutorials and tools for mood management, especially when feelings of despondency threaten to overwhelm the patient. According to lead researcher Professor Mark Williams of Oxford’s Department of Psychiatry,

"We are on the brink of discovering really important things about how people can learn to stay well after depression. Our aim is to help people to find long-term freedom from the daily battle with their moods.”

Instead of being caught up in disturbing memories of the past or anxiety about what the future may hold, Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy helps people to live in the present moment. This lies at the heart of MBCT, just like ancient meditation methods. The team at Oxford is currently carrying out a larger study that will compare the new approach to traditional cognitive therapy. What’s clear is that meditation can be highly conducive to mood management and the treatment of depression-- and its counterpart, anxiety.

Copyright Ⓒ 2013 by William K. Ferro

All rights reserved

The Ballad of Teddy Cruz

Image from Salon.com

Every week there is a dick

who makes the rest of us quite sick.

I realize this is hardly news,

but this week it is Teddy Cruz.

He did not like Obamacare;

he would not like it anywhere.

It made him pace and rant and roar

for hours on the Senate floor.

That’s what he did, this Texan dude

(who makes us think of words quite crude).

He ranted and he quoted Seuss,

The Doctor, who would have no use

For such an application of

His verses we all know and love.

Ted Geisel was a caring soul

Who felt for people on the dole.

He would not like his work misused

by hucksters like this Teddy Cruz

to try to take health care away

from who need it most, I say.

The Senate’s now the butt of jokes

Because of Teddy Cruz-like folks.

It makes us mad, it makes us pissed

To see the Senate used like this.

Teddy Cruz, he wants to be

The President of you and me.

That’s why he played around like this:

Our Teddy is a narcissist.

Don’t be fooled by patriotic

talk: that would be idiotic.

Everything Cruz does and says

is ‘cause he wants to be the Prez.

For Teddy’s buddy Randy Paul

This kind of stunt seemed a good call.

He seemed to take the world by storm

(at least among the Fox-informed).

So why should Ted not follow suit

And launch a stunt that’s just as cute?

Oh yeah! Because Ted cannot win--

You see, Cruz is Canadian.

So all this nonsense, all this bluster,

all this so-called filibuster,

helps our Teddy not one bit;

He just chose to be a shit.

Copyright Ⓒ 2013 by William K. Ferro

All rights reserved

Dark Days

The End of War

I was looking through an old notebook yesterday, and discovered a poem I'd forgotten I'd written. It's called Dark Days (The End of War), and was written in 2006 at the height of our national madness. Due to the perennial nature of that madness, and in light of the latest in the seemingly endless series of gun massacres, I thought I'd share it. -- WKF

*      *      *

image from kliguy38depression2news.blogspot.com 

I weep for the children of Haditha

For the victims of violence every day.

And I grieve for our children with guns in their hands

Who should never have been placed in harms way.

And I mourn for the soul of my nation

Because I don't recognize her anymore.

And so I light a candle in these dark, dark days

And hope that we will find the end of war.

I think of the people of Fallujah

Of the families that were forced from their homes.

And I grieve for our children with blood on their hands

For killing turns a human heart to stone.

And I mourn for our great Constitution

Because it doesn't seem to rule here anymore.

And so I light a candle in these dark, dark days

And hope that we will find the end of war.

Because there's murder and rape and torture

Being done in my name

And I know that I'm to blame

If I turn a blind eye.

Today I am a prisoner at Camp Delta

The condemned in the hell that men have made.

Five years on now, still no trial in sight 

In the clutches of the free and the brave.

And I weep for the soul of my country

Because I don't recognize her anymore.

And so I light a candle in these dark, dark days

And hope that we will find the end of war.

I hope that we will find the end of war.

Copyright 2006 by William K. Ferro
All rights reserved

Make Joy Your Default Position

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I've written in the past about cultivating the habit of contentment, and how this can be a valid goal for the holistic spirituality practitioner in and of itself. It has a great many benefits, of course; making happiness a habit can get you through tough times and make joy your default position in life. It also makes you much more enjoyable to be around, which means that everyone in your life can benefit from your practice as well.

Because we all have problems to solve in our work, homes, and relationships, we can easily get in the habit of approaching every situation from a "what's wrong here?" angle. But in the same way that that response becomes habitual--through practice--the happiness habit can be cultivated as well.

Neuroscience tells us that our habits become established when repeated behaviors create neural pathways in our brains. When we get a payoff for a behavior (through the release of endorphins), we repeat it in search of that same reward; this is how the "grooves" in our brains are created. And yes, there is a payoff for the pessimistic approach: even when the response is negative, our brains are happy with what's familiar to them. We get the same biochemical reward for positive and negative responses to life; it's just a matter of what we've gotten used to. (Anyone who's predicted the worst possible outcome and then feeling perversely satisfied when that's exactly what happens will understand what I mean!)

The point is that conscious living gives us a choice of which patterns to make habitual. This is one of the great tools an active yoga and meditation practice offers-- the ability to make conscious choices about how we're going to respond to events in our lives. It also teaches us to let go-- to release the impossible goal of total control. A great deal of suffering and emotional unease can be traced back to attempts to control things that are by their nature quite beyond our control. There's a well-known quotation that is often erroneously attributed to the Buddha, but which nonetheless is an excellent guide:

       In the end, only three things matter: how much you loved, how gently you lived, and how gracefully you let go of things not meant for you.

Regardless of who originally said this, it's quite brilliant! Love liberally, live gently, and release things not meant for you-- like total control, for instance! Make joy your default position; it will benefit you and everyone who comes in contact with you.

Code-Switching and the Freelance Writer

Repost/Revision

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When you make your living as a freelance writer, you need to be able to turn on a dime in terms of style. One day, you might have a deadline on an academic journal article in which you need to observe strict MLA style. The next day, your assignment may be a short blog post for an entertainment website; now you have to shift gears dramatically, writing in a relaxed, conversational tone. Challenging to say the least-- and one of many reasons that flexibility is one of the most essential secrets to freelance success.

Some writers’ natural writing voices are quite colloquial; the reader almost feels as if the author is in the room with her, having a conversation. At the other end of the spectrum are those whose voices are naturally academic or “highbrow.” Most fall somewhere along the spectrum between these two poles.

It’s an open question among writers to what degree writing should mimic speech in any given forum. The real ninjas, I think, are the ones who manage to sound conversational (in those media in which it’s appropriate) while observing all the rules of English grammar, spelling and usage. These writers understand that the secret of coming across as both accessible and professional lies in the rare synthesis of conversational style and flawless grammar.

Very few people speak in sentences that could be transcribed word-for-word and used in an article or blog post without some editing. Writing that concept for a “middlebrow” medium, you might write, “No one’s grammar is perfect when they’re having a conversation-- they have to make some adjustments when they put the words on paper.” If you were expressing the same thought in an academic journal, it might appear as, “Few people observe strict grammatical rules in colloquial speech; expressing the same ideas in print, they need to make the necessary adjustments to fit the new forum.”

But what if you were expressing the same idea in a highly informal setting, such as an entertainment or fashion blog? There, you might well get away with, “Hey, not many of us are walking English textbooks, right? We’ve got to make some changes when we write things down!” The fact is that all three of these examples are grammatically correct, even if the third might be a stretch in terms of usage. The important thing is that readers in any of these forums would clearly understand the idea without the jarring effect of having one style substituted for the other. For instance, imagine how thrown a reader of People Magazine would feel coming across the “few people observe strict grammatical rules...” sentence above. in the context of a People Magazine article. By the samw token, a reader of Scientific American would no doubt find “Hey, not many of us are walking English textbooks” equally jarring.

My own natural writing voice tends toward the formal end of the spectrum: phrases such as “highly colloquial setting” and “the rare synthesis of colloquial style and flawless grammar” pretty much give that away. Other writers have much more conversational voices. There’s no “right or wrong” here; the essential thing (again) is flexibility. Unless you’re getting all your work from a single source, a good deal of code-switching is going to be necessary.

Of course, none of this quite takes into consideration the unique degree of flex required of the ghostwriter. To succeed, ghostwriters have to carefully read all their clients’ correspondence and attend closely to their patterns of speech. This is because the stakes are higher here: people who know the “author” personally have to believe she could have written the article or manuscript herself; otherwise the ghostwriter has failed at his most important task. If words and phrases completely alien to the client start cropping up in a manuscript, people who communicate with her regularly are going to have their doubts about the authorship.

Contrasting and comparing patterns of speech with the production of grammatically-correct prose is a source of inexhaustible fascination for wordsmiths. Or to put it another way, Dude! Those grammar wonks never get tired of checking out the way people write and talk, right?

Perhaps something in between.

Best regards,

William K. Ferro

Copyright Ⓒ 2013 by William K. Ferro

All rights reserved

New Favorite Yoga Quote

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“As on the mat, so off the mat.”

This is my new favorite quote; I know it’s well-known to most yoga devotees. It can be applied to so much in life: on the mat, you need to be limber and flexible; so must you be in your daily life. If you’re struggling too much in your yoga routine and forcing yourself to hold poses that your body clearly doesn’t want to, there’s a problem. The same principle holds for life in general, and applies to mental constructs, belief systems, habits and routines.

I’ve discovered that when I’m struggling unduly with some aspect of my life--be it relationships, work, or whatever--there’s almost always something fundamentally wrong with my approach to it. If I’m busting to make ends meet and suffering headaches, insomnia, and so on, something in my approach to my work, spending habits, and/or self-discipline is usually out of whack.  

Similarly, any time I find myself in a twist about a relationship, the way someone else is behaving, or the way things are going globally, I need to reassess my approach. In the first and second case, I’m probably trying to force someone into a predetermined role that doesn’t fit his/her personality. In the third, I’m taking on responsibility for the way things are that simply isn’t mine to claim (the things we are responsible for are more than enough!).

I’ve come to terms with the fact that there are a few asanas I will probably never completely master. This isn’t defeatism, but an embrace of reality; no one practitioner can do all things equally well. This kind of reality check is great for our daily lives as well: if we spend most of our energy focusing on projects for which we have limited aptitude, we’ll probably miss out on developing our abilities in our high-aptitude areas.

“As on the mat, so off the mat.”

Copyright Ⓒ 2013 by William K. Ferro

All rights reserved

Counting Our Blessings

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Cultivating a Grateful Mindset

When I’d get in a grumbling mood as a kid, I remember my mother advising me to “count [my] blessings.” Her parents had lived through the Great Depression, so awareness of the possibility of scarcity had filtered down to her. My generation of Americans--most of us, anyway--were so far removed from that mindset that we took material comforts for granted. I remember (like so many in my generation) hearing grandparents and other adults saying, “you kids have no idea how good you’ve got it!” We all heard the stories about how tough times were in days gone by, but it remained largely an abstraction for us.

We still tend to take a great deal for granted. A look at the Facebook page First World Problems (http://first-world-problems.com/) is a humorous eye-opener. People there make ironic comments such as these:

“I had to wait a whole minute for my money to come out of the ATM today!”

“My plane seat was so uncomfortable, I got a crick in my neck!”

The implication being that we take for granted that we put a little card in a machine and it spits money out at us and that we’re flying in one hour to a city it would take us a whole day to drive to!

Accordingly, I’m compiling a list of “Things to Be Happy About.”

We’ll start with the basics and move up the hierarchy of needs.

-- Food, water, shelter, and medicine.

These are things people in the developing world may or may not have on any given day. Not a guilt trip, just a fact.

-- Central heating and air conditioning.

For those same individuals, heat means keeping a fire going, or if they’re fortunate, a wood-burning stove. Air conditioning is fanning yourself with a palm frond.

-- Multiple forms of powered transportation. Most families in the developed world own more than one car.

-- Multiple forms of home entertainment: cable or satellite television (often, units on each floor of the home), multiple stereo systems, desktop computers, laptops, cell phones, tablets, and so on.

You get the idea: Mom was right; there are just too many “blessings” to count! Let’s not let this induce feelings of guilt, but rather a sense of gratitude and a desire to share with those less fortunate than we are.

The Greatest Thing

Image from healthtrition.com

When someone you love is beating breast cancer at an early age, it’s the greatest thing in the world.

That’s happening in our house right now, and I’m quite impressed with the recent advances in cancer treatment and surgery. In fact, they’re mindblowing, especially when you see them up close. Treatment is more preventive, surgery less invasive. Plastic surgery is particularly amazing-- they now do it as part of the surgery to remove the tumor, not months and months later. This helps the survivor to feel like herself; there’s no need to go through months of dysmorphic depression (although post-operative depression is hardly unusual). It will be some time before the survivor will be able to execute a Downward Facing Dog or Tree Pose (she’s under the influence of wonderful narcotics to knock out the post-op pain), but already I’ve seen how her own idiosyncratic spiritual practice is aiding in her recovery.  

What about similar practices for those helping the person recover? I’d call them a must. If you already spend half an hour a day doing yoga and meditation, you definitely don’t want to cut it out. If anything, you might want to consider doubling it, if possible. From the moment you hear the diagnosis, you’ll be under considerable stress right along with the patient; you may not even realize it. You may find yourself lashing out at people for no reason at all; small irritations may become magnified and your responses to them out of proportion. It’s next-to-impossible to recognize the impact your psychological stress is having on you while you’re in the midst of it. That’s why an ongoing meditation practice is so important.

I recommend Thich Nhat Hahn’s book Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames. In that book, Thay goes into detail on how to manage anger and other storms of strong emotion, all of which are amplified when someone you love receives a life-threatening diagnosis. Let’s face it: that news can make the most habitually serene individual more than a little pissed off at the universe. At the heart of the book’s advice lie the old stand-bys: conscious breathing and making meditation a part of everything you do. When you’re helping somone recover from cancer surgery, you’ll be more useful if you make a point of becoming a veritable meditation machine. Practice medication scheduling and administration meditation (“Breathing in, I prepare today’s medications. Breathing out, I know I can stay on top of administering these meds on time.”); food preparation meditation (“Breathing in, I prepare a nourishing meal for the patient and the rest of the family. Breathing out, I know this food will nourish everyone’s compassion and wellness.”). And so on, covering every aspect of recovery.

Cancer is the plague of our time, but we’re making progress. My dream is to see a vaccine for it across the board in my lifetime, for it to become as curable and manageable as tuberculosis and other once-deadly diseases. If you share that dream, there are two websites you need to visit: http://www.cancer.org/ (The American Cancer Society...leading the way to transform cancer from deadly to preventable) and http://ww5.komen.org/, the website of the Susan G. Komen for the CureⒸ. From that highly useful website:

Nancy G. Brinker promised her dying sister, Susan G. Komen, she would do everything in her power to end breast cancer. In 1982, that promise became Susan G. Komen for the Cure...Today, Susan G. Komen is the boldest community fueling the best science and making the biggest impact against breast cancer. 

Join the fight to make cancer a fully preventable disease, and please don't neglect your practice while you do. We're all more useful to whatever cause we've aligned ourselves with after we've meditated.

Copyright 2013 by William K. Ferro
All rights reserved