I'm prepping for tonight's call and it's like a trip down memory lane to look back at the way my young, impressionable mind believed everything I was told to be true in medical school. Just drank it in like a free cup of coffee at Trader Joe's.
But now that I am beginning to understand and see the difference between REALITY and THOUGHTS about reality, it's a whole different game. Things have loosened up in my mind, and all of a sudden there's this vast amount of SPACE. It feels ROOMY in there! After a lifetime of jamming my head full of things to remember, and things I believed to be true, all of a sudden, I have more room to move around. This, I sense, is what the word FREEDOM means to me. We are so blessed to live in a country with many freedoms, but the most important place we experience it is in our own minds.
I'm so excited to be chatting it up tonight in a FREE coaching call with medical students, residents, & fellows who are curious about the topic of PHYSICIAN BURNOUT. It's a frequent subject on the blogs, in the New York Times, and in the academic medical journals. Doctors seem to be on the brink of something. While to many others it may seem like a crisis, I find myself getting very excited about this juicy opportunity to share what I've learned from my life coaching practice as well as my personal meditation and yoga practices.
To get your appetites whetted, here's a little sneak peek.
First I'll be talking about our "To Do" lists. We'll zero in on exactly that task that you never talk about - the one you really don't want to do, but find yourself forcing yourself to do anyway, on a regular basis. Chances are, you have a long list of mental rationalizations about why you "have to" do it, why you "should" do it, or why you "can't" do anything else. I love diving into these rationalizations as a way to illustrate how our minds work, how they entangle us in patterns of behavior based on explanations that may or may not be true.
Then, we'll look at the difference between REALITY and THOUGHTS about reality. When we question reality, we suffer. When we question our thoughts, we become free. This is such an important discussion that I thought I'd give you a headstart with some examples, listed below. See if you can come up with any of your own examples from your life. It's essential that the thoughts you work on come from YOU. Notice the difference between REALITY, which is a statement of facts or circumstances that are irrefutable, and THOUGHTS, which are interpretations or value judgments placed on reality.
Reality: I am in medical school.
Thought: Medical school is hard.
Reality: I am a doctor.
Thought: Being a doctor is stressful.
Reality: I am on call tonight.
Thought: I should be getting more sleep.
Reality: I am learning to practice medicine.
Thought: I need to do everything perfectly, or I won't get into the residency or fellowship program I want.
Reality: I work in a system of 3rd party payor reimbursement.
Thought: I should be getting paid more for the work that I do.
Reality: Insurance companies determine what I am paid for certain procedures.
Thought: I should have control over how much I am paid.
Reality: Doctors' reimbursement for certain procedures has declined in recent years.
Thought: Doctors are supposed to earn more money than they are now.
Reality: I am a human being just like my patients.
Thought: I need to be smarter than, stronger than, and more responsible than my patients in order to take care of them and be a good doctor.
Reality: No human being can know all the right answers all of the time.
Thought: Good doctors don't make mistakes.
Reality: I have student loans from going to medical school.
Thought: The only way I'll pay off my debt is by working as a doctor in this system. I have to, I have no choice.
As you look at this list, and come up with your own examples, also notice the content of a typical social conversation you might have with a classmate, coworker, family member, or friend.
Are you discussing reality, or your thoughts about reality?
Do you spend your energy arguing with reality by coming up with more layers of thoughts that prove your own beliefs?
If you're like I was when I was in medical school, you might find that the only conversations with classmates are around your collective, self-reinforcing thoughts about reality. The other option might be to escape to the latest bar night, where a temporary, alternate reality is offered in the form of alcohol, noise, and release of repressed emotions. Neither of these really moved the needle for me.
It's up to you. I hope you'll join me tonight on the call! And if you can't make it, please send me a message and I'll email you a recording of the call afterwards.
OK, Docs. This is what I see. I’ve been reading the blogs, studying the published research papers, checking out the advice you’re giving each other for dealing with the health care system. I hear you. There are many things about the system that seem broken. You are tired. You feel overworked and underpaid, and when you look out on the horizon, all you can see is things getting worse, not better. You feel powerless and voiceless as other stakeholders make policies that have a profound impact on the way you do your job. You see your job as sacred. You went into medicine not just for the money, but for the nobility of doing something good for other people, and for society. You feel that your job is special. It's more than just a job. You think it's not so unreasonable to expect to be rewarded for your efforts and personal sacrifices. Now you’re being herded like cattle into a holding bin, while still being asked to hold yourself to the idealistic standards that you believed when you went through your white coat ceremony as a medical student.
I’m not in your shoes right now, but I offer the perspective of an observer. I did go to medical school, and saw too many of you around me who were burnt out and walking around like zombies during the most vibrant years of your life to want to be like you. So I chose to walk. Some might say I copped out. Others might say I made a wise choice, getting out early. I’m not here to debate my choice. I’m here to offer you a different way to look at your life.
I’m here to remind you that you can choose, over and over again in life, no matter what other people tell you.
No one in my life ever told me that I could choose what to believe, and that this simple (but by no means easy) choice could give me the power to change my life. Maybe it was assumed that the minute I stepped out of my parents’ house, I would adopt a whole set of independent beliefs based on being “out there” in the world.
It wasn’t like that for me.
Long after I left home, long after I left school environments, I was still unconsciously believing things that I had never stopped to question. They ranged from simple things, like, “You’ll never get a good job right out of college, even if it’s Harvard,” and “You’ll never make a living as a musician,” to more complex things like, “Life is just a series of tests. You win some, you lose some. Hopefully you win more than you lose. Then you get weak and die.”
Sure, it may look like I’ve broken down many beliefs in the process of making some bold changes in direction during my life. I said “no” to a residency, I actually did get a job out of medical school (and it paid really well), I believed in myself enough to move across the country to follow a dream.
But I'm beginning to see that it doesn’t end with just taking the big steps.
It’s the little steps that count even more. The many small decisions you make in each moment of each day add up to your experience of life. Time is simply the sum of many present moments. And if we remain unaware, these moments still go by without the benefit of our attention.
I’ve been trying to strive for “the next big step” in my life for quite some time. I’m just beginning to learn what it’s like to take the tiny ones. I’m learning what it’s like to celebrate myself, before expecting others to celebrate me. I’m learning how to listen to myself, before I run out to check if someone else will tell me I’m doing it right (usually I expect to be wrong). I'm learning that there's nothing wrong with being wrong, as long as I am open to it and keep learning. I’m learning how strong my muscles of self-care need to get, in a culture built on teaching us to face outwards and seek any sign of reinforcement, even if it’s a blinking red light on my Blackberry, or one more follower on Twitter, or an upward-sloping line on my web stats page for today.
Looking inward at yourself, asking the questions that can be answered only with the heart’s truth, and sitting with your own answers – I believe these are some of the hardest jobs on the planet right now, no matter what you happen to do to earn your paycheck.
Do you have 7 and a half minutes for your self-care today?
Grab a seated position, with your spine straight, legs and arms uncrossed, and palms open toward the sky.
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This is a Call and Response version of the Purification Mantra. I invite you to listen to my voice, and repeat along with the group.
Notice the duration of each breath and each sound.
No thinking! Just listening! And play...
Focus on the SOUNDS, without worrying about the meaning or translation of words.
If you have trouble sustaining your attention, try noticing when your mind wanders, and notice what thoughts arise in your mind when this happens. Then gently bring your attention back to the sounds.
Attempt to focus your attention on the quality of all sounds - those coming from the recording and coming from you.
I use this mantra when my mind feels distracted and overactive, when I want to find my center of freedom before a presentation, a class, or seeing a client. When do you find it useful?
“Life begins when you put down the knife that you’ve been holding to your own neck.” – Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat Pray Love
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Elizabeth was addressing the crowd gathered for O Magazine’s 10th Anniversary bash in New York City, using her signature blend of truth, humor, and self-compassion to remind us that in our quest to “live our best lives”, we can easily fall prey to perfectionism, trying to fix everything that we find broken, and holding ourselves hostage to our own ideal images of who we believe we should be.
It’s a challenge in our culture of extremes to find what feels like balance for YOU. We’re being told by a lot of people what balance “should” be, and given formulas for how to achieve it. Go to a retreat center. Get a massage. Hire a life coach. Read this book. Watch this video. Join this community. Listen to this teacher. It’s enough to make you feel so overwhelmed that keeping the status quo seems a whole lot easier than trying to do something about it.
Right now, I’m in a deep practice of rethinking my thoughts, observing how my responses to situations are governed by a few deeply rooted beliefs that I never had an awareness of until my own experience with burnout led me to my training as a life coach. For me, I have noticed that by believing three main thoughts, I experience most of my feelings of stress, overwhelm, and resistance to what life brings my way.
“It’s never enough.”
"There’s not enough time.”
"I am responsible for other people’s pain and suffering.”
As I write them and look at them now, they still cause me twinges of pain. They are the three different knives I’ve been holding to my own neck, to borrow Elizabeth Gilbert’s image. Maybe you can imagine similar thoughts that you’ve had, and how they land in your body as sensations – a knot in your stomach, a crook in your neck, a clenching in your jaw. When taken to the extreme, any one of these thoughts feels like the threat of my imminent demise. It can cause me to freeze up, become silent, and wonder why I bother to say anything at all.
When I first started to notice these thoughts, the first thing I did was disbelieve how powerful they were as forces in shaping my life. “It’s only a thought,” I thought to myself. I blew it off as no big deal. I tried to take big, bold actions to show how free I was of these limiting beliefs. Limits, me? No way! And what happened? The same thoughts came back in different situations, causing me to behave in similar ways and feel similarly to the way I did in previous situations.
The second thing I did was to be a very dutiful student of the process, coming up with “perfect” turnarounds that showed how skillful I was at mastering the tool. To the first statement, I said, “It’s always enough.” I basked briefly in a moment of triumph for stepping into such power with an abundance-filled affirmation about how the universe always provides, etcetera. But, as my coach pointed out, that is a bunch of baloney if you don’t genuinely believe what you’re saying. Until you look for the evidence in your own life that shows how a turnaround is true, it’s only words on a page.
Busted!
I found this other turnaround to be just as true for me: “I’m never enough for me (my own standards).” Yet another proverbial knife to the neck that I’ve been holding. I can find the truth that I’m never enough for my own standards, and my mind proves that true by preventing me from taking the risk of stating what I really want. If I never set that lofty goal, then I’ll always have a reason to say I haven’t met it. I’ll never be enough for me, as long as that’s what my mind still believes.
For me, the hardest challenge - the thing I think I cannot do - is doing less. And being OK with that being enough for now. Not taking responsibility for other people's feelings or fixing them. Doing my best in each moment, and trying to learn. Now I see that every time I say, "This is enough!", I am one step closer to believing that I can be enough for me. Each time I say, "This is enough!", I am closer to putting down the knife. And it ain't easy!
Who would you be without these thoughts?
When you’ve been walking around holding a knife to your own throat, you don’t just drop it when someone tells you to do so. You may recognize that you don’t like the sensation, but you also don’t know another way. You’ve grown accustomed to “living on the edge”, motivated by the fear of never being enough, running out of time, or being responsible for other people’s opinions of you. These thoughts have gotten you to a certain point in terms of getting a certain job, the approval of family, the image of success, or the apparent ingredients of happiness. To question them may feel like something you might not survive.
Well, you’re right. Part of you – the ego identities associated with those beliefs – will die. But if you’re willing to go through the “death” of disbelieving your painful thoughts, what’s left is the clean, clear mind that gives rise to peace, no matter what circumstances you find yourself in.
So it’s not a new set of instructions, rules, or formulas to follow that will give you what your soul wants. It’s not another idol to worship, or a teacher to please, or a parent to plead for love from. The soul’s nature is to be free and at peace. All you need to do is clear the obstacles.
And put down the knife.
Photo credit (used under a Creative Commons license): Pierre Vignau
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I went to medical school and know something about what it’s like to work in clinical environments. I’ve recently started reading blogs and articles about “physician burnout” and I can’t help but notice that there’s a lot of blame being placed on “the system”.
Doesn’t this kind of storytelling just reinforce that physicians are victims? I’d like to see physicians adopt a way of thinking that will enable each of them to create the desired changes in their own lifestyles, levels of satisfaction, and ultimately patient care.
In 2001, I made the choice to graduate from medical school but not pursue a residency. I benefited countless patients by making this decision. The key realization I made as a third-year medical student on my Vascular Surgery rotation, was, “I don’t have to do a residency.” So much of my suffering up until that point was based on the single erroneous thought, “I have to do a residency!” I also thought, “I don’t want to live this way! But I have to! These are my only choices!”
Well, none of those thoughts was true.
After graduating from medical school without a job, I ended up starting as an unpaid intern at a venture capital firm, getting hired six weeks later, and eventually getting promoted to partner. I then moved to California to follow my dream of creating my own violin school, and now am a life coach, helping people untangle their minds from the kinds of thoughts that lead to feelings of helplessness, burnout, and stress.
I’ve also lived through burnout myself. As a violin teacher, I acted like I had been trained to do as a “caring” professional. I invested heavily in each student’s outcome, identifying very closely their success with my own sense of competence, self-worth, and professional identity. At the end of each day, the only thing I had energy left to do was to tell stories of all the people who I believed were “not responding” to the intense efforts I had put in, only to get up the next morning and do it again. I saw myself as a victim of other people, and I had no knowledge of self-care. And this, my friends, was supposedly me “following my dream”!
It was my body that finally gave me the gift of forcing me to slow down. What began as mild neck and shoulder pain escalated to debilitating back pain. Thankfully, I listened. This was not part of my dream. And it made me look at my life with new eyes.
Over a period of a year, I regained my own sense of well-being, joy, and clarity, through a gradual process of deep self-care, self-reflection, and pursuing three formal training programs as a healer and coach. I learned that our thoughts create our reality. No circumstance – no matter how unbearable it seems – can ever be the cause of our burnout or suffering. It is our thoughts about the circumstance that create our suffering.
The theme of my story is that I didn’t look to a system to reform.
I found a way to reform myself, by listening to my body and seeking training from people who were already exemplifying the qualities of life I wanted. I pieced these together, and I pursued them proactively through a training process just as disciplined as any medical residency. The difference was, I was training myself to be who I wanted to be.
Thanks to this process, I now have a new career AND most importantly a new way of life that I know I am responsible for creating every day, through practice and continued learning. I am able to support people through a process of discovering how their own thoughts are the creators of both endless suffering AND limitless joy.
You get to choose.
Now, I’m no longer attached to stories of blame, rantings about the economy, or lack of options. I know now that freedom is available inside each and every one of us.
It is just one thought away.
Photo Credit (used under a Creative Commons license): Brendan Adkins
Last Thursday was the first meeting of Sounding for Self-Care Circles. This is a group that started out as a weekly practice circle for several of us who are about to finish our certificate program in Sound Voice & Music Healing at California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) in San Francisco. We began meeting weekly as a way to keep our skills active and to integrate our learning and transformation during a break in our classwork.
A Place to Practice
As our training program comes to a close and we each set out to offer our learnings in the world in unique ways that resonate with us, I realized that we needed to keep cultivating our community of practice, and to plant the seeds for a circle of practitioners to grow on the Peninsula.
So, I thought, why not open up our weekly practice to the public, and see who comes? You may not realize it, but every time you are admitted as a patient to a teaching hospital, you are entering a community of practice. The purpose of these institutions is to train doctors and other health care professionals in their art. Yes, true caring and healing work is an art form, no matter how far we've strayed from that in our health care system. The medical model at least recognizes that becoming a skilled practitioner (in anything) is a process of practicing. Many medical residents spend years chomping at the bit, waiting to get "out there" and start practicing on their own, and to have a "real job" with some autonomy.
What I now appreciate is the value of having a place to practice.
Effective practice requires repetition with awareness and consistent effort toward a conscious goal, as well as specific feedback along the way. The problem is, it's impossible to practice something and get better at it without taking the risk of doing something that doesn't work. We knew this when we were toddlers learning to walk. We fell down thousands of time, cheerfully getting back up again, training our muscles, building strength, until finally one day, we took our first step. After which, we promptly fell down again.
How many of us are willing to fall down in front of others? To risk "looking bad", or appearing silly?
When we were learning to walk, almost everything we did was entertaining to our parents. When we tried, they laughed. When we fell, they laughed. When we finally walked, they also laughed.
Some time between the age of 3 and being a teenager, we manage to lose our sense of sheer delight at the process of learning and practicing. We somehow forget our cheerful attitude toward failures as part of the process. It seems that "some time" is getting closer to age 3, as parents focus earlier and earlier on getting their kids into the right schools, needing to optimize test scores and performance evaluations even to get into kindergarten. It also seems that there are fewer places in our society that enable us to practice something in front of others - to be witnessed in our process of trying, failing, and trying again. There are plenty of performance spaces - in fact, many of our work and even family environments are probably best described as places where we put on a costume, play a role, memorize our lines, and hope for the applause at the end of our show.
But where do we go when we want to really LEARN? Where do we go when we need to really practice something, and try things out, and know that we don't have to look good, and trust that by being willing to NOT look good, we actually enable ourselves to get BETTER?
My vision for Sounding for Self-Care Circles is to create a safe space not only for students but for us as leaders and facilitators to play, practice, learn, and grow.
There were some beautiful moments of sharing and discovery last Thursday. The one that touched me the most was 21-year-old Elizabeth's comment that she never used to sing at all, but by the end of the class realized that she actually does enjoy the sound of her own voice, and wants to start practicing at home.
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I'm currently exploring my inexplicable fascination with what happens when you put a bunch of colorful children's bells in the hands of adults and say, "Play!"
In every class, I look at these bells and think, "Maybe we won't do it this time." But every time, I end up learning something new when we DO play with them. This Thursday was no exception.
Improvisation: Freeing the group's wisdom
The first time around, everyone chose their favorite color bell. Among the five of us, there were all the notes in the C major scale. This would be like having available only the white keys on the piano from middle C to the next C, 7 keys away. Try this at home on the piano. Give yourself those 8 notes to work with, and those 8 notes only. See what you can create.
Here's what five of us created, with our eyes closed and no one standing in front of the group to lead. I love the space between the notes and the unexpected harmonies that emerged.
Then, at one participant's request, I handed my bells to someone else and took a turn standing in front of the group, as if it were an orchestra and I were the conductor. In my efforts to find melodies and harmonies by directing the others, I felt the group energy as being a bit stiffer and more distracted by this way of interacting.
Same group of people, different leadership dynamic, different result. Fascinating! Maybe as the conductor I was trying too hard, but in any case, you can listen to the clip below and hear for yourself.
Right now I am loving the freedom of using my voice to create a safe space for all of us to explore. I hold in my mind the image of all the teachers who had come to CIIS to share their art with us. The common theme that ran through these experiences was total authenticity. Each of these teachers had done the work of transformation, and continued to practice creativity as a way of life. Each was completely unique and beautiful. Each was willing to be with us and stand before us as exactly who they are right now.
And I, even at this beginning stage of a new journey for me, must remember that my willingness to share myself in process is one of the greatest gifts I can offer.
"Yemaya" came to me on the morning of the class last Thursday, as I was re-reading a chapter of Twyla Tharp's The Creative Habit. It was just one word on a page, mentioned in passing. It's the name of a piece she choreographed years ago. It leaped off the page as inspiration and I created a simple medicine melody to go along with it.
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So what IS the sound of freedom? It's a practice I am just beginning to savor and enjoy.
My first experience shadowing a real practicing physician was in 1996, when I spent my spring break week staying in the home of a Radcliffe alumna and saw a glimpse into "a week in the life of..." someone in the real world. I thought, if I wanted to have a credible story about wanting to go to medical school (which my essential self really didn't want to do), I should at least see what one does. I shadowed a family physician in Philadelphia, who had a beautiful family of her own and a fun group of colleagues. At the time, I was naive to many of the challenges of having a small medical practice affiliated with a teaching hospital system, but I was keenly focused on how she interacted with her patients. I noticed that every time a patient came in, she would ask, "How are things at home?"
It almost became a running joke between us, because no matter how "mechanical" the problem seemed to be at first - an annual school physical, or a follow-up visit for a broken arm - she always asked this question. And it always opened people up to some long-awaited discussion about a lingering source of stress in their lives. They seemed so relieved to be able to talk about what was going on at home. Often there was nothing more she had to do except listen to the patient for a few minutes, giving them a space to be heard. Amongst us doctors, we used to call these "psychosocial" issues or "supratentorial" problems (a medical insider's term for implying "it's all in their head"). I returned from that trip with a profound respect for the job of a family physician - in the way she had taken it on - and also a desire to find some way to play an important role in people's lives through my work.
Self care isn't as sexy as medical care
When I actually got to medical school, I quickly learned the hierarchy of "sexiness" among the medical specialties - the unspoken but pervasively understood ranking based on how "challenging" or "prestigious" or "difficult to get into" they were. Family medicine pretty much ranked at the bottom. In contrast to the people who were "really" doing important things like surgeries, intensive care, and (oooh la la!) minimally invasive procedures, family physicians were the glorified "social workers" in the pecking order of traditional western medicine. At least that's how I learned it at the time.
When I rotated onto the primary care services and saw patients in the outpatient clinics, I was struck by how little time could be devoted to asking, "How are things at home?" within the structure of our medical training. We're taught to find out what's wrong, and have a plan of action - involving writing orders for diagnostic tests, referrals to specialists, or a prescription for a pill - to address the problem. Never were we told to inquire about what might be the underlying cause of the complaint or symptom. Never were we allowed to ask what really brought the patient in to see the doctor.
I can't blame modern western medicine for getting to this point. As we've become more and more disconnected from our bodies, and as our lives have become more and more complex and demanding, our physical problems have become more severe. Naturally, our tendency toward innovation has led to the creation of more and more sophisticated technologies for dealing with those escalating problems.
But what no one seemed to care about - at least when I was in medical school - was health and wellness. In other words, doctors played no active role in promoting their patient's SELF care by asking, "How are things at home?". Some of the most basic questions and observations were left out of our assessments of "normal" patients - like posture, breathing, diet, exercise, work-related stress, quality of relationships, and emotional coping mechanisms.
I've heard all the arguments about doctors "not having the time" to ask these questions. I believe those pressures are real. But I also believe that the intention to maintain and restore health to the whole person is not at the forefront of our medical training or even our health care paradigm in this country.
Self care is simply not part of our health care system.
I had to learn this myself, outside the system. I've always lived my life with an underlying belief that if there was a heap, I would find my way to the top of it somehow. Luckily, through a sensitivity I was born with and also cultivated through years of musical practice and listening, I also had the ability to "check in" with myself and set limits for the amount of work and stress I would sign up for. I didn't like being around the crowds of medical students who got together in groups to hype up their own stress by studying together for exams. I didn't drown my sorrows in alcohol at the end of each week either. I found other outlets - playing music with people who managed to live on a different setpoint for stress was one, and exercising was another. Both of these gave me a chance to surround myself with different kinds of people, who spoke a different language, and would not allow my particular stresses to spiral and escalate through constant storytelling.
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Moving into balance
Later on, I discovered yoga, which started out as a pure fitness activity and has slowly evolved into a deep personal self-care practice for my mind-body connection. After ten years of practice, I can "drop in" to my own body and consciousness each time I get on the mat. By repeating many of the same poses each time, I can sense subtle differences from day to day, and from the beginning to the end of practice. Now that I include chanting, meditation, and breath work in my practice, I can also tell immediately when my mind is racing or wandering, and when it is quiet and receptive.
As I look back, it has been during the most "busy" and "stressful" years of my life that I have chosen to neglect yoga in favor of more "active" exercise like going to the gym and doing more "efficient" cardiovascular activities. I think at the time I believed that the more vigorously I worked, both in my life and in my exercise, the better I would perform. I thought that constant activity would protect me from things. I didn't want to think about what might happen if I actually slowed down and took a few deep breaths.
In every case, I learned from my own body that breathing is the only option. The opposite of what I believed was actually true - if I didn't slow down and take a few deep breaths, I would not have come into contact with the restorative power of my body's own energy, or quieted down enough to listen to the tangled web of outdated thoughts that were keeping me stuck in old patterns. Becoming aware of these things enabled me to take specific actions to improve my own experience of life, and consciously create my own state of well-being.
How's your mind-body hygiene?
I just read a fascinating article in this month's Yoga Journal about a Harvard University neuroscientist at Brigham and Women's Hospital whose lifelong mission has been to scientifically prove the health benefits of yoga. After twenty years of being unsuccessful in raising funding (while he worked on research in the field of insomnia and Circadian rhythms), Sat Bir Khalsa, PhD, a yoga practitioner for over thirty years, finally received a grant in 2001 from the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. His far-reaching vision is for yoga to become the preferred "medicine" in America, by promoting it as a "toothbrush for body and mind". Says Khalsa:
"I think of this as hygiene. We have dental hygiene, which is a well-accepted part of American culture. Schools teach it, doctors recommend it, parents reinforce it. Imagine if people didn't routinely brush their teeth. That would be unheard of in this country! But what about mind-body hygiene? We have nothing for that."
"The American lifestyle generates an enormous number of sick people, and there's a huge cost to repair them. We're constantly looking for high-tech solutions - a new magic pill, a new surgical procedure. But what if we went low tech instead, giving people yoga strategies? It would be the biggest bang for the buck in terms of making an impact on the world."
Why is yoga as SELF care perceived as such a "soft" approach - like family medicine compared to neurosurgery? Part of our distrust of yoga as a therapeutic activity is that it includes spiritual or sacred elements and isn't a "pure" physical activity. We seem to feel more comfortable separating mind from body in our culture. We want to "isolate" a problem and "solve" it, once and for all. And oh, the technologies we've created that give us the illusion that we're doing that!
By the way, my mentor in Philadelphia ended up going back to pursue her psychiatry residency at the age of 50. She's diving deeper into those questions about "How are things at home?". In a way, I've taken my own deep dive into these questions by devoting myself to holistic wellness education and self-empowerment.
I believe we need to develop a vocabulary and practice of SELF care in our culture, starting one person at a time. When we see examples of exquisite self care - the energy and vitality of someone who is joyful, powerful and at ease - we know it. It's undeniable.
But how many times do we use a limiting belief like, "I don't have time!" or "Some people are just born that way...", to keep us in our comfort zones and safe from the risk of learning?
Sure, changing your behavior may seem "hard".
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But haven't we gotten to the point where we've seen that our old ways of thinking, the systems we have come to rely upon, just don't make it any easier?
If you want to keep beating up your body and waiting until you get a diagnosis before you start caring about your health, be my guest. The new "reformed" health care system will be right there waiting for you.
But if you want to learn - for yourself - some ways to care for your SELF, you can start right now.
I'm going to be bringing all kinds of ideas and practices your way. You can join me, too, either here in cyberspace (hopefully I'll get you away from your computer for a few minutes a day!) or in the real world, face to face. I would LOVE to help you learn how to care more deeply for your SELF.