PatSamples

You Can't Take Away My Panic Attacks!

Nothing like a stay in the hospital to make you pay close attention to your body and mind. Having just gotten home from a week in North Memorial Medical Center, I speak from experience. For the past few months, I've been experiencing rapid heartbeats on quite a number of occasions. On the one hand, that didn't seem too out of the ordinary. I've had panic attacks off and on for years. In fact, I wrote a whole chapter describing these attacks in my new book, Body Odyssey: Lessons from the Bones and Belly. They've caused me a lot of misery over the years, but it's become familiar misery. I'm used to the shortness of breath, the rapid heartbeat, feeling faint, and the tremendous sense of fear and irritability that are common when this severe panic reaction occurs. They are feelings you might have if you had just escaped being hit by a speeding train. More…

Who's Dead But Still Talking?

Holiday time often brings to mind memories of family and friends who have died, and a wish that they were here. Maybe they are. I've become quite curious about death lately with the recent send-off of two friends to another life. I also gave some additional attention to death as I prepared a recent workshop I gave about the lessons of our bodies during grief. After that workshop, a woman came up to me and, in a hushed tone, asked, "Have you ever heard anyone talk about strange things happening after someone dies?" I could tell she was clearly bothered by some experience she had had and wanted to talk about it. More…

Get Moving -- Because You Can

Wintertime, at least for those of us in northern climates, can be hard on the body. With snow and ice covering trails, tennis courts, and golf courses, lively outdoor activity is limited (though not for skiers and sledders). The shorter, darker days can leave us feeling uninspired about getting up and moving about. Cold weather may create greater achiness, and icy steps and walkways makes us at risk for falls. All in all, it takes extra effort to get moving. What helps me when I don't feel like making that effort is to step into gratitude. I become thankful for what I can do -- running in place, jumping on a mini-trampoline, dancing to energizing music in my living room, walking in a nearby mall, or  moving to an aerobics tape. I take a moment to realize I have arms and legs (some people don't!). I'm not paralyzed. I'm not bed-ridden. If I can move, it makes sense to do so. It's certainly good for my physical well-being and also for my mental state. More…

Meditations on Grief from Inside the Body

After I wrote about the expressions of grief in the body last week, two people dear to me died within a few days. I've also been with several people this week who are experiencing grief over other losses. So I'm learning close-up even more  about what happens to our bodies when we are grieving. More…

What happens in your body when you're grieving?

 This week, in a workshop I gave on body wisdom to a group of bereavement ministers, we explored together how grief shows up in our bodies. Common experiences for grieving people, in addition to weepiness, are sleeplessness, loss of appetite, shortness of breath, feelings of heaviness, and lack of energy or interest. The body goes into a contracted state, pulling inward, curling up and hiding, as it were. There may also be a tight jaw or an irritable scowl or a curled up fist, reflecting a simmering anger over the loss. One woman told me that her mother got very angry when her husband (the woman's father) died. The mother then had a heart attack and died shortly thereafter. Maybe the anger wasn't the cause of her death, but the emotions associated with grief are very strong, and our bodies report on them faithfully. More…

Let Your Body's Impulses Be Your Teacher

I was very excited this week to find another book that echoes what I talk about in Body Odyssey: Lessons from the Bones and Belly. Arnold Mindell, a brilliant visionary and psychotherapist who weaves together bodywork, Jungian therapy, quantum physics, and more, has written The Quantum Mind and Healing: How To Listen and Respond to Your Body Symptoms. In it, he talks about paying such close attention to our bodies that we notice the subtle tendencies to activity that exist before we actually move. More…

What Has Your Body Been Doing All This Time?

I did a Body Odyssey retreat today at an assisted living facility. In places like this, the body's limitations are often emphasized, and people sit  unmoving much of the day. Today we talked about all the body has to offer. I asked people what their bodies had done in their lifetimes. Think of that question yourself. Some of the answers I heard today were: skating, picking rocks, dancing, holding babies, eating, running, sewing, waving, smelling, whistling, shaking hands. More…

I Can't Sit Through One More Meeting

Have you noticed we've become a sitting people? We grew up learning to sit in our seats at our desks and listen, and, to my way of thinking, we learned that lesson all too well. We sit a lot - in our cars, in front of our desks, in front of TV and movie screens, at sports and performance events, at meetings, at religious services, to name a few situations. In Body Odyssey: Lessons from the Bones and Belly, I rant about our sitting addiction in one of the early chapters. In particular, I talk about the plague of sitting that happens when we attend conferences. How many times have you gone to an all-day or several-day conference or convention and sat and sat while you listened? Still doing what the teacher said to do in first grade. More…

Performing for the well-being of the world

I had an inspiring conversation the other day with a group of older women in my community who are members of the International Women's League for Peace and Freedom. This group helps address the needs of women around the world and works on other social justice causes. Some of these women have experience as professional artists, some do not. But they jointly use artistic expression as a means of drawing attention to important social issues. They have created dramatizations related to genital mutilation of women in some countries. They have produced a video portraying the story of one older woman's experience with racism, using their puppetry to illustrate aspects of the story. They have created a piece of artwork reflecting an "empty" chair to represent women who have not been able to sit at the important decision-making tables. This piece is now on exhibit with other chair sculptures at a theological school. More…

The Price of Rushing

It's been very heartening to hear responses from several people in the medical field cheering me on as I've talked about tuning in to our body wisdom. It makes me think of a few years ago when I was told I needed shoulder surgery. It was right before Christmas and a particularly hectic time with my work, so I was feeling stressed already. On top of that, I didn't really like or trust the surgeon I'd been referred to, and questioned whether I should go ahead.  I was fearful of how I would manage, living alone, being more-or-less one-handed for a while. And I knew the limited use of my arm and hand would make my work productivity suffer greatly. It would mean rearranging schedules and finding people to help, and the whole thing left me feeling overwhelmed. More…