Laughter truly IS the best medicine

One of these days, I'm going to start a LAUGHING CLUB. A LAUGHING GROUP. LAUGHTER THERAPY. Go ahead. Laugh. That's exactly what I want you to do. I've done this before - a little bit - and it was just amazing. In the early days of my psychology practice, I had a very small women's therapy group. After we'd been meeting for a number of weeks, one of the members, who was a twin, came to group and told us that her twin had died two weeks ago. We all listened and helped her process and remember and grieve. And then we laughed. Before that night's group, I had sent them the link below and asked if they'd like to try. All three had said yes. So we watched the clip, and laughed with it. And then I challenged them to laugh for 2 solid minutes without it. We went for nearly 4. We laughed at nothing and at each other - and then we pulled the little glass pebbles out of a bowl I have on the table and tossed them at each other and laughed harder. One pebble went down a shirt front by accident; then it became a game to try to land them there. (Ages here were 79, 71 or 72, 60-something, and 55.) So afterward, I asked them what happened, what it did. The ALL said they forgot every single thing that was bothering them, that they felt lighter, they played and loved it, realized they don't play enough, that it's THAT easy to get outside of what's eating you. Here's the information we shared about laughter clubs: Laughter Yoga Clubs Laughter Yoga Clubs were started by Indian physician, Dr. Madan Kataria in 1995 with just five people. Today, the Laughter Movement is widely accepted and has become a global phenomenon with over 6000 clubs in 60 countries. Realizing the tremendous power of laughter and its efficacy as the best prescription for wellness, Laughter Clubs have brought smiles and laughter in the lives of many people suffering from physical and mental and emotional upsets. http://www.laughteryoga.org/english

Four minutes

Take four minutes and let this volunteer firefighter tell you how to make your life count. Really. Just do it. You have four minutes. http://www.ted.com/talks/mark_bezos_a_life_lesson_from_a_volunteer_firefighter

17 minutes of your time

Watch this. Please.
I know you're busy. You don't have time right now, right? So much to do. So many tasks, so many loose ends.
Drop them.
Right now.
I'm not kidding. I promise.
I promise that minute Number 18 will be better after you spend the 17 minutes watching this.
Not to mention minute Number 19.
And tomorrow.
And next week.
And probably next year.


http://www.ted.com/talks/neil_pasricha_the_3_a_s_of_awesome.html?utm_source=newsletter_weekly_2011-01-11&utm_campaign=newsletter_weekly&utm_medium=email

Needing a bit of solitude now?

Oh, yes. Yes, a little down time, a little "you time," a little quiet after the delightful (or perhaps, not so, depending on the circumstances of one's life) holiday gatherings and doings and comings and goings.

I've stolen what's in quotes below from the Tricycle newsletter - and the link at the bottom will take you to quite a few more words of wisdom:

"Weekly Teaching: The Power of Solitude
Sometimes, after a big gathering with lots of family, friends, and excitement, we just want to be alone. And Buddhism, particularly Tibetan Buddhism, emphasizes the importance of solitude in practice. And there are tangible, immediate benefits to going on retreat, to being alone:

You can look at retreat as a practice to develop compassion for other people. When you know how to relax into that deeper sense of yourself, you can be there for people in a way that you never could before, in a way that is not driven by your ambition and habitual patterns but rather where you see what other people really need. You see their experience from their side. You are actually able to get outside of yourself. Far from being an antisocial practice, retreat practice frees you to love people in a uniquely powerful way."

http://www.tricycle.com/interview/power-solitude

Desire? Desire!!!!!!

What do you desire? Does the act of desiring feel wonderful - or does it frustrate you?
If and when you obtain your heart's desire, are you then happy? Joyful? Ecstatic? Euphoric?

What about how desire plays out in our addictions - to food, to alcohol, to drugs legal and illegal, to sex, to running, to work, to perfectionism????

In the interview found by clicking the link below, Mark Epstein offers up some tempting tidbits about his thoughts on desire, more fully contained in his latest book. Click and learn!

http://www.tricycle.com/special-section/merry-go-round-desire

bogged blogger

Sometimes the blogger is just more boggy than bloggy, and sadly - or maybe more accurately - just a function of the normality of the changeability of life - that has been the case for the past week or so.

Where did the boggy come from? Oh, let's see - I suspect part of it can be laid at the feet of the holiday season and the range of emotions it conjures up - from joy and gratitude and awe to poignant memories and sadness and loneliness - lonely for those I loved who are no longer living, loneliness for that someone I'd like to love who hasn't shown up just yet.

And there's the existential angst thing that is never far away, that seems to grow a bit more prominent during cold, stay indoors, wind down the year kind of days.

And there's the overwhelm that sometimes shows up when there are lots of new things on the agenda - like learning some of the pertinent points of blogging and AdSense and Google partners, of wandering helpless through the maze of Medicaid filing as part of a psychology practice, of meeting new folks while out and about more than usual for holiday gatherings.

So today was a wind-down, be quiet sort of day, with a bit of catching up with myself, with a larger bit of reality check with a friend, with a nicer, softer spot to land this evening.

Hope, always, honestly, truly does - spring eternal. Sometimes I just have to actually open the window to let it in.

Doing December

So, it's December 7 today, one solid week into the month that holds Christmas and Hanukkah and Kwanzaa and the winter solstice and how many other causes for celebration and socializing whose names I don't know or perhaps have never heard of....
How are you doing with all of this?

I have, for so many years, loved Christmas and its trappings. I loved thinking about the gifts I'd give people I loved, maybe even making some of them some years (there WAS the year of decoupage, when everybody got some picture shellacked onto a piece of wood); I loved stockings - my own and the ones I filled for other people; I loved tying pretty bows on boxes wrapped in pretty paper; I loved party food - eating it and cooking it; I loved party drinks (the Scarlett O'Hara, made of Southern Comfort, cranberry juice, and an egg white shaken into fluffy froth looks like the holidays in a glass; too many of them will make your head feel decidedly less festive the following day); I loved being with friends and family; I loved real green cedar trees, shiny magnolia leaves, nandina berries (later holly; it was just nandina that grew in our yard).

I do still love all those things, even though they're not all part of my Christmas experience any more. I pick and choose; I do what works in whatever year I'm living, in whatever circumstance I'm living through.

And that thought - living through circumstances during the holiday season - is the point of all this rambling.

What ARE your circumstances this year? How lovely it would be if all of us really could waltz through our holidays totally wrapped in bliss, totally merry....

What is closer to the truth is that most of us navigate this season with some "circumstance" impinging on our ability to experience bliss, to exude merriness....

Here's a bit of what I know about that, right now, today, without even trying hard. Tomorrow will be the12th anniversary of the day my father shot himself and died from the wound. It is also the second anniversary of the funeral of the mother of my best friend; Sarah died on December 5. Today was the eighth anniversary of the suicide of the husband of a dear friend of mine. Just two days before Thanksgiving this year, a man in my neighborhood put a gun in his mouth and ended his life. I have another friend who lost her beloved father to illness in October, and she's wondering how long that loss is going to hurt.

Everywhere, I can see, and so can you, people who are struggling financially just to take care of the basics, and for so many of those people, the desire to do "extra" and "special" during the holidays is more of a stressor than a cause for celebration. In my town right now, it's colder than usual, and I don't think my heat pump has stopped running all day. I'm thankful I've GOT one; I bet I could throw a rock and hit at least one house where people are suffering without an adequate heat source.

So, I'm wondering: what's going on with you? How are you coping? What do you do to honestly contact the things that hurt, that make you sad, and still move forward in a way that DOES allow you to celebrate this time of year, to feel joy at all the things that are right in your life, to express honest gratitude for all the good things? Because most of have our ways, some of us are looking for new ways, and all of us have a piece of this story to share.

Here's your invitation. Talk to me.