What is the world coming to that teachers are straining their voices just to teach? To get their students' attention, they have to holler over the noise in the kids' heads. Kids nowadays are so overwhelmed with sensory input that things have to be louder, more urgent, more compelling for them to pay attention.
And it's not just the kids, of course. I had a patient come in today with anxiety and insomnia: he finds he can't turn his mind off. When at work he's thinking about things that need to be done at home, when at home, work follows him. Even when there isn't as much to be busy with, he finds he is worrying about the next thing looming on the horizon.
This sort of busy-ness is nothing new. And the solution is as old as can be. But it's contrary to our modern sensibilities: get QUIET!
What fear we have of being silent! What dread we have of being alone with our thoughts! And what anger we have at not being busy - what, we have to wait for the checkout? red light? bank machine?
Making friends with ourselves again, that's what being silent is about. Getting to know yourself all over again, getting to sitting and chatting with yourself, having yourself over to tea. Cutting out all the extraneous noise we call work, entertainment, fun... and getting into just being, just observing! When we quiet down to ourselves, we realize we can hear better. I heard someone put it that "Prayer is talking to God. Meditation is listening to His response."
Meditation sounds like a big word, and a big challenge. It isn't anything difficult, unless we make it so. It is just about slowing down, stopping the merry-go-round and enjoying THIS moment, this situation, this sensation, this person in front of me, this beautiful sunny day.
And when we listen deeply, then we know things. And we know we are loved, that we belong, that all is where it should be - for how could it be any other way? This whole game was set up for us to discover this for ourselves. If you don't yet believe it, you're playing the game well! Eventually you come to a dead end on that path, and you have to make other choices - only to discover there's always another trail that leads you back to love, belonging, and wellness. Let go the fight, because it's all good.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Saturday, October 3, 2009
Health insurance
It seems that not a lot of people I talk to know about HSAs. Health Savings Accounts. It's a federally recognized form of health insurance.
The benefit: you put money aside every year for medical expenses, and unlike Flex Spend accounts, the money in the account can accumulate year after year. The money is pre-tax, and can grow tax-free. However, you can only put in a fixed amount annually - this year it was $3000. And the money is yours to use on whatever medical expenses you deem fit - and that is included on a list of covered medical expenses by the IRS. Also, if you don't use it all up, it can pass to your beneficiaries when you die.
The catch: you have to have HDHP insurance: High-Deductible Health Plan. This is like a major medical insurance... only there aren't a lot of options in NY. I found only one company carried this kind of plan when I was looking - it covers hospital, and even some preventative (an annual gyn and physical exam, well-child care, and mammogram). The company is Emblem Health, a conglomeration of HIP and GHI. It seems though that since I locked that in, the availibility of the plan or the cost of it changed... I have a friend who looked into it and didn't find what I did.
So I don't know what will happen to the insurance I have in place, but I figure now's the time to lock in something you want to keep, because with new legislation in the works it may or may not be an option in the future!
Being pretty young (38), and being in good health, I don't plan on using much of the money in the near future, so I can let it accumulate, and one day it may cover my long-term health needs... Which is better than just paying an insurance company every month only to find that they won't cover alternative medicine, and they won't cover long-term health care, and they give you a hassle for every other supposedly covered services! Pay them every month and they spend it, or pay myself every month and I can keep it. Hmm, the choice seems too easy!
The benefit: you put money aside every year for medical expenses, and unlike Flex Spend accounts, the money in the account can accumulate year after year. The money is pre-tax, and can grow tax-free. However, you can only put in a fixed amount annually - this year it was $3000. And the money is yours to use on whatever medical expenses you deem fit - and that is included on a list of covered medical expenses by the IRS. Also, if you don't use it all up, it can pass to your beneficiaries when you die.
The catch: you have to have HDHP insurance: High-Deductible Health Plan. This is like a major medical insurance... only there aren't a lot of options in NY. I found only one company carried this kind of plan when I was looking - it covers hospital, and even some preventative (an annual gyn and physical exam, well-child care, and mammogram). The company is Emblem Health, a conglomeration of HIP and GHI. It seems though that since I locked that in, the availibility of the plan or the cost of it changed... I have a friend who looked into it and didn't find what I did.
So I don't know what will happen to the insurance I have in place, but I figure now's the time to lock in something you want to keep, because with new legislation in the works it may or may not be an option in the future!
Being pretty young (38), and being in good health, I don't plan on using much of the money in the near future, so I can let it accumulate, and one day it may cover my long-term health needs... Which is better than just paying an insurance company every month only to find that they won't cover alternative medicine, and they won't cover long-term health care, and they give you a hassle for every other supposedly covered services! Pay them every month and they spend it, or pay myself every month and I can keep it. Hmm, the choice seems too easy!
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Fatigue - depression or adrenal exhaustion?
Chinese medicine honors how you feel - if you're tired, you probably need rest. How much rest? That depends on how much you've been "overspending" your resources. We highly value rest and relaxation - and we know that being busy and not sleeping enough adds up over time. Somehow in this modern American culture we think we can just keep going - or worse, that we must: "I'll rest when I die."
It isn't conducive to quality of life if we just keep running, and don't stop to assess where we are, where we've come from, where we're going... and how our actions affect others who we are close to. When we busy ourselves in only seeing the immediate urgency and forget to look at the larger perspective, it's a lot like driving without any idea of what turn to take next. Besides getting lost, we're spending resources (time, energy, relationships, consciousness) going nowhere.
Sometimes it takes a bigger crisis to make us stop and take stock. Often the crisis is one of health. The thing is, the crisis took a while building up, it just wasn't noticed until it got to be a problem. Sometimes it starts as just fatigue, difficulty getting out of bed. Depression seems to be the catch-all diagnosis, take some meds, feel "fine"! Well, that just hides the problem under the rug, until something else shows up... More meds? Or maybe it's time to take stock of how we got here, accept that we don't have unlimited resources, that our bodies aren't the invicible 20-year-old body we used to have, that seemed to take all sorts of abuse with minimal repercussions... And maybe it is ok to sleep 12 hours a day - even for 2 years!
The Western medicine diagnosis is adrenal fatigue. Check out Dr Mercola's article on it:
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/09/05/Most-Common-Cause-of-Fatigue-that-is-Missed-or-Misdiagnosed-by-Doctors.aspx
It isn't conducive to quality of life if we just keep running, and don't stop to assess where we are, where we've come from, where we're going... and how our actions affect others who we are close to. When we busy ourselves in only seeing the immediate urgency and forget to look at the larger perspective, it's a lot like driving without any idea of what turn to take next. Besides getting lost, we're spending resources (time, energy, relationships, consciousness) going nowhere.
Sometimes it takes a bigger crisis to make us stop and take stock. Often the crisis is one of health. The thing is, the crisis took a while building up, it just wasn't noticed until it got to be a problem. Sometimes it starts as just fatigue, difficulty getting out of bed. Depression seems to be the catch-all diagnosis, take some meds, feel "fine"! Well, that just hides the problem under the rug, until something else shows up... More meds? Or maybe it's time to take stock of how we got here, accept that we don't have unlimited resources, that our bodies aren't the invicible 20-year-old body we used to have, that seemed to take all sorts of abuse with minimal repercussions... And maybe it is ok to sleep 12 hours a day - even for 2 years!
The Western medicine diagnosis is adrenal fatigue. Check out Dr Mercola's article on it:
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/09/05/Most-Common-Cause-of-Fatigue-that-is-Missed-or-Misdiagnosed-by-Doctors.aspx
Saturday, August 8, 2009
People Vote with their Dollars - Acupuncture Works!
New Study Reveals Number of Visits to Acupuncturists and Amount of Out-of-Pocket Spending Annually for Practitioner Visits and Self Care Such as Tai Chi and Qi Gong Up Significantly from Previous 2002 Study
According to a new study from the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) and the Center for Disease Control’s National Center for Health Statistics, in 2007, adults in the United States spent $33.9 billion out-of-pocket on visits to complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) practitioners and purchases of CAM products, classes, and materials for self-care. Nearly one-third of this out-of-pocket spending was to pay for CAM practitioner costs (see figure below.) Further, according to this government survey, the number of visits to acupuncturists rose 32% between 2002 and 2007. Also, nearly 12% of the out-of-pocket money was specifically spent on yoga, Tai chi and Qi gong for self-care (see figure below).
To read more about these significant findings on increase use of acupuncture, Tai chi, and Qi gong, please go to the link below, which provides access to the newly released National Health Statistics Reports (NHSR), (Number 18, July 30, 2009) as well as the earlier, NHSR (Number 12, December 10, 2008).
Link to the press release: http://nccam.nih.gov/news/2009/073009.htm
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Acupuncture beats Western med for low back pain
http://www.naturalnews.com/026249.html
It's not enough to have a diagnosis... Give acupuncture a try, maybe that diagnosis is only a single-moment snapshot of where you are - it may not be permanent at all!
This article is hardly news to me! I see it every day - low back pain, and other muscle aches, are really hard for Western medicine... Even arthritis is often correctible with acupuncture, some exercises, and maybe some daily self-massage! I have even treated torn meniscus and herniated discs and had good results.
And people find all this "miraculous." I don't mind the enthusiasm one bit, but it strikes me that acupuncture and hands-on massage are very straightforward, no magic at all! The only reason it seems so wonderful is that Western medicine has left the hands-on so far behind that many folks who go to a doctor are never touched once... even those going in for surgery don't even get the basic "Does it hurt here or here?" examination. Instead they get a machine that takes a picture of a living changing organism - and the verdict is rendered by reading a machine's interpretation of the body!?!
And then based on such a fuzzy picture, the doctor recommends three things - surgery, meds, physical therapy... and marginalizes the hands-on therapy to only the things he writes down on a pad of paper! How can someone who hasn't even touched you prescribe manual therapy to someone else who isn't legally allowed to stray from the doctor's orders?
The way I work, I don't know in advance what I'm going to do. It's a combination of examining the patient, experience... and intuition! The results speak for themselves.
It's not enough to have a diagnosis... Give acupuncture a try, maybe that diagnosis is only a single-moment snapshot of where you are - it may not be permanent at all!
This article is hardly news to me! I see it every day - low back pain, and other muscle aches, are really hard for Western medicine... Even arthritis is often correctible with acupuncture, some exercises, and maybe some daily self-massage! I have even treated torn meniscus and herniated discs and had good results.
And people find all this "miraculous." I don't mind the enthusiasm one bit, but it strikes me that acupuncture and hands-on massage are very straightforward, no magic at all! The only reason it seems so wonderful is that Western medicine has left the hands-on so far behind that many folks who go to a doctor are never touched once... even those going in for surgery don't even get the basic "Does it hurt here or here?" examination. Instead they get a machine that takes a picture of a living changing organism - and the verdict is rendered by reading a machine's interpretation of the body!?!
And then based on such a fuzzy picture, the doctor recommends three things - surgery, meds, physical therapy... and marginalizes the hands-on therapy to only the things he writes down on a pad of paper! How can someone who hasn't even touched you prescribe manual therapy to someone else who isn't legally allowed to stray from the doctor's orders?
The way I work, I don't know in advance what I'm going to do. It's a combination of examining the patient, experience... and intuition! The results speak for themselves.
Monday, April 6, 2009
Great example of how to live!
Hey all! Check out the 88-year-old mayor of a major city in Canada...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fY79KbCptTo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fY79KbCptTo
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