Archive for year: 2023

This week I had to attend a driving awareness course which is very topical to the moment as there is a great move, not least of all over they border in Wales, to reduce all 30 MPH limits to 20 MPH. There are a list of reasons for this reducing pollution and improving air quality to reducing accidents and saving lives. All of these reasons are supported by the evidence based research and the case is there for it to be a good idea.
Interestingly many people that I know are either from Wales or have to travel to Wales have shared their frustration with me about the cues of traffic that are now in the knew system.
On the course, that was attended exclusively by males, the reasons given for speeding were about being in a hurry. Each of us could justify our hurry or we believed that we could. For me I was taking belongings from my recently passed auntie’s house to charity shops and to the tip and fitting this around all the other things that had to do. I was doing 36 in a 30. Did I need to be? Really the answer is ‘No’. Yet we can all justify to ourselves why we need to rush everywhere but why?
Slowing down to speed up can seem paradoxical if your default behaviour is to rush everywhere as quickly as you can. But where did we learn that everything has to be done at speed? I remember being told that ‘time is money, so get a crack on’, but is it? Does it matter if I get to the supermarket five minutes later or to my my holiday cottage a few hour later? Why do we all need to be doing everything at speed?
Ed pointed out that when you slow down and take a bike to travel around you see more, smell more, appreciate more and interact with other people more. Where as in a car you are trapped in a metal box and missing most of what you are driving through.
Increasing your stress levels
Remember that driving too fast and feeling stressed will significantly impair your ability concentrate, observe and anticipate the decisions you need to make, and reduce your capability as a driver. If you are really stressed from what is going on in your life so that it affects you when you are driving it may mean that you need to take a break and to question whether or not you should be driving at all. You may need to take a few moments to meditate and just breathe to calm down and give yourself time to recover so that you are safe to drive.
Driving slower, moving slower, living slower and being more aware allows you to be is more efficient not just as a driver but in every aspect of your life. You should prioritise speed over quality in every thing that you do. Self-care is so important. When you are overwhelmed or exhausted you can become a liability to yourself and others. More importantly it might even save a life.
There is always a balance between getting things done and getting where you need to be and looking after your self. To create the right balance you may need readjust your attitudes and behaviours and take breaks as and when necessary. This will allow you to be as constantly and effectively as you can.
My resource for this week is the up to date edition of the Highway Code. It has changed a lot since I last looked at it and takes into account both pedestrians and cyclist.
So, if we all one need to travel a bit slower don’t fight it enjoy and arrive at your destination with a smile on your face.
Take care and drive safely
Sean x

Have you ever wanted to give you a body a good clean, but from the inside? It is rebooting your entire system. A bit like when you turn your laptop off and on again and then defrag the hard drive.

Twice a year, autumn in October and spring in March I will do a 13 day mini detox. This an exclusion detox, that you can see on the site www.livesthepresent.co.uk . In the thirteen days you progressively go from a full solid diet to three days of fluid and then back up to a full diet again.

Every few years I go on a 90 day clean out. This means no alcohol, no chocolate, no caffeine, no dairy, no meat. With the no dairy goes all the cakes and pastries. Does that sound hard? for many people this is normal. 

When you have been eating a full western diet this may seem a difficult idea. Yet many people live their entire lives this way and, guess what, they are very healthy. When Fauja Singh ran the london marathon aged 102 he did it on a Punjabi farmers diet of mainly rice and lentils.

I will reduce my diet over a seven day period and have a day, or a few, on just Water with honey and lemon, often this will be warm. The lemon cleans, and the honey provides energy. Some people will have some withdrawal to begin with. So if your system is addicted to something like caffeine you may get headaches if you stop too quickly so it important to reduce things gradually.

People often fear that they will lack energy. Not true. You use between 35 and 50% of your energy just digesting the food that you would normally eat. On diets like this most people feel an increase in their energy level and even sleep better. 

Flushing your system may sound odd, this is why I do it. The tube that runs from your mouth to your bottom, the alimentary canal, gut, processes all the food that you eat. It has done so from the moment of your birth and if you have never fasted or detoxed, without a break. Just like the skin on the outside of your body the lining of you gut will be sloughing cells, so that a proportion of what comes out of your bottom will actually be your dead cells from your gut lining. 

However, because your poor old gut has been working, usually flat out 24/7, year after year not all the cells come away and you get a build up of old rubbish on the lining that reduces the efficiency of the gut wall to absorb the nutrients that your your body needs. Many people suggest that this buildup and the subsequent problems this creates lead to many diseases. By doing a few days on fluid, and that means quite a lot of fluid, so that you pee a lot, your gut gets the opportunity to flush and clean all this rubbish that would otherwise remain stuck to your gut wall. Having given the gut a clean you then have a chance to create a new diet that will serve you well.

Think about our origins as hunter gatherers. We would never have had the constant supply of food that we have now provided for us in the supermarkets. There would be days of plenty and day when the calories would have been reduced and some days when we only drank water. In these circumstances the gut had the opportunity to cleanse itself on a regular basis.

So what will I eat? Well pulses, beans, grains and nuts, plenty of protein their. Rice, potatoes and wholemeal pasta, plenty of carbs there. As much fruit and vegetable as I want, plenty of minerals and vitamins there. I make my own bread that can be moistened with good olive oil or nut butter. For breakfast a plain unsweetened muesli type mix with nut or soya milk.

Really it means flushing the system and rebooting onto unprocessed foods that are healthy and nutritious. My rule is no meat, no dairy, no alcohol, coffee, sugar and anything processed with a drastic reduction in sugar. I have to say that if you are going to try it you might need to talk with your doctor first especially if you are diabetic.

The resource for this podcast/blog is my thirteen day detox programme. This can be a good place to start, as I say twice a year. If that goes well and you enjoy it you may get to trying a thirty day and then gradually extend it to 90 days over a few years.

Game for a laugh? Have a go.

Take care 

Sean x

 

 

Lately the international news has been full of stories of inappropriate touching kissing, and so on, in a variety of areas from sport to politics. The implication is that we either no longer have a clear idea of what our boundaries are or that our attitude to boundaries is changing. We are living in a world of change. It could that this is the reality of the end of the age of Pisces the beginning of the age of Aquarius. Or it could simply be that we are waking up a bit as in the evolution of human consciousness.

As a society we are currently reviewing our relationships to gender, orientation, ethnicity and attitudes. To have a clear boundary in any of our relationships we need to have a clear image and understanding of our fundamental relationship and that is the one that we have with ourself. Our approach to all our relationships begins with the approach that we have with our self.

‘I love me’ is not a statement of arrogance it is a statement of self esteem. To ensure that people give us value we must give ourself value. If I value me then I will ensure that you value me. If I feel that I have no value then I can accept any negative treatment that you throw at me.

Arrogance is when I see myself as better than others. Self esteem gives me the ability to value me as well as valuing you. If we all has self esteem we could all look after each other. So, I believe that the way to create positive boundaries with other people begins with creating positive self esteem. Charity begins at home.

Of coursed we need to put some effort into understanding other people. We need tolerance, empathy and insight. Most of all we need kindness and care. However it only works when we apply all these things to ourself.

My bid is that we attend to ourself first then attend to others. The easiest way to achieve this is what we are now calling mindfulness.

In short, if you want to change the world then love yourself.

Take care

Sean x

Last week Auntie Vera passed at the age of 96. As the last person in that age group in the family her loss has been very profound the grief intense. There is joy and happiness for the memories of what a lovely person she was set against the hurt and pain of her going. Thankfully her passing was a good one.

Dealing with the grief that follows a death is something that can never be understood unless it has been experienced directly. I see so many people who feel a sense of guilt because they are still grieving only three months after a loss when, in reality, grieving takes a long time, and sometimes may even last a lifetime.

A dictionary definition of grief is….

Intense sorrow, especially caused by someone’s death

Grief comes from a French word ‘Grever’ meaning ‘to burden’. We might, therefore, consider grief to be a burden that we carry. We have finished our grieving when we are ale to put the burden down.

I am forever surprised at how ill prepared we are to face death, both our own and of those people, family and friends around us. It is the most certain thing that faces all of us, we will all die.

The attachment of emotional elastic

In my book “what colour is your knicker elastic” I explain that the emotional connections that we make between ourselves and others is like a piece of emotional elastic. At a point of loss, when that relationship comes to an end, the emotional elastic is severed and we are hit in the face by the emotional energy that is remaining in it, unless we are prepared for it. 

The loss of a parent

We had an email from a listener this week who has been facing the death of a parent and is trying to come to terms with the hurt and the loss. I am not sure if this true for us all of us but for me the loss of those that we truly love is possibly the worst pain that there can be. The only loss greater than that of a parent is that of a partner or child. It may seem like an easy thing to say but the reality is that, at some time, most of us will face the loss of those people that we care about. The pain of this loss we call grief.

Relationships are all different and the nature of the emotional elastic will vary. It may be thick and strong or thin and week. Because of this the level of emotional rebound and grief that we experience when the elastic snaps will be very different. I have seen situations such as when someone’s mother had died. The person in this case showed little or no emotion and took the morning off to deal with it and arrange the funeral before returning to their work. Two weeks later they took a few hours off to attend the funeral and returned to their work. Their colleagues observed this and saw it as insensitive, negative and nasty. What they did not realise was that the relationship that this person had with their mother was not a good and happy one. For them childhood had been a difficult time and the lack of support they experienced from their mother had resulted in thin emotional elastic, so thin that when it snapped it had virtually no emotional effect upon them at all. In fact they described the death as a relief not a burden.

Alongside that I have also experienced the people who have been completely devastated and debilitated by the loss of their mother. They have taken weeks, and in some cases months, off work as they have attempted to recover. For them the emotional elastic was thick and strong and at the point of snapping the were hit hard by the emotion.

Learning to live with loss

When I consider the real affects of a death and the cutting of the emotional elastic phrases like…

 

…‘don’t worry you’ll get over it’ or ‘times a good healer’… 

…show a total lack of empathy and insight. 

These phrases are often used by those people who have never experienced the grief of a death, or of a significant death. The idea of getting over the loss of someone close could not be further from the truth. It would be more accurate to say that grieving is learning to cope with the new situation that you now find yourself in. Life without a parent, husband, wife, mentor, friend or child can be so completely different to all that went before. Death, loss and subsequent grief is literally life changing. 

Life will never be the same again.

Acceptance, a journey

Grief and bereavement are not a thing to get over. They are a process that must be gone through until the reality of the loss has been accepted. This is a journey that you may not want to travel and yet you will, in the end you have no choice. For some of us the journey is short, this is when the elastic is thin. Also it may be shorter if we have had time to prepare. This is what I call pre-bereavement. Perhaps there has been a long illness and a gradual ending that has prepared us for the real end. 

For some the journey may take a long time to negotiate with many obstacle to overcome and issues to face. In these cases the elastic is thick and strong. Sometimes the emotions may be so powerful that they will never be resolved and the grief may simply be something that we have to accept and live with. It is as though this loss, and perhaps others that we experience in life, have been woven into the tapestry that is our life. It has now become a part of the picture.

The unbreakable elastic

Some elastic will never break and continues to pull from the other side of the grave. I lost a child, many years ago now. Every time that day comes around it is as though it was live action all over again. I have accepted this as part of the tapestry of my life and no longer need it to be any different. It is a part of my year, it is a part of who I am.

The process of grief

In psycho talk we alway say that grief will take a minimum of two years to process. The pain of being without that special person can be hard to bear. From the death day we have to live through the first year and all the significant times, birthdays, Mother’s/Father’s Day, anniversaries, and all days of importance. 

The first of each annual event is generally the most difficult. So too are the new events, those events that the lost person will never to see such as a wedding, a new grandchild or a naming ceremony. The feelings and emotions associated with these days has to be borne and gone through. 

Avoidance is not always a good idea

A family may decide that they cannot possibly have their normal Christmas, as they have done each year, because it would just too awful with the lost person not present. The family decide to go to Honolulu or do something completely different. This seldom works because next year they simply have to face what they avoided last year. In the end all that they have done is delay our process by a year. Grief is when we need to understand that grief is a process not an amount of time.

So in psychology when we say that the minimum period of grieving is normally about two years we mean each events needs to be faced and processed. This is because from the death day we go around the year facing every special day and anniversary. After one year we come back to the death day, take a deep breath and do it all again. In most cases by the time we have completed two year cycles we are starting to normalise and accept the change and our loss. However we have to accept that some, or perhaps most, losses will never truly leave us. 

Becoming an adult

We are all, or were all, children. All of us were born of a mother and had a father. Throughout our life we are our parents child, until, that is, the moment when they pass on. In reality none of us become truly become adults until both our parents have died because up to that point we are someone’s child.  We only become adults when we are orphans. Just as this is true for us and our own parents it is equally true for our children. While we live they will always be children, we need to die to allow them to become adults. If you are in your seventies and your parents are in their nineties you may not come to adulthood until late in life.

How long should we grieve 

While grieving may take an indeterminate amount of time that may have no limit it still remains a process. Often people will feel guilty for still being upset three months after a loss. In reality the process may take several years. On average we think of two to begin to come to terms with a loss.

The three stages

Grief is often identified as having three distinct phases. These may follow the classic sequence or the phases may come and go over time.

1: Disbelief

The first stage is disbelief. “I can’t come to terms with what had actually happened” I assume that the person will come back and walk through the door, that they will ring or write.

2: Emotional letting go

As emotion is released it may come out as tears frustration sadness or depression. Even when people try to hold it in there usually comes a time when it is released.

3: Anger

Anger is a strange though powerful emotion. At some point the anger comes. We may feel anger with the doctors, the disease, God or the person who has died. When we feel guilty with the person who has died we then often feel guilty for being angry with them and we may spend sometime going round and round until it is processed. Often it is the anger that give us the energy to move on.

The wonder of birth and the wonder of death

Why do we celebrate birth and not death. In many ways we have lost touch with both birth and death. These great events, that used to take place in the home now happen in hospitals and hospices. Only a generation ago most people would have been born at home and died at home.

With the rise of the medical professional we have de-personalised the process. As we have done this we have also given away our own responsibility and participation in these processes.

Celebrating a life or mourning a death?

My vote is that we use the last funeral rites as a celebration of life, that we change our sadness into happiness and celebrate what that person’s life has achieved.

I shall stop here before this turns into a book.

Wherever you are in the cycle of life, enjoy it and plan your ending with joy.

Take care

Sean x

Here we are again. It is the end of the summer, winter is on the horizon and as they say, 

“it won’t be long and then it will be Christmas” 

With the loss of light comes a reduction the available vitamins D in our bodies that direct effects the levels of serotonin in our brains and the a feeling of well being that can so easily lead to low mood, depression and seasonal affective disorder SAD.

According to Kevin Loria depression may be our brain’s way of telling us to stop and solve a problem. There is a theory that suggests that generally rather than being a problem depression might be a specific behavioural strategy that we have evolved over time as a biological adaptation that serves a purpose. As Matthew Hutson explains in a Nautilus feature on the potential evolutionary roots of depression and suicidal behaviour , that the purpose of depressions might be to make us… 

…stop, understand, and deal with an important problem.

At this time of year as we come out of summer and into winter people report symptoms of moderate to severe depression. It is the time of year when the sunlight fades and as the levels of vitamin D start to drop and this reduces the level of serotonin in the brain. We are then into depression season. 

Across the board in both the USA and Europe major depressive disorders are now so common that at as many as one in six people  will suffer from it during they dark months.

So why does such a debilitating condition strike so many people? 

The traditional understanding is that depression is just a breakdown in the normal working of the brain. This is seen as a chemical imbalance that is treated by chemical medication designed to re-balance brain chemistry, change mood and create shifts in  behaviours.

Could depression have developed to help us?

Evolutionary psychologist Paul Andrews and psychiatrist J. Anderson Thomson first elaborated on this idea, called the “analytical rumination hypothesis,” in an article published in The Psychological Review in 2009.

Their idea is that what we think of as a disorder is actually a way for our brains to analyse and dwell on a problem in the hopes of coming up with a way to deal with it. The researchers suggest it’s possible that a difficult or complex problem triggers a “depressive” reaction in some people that sends them into a sort of analytical mode which then enables them to change behaviours, strategies and attitudes. It allows them to stop long enough to solve the problem.

This intrigues me greatly because in the Ayurvedic model, my original training, depression is also seen as a gift, as a way of our system telling us that something was wrong and giving us the chance to sort it out. This would explain the increased rumination that arising in depressive episodes. Along side this in and increase in dream sleep. The two phases of sleep are deep sleep (NREM) and dream sleep (REM). It is assumed that deep sleep is the resting phase concerned with repair of the body and dream sleep is an active phase concerned with processing our experiences and related emotions. In depression the dream sleep eats into the deep sleep so that despite sleeping for long periods of time the person does not experience rest and may become progressively more tired.

The concept that depression might be an evolutionary adaptation rather than a mental disorder is not the main consensus of the mental health community. In reality it cannot be true for all depression. It would be true for those that suffer a reactive depression in response to a trauma or traumatic stimulus. Even so this could still account for around 80% of depressive episodes.

The problem is that in most cases depression is not the cause it is the symptomatic response to the cause. In western medicine we tend to only treat the symptom and pay little or no attention to the cause. 

It could be that if we accepted depression as a gift and took the opportunity to undertake a self audit that would enable us to get our lives back on track. Instead we treat depression negatively as a problem and medicate the symptoms and fail to deal with the cause. It would make sense that if alongside medication we engaged in mindful therapy we could speed up treatment and help to dissolve depressive episodes much quicker. While some people do get referred to cognitive behavioural therapy it is not always an effective way to deal with depression. It is the addition of mindfulness that makes the therapy really effective. 

MBCT

Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy is designed to deal with and overcome issues of reactive or repetitive depression. MBCT, is recommended by the United Kingdom’s National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE) for the prevention of recurrent and reactive depression and has also been shown to be effective in treating the symptoms of anxiety.

If we can look at the challenges that we face in life as learning opportunities rather than problems then we can to stop long enough to grow and develop. So, perhaps depression is the things that can make us stop long enough to get our life right.

As my resource for this week I am using my thirteen day detox. This is something that I tend to do twice a year in September and March. It gives me the chance to consciously stop, do a self audit and decide just where I am up to and to make any changes or adjustments that seem appropriate.

Take care and be happy and if appropriate have a go at the detox.

Sean x