Young at Heart
You body is always a 5-year-old. It wants to play. Let it.
Self Massage
Self Massage is cheap and requires no special equipment. It’s a good way to help you distress at the end of the day.
Try some techniques the Maya Clinic Health Letter listed:
Eye Palms: Rub hands together and cover eyes with warm palms. Hold for 30 seconds.
Rub Ears: Use thumb and index finger on each hand to gently rub your outer ears.
Shoulder Rub: Using your right hand rub the left side of your neck, shoulder and upper back. Repeat on the other side.
Atop Mt. Lafayette
It was my first overnight hiking trip–the highest I’ve ever camped (around 4,000 feet above sea level). Each day began like a Comedy of Errors.
Day One: Up before sunrise, thankful for full moon to help me see, broke camp in the dark (and what I thought was cold), filled the Honda Fit with rucksacks and other gear, started to drive to trail head, realized I hadn’t closed the hatchback, heard a thud, stopped car, got out, reloaded the car with all the gear that fell out of the open hatchback. Felt confident that hike would go well.
Day Two: Up before sunrise (in hope of seeing sunrise), thankful for full moon, wandered into woods to get food suspended in trees in an attempt to outwit bears, was warned by other campers to watch out for their clothesline so as not to be decapitated, so worried about clothesline I walked into a sharp shard of […]
Shampoo Update
Well as some of you know I stopped using shampoo in October 2008–that’s almost a year now, but this is my first summer without the soapy suds. One of the many changes I appreciated with ceasing shampoo use was that I didn’t seem to need conditioner anymore. That all changed with days at the beach and humid weather curling my hair into knots at my scalp. I don’t need to use conditioner every day, but I have needed to use it, on average, about once a week.
It’s no big deal, but I thought it was important to mention since I seem to have become an advocate of less shampoo. Occasionally conditioner is a side effect of a New England summer.
Meditation: Part Two
Okay, I’ll admit it. I wasn’t very good at following my first weekly challenge. I didn’t sit and meditate for ten minutes a day, but I did think about it, which is a step closer than I was the week before, and I started reading The Miracle of Mindfulness by Thich Nhat Hanh, which actually kind of makes me want to meditate. Can reading a book on mediation for ten minutes a day count as meditation?
I’m very open to what I will accept as mediation and always have been, but I also recognize that I am not very good at sitting still and being quite. (Note the photography above of Maggie not being still with her sister.) My boyfriend nicknamed me Chatty Cathy long ago.
The way peace and calm are described in the book seems to strike a cord with me. He talks about thinking of yourself like a pebble sinking through the silky waters of a pond until you gently hit the soft sediment below where nothing is pushing or pulling you. I […]