Dear Osa Community,
I hope you are all enjoying a beautiful summer. I have been pulled in many different directions by my family’s usual summertime wanderings, which have involved returning to some familiar places–the Olympic Peninsula, the Oregon coast, Lake Chelan–and along the way I’ve been thinking about how grounding it is to return, because there is a sense of belonging for me in these places. I hope you have also felt a certain sense of belonging in returning to any summertime places or seasonal traditions that you have.
I have also this summer returned to a practice that I had let fall by the wayside in recent months, and that is my mindfulness meditation practice. This practice found me when I most needed it several years ago, and it has been an anchor for me ever since. Even so, this life is very busy, and we can find ourselves adrift even from our most solid anchors at times. In returning to my practice (just 10-15 minutes daily), I have felt ease returning to my mind and body, even in the midst of the chaos and stresses of life.
This got me reflecting more on the concept of returning. In meditation, a central part of the practice is noticing that the mind has wandered off and then returning to the practice of active awareness–of the breath, of a different bodily sensation, of sound, or whatever it may be–and continuing to do this again and again. Meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg has said that the moment that you realize that you have been distracted or lost is “the magic moment, because that’s the moment we have to be really different. Not to judge ourselves or condemn ourselves but simply let go and begin again.”
In this era of information overload, it’s easy to get lost looking for the most cutting edge treatment or the shiniest new supplement or the trendiest diet. And of course there’s not anything wrong with searching, as long as that’s not all we do, because the search can be endless. I wonder if there is a practice that you used to do or had tried for a while and experienced benefit from, but that you let go of due to busy-ness or a change in schedule. As you’re wandering and searching this summer, can you also return again to that practice? It may not look exactly the same as when you first practiced, because perhaps your scheule has changed and you can no longer fit it in when you used to. But with some flexibility and creativity, we can often find pockets of time to prioritize healthy habits. Maybe it was drinking a tall glass of water upon waking in the morning, or reading a new book every couple of months, or growing herbs in your window, or calling that friend once a week, or journaling, or consistently taking that supplement your provider recommended. (These are just a few simple examples; your practice could literally be anything you found helpful to your health). If you do have something like that, could you find a way to bring it back into your life this summer? How might you welcome your practice back and begin again, without criticizing yourself for having dropped it?
If your schedule has changed, you may need to call in some flexibility and creativity to fit the practice back into your life. For example, I love to have morning meditation time, but it does not currently fit my schedule because we adopted a new dog. So, I find a different 10-15 minute chunk of time later in the day, and on the occasional quiet morning, I can still do my preferred morning meditation.
If you are curious at all about mindfulness meditation and would like to get started with some guidance, I have one free 30-day guest pass to share for the Ten Percent Happier app, no strings attached–just send me an email (becky@osaintegrative.com) and let me know you’d like to try it out! My favorite teacher on that app is Joseph Goldstein.
Summertime Reads
Two practitioners I highly respect published books this year, and I’ve been enjoying digging into them this summer:
Younger You by Dr. Kara Fitzgerald
Dr. Fitzgerald has utilized the research exploring patterns of DNA methylation and aging to create this awesome–and doable!–food-first plan to turn back your biological age (which is different from your chronological age) by giving your body the foods that optimize methylation. What is methylation? This is simply the process of adding a “methyl” group, which is a molecule consisting of one carbon atom and 3 hydrogen atoms, to another molecule or to DNA. The addition of a methyl group to DNA is considered an important “epigenetic” mechanism, which means it does not alter the DNA itself but it modulates expression of genes. By providing the constituents in the diet that provide the body what it needs to optimally regulate gene expression, resesarch is showing that we can turn back the clock on diseases of aging–and to be clear, age is the heaviest hitting risk factor for nearly all chronic diseases.
Are you interested in hearing more about this? Let me know! I’m so excited about this research that I’m currently completing a training to fully utilize the tenets of this healthy aging plan with one-on-one clients beginning in September.
Reversing Alzheimer’s by Dr. Heather Sandison
As the new face of the Bredesen protocol, Dr. Heather Sandison details in very accessible language how to incorporate into your life or the life of your loved one the tenets of Dr. Bredesen’s revolutionary, individualized, multimodal approach to treating cognitive decline and dementia. (Dr. Bredsen himself has a number of books on this topic as well, including The End of Alzheimer’s). Dementia of all kinds takes a uniquely tremendous toll on both individuals and families, as few other conditions do, and conventional medicine–despite billions of dollars and decades of investment in pharmaceutical research–has next to nothing to offer. This evidence-based, functional medicine approach offers hope that is sorely needed, and Dr. Sandison makes it approachable in her conversational book that is full of helpful guidance both for individuals looking to prevent or to reverse their own cognitive decline, as well as for caregivers wanting to help a loved one. The nutritional approach recommended here has quite a bit in common with the Younger You diet; one major difference is its emphasis on nutritional ketosis (not all the time, but for about 1/3 of each year) to help the brain heal.
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