Main » January 2005
January 20, 2005
Hack Yourself
I found some great food for thought... and action at Hack Yourself. It's like a splash of cold water reality on my face.
Posted by Lalo at 4:16 PM | Comments (1)
Healing Quotes
Each one of these is like a little bit of medicine for your inside.
"In order to laugh, you must be able to play with your pain"
-Annette Goodheart
"You gain strength, courage, and confidence by each experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, "I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along."
-Eleanor Roosevelt
"Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They make use of a very small portion of their possible consciousness, and of their soul's resources in general, much like a man who, out of his whole bodily organism, should get into a habit of using and moving only his little finger. Great emergencies and crises show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had supposed."
- William James
"Of one thing I am certain, the body is not the measure of healing, peace is the measure." - George Melton
"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone, and as we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."
-1994 Inaugural Speech, Nelson Mandela, written by Marianne Williamson
Posted by Lalo at 4:14 PM | Comments (5)
January 6, 2005
Thoughts On Exercise
Worked out two days in a row so far this week, Monday and Tuesday. It's hard work but feels great to be working with my body, not struggling against it. Having a physical problem can make you feel that you are in an adversarial relationship with your own body. You find your mind outpacing what the body can provide and the disappointment can lead to a great deal of frustration.
The challenge of exercise does place you somewhat at odds with your body on a basic physical level, but the benefits you begin noticing show that the body does gravitate toward health and welcomes the care given to it.
Weight loss has been a plus. I've lost 6 pounds since the year began.
Posted by Lalo at 4:13 PM | Comments (1)
January 2, 2005
The Body Responds
My muscles are sore from the exercise of last week but it has been teaching me that not all pain is necessarily a bad thing and something to be immediately suffered over and grieved. It seems to be helping a bit in dealing with the pain in my left arm if my right arm is sore as well. I can't explain why that is except to say that the pain feels so similar now it's become difficult to distinguish between the aches and pains of PD stiffness and muscle pain because of exercise.
Odd way of looking at it, I know.
I feel very hopeful about the new year in a personal way. I watched a couple of movies tonight, they were old black and white cheeseball movies but I enjoyed them. One was Calypso Heatwave, which, by the way, featured a young Maya Angelou as a calypso singer(!) and the other was a Lon Chaney movie called West Of Zanzibar from 1928.
I am also reading Healing And The Mind by Bill Moyers. It's a series of interviews on the mind/body connection with various health professionals. I just started the book and I'm seeing that physicians aew aware of the mind/body connection but it seems a problem that they face is that insurance pays for the bare minumunm and the way it is set up, they are paid more if they can jam many patients into their schedules, not by time spent with each patient.
In reading this, it can be rather frustrating I suppose, but it highlights the greater need for the public to take more active initiative in their self-care and health.
Posted by Lalo at 4:10 PM | Comments (0)
