Vitality Advocates

Category: Meditation

  • Three Powerful Techniques to Get Better at Habits

    Three Powerful Techniques to Get Better at Habits

    For many who started the year with great aspirations and goals of creating new habits … it’s coming to the time of year when lots of peopel start to falter on their new habits.

    That’s completely normal, but we can do better.

    We can figure out how to overcome the difficulties that often plague our habit-changing attempts:

    • We delay starting on the habit.
    • Our minds start to rebel from the tediousness of sticking to a plan.
    • We rationalize not doing the habit.

    With those very common obstacles in mind, I’m going to share three powerful techniques for overcoming them. They take effort to implement, but you got this!

    Here are the techniques:

    1. Focus on just starting. Set a trigger when you’re going to do the habit each day — let’s say you’re going to meditate when you wake up, or work out when you get home, or read during your lunch break. When the time comes to do the habit (the trigger happens), just launch into doing the habit, without delay. Focus on getting good at this skill of starting. When the trigger happens, have a reminder note nearby that says, “Just start.” Lower the barrier to doing the habit by making it smaller (just meditate for a minute or two), create barriers to doing your usual distractions, and just take the smallest first step. You’re going to practice getting good at starting, every day. If you master this, you’ll also get a lot better at not procrastinating with other stuff!
    2. Be completely with the habit. When you do start the habit, it’s very common to focus on getting through the habit, trying to complete the task. This is a mindset that most of us have all day long — we are just rushing through our tasks, trying to finish each one. But actually this is not helpful for habits. We want to be completely present with the habit, really feel the texture of the experience, and imagine there is no end, that this moment is all there is and ever will be. It can transform the habit, turning it into a mindfulness practice, and we can even find gratitude for being able to do it. We don’t have to do it, we get to do it. This is an act of love for ourselves, and we are doing it to not only be compassionate with ourselves, but to enable ourselves to be more present, compassionate and committed to serving others. This moment of doing the habit is an act of love for everyone we know. This is a wonderful cure for the tedium of sticking to a plan.
    3. Pause when you start to rationalize. The problem with rationalizing not doing the habit is that we don’t often notice we’re doing it. We just start moving away from doing the habit. We just think, “It’s OK, I’ll do it later,” or “Screw it, I don’t really need to do this,” or “Just this one time won’t hurt.” These are not helpful thoughts. Instead, we should learn to pause. Sit still, take a breath, and remind yourself of why you’re committed to this habit. Who are you doing it for? Are you devoted to them, and if so, is your devotion larger than your momentary discomfort and rationalizations? Take this pause and remember your love, and pour yourself into this habit by just starting and being completely present with it.

    I offer these three techniques to you, and I hope you’ll give them a full-hearted effort.

    Mindfulness & Meditation Summit

    This month, I’m going to be part of a free 10-day Mindfulness & Meditation Summit that will include me and more than 30 other renowned meditation teachers, visionary leaders, neuroscientists, researchers, writers, performers, activists, and educators.

    The online summit is from Jan. 22-31, 2018 … and includes some incredible presenters: Alice Walker, Sharon Salzberg, Daniel Goleman, Jack Kornfield, Jewel, Kelly McGonigal, Alanis Morissette, and special sessions with Pema Chödrön, Thich Nhat Hanh, and Eckhart Tolle.

    Whether you’re new to mindfulness practice or have been meditating for years, this gathering of over 30 leading spiritual teachers and visionaries will be sure to help you transform yourself, your community, and the world.

    Registration is free, and you can sign up now.

  • The Compassionate Way to Health & Fitness

    The Compassionate Way to Health & Fitness

    Lots of us would like a better body, an amazing workout habit, and a diet that celebrities would die for.

    OK, maybe that’s an exaggeration, but most of us definitely have an ideal when it comes to fitness. We want to be super healthy, and we strive for it. Maybe we strive and then fail and feel bad about it, but we strive.

    What would it be like to not strive for these fitness goals?

    What would it be like if we removed the striving, and found compassion instead?

    The Problem with Striving

    When we strive for a fitness ideal (which is usually what we do), there are a few fundamental problems to be aware of:

    1. The ideal is one we will never meet. Even if we do great at our goal, it won’t be what we pictured. For example, I ran several marathons and an ultramarathon because of ideals I had in my head, and completed them … and they weren’t at all what I pictured. They were still worthwhile, but not at all what my fantasy was.
    2. You have a good likelihood of failing at some point, not meeting your ideal, and then feeling bad about yourself for failing.
    3. You don’t hit the ideal right away — most ideals are several months, if not years, in the future. So for the first few days, first few weeks … you will just do the activity but not hit any ideal. This is likely not fun. You might set ideals for each day (“go for a run today!”) but even then, you’ll go for the run and it won’t be what you fantasized it would be.
    4. Once you reach the goal you’re striving for, you’re not content. You just find another goal to strive for. And another. Until you’re dead, having never been satisfied.

    What we don’t realize is that there’s nothing to strive for. We’re already in the perfect place: a moment that is filled with beauty and wonder, a life that is filled with untapped love and compassion, a goodness in ourselves underlying everything we do. We’re already in the ideal moment, but we take it for granted and fantasize about something else instead.

    We can just stop striving. Just find joy in this present moment, without needing the crutch of our fantasies.

    The Compassionate Way

    So if we stop striving for health and fitness ideals, does that mean we just lie on the couch, stuffing our faces with potato chips and slurping soda all day? Umm, yuck. And no.

    What we can do is 1) realize joy in who we are, where we are, and our intricate connection to the wonderful people all around us, and find contentment right now; and 2) in that moment of joy and contentment, we can act out of love.

    What are some acts of love that we can do, in this moment of joy and appreciation for what is right here in front of us?

    1. Appreciating the gift of our bodies, we take care of them. The bodies we have are incredible, wonders of nature, and we take them for granted. We abuse them by being sedentary, taking drugs, eating junk food, not taking care of them. Instead, an act of appreciation for our bodies is to care for them. Exercise, walk, eat well, floss, meditate.
    2. Appreciating the gift of life, we explore the outdoors. There is so much to notice and explore, to behold with absolute wonder, that it’s a waste to be online or on our phones all day. Instead, it’s an act of love to get outside and move our beautiful bodies.
    3. Appreciating the gift of food, we nourish our bodies. Instead of abusing ourselves by putting junk in our bodies (just to satisfy cravings of comfort), we can find joy in the nourishment of our bodies with gorgeous, healthy, delicious food. And appreciate that the fresh food we’re feeding ourselves with is a gift, grown from the earth by people we don’t know who support our lives, a miracle not to be taken for granted.
    4. Appreciating this moment, we meditate. This moment is filled with brilliance, and yet we often ignore it. Instead, we can sit and meditate, to practice paying full and loving attention. We can do yoga, moving while we meditate. We can meditate as we go for a run, lift a barbell, ride a bike, swim in the ocean, walk in a sunny park.

    There is no need for striving for fitness and health ideals. Instead, we can let go of those ideals and appreciate what’s right in front of us. And in gratitude, act with love and compassion to take care of ourselves and pay attention to the moment we’re in.

     

    Originally posted at Zen Habits

  • Change Your Life in 12 Minutes a Day

    Change Your Life in 12 Minutes a Day

    Change-Your-Life-in-12-Minutes-a-Day400You’d probably think I was running an infomercial if I told you about a simple intervention that:

    • Reverses memory loss
    • Increases energy levels
    • Improves sleep quality
    • Up regulates positive genes
    • Down regulates inflammatory genes
    • Reduces stress in patient and caregiver
    • Improves psychological and spiritual well being
    • Activates significant anatomical areas of the brain
    • Increases telomerase, the rejuvenating enzyme that slows cell aging, by 43%, the largest increase ever recorded
    • No side effects, no cost

    …especially if I told you that the intervention takes 12 minutes of your 1440 minute day.

    Can you imagine the media attention this treatment would garner?

    What if I told you this is already in the published literature? If you’ve been following my journey, you’ve probably heard a bit about mainstream media’s advertising chokehold and why you might not be hearing about this treatment on the 6 o’clock news.

    Since 2003, Dharma Singh Khalsa, MD and his team have been carrying out research on a kundalini yoga meditation called Kirtan Kriya. One of the foundational exercises of this ancient practice, I think of it like the magnum of kundalini. Feeling stuck? Feeling desparate? Feeling sick? Give this medicine 40 days.

    In published trials catalogued here, they demonstrate changes in brain perfusion, decreases in inflammatory gene expression, and dramatic increase in telomerase (a longevity enzyme) that correlates with subjective sense of wellbeing, energy, sleep, memory, and even a 65% improvement in depression scales.

    Beyond symptom resolution

    In my practice, I want more than just symptom suppression for my patients. I want transformation. For many, the portal to transformation is a meditative practice. After years of following the literature on mindfulness meditation, all I was left with was a sense of frustration and guilt that I could never commit to “watching my thoughts”. It wasn’t until I began with 3 minutes of a kundalini yoga meditation that it stuck. My monkey mind had found the perfect hammock to chill out in.

    Kundalini yoga is a one-stop shop for mental, physical, and spiritual transformation. It has literally turned me from a neurotic, controlling, agro workaholic into someone who experiences grace, bliss, and a trust in the process so deep that I no longer even relate to “stress”. It is, in a word, profound. In fact,  Dr. Dharma Singh Khalsa states that these parameters are improved in as little as 8 weeks of daily practice:

    Spiritual well-being involves 4 characteristics that enable you to achieve peace of mind.

    1. Patience: leads to persistence of a regular yoga and meditation practice, which brings with it the development of personal empowerment. When you develop patience you have the ability to slow down and enjoy life more because you’re in the “flow” and can let the Universe work for you.
    2. Acceptance: brings self-acknowledgment and self-appreciation. It also gives tolerance, which allows one to see the faults in themselves and others but yet to look beyond these faults and accept others and themselves as they are. This leads to forgiveness, which releases anger, which is toxic to brain, immune, and cellular function. It also conveys a higher state of mental awareness.
    3. Compassion: conveys kindness, which leads to empathy, which emboldens healthy feelings and communication. Compassion also fosters clarity and commitment and the courage to be yourself without fear and pass to the next level of spiritual growth, which is surrender.
    4. Surrender: Surrender to the stretch is said in yoga practice. In this case the stretch that we’re surrendering to is our soul; our spirit. When you surrender to your soul, you gain the strength to sacrifice and to serve others and give to them without thought of reward for yourself. This is called seva in yoga and brings with it a sense of true happiness and serenity. Serenity gives peace of mind and a sense of universal love where the One is seen everywhere. This is the ultimate in brain longevity and is what many people call enlightenment or illumination.

    How does chanting do this?

    We try to understand these non-linear effects, and we may touch on some aspects of their mechanism, but we undoubtedly fall short of capturing the web-like effects of these natural interventions. The best understanding around how Kirtan Kriya works its psychophysicospirutal magic includes these attributes:

    Chanting these sounds in this order is thought to stimulate meridian points in the palate that reflex to the hypothalamus and pituitary the master gland.

    Dense nerve endings in the fingertips and tongue are highly represented in the brain.

    As evidenced by brain scanning, different areas of the brain including the occipital lobe are activated by different parts of this simple meditation.

    I bet you want in on the details?

    Here’s how you do it

    I love the track by Nirinjin Kaur called Kirtan Kriya. It takes you through the meditation’s parts and you just follow along. Here are the components, from alzheimersprevention.org

    1. l-form-concentrationRepeat the Saa Taa Naa Maa sounds (or mantra) while sitting with your spine straight. Your focus of concentration is the L form (see illustration), while your eyes are closed. With each syllable, imagine the sound flowing in through the top of your head and out the middle of your forehead (your third eye point).
    2. For two minutes, sing in your normal voice.
    3. For the next two minutes, sing in a whisper.
    4. For the next four minutes, say the sound silently to yourself.
    5. Then reverse the order, whispering for two minutes, and then out loud for two minutes, for a total of twelve minutes.
    6. To come out of the exercise, inhale very deeply, stretch your hands above your head, and then bring them down slowly in a sweeping motion as you exhale.

    The mudras, or finger positions, are very important in this kriya (see illustration below).

    • On Saa, touch the index fingers of each hand to your thumbs.
    • On Taa, touch your middle fingers to your thumbs.
    • On Naa, touch your ring fingers to your thumbs.
    • On Maa, touch your little fingers to your thumbs.

    fingerpositions

    Some of my patients find that after the first practice, they inexplicably cry with a feeling of poignancy. What is it that is unlocked by these sounds? By the stillness. Only direct experience can answer that question with a wordless sense of remembrance for something we have forgotten. There’s a road back to your soul and it is paved with these ancient technologies.

    The post Change Your Life in 12 Minutes a Day appeared first on Kelly Brogan MD.

  • Antidepressant Discontinuation: Why & How

    Antidepressant Discontinuation: Why & How

    Cold SeasonNote: The author acknowledges, with great compassion, that this is a challenging topic for the many individuals who make the difficult decision to begin treatment with psychiatric medication. All patients must be given the most complete and accurate information about these medications, including side effects (risk for dependence, violence, impulsivity, etc), the importance of properly tapering off medication, the institutional incentives for medical doctors, educators, and others to advocate for their use, and the availability of effective non-pharmaceutical avenues of treatment that can address root causes of mental illness and behavioral problems. What follows herein is a discussion of steps that the author believes should be taken in anticipation of any medication taper, and the subsequent taper should be handled by an experienced professional. Despite these considerations, some patients may be unable to taper which, in the author’s opinion, speaks to the important of true informed consent prior to medication initiation. This blog is not medical advice and does not replace consultation with a qualified medical professional of your choosing.

    If you squeeze a spring and you hold it there, steadily for a couple of hours, and then you suddenly let go, what happens? It bursts into expansion, maybe double its natural size and reverberates for a while until it comes to a resting place. This is the example that I use when I describe the effects that antidepressants have on brain chemistry over time – they squeeze the spring and if you let it go too quickly, it’s mayhem.

    Despite being taught, in my training, that antidepressants were to the depressed (and to the anxious, OCD, IBS, PTSD, bulemic, anorexic, etc.) what glasses are to the near-sighted, I don’t buy this anymore. I don’t think patients are getting the whole truth.

    Here’s the deal: There is not a single human study that supports the “monoamine hypothesis” of depression, which is the idea that depression is caused by a certain kind of chemical imbalance in the brain, such as under-activity of serotonin. The only studies in which tryptophan (an amino acid precursor to serotonin) depletion resulted in depression were in patients who had previously taken antidepressants.

    Imaging studies, post-mortem suicide assessments, and animal models have never yielded consistent patterns of neurotransmitter levels, metabolites, or receptor profiles. Compelling discussions like this one by Moncrieff and Cohen suggest that antidepressants actually createabnormal states rather than repair them. They use the analogy of alcohol’s disinhibiting effects: just because booze can ease one’s social phobia, does not imply that alcohol is an appropriate treatment nor a correcting agent.

    Direct-to-consumer advertising in America has allowed pharmaceutical companies to “teach” the public about brain chemical imbalances and serotonin deficiencies through cleverly worded taglines and absent FDA-policing. The disconnect between available evidence and advertisements is explored in this excellent commentary.

    But they do work! say many patients and their prescribers. And they do work! Sometimes. Thanks to active placebo effect or expectations of relief that manifest as actual physiologic changes as demonstrated by this metanalysis by Dr. Irving Kirsch, a placebo effect expert. He also collected unpublished data to show that more studies demonstrated lack of effect compared to marginal benefit largely attributed to placebo.

    So what? Why come off antidepressants?

    What are some of the undisclosed concerns about long-term treatment? They include chronic illness, risk of “relapse” increased by treatment as demonstrated by this study, increased disability, and even decreased benefit from exercise! Read more about the potential concerns here.

    With some of these considerations in mind, you may be thinking, get me off this stuff! I’m done!

    Not so fast.

    What has fueled my fire about the irresponsible prescribing of psychiatric medications is bearing witness to cases of “severe discontinuation syndrome,” as the field euphemistically refers to the months to years of nervous system instability that can result from medication taper. The process of coming off of antidepressants is just that, a process.

    If you’ve been treated for longer than two months it must be (painstakingly) slow with small incremental decreases in medication doses and use of liquid preparations and compounds when small increments are not available.

    My approach to supporting medication taper is to promote resilience before the taper so that your body is very able to adapt to the change. This is the idea of draining your bucket so that it doesn’t overflow when the “Where-are-my-meds?!” brain and body bomb drops.

    Here are what I believe to be the most important preparatory steps:

    1. Balance blood sugar, support natural fats, and calm inflammation

    Blood sugar instability can drag your insulin and cortisol levels around to an extent that impacts your thyroid, sex hormones, and immunity. Low fat or diets that are heavy on the wrong fat diets (trans, hydrogenated, heated vegetable oils) can compromise your central nervous system’s ability to support cell membrane functioning as well as hormone production.Inflammatory foods like gluten can also provoke brain-based reactions and immune system dysregulation. For these reasons and more, I recommend a high natural fat, no-suger/no-grain/no-legume month that eliminates corn, soy, dairy, and gluten, at a minimum. It’s the most effective way to control for these variables.

    2. Support your adrenals

    If you want to promote resiliency, train your body to respond with ease to stress. One of the most powerful ways to send a signal of safety to your nervous system and to retrain your response to stress is breathwork, and specifically kundalini yoga. If you’re like me, mindfulness meditation, aka “watching your thoughts” feels like an advanced course in impossible. Kundalini offers usable tools for rapid shifts. The goal is a pervasive feeling of trust in the process and an attitude of “I got this”.  Start with three minutes!

    3. Heal the gut

    Make sure you’re pooping daily, have resolved gas, bloating, and indigestion through dietary change, relaxation during eating, and possibly the strategic the use of herbal anitmicrobials, gut healing agents like aloe and glutamine, and probiotics. The gut/brain axis is a major focus of resolving underlying inflammatory drivers of what likely got you on meds in the first place. Diet and stress minimization will go a long way toward resolving gut problems, but a stool analysis may also be indicated.

    4. Clean house – inside and outside

    In the past 100-150 years, we’ve done quite a number on this planet. The 100,000+ chemicals, largely unstudied for human safety, including pesticides, fluoride, and plastics put quite a demand on our defenses including our immune system and liver.

    Cleaning up personal care products, cleaners, and even supporting detox through coffee enemas can really drain your bucket of accumulated burden.

    Movement and sweating are also powerful ways to detox. I recommend 20 minutes of burst intervals (high intensity, low-volume) weekly as a starting point.

    5. Seek strategic support

    I recommend a slow taper using a compounding pharmacy and discuss more details here, but suffice it to say that shoring up the body with strategic supplements can help. I focus on calming the nervous system during medication tapers. Agents that have been identified as NMDA modulators or natural molecules that buffer the effects of excitatory glutamate are magnesium, zinc, N-acetylcysteine, and phenibut or GABA. I don’t always use amino acids as primary therapy, but they can be essential during a taper because of signals of “deficiency” that the body may be getting in the wake of medication discontinuation. Tryptophan and 5HTP, and L-tyrosine and dL-phenylalanine can be effective support. Inositol, a membrane stabilizer, and St. John’s Wort can also serve as transitional aids, which can relieve symptoms of anxiety or dips in mood.

    Mostly, I counsel patients not to be afraid.

    Psychiatrists are so driven by fear and a need to control and regulate the emotional experience. Once these first several steps are underway, there is a strong possibility that the original driver of your symptoms has been addressed. You may not have the same need or even be deriving much benefit from medication. In the end, I believe it is everyone’s choice to manage their health in a way that resonates with their beliefs about health and wellness.

    This decision should be made with eyes wide open; however, and preferably with gentle interventions preceding more aggressive ones. The complexity of the body is awe-inspiring, and depression is a syndrome that has many many different causes. Look to the root, look to healing, and look to restoration for real lasting change.

    Once you remember what we have forgotten – that the body is best at self-healing if we just get out of our own way – then you might shift into a new mindset of empowerment. You might just realize that you can reclaim something you gave away. Something that’s not available to you through a model of care based on life-long pharmaceuticals. It’s that feeling that we are always missing something even if our symptoms are “managed”. It’s our personal power and fearlessness. With this, anything is possible including becoming medication free after decades of exposure. Remember, this is your journey for a reason and there are no regrets.

    Learn more in the NY Times Bestseller, A Mind of Your Own.

    The post Antidepressant Discontinuation: Why & How appeared first on Kelly Brogan MD.