Anxiety, Body Image, and Other Lovely Reasons to Just Chill Already

The challenge of maintaining a work-school-life balance returns as soon as the alarm goes off on Monday morning.

From Giphy (OMG, so adorable!)

The imminence of our brief "holiday" (i.e. work from home) time ending is a bit anxiety-provoking, but yesterday at Mass, I realized that gratitude is so much more convenient, beneficial, and compassionate than fear and worry are. I'm incredibly grateful to have an education, jobs, and a place to come home to at night, and when I choose to focus on this instead of on all the things I could be panicking about, the jigsaw pieces of life fit together much more easily than they do when my thoughts are scattered and freaked out.

Giphy

Of course, it's much easier to just sit here and write about mindfulness than it is to actually put mindfulness into practice. We don't just wake up one day feeling all zen and Yoda-like (just ask Luke Skywalker about that!). Sometimes, anxiety sweeps in and decides to take over everything. This morning, for instance, I found my mind drowning in overwhelm. I couldn't focus on anything, and my thoughts were going way too quickly for me to keep up with them. I wanted so badly to slow down but at the same time felt that I had to go faster and faster. Ugh, right?

One of the great things about science is that, at times like these, we can use it to understand what's going on in our bodies. The spike in cortisol and adrenaline that accompanies panicked, distressed feelings produces certain physiological reactions: shallow breathing, shaking, sweating, etc. Anyone who's ever heard a yoga instructor before knows that the breath plays a major role in regulating how we feel at any given time, and we can harness the breath to our advantage by focusing on deep inhales and long, relaxing exhales. Yoga, tai chi, qigong, and meditation are wonderful practices for building awareness and contentment because of their incorporation of mindful breathing. By linking breaths to different postures, a yoga "flow" encourages us to stop paying attention to whatever is going on in our head (body-bashing, self-criticism, fear, etc.) and instead pay attention to our inhale/exhale patterns. As we calm down, our breaths become fuller and deeper, and we experience a sort of "lightness" in our bodies that is only accessible via the one-and-only parasympathetic nervous system.

Breathing--that amazing function that so many of us take for granted--keeps us alive. It nourishes us with oxygen and gives us a vehicle through which to expel negative energy, but when we're caught up in anxiety, we let the bad feelings fester and don't allow the breath to help us. When I looked in the mirror the other day and decided I didn't like what I saw because x wasn't flat enough and my hair wasn't y enough, my breath became shallow, and negativity built up inside me. I started thinking about all the things I needed to do . . . restrict, add cardio, etc., etc., etc. Did any of those thoughts help me? NO. They suffocated me--physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

Don't let your thoughts suffocate you, loves. Remember that you aren't a body. "You're a soul. You have a body." 

And nourish that soul--nourish yourself--with sincere, healing breaths. 

Art by Michelle Eshleman

<3 <3 <3

Link Loves and Must-Reads 3/10/17

In honor of whatever flu/stomach bug/bronchial infection is currently making rounds through school, I'm taking a sick day.  (In other words, I am ill.  Woohoo.)  But I've developed a new sort of love for tea.  If I could carry a tea kettle around with me at school and work, I seriously would do that.  Unfortunately, my backpack is already big enough to make me look ridiculous enough as it is.
Since I'm home, I have a little bit more time to do classwork and long-term projects, and I thought I'd take the opportunity to share some of the things I've had sitting here as links for the past two weeks.  Yay!

• What I Ate Wednesday: It's Unhealthy to Eat Only Healthy Food by Alexis Joseph
• This article from the Hummusapien is really refreshing given the current "all-or-nothing" attitude that the media is preaching when it comes to health and fitness and well-being.  It's awesome to make healthy choices so you can feel your best, but there's a big difference between taking caring of yourself and being obsessive.  Having a fixation on health can actually be really unhealthy.  This is something that's become more and more clear to me over the past few months.  That said, it can be difficult to identify what behaviors are healthy and which are obsessive because of al of the hardcore images of wellness that we're constantly being bombarded with.  Alexis's post is something I think everyone who struggles with balancing true health and happiness with obsession and anxiety needs to read because Alexis (an actual RD) has a very honest and un-obsessive attitude about taking care of herself.  Unlike the Photoshopped fitspo pics preaching two-hour workout sessions, green drink lunches, and dessert-less evenings, Alexis talks about how "[t]here is so much more to life than golden milk and smoothie bowls and toast covered with berries and almond milk yogurt." Thank you!!
• A Story of Bats, Agaves, and People by Kristen Lear
• I love Bat Conservation International and all it does to help take care of our little bat friends, and this story is awesome because it shows just how we can help people and animals at the same time.  YAY for environmental conservation efforts!  There's such a huge relationship between the health of the natural world and the health of the human one, and we often forget about this relationship when we're thinking about "progress" and "industrialization."  But true progress is about maintaining a balance with nature and respecting our ecosystems so that our world doesn't end in a sad spiral of global warming and pollution.  I mean, look at Bhutan....a carbon-negative country that measures progress based on GNH (Gross National Happiness). I think we have a lot to learn from Bhutan! (And from bats.)
• If social media is toxic for you . . . do these 4 things by Cassey Ho
• This sort of relates to the first article I linked to.  Looking around me, I realize just how many people (many of whom are very young) have fallen into the trap of comparison.  I'm definitely not immune to this myself. Even without a smart phone and all the apps that come with it (yup, I've got a little flip phone and LOVE IT), I'm definitely affected by comparison.  I'm so incredibly grateful every day for little things like hearing my hermit crabs playing in their houses or talking to my mum about work, but I also really love fashion magazines (guilty pleasure), and that usually leads to #comparisonproblems.  Social media is such a huge contributor to comparison because it inundates us with a Photoshopped version of reality.  Why, we wonder, is everyone so happy and glamorous and perfect all the time?  Well, here's the truth: they aren't!  Think of social media as a big filter.  People are only sharing what they WANT to share.  And for every Snapchat story of an epic vacation, there's something very sad going on in the world (i.e. deportation, famine, war, etc.).  Comparing ourselves to each other is such a waste of time. Should a blueberry compare itself to a banana?  NO.  Both fruits are totally awesome in totally different ways. 

<3 Frances

Link Loves and Must-Reads 1/18

I'd told myself I'd write this on Monday (aka two days ago), but it just didn't happen.  Happy post- post- Martin Luther King, Jr. Day!  I spent most of the holiday running up and down a rainy street trying to locate an apartment building, doing work for school, and feeding pets.  One positive development from this weekend is that my hermit crab has stopped climbing upside-down on the roof of her little house. She's finally seemed to realize (hopefully) how dangerous that is. . . .

Hermit crab antics aside, though, here are some shares for the day:

• The Truth About Change by Heather Waxman
• I love Heather's kind, holistic approach to living and connecting with our inner "soul sisters" (or brothers, etc.).  Her post on change is full of so much truth, and it always makes me feel a bit better to consider how change isn't something to be fought but rather a force we can work with.
• This Superbug Is Resistant to All Antibiotics -- and Has Killed Its First American Victim by Tom Philpott
• Okay, this one is very sad and upsetting and scary, but I think it's important to read anyway because it gets into the conversation about antibiotic-resistant bacteria and their relationship to factory farming. Factory farms are a a major user of antibiotics, and they're also responsible for massive animal cruelty.  My prayers are with the family of the woman who died, and also with animals in factory farms all over the world.
• 5 Things I've Learned Living with 500 Plants by Summer Rayne Oakes 
•  We may not all be able to afford nice Brooklyn apartments filled with plants, but this is a quirky reminder of how beneficial time in nature is.  And it's an inspiration to start an indoor garden. We have lots of little plants around our tiny apartment, and some of them have been around since I was a baby, so I often think of them as siblings. Looking at the pictures of Summer Rayne Oake's plant-filled abode is fun because all the green is so refreshing.  It's amazing how much I want to go hug a plant right now.

Best Wednesday wishes!
<3 Frances 

Good News for Animals

Getting up at 5:55 AM instead of 5:15 AM makes such a difference.  It's not something I'll be able to do again in the near future during the work week, but I'm grateful for the extra sleep today because of so. many. tests.  Something else I'm grateful for?  Fake skin!  Okay, that sounds odd, but what I'm talking about is the fake skin being produced as a substitute for animals in product testing. 

MatTek grows its own human skin, and then sells it to companies that want it—companies that make laundry detergent, makeup, toilet bowl cleaner, anti-aging creams, tanning lotion.  Without lab-grown skin, these companies would be testing products on animals, usually rabbits, shaved to expose patches of naked skin. This practice is straight-up illegal for cosmetics in Europe now, and increasingly ethically dubious everywhere else.  (Sarah Zang)

Isn't it awesome that science is being used to save animals now instead of to hurt them?  While my favorite products are the ones that are natural and don't need intensive testing, I'm excited about the possibility of all companies being able to abandon animal testing practices and use synthetic skin instead.  Science for the win this time!

That's our happy news for the day.

<3 Frances