Cleaning Your Soul

I know this is going to sound very old school but I'm going to come out with it anyway: sometimes if I want to feel better, I pull out the cleaning supplies and take a room apart.

I fill a pan with hot soapy water, gather some rags and a few spray cleaners and I then I go for it!

Over the weekend, I did this to my kitchen because something about the change in seasons was in the air and I looked around and thought I would feel better if I could clean away some of the dirt and also toss out some unused or broken items taking up space.



My Healing Tools

Everybody has dirt in the place where they live whether they admit it or not.  It's just what happens while you are living life; especially in a room made for cooking and preparing food.

From the ceiling to the baseboards and all those little spaces in between where you don't see the dirt until you are on a stepladder and up close and personal with it, I felt productive.  Cleaning is physical work and exercise produces endorphins -- those natural chemicals in the brain that are responsible for creating good moods.

As I wiped down the kitchen walls and physically cleaned the knobs of the appliances and other things hanging on the walls, I lost myself in the motion of it and that was a good thing.  I could feel that I was getting rid of some of the stresses of the work week by wiping and vacuuming and squeezing out those rags in the water over and over again.

Rather than waiting for change in your life, you can be the agent of change!

The simple act of moving furniture around or cleaning your kitchen or reorganizing your closet can freshen your attitude.  Think of how much time you spend in your house and how much it means to you.  It's your haven.  Your comfort zone.

When you decide to change your environment, you make it different.  Let go of the way a room used to be arranged and try it the way you want.  Even if you clean a room and put everything back exactly where it was, it still looks different because it sparkles and feels fresher.

In cleaning, you are simplifying your space, getting rid of what you don't want.

You may think that cleaning is gross -- and it can be -- but it's also about changing up your living space, the special place where you and your inner spirit live.

Let's Get Physical

Steps behind the Lincoln Memorial

A healthy mind needs a healthy body. Or is it a healthy body needs a healthy mind?

Anywho, this past weekend was one great big package of fabulous weather so I took the ole bod out for some much needed exercise and it was great!  Any kind of exercise is always good but sometimes it's hard to find the time.  But when I do make time for it, I always feel thankful that I did.  In the beginning, I felt a bit like the tin man in "The Wizard of Oz," trying to stretch, warm up and get the kinks out of my muscles. Oil can please?

As much as I try to walk every day, I don't walk as much as I should and this year for some reason I feel particularly out of shape. I am from the "use it or lose it" school of exercise and I know that if I don't push myself to get going then I will find something else that will distract me from moving. Maintaining a certain level of energy and ease of movement has always been important to me and I don't take it for granted.

With my ipod charged up, I slowly walked for about 10 minutes and then worked myself into a gentle run. I probably ran for about a mile and I could have gone further but I didn't want to overdo it and wake up the next day with really tight and sore muscles. It felt so good to get the body moving and take in the fresh air and beautiful blooming flowers and trees.

Whenever I am feeling helpless, or as if my mind is running in a million different directions, I try to go for a walk or get on my stationary bicycle. I know that the act of moving helps me work through whatever I am trying to untangle.  If you're wondering why exercise is so beneficial, doctors say this is why:   physical activity releases endorphins, natural chemicals in your body that can enhance your mood, decrease stress hormones and improve sleeping patterns.  And that's not all.  According to Dr. Brian Clement, the body heals eight times faster when you exercise regularly!

Taking care of yourself is project number one and I hope this warm weather stays around to help me and you stay healthy, active and mentally postive.

Laughing Enriches Your Life

It's really true, according to the story below.  Laughing can make you relax and breathe.

When times are tough, a sense of humor can help us cope.  I think
it always makes you feel better if you can make fun of the person who is stressing you out or make a joke about the awful situation you're in!

KHAM/Reuters

Laughing may help ease blood pressure, boost mood and enrich health in other ways

By Carolyn Butler, Published: October 24

The Washington Post

Whenever I took a tumble or scraped my knee as a child, my mother typically assessed the situation and then promptly tickled me, counseling, “Laughter is the best medicine.” This trick remains remarkably effective with my own boys and, to this day, YouTube videos of laughing babies or cats playing with printers still have the power to make me feel a bit better when I’m under the weather.

But while giggling is certainly a great distraction when you’re hurt or feeling low, I can’t help but wonder whether the old adage is true: Can laughter really have a positive impact on health?

There is a growing body of research indicating that a good guffaw may improve immune function, help lower blood pressure, boost mood and reduce stress and depression. And despite a dearth of more rigorous, long-term studies, the sum of these findings is compelling, says cardiologist Michael Miller, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine who has researched the topic.

“We don’t have any clinical outcome evidence to show that laughter will reduce heart attacks or improve overall survival. However, we do have a number of studies that have shown that there is a potential upside, in terms of vascular benefits and also overall health,” he explains. “These findings certainly support laughter as a reasonable prescription for heart health and health in general, especially since there’s really no downside.”

A new study from Oxford University supports a long-held theory that laughter triggers an increase in endorphins, the brain chemicals that can help you feel good, distract you from pain and maybe deliver other health benefits.

The study reports on six experiments in which people watched television sitcoms or a live comedy performance, either alone or with others. The participants were then subjected to various measures that prompt discomfort, including wearing an ice-cold sleeve or a tight blood-pressure cuff and squatting against a wall for long periods. In all cases, laughing with buddies for just 15 minutes resulted in an average 10 percent increase in pain threshold. A change in affect alone — in other words, getting happy but not laughing out loud — did not have a significant impact on pain sensations.

According to lead author Robin Dunbar, an evolutionary anthropologist, these results back up prior research suggesting that people who laugh need less pain medication after surgery. She explains that if laughing “triggers endorphin activation, then it may have direct [health] benefits, because there is a possibility that endorphins help to ‘tune’ the immune system.”

Still, we’re not just talking about a snicker here and there. The key is that real, true, unforced laughter is “an energetic, stressful activity that stirs up all of our physiological systems . . .involving strong vocalization, an increase in heart rate and blood pressure and muscle contractions all over the body,” says Robert R. Provine, a neuroscientist at the University of Maryland Baltimore County and the author of “Laughter: A Scientific Investigation.” He explains that modern laughter of the “ha-ha” variety evolved from the “pant-pant” of primates and early humans, which he says is “really the sound of rough-and-tumble play.” Indeed, the new Oxford study found that endorphins are released only when “we ‘laugh till it hurts,’ ” meaning we end up running out of breath or physically exhausted, says Dunbar. “It is only full belly laughs that do this, not polite titters.”

But before you work up a new stand-up routine, Provine points out that laughter often has little to do with jokes. “Real laughter is unconscious — you don’t decide to laugh, it just happens — and if you look at what people are doing before or during a laugh, it’s usually not associated with jokes,” he says.

Dunbar says the most important benefit of laughter may be that it brings people together, which is clearly good for emotional health. “When you laugh, you’re almost always in the presence of another person, whether they’re physically present or imagined on radio or TV,” agrees Provine, who has shown that laughter in social settings is 30 times as common as when a person is alone.

He says that those studying the effects of laughter need to tease out “to what extent any health benefits of laughter are associated with the social context of laughter.” People are far more likely to giggle when others do (which explains laugh tracks on television sitcoms), he says. “It could be that it’s the playful interaction with friends, family and lovers that makes the difference [in health measures], and not the physical act of laughter itself.”

For now, I intend to keep using the tickle cure on my kids — and I no longer feel guilty about watching those YouTube videos of babies guffawing. In fact, I will no longer feel guilty about inflicting them on others, either. Because who can’t use a few more laughs in her life, regardless of how or why or even if they make you healthier?