Vibration is Life…and Antidote to Hysteria

 

“Vibration is life” advertisement, 1910 “The secret of the ages has been discovered in Vibration. Great scientists tell us that we owe not only our health but even our life strength to this wonderful force. Vibration promotes life and vigour, strength and beauty. … Vibrate Your Body and Make It Well. YOU Have No Right to Be Sick.” (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

The brilliant movie “Hysteria” has brought back to our awareness a time when a woman’s stress-based symptoms were often given a catch-all diagnosis of  “female hysteria”. Apparently hordes of women presented their male physicians with puzzling symptoms  including faintness, nervousness, sexual desire, insomnia, fluid retention, heaviness in abdomen, muscle spasm, shortness of breath, irritability, loss of appetite for food or sex, and “a tendency to cause trouble”. The movie makes the case that the diagnosis was often used to lump women’s dissatisfactions with their lives and their mates into a neat category. And there was money to be made by the perceptive physicians who saw that this “disease” was not fatal and required on-going, lucrative treatments.

Number of French psychiatric theses whose main topic was hysteria. Data from: Mark S. Micale (1993). “On the “Disappearance” of Hysteria: A Study in the Clinical Deconstruction of a Diagnosis”. Isis 84 : 496-526. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

To alleviate the tedious work of the current “pelvic massage” treatments that doctors and midwives provided in many cases, the electric vibrator was invented. And, as we know, it became a perennial favorite of women, although this diagnosis (thankfully) is no longer used for these symptoms in women.

Men, too, found benefit from the vibrator as a healing modality. It was widely accepted, if we can infer it from the newspaper ads of the time, that vibration was a key to our health and vitality.

So, when we say we are vibrational beings, ancient and modern science has our backs. And speaking of backs, when I have the spare cash, one of the first things I’ll buy is the vibrating massage chair. I’m the one who’s always testing it out at the stores. It’s an amazing stress-reducer!

 

 

 

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Adding a Side Job for the Joy of It

The Teeter-Totter of Work-Life Balance

In the prolific discussion about work-life balance, it may seem that what is needed is less time at work. The image that is conjured is one of a teeter-totter with you, working like a dog, on one side and your personal life on the other, up in the air.

Pembroke leaving teeter-totter during a dog agility competition (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

However, my experience and observation is that it’s not that simple. It may boil down to how happy you are with what you’re doing, not how many hours you spend at it. So when I suggest that you consider adding a side job to increase your work-life balance you may think I’m a bit crazed.

But let me explain…

I propose that what really makes us feel out of balance is that we’re not able to express our creative individuality. Time blurs and expands when you’re in the midst of doing something you love. It’s what some call being “in the flow“. I can work for hours writing something I’m truly engaged in and not even notice I missed dinner. By adding a side gig of writing for my personal projects and interests, I’ve increased my overall feeling of balance and well-being. I know that I can get a little stressed and cranky when I put my personal projects on the back burner for too long.

Seeking Self-Others Balance Instead

The balance I’m seeking is the one between myself and others, I think. How much time and energy and I spending doing what others want and need of me in contrast with how much I do what I want to express myself.  Sounds selfish doesn’t it? Yes, it is. But in the nicest possible way.

 The Joy of Personal Creative Projects

I love my day job, don’t get me wrong. But what really gets my creative juices and joy flowing is my side projects that I gladly squeeze in at lunch breaks, evenings and weekends. As Mary Choi points out in her article for Wired magazine, October 2012, called “The Second Shift”:

“You are overwhelmed, overscheduled, and dejected, because you keep trying to have it all–or at least most of it. You want a fulfilling job and personal life, and it’s not working. The way out? Work more. Hate to break it to you, but career and home aren’t the only poles. There is another:  all those beautiful, disregarded side projects.”

Sometimes, the side jobs can lead to a whole new work and life. That was the case for Rae Hoffman, who shares her heart-felt story of how she fell into Internet Marketing and blogging because of her infant son’s tragic stroke. Or what about the story of J. K. Rowling, now famous and wealthy author of the Harry Potter books? She tells the story in her autobiography on her website:

“I had been writing almost continuously since the age of six but I had never been so excited about an idea before. To my immense frustration, I didn’t have a functioning pen with me, and I was too shy to ask anybody if I could borrow one. I think, now, that this was probably a good thing, because I simply sat and thought, for four (delayed train) hours, and all the details bubbled up in my brain, and this scrawny, black-haired, bespectacled boy who didn’t know he was a wizard became more and more real to me…

I began to write ‘Philosopher’s Stone’ that very evening, although those first few pages bear no resemblance at all to anything in the finished book…

J.K. Rowling reads from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone at the Easter Egg Roll at White House (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

I intended to start teaching again and knew that unless I finished the book very soon, I might never finish it; I knew that full-time teaching, with all the marking and lesson planning, let alone with a small daughter to care for single-handedly, would leave me with absolutely no spare time at all. And so I set to work in a kind of frenzy, determined to finish the book and at least try and get it published. Whenever Jessica fell asleep in her pushchair I would dash to the nearest cafe and write like mad. I wrote nearly every evening. Then I had to type the whole thing out myself. Sometimes I actually hated the book, even while I loved it.

Finally it was done. .. It took a year for my new agent, Christopher, to find a publisher. Then, finally, in August 1996, Christopher telephoned me and told me that Bloomsbury had ‘made an offer.’…

And you probably know what happened next.”

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15 Minutes to Destress and Change Your Life

Feeling You Have Way Too Much Work to Do?

When you’re feeling stressed because you are overwhelmed by mountains of work to do, the last thing you want to hear is to take 15 minutes to do something else.  But I’m about to tell you about a technique that you can easily learn and use everyday to leverage that 15 minutes to multiply the time you have available to be productive. You can cure your work stress. This simple technique is called meditation, without any complicated rituals attached. You might want to think of it as focused deep breathing (or humming as you’ll see in the fun example below).

Rembrandt’s Philosopher in Meditation (detail). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Facts About Stress and Productivity

How can I make this audacious claim? First, I’ve used this technique myself and gotten great results. I encourage you to use the same test:  Try it out for yourself. But if you need more convincing, there are facts to back it up.

• When you’re stressed, you don’t think as clearly, so you tend to make more mistakes and have to spend extra time going back to redo your work
• Stress is related to many of our illnesses that cause reduced productivity or time off work completely, such as colds, flu, headaches, fatigue and more
• Stress at work is often really worry about what might happen in the future if the work doesn’t get done, so you’re creating stress responses in the present about something that may not even happen in the future

What is Meditation?

One teacher of this simplified form of meditation, Abraham-Hicks, describes it this way:

“Meditation is a state of allowing where, for just a few moments, you stop trying to make anything happen. It is a time when you are saying to your Source Energy, to your Inner Being, to your God (or whatever you want to call it):  ‘Here I am, in a state of allowing Source Energy to flow purely through me.’ Fifteen minutes of effort will change your life. It will allow the Energy that is natural to you to flow; you will feel better in the moment, and you will feel more energized when you come out of it.”

–from Ask and It Is Given Perpetual Flip Calendar, September 8

 

Meditation has been shown to have additional benefits such as improved memory and focus as well as increased productivity at work. It’s well worth a try. Give yourself a 15-minute destress break every day for 30 days and see how much more energy, time, creativity, and productivity you can gain. These benefits overlap into your personal life, too, as you carry less emotional stress home from work.

I’d love to hear from you! Please leave a comment and continue the discussion about how meditation can help reduce your stress and improve your work productivity.

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Quick Technique for Dealing with Overwhelm

The build-up of work-life stress reached a peak

On this particular day, I was feeling overwhelmed by workload and time demands of my work and my life.  My life felt out of balance and stressful. The litany of challenging things going on included:

• An impending hurricane and related anxious preparations
• A major convention was in town with traffic and security issues so our entire office was working remotely
• An office remodeling that has caused allergies and related illness, sick time and medical expenses
• Extra expenses from the last tropical storm for tree damage had stressed my budget
• Emotional challenges which resulted in ending a new dating relationship
• Committments to help a friend who is also stressed and unclear about what she wants with her website
• Parental health issues always on my mind
• Our normal office environment with an open plan has gotten progressively louder and more crowded as we add more staff.
• There is an emphasis on group fun activities on work time which take precious time away from my work schedule, but peer pressure makes me feel guilty or anti-social when I decline

I’m feeling stressed on a daily basis and it’s not improving. On a conference call with my boss and another coworker, I felt that she was unusually short and dismissive, almost rude. On the next conference call, I had the same feeling as she was short and seemed impatient with me. I hung up and felt distressed, anxious, angry, hurt, and somewhat embarrassed that I was treated that way by my boss in front of my peers…”jangly” as I describe this feeling.

A different approach is needed

“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.” –Albert Einstein

I decided to try something new I’ve been studying. The Institute of HeartMath’s “Inner Ease” techniques for dealing with stress and anxiety and overwhelm. I used the Inner Ease technique for about 10 minutes to get myself calmed down and refocused from the heart.

Then I called my boss back and we had a heart-to-heart chat in which I was able to calmly and compassionately talk with her about how I felt. I had the insight to talk about the differences I perceive in our mental and communication styles, how they can complement each other and I asked how I might help make our work together go more smoothly. She was taken by surprise and seemed to genuinely be sorry that it appeared that she was frustrated, annoyed or impatient with me. She explained that she has issues at home with her two young kids and nanny, is feeling pressure to move things along more quickly from her boss, not getting the cooperation she expected from other teams, and is generally overwhelmed herself. I felt genuine care and compassion for her that I hadn’t felt in the past. I was able to recall those same feelings when I was a working mom with a small child. It seemed to totally reframe the attitude I had when I thought about our work together. It felt good.

It was a very positive experience that I honestly couldn’t have had from the state I was in and have been in for the last few months. In ten minutes, I was able to turn things around remarkably. I can’t wait to continue the practice regularly for deeper and more lasting results in all areas of my life!

 

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5 Tips to Destress in Less than One Minute

How to Deal with Workplace Stress

Entrepreneurs and employees alike feel the work-related stress of deadlines, co-worker relationships, time pressures from family needs, difficult customers, technology failures, process changes, financial concerns, and a poor fit between capabilities and job demands. While some stress can be good to encourage us to stretch our boundaries, too much stress often leads to tension, anxiety, unsatisfactory relationships, and physical ailments. About 33% of us report that we feel high levels of work-related stress, and about 25% of us view our jobs as the #1 stressor in our lives.

So what can you do…fast…when you’re feeling stressed?

1.  Exercise. You can also take a walk outside or up and down the stairs. Or keep a jump rope in your office (if you are lucky enough to have a private office) and do some skips. Jumping jacks work nicely, too.

“Exercise relaxes tense muscles that become tight and rigid when you experience stress,” says Hall, chief executive of The Stress Institute in Atlanta, Ga., an educational and training firm that focuses on the effects of stress and how to relieve it. “Exercise delivers oxygen to the brain, vital organs and muscles immediately and produces endorphins that soothe your mind, body and soul.”–Entrepreneur Magazine article

2.  Stretch. You may want to get a neat balance ball chair with a desktop guide to stretches that I found for my office.

One of the ways I feel stress in my body is lower back pain, and it’s aggravated by sitting in my chair for long periods at the office. This chair allows me to sit with better posture and use it for yoga stretches during the day. My back feels great!

3.  Breathe. I find that I tend to hold my breath or breathe very shallowly when I’m stressed. A technique called ‘heart coherence‘ allows you to synchronize your heart beat and your mind with your breathing, and can bring immediate relief from stress. It’s very simple:  First, place your left hand over your heart. Imagine your breath is flowing through your heart. Breathe in and count to four, then breathe out for another four counts. Then visualize being with a loved one or in a special place in nature. In your mind, send feelings of love, joy or compassion out of you like rays of sunshine.

4. Visualize. Change your negative thoughts and imagine a more positive life. One visualization technique you can do at your desk:  imagine a lavender-colored, healing light moving through your body, from your head, to your neck, to your arms and trunk, down through your legs, and out through your feet–taking away any stress or pain.

5.  Smell.  Aromatherapy is an ancient form of alternative medicine and a powerful tool to calm your nervous system, your body, and your mind and to lift your spirits. According to the Alliance of International Aromatherapists, it is also a powerful tool for change.  Lavender and rose are great for relieving anxiety and rosemary is good for relaxation. I love to savor the scent of the rosemary garnish whenever it’s served with my meal. My eye mask for sleeping is filled with dried lavender and I sprinkle lavender essential oil on my pillow at night when I’m restless or have a slight headache…it’s good for pain relief as well. You can also place a small amount on your fingertips and hold your hands in the prayer position while taking deep breaths. Or dab a drop directly under your nose for a longer lasting effect.

Relax. Chill out. Life is supposed to be good!