December 2019 – VedaMinn

As I approach the end of another trip around the sun I like to take stock of the year past and set intentions for the upcoming year. I write down key high and low lights of the year, reflect upon forward momentum, and set categorized intentions (home, friends, creative, health, career etc) for the upcoming 365 days. These intentions range from tackling specific tasks: “Clean out the basement and make it useable” and “Paint the living room,” to the more general and esoteric: “Figure out gratitude,” “weigh less, or more at this time next year” (to be honest, I’ve never set the intention to “weigh more” but one could), Then I put the paperwork away until 365 days into to future, when I review it and again reflect and repeat.

This ritual has helped me establish a realistic perspective on my life that has served me well. I encourage you to give it a try–especially the putting the intentions away for a year part. You may be surprised by what you discover. So, after this is posted, I’ll be reflecting on the past year and anticipating my future.

I’ve been keeping New Years Journals since 1998. They have become a comforting yearly ritual that seems to produce remarkable results

And yes, post I shall–despite my resistance. And in the spirit of blogging, I’ve decided to burden the world with yet more opinions per every pundit in internet-land. This appears to be the season for posting the best and worst of the year and the decade. So, to go with the flow, and purge myself of my attachment to my opinions, I proceed.

Best non-fad food of the century

Ginger. I’ve known about the powerful effects of ginger for years and have occasionally drunk ginger tea. This year, however, I took ginger seriously and have been vigilant about using ginger therapeutically, particularly for upper respiratory situations (ie colds). I’ve fended off a number of colds with concerted application of fresh ginger tea with honey (don’t cook the honey). And of course, miraculous ginger baths have been a staple of my cleanses for awhile. Ginger is also a great digestive aid. It’s a workhorse of an herb, is easily accessible, and tastes great!

The gnarly looking ginger root has helped me kick numerous colds this winter. Just toss a few slices of fresh ginger (or a teaspoon or so of dried ginger) into boiling water and simmer for about 20 minutes. Cool a bit and add honey and lemon. Dried ginger is a great addition to hot and and cleansing soak. I hope to add ginger to my garden this spring. Will report back.

Worst wellness food-fad of the decade

Acai. I suppose I’ll receive a lot of hate mail for this one but I find the acai berry fad symbolic of the worst of the wellness and supposed “nutrition” movement. For those not in the know, acai is touted as an anti-oxidant super food that is supposedly responsible for all sorts of miraculous results. It is harvested in Brazil and was a huge money-maker for a select group of entrepreneurs earlier in the decade. This New Yorker piece describes in painful detail the evolution of the acai phenomenon and is reminder of how what we eat effects more than just our selves, our egos, and our appetites.

Second worst wellness food-fad of the decade (there are so many to choose from!)

The raw food movement. We need to cook much of our food in order to release the nutrients to do their nutrient jobs in our body. And besides, cooking makes a lot of our food taste a whole lot better.

Best food fad of the decade

NONE! Food fads are just that, fads, designed to line the pockets of those pushing them.

Most gratifying wellness find of 2019

Pilar Gerasimo: Pilar, who hails from the Twin Cities area, focuses her wellness work on the concept of “healthy deviance” which is the idea that those of us who choose to live healthy and happy lives are bucking the establishment. Consequently, we need to see ourselves as existing outside of the mainstream and proceed as such if we want to be healthy. She does a great job of explaining the evolutionary conundrum the human race finds itself in when it comes to our health and well-being. When I saw (and heard) her speak, I felt a sense of relief at finally finding someone who thought the way I did—ie the system is broken (that includes the system that pushes food and exercise fads) and until we see that clearly, we will be continually frustrated in our efforts to be happy. She has a book coming out soon, The Healthy Deviant and I can’t wait to read it.

Most disappointing wellness trend of the decade

Workplace Wellness Programs: While I encourage people to stay healthy and happy while on the job and I imagine some workplace wellness programs may be moderately helpful, I think, based on observation, that these programs, by and large, have simply become additional vehicles for moneyed interests to line their pockets and for employers to manipulate their work forces. If we, in the United States, are truly concerned about the health and well-being of our workforce, I suggest we pay living wages, provide universal health coverage (so people don’t stay at miserable jobs just to get health insurance), and limit the work week to no more than 40 hours. People will then have the time, space, and resources to properly manage their well-being and be happy.

Most hopeful wellness trend of the decade

The eat local movement, along with the upsurge of farmers markets in metro-areas all over the country provide healthier foods to our communities and do a great job of educating us about where our food comes from and what real food really tastes like. By visiting these markets, we come together as a community to honor the most basic of human activities—feeding ourselves and our communities.

Farmers markets are a great way to connect with the food we eat and those who labor to produce this food.

Most fun new activity of 2019

Circle Singing! Singing in general is good for the soul, our mental health, our physical health and our universal health; circles are a universal symbol of coming together. The perfect combination!

Circle singing is a form of community singing, developed for contemporary times by Bobby McFerrin, in which a leader directs a group in improvisational song. The group I sing with doesn’t seem to have any links I can provide but it is led by Judy Donaghy Vinar so if you get on her mailing list you likely will receive announcements of the monthly gatherings.

We’re in this together

Whew! I think I’ve expressed enough for now. Thanks for indulging me!

As we head into another new decade I encourage all of us to keep our senses attuned—pay attention. There is a lot to observe out there. Let’s watch the sprouts from all the seeds of love, compassion, justice, and creativity that we’ve sewn over the decade begin to pop their heads out of the ground. Let’s nurture these sprouts as we continue to plant more seeds. Let’s care for all of our “selves”: physical, subtle/spiritual, and universal, never forgetting that we’re all in this world together and together is how we will both suffer and thrive.

Happy New Year and Happy New Decade to all of you, thank you for your support, and enjoy the ride.

Start the year out right and mark your calendars

The Kindred Spirits gathering will re-convene Thursday Jan 23rd, 2020 at St. Peder’s Evangelical Lutheran Church, 4600 E. 42nd St., Minneapolis, MN 55406, from 6:30 to 8:00 p.m.. Note that the sessions will be running a half hour earlier than in 2019.

In the January session we’ll explore awareness, the first step towards making any meaningful changes in our lives.

Tomorrow is the official day of the Winter Solstice. Soon, we will begin to see tiny increases in sunlight. I’m trying to stay away from an attachment to sunlight—but it is not easy.

As the sun mysteriously disappeared over the last few months I have found myself retreating into comfort, which is not a good place for me to inhabit. I know this instinctively but have also had this validated by virtually every avenue possible: Ayurveda, the Enneagram, the Tarot, the I Ching, psychotherapy, my mother, and simple common sense.

Comfort is an insidious force. After all, comfort can feel really good at a certain level. Who doesn’t like the comfort of wrapping ourselves in a blanket in front of the tv and just zoning out for a while? But, when carried to an extreme, that comfortable situation can turn to sloth, and it can happen without us even recognizing it’s happening.

The winter solstice brings long, lazy, dark shadows early in the day (3 p.m.). But despite the darkness, the rabbits seem to stay active 24/7 (those prints are from rabbits).

Comfort and the current world

This time around, comfort manifested itself in a very uncomfortable way: current world events.

Over the past few months, I’ve found myself glued to the television, wondering how we let our world slide back into horrors I naively thought we had overcome. This triggered many difficult emotions and I pondered how or even if I could best serve the common good as my country of origin descended into the abyss. I worried that for all my commitment to mindfulness, non-violence, and compassion, I was not finding a helpful avenue for action.

tv's — The insidious comfort of politics via the TV is not serving me well.

As I basked in these feelings of despair, I began to see that my attachment to the outcome of current events is comfortable for me, as uncomfortable as it may seem. I am comfortable raging (both inwardly and outwardly) about the state of the world while ignoring ways in which I could truly contribute to the common good—the WE.

Meanwhile, life goes on

Comfort even helps me to ignore writing my Blog! I’m learning that maintaining a blog is not for the faint of heart—it requires being very uncomfortable. During my “hiatus” from my blog, life has gone on around and within me. I engaged in a semester long Tibetan Medicine class, attended a Tibetan Buddhist retreat, celebrated Thanksgiving with friends, figured out my Medicare plans (to whatever degree that is possible), visited with friends, went to shows, danced, sang, had lunches with friends, and shoveled a fair amount of snow. Yet still, in the background, this familiar dread has been murmuring, “The world is falling apart and you are doing nothing about it!” Oh, poor me, me, me, me, ME!!!

This inner voice is one with whom I’m familiar, and comfortable. It enables qualities in myself that I would do well to overcome: self-righteousness, helplessness, and cowardliness. It facilitates chronic inaction in the same way that the comfort of sitting in front of the TV day after day with a box of chocolates would.

Understanding the true nature of comfort

I think I’m finally beginning to understand the concept that comfort is not a state of joy and relaxation, but a state of passivity. It isn’t necessarily a state of physical or mental stillness but a state with which we’ve become overly familiar and to which we’ve become habituated. It could mean feeling comfort when catering to the demands of others, or a comfort with constantly being on the go, or comfort with being undervalued on the job, or comfort with aggression or timidity, or… I see my state of comfort as a state of cowardice. And I am beginning to see this ongoing state of comfort as the enemy that hinders my ability to be of service to the world (including myself).

“If you take the negative as absolute and definitive, however, you increase your worries and anxiety, whereas by broadening the way you look at a problem, you understand what is bad about it, but you accept it…”
― Dalai Lama XIV, My Spiritual Journey

To overcome negative states, Ayurveda and Tibetan Buddhism suggest applying the opposite force. For the person who settles into the comfort of physical sloth, physical movement might be a start, or if someone is comfortable being constantly “on the go”, intentional periods of repose and contemplation may be in order.

For me, this means staying aware and informed while wrestling with the discomfort of knowing that my inner desire to see myself as the moral arbiter of all things (political and otherwise) may not be serving either myself or the world. It means letting go of that comfortable (but unhelpful) feeling of rage and angst. It means (and this is the really hard part) cultivating a genuine feeling of compassion towards all living beings—even those with whom I vehemently disagree. And it means recognizing that we are all connected, we all suffer and we ALL are worthy of compassion. This recognition of compassion, is in itself, an action. It’s a small seed waiting to bloom.

“Profound happiness, unlike fleeting pleasures, is spiritual by nature. It depends on the happiness of others, and it is based on love and tenderness. We”
Dalai Lama XIV, My Spiritual Journey

A seed germinates

Yesterday I was blind-sided by the news that a major Christian evangelical publication had spoken out against some of the behavior of those actively sewing seeds of hate. This happened a week or so after I decided to just let go (at least for now) of my obsession with current affairs and earnestly try to practice compassion. I felt a remarkable feeling of relief after reading of the germination of this seed and reminded myself that this had nothing to do with “me” and everything to do with “we”.

Kindred Spirits reconvenes

In the January session we’ll explore awareness, the first step towards making any meaningful changes in our lives.