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Have I mentioned how much I love summer?
Yes Jen, every week.
Well there's so much summer left and I'm happy as a chipmunk on a slice of watermelon... a songbird in a bird bath or... even... a mosquito on a fleshy arm...

Yeah. Mosquitos.
An integral part of the food chain. Also a plague.
A. Moses. Level. Plague.
ugh

Nothing like a lovely summer evening with a pleasant summer breeze to be chased indoors by these nasty, deft, cunning bloodsuckers. You would think by now I would have this all figured out but I don't; that I would be the master of mosquito solutions but I'm not. I'm trying.

Sprays: they work. I PERSONALLY don't appreciate  the chemical exchange on an everyday, hour to hour basis. Even sprayed on clothes.
Repellent items: bracelets and stuff like that. They work too. I recently discovered cute stickers you can wear! Also full of chemicals and I would use if at an event outdoors; again sparingly and not a solution to my day to day mosquito problems.

Citronella candles and torches: work well, to an extent. Also::: chemicals. Billows and billows of fumes will be experienced if you use enough candles to actually be effective. So these really need to be strategically placed about in a way that is inoffensive and therefore handling about 15% of my problems.
BTW if candles are YOUR go to I have to tell you... Big Lots brand of citronella candles work like a BOSS for some reason... it must be the chemicals! They sell out pretty quick for the season... for a reason. They work.

so... what do?

Well now I'm on a personal journey, the quest, to find a solution that is effective and perfect. A bit of internet research has yielded these things::::

Plants:
yes... potted or garden plants. These have been listed as effective for warding off mosquitos.
Citronella (duh) marigold, mint, basil, catnip, lemon balm, pennyroyal, sage.
Sooo do I have to construct a throne of herbs and annuals every year for plants to work on an, at least, 60 - 70% effectiveness? idk
To be continued...

Essential Oils:
yes... these are chemicals. Harsh, abrasive but natural and even medicinal chemicals! These are chemicals I can deal with. When diluted properly can be safely applied to skin or burned in a diffuser. Dilutions are best, usually one ounce of carrier (olive oil, cream etc) to 2 drops essential oil. Or one drop to a small diffuser of water.
They are:::: Lavendar!!! (husband hates it) Tea Tree (ew) Peppermint (oooh) Citronella (this again) Lemon Eucalyptus (very nice, careful on skin) Sweet basil, Catnip Clary Sage

I'm interested in a mix of peppermint and lemon euc as an ointment. I'll try this one day and let you know. One day...

Misc:
Garlic. Yes garlic oil. Yes garlic plants but really... one. clove. of. garlic. eaten. raw. so. that. the. chemical. compounds. of. your. blood. are. altered. for. the. entire. evening.
Please for the sake of goodness warn your loved ones.

Bug zapper. I love our bug zapper. It's got a name; sparky. It does the job of ... hmmm maybe 30%. An ally. Helpful.

Standing water. Make roaming your grounds looking for those little pools of water in shovels, empty planters, chairs and all the many crevices on your property a part of your walking meditation! Boom, done.

Screens. Just, screens.

And burning sage. The smoke of burning bits of dried sage is antimicrobrial and also, apparently a good mosquito repellent. Also my husband hates this more than lavender.

And one day I will get the recipe right. I imagine there will be a couple of candles like over there, sparky, a nice refreshing lemony peppermint cream, lots of little plants still in their, plastic pots from the market and maybe a hint of garlic. I will submit my report,,, one of these days.

In my last post I introduced you to you, or rather, parts of you to you. These are the SNS and PNS and are two major parts of your nervous system that regulate stress and relaxation. Introductions were made, hands were shaken, notes were taken. The next step is to take a look at what's going on IN you when everything AROUND you is getting TO you! I really recommend going back and reading part 1 before proceeding......


Okay...


So before I get to some gory details let me give you some gory perspective; so a grizzly bear, a manhunting dinosaur and a dental appointment walk into a bar. Which one do you find the most unpleasant to think about? Well, your SNS doesn't know the difference to any degree, it just registers that you're experiencing stress. That's really nuts! I mean, that's crazy! If you get pulled over by a cop or receive a final cancellation notice in the mail, that cold stress sensation that comes over you is not unlike finding a bear in your backseat! Those stress sensations are your body kicking in to fight or flight!!! Yikes! You've heard this term used over and over but do you have any idea what it means??

Yes there are degrees of stress ranging from discomfort to shock to full panic but it's all the same to the SNS. No matter what the scenario is your SNS is going to be 'stimulated', it's going to switch on and it's going to do these things, all the time, everyday, unless you SHUT IT OFF.

Circulation: 

Heart rate increases dramatically so that baby can pump that blood and oxygen to the parts of the body that need it the most: the muscles!! This is so that you can fight to the death or run away! The lungs and parts of the brain are next on the blood list so your breath can continue to oxygenate your body. Blood is directed AWAY from systems that are not really useful for dropkicking a predator and this includes digestion. Your digestive system gets seriously ripped off in this ordeal.

Brain: 

Okay so blood is directed to parts of the brain that are important for acting really fast but activity in the the forebrain is suppressed. To quote a New York Times article what is suppressed is "activity in areas at the front of the brain concerned with short-term memory, concentration, inhibition, and rational thought". Ha! That's why you feel like a blubbering fool in stressful social contexts in which you have to speak or during an unpleasant verbal conflict! 

Here's another neat quote, from Pub Med, concerning your brain on stress. It cites a study done on social phobias and the brain. It explains..

"that cortical evaluative processes were taxed by public performance. In contrast, the social phobia symptom profile was associated with increased subcortical activity. Thus, the functional neuroanatomy of social phobia involves the activation of a phylogenetically older danger-recognition system."

This means your relating to other humans via your reptilian "danger" archives.

Digestion:

So to expand upon the whole blood diverted away from your guts thing I mentioned earlier here's a quote from Harvard Health Publications:

During stress "digestion slows or even stops so that the body can divert all its internal energy to facing a perceived threat. In response to less severe stress, such as public speaking, the digestive process may slow or be temporarily disrupted, causing abdominal pain and other symptoms of functional gastrointestinal disorders. Of course, it can work the other way as well: persistent gastrointestinal problems can heighten anxiety and stress."

IBS? Ulcers? Chrohns disease? Acid reflux? An entire nation of gastrointestinal problems? Does this seem okay?

Note: "less severe stress" causes abdominal pain... 

Immune system: 

This one is insane to me. Your immune system is basically suppressed during stress except for the parts that fight infection. It's brilliant. It's miraculous. It's terrifying. This type of long term suppression can be linked to auto immune diseases to many allergies and even cancer. Why?

The constant dysregulation of the immune system day in and day out. Your immune system is comprised of so many different kinds of cells and during stress they are given rank. This will cause dysfunction eventually. This will cause your immune system to attack your body or will cause the dysregulated release of hormones and in the case of cancer stress will reduce the amount of natural killer cells in your immune system that are known to attack and eat cancer cells. So your immune system cannot properly fight cancer because it's being f**king supressed! The effect of stress on natural killer cells is a fascinating study and one that deserves the wheel.

I implore you to check out the New York Times link below to read the section on the immune system fully. 

Miscellaneous:

You get tunnel vision. Your mouth goes dry and your throat tight. Your skin tightens. Bodily tension puts physical stress on your muscles, tissues and organs risking injury and contributing to ischemia (loss of blood flow). 

Is this starting to sound like a panic attack yet? 




Now. 
Like I said, there are degrees.
There are those serious and acute episodes; serious accidents, emergencies and other frightening events. This is acute stress. It's hot, pulsating stress. It's different than daily stress.
Daily stress is what I'm talking about. The kind that hums just beneath the surface.


Ever go through an acutely stressful event and feel that warm feeling wash over you when it's all over with? That's PNS. PNS takes over when the catastrophe has run its course.


It isn't activated when you're dealing with the daily grind or those "less severe" instances. You have to activate yourself. And know what's nice? You can!


What happens when this SNS system is running low grade day after day? Illness. Of all kinds. Mental, emotional, physical... stress is a part of every illness you experience.

Long term stress will start to act like acute stress. This now becomes a disorder. What happens when your body goes through a stress response meant to rip an automobile off a small child while you're,,,, just,,, sorta,,, standing there? Probably a panic attack. What happens when you go through this everyday? You probably end up on medication being told you have a mental illness. The symptoms of anxiety are totally insane and can bring you to your knees. 

There is only one way out. You have to switch if off. There is only one way to do this, you must turn on PNS.


PNS will regulate all of this mayhem. PNS activation regulates blood flow and digestion, heart rate and even has a profound impact on your immune system! Many studies show that activating PNS through massage or a forest walk or deep breathing increases natural killer cell count! WOW! The euphoria felt during PNS activation is linked to homeostasis of dopamine and serotonin! Pain is decreased, tension reduces. That kind of research confirms everything I'm saying.... our daily stress is killing us and we have to take control... and we can. The first step is to know how this works, which is what I'm trying to do.


This is why relaxation techniques have such a major effect on anxiety disorders, because you'r retraining your nervous system to not react with stress. You're ensuring yourself that you are not under bear attack,,,, right now.


PNS response is also called the 'rest and digest' response. This is because you start to digest food again! Ever notice that moment during a massage when your stomach just starts gurgling for no reason? Well, there you go! PNS has begun! 


Well I'm glad you're here, at the end of this entry. I'm glad you read it! This is only still a part of the story... we're not done here! These are the facts with a bit of perspective but in the future I would like to offer some philosophy on how we're living and how we need to evolve. We need evolution to take us past this hellish deathtrap of stress and to start to run in harmony with our technology and ourselves. Below are links to the articles I quoted. This is real. This is why, I think, people with healthy lifestyles get cancer or other diseases. I also want to show you the way out. I can help you,,, in 5 minutes I can switch you to PNS, but you can do it too. 

http://www.nytimes.com/health/guides/symptoms/stress-and-anxiety/the-body%27s-response.html



http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11481154

http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletter_article/stress-and-the-sensitive-gut


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18190880

Hello and Happy New Year! I have so so so much to say about what stress is and what it does and how healing modalities affect it. Whatever your 'New Year New Me' plans may be they will most likely be affected by stress. If you have an illness, of ANY kind, it is affected by stress. If your problem is mental, existential, physical, or emotional it is affected by stress. And you have power over stress therefore you have power over every little damned problem in your life. Every one.

It's a new year for me too and there is so much blog in my heart, really, and I want to tell you more about what I mean but there is some groundwork to lay first. There are a few physiological realities that must be made clear. Everything else makes so much more sense when you have a basic understanding of the 'Anatomy of Stress'. What I'm about to put forth here is purely biological; it's real and documented and known to the medical industry but not to every one of you. 

First a little about me. Foremost I am, as a massage therapist, medicine. That's what I am. You come see me, you lay down and I administer medicine with my friggin medicine hands! You don't have to do anything and by the time you leave, whether in 15 minutes or 90, healing has occurred; things have changed. But what does that even mean? You can tell that it is so but what is it?

A billion little physiological things probably, of which I know a few.

But really it means 2 things... I have reduced pain and I have lowered stress.

These 2 things deserve and demand their very own volumes and are both extremely important to health and what we call 'well being'. Now when it comes to stress and it's impact on health it's totally insane that we're not taught the basics of what stress is and what it does. These basics should be common knowledge and knowledge is power. This knowledge is the groundwork for everything I do. I have established that I am medicine but I also strive to be a stress educator. From anxiety disorders to cancer stress matters. Here's why...

I'll start with an excerpt from my lecture "mind, body spirt... now what" called? "predator in the face"


~Do you realize that you have 2 different nervous systems in your body that are responsible for either causing stress or relaxation???
One induces stress, the other invokes relaxation.
This is the absolute truth. I'm not making this up.

The sympathetic nervous system (SNS) causes the "stress" response and was adapted to help us deal in real life threatening situations in which we needed to run or fight to the death. The stress response prepares our bodies for dropkicking a predator in the face, for lifting a car off someone, for making quick decisive action when a deer gets up in our grill or for screaming off into the night::::::: it's not good for dealing with debt collectors, people buying lotto in front of us, deadlines, for hashing out some dilemma with a peer or for partaking in any retail encounter whatsoever.... unless of course you're about to dropkicked in the face. Life can feel like that yes? 

We have not evolved past this prehistoric state of being. Stress is not the natural way of going through life. Sometimes it can help get through a period of intensity but mostly it floods the system with adrenaline causing adrenaline fatigue, suppresses our immune systems, makes us nervous, jumpy, short of breath, unbalanced, tense, brainless, sloppy ogre people with bad digestion. Stress drains blood from the ORGANS AND FOREBRAIN and puts it in the muscles and mid-brain to help us act like wild reptiles that survive. This is why you get befuddled, confused and crazy when you're overly stressed and angry;:::: you never say the right thing when there's a prehistoric beast in your face. Blood leaves the forebrain and you cannot properly digest food when you're like this, which is every day. 

Now, there is the OTHER nervous system the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS). This one activates the REST AND DIGEST response. We are in one or the other. We are either in stress or in rest and digest and, believe me, there is no mistaking the rest and digest state. You definitely know when you're there. We are usually never there. Even when watching T.V. or chillin out we're still using the sympathetic nervous system. If you're not in the relaxation response you are still in stress. The idea is to achieve the relaxation response as often as possible::: once a day to start with would be good. We literally need to retrain ourselves out of constant stress. This constant stress is the cause of so many chronic illnesses and disorders, from being overweight to mental illness to whatever ails you.

There are many ways to achieve the relaxation response through stimulation of the "parasympathetic nervous system".  Massage is a good way to achieve this because the client is passive and doesn't have to do anything. The client will always achieve deep relaxation at the conclusion of a massage.~

Okay, so that is really basic but it should also be very compelling to you; we are operating on outdated modes of behavior! We are no longer hunted day and night yet we still run on the part of the nervous system that helped us survive the primitive centuries! We are safe now, we can chillax! But we haven't yet! This system (the SNS) is very destructive to the immune system! How? Well that's just one of the many many things I need to tell you about! But I needed to leave this here first and lay the ground work. Now you know what SNS and PNS are. That's good. That's reallly good. You enter the massage in SNS and leave in PNS and you can tell the difference.

 We have not evolved. But we can evolve. Being in a state of PNS calm is something we need to learn to do, then cultivate then maintain with every inch of our being. We need to hold on to it and make it ours. We need to take control and realize that day to day stress is not natural or okay or all around you,,, it's actually a choice. It's a choice that you need training in order to learn to make it and I'm here for you, it's what I do. I'm a switchboard operator dialing in PNS. I am medicine... this is what healing means.

P.s. Join me on Facebook and I 'll tell you exactly what SNS does to your immune system!

 
 A whole lot of FRIGGIN money is about to be literaly DUMPED, by you and me, right into the economy! But whos economy?

So this is a call, a challenge and, I admit, a plea... buy local this holiday season. This is a very direct way to build a strong local economy, to empower your community and flex your purchasing power! I challenge you to buy 25% local or 50% local or ... more.


Yes. I know. Things ARE more expensive on a local level. This is part of your investment. It's part of your contribution. You may find  your self yielding to quality over quanity. This then becomes a very sound and environmentally good choice.

When you really look around, there are a ton of exciting ways to give from the heart! A popular trend is to give the gift of experience. This includes restaurants, performances, art, dance or karate classes, boat rides, wine tours... just about any bucket list item has a gift certificate for sale. Get them a makeover, a horse riding adventure...

Check out local hardware stores for bigger items. Bergers Appliance of Hawthorne is a local business. 

I've seen so many wonderful local boutiques tank. They lose so much holiday revenue to big box stores. Get out and support these wonderful shops while getting something truly unique! Compile a list of boutiques and just go to them! The only ones I can think of around here are Trinkets in Croton or Ruthenys, also in Croton. I always used to buy jewelery from SWAK in Montrose and my recepients squealed, no really, squealed with delight. They sadly had to close.

Get to your local craft fairs!!! You will always find something unique and wonderful. No one, and mean not one of us, can own enough hand made scarves. Seriously. 

If a small business is not in your local area per say it's still shopping local. Now's a good time to check out etsy.com for hundreds of independant sellers of handmade or vintage goods inlcuding jewelery, art, or just about anything you can think of.  

Explore pintrest for a millions ways to MAKE an awesome gift!

Also consider local bakers, florists, book and record shops, yoga studios, spas...

Every year I enjoy going to Feed the Birds in Croton and getting bird feeders and outdoor seed ornaments.

Like I said, 25%, 50%, 75%. These are good percentages if we all challenged ourselves with one of them. All of us are going to buy big box items this year. It's unavoidable. It's okay. But we can make a major impact by looking around and challenging ourselves to a percentage. 

What are some of your favorite local holiday hot spots? Plug away! Show us where to go! 
Your community thanks you!

Here I am. I am ready to blog for you.

Peace is an abstract concept; at least I think it's better to think of it that way until you finally acheive it. There can be little or no reference to what peace is or feels like until you have felt it's exact opposite. 

Stress is something we're generally used to. I don't mean the pressure of a stressful, nerve wracking event or a bad day. I'm talking about a low level stress that's always there. It's there when you unwind from the day or even when we do the things that give us pleasure. We aren't aware of it. This kind of stress is also an abstract concept, until you experience the opposite. 

This is exactly what happens on the massage table. You get the concept; sometimes you get it the second your head hits the table. I'm pretty sure every person who gets on the table leaves with a reference for peace. Once you get familiar with the concept of peace you begin to recognize your stress. When you leave the office you are out of stress, at least the kind of stress that we carry day to day.

What makes the table unique is that deep relaxation and a senes of peace and well being happens immediately without any effort. To maintain that peace you must practice by finding meditation or a yoga teacher, but massage can and will open the door. It is a silver bullet. Whatever you bring to the table your massage will improve it. 

I've enjoyed a simple visualization in my work. I imagine that the treatment is a drop of water that hits the surface of your stress, rippling it out, smoothing it over. There is at least a drop of peace with you, effecting the ocean of your being. And now when you leave the office you are a drop of peace rippling out into the ocean of the world. If it lasts five seconds then it has done some good but it can last all day.

There are biological names for these abstract concepts of stress and peace and there are many physiological things that take place between the two but I will talk about that another time. For now it's enough that you know peace and stress cannot exists together and that you can choose on or the other. It takes practice to learn to choose and massage can help.