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As a teenager I spent a lot of time in the tunnels of Boston’s subway system. They were brightly tiled in red, blue, green, and orange, and there was a smell that I’ll never forget – not terrible, not pleasant – that poured forth in gusts as a train approached. I sat on benches with my head down, doing homework or reading the liner notes of albums, and generally nobody bothered me.
Except the evangelists, that is. I was often told that I needed to accept Jesus as my lord and savior – or else burn in hell. One guy had a sandwich board that listed all the reasons you could go to hell – rock ’n’ roll, masturbation, homosexuality, fornication, socialism, feminism, atheism, etc. – and he liked to give me the stink eye as I walked by. Sometimes I’d run into the Hare Krishnas, who told me that my whole way of life was wrong and tried to get me to come to their temple. And at home, we were visited weekly by Jehovah’s Witnesses who were determined to win us over despite being told repeatedly that we already had a religion.
Religion felt like a heavy inheritance, and these exchanges made me averse to being told what to believe – so averse that I threw the baby out with the spiritual bathwater and turned my back on it altogether. Eventually I was able to recognize that the spiritual connection – which religion aims to facilitate – doesn’t require a religious structure, and it certainly doesn’t require dogma. But even years later, having studied yoga, qi gong, reiki, acupuncture, Daoism, and other practices that offer a non-dogmatic approach to spiritual enrichment, I still found it difficult to speak openly to students and patients about spirituality because I didn’t want to come across like those evangelists – pushy, judgmental, and condescending.
However, I had seen firsthand the positive impact of a spiritual practice – and it’s supported by scientific research: people with a spiritual practice tend to have less stress, greater resilience during challenging times, more positive engagement with community, better health, and a longer life. So, little by little, I began delicately broaching the subject. I touched on it in some articles, and then Briana and I covered it a bit more explicitly in the book The Well Life.
Meanwhile, I observed more and more cases where the presence of a spiritual practice was instrumental in a patient’s recovery. It would be untrue to say that people can’t be happy or can’t overcome challenges without a spiritual practice, but for those who find it difficult to achieve lasting happiness or who seem beset by one challenge after another, a spiritual practice often makes the difference. The same is often the case for those who feel their achievements are somehow hollow, or who constantly feel that something is missing – that emptiness may be the absence of a spiritual dimension, a means by which one’s individual pursuits are connected to the whole.
Finally, a few years ago, we decided to stop beating around the bush. We wrote a book called Rituals for Transformation – a 108-day process for awakening this dimension of your life. Briana doesn't really have any hang-ups around this topic, but I was a bit nervous about releasing it. Even though it’s not a religious book, I thought it might push some of those buttons. After all, religion has been not only a structure for spiritual connection, but also an instrument for political control, discrimination, and genocide – and these associations aren’t easily erased from our collective consciousness. But part of our aim with this book is to help people see that spirituality is the baby that many of us threw out because we didn’t resonate with the bathwater. Your spiritual life is yours to define, and spirituality is available to everyone – religious and nonreligious, theist and atheist.
When you have an experience of this dimension, whether through prayer or mindfulness or a spontaneous connection with nature that transcends everyday consciousness, it’s funny to consider that we talk about wanting to give a sliver of our lives to it, or that it’s “available” to us if we’d like some, like, “Sprinkles are available for your ice cream,” because the reality is that it’s always here, and it encompasses the whole of your life.
But a little is enough, so we were careful not to make Rituals for Transformation so ambitious as to be difficult to complete. I remember my first qi gong teacher explaining that although we were beginning with exercises that would only take 20 minutes of each day, the change in consciousness they’d produce would begin to spread into the rest of our lives. She was right – it wasn’t long before I started to be aware of my energy and below-the-surface interactions with the world, even when I was just walking down a street or eating or having a conversation.
I’d love to hear about your experience with religion and/or spirituality and how this practice has supported you – or, if you don’t have a spiritual practice, what has gotten in the way.
Be well,
Peter
[post_title] => Ditch the Dogma, Keep the Spirituality
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The holidays are a good time to remember what we’re grateful for, and right now I’m grateful that the holidays are over. Don’t get me wrong, I spent lots of sweet time being with people I love, which is my favorite thing. But I’m happy to get back to my routine, and I find that my “everyday life” – when I’m not surrounded by presents and cookies – provides more challenge for appreciating all that I have to be grateful for. It’s a better workout for my gratitude muscles. (Also, I can get back to my Dreambook, where I have daily prompts for gratitude.)
As I see people around me making new year’s resolutions, hopeful but uncertain if they’ll keep them, I notice that a practice of gratitude is a vital part of developing and believing in our ability to change and to fully accept our role in it, i.e., our creative power.
Resolutions are usually prompted by a feeling that something needs to change. Yet if we only focus on what’s wrong, we’re impotent and miserable. When we decide to make a change, a mentality of “my current situation sucks” probably isn’t enough to carry us through actualizing that change. But a recognition of all that’s good in our lives reminds us (if we’re open to it) that we co-created this. And if we want something different, we can envision a new reality for ourselves and bring it into being.
I believe we’re much more effective at consciously shaping our lives when we do a few simple things.
First, we pay attention and appreciate all the ways in which life is going well for us, all the beauty, all the love, and all the miracles. If you can’t see these things, something is veiling your vision. Cut through it.
How can we hone our creative power if we don’t even recognize it? The more we stop and acknowledge the magic (i.e., practice gratitude) the more magical life becomes, and the more we can appreciate the role we’re playing in it. You don’t have to take my word for it. Just try it for a week (practice gratitude all day, every day). You’ll see.
Second, be sure you’re receiving what you’ve asked for. This is kind of a repetition of my first recommendation, but specifically refers to your receptivity regarding the change you’ve initiated. Make sure there’s space in your life for it, and a willingness to let yourself change. Make sure you notice when your world begins to shift – even minutely – in the direction you’ve intended, and acknowledge that your creative power is working.
Third, release your resistance to having what you’ve asked for. Sometimes we think, “Why on earth would I oppose this?!” And I’m not placing blame here. I’m just saying, be completely truthful with yourself about the hidden (or not-so-hidden) desires and beliefs that may be in opposition to your intention. And let them go. We have three processes for clearing resistance to your intentions in our book, The Well Life that can help.
Why do so many people fail to keep their new year’s resolutions? Easy. They are resistant to making this change and/or they have specific “counter-intentions” that are getting in the way (or put simply, they want something else more).
Many of these counter-intentions are rooted in childhood. For instance, you may have a childhood belief such as “it’s bad to be strong” (because, for instance, that would mean not needing your parents, or it would entail taking back power you’ve given away to others) or “I don’t deserve to be happy” (because, for instance, in pursuing happiness you made a mistake that hurt someone). I don’t agree with Freud on everything, but he was spot-on in asserting that childhood impressions affect us throughout our lives. For many of us, it’s the work of a lifetime to recognize how our inner child is running the show and to shift power to our mature inner adult.
Fourth, be consistent. I’ve heard people say, “The Universe hears your every request, so you don’t have to keep asking over and over.” I believe that it’s true that the Universe doesn’t need to be asked twice – the issue with people not getting what they say they want lies more on the human side of the equation. We change our minds all the time and we lose sight of what we’re bringing into reality.
So I recommend writing your intentions down. Personally, I like to make a ritual out of it, lighting a candle, bringing my full attention to the process, using a nice pen and a special piece of paper, feeling the intention with my whole being, visualizing its actualization, etc. Then, every single day (or twice a day) read what you’ve written and re-embody these intentions.
Finally, don’t indulge in criticizing your life. A gratitude practice helps us maintain perspective throughout each day. And a practice of stepping back – expanding into the awareness that contains this character whose life you’re leading – helps you avoid getting trapped in black-and-white judgments. When you are able to see the big picture, it’s hard to feel cursed.
Be well,
Peter
[post_title] => Forget Resolutions: Gratitude and the Process of Constant Creation
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[post_content] => Almost everyone will experience at least one episode of back pain in their life, and many of us will have several bouts or even chronic back pain. While acupuncture, massage, and chiropractic can help, it’s worth having some tools you can use on your own, wherever and whenever the need arises.
I’ve been helping people get out of pain for the past 20+ years, and have discovered many useful strategies for back pain. Today I’ll share five of my favorites.
But first, a little theory. I’ve found that teaching my patients about the mechanisms behind pain often produces an instant reduction in their discomfort. A fundamental principle of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is that all pain involves some sort of stagnation. Whether it’s stagnant digestion, stagnant blood flow, stagnant lymph, or even stagnant thinking and emotions, stuckness is counter to wellness. Good health, on the other hand, always entails flow – a free-flowing adaptability to challenges, free movement of blood, other fluids, muscles, tendons, and joints, and freely feeling and moving through thoughts and emotions. So everything I recommend below entails opening up stagnation and restoring free movement again.
1. Keep Moving Your Body. After an injury, we’re often told to rest (which has some value), but total immobility usually slows down the recovery process. In nearly all pain, there is muscular tightness and restricted circulation. This stagnation is even more obvious in the case of swelling (e.g., a sprained ankle), where lymph has pooled in the area and gets stuck there. Safely moving the affected area promotes clearing of pooled lymph, elimination of cellular waste and debris, an influx of fresh blood – and a reduction of pain.
In biomedical terms, pain is an alarm that’s trying to warn us of danger or injury – like the pain that arises when you touch a hot pan. But it’s not an infallible system. It can be trained (or mis-trained) to give us a strong pain signal even when we’re not in danger. It can also get “stuck in the ON position” – not turning off the pain even though we’ve resolved whatever the issue was.
Experimenting with ways to safely move the painful part of your body without causing pain is a useful means of retraining the nervous system to deactivate the alarm and lower its sensitivity.
Also, it’s always a good idea to move around frequently throughout your day, since a sedentary lifestyle – and the postural stress it causes – is a major contributor to back pain.
2. Heat + Topical Herbs. Another way to promote circulation and alleviate pain – and especially useful when movement is restricted or not possible – is through the application of heat and circulation-enhancing herbs. Heat application promotes dilation (opening) of blood vessels. It doesn’t have the numbing effect that cold can, but in the long run it’s a more useful treatment.
It’s especially effective when applied in combination with external herbs or essential oils of plants that also enhance circulation. Many of these can be found in our
Muscle Melt products. Some of the most popular are peppermint (or its most active constituent, menthol), eucalyptus, cinnamon, fresh ginger, and capsaicin (chili pepper).
It’s always a good idea when using a heating device to check frequently to make sure you’re not burning yourself, since sensitivity to heat may be impaired due to the pain, pain medications, and/or the external herbs.
3. Stretches + Hydration. Dehydration often plays a role in pain. The suppleness of our tissues and the free flow of – well, everything in the body – depends on water. Especially if you combine dried out muscles with a sedentary lifestyle or exertion without first warming up, you’ve got a recipe for pain. I like to have patients combine hydration with stretching, to help get the water into the affected tissues. There are lots of stretches that can help, depending on the particular nature of your back pain. These are six that tend to be the most helpful.
a. Cat-Cow. On your hands and knees, slowing alternate back and forth between a fully rounded spine and a fully arched spine. Taking a five seconds to move from one position to the other. Repeat ten times.
b. Cobra. Lying face down on the floor, place your hands palm-down under your shoulders and slowly arch your back. Hold, then slowly release back to the floor. Repeat ten times. You’re primarily using your back muscles to lift yourself, with the hands just there for stability. You don’t need to strive for a big stretch here – just enough muscle engagement to warm up the lower back without causing any pain.
c. Child’s Pose. Kneel on the floor, touch your big toes together, sit on your heels, spread your knees as wide as your hips, then lay your torso down between your thighs. Rest your arms at your sides, palms up. You can lie in this position for as long as it feels good. Breathe slowly and deeply.
d. Lying Side Twists. Lie on your back with legs extended. Bring one knee up toward your chest, then take it across your body, aiming past the opposite hip. Your knee may or may not rest on the floor. Hold for ten seconds, then come back to center and repeat. You can also try placing the knee higher and lower to direct the stretch to different parts of your back. Generally, with a high knee (even with the opposite hip, for instance) you’ll target the lowest part of the lumbar spine. With a lower knee (even with the opposite knee, for instance), you’ll target more of the upper lumbar region and lower midback.
e. Lying Glute Stretch. Lying on your back with your knees bent and your feet flat on the floor, cross your left ankle over your right knee. Then interlace your fingers to grasp your right knee (either inside the bend of the knee, holding onto the hamstrings, or – even better – grasping over the front of the knee) and pull the knee toward you. You may need to use your left elbow to press against your left knee to push it away and intensify the stretch. Make sure your left foot is extended (dorsiflexed) toward the left knee. Hold for 30 to 60 seconds, then switch sides.
f. Hamstring Wall Stretch. Lie on the floor near a flat wall. Scoot your butt as close to the wall as you can get it. Gently raise your legs and place them with unbent knees flat against the wall (scoot your butt a little bit more forward if you need to). Tight hamstrings often contribute to a tight lower back and this hamstring stretch tends to be easy on the lower back. Rest in this position for 30 to 60 seconds.
4. Breathe Through It. In TCM, our vital energy – Qi – is considered to be circulated by the breath. That is, breathing moves energy. It’s part of why we sigh when we’re stressed – or relieved. Intentionally breathing “through” a painful area can often quickly reduce pain. Imagine that you’re drawing your inhale through your back, and then exhaling the pain out through your back.
Meanwhile, practice non-resistance. Don’t fight the pain. Just for this moment, allow it to be here, stop struggling against it, and stop telling yourself something is “wrong.” In fact, see if you can even invite the pain to just be here. And breathe.
5. Visualize Movement. There are many useful visualization practices for alleviating pain. A basic place to start is to imagine movement happening in the painful part of your back. Visualize blood coursing through the area, see energy or light moving in and out of your back, “watch” your cells shutting down the inflammation, making repairs, and soothing irritated tissues. Inhale white, healing light, and exhale dark, stagnant pain out of the area. Find a visualization that works for you. I sincerely hope these techniques work for you and that very soon you’re pain free and getting back to what you love.
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
P.S. If you’re looking for more support for living pain free, we invite you to join us for an online mini-course my wife, Briana, and I are leading on how to give a relaxing, pain-relieving massage. Briana and I have over 40 years of combined professional experience giving massage and training teams of massage therapists. Massage has so many benefits: It relieves tight and painful muscles and joints. It measurably decreases stress. It strengthens immune function. It improves sleep quality. It promotes better circulation. It reduces fatigue and improves mood. And it facilitates faster recovery from injury and surgery. We should all be taking advantage of it! Since that's not possible due to the pandemic, why not learn how to give each other massages at home?
Unlike massage trainings for people starting a new career, this course is geared toward non-professionals who want to learn the fundamentals of good massage - even if you don't have a massage table or other special equipment. We'll teach you the most effective ways to release tight muscles and promote stress relief. We'll share ways to use your body so that you can work deeper and for longer without getting tired or sore. And we'll explain some things we wish were taught in massage schools that make for a better overall experience for both the giver and receiver.
Learning massage skills is a gift that will provide a lifetime of connection, relaxation, and effective pain relief. If you’ve ever thought, “I’d love to massage my partner, but my hands hurt and I can’t do it for more than a few minutes,” or, “I want to give a good massage but I just don't know what I'm doing”, this is exactly the course you need to gain confidence in your ability to provide a great therapeutic massage. Join us live to have your specific massage questions addressed.
And if you’d like to learn a bunch more about managing your own pain – including both Eastern and Western approaches, psychological tools, special acupressure points, guided meditations, pain relieving herbs, and altogether the most comprehensive course in the world for getting out of pain (I made that up but it’s probably true!), check out Live Pain Free. We’ve gotten only rave reviews from users.
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As a teenager I spent a lot of time in the tunnels of Boston’s subway system. They were brightly tiled in red, blue, green, and orange, and there was a smell that I’ll never forget – not terrible, not pleasant – that poured forth in gusts as a train approached. I sat on benches with my head down, doing homework or reading the liner notes of albums, and generally nobody bothered me.
Except the evangelists, that is. I was often told that I needed to accept Jesus as my lord and savior – or else burn in hell. One guy had a sandwich board that listed all the reasons you could go to hell – rock ’n’ roll, masturbation, homosexuality, fornication, socialism, feminism, atheism, etc. – and he liked to give me the stink eye as I walked by. Sometimes I’d run into the Hare Krishnas, who told me that my whole way of life was wrong and tried to get me to come to their temple. And at home, we were visited weekly by Jehovah’s Witnesses who were determined to win us over despite being told repeatedly that we already had a religion.
Religion felt like a heavy inheritance, and these exchanges made me averse to being told what to believe – so averse that I threw the baby out with the spiritual bathwater and turned my back on it altogether. Eventually I was able to recognize that the spiritual connection – which religion aims to facilitate – doesn’t require a religious structure, and it certainly doesn’t require dogma. But even years later, having studied yoga, qi gong, reiki, acupuncture, Daoism, and other practices that offer a non-dogmatic approach to spiritual enrichment, I still found it difficult to speak openly to students and patients about spirituality because I didn’t want to come across like those evangelists – pushy, judgmental, and condescending.
However, I had seen firsthand the positive impact of a spiritual practice – and it’s supported by scientific research: people with a spiritual practice tend to have less stress, greater resilience during challenging times, more positive engagement with community, better health, and a longer life. So, little by little, I began delicately broaching the subject. I touched on it in some articles, and then Briana and I covered it a bit more explicitly in the book The Well Life.
Meanwhile, I observed more and more cases where the presence of a spiritual practice was instrumental in a patient’s recovery. It would be untrue to say that people can’t be happy or can’t overcome challenges without a spiritual practice, but for those who find it difficult to achieve lasting happiness or who seem beset by one challenge after another, a spiritual practice often makes the difference. The same is often the case for those who feel their achievements are somehow hollow, or who constantly feel that something is missing – that emptiness may be the absence of a spiritual dimension, a means by which one’s individual pursuits are connected to the whole.
Finally, a few years ago, we decided to stop beating around the bush. We wrote a book called Rituals for Transformation – a 108-day process for awakening this dimension of your life. Briana doesn't really have any hang-ups around this topic, but I was a bit nervous about releasing it. Even though it’s not a religious book, I thought it might push some of those buttons. After all, religion has been not only a structure for spiritual connection, but also an instrument for political control, discrimination, and genocide – and these associations aren’t easily erased from our collective consciousness. But part of our aim with this book is to help people see that spirituality is the baby that many of us threw out because we didn’t resonate with the bathwater. Your spiritual life is yours to define, and spirituality is available to everyone – religious and nonreligious, theist and atheist.
When you have an experience of this dimension, whether through prayer or mindfulness or a spontaneous connection with nature that transcends everyday consciousness, it’s funny to consider that we talk about wanting to give a sliver of our lives to it, or that it’s “available” to us if we’d like some, like, “Sprinkles are available for your ice cream,” because the reality is that it’s always here, and it encompasses the whole of your life.
But a little is enough, so we were careful not to make Rituals for Transformation so ambitious as to be difficult to complete. I remember my first qi gong teacher explaining that although we were beginning with exercises that would only take 20 minutes of each day, the change in consciousness they’d produce would begin to spread into the rest of our lives. She was right – it wasn’t long before I started to be aware of my energy and below-the-surface interactions with the world, even when I was just walking down a street or eating or having a conversation.
I’d love to hear about your experience with religion and/or spirituality and how this practice has supported you – or, if you don’t have a spiritual practice, what has gotten in the way.
Be well,
Peter
[post_title] => Ditch the Dogma, Keep the Spirituality
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