What is Wrong With Everyone

In my experience - and I am just one little case study - American medicine has it all wrong, much like American Zen.  In both cases, they're really good at some things but miss the big picture.  In the case of Western medicine, it's been preoccupied with fixing people and only now starting to think about how to be healthy.

For big-picture medicine, turn to Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) or Ayurveda or, I suspect, many other native healing systems.  It is the gift of what we call primitive people that they don't think in terms of the laboratory or the gold-standard study* as Western science does.

*The gold-standard study in medicine can be defined as a study that follows specific protocol,  indicates correlations and possibilities, and concludes by saying more study is needed.

What is that big picture? Context. We are not isolated individuals. We live in environments.

You sometimes saw contextual medicine in action in the TV series House.  Dr. House was a radical misfit who valued his intuition and often sent his team out to search someone's house for toxins and secrets.  He watched family interactions and quizzed family for information. All that stuff was more interesting to him, and the viewing audience, than lab results.

Our context right here now is Weather. It is actually everyone's context, no matter how much time you spend indoors.  Here in mid-America it is high summer - mid-August - and this brings about different problems than mid-winter, which is happening right now in Australia where my sister lives.  (In mid-winter in Australia you actually have to use your space heater!) And there sure is a lot of weather, drought here, flooding there, as if some climate change is happening.

Weather affects people differently depending on their constitutions.  Both TCM and Ayurveda see human beings as made of elements. And so the elements affect them.

In Ayurveda I clock in as a Vata-Pitta, or air-fire person.  The fire in my temperament is easily disturbed.  And oh, August, season of too much ripeness, as you know if you grow tomatoes or zucchini.  August is Too Much. It's not just the heat or humidity, it's the light.  Lately here we've been getting a little relief with small batches of autumn days down from the North Pole or Canada.

Canadian air is nice.  It is fresh and coolish and breezy. But uh-oh, wind is really not good for Vatas, who are made mostly of air. In Chinese medicine there is actually a disorder called "wind devil."  I relate to that.  To prevent it, we are advised to cover the head and neck, that is, wear what my mother called a babushka. This makes you look like an old lady even if you're only 12, not that I care, as I am 71 11/12 years old.  If I did care I could get a special hat.  They even come in Desert Sunrise. It's a thought.

I notice a lot of fire people looking haggard these days, running around in the heat and the noonday sun. So this post is a sort of public service announcement.  If you don't know whether you're air, fire, or earth, Banyan Botanicals has a little test you can take that may indicate more study is needed. They will also sell you various oils and things, which are helpful to me me (I am not paid for this).

They will also advise you on your diet, since you are composed, in part, of what you eat and drink.  Bear in mind that alcohol is sometimes called firewater.  Yes, it is a heating food.  My own diet at the moment includes nothing hot and spicy, no raw onion or garlic, more cucumber and peppermint tea. I have tested this empirically. It is interesting to me that these ancient folk traditions see mood disorders as an imbalance of fire.  Worth investigating, since Western medicine is notoriously poor at managing them.

Boredom Ointment

Self-portrait in orange shoelaces

The Vermont Country Catalog came today, and I was leafing through, looking at the supplements they offer us old people - this company is all about nostalgia, and easing old age.  There is a supplement for vertigo, for instance, that you smell to relax your anxiety and help you focus.  It contains lavender and some other essential oils; I approve.  It's fun to think of really old people (older than me) learning to use these hippy-dippy things that came out of the seventies.

I like aromatherapy, which is a science built on the oral tradition. I have a collection of scents I can use to bring me down a little or cheer me up or just relax me.

On the same page in the catalog I came across what I thought was Boredom Ointment.  What?  No, it's Boreoleum Ointment.  Which looks a lot like Vicks Vaporub for your nose.  But I already have a classy Ayurvedic nasal oil from Banyan Botanicals.  Ayurveda is basically another folk-wisdom tradition.

But, Boredom ointment!  If only there were a cream you could dab on and immediately feel interested in yourself and your surroundings.  I googled images for Bored student and got well over 2 million hits.  This seems like a lot, and accurately reflects what my own public schooling was like, but it's only 1% of the number of  hits for Britney.  Why Britney?  I don't know.  I didn't even know  she was the Queen of Pop until I looked her up. 

Anyway, this morning something led me to see that her Facebook page has over 2 million "likes".    Why is that number taunting me?  Because mine has 1,999,62 less, unless it's taken a huge growth spurt since this morning.  I asked why on my personal Facebook page, and haven't had any helpful answers, except that maybe I have too much time on my hands.  I think this difference is a comment on human nature, in fact. I'm a fun person (see photo above), but not as much fun as Britney, I guess.

Actually, these subjects - boredom and Britney- have found themselves side-by-side in my sprawling brain, and pulling weird, anomalous things together is what we artists do.  Britney is not an artist and Buddhist blogger, but an entertainer.  Entertainment is excitement, and seems to fill that big space of being bored or discontented with life or downright unhappy.  It pays much better than art.

Is discontentment the same as boredom?  I think it is, in a way.  There are some writings on boredom in the massive body of work left behind by Chogyam Trungpa, whose page is surprisingly small, with some 21,000 hits, though he was quite entertaining in his lifetime. 

To my surprise, there is no page for Ocean of Dharma, which sends me quotes like the one below from him.  Britney may be the Queen of Pop, but his honorific is Rinpoche, a Tibetan term for a Buddhist teacher which means "precious jewel". 

“Boredom is part of the discipline of meditation practice. This type of boredom is cool boredom, refreshing boredom. Boredom is necessary and you have to work with it. It is constantly very sane and solid, and very boring at the same time. But it’s refreshing boredom. The discipline then becomes part of one’s daily expression of life. Such boredom seems to be absolutely necessary. Cool boredom.” Chogyam Trungpa

Death is Nature's Way of Telling You to Slow Down

Here I am, wondering whether to call the kidney doctor and let him know about this breakout of cold sores, which Mayo Clinic says can be serious in immune-suppressed people.  But I've had this before since the transplant.  Maybe see how the day goes.  It is uncomfortable and my nostril is affected on that side, and it isn't responding to l-Lysine the way it usually does.  Boy, I would hate to have the shingles flare back up.

Stress.  It elevates cortisol in your body, which then gets sort of exhausted and isn't available to fight infections. Ayurvedic medicine understands this as excess Pitta, which is, roughly, heat or fire unbalanced in your constitution.  I am a Pitta-Vata, an air person whose fire gets aggravated by lots of change.  I also "have" fibromyalgia, which you can feel respond to the kind of big weather change we've been getting, from way too hot to freeze warnings.  And too bright. Here's an old picture of me in the blue sunglasses I like to wear when it's like this.  I have a better haircut now, except that I need a haircut and my beloved hairdresser is on vacation.  Stress

Right away I found this online -

Reduce Pitta-aggravating foods such as sour tasting foods, pungent spices and nuts.
Eat lots of sweet juicy fruits--they are both cooling and cleansing.
Soak a handful of raisins in water overnight. Drain and eat them the next morning. 

I don't mind that. I remember now that I have a recipe for balancing tea, must do that, too.  In fact, I have two Ayurveda cookbooks.  What I have already done was the six healing breaths I got years ago from yoga teacher Kit Spahr - the link is both to the description of how to do this sound-breath exercise, which is derived from Taoist practice and to her blog.  I wish I could do yoga with her now, but I am just barely able to get up off the floor these days, and have a bad knee, ankle, sciatic thing - enjoy yoga while you can.  I still do stretches though, and I learned to relax. Usually.

Nothing for relaxing like sitting meditation, resting in the breath.  Did that, too.  Otherwise, I get it, I need to slow down and stay cool.

You don't want to know all about the stress, do you?  It has to do with aging parents suddenly in crisis in more than one way.  Even poor Tashi is feeling it, so I really must calm down. They say it's the natural way, first the parents get old and die, then the children get old and die.  It's still hard, and a real challenge to practice.

Pissed-off Buddha

Well, this was weird - I don't know what key I might have hit, but it erased the paragraph I had written.  I'm not even more pissed off about it - just kind of interested how awful the hours of fire are in the month of Thunder Moon (which just passed full).

I had started to more or less apologize for the vulgarism, but explain that "pissed off" identifies exactly the mood I am in.  I am mentioning this in an educational way.  I like to alert people to how much we are affected by this weather.  I'll just bypass the unease we all have about the many weather disasters happening, the big drought in the southwest US, the fires, the heat waves. We have the feeling we don't know what's about to happen, which is exactly right.

August is a horrid month for many sensitive people, worse than February, and this year July is acting like August, except for the harvests, which are being killed off by the heat and drought.  Of course I'm talking US here, and I know some readers are not in our latitude, is it? Not in our climate. Hello Great Britain - you have your own problems now, but a marvelous scandal to take your mind off them (Goodbye, Rupert Murdoch).  August is high summer, which means the yang that brings summer in is decaying.  This is awful. Add to that the truth of the ancient medical theories that the hours of the day are ruled by different organs and elements in succession. What that means here is that roughly 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. are The Hours of Fire. (I wish I had a really wild font for that.)

Fire is an apt description for the high energy, the anger and restlessness and pain this can bring to us. Maybe not you. If you're an earth or water person, you may feel more energized, brighter, maybe you benefit from some fire.  But I am a Vata-Pitta (Ayurvedic system), air-fire.  Mostly Vata, the thin-boned artistic type, which is easily unbalanced and inflamed by getting too "hot."  Yow.

The truth of this came home to me half an hour ago as I sat in the cool dim (which I cultivate) at  my dining room table doing my weekly pills.  This is about a one-hour job demanding concentration.  It always generates tasks like seeing a doctor or getting a refill or updating the med list.  I did not have a bad attitude about it when I began.  But then I noticed I was mad at someone who was not in the room.  You know what I mean.  Then at something that might happen. What had happened to my quiet, pleasant mood?  What time is it? I asked.  Ten-thirty, Tom said.  I knew it!  Fire rising.

I just feel that part of my task in life is to elevate Westerner's awareness of the energies all around us.  We are deeply conditioned to believe we are individuals who determine our own destiny and attitude.  Well, what nonsense. We are connected profoundly to other energies of many kinds. You know this.  You've been places that felt all wrong.  If you were the scapegoat in an alcoholic family, you may have noticed that you felt depressed around the group, as if subtly you were being beaten - and you were, by their mental energies.  (Why would the electric storm of the brain stop at your skin?) If you've done spiritual practice, and maybe if you haven't, you've been around people you feel good around, people you might say have a nice presence. And then there's more interesting psychic experiences, which almost everyone has had at some time.

So, beware of high summer and especially the hours of fire.  They appear again at 10 pm to peak at midnight. Alcohol intensifies fire, no matter if it's in a frozen drink or not. Bright lights, loud music, a bunch of fired-up people - these things make it more and more.  I know some people seek that out.  Pay money to be in exciting fiery places.  I know.  I just hope they're not my grandson.

Meanwhile, if you want to stay cooler, avoid spicy foods and midday sun.  Keep your blinds drawn. Wear your blue sunglasses.  Be cool.
[The photo is me wearing mine. It was taken several years ago. I have a better haircut now.]
~~~~~
 
p.s.  Hello, Emma and Lola. Every person that joins this site encourages me to keep on being crazy honest.

Barely Managing Time

My friend Kit says that the Ayurvedic tradition holds that when people have a strong fire element in their constitution (pitta), they tend to want to manage things.  I seem to be primarily vata-pitta, vata being air-space, typical artist, and pitta that streak of fire that emerges when vata is blown out of balance, which seems to be easy for me.

What is it about the week?  Monday so busy.  Tuesday frantically trying to get done what needed to be done on Monday.  Wednesday, they call it "hump day."  You begin gliding downhill. Water the plants. Earth, good for me, grounding.