Bringing Light Into The Longest Nights of the Year
This is the Holiday Season and for many people it is filled with joy and reunions, but for other people the idealized images that surround them on TV, social media, and in the shops tends to exagerate a deep loneliness and isolation. What can we do to bring some light into this world? First, I think is to get in touch with our hearts.
Scientists thought they fully understood the functions of the cerebellum, an ancient part of the brain that is also found in fish, lizards and mammals, so mostly they but it in a conceptual box. It has long been thought to make sensory-motor functions, such as walking, smoother and faster.
According to Dr. Jeremy Schmahmann at Harvard, “Isn’t only involved in sensory-motor function, it’s involved in everything we do.” “It’s been woefully understudied,”
When the “baby boomer” women hit menopause we refused to sit in the back of the room and hide our sweat. We educated ourselves and applied what we learned. I hope we will also look at the looming Alzheimers threat and refuse to fade into a nursing home without doing everything we can to maintain and even improve our health. There is so much doom and gloom around Alzheimer’s disease that its easy to assume there’s nothing we can do.
What Do You Expect?
IN 1981, Ellen Langer and her colleagues drove two groups of men in their seventies and eighties to an old monastery in New Hampshire that was decorated to look like it was 22 years earlier. Photos from the 50’s lined the walls and shows from that era played on the TV. In her words, “These guys were old. Not like 80 is the new 60 old. Some of them used walkers.” They were also treated like younger men.
Travel Tips
There’s an old song that comes to mind as I write this that goes something like, “Be prepared is the Boy Scouts marching song. Be prepared…”
Traveling during the holidays can be a time of shared meals, fun and adventure, but there is also so much that is out of your control. Following a few simple tips can make the difficult times much easier to manage.
If you are flying or if you have special dietary needs always travel with food.
Loss: the fact or process of losing something or someone.
“avoiding loss of time”
synonyms: mislaying, misplacement, forgetting
Language is incredibly powerful. Often when something is lost there is the possibility and even hope that it will one day it will be found. Unfortunately this is often the case with weight-loss. Where did it go? Is it playing hide-and-seek? Will I find it again on my thighs,
“Kaela closed her eyes and felt her breath slowly moving up and down with the rhythm of the butterfly’s wings… Up and down – in and out. Awake or asleep, happy or sad, her breath was moved by some unseen hand, up and down, like the wings of a butterfly softly stroking her heart.”
~ Excerpt From: Barbara A. Mahler. “The Hole in the Sky.” Sea Turtle Publishing.