Blog Archives

MS WITH ATTITUDE

3/31/2016

How do we live our MS with attitude?

One way that works for me is the DDP Yoga exercise/food/community.
[Warning, this is a plug. If you need a set of DVDs that comes with an on-line community of people who are making a life change that includes diet and exercise and positive thinking, DDP Yoga is ideal.]

DDP Yoga targets 3 areas of health—exercise, diet and positivity. It also is big on community, which keeps me on the straight and narrow.

We all know these are important, but here are studies that support what we know.

Positivity helps healing (http://bbh.hhdev.psu.edu/media/bbh/lab/ stress-health/files/Sin-Graham-Engeland-daily-positive-events-inflammation-2014.pdf).
Diet and exercise influence repair of neurons in the brain (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3225186/).
Community impacts health (http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/ article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1000316)

I found DDP Yoga online early on in my MS experience, which was a low time for me. I could feel my body slipping away—with MS and with the blues—no exercise, more comfort food—something needed to change.

Though I was really skeptical, I tried the system out.

It worked. I, of course, backslid. Now I am working my way back into shape with the support of the DDP MS group. We are doing a month-long (or longer) challenge: exercise and healthy diet.

I asked these friends what they do to keep in touch with positive energy while toting MS around in their lives. Here is what two people told me--

I stay happy and positive because of my family and friends. I am a single mom and approach life and work the same way---a smile on my face and joy in my heart. I am truly blessed to have the life I have and plan to enjoy it for as long as I can.
My idea—do something you enjoy, whatever that may be. When I was younger I was a paramedic at an amusement park. There was a sign on one of the fences from the back lot before you went out into the park that said "Smile, you are on stage." I have followed that philosophy my whole career. When I walk into work, I leave my troubles behind. I am a manager of a multi-specialty medical clinic at Kaiser. That means I set the tone of the building. So, I smile because I am on stage. I have taught one of my physicians "fake it til you make it." If you go through the emotions/motions long enough they will become a habit.

… and…

My philosophy comes down to two things. One is my faith and the other is family.
1) Family...if I don't take care of myself who's going to take care of them? It keeps me motivated to stay on track with my health.
2) Faith...I can do all things through Christ in me. Keeps me strong and focused.
With that said I remind myself of a few things that has been said to me.
"Get busy living or get busy dying." I'm going to live my life to get the most out of it.
"You don't know what you don't know." Look if doctors had all the answers they wouldn't call it a practice. I look outside the box see if there's something else helping other people and I give it a try for myself. That's how I found DDPyoga or should I say it found me. Either way, this works.
"Each day is either going to be a positive day or negative day, it's my choice. Whichever one I choose will take the same amount of energy."
And my new one...."If I say I can or if I say I can't, I'm right." Thank You DDP for that one.
By the way........
Diet
Diet
DIET
Get the book... The Multiple Sclerosis Diet Book by Roy Swank. It works hand-in-hand with DDP yoga.

This group, and the DDP Yoga regimen both energize my day.

You may find your own group. Definitely you will find your own way, but this group and exercise plan is one that works for loads people, you may like it.

Sending love,
Rosalie

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What I learned

3/24/2016

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These weeks I am sharing ideas that people who have MS are sending me—how to experience positivity in spite of MS.

Two of these people are like most of my MS friends--they live in such a way that MS is not their main ‘story’ –but these two shared a particular method of meeting the blues. When life challenges rage, they step back and let the storm happen.

One person says “When I get blue, I pull out my Pity Party Box. It's decorated on the outside with lots of encouraging reminders and pictures. Inside are love notes, prayers, bubble wrap, paper dolls, a crown, false eyelashes, lots of toys, and a CD (mine is Patsy Cline's Greatest Hits). When the music's over - so is the Pity Party.”

Here is another friend’s version of the Pity Party Solution. “When I am really discouraged, I just let myself get blue for a night. By the next morning I can’t stand myself that way, so I just stop being down…and that is my last trick.”

Last week I tried this. I didn’t soldier on when I got discouraged, but instead tried my friends’ method.

The result? I learned (began to learn) that challenging trait—vulnerability.

I am not vulnerable very often (not if I can help it!), but this time I told my family I was having a tough day.

I got an answering email. “I want to make it go away, which I can’t, but I love you!” Then, true to my family, the presents came--it was my birthday, I forgot to mention that.

Everything was better after that.

What part of me got her needs answered? Was it the greedy 7-year-old inner child who loves presents who got distracted, or was it the 7-year-old inner child who wanted her family who felt loved?

I don’t know, but I do know that everything got better that day and it started with allowing myself to be vulnerable.

I don’t often let my vulnerability show. But sharing my struggles—and having that met with affection—taught me something.

To my surprise it opened me to more joy than my stiff upper lip would have allowed.

The psychologist Brene Brown says that without having enough courage to be vulnerable that we deny ourselves the capacity for joy. The key to living this way, Dr. Brown says, is learning to see that vulnerability is courage. With this perception we are able to show up in our lives in an open way that is scary for many people, she says (http://spiritualityhealth.com/articles/bren%C3%A9-brown-how-vulnerability-holds-key-emotional-intimacy).

Being able to see vulnerability as courage—I am so impressed with this.

No, I am not a hugely brave person, and I don’t easily allow my vulnerability to show.

Like my two friends, I don’t plan on having a lot of sessions with the blues. Not if I have a choice. But this little experiment with giving the blues a voice, giving them a say in my life, even just for a little while, taught me something, and I will remember it. Being openly vulnerable gave me something I can’t give myself—the affectionate support of others.

This leads me to another gift for all of us when the motto“Keep Calm and Carry On” isn’t enough. That is, loving kindness meditation.

Like the kindness that I got from my family, loving kindness is a way of saying to ourselves that we don’t require people, ourselves included, to come across as strong or perfect in order to be lovable.
Ten minutes of loving kindness meditation has immediate and also long term results (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3122474/).

This includes improvement of MS symptoms (http://www.natuionalmssociety.
(org/ Chapters/MAM/Services-and-Support/Services/Research-Study-Meditation, http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/yourlife/mind-soul/spirituality/2010-10-15-meditation-yoga_N.htm).

Here is a you-tube explanation of this kind of meditation (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zi7-eS058cg) and here is a guided meditation (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlW0VHupTFI).
My birthday gift to your inner 7-year-old!

With love, Rosalie

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To Choose Health or Not

3/17/2016

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Choosing Health

Of course, if you asked any of us, we would choose good health. Of course.

But—is choosing positivity an obvious choice? It is if deciding our response to life’s bumps and curves makes an impact on our health. Studies are showing this relationship.

There is evidence that negative emotions are associated with poorer health but what is just being discovered is that positive emotions connect to the work of cytokines to create an environment of healing (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25603133).

Why do we care about cytokines?

Because there is evidence that these chemicals drive the inflammation in the which means they play a major role in the cause of multiple sclerosis (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/
04/150429101034.htm).

These studies say there is a biological bridge between positivity and promoting a healing environment in our bodies.

People with MS know first-hand the determination it takes to not fall into a victim role of negativity with this disease.

Below are some more go-to ideas from friends who choose how they live with MS. I am blessed to know enough people so that all of the ideas don’t fit into one or two blogs! I will keep sending them.

These may be ideas that you have heard—the difference is that these ideas are part of the life choice of people who are living positivity!

One person makes it a choice:
I choose. I'm driving this bus! I'll feel how I decide to feel, not how my world (whether inner or outer) is tempting me to feel right now this minute. And since I'm driving the bus, I can turn the bus in whatever direction I need:
I choose to be grateful.
I choose to be cheerful.
I choose to smile.
I choose to appreciate.
I choose to have a cup of tea and a cookie.
I choose (fill in the blank).
I can also choose NOT to...
.... be unpleasant.
.... get discouraged.
.... let MS define my existence.
.... eat that comfort cupcake.
.... read articles titled "How to choose a wheelchair." Not this year, anyway.

When another friend notices that she is beginning to feel down, chooses to create a different focus, like we do with little children who need a distraction. She says:
I GET OUTSIDE OF MYSELF TO DISTRACT MYSELF , when I do have the blues, I try to listen the liveliest, most cheerful music I can find. Music alters my mood better than anything. I try to find something funny enough to give me a good "belly laugh:" a funny book or story, a comedian on TV, a good YouTube video (I hope that's not an oxymoron!), or one of my husband's stupid jokes. Then, I try to spend time with positive, upbeat people. Nothing causes a blue mood to balloon into something bigger than negative people who whine and complain every time they open their mouths. Oh, and I mustn't forget... get outside. Look at a flower, watch a lizard sun himself or a couple of squirrels play chase, look at the clouds in a bright blue sky during the day or twinkling stars in a black velvet sky at night, see how many different leaf shapes you can find, close your eyes to better feel the warmth of the sun or the touch of the wind on your face, listen to bird calls. I guess all of this is to say I try to get outside myself, to distract myself from whatever it is that is bothering me. If I can get away from my inner turmoil for a while, it's easier to gain some perspective and regain control of my emotions.

Why do we gravitate toward positive people? Something inside of us finds them fun to be around, and intuitively knows that they are part of a healing environment.

These friends, who choose positivity, are my teachers. They show me how we can choose to be that way, for ourselves.
T

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The Teacher Named MS

3/10/2016

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The Dalai Lama often repeats this: “Your enemy is your teacher.”

His point is that enemies, much more than friends, give us a chance to develop patience and tolerance. Good friends don’t always make us learn these things, but enemies do. They are our teachers.

This applies to MS. MS is our enemy. The Dalai Lama would say that MS is our teacher.

This month I have wondered about that--what have I learned with MS that I might have missed otherwise? I am keeping a list. Today what I am thinking about is resilience--how we learn it through our enemy MS.

MS threatens us by changing how others—and we ourselves—see ourselves. Here is an example. If I become a Syrian refugee, even though I might have been a carpenter or a high school teacher, my new identity is Syrian refugee.   MS is that way.   When we first get the MS diagnosis we have to learn how to hold on to our ‘before-identify’ while coping with a new situation.

One thing this ability is called is resilience. MS is the great teacher of resilience.

If we don’t learn it, we are more likely to join many other people who have MS and who experience depression—which is three times more likely with people with MS than with others.

Resilience is hugely important to learn. A recent meta-analysis showed that successfully dealing with psychological issues has a positive effect on our symptoms (http://www.msdiscovery.org/news/news_briefs/15648-power-positive-thinking).

We need resilience—not only for our character, not only for our emotional well-being, but because it is also physically helpful.

That’s why I turned to friends with MS to ask them—“How do you keep your positive sense of life?”

The answers aren’t all new to me—but these aren’t just good ideas, they are lived by people who are fun, creative, who are living lives that are unique and strong. There is a vast difference between knowing good ideas and seeing them lived out—like the difference between having a Mozart piece sitting on my piano and actually hearing it played by an artist.

Here is my beginning collection of fabulous ideas for living with resilience after MS enters--
*          *          *          *          *          *
One person puts MS in perspective: “I think of the other people in this world who have to deal with so much more. I just keep plugging along, with the Grace of God.”

Gratitude is a choice people make, such as “…sitting outside my new house, marveling at God's beauty, feeling blessed because I am part of it,” as one person puts it. Another says, “I am grateful and blessed and I leave it in God’s hands to take care of me. I am thankful to have a name for symptoms that have been with me for years.” Another, “I’m thankful for everything in my life, regardless of what’s responsible for the things and people I have.”

Two people refuse to let MS be theirs. They are adamant! “I won’t let my mind think that I have MS, I won’t accept it!”

Another puts it this way: “I never call it mine. I hear people say, ‘me…’ won’t even put it in an example in the same sentence. Nope. Not mine, don’t want it. I’ll say I was diagnosed with it, but I refuse to own it, nor will I allow it to own me.”

She adds that she finds that family and friends are her great support. “I also rely on my family, my husband and my children, who are my closest friends. My son and my daughter are both strong shoulders when I need someone to lean on. It’s hard sometimes to tell them I’m not feeling well, but they cope—and with their smiles and humor they make me feel better.   My friends are my other source of strength and I appreciate them more than they know.”

MS is a great teacher and resiliency is only one of the lessons, but it is huge to learn. Next week -- more ideas from people who are definitely walking the walk!

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Inimitably Quirky

3/3/2016

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A friend told me about Jimmie and Maggi, a quirky couple that used to come into the artsy gift store where she works. Jimmie was always donned in kilts and tattoos that went everywhere. My friend and her buddy the store owner loved the sight.

Jimmie and Maggi inspired superlative words--they were distinct, they were individual, they were inimitable.

Whether you like kilts and tattoos or not, isn’t the idea of expressing our quirky uniqueness delightful. That’s what Jimmie and Maggi represented to my friend.

Then the couple became the victims of bullying. The harassment went beyond words to being accused of drug peddling.

They didn’t do that stuff, but who would believe it—they looked so counter culture. People who live quirky lives are probably more at risk for being seen outside the law than people in 3-piece suits, no matter what The Big Short, that Oscar-winning movie, tells us about legality and morality.

Jimmie and Maggi committed suicide.

When I heard the news it was a huge loss to me—though I had never even met them.
I hate to lose quirky people in this world.

It isn’t just the unfairness of bullying, which is horrible, it is that quirky people say to me that our individual expression—whether it is understood or admired by the world or not—is okay.

Quirky people make room for the rest of us to be who we are beneath our civilized persona.

What does this have to do with MS?
Maybe nothing.

What does our expression of life have to do with the fact of a bullying?
Maybe more.

Let me ask this question. Is MS a bully? Does MS threaten to say something about us that isn’t fair—or true: that we aren’t somehow as okay as we were when we didn’t wear those symptoms like tattoos that go everywhere?

Maybe fighting against being put inside that MS box called “OH YOU HAVE MS SO YOU MUST NOT BE AS OKAY AS BEFORE” is the gift we give ourselves when we find ourselves limited by how our symbolic kilts and tattoos—disguised as our symptoms and diagnoses—are viewed by unfriendly judges.

Andrew Weil pictures emotional resiliency as a rubber band. This is what he means. If we are resilient, no matter how stretched we are by difficulties, we will be able to return to who we are.

To do that, to always return to our essence no matter what hits us, we have to know that our truth is unique—and important. We must understand that our expression is essential, even if others judge it to be no more important than kilts and tattoos.

The fact of being who we are is precious to the world, just as fact of Jim and Maggie and their quirkiness is priceless to all of us who suspect that we are not the perfectly tailored gray 3-piece suits of Wall Street.

It doesn’t seem important to be quirky. It seems more valuable to have an impressive job, to garner money and prestige.

But quirky is essential.

Quirky is the unsung hero: the poetry, the color, the texture and music of our life journey. Voltaire said it this way: the superfluous is a very necessary thing.

We are more than 3-piece suits—we are unique. That uniqueness is what our superfluous qualities express.

Quirky is the banquet of life, and, as Auntie Mame explained it, life is a banquet but most poor suckers are starving themselves.

May each of us live beyond whatever our personal rendition of Life's Curve Ball is. May we bask in our own expression of kilts and tattoos in a world that mistakes perfection for 3-piece suits in the color gray.

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MS WITH ATTITUDE

What I learned

To Choose Health or Not

The Teacher Named MS

Inimitably Quirky

Author--
Rosalie Richards

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MS WITH ATTITUDE

What I learned

To Choose Health or Not

​The Teacher Named MS

Inimitably Quirky

Author--​Rosalie Richards

Archives

Categories

The Teacher Named MS

Author--
Rosalie Richards