Tag: healing

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Winter Is Kidney Time

CDC, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Winter is a difficult season. Nothing works well in the extreme cold – including us. Doors that are usually quiet, now screech horribly. Cars stutter and take forever to warm up. The ground itself is no longer trustworthy and can upend you in seconds. It takes longer to get out of the house because of all the extra layers you have to put on, and everything you touch feels taut, like it’s on the verge of shattering.

How can you ensure your winter months are spent in greater equanimity? Well, if you follow Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) theory, you should take this time to strengthen your kidneys. According to TCM, winter is kidney time. This means that, if your kidneys are weak, you will not handle winter as well. On the other hand, winter is also an excellent time to take care of your kidneys and try to heal them, so there is opportunity here as well.

Why is winter particularly taxing for your kidneys? Well, for one thing, your kidneys strongly dislike the cold. Older, retired people know this well. As their kidneys age and weaken, they can’t manage the cold as easily and prefer to spend their winters in a warmer climate. Meanwhile, children with their young and healthy kidneys barely even notice the cold and can play outdoors for hours.

Other signs of weakened kidneys? Well, your kidneys are located in your lower back, so this means that if your kidneys are weak, you will have a tendency towards lower back discomfort and pain. It’s not just all the snow shovelling which causes this; there is usually an underlying weakness that contributes.

Your kidneys are partnered with your urinary bladder, so frequent urination, weak urine flow, or incontinence are additional signs. A healthy kidneys and bladder have the ability to pull calcium out of your urine so it can be stored in your bones. So, when your kidneys become weak, osteoporosis is another result, as well as weak nails and loosened teeth.

Other signs and symptoms include weak legs, and weak or painful knees. Your complexion will tend to be a bright white (indicating cold), and there may be dark shadows or baggy areas underneath your eyes. There will also be a tendency towards edema, particularly in the lower legs, as well as loose stools. If you have just one or two of these symptoms, you don’t necessarily have weak kidneys. However, the more of these symptoms you have, the more likely it is that you have some strengthening to do.

The effects of weakened kidneys aren’t just physical; they can also show up in your emotions. Someone whose kidneys are weak will tend to be more fearful, and suffer from anxiety attacks. They will feel more apprehensive, panic easily, and tend to be suspicious and distrustful. With enough exposure to these kinds of feelings, a sense of inferiority and inadequacy is also common, along with low self-esteem.

These feelings of fear and inadequacy are a double-edged sword. They are not just signs of weakened kidneys; they can be a source of kidney weakness as well, if felt for a long enough period of time. People with chronic illnesses, who feel fear and inadequacy in spades, will have a tendency towards kidney weakness for this reason. All illnesses, if experienced for a long enough period of time, will eventually make their way into your kidneys.

The kidneys house the will and are the source of our willpower. Therefore, if your kidneys are strong, you will be able to set goals easily and follow them through. On the other hand, if your kidneys are weak, you will tend to be easily discouraged and led off course. You will drop projects before they are finished, and lack the drive to continue with them.

So, what can you do? How can you strengthen your kidneys? Well, prevention is part of the cure. Make sure that your lower back area is well protected against the cold, particularly during the winter months. Please, no bared mid-riffs! In Japan, people traditionally wear a haramaki around their mid-section. This is a band of soft, stretchy cotton that keeps the lower back and digestive organs warm, so that blood can continue circulating well and the body remains strong.

To further protect your kidneys, you should avoid creating internal cold too. This means, no cold foods or drinks. Drink warm teas, eat your food well-cooked rather than raw, and avoid cold indulgences, like ice cream. Tropical fruits also tend to have a cold energy inside your body and are best avoided, especially during the winter months. These foods would include; citrus fruits like oranges, lemons and limes, as well as melons, and bananas.

Warming spices, like cinnamon, fenugreek, black pepper, and cardamom invigorate the kidneys and help them work better. Additionally, warming herbs, like eucommia bark, ashwagandha root, celery seed, cordyceps, morinda root, and Japanese teasel root can strengthen your kidneys. But be careful! Your kidneys also dislike becoming too dry, so moistening kidney tonics like goji berries, prepared rehmannia root, and shatavari root are best included with any kidney formula.

To preserve your kidney strength, it is also important to avoid excessive stress, particularly physical stress. This will deplete the kidneys and age you. So, don’t overwork yourself, or stay up too late at night. Make sure you take breaks, allow yourself time to relax, and be sure to get enough sleep.

This applies to the good stuff too. Don’t spend all your energy at parties, have too much sex, or over-do your exercise routine. Yes, socialization, physical closeness, and exercise are healthy, but not if you push your kidneys past their limit. Even good things can be bad for us when done to excess. “Everything in moderation” is an excellent motto to have here.

I hope this has given you some food for thought as we continue to struggle through the dreary months of winter. In the west in particular, we seem intent on weakening our kidneys. We are so fond of cold drinks! And also of overwork! We will actually pat ourselves on the back when we’ve pushed ourselves hard in pursuit of a goal. This seen as a sign of dedication and strength, and it is a sign of strength, of course. But keep in mind that this strength is fleeting. Please preserve it for something truly important to you, not on some whim from your boss.

Now that you know all the ins and outs of kidney health, you can take steps to protect yours. The kidneys are the root of your strength and vitality. Once they’ve become depleted, they’re incredibly hard to regenerate. Please protect yours.

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Silent Night

Txllxt TxllxT, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Today marks the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year. As the month of December has advanced, the sky has been darkening earlier and earlier with each passing day. But on this day, that cycle will come to an end. Tomorrow, the day will be just a little bit longer, just that little bit brighter. This is a hopeful change.

Each day when I come home from work, I look around at the lights decorating our house, and watch them twinkle in the dark. It’s a moment of beauty in an otherwise cold and barren landscape. I’m so thankful we got our Christmas lights up early this year. It’s been a welcome change from years past.

This feeling of Christmas tranquility has been all but impossible for us for about the past ten years. It’s funny how the weight of those years became almost invisible to us back then, we’d been carrying it for so long. But now that it’s gone, I can remember the weariness more clearly. Its sudden absence brings a feeling of relief, but also of sadness.

Those who live with family members suffering from dementia will probably understand.

Caring for someone with dementia is challenging. As much as you try to remain patient, as much as you prepare yourself for each day, you will inevitably lose your temper. And then, you will chastise yourself. You will feel guilty for becoming angry at someone who, though an adult, has the mental and emotional understanding of a toddler.

During the last few years of Julia’s life, we put up a Christmas tree only mechanically. In her final year, we didn’t bother putting one up at all. It just created too much trouble. Julia would ask: “What is that? Why is it lit up? It bothers me,” or some variation of those responses. Then, she would unplug the lights, and the tree would sit in darkness. This would happen about every hour, if not sooner. Since it was impossible to keep the lights on, Christmas was effectively cancelled.

It wasn’t just Christmas lights, though. Julia would also turn out room lights, even if you were still in the room! She would unplug the stove while you were trying to warm it up. She would stop the washing machine, mid cycle. Then, she would take clothes out of the dryer and spread them out about the house, not knowing whose they were, or what they were for.

She was also paranoid about the front door being left unlocked, so she would check it all the time, pulling hard on the knob, twisting and turning it one way and then another. We actually had to replace the doorknob twice because she broke it. I didn’t even know you could break a doorknob until Julia did it. It boggled the mind. How could such a small woman cause such damage? And yet she did.

She would regularly open and close the garage door, multiple times a day. I never quite understood why. I think maybe she was just checking inside, but the cycle would inevitably end with the garage door being left wide open, exposing our junk for all to see, and potentially steal. During those years, I often felt like I was leaving the house in my underwear every day. My entire life felt exposed for all to see. Nothing was private anymore.

As Julia’s dementia worsened, she got kicked out of the local supermarket. The manager called the police, who threatened to take her to the police station. I guess she had been bothering other customers, probably giving them dietary advice they weren’t interested in receiving. She also got banned from the bulk foods store – for life. I have no idea what she was doing in there, but we suspect she might have been eating indiscriminately from the bins. She was impossible to contain. During those years, life was never dull!

Now that Julia’s gone, and her husband too, the house feels unnaturally quiet. The night more silent than I can recall it being in years, if ever. The losses are really hitting me now. The warmth and comraderie of the Christmas season seems to draw it out.

This Christmas, I would like to extend care to all who are struggling with burdens of various sorts. To those struggling to care for elderly parents, as we did for years, I wish you patience and fortitude. For those struggling financially, I wish you abundance. For those who are alone, I wish you moments of warmth and connection. For those who are grieving, I wish you love.

The night may be dark tonight, but tomorrow brings the beginning of greater light, increased brightness. May the lights of Christmas bring you solace during the more difficult days that lay ahead, and hope for a better and brighter future just around the corner.

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The Season of Gratitude – Part 2

Isiwal/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 4.0, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

In my last blog post, I wrote about my difficulties feeling gratitude in the past and how allowing myself to feel all the feels opened up some space in my heart, allowing the gratitude to finally move through me.

In this blog post, I’d like to delve a little deeper into all those murky feelings and then talk about choice.

Back in 2010, when I was in the thick of my struggle with CFS, I remember watching an interview with Karen Armstrong. In case you don’t know her, Armstrong is the author of many books on comparative religion, and during this particular interview, she was promoting her latest book (at the time), Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life.

I was not paying particular attention to what she was saying in this interview until she openly admitted to feeling bitter. Very bitter about life. That got my attention. An expert on religion, and author of a book on compassion, was declaring herself to be bitter? I wanted to know more.

She spoke about her past as a nun in training in Ireland, and about the Superior who was responsible for her. This nun had had a very difficult life, going deaf at an early age, and then being sent to a convent. She happened to be dying of cancer and was in extreme pain, yet she had still spoken kindly to the nuns under her watch. As Armstrong said, “she had trained herself, through all those difficult years not to become bitter, not to think, why me? Why am I deaf? Why am I wasting my life? And as a result, she has remained in me as an icon of what a good person should be”.

And then Armstrong said, “Becoming bitter is always a choice”. In essence, she was saying that life is a road with two very different paths, both equally valid. The decision you make will determine the quality of your life going forward. You can either decide to be bitter and angry about the difficulties and injustice in your life, or you can choose to be compassionate instead.

Her comment really resonated with me because I was slowly coming to the same realization myself. Stuck in bed and unable to accomplish any of my life goals, I was feeling frustrated, angry, and yes, definitely bitter. But I was also realizing that this was not the kind of person I wanted to be.

I think it’s the same with gratitude.

We are living in difficult times. A lot of people are struggling. In many cases, basic needs are not being met. The climate is worsening. Wars are being fought. Everywhere you go, people are suffering. It is very easy to feel hopeless and despondent at the number of crises surrounding us.

It is at these times – often especially at these times – that we realize we have a choice. We can either choose to become bitter, or we can aspire to something a little more noble.

During my years of difficulty, I would often console myself with the beauty of my neighbour’s garden. I may not have had the energy to care for a garden myself, but I felt grateful that I could still enjoy the gardens of others around me.

I became spellbound by the gracefully arching branches of the tree outside my window, watching its many moods as the seasons changed. I may not have been able to spend much time outside, but being able to watch that tree outside my window was a lifeline for me.

I was also deeply consoled by the laughter of the neighbourhood children as they walked past my home on their way to and from school. I may not have been able to see them, but I was grateful for my ability to hear their small voices, and to feel the bubbling energy of their youthful selves.

I know it’s been said before, but it is often when life is at its most bleak, when we are grasping at the smallest example of beauty or kindness, that possibilities for gratitude are fully revealed to us.

This doesn’t mean we don’t also acknowledge our pains and our struggles. It means that, while still feeling our pain in all its fullness, we make the choice to be grateful anyway. It’s a powerful choice. I can’t promise that it will magically make your troubles go away. What I can promise, is that it will make your heart lighter, and your burden easier to bear.