Spirituality & Health 11.12 2023

NOVEMBER / DECEMBER 2023 spiritualityhealth.com CELEBRATING 25YEARS OF TOTAL ALIVENESS Give yourself The Gift of Time TO HEAL TO WRITE TO FIND YOUR CALLING AUTOIMMUNITY: HEALED IN JUST 3 DAYS RABBI RAMI: SHOULD I BE WOKE? 3 GREAT PATHS TO BECOME AN HERBALIST ANNE LAMOTT’S MASTER CLASS ON WRITING 11 GIFTS FOR HOLIDAY CALM

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28 38 56 34 44 Healing a Lifetime in 3 Days BY BEVERLY FREDERICK This Is Your Brain on Time BY ALLAN HAMILTON, MD Knowing the Time to Rest AN INTERVIEW WITH GAVIN FRANCIS, MD BY STEPHEN KIESLING The Time to Write AN INTERVIEW WITH ANNE LAMOTT BY STEPHEN KIESLING How to Become an Herbalist BY BRENNA LILLY november / december 2023 FEATURES cover photography by Sam Lamott 18 Nietzsche’s Path to Inner Peace BY ALLEGRA JORDAN 22 Why Crush an Ancient Stone Pipe BY STEPHEN KIESLING 24 Enjoy Being Ordinary BY NEAL ALLEN CONNECTIONS GISELLE DEKEL YELENA BRYKSENKOVA 38 44 25YEARS OF TOTAL ALIVENESS GETTYIMAGES.COM / WILDPIXEL 34

11 Roadside Assistance for the Spiritual Traveler BY RABBI RAMI SHAPIRO 14 The Soul of Therapy BY KEVIN ANDERSON 74 Our Walk in the World BY MARK NEPO 76 The Heart of Happiness BY PAUL SUTHERLAND 78 Creaturely Reflections BY SARAH BOWEN COLUMNISTS DEPARTMENTS Check out what’s happening at SpiritualityHealth.com 4 Editor’s Note 6 Featured Artist Yelena Bryksenkova 66 Toolbox The Gift of Time 68 Reviews 80 One Last Thing Sadagat Aliyeva 68 25YEARS OF TOTAL ALIVENESS USE THESE 20 AFFIRMATIONS TO HELP YOU THROUGH THE HOLIDAYS Holiday stress can extinguish the brightest of lights. Recite one (or all) of these positive holiday affirmations to keep yours burning bright. spiritualityhealth.com/ holiday-affirmations TRY ULTRA GRATITUDE, A THANKSGIVING PRACTICE FOR ANIMAL LOVERS Explore more compassionate ways to eat and be this Thanksgiving— beginning with what’s on your plate. Start by donating organic produce to a local food pantry or committing to a turkey-free table. spiritualityhealth.com/ ultra-gratitude TAKE OUR QUIZ: ARE YOU READY FOR TRANSFORMATION? Are you maintaining the status quo, or are you open to great change? Take this nine-question quiz to determine how open to transformation you really are. spiritualityhealth.com/ transformation-quiz FROM THE TOP: GETTYIMAGES.COM / EKATERINA FEDULYEVA ; SIMONA TONOLI; DENIS NOVIKOV MICHAEL GOLDMAN 2 spiritualityhealth.com november / december 2023

“What’s the deadline?” Such a simple question. Alas, the answer is like the first offer on a Persian rug. Writers who know me sometimes cut to the chase: “What’s the drop-dead deadline?” Ultimately, that has to do with the “upload,” and right now Sandra, our-fabulous-but-nowgrumpy art director, has emailed to warn that the upload is happening just hours from now: “Need cover lines! Chop! chop! Need your editor’s note!” Meanwhile, my wife, also grumpy, is calling from across the house, “Are you awake? Where are you? It’s 3:41 in the morning!” What’s now funny is the main cover line: Give Yourself the Gift of Time! I’m blaming this one on Annie Lamott and her master class (page 44): “It takes a spiritual awakening, maybe a near miss where you realize you could have died without fulfilling this dream of getting it down on paper…. You gotta grab yourself by the wrist sternly and say, “Stop!” We’re gonna stop living unconsciously.” So, I am fully conscious (now at 4:33 in the morning!) out of fear of being uploaded before my stories are done. Sort of. What really did me in was promising myself that I would have my sculpture finished in time for my editor’s photo. The sculpture seemed really important in the spirit of this issue because it has been nagging at me for years. But no! Writing may be hard, but drilling holes through thick steel turns out to be harder. And I put them in the wrong place, and the autocorrect doesn’t work. Damn! What I’m really trying to do now is learn from Kevin Anderson (page 14): Now in my early 60s, I feel some expectation to come up with a bucket list to make sure I get the most out of life. I have nothing against that, but it’s only one of three lists I want to have. I also need a daily f**k-it list to help me let go of preoccupations that block my capacity to flow with compassion and joy. More than either of those, I want a pluck-it list that will let me think of good days not so much as the ones in which I am busy “making time,” but those when I slow down enough to enjoy simple things—to pluck what is right here and now and ripe for soaking deep into my awareness. That’s real wisdom! FROM THE EDITOR I’m also trying to learn from my friend Beverly Frederick, who suffered for almost sixty years from a growing list of autoimmunities. She cured a large chunk of them in just three days. And now she’s fine (page 28): Hers is the kind of “miracle-cure” story I am normally hesitant to run, but I knew her back when her life was becoming a nightmare—and the healing process really worked. It’s a combination of modern science and spiritual practice that that can retrain autoimmunity, and I suspect the process can also help with other stuff, like overcoming my own addiction to adrenaline. That would make my cardiologist happy, and maybe put off that upload. But deadlines are fun when time is flying—and I have less than 200 words to go! I really like how Allan Hamilton, MD, explains the ways our brains actually shape time so we don’t go crazy and have the real possibility of being happy (page 34). He also points out that 24-hour screens have created a circadian chaos that may outstrip our ability to cope. We shall see! Meanwhile, Gavin Francis, MD, reminds us that we all need time to rest and heal (page 38). He also says that travel can be just as good. A few hundred years ago, a pilgrimage was the best medicine there was—and it still can be once they find your luggage. Speaking of pilgrimages, I want to remind you to join Chip Conley and me in Santa Fe March 25–30 for S+H at the Modern Elder Academy. meawisdom.com/workshop/ spirituality-health-in-midlife-and-beyond. That is going to be fun! I think that’s all the words I’ve got, and a new day is dawning! I hope you enjoy this issue. It’s been a really fine adventure! Steve Stephen Kiesling [email protected] MARY BEMIS 4 spiritualityhealth.com november / december 2023

volume 26, number 6 At Spirituality + Health we define Spirituality as Total Aliveness Our Mission is to explore the rituals, practices, beliefs, and ideas that enhance the health of our bodies, minds, communities, and the earth that supports us. Please contact us with any comments or inquiries at the email addresses listed below. EDITOR IN CHIEF Steve Kiesling [email protected] CREATIVE DIRECTOR Sandra Salamony LEAD DIGITAL EDITOR Brenna Lilly CONTRIBUTING EDITOR Rabbi Rami Shapiro STAFF WRITER Julie Peters EDITOR AT LARGE Peggy La Cerra, PhD PUBLISHER Natalie Dayton ADVERTISING & MARKETING spiritualityhealth.com/advertise DIRECTOR OF SALES & MARKETING Tabetha Reed [email protected] SUBSCRIPTIONS Subscribe online at spiritualityhealth.com/subscribe Customer service: spiritualityhealth.com/customer-service [email protected] CIRCULATION Laura Garrity, NPS Media Group NEWSSTAND DISTRIBUTION Ron Murray MAIN OFFICE 52 Golf Oval, Springfield, NJ, 07081 EDITORIAL INQUIRIES [email protected] Spirituality & Health (ISSN 1520-5444 and USPS 17652) is published bimonthly by Good Harbor Media LLC., 52 Golf Oval, Springfield NJ 07081-2504. Periodicals postage paid at Union, New Jersey and additional mailing offices. Subscriptions are available by mail, $35.00 for one year within the U.S. For Canadian address, add $15.00 per year, and for all other countries outside the U.S. add $30 per year. Please allow 6 to 8 weeks for delivery of the first issue. POSTMASTER Send all UAA to CFS (See DMM707.4.12.5); NON-POSTAL AND MILITARY FACILITIES: SEND ADRESS CORRECTIONS TO Spirituality & Health, PO Box 37323, Boone, IA 50037-0323. Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to: IMEX Global Solutions, PO Box 25542, London, ON Canada N6C 6B2. Copyright ©2023 Good Harbor Media LLC. Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the publisher. SUBSCRIBE! An unboring, burnout-healing, joy-inducing journal Available at your favorite bookseller NATALY KOGAN november / december 2023 spiritualityhealth.com 5

You were born in St. Petersburg, Russia, grew up in Cleveland, studied in Baltimore and the Czech Republic, and now reside in Montreal. How have your travels inspired your art? I love to walk, and every place I’ve lived I’ve walked thoroughly, on the lookout for quiet, ordinary things that feel magical or inviting. My experiences have culminated in my mind into one abstract ideal that is the perfect blend of coziness and emotion, sometimes with a little bit of mystery. The work now is for my skill to catch up to that ideal. Much of your work, particularly on Instagram, draws from your collection of pet portraits. What inspired you to honor people’s animal companions in this way? It was a project I decided to try my hand at a few years ago that ended up being really lovely. It’s a collaborative process between myself and the client, which I think a lot of people enjoy, and I, in turn, get very sweet photos and stories in my inbox. A good deal of the portraits commissioned are of a pet that has passed, and I feel privileged to be entrusted with the task. As in illustration, I’m working within certain constraints, but it’s actually closer to my personal work because I can take the time to challenge myself or figure out a new way of doing things in the process. My drawing skills have really improved since I started the project. Yelena Bryksenkova We spoke with painter and illustrator Yelena Bryksenkova about travel, the beauty of coziness, and making art just for oneself. FEATURED ARTIST Max (and Jess) S+H: Your work beautifully captures people, majorly women, in everyday moments: brushing their hair, walking the dog, or decorating for the holidays. What inspires you to focus on quotidian subjects versus more fantastical scenes? BRYKSENKOVA: I find joy in elevating the mundane in my everyday life, whether it’s by taking the extra effort to do a simple task well, or being thoughtful about the objects with which I choose to surround myself. I get a sense of satisfaction from capturing that feeling in my work, especially on such a tiny scale (a typical painting of mine is 5x6”). There is a lot of beauty in the everyday; elevating it through painting is how I delight in the small things as well as process deeper and more complex emotions. BORIS MORIN-DEFOY 6 spiritualityhealth.com november / december 2023

So many of the paintings you craft evoke an air of serenity and mindfulness. How does your artistic practice contribute to your own wellbeing? My creative output is very much tied to my sense of self worth, there’s just no getting around that. Fortunately I’ve discovered that deliberately making time for personal work—painting whatever is in my heart—changes not only my mood for the better, it physically feels different than when I do work for someone else. Even if it’s challenging, staying up late and taking the time to get it right feels exciting, and I feel no fatigue and no weird aches in my body. My overall mental health is improved when I know I have something to come back to on my desk that’s just for me. Is there an intersection between your spiritual life and your art? What does that look like? Perhaps—painting is the act through which I manifest and meditate upon things of an abstract nature. When I’m “in the zone” and my hand and mind are peacefully in sync and the audiobook I’m listening to is perfectly engrossing—that’s when the magic happens. What advice would you offer folks who want to make art but don’t know where to begin? Don’t be afraid to make something bad. It can be painful to be a beginner, but the only way over is through. I suggest not investing in expensive or very special materials from the start, as the fear of “ruining” or “not doing them justice” can be detrimental to the creative process. S+H Autumn Day Yelena Bryksenkova yelenabryksenkova.com I find joy in elevating the mundane in my everyday life, whether it’s by taking the extra effort to do a simple task well, or being thoughtful about the objects with which I choose to surround myself. november / december 2023 spiritualityhealth.com 7

Dr. Jones is a retired board certified Osteopathic Family Physician. He follows in that tradition by developing a nasal spray that helps the defenses in our airways work better. In his practice, a nasal spray containing xylitol prevented more than 95% of ear complaints in the ten kids in his practice with chronic otitis. It’s in the tradition because in the 1919 flu epidemic, patients treated by osteopathic physicians had a mortality that was forty times less than those treated in mainstream medicine. fflat difference is thought to be due to their avoidance of fever reducing drugs that crippled the body’s defensive response to the flu virus, which allowed the virus better odds on killing us. In his book, Commonsense Medicine, Dr. Jones explains how xylitol works as what he calls a Hippocratic drug, and xylitol illustrates that more than any other food. ffle book is available on Amazon. He also introduces what he calls defense medicine, which looks at the defenses we all have in our most vulnerable openings and shows how they all can be optimized. In doing so he reframes the practice of medicine from the offensive focus on killing microbes and blaming us all for our bad habits, to one of making all of our defenses work better so that we don’t get sick. And the Hippocratic drug xylitol has a profound role in doing this, from preventing tooth decay (proven), to preventing COVID (demonstrated). Lon Jones D.O. Can a food be a drug? NO! FDA drugs are expensive because of the cost of getting there; they need to recoup the expenses of the studies demanded to show the drug to be effective. Foods can’t be FDA drugs because they cannot be controlled; if a food was proven to be a drug by such expensive studies, and priced high enough to pay for the studies and make a profit, people would buy the food and bypass the drug company. And all drug companies understand this. YES!Hippocrates told us our food should be our drugs. fflere are many foods with drug effects. We call them Hippocratic drugs. But regulations prohibit the farmers and companies from telling the public what they do without them being FDA approved. One of the best examples is the natural sugar alternative xylitol. Its drug effects include: preventing tooth decay; preventing C. diff. infections; keeping the airway clear, which prevents respiratory problems from ear and sinus infections to allergies and asthma; wound healing; managing diabetes; and preventing the adherence of many microbes, including SARS-CoV-2. fflese are all documented in Commonsense Medicine.

Xylitol: A Biography My name is xylitol. I have always been around, but I was discovered in 1891 when one of your researchers added a hydrogen atom to what was then known as plant sugar or xylose. Most of you humans know about glucose; that’s animal sugar. You found out that I was sweet and that I had fewer calories than your common sugar, sucrose. fflat’s because you get calories from using the carbon atoms in sugars and I only have five while sucrose has twelve—so I have five-twelflhs as many calories as the sweetener you commonly use. Some people use me to correct diabetes. Some of your researchers have shown this effect in rats, but no one has looked to see if it would do this in people. fflat’s likely because I am a food and not a drug. Hippocrates is regarded as the father of your brand of medicine and he argued that your food should be your drugs, but you have government organizations now that determine if drugs are safe and effective and the steps they require are costly, so foods get lefl out—and that’s too bad. fflose that know what I can do to help people become healthy call me a Hippocratic Drug. But one country wasn’t bothered by those regulations. During your last world war there was a sugar shortage, and people in Finland found they could make xylitol from their plentiful birch trees. So they knew about me. fflen some dental researchers wanted to find out what different sugars do to tooth decay, so they took a bunch of people in a town called Turku and fed them different sugars afler looking at their teeth. ffley did that for two years and then looked at their teeth again. ffle sugar group had lots of decay; the fructose group had less, but the xylitol group had none. ffley were very happy with me—and it made me feel good too. ffley found that the decay was caused by germs that live on your teeth and make an acid from the sugar in your diets. Tooth decay is what you call an infectious disease, and it’s the biggest one you have. Some of you were smart enough to put me in gum that they could sell and your dental researchers have done lots of experiments with me. At first they thought I did this because the germs could not digest me, but then they showed that the germs learn not to eat me. fflen they did a study on kids in a country called Belize that showed a long term benefit afler chewing xylitol gum for two years. ffle only explanation for the long term benefit was that the germs causing the decay were either gone or changed. ffley all wondered how I did that and mostly they could not figure it out. fflen more happened. ffle government in Finland realized they could save lots of money in dental bills if they gave school children xylitol gum during the day. Not only did it save on the dental bills but a children’s doctor found out that it stopped a lot of ear infections. Another doctor who read their report was looking for a way to prevent ear infections. He needed to do that for his granddaughter who was getting them regularly, and for his wife, Jerry, who as a special education teacher knew that early ear infections, when they are chronic, lead to special education. He tells me that’s because there is what you call a developmental window, where your brains are cued to learn specific senses as you develop, and the window to learn the sounds that make up your languages is during the time when many children get ear infections. Jerome Klein is the co-author of the standard textbook Otitis Media for Infants and Children, and he told this doctor to tell everyone he talked to that “fflis Jerry agrees with your Jerry’’ on the importance of preventing ear infections. fflis doctor knew that the germs causing ear infections live in the back of the nose, so he put me in a nasal spray and had parents and caregivers spray me into his granddaughters nose before every diaper change. ffle result was the same as those eating me in Turku—ear infections disappeared. Like those making the gum, he wanted to tell people about what I did but they wouldn’t let him do that without me being a drug, and like with me and diabetes there was no way to do that. One of your lawyers told him to sell a nose wash since things like soap are not considered drugs, so that’s what he did. And his son did afler he retired. But he kept thinking about me and how I worked. When all of you humans began getting sick from a new virus, he told his son to find out what effect I had on this virus. A laboratory at Utah State University looked at the spray he was using and showed that the preservative in the solution killed the virus and the xylitol blocked it from attaching in the nose. When they wrote that up and released it, one of those government agencies told them they were falsely advertising, and when they said it wasn’t false, the government agency sued him and his company. What that information told his father was even more important because it told him how I work to make people healthier. Your researchers have shown that the attachment of the virus is conducted by a class of sugars and sugar complexes called glycans, and that the glycans essentially cover your cells and microbes in long-branched chains. If something could interfere with these sugar complexes binding together, we would be able to stop infectious organisms from holding on and it would also support people, like it did for the kids in Belize, to have more friendly microbes. I look like xylose, which is a glycan, but my added hydrogen makes me flexible so I can contort myself to fit into many of those places where microbes are looking to dock. If the doctor is right, I could help end your war with microbes. He wrote an article about that a long time ago that you can read if you want. It’s called “ffle Next Step in Infectious Disease: Taming Microbes.” As more of you realize this benefit, perhaps your government will add more information to the flattering statement they already use to describe me: Xylitol efficiently stimulates the immune system, digestion, lipid and bone metabolism. Xylitol helps in glycemic and obesity control; reduces ear and respiratory infections. Xylitol treats diseases that cannot be cured through antibiotics or by surgery.

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Shortly after his enlightenment, Buddha was asked, “Are you a god?” “No,” Buddha said. “Are you a wizard?” “No.” “Are you a human?” “No.” “Well, then, what are you?” “I am awake.” Buddha was awake to the interdependence of all life and the justice and compassion for each life that interdependence demands. If being woke includes being awake to the unity of all life and being committed to the dignity of all beings human and otherwise, then in this way, I strive to be woke as well. I’m a new “None”: when forced to check the box next to my religion, I check “None.” None, so I’m told, is the fastest-growing “religious demographic” in America. Honestly, I hate being a None. It’s so negative and sounds like I have no spiritual sense at all, which is just false. What’s a good alternative? At the risk of blowing my own horn, I prefer the term “spiritually independent,” a term I coined in 2013 for my book Perennial Wisdom for the Spiritually Independent. Like politically independent folks who blend ideas from a variety of political sources, spiritually independent people blend wisdom and contemplative practices from a variety of spiritual traditions. When you identify as a “None” you reinforce the categories of the pollsters whose bias is toward ROADSIDE ASSISTANCE FOR THE SPIRITUAL TRAVELER RABBI RAMI SHAPIRO I read your column to a friend of mine who responded with a heated, “He’s woke!” Clearly, it was meant as a criticism. Are you woke? RABBI RAMI: African American blues legend Huddie William Ledbetter (Lead Belly) coined the term “woke” as a warning to Black people traveling in the southern United States: “Best stay woke” to the evil and potentially homicidal racism they would encounter. Today “woke” applies to anyone attuned to and fighting against the hatred of people of color, Jews, Muslims, women, LGBTQ people, etc. If this is “woke,” then I strive to be woke. Spiritually speaking, I would take “woke” one step further. ARE YOU WOKE? AM I A NONE? For over half a century, RABBI RAMI has been devoted to a single teaching: Alles iz Gott, “Everything is God.” To learn more, visit the website rabbirami.com. november / december 2023 spiritualityhealth.com 11

mainstream religion. When you identify as “spiritually independent,” you step beyond conventional limits toward a new vision of human spirituality where people are encouraged to seek truth wherever they find it rather than restrict themselves to established religious silos. I hate religion. Case in point: The baker and website designer who refuse to bake cakes or make wedding websites for gay or trans people based on religion. Isn’t religion supposed to bring people together rather than foment hatreds that tear us apart? The recent web designer case was decided on free speech grounds rather than religion, but I get your point. Even though the word “religion” comes from the Latin religare, “to bind together,” in practice religion often does just the opposite. But the problem is deeper than religion. The hatred you decry is part of our psychological makeup. Whereas many animals fight and even kill one another over mates, territory, and to protect their young, human beings fight and kill one another over stories. Religion is just one kind of story; race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, and politics are others. The web designer turned to religion to sanctify and justify a bias she already had. People who aren’t racists don’t join racist religions; people who don’t hate LGBTQI people don’t join religions that do hate them. People who hate join religions that reinforce their hatred. Don’t blame religion for human hatred; blame the people who invent and support the religions that support the hatred they already harbor in their hearts. I know Spirituality+Health isn’t a political magazine, but I’m desperate to find a spiritual response to the fascism overtaking much of the world. Organized religion collaborated with the fascists in the 1930s, and they are doing so again today: Christianity in America, Hungary, and Russia; Judaism in Israel; Islam in Turkey, Iran, and Saudi Arabia; Hinduism in India; Buddhism in Burma. How is “spirituality” an alternative to fascism? And if it isn’t, what good is it? Spirituality is not an alternative to fascism; it is an act of resistance to fascism. Fascism is a system of social control that promotes a fearful, violent, hate-filled, and zero-sum (winner-takes-all) worldview that fuels an endless war of “us” against “them,” where “us” and “them” are defined and redefined according to the needs of the Party and its Leader. Because religions are often entangled in their own zero-sum us-againstthem worldviews, religions are easily coopted by fascism. Spirituality resists fascism and fascistic religion by promoting a non-zero world of “all of us together” rooted in the infinite nondual Aliveness called by many names: God, Tao, Brahman, YHVH, Mother, Spirit, Mind, Nature, etc. But spirituality isn’t just an idea, it is a bold living out of this nondual worldview by embracing an ethic of mutuality we call the Golden Rule: What is hateful to you do not do to another (Confucius and Rabbi Hillel). While all religions preach the Golden Rule, each religion has an escape clause that allows their “us” to violate the Rule when it comes to their particular “them.” There is no escape clause in spirituality—at least, there is none if your spirituality is authentic. You are right that Spirituality+Health is not a political magazine, but the kind of spirituality and health we promote only flourishes in an anti-fascist, anti-racist, free and egalitarian liberal democracy. S+H I’m 82 years old and I still read your magazine (with glasses) and learn something new from every issue. Years ago, my then-guru told me that all I had to do was see the truth that the “me” I imagine myself to be isn’t real and that only the I AM—pure awareness, pure consciousness, God—is real. I didn’t get it then; today I do. I am the I AM. Everyone is the I AM. When I share this notion with people, they stare blankly at me. Why is this simple truth so hard for people to get? The simplicity of the teaching itself makes it difficult to grasp. We’ve been taught that the search for Truth is arduous and for the few, when in fact Truth “is within you and around you” (Gospel of Thomas 3) and “on your heart and in your mouth that you might live it” (Deuteronomy 30:14). When Jesus says we must be like little children (Matthew 18:3), he is telling us that awakening to Truth is all about wonder, joy, abandon, and play rather than hardship, discipline, and self-denial. It may take the spiritual maturity of old age to become like little children. I’m glad you made it, and that you still value reading Spirituality+Health Magazine. 12 spiritualityhealth.com november / december 2023

Create a sense of peace at home and within yourself with these reads: Nourish your body with these wholesome, delicious cookbooks: Available wherever books are sold Give the gift of self-care this holiday season — —

THE SOUL OF THERAPY KEVIN ANDERSON, PHD Fast forward to summer of 2023—more specifically to the yearly Fourth of July campout at the farm where my wife grew up. As she does every year, she asked if I’d be willing to join her for a few hours picking wild black raspberries. Her idea of a good time on vacation is dressing in old jeans and a longsleeved shirt in muggy weather, spraying herself for tick and mosquito protection, and wandering into dense briars that seem to guard the succulent berries as if she were Indiana Jones coming to steal the Ark of the Covenant. I mindfully noted my brain’s plentiful objections to joining her, got dressed, sprayed up, and headed out with her to collect the harvest. A half-hour in it began to rain, lightly at first—and then the dark sky unloaded. At first I thought the whole outing was a disaster. Something shifted, though, when I realized I was already as soaked as I could be. I gave up fighting and replaced it with acceptance. First, I accepted the rain, which led to accepting the heat, the briars, the bugs—the whole soggy, sorry, prickly situation. Everything slowed down. The next couple of hours felt like a mindfulness retreat. Things that earlier appeared to make joy impossible seemed to become part of the joy of gathering as many of those plump, juicy, purple berries as we could. Call me strange, but this was one of the highlights of my summer—an experience of immersion, flow, focus, and mindful acceptance to be savored each time we enjoy the black raspberry preserves that came from it. Actually, I want to recall that moment of going from soaked to soaking-it-in far more often than NEARLY 40 SUMMERS AGO, I backpacked through the Beartooth Mountains in Montana with eight other adventurers. One in our group was highly focused on reading maps, planning routes, and covering miles to get to our daily destination. When those of us at the front of the single-file line of hikers stopped for a breather to pick wild raspberries growing along the path, Map Guy would shout from his position at the back, “Cut the berries! We need to make time!” That memory stuck—a reminder of how easy it is to miss life’s simplest pleasures because we’re too busy or stressed to even notice them or consider them worth our time. DO YOU HAVE A PLUCK-IT LIST? KEVIN ANDERSON, PHD, is a psychotherapist, poet, and writer. His most recent books are Now is Where God Lives: A Year of Nested Meditations to Delight the Mind and Awaken the Soul and The Inconceivable Surprise of Living. Both are available at his website thewingedlife.com or Amazon. 14 spiritualityhealth.com november / december 2023

Information in this column is for general psychoeducational purposes and is not a substitute for assessment and care provided in person by a medical or mental health professional. when we’re spreading the fruits of our labor on toast. When my mind is stuck in fight mode trying to figure out, fix, or be rid of life’s challenges, a personalized parable can be more helpful than any left-brain analysis of how to get unstuck. The lingering invitation from the strange peace I experienced in the rain and briars that day is: How can I more often meet the rest of life that way? Now in my early 60s, I feel some expectation to come up with a bucket list to make sure I get the most out of life. I have nothing against that, but it’s only one of three lists I want to have. I also need a daily f**k-it list to help me let go of preoccupations that block my capacity to flow with compassion and joy. More than either of those, I want a pluck-it list that will let me think of good days not so much as the ones in which I am busy “making time,” but those when I slow down enough to enjoy simple things—to pluck what is right here and now and ripe for soaking deep into my awareness. This pluck-it list idea may sound like little more than “Stop and smell the roses.” But I think “Accept the mosquitos, briars, downpours and keep plucking berries,” though less pithy, is better suited to life as we experience it in this dukkhasoaked existence. Rainer Maria Rilke seemed to be encouraging us to have a pluck-it list when he wrote in Letters to a Young Poet: “If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches.” And why are we not poet enough? We may think it’s the challenging energies that come at us incessantly from the world that block our perception of life’s poetry and grace. But Rilke seems to be suggesting we need to look at energies within us that block our ability to see as poets see. The human brain is an amazing tool, but reversing the two vowels in “brain” and covering up half of the “n” transforms it into “briar.” Worries, fears, preoccupations, comparisons, discouragements, disappointments, triggers, cravings, doubts—yes, it can be a prickly tangle in there! I think this is what Anne Lamott was referring to when she wrote: “My mind is like a bad neighborhood—I try not to go there alone.” It’s hard to give up the fight and move toward acceptance in our brains, so it’s not surprising that things can also get tangled in our long-term relationships. Couples in therapy often report that they get along well and enjoy each other on vacation. When they come back to daily life, however, they don’t know how to find the simple joys of connection, time together, kindness, and affection. They get so caught fighting life’s mosquitoes and brambles or cursing the rain clouds of their conflicts that they forget about plucking the good stuff. They go back to a “Cut the berries!” way of living. They want to eventually get to the fruit, but they believe it must wait until the rain has stopped and until conditions are perfect for joy to appear. Like everything else, ease and comfort are impermanent. If life feels perfect for a moment or a bit longer, it doesn’t stay there. But if we have a daily pluck-it list, we can be poet enough to call forth its riches. S+H GETTYIMAGES.COM / JHLLOYD From Now is Where God Lives: A Year of Nested Meditations to Delight the Mind and Awaken the Soul  © 2018 by Kevin Anderson Joy is succulent, wild! Joy is succulent, wild black raspberries. Joy is succulent, wild black raspberries overhanging every path, right and left. Joy is succulent, wild black raspberries overhanging every path, right? And left mostly unpicked? november / december 2023 spiritualityhealth.com 15

T— OJAYA.COM — Learn the ancient OJAYA Deep Meditation “Armor” technique 100% online at: H EART-INSPIRED by the beauty of this world, yet heart-broken by the suffering of all beings, neither my mind nor my heart could navigate this paradox. So, my spiritual journey began with a hope of finding a path where I could walk with clarity, emotional balance and compassion. ❈❈❈ A college course introduced me to the Buddha, with his skillful path that integrates wisdom, moral discipline, compassion, and—above all—deep meditation as the way to end suffering. ❈❈❈ I philosophized on emptiness, I meditated on my breath, I walked the path as best I could. Yet I had a growing restlessness that increasingly whispered to me that modern-day “mindfulness” alone wouldn’t lead me to heart awakening, nor would a sterile inner emptiness nurture compassion. I needed a more expansive path. ❈❈❈ My journey brought me to a Tibetan tradition and I became a formal student. But, over time, the many complex meditations and rituals increasingly felt like intellectual exercises, often frustrating, and not really awakening either wisdom or a caring compassion for everyday sentient beings. I felt something profound was missing. ❈❈❈ So—I rested on the path for a while. ❈❈❈ Then someone unexpected suddenly appeared on the horizon: Sukaishi David—a new, provocatively stimulating Teacher who teaches online from a wondrously beautiful rainforest garden, and who gently guides students in the rare, ancient, closely-guarded technique of Ojaya —a blissful, ultra-deep meditation technique that is unlike anything we see anywhere in today’s meditation toolbox. ❈❈❈ A new direction now beckoned me with a new stream of wisdom that pointed out the need to reorient myself—and to deepen and totally transform my daily meditation practice. ❈❈❈ My previous methods had been effortful, even tedious, and had kept my mind only on the surface levels of thinking. Now I quickly learned that true deep meditation must lead to samadhi—that effortless settling into the blissfully calm and serene depths of inner stillness. ❈❈❈ I quickly experienced the striking potency of the Ojaya “Armor” meditation technique, which builds up an “armor” of clear, calm energy to protect you from the stress and frenzy of life in the real world. In just 10-20 minutes this refreshingly simple, easy, and yes, blissful practice draws the consciousness deep within—automatically, pleasantly, effortlessly. I felt the serene, energetic effects immediately. ❈❈❈ Moreover—to the surprise of my skeptical, analytical nature—my heart now mysteriously stirs and has awakened to a depth of unbounded love which even today swirls and integrates into my daily life. ❈❈❈ This new, deep, unexpected level of heart awakening with Ojaya assures me—at last I have unlocked the secret to heartfelt compassion and solved the paradox of suffering amidst the extraordinary beauty of this world. Scan Me! My Journey from Head to Heart How I discovered OJAYA . . . the rare, potent technique of effortless, blissful, deep meditation Vicki L. Jenkins, Ph. D. Adjunct professor, Philosophy and Religious Studies, Indiana University-East This page is sponsored by loving volunteers of the OJAYA School of Deep Meditation. This page is sponsored by loving volunteers of the OJAYA School of Deep Meditation.

TIONS CONNECTDance Party for One Yelena Bryksenkova yelenabryksenkova.com november / december 2023 spiritualityhealth.com 17

NIETZSCHE’S PATH TO INNER PEACE ALLEGRA JORDAN discovers the secret to becoming shallow. to sip nourishing matcha in the morning while looking off into the Mediterranean Sea. At night, I’d have lavender tea with local honey as I reveled in the glow of the night stars. Ted required 12-14 hours of rest each day, so my plans and my spouse’s needs matched perfectly. Silence, beauty, and fresh air were what the doctor ordered. We found them in great supply, and more: air perfumed IN THE SPRING OF 2021, I went to the French Riviera to recuperate. The pandemic, my husband’s cancer battles, the death of my dog from a snakebite, and a blisteringly hard teaching schedule at Duke had taken their toll on me. I was exhausted. I was determined to use my six expensive days to meditate, read, and write each day from our studio’s veranda in Èze-sur-Mer. I’d planned Beachcombing Yelena Bryksenkova yelenabryksenkova.com 18 spiritualityhealth.com november / december 2023

with orange blossoms, powerful race cars driving to Monaco, and white sailboats floating across the azure bay. Ted was able to sleep uninterrupted while his body healed. But for me, life did not go so well. The first day I rose at dawn and went out to our terrace to achieve Zenlike serenity, as if it were a destination to which one could march. I prayed, heated the water to 170 degrees, and poured it over the matcha powder in a bowl. I turned on the electric whisk. I was splattered in green. I wiped the mess up, changed clothes, made espresso, and tried to meditate. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and … my mind would not tolerate stillness. Course upgrades for next year! So many great things we can do! I hired way too many teaching assistants. What am I going to do with all of them? Ukraine! I can’t stay silent! Should have I bought extra collision insurance? These streets here are so narrow. The clock was ticking on my valuable vacation time. I doubled-down on serenitybuilding measures, trying to outrun the thoughts cascading in my head. I walked the town’s hilly roads. I took a The trail became what I did not want: another hill to climb, another struggle to face, another burden that must be borne. bus to the Matisse Museum in Nice. I went day drinking at Chagall’s grave. I swam in the sea. I admired the yachts in the Nice harbor. I shopped for French cheese in Beaulieu. I took the train northwest to Grasse. The only thing I would not do in the name of inner peace was walk a trail by my apartment: the Chemin de Nietzsche. I wasn’t in shape. I didn’t bring the right boots. A woman hiking alone isn’t safe, and Ted would not be able to accompany me. The name Nietzsche made my lips curl with disgust. Nietzsche’s work had been misappropriated in both World Wars to justify killing, racial november / december 2023 spiritualityhealth.com 19

superiority, and mass atrocities. Perhaps I wasn’t being fair to the philosopher, but in fairness to me, I was not looking for black turtleneck heaviness. I wanted to keep things light. Each day I’d rise, gaze out to sea, turn my back on that trail, and work toward inner peace. I’d take 10 calming breaths. I’d smell flowers. I’d close my eyes and sit in silence. I did sun salutations and downward dogs. But my mind would not let go of the adrenaline, cortisol, ego, superego, validation, invalidation, nor of that trail. The trail became what I did not want: another hill to climb, another struggle to face, another burden that must be borne. On the last full day in France, I tried the routine one last time. My mind butted in: Did you see what the Supreme Court did today? My nostrils flared. I turned my head and looked over at the trail. Enough! I’ll climb the trail. Go out alone? I paused. Well, what else would I do? Sit on that damn patio another wasted morning? A guidebook described the path as roughly five kilometers, hot, steep and punctuated by breathtaking vistas. In the 1880s, Nietzsche visited and was inspired to write the third part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. I pulled on my shoes, picked up a bottle of water, then quietly stepped over to the side of our bed. “How are you doing, Ted?” “You know me, Shallow Hal here,” he said sleepily. “Life is good.” I furrowed my eyebrows. Dammit! Why couldn’t I just be shallow? “How do you get to be shallow?” The Lake House Yelena Bryksenkova yelenabryksenkova.com “Hmmm. Make decisions. Let things go. Simplify. You need something, sweet pea?” “Yes, to be professional-grade shallow.” “Is that all?” “And exercise. I’m going out to hike the Nietzsche path.” “Enjoy,” he said as he turned over and went back to sleep. I looked back at my phone. Nope. Not taking it. With my monkey brain I’d be writing to-do lists up and down the trail. I left with the keys in my pocket, locking the gate behind me on our Avenue-sur-Mer apartment. I went down the steep hill from our apartment to the beach, where the trail started. The start of the path was a corridor with vine-covered walls. The height of the walls and the path’s constant U-turns meant I could not tell if there was another person behind the next bend. I’d been violently mugged one time when walking by myself, and I did not like not knowing what was up ahead. My heart pounded until the high walls gave way to an open spot on the edge of a cliff. The bright spring sky, the sun, the water, and the hills were beautiful. Why wouldn’t Nietzsche want to walk this path? Maybe he wasn’t so insane. The sun rose right along the arc of much of the path, shining in my eyes. My sunglasses had broken while traveling to France. I misplaced my tennis cap. The pavement turned to a dry pocked stone that crunched like gravel. I had a long way to go. Suddenly, the fear, the sun, the desert-like rock, and my tired, dry spirit became too much. I started sobbing. Ugly crying. I can’t say why. 20 spiritualityhealth.com november / december 2023

I stopped. Nietzsche, I never liked you. In your name—fair or not—a lot of harm has been done. But I ask your spirit to come with me on this hike. Teach me about you. What was it about this path? I suddenly thought of my apartment keys. They were big, not the small ones we have in the US. I pulled them from my pocket, shook them, and smiled. My key rattle could warn people and lizards and dogs and who knows what that I was coming. My chest lightened. I felt strangely safer and unburdened. I walked on, rattling my keys until I arrived at an outcropping with a quote from Nietzsche. He discussed friendship and seeing “beyond the veil.” I’d never thought of Nietzsche as valuing friends. His fans helped usher in large scale killing with anonymous machines. But here he was, on this path, talking about the joy of friendship and being able to see beyond our current circumstances to another dimension. That dimension seemed benevolent, good, and kind. Up, up, up I went: a cliff on one side, a vale on the other. Gulls flew the valley to the sea so far below. I turned a bend and found perfume test strips on the path. They were from a famous perfumer in the village on the cliff. I picked them up, sniffed them, and smiled. Maybe life’s scent would one day be sweet. Not much later, I heard water. I walked off the path and found a crumbling stone house. Behind it was a narrow space between the house’s lichen-spotted stone and a thick wall of trees and vines. The vines blocked out the hot sun. I could not see more than a few feet in front of me. But the I knelt down and stayed until I wanted nothing else. air, so dry along the path, felt blissfully damp. I heard the water calling and hurried through the tunnel. I found a grotto with water cascading into a small pool. Light filtered through a canopy of ancient trees. The waterfall’s source was far above me, and its cool waters showered down over a forest green cedar tree that had grown in the space between cliffs. The water pooled at my feet and then ran off the cliff. I stood under the falls, showering in this mysterious water. I pulled out the perfumed strips I’d found along the trail, wet them in the stream, and washed my face with their scent. I knelt down and stayed until I wanted nothing else. Eventually, I made it to the top. At the end of the trail was a sign overlooking the royal blue and teal waters below with a Nietzsche quote that read: Oh, those Greeks! They knew how to live: for that purpose it is necessary to keep bravely to the surface, the fold and the skin; to worship appearance, to believe in forms, tones, and words, in the whole Olympus of appearance! Those Greeks were superficial—from profundity! True enough, I thought. Becoming shallow is some of the hardest work I’ve done. S+H Allegra Jordan is the author of the World War I novel The End of Innocence and the poetry collection The Light of Borrowed Splendor. She teaches leadership at Duke University and holds an MBA from Harvard Business School. “Becoming Shallow” is excerpted from her forthcoming memoir Praying Badly in Rome, about how she changed during her husband’s cancer journey. newworldlibrary.com ALSO AVAILABLE AS EBOOKS NEW FROM NEW WORLD LIBRARY 328 pages | $19.95 “The One-Way Ticket Plan will have you laughing, crying, and ditching your 9-to-5 for a lifestyle you love.” — VALERIE JOY WILSON, travel expert and founder of Trusted Travel Girl 240 pages | $17.95 “I adore and admire everything Scott creates.” — ELIZABETH GILBERT, bestselling author of Eat, Pray, Love november / december 2023 spiritualityhealth.com 21

early growers understood the addictive nature of nicotine, he said, “Of course!” Some tribes believed the spirits were addicted. Native Americans and tobacco plants became symbiotic: People got hooked on tobacco and some tobacco plants only grew with human help. The arrival of Europeans in the New World created the first recreational market for tobacco, a market that demanded a much milder form that could be grown in great quantities. Not surprisingly, the new tobacco also came to be enjoyed by Native Americans, who traded furs WHY CRUSH AN ANCIENT STONE PIPE? STEPHEN KIESLING explores an ancient battle between tobacco and gold. About 30 years ago, in April 1994, 7 top executives of America’s tobacco companies stood before Congress with their right hands raised and swore that tobacco was not addictive and that they had not manipulated the nicotine content of their cigarettes to make them more addictive. A few days later, however, leaked internal documents from one of those companies, written 30 years before the congressional hearings, exposed these pillars of the community as liars. The document read: “We are then in the business of selling nicotine, an addictive drug effective in the release of stress mechanisms.”  And so in 1996, when we began dreaming up Spirituality+Health, those CEOs were under criminal investigation, smoking was widely acknowledged as a public evil, and a gold rush had begun for what has amounted to hundreds of billions of dollars in settlements for massive health care costs and millions of lives cut short. Justice, it seemed, had been served. But that story got more complicated in our first year of publication, when I began corresponding with Joseph Winter, PhD, an anthropologist at the University of Arizona. As I wrote in our Spring 1999 issue, Dr. Winter had found ancient tobacco seeds at Native American archaeological sites, and he knew from his own family heritage that tobacco smoke traditionally carried Native American prayers to the Creator. Winter then went to local Pueblos hoping to collect live tobacco seeds and to learn more about traditional tobacco practices. What he found, instead, is that the old sacred seeds had become rare, so he threw himself into cultivating sacred tobacco and ceremonies with the fervor of a Benedictine monk growing grapes. Winter told me that tobacco cultivation goes back at least 10,000 years and a primary focus has always been nicotine content. Some tribes likened tobacco to the power of the sun, because, like sunlight, nicotine is a potent antidepressant and helps people to focus. In high doses, both sunlight and nicotine can cause hallucinations. When I asked if THE CHARLES AND VALERIE DIKER COLLECTION OF NATIVE AMERICAN ART, GIFT OF CHARLES AND VALERIE DIKER, 2018 Tobacco bag with pipe-stem case, ca. 1870 Northern Cheyenne, Native American metmuseum.org 22 spiritualityhealth.com november / december 2023

for it. For several hundred years, a clear division existed between sacred tobacco and “trade” tobacco—until the more abundant trade tobacco made its way into ceremonial use and sacred tobacco all but disappeared. That left modern Native Americans with a problem of epidemic proportions: One cannot “Just Say No” to the medium that carries your prayers, and yet many had lost connection to the rituals necessary to safely contain such powers.  Rates of tobacco addiction among Native Americans were more than double those of the rest of America. Winter’s goal was to bring the ceremonies back.       THE STORY OF THE PIPE Winter’s account of the tobacco story made sense to me 25 years ago. What I didn’t understand was a local story that I heard a few years later. As that story goes, a Native American elder was leading a ceremony to rebury some ancient Native American bones that had been exhumed long ago by archaeologists from graves about a mile downstream from my home at Ti’lomikh Falls on the Rogue River in Oregon. With the bones was a stone tobacco pipe. The bones were gently placed into the new grave, but when the time came to place the ancient pipe, the elder smashed it—and then carefully placed the pieces with the bones. The explanation given was that no one would be tempted to dig up the grave and steal the pipe, but the destruction struck me as both wrenchingly horrible and misguided. Sure, archaeologists had stolen it once, but so long as the pipe remained intact, it could be stolen again and again. Why crush something that was not only incredibly old but was presumably the most important object to the person in the grave and to the people who put it there? Why do that? Who had that right? D ecades later, for our September/October 2023 issue, I interviewed Rebecca Clarren about her family, the Lakota, and The Cost of Free Land, and a better understanding began to take shape: A few puffs of nicotine provides clarity and calmness, and the exhaled smoke carries your words to the Creator—so you’re not going to lie. To be buried with a stone pipe says something important about the aspirations of the person who was buried as well as the people who did the burial. They were not liars. Or at least, at the end of their days, they aspired not to be thought of in that way. They wanted their connection to the Creator to be clear. The stone pipe was like the Buddha’s story of the finger pointing at the moon: The pipe is likewise a finger that directs our minds on a path, not the path itself. So, smashing the pipe did not break the connection to the Creator; smashing the pipe leaves us free to find our own pointing finger. TOBACCO VS. GOLD When I moved to Ti’lomikh Falls, I found tobacco plants, which I thought of as an evil weed that killed people. I also found flakes of gold, which were exciting enough that I bought gold pans for my kids. But 25 years of dealing with gold seekers, often trespassers, has taught me that gold provides neither calm nor clarity. I’ve learned that my land and the river here were raped by miners who left both the land and the river practically barren. I’ve come to realize that the most endearing quality of gold is that it is so pliable that a small nugget can be pounded thin enough to gild a turd and make it shine forever. When gold miners first came to Ti’lomikh, the Takelma killed them and the threw their gold in the river, which I now realize was a desperate act by people who knew that they were doomed. Gold mining is smash and grab, and typically involves deception if not violence. Treaties with the Native Americans, at least in Oregon, were preceded by ceremonial smoke from a pipe—and I think it is not unfair to say that the pillars of the EuropeanAmerican communities who negotiated these treaties were always found to be lying. Why? Call it the Gold Standard. Or more accurately, the Golden Rule: You do unto others as you would expect them to do unto you. You lie because it quickly gets you what you want, and it is what you expect from other people. The Takelma civilization lasted thousands of years based on three ceremonies: The Salmon Ceremony, an obligation to share food that became our Right to Life—and by extension our right to carry an AR15. The Vision Quest, which became our Right to Liberty—and thus the right to express anything no matter how hateful. And the Potlatch or giveaway ceremony, which became our Pursuit of Happiness and then a competition for the largest individual carbon footprint. What held these three ancient ceremonies and communities together was something you also took to your grave, an honest connection to the Creator mediated by tobacco, before the sacred plant persuaded the pillars our community to stand up, raise their right hands, and lie shamelessly. As our nation approaches its 250th birthday, and we wonder if our lofty ideals will last another 10, we might reflect on another reason why the elder smashed the ancient pipe. He was calling attention to a more modern and timely finger that points—the middle finger. S+H One cannot “Just Say No” to the medium that carries your prayers, and yet many had lost connection to the rituals necessary to safely contain such powers.   november / december 2023 spiritualityhealth.com 23

ENJOY BEING ORDINARY NEAL ALLEN says the process isn’t simple, but it’s easy. Just pick off the parasites … Evening Routine Yelena Bryksenkova yelenabryksenkova.com examinations of everyday suffering, are intellectually provocative, brilliantly thought-through, and so plainly personal that many of her readers adore her as a refuge or invent a kinship with her as a secret friend.  I learned to be the minister’s wife—smiling, appropriate, quiet, and politely off to the side. I usually end up taking the selfie, since Annie’s besotted fans are singularly uninterested in my handsome mug. The message is clear: Annie is valued for her extraordinary talents. I’m ignored because I’m ordinary. Who wants to be around ordinary? Who wants to be ordinary? I do. Annie does. You do. You might not know it, though.  D o you know how much easier life is when you’re ordinary? If you’re like most people, life is constant, repetitive reinforcement of identity structures. Your personality is like a garden or a home; it requires constant upkeep. My ordinary self? No maintenance required. My ordinary self isn’t hierarchical, trying to be better or not be worse. It’s okay with how things are, right now, more or less. Tasks are required, of course. Spirituality doesn’t clean the dishes. But one task is the same as another. The task presents itself, gets done, is complete, and on to the next task. Civilization trains us to be judgmental about just about everything and to trust no one. But think about it. Who do you trust more? The alpha dogs at work or the nice cashier at Safeway? Being around ordinary people is a relief. No one expects much SEVEN YEARS AGO I met Annie Lamott—and her public. When Annie and I went out to the movies or restaurants together, I got used to being interrupted for a selfie or by words of praise from a stranger. Her 19 books, some of them sensitive novels and others inspired 24 spiritualityhealth.com november / december 2023

of me when I’m talking about the weather.  Being ordinary is what Jesus was talking about when he said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” If you’re lucky enough to be poor in spirit in the Sermon on the Mount sense—you have given up on the upside-down world of valuing riches, honor, and standing—if you’re so committed to being ordinary that you’ve abandoned all hope and help in achieving rank or being judged great, then you might have a shot at abiding presence. As you proceed through the course of life, you’re nothing special, and then eventually you become nothing at all of any note. Egoless. And then God or something else peculiar appears. Well, sometimes.   Hearing that, are you sure you want to be special? What if you could be unique—taking on the world through your own lens and individual expressions—without being special? What if being unique and being ordinary weren’t at odds? What if you could create and achieve things without caring about recognition? If I don’t have to be special, if I don’t have to spend all my time maintaining a valued self-image, if I’m not worried about being judged, then I can discover how fun it is to watch the world unfold without having a stake in it. I can perform my tasks and cultivate my interests without caring what others think of me. If I’m ordinary, the judgments of others won’t get in the way of my examination of the world at hand. If I’m okay as is, I can dawdle and daydream and scan the horizon for hawks, or bend down and investigate a roadside California poppy.  Presence—the mysterious essence that gurus and meditation teachers talk about arising when the quest for being recognized and need for improvement disappear—is weird and If I don’t have to be special, if I don’t have to spend all my time maintaining a valued self-image, if I’m not worried about being judged, then I can discover how fun it is to watch the world unfold without having a stake in it.  ISBN 9780943015538 • $12.95 • 160 pp ISBN 9780943015781 • $14.00 • 232 pp An invaluable new guide to the most important journey of your life—from the author of the groundbreaking Zen and the Art of Happiness Now available at your favorite neighborhood and online bookseller POWER PRESS Published in 35 foreign editions Over 250,000 copies sold — NEW RELEASE — In bookstores now Living Your Way to Enlightenment THAT WAS ZEN, THIS IS TAO november / december 2023 spiritualityhealth.com 25

Watering the Plants Yelena Bryksenkova yelenabryksenkova.com distinctive at first. The idea of a point in time that doesn’t need to be better, that can’t be influenced much by me, that unfolds on its own as a spectacular vision that continues to the horizon? That’s peculiar. We don’t hear about spiritual presence in school; it has no obvious social value. It sounds supernatural, or as if to encounter it I have to be as possessed as Joan of Arc. But without warning or intention, presence starts to show itself to my clients as their ego defenses start to decline. They’ll notice that the experience their ego wants to improve by going somewhere else is instead paused and allowed to exhibit itself. The pause creates a short reverie. It’s like a meditation but more spontaneous and more eyes-wide-open. It’s pretty odd the first few hundred times it shows up. The me who encounters presence has somehow freed itself, at least temporarily, from being an achiever or slob or handsome or ugly or young or old. The me that is left over is ordinary as all get out, to the point of near invisibility. Presence is what happens when you take a pause from looking ahead. Any kind of pause is usually fun. Have you ever paused a conflict and asked, “Hold on a minute. What else is here?” Melodrama recedes. Pause is another word for “look around.” When I’m scanning my environment, it may be with an eye for the peculiar, the desirable, the fresh, the familiar, or the useful, but ultimately, I’m in the thrall of the fascinating. Looking around is being fascinated. Curiosity is the act of pulling something in my environment closer for inspection. Being curious willy-nilly? That would kill the ego’s right to narrow my choices to the ones that make me shine to others.  Encountering presence is a little trippy. It can resemble a bliss state. The message that things aren’t necessarily as they appear comes through. Most people who experience it want to experience it again and again. It’s typical to embark on a quest to prolong the experience. Typical, yes, but also futile. If presence is a goal, it gets gobbled up by the ego as just another way to be disappointed by what’s going on right now. Paradoxically, setting a spiritual goal tends to prevent its attainment. Fortunately, our inner-critic work sidesteps the problem. Addressing the inner critic is a process of destruction, not affirmation or goal-setting. It’s a removal of filters. Once the objects of the ego are identified and pushed aside, presence has a funny way of showing up and taking care of itself. Let’s look a little closer at this. Goals by nature imply that things are imperfect here and now. Anytime I’m trying to find something better, I’m projecting myself out of the current moment and into the future. Most people spend a lot of time every day projecting themselves into a better future and not noticing that satisfaction is already available. Do you need anything right now? Right this second? So why would you be dissatisfied in a typical moment? Once I’ve decided my current status is not quite enough, I am telling myself that I am not happy now, that there is something wrong, incomplete, or improvable in the present. Dissatisfaction is a sure hallmark of the inner critic’s corrupt influence. If I’m dissatisfied by familiar life and want a trippy bliss state, then I’m in the inner critic’s wheelhouse. Spiritualism turns into its own materialistic, attached desire for a permanent better state that is off in the distance, no different than the materialist’s dream of a better world with that boat or vacation home or luxury car. Fortunately, you don’t need a spiritual goal. This process isn’t simple, but 26 spiritualityhealth.com november / december 2023

it’s easy. Just accept where you are and pay attention to anything that’s getting in the way of your satisfaction with the current moment. As the superego—the main thing in the way—is relaxed over time, presence starts to show up, all on its own. They’re two sides of the same coin: Reduce the inner critic, increase presence. You don’t need a guide to presence; you just need the kinds of exercises in this book or even, eventually, the simple acknowledgment that the inner-critic parasite is here, now. If I’m aware of the inner critic in real time, then I also recognize a me who deserves to pause things for a bit. And without thinking about it, I let the pause begin. This isn’t how we’re taught that things work. We’re told to apply ourselves to betterment, perfection, achievement of goals, disciplined behavior. Apply yourself to presence, kid. Just meditate a little more, a little harder. Sorry, but that’s an unlikely path to presence. What if instead all I have to do is remark, “Huh, that fool inner critic’s here again.” If I’ve done it enough times, there will suddenly appear, on occasion, space for more to enter. More is the same as presence, so long as it’s more right here, right now. If I’ve paused to look around my most ordinary life as it is happening, in a single moment I can be introduced to the new sensations and experiences of presence. By relaxing my need to be special, to be structured, to be an achiever, a wider and less-structured world appears in living color. All on its own. Inner critic work is like that. It’s about clearing brush, not building fences. S+H From Better Days: Tame Your Inner Critic by Neal Allen, published by Namaste. Creates and holds sacred space Insight • Resilience Inner Peace StevenHalpernMusic.com YouTube.com/StevenHalpernMusic • Streaming on all platforms #1 best selling sound healer, author and recording artist STEVEN HALPERN Riding the wave of medical, media and public interest, Grammy® nominated musician STEVEN HALPERN announces a major new contribution to the fi eld of therapeutic music. • No plant medicine needed to enjoy! PSYCHEDELIC THERAPY MUSIC PSYCHEDELIC THERAPY MUSIC PSYCHEDELIC THERAPY MUSIC Insight • Resilience Inner Peace Creates and holds sacred space STEVEN HALPERN IPM 8432 STEVEN HALPERN PSYCHEDELIC CHEDELIC THERAPY MUSIC Award Winning Book A classic tool for gaining clarity and awareness at Intensive Journal Workshops TM november / december 2023 spiritualityhealth.com 27

A DRAMATIC ACCOUNT OF CURING DECADES OF SUFFERING FROM CHEMICAL SENSITIVITIES AND AUTOIMMUNE DISEASES THROUGH THE PROCESS OF BRAIN RETRAINING. BY BEVERLY M FREDERICK Healing a Lifetime IN 3 DAYS L ooking back, I can say the first symptoms of my limbic system impairment appeared in early childhood. I grew up in an inner-city environment with burned-out houses and break-ins. Hypervigilance was the norm, though I didn’t understand to call it that at the time. What I do remember, as early as I can remember anything, was my reaction to cigarettes, perfume, and the smell of hot asphalt from newly paved roads. It would feel like my throat was closing and I could barely breathe, so I made the decision very early in life to avoid these things. 28 spiritualityhealth.com november / december 2023

Once, on a long drive with my family, I asked my father to put out his cigar because I was feeling nauseous in the backseat. He ignored my requests, so I finally grabbed the cigar from the ashtray and threw it out the car window. This short vignette illustrates my basic answer to dealing with the substances that affected me so adversely: Avoid them at all costs! And because I was otherwise healthy and happy, my decision seemed like a good one. What I didn’t understand until nearly half a century later was that by avoiding my triggers, I was reinforcing a limbic system impairment loop that held knowledge that wasn’t exactly true. It wasn’t actually killing me to smell these things. But the more I feared and avoided them, the stronger the fight-flight-or-freeze loop of my limbic system became. For decades I continued to avoid chemicals and chemically scented products. So when additional symptoms began, I didn’t see the connection. I was in my late 40s when lights became painfully bright and sounds became painfully loud. I’m a drummer, and I couldn’t pick up a drum anymore. I’m also a West African and Afro-Haitian dancer, and I could no longer perform those dances because the drums I loved were now painful to my ears. I thought it was part of a prolonged menopause that I referred to as “adult-onset autism,” but eventually I was tested by a dear friend who was a fellow drummer and MD who had a hunch that I had an autoimmune disease. Sure enough, the blood test came back showing I had antibodies to my thyroid, which was diagnosed as Hashimoto’s autoimmune thyroiditis. My own body was now attacking my thyroid! The years that followed came with more diagnoses: Osteoarthritis, fibromyalgia, and rheumatoid arthritis. I could have become bedridden, but I taught yoga and practiced daily, and I’d also worked out exchanges with a few students who were highly skilled body workers who practiced cranial-sacral and myofascial work. So I was blessed to be able to keep my symptoms at bay as my diagnosis escalated, but I was so busy managing all my various symptoms that it kept me from even considering a root cause. Life became truly frightening when an undiagnosed adrenal issue set my heart racing to a wildly irregular beat. I had given up gluten 20 years earlier, but now soy, dairy and eggs would set off a racing heart, so I removed them from my diet. This all came to a head when my left arm froze in the middle of my daily workout. I could barely breathe because my chest hurt so much. I was having all the classic symptoms of a heart attack, but GETTYIMAGES.COM / RUDZHAN NAGIEV (MAIN IMAGE); BULGAKOVA KRISTINA NEURONS

after many expensive tests it was revealed that my problem was dehydration from a lack of vasopressin, an essential hormone that regulates fluid retention in the body. I was then prescribed a drug called Desmopressin, which made it so I could barely sleep for more than an hour or two. It was pure torture, but I was told I needed the drug to stay alive. And then we had to move, and move again, and again. My partner, Doug, and I had lived on Hawaii’s Big Island for 12 years, but now the sulfur from the active volcanos and the mold from the Hawaiian humidity was implicated in the escalating severity of my autoimmune diseases. So, we moved to find a new community—to Bellingham, Washington; to Oaxaca, Mexico; and to Santa Fe, New Mexico—but each place had its own surprise. For example, after renting a home in the lovely and very dry city of Santa Fe came the realization that the high altitude increased my risk of dehydration from lack of vasopressin, so we couldn’t stay. Each move piled on more debt, which brought its own complications and stress. In Portland, Oregon, we thought we had found a good space until our neighbor started bringing over her employees, four men who smoked cigarettes nonstop. My legs would swell with edema, my heart felt like it would explode, and my air passages would close down. I went to the ER for interventions, but the neighbor refused to alter her behavior, so we rented a different house. We were there when I told this story to a dear friend, who said, “Oh, my god, Beverly! I know someone who had chemical sensitivity at this level, and she’s totally cured now!” I didn’t begin to believe it until her friend, Leslie, called me. We spoke on the phone for well over an hour—and while we never met, the conversation changed my life. Leslie told me her story, which was in certain ways harder than my own because she had spent well over a decade living alone, in near complete isolation. Scents and electromagnetic fields were some of her triggers. Her adult daughter would buy her food and drop it off without interaction because even the scent of her daughter would make her ill—until she attended one of Annie Hopper’s Dynamic Neural Retraining System (DNRS) retreats and learned to retrain her brain. Leslie was sure I could cure myself, too. She also thought that my decades of yoga and meditation would make my journey quicker than hers. I was not experiencing the brain fog that affects so many people with limbic brain impairment. It may sound odd, but the fact that my life was unlivable and seriously threatened actually served as a powerful impetus to drop everything and delve into my brain retraining with single-pointed focus. Because of our financial situation, I didn’t sign up for one of Hopper’s retreats. Instead, I bought a set of her DVDs and set aside three days to create my own retreat at home with my partner. At the heart of brain training is creating an affirmation of where you are going, empowering yourself to weave together what you want most for a thrilling life, and learning the art of “thought catching” to break the limbic brain trauma loops that have prevented you from moving toward that life in the past. My own affirmation was, “I am happy, healthy, wealthy, and wise—and I can do anything.” Not one of those things was true when I created that affirmation, but I knew they all were possible because they had been true before, and I was determined they would be true again if I was going to continue in this lifetime. Between the present me and the me I promised myself to become was learning to witness my thoughts, to catch the limbic system trauma loops when they occurred, to thank my vigilant limbic system for trying to protect me, and to redirect them on a new and healthy pathway with my practice. I learned that communicating with the limbic brain is like working with three-year-olds—or like herding cats. I learned that communicating with the limbic brain is like working with three-year-olds—or like herding cats. GETTYIMAGES.COM / RUDZHAN NAGIEV 30 spiritualityhealth.com november / december 2023

In the beginning, a very important part of the training was what I call “classic neuroscience” YouTube videos. One video featured a woman who suffered from a pharmaceutical-induced injury that left her without a sense of balance, as if she was constantly falling even when she was lying down. Her life was hell on earth—until a special helmet was created by neuroscientist Paul Bach-y-Rita that allowed her to receive information on the tip of her tongue so she could reroute balance into an uninjured part of her brain. In the video, you see her go from a state of tension and struggle to a discernible state of relaxation as she puts on the helmet for the first time. At the end of the video, you get to see her dancing with her therapist. Another classic neuroscience video showed the famous neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran working with a client who was suffering from unbearable pain in a non-existent amputated arm. Ramachandran created a box with mirrors so that his client could experience a visual mirage of his phantom limb as his existing arm was being massaged. His pain went away as he watched but returned when he closed his eyes. Through training and with time, both the pain and the phantom arm disappeared, and this protocol has become the standard treatment for a nightmare scenario that has driven many sufferers to suicide. I cried transformative tears watching these videos of life-changing breakthroughs for people who were so unbearably miserable. I saw what was possible, the healing magic that can transform our brains in ways that neuroscientists are only now beginning to fully understand. Those videos affected me as much as my own affirmation because I now understood and believed in my brain’s capacity to create new pathways and neurons: to change not only my brain’s form, but its function. At the end of the three days of DVDs, Doug and I went to the grocery store to get some food and passed three men smoking. Doug was ready to catch me: “Are you alright? Are you alright?” he asked. But I hadn’t noticed the smokers. When he explained what happened, I went back to find the smokers and stand next to them, but they had gone. It was only then that I started crying tears of joy. An entire lifetime of multiple chemical sensitivity had been wiped away in just three days by deeply understanding and accepting that my brain had been stuck in a repetitive trauma loop for 60 years! The disappearance of my thyroid antibodies and the rising of my vasopressin took longer. Somewhere between two to three months after beginning the program, I threw away the horrible Desmopressin prescription and no longer had any symptoms or blood-work markers of autoimmune disease! It took longer for me to free myself of my reactions to certain foods. I did incremental training, starting by imagining eating something that had soy or dairy or eggs. I learned that I could give myself heart palpitations from just the thought of eating those foods. It took weeks to eat even a small bite of those foods and many months to begin to feel comfortable. Most of these events occurred just over five years ago. Since that time, I have talked to others on this path and learned that symptoms that disappear quickly for one person can take much longer for another. What I know for sure is that my commitment to the practice was a key to my success. I also know that my commitment was rooted in the creativity with which I molded my practice. I gave names to the different parts of my limbic brain: the amygdala, anterior cingulate cortex, hippocampus, and hypothalamic pituitary axis. I called them “my fire dragons” and “my beauties.” I imagined their different colored scales and diversely shaped dragon bodies when I addressed them and spoke to them with love, appreciation, and inclusion. I sang to them as if they were a group of three-year-olds needing to recover from a traumatic experience. I repeatedly explained that they don’t have to worry anymore. I danced with them. I still do this, as this imaginative twist I serendipitously added made my practice so much more fun. I actually look forward to it, which is key to a prolonged and relaxed engagement. When I began five years ago, I usually practiced much more than the recommended hour a day because taking that horrible medication meant I barely slept. When I wasn’t sleeping, rather than worrying about the things I had to do the next day, I would do the practice silently while lying in bed next to my partner. I would say my affirmations to myself, and then I would remember an inspiring memory, sweep it through my body, and put myself into a bliss state. I would take refuge in that bliss state. Then I would imagine my future, some of the things that I imagined moving towards: sleeping eight hours a night; moving to Portugal; learning to sail; being able to perform music with Doug regardless of people’s cigarette smoke. None of those things were possible then, but I did each and every one of those things in the years that followed. I still do. Beverly Frederick is a longtime contributor to S+H who lives on the Portuguese island of Porto Santo. She now offers her own highly playful version of brain retraining called FLY-FREE with her partner, Doug Orton. 12 SELF-TESTS FOR LIMBIC TRAUMA LOOPS >>> november / december 2023 spiritualityhealth.com 31

DOES YOUR BRAIN Brain retraining guides us to rewire our limbic system by reviewing the habits of our limbic system’s fight-flight-orfreeze response to see if the things we perceive as a threat are indeed a threat. It is a drug-free, self-directed technique based on the principles of neuroscience. When we are methodically guided to do this, we can begin to understand the places where we have been operating from a maladaptive stress response. The process allows us to move from a state of survival to a state of rest, growth, and repair, where lasting healing can occur. Long Covid, chronic fatigue syndrome, multiple chemical sensitivity, fibromyalgia, chronic lyme disease, food sensitivities, anxiety, disease, chronic pain, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome and a long list of autoimmune diseases labeled as “incurable” all have their roots in a maladapted stress response. Brain retraining is a simple process, but it is not easy. It takes a willingness to make your healing your number one priority; a willingness to change how you perceive yourself and your relationship to the world; a willingness to show up daily (or nearly daily) to create your life goals, witness your thoughts and feelings, focus on the best moments of your life, and rehearse your future. To get a sense of whether brain retraining may be helpful to you, take a close look at each of these 12 tests. If you answer “never” or “occasionally”, skip it. But if you answer “often” or “always”, write down an example and prepare yourself for next time with these suggestions. Sadly, many people who have suffered for years or decades are understandably afraid of even allowing hope for a cure. It is my hope that trying these simple suggestions will provide a glimpse of joy—and thus discover what is possible through brain retraining. OBSESSING ABOUT FEAR OF PAIN, CHEMICALS OR ANXIETY Do you find yourself constantly worrying about the future of your health? Is most of your inner and outer dialogue about symptoms of illness? NEVER OCCASIONALLY OFTEN ALWAYS SUGGESTION: Actively let go of thoughts and fears. Laugh. Actively engage in other conversations. Tell yourself, “It’s not me, it’s my brain!” NEGATIVE THINKING PATTERNS Do you often find yourself in negative thinking patterns about yourself, others, or the world? Do you feel victimized by other people or circumstances? When things are going well, do you find yourself thinking it won’t last? NEVER OCCASIONALLY OFTEN ALWAYS SUGGESTION: Experiment with different positive affirmations. What else is true in this moment that could be uplifting? What can you be grateful for? FOCUSING ON PAIN OR SCANNING FOR BODY PAIN Is much of your mental energy spent tracking and identifying physical symptoms? Do you talk nearly exclusively about your symptoms or your illness? NEVER OCCASIONALLY OFTEN ALWAYS SUGGESTION: Remind yourself that these symptoms and this pain are caused by your confused limbic system. Say to yourself, “Today I choose to focus my attention elsewhere and on something uplifting.” PREDICTING PAINFUL OUTCOMES Do you calculate your reactions to things in advance by how long you will be sick/in pain/fatigued/anxious afterward? Do you avoid situations or alter the way that you live in a self-protective manner? NEVER OCCASIONALLY OFTEN ALWAYS SUGGESTION: Actively decide to try on gratitude like a new outfit. Make a list of things you are grateful for. Remind yourself that it is your limbic brain that is creating the painful outcomes and that you can make new decisions now that you know. 1 4 5 3 2 CHECKING THE ENVIRONMENT FOR THREATS Do you find yourself scanning for potential threats in your environment? When you experience symptoms, do you look to the environment to try and determine the cause? NEVER OCCASIONALLY OFTEN ALWAYS SUGGESTION: Focus on the task at hand. What am I doing? Where am I? Bring yourself into the present moment: laugh, sing, count colors, count backwards or in another language. List things that start with the letter C. NEED RETRAINING? TRY THESE 12 SELF-TESTS FOR LIMBIC TRAUMA LOOPS 32 spiritualityhealth.com november / december 2023

6 7 8 9 10 11 12 BLAMING YOURSELF OR OTHERS Do you notice yourself blaming yourself or others for your circumstances? NEVER OCCASIONALLY OFTEN ALWAYS SUGGESTION: We give our power away when we perceive ourselves as victims. Reclaim power by giving yourself and others permission to be human. ADDICTIVE BEHAVIORS Do you notice yourself engaging in behaviors that you know are unhealthy or escalate your limbic brain injury but cannot stop them? NEVER OCCASIONALLY OFTEN ALWAYS SUGGESTION: Allow your inner curious observer to notice addictive impulses without judgment, then do a round of practice or take a pause and decide to nourish yourself with a health-affirming behavior instead. PLANNING FOR A FUTURE OF LIMITATION Do your visions of the future include your present limitations? NEVER OCCASIONALLY OFTEN ALWAYS SUGGESTIONS: Remember that thousands of people have healed “incurable” diseases by creating new neural pathways—and you can, too. Make exciting, enticing plans for your new life. ARE YOU STUCK IN THE PAST Do you witness your mind repeatedly replaying past painful experiences or social interactions? NEVER OCCASIONALLY OFTEN ALWAYS SUGGESTION: Actively search out for the beauty and wonder of the present moment. Remember that you are now actively engaged in healing your brain injury and focus on all the enticing possibilities this will offer to your future. DEFINING YOURSELF THROUGH YOUR SYMPTOMS When you speak about yourself, do you define yourself as a person with [the symptoms of your limbic injury]? NEVER OCCASIONALLY OFTEN ALWAYS SUGGESTION: Remember that no matter how long you have lived with the symptoms of your limbic brain impairment, you can heal. Request that people ask you “What’s new and exciting?” instead of “How are you?” so you can tell them about your progress (no matter how small). COMPLAINING Do you notice yourself complaining about how you feel, complaining about others, or expressing dissatisfaction with the world in general? NEVER OCCASIONALLY OFTEN ALWAYS SUGGESTION: Your symptoms are seriously challenging, but they are not your fault! And—you can heal them! Remind yourself of this repeatedly. Invest in gratitude lists and create elevated states that will improve your immune system and carry you on your way. OVER RESPONSIBILITY FOR OTHERS (CARETAKER’S SYNDROME) Do you feel the need to be responsible for the welfare of others, even before taking care of yourself? NEVER OCCASIONALLY OFTEN ALWAYS SUGGESTION: For the next six months, you are only responsible for your recovery. Rerouting your neural pathways and staying in a receptive, elevated healing state is your number one priority. To do this, you cannot be responsible for anyone else. Set boundaries ahead of time. Let people know. RESOURCES TO FIND OUT MORE: The Brain that Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science by Norman Doidge, MD. DNRS Dynamic Neural Retraining System retrainingthebrain.com Fly-Free Brain Retraining beverlyfrederick.org Raelan Agle – “How to Overcome Setbacks & Unlock Your Long Covid & CFS Recovery” youtu.be/5wXt3YeRtP4?si=EO2uJdGA6IJfVe2K www.youtube.com/@RaelanAgle november / december 2023 spiritualityhealth.com 33

Our brain radically shapes time for our sanity, health, and happiness. Most of us don’t even notice the missing blink.t he brain has a lot of jobs to do, but one of the most important jobs is to edit time. Take the blink of an eye as an example. The average blink lasts 200-400 milliseconds and happens about every two seconds, a fluttering in and out of light that would drive most of us crazy if our brain didn’t edit out the time we blink. Or think of television. When the concept was first proposed, physicists were sure it could never work because the images on the TV would be transmitted at the speed of light, reaching our eyes 900,000 times faster than the sound would reach our ears. What those scientists never counted on was the human brain editing the incoming sensory signals so severely that they would seem to arrive together. Our brain works to make the world seem consistent, so it slows light down enough that the sound catches up. Presto! Television works. This Is Your Brain on Time BY ALLAN J. HAMILTON, MD 34 spiritualityhealth.com november / december 2023

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In 2013, a retired pilot named P.H. went to Queen’s Square Hospital in London because he had begun to hear the audio from the TV before he saw the actor’s lips move—the opposite of the TV problem that had worried physicists. P.H. then noticed that the same thing began to happen in regular conversations: He would hear his own voice before he could feel the muscles in his tongue, lips, and mouth begin to move. Eventually, MRI scans revealed that P.H. had suffered a stroke in the brainstem that somehow left a 210-millisecond delay between P.H.’s audio and visual perception. That sort of discovery is typical in neuroscience as it is in life: We don’t know what we’ve got till it’s gone. Take K.D., a housewife in her 50s who suffered a minor stroke in her cerebellum, a relatively “silent” part of the brain where a stroke usually won’t have much of an impact on a patient’s life. In K.D.’s case, however, that wasn’t true. For her whole life, K.D. had been an early riser, but after the stroke, she rarely got out of bed before 11 a.m. She had always been an avid baker, but now loaves of bread that were supposed to rise for hours were given only minutes—and the loaves often burned in the oven until the fire alarm went off. She took the dog out for a walk, and the police found her eight hours later—still walking the dog. All of this wasn’t dementia. She had lost track of time, and thus K.D. helped neuroscientists realize that the cerebellum has its own time-keeping cells that coordinate our muscle movements. When those neurons don’t function, daily living becomes practically impossible. There are also very accurate time-keeping cells embedded in the hippocampus and parahippocampus. Some of these function as “time signature” cells for our memories as we store them. So, recollections we made of last year’s Christmas are not mistaken with, say, the memory of a Christmas from our childhood. Without such timestamps, memories would likely be as useful as a stack of photographs glued together. Under the frontal cortex we can find several distinct clusters of grey matter, called nuclei, lying close to the brain’s center. Collectively, neuroscientists call them the striatum, and different kinds of timing cells populate the entire striatum. These are the brain’s stopwatches and can cover intervals lasting only a few milliseconds to a few minutes. For example, when we hear a sound, these stopwatches immediately compare how quickly that sound arrives at our right ear versus our left. That difference can be as little as 10 microseconds, but our brains can analyze that tiny gap to tell us from where the sound came from. Without those stopwatches, we’d lose track of sound. Recent research also shows that our ability to gauge a length of time relies on the secretion of the neurotransmitter, called dopamine, which is especially abundant in the striatum. When dopamine levels fall—as they do in patients with Parkinson’s disease and ADHD—people have a badly altered sense of time. When individuals with Parkinson’s disease or ADHD were asked to estiamate how long a given interval might be, both groups tested poorly and tended to overestimate how long the interval was. With medication to boost their dopamine, their time assessment returned to normal. THE BIG CLOCK UPSTAIRS All life that has evolved on our planet has come to fruition under the impact of our sun, and almost every life-form is tied to the circadian rhythm imposed by the sun’s 24-hour cycles. In humans, that cycle is married to our biological rhythms by a part of the brain called the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN), which sits above the optic pathways and samples how much light falls upon the retina. In turn, the SCN determines when we get sleepy, when we dream, when we stir, and when we arise. It also sets off a thousand biological rhythms, like the tides of cortisol and other stress hormones that activate our energy stores. A series of experiments done deep underground in lightless caves demonstrate that, without the input of the sun’s cycle, the brain quickly begins to “freecycle” on its own and can begin to have cycles of activity longer than 48 hours. Imagine the chaos of a world in which everyone cycles on their own time. In a flow state, one’s complete focus and absorption in the activity can cause the outside world, including the sense of time, to fade. GETTYIMAGES.COM / WILDPIXEL 36 spiritualityhealth.com november / december 2023

And that’s what we’ve created. With the onset of artificial light and now handheld screens, millions of years of the human body being inextricably linked to the daily cycle of sunlight and darkness is over. Suddenly, human beings can work and travel and watch YouTube all night. Factories and stores and phone scammers operate 24/7. The graveyard shift has metastasized into constantly being on call. Sleep has fallen victim to productivity and distraction. And so has health, starting with night shift workers, who show increased rates of heart disease, cancer, depression, and suicide. Our exploding epidemic of anxiety may be just a matter of time. Jetting across time zones leads to a similar mismatch between our internal clocks and the Big Clock Upstairs. Symptoms of jet lag can vary but typically include fatigue, insomnia or disrupted sleep, difficulty concentrating, irritability, gastrointestinal disturbances, and general discomfort or malaise. The severity depends on the number of time zones crossed. Escaping to Mars will be likely be much worse. On the red planet, a day is 56 minutes longer than a day on Earth, and astronauts may not be able to adapt no matter how long they try. Living on Mars may prove to be practically impossible—or just as impossible as TV. THE FLUX AND FLOW In 1905, when Einstein published his Special Theory of Relativity, he asserted that an observer would experience time unfolding slower and slower as he got closer to travelling at the speed of light. By 1915, Einstein had elaborated his General Theory of Relativity, which proposed that gravity was not a force transmitted through space, as Isaac Newton had asserted, but a warping of the space-time continuum. This warping caused time to slow down near a massive object like a black hole, where time can come to a standstill. So, in Einstein’s view, time cannot be absolute and fixed because it is fluidly interconnected with space. Something similar is true of human time: Even though we can measure time with extraordinary precision based on regular, predictable phenomena, such as the rotation of the Earth or the vibration of atoms, we live with enormous variance imposed by differences in human perception. Different people, or even the same person in different situations, may experience the passage of time in vastly different ways. This subjectivity can be influenced by myriad factors. One prominent example is time seemingly “flying” when we are having fun. And it turns out to be true: When we are engaged in a stimulating, enjoyable activity, we assess time intervals as being shorter than they actually are. Conversely, when we are bored, time intervals stretch out and seem much longer to us. We also know that traumatic experiences often lead to a compression of time. In high-stress or threatening situations, the body releases adrenaline, heightening our senses and mental acuity. This causes the brain to process information and shuttle it into the hippocampus at a much faster speed. It is as if we are recording everything in slow motion, or a high rate of frames per second. We are creating more memories per second, so time appears to slow down.   Flow states, often experienced by athletes, musicians, and artists when fully immersed in their craft, can also lead to a suspension of time. In a flow state, one’s complete focus and absorption in the activity can cause the outside world, including the sense of time, to fade. This often results in the experience of timelessness, where hours might feel like minutes. Similarly, sensory deprivation, such as that experienced in a floatation tank, can distort our perception of time. Without external stimuli to anchor our senses, our brain lacks the usual cues that help mark the passage of time, leading to a sense of timelessness or temporal distortion. Transcendental meditation can often lead practitioners to report a sense of timelessness, a perception that time has stood still or become irrelevant. More universal is the feeling that time passes more quickly as we age. One theory explaining this phenomenon is the proportional theory: that, as we age, each unit of time represents a smaller proportion of our entire life. For example, a year represents 50 percent of life for a 2-year-old but only 2 percent for a 50-year-old. So a year, a month, or a day seems shorter as we age simply because it makes up a smaller fraction of our lives. Some have seriously proposed doing nothing in later years to make life seem longer, but that approach—boring as intended—runs headlong into a second theory, the novelty theory, of why time speeds up. As we grow older, we encounter fewer new experiences than we did in our younger years, when everything was fresh and needed to be learned. Novel experiences require more neural resources to process, making time seem to unfold more slowly. Familiar routines, conversely, blur into each other, and thus vast chunks of time disappear like the blink of an eye. Allan Hamilton, MD, is a Harvard-trained brain surgeon and Regents Professor of Surgery at the University of Arizona. His new book, Cerebral*Entanglements—How the Brain Gives Value and Meaning to Our Private and Public Lives, will be published by Knopf in February 2024. november / december 2023 spiritualityhealth.com 37

GAVIN FRANCIS TRAINED in emergency medicine and became an ER doc, but he grew frustrated by not knowing what happened to his patients, so he decided to become a family doctor. But the volume of patients, the complexity of their needs, and the fact that he was being asked to get involved in so many different areas of their lives proved overwhelming emotionally, which manifested as blinding headaches. BY STEPHEN KIESLING A CONVERSATION WITH GAVIN FRANCIS, MD to Knowing theTime Rest He realized the only way he could complete his training was to take more time—so that every day in the clinic was followed by a day off to recover. That decision shaped the doctor he turned out to be—and starts a beautiful new book: Recovery: The Lost Art of Convalescence. Not Today Giselle Dekel giselledekel.com 38 spiritualityhealth.com november / december 2023

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You write about the difficulty of getting patients to give themselves time to recover. Yes. As a primary care doctor in the UK, a big part of my role is to sign off on judgments about people’s capacity to work: when I think they shouldn’t be working because they’re too ill, and when I think they might be ready to go back to work. Sometimes I make these assessments on behalf of the government in terms of welfare assessments. And while stories in the media might tell you that the workforce today is a bit lazier than in the olden days—a bit work-shy—the reverse is actually the case. An awful lot of people work much harder than they should. They’re too keen to get back to work too early, and they end up making themselves sicker. So, one of my biggest roles as a physician is to give people the permission to take the time away from other obligations in order to recover to the best of their abilities. That can be quite a hard sell today, especially in the modern world where there’s real pressure to be constantly productive. In the West, we have a very mechanistic view of the body, and people tend to think about the body like a machine. They think about it in terms of parts wearing down the way they might think about an engine. But that’s not true at all. So many just push themselves hard until they get sick and then turn up to the doctor and say, “Fix me!” And I say, “Well, it’s not quite as straightforward as that. Let’s roll back a few steps and think about it differently.” You write that we’re more like plants. [Laughs.] I don’t think human beings are like plants at all, but I do think that we’re more like plants than we are like engines. Doctors and nurses should be more like gardeners than mechanics. Rather than asking, “Which part’s broken and how can I adjust it?” they should be asking, “What does this patient before me need to flourish? What environment do they need? What circumstances do they need? What nourishment do they need?” That’s a lovely thought. My primary care doctor when I was growing up studied medicine in the 1950s, and he had to study botany as part of his medical degree. One reason is that, pre-1940, nearly all the drugs came from plants. But it was also because the study of botany is a way to understand how life flourishes. I think we lost something by no longer asking medical students to learn a bit of botany. Our body is very much a part of the natural world—and is always in a state of dynamism and change. Rather than think about health as some sort of extreme that we reach towards at very brief moments of our lives, I think of health as a balance between lots of different competing elements that we can achieve at all the different phases of our lives. Even if you’re suffering from a severe or incurable condition, you can still work towards health in the sense of working towards a good balance and a place of dignity and minimal suffering. I think a big part of that is learning a new language of the body, learning to listen to your body. Starting to pay attention to: What kind of things make you feel worse? What kind of things make you feel better? What gives you energy? What depletes your energy? Start trying to track what kinds of triggers there are for your pain: emotional triggers, as well as behavioral triggers. Encouraging people to start paying GAVIN FRANCIS, MD ONE OF MY BIGGEST ROLES AS A PHYSICIAN IS TO GIVE PEOPLE THE PERMISSION TO TAKE THE TIME AWAY FROM OTHER OBLIGATIONS IN ORDER TO RECOVER TO THE BEST OF THEIR ABILITIES. Morning Flower Giselle Dekel giselledekel.com 40 spiritualityhealth.com november / december 2023

really close attention to their bodies and minds is something new for a lot of patients. A couple of lovely observations pop out: “There is no hierarchy in suffering,” and “Recovery and comparison don’t mix.” Yes. It’s tempting to be resentful of others who recover more quickly than you. It’s also tempting to think less of somebody who struggles for a long time. But I find such comparisons are rarely helpful. It’s much more important to set achievable goals and work within the framework of what you can experience and what you can understand rather than comparing yourself to others. Being a primary care doctor is a real privilege because you get insights into people’s lives, rich and poor, young and old, severely disabled, and fit and healthy. You really learn that money doesn’t necessarily make you happy, although it helps. And you really learn that everybody reacts differently to the trauma and the difficulty of illness. You tell a fascinating story about the rise and fall of hospital beds. My own research has shown that if you go back to the 1700s in the US or in Europe, there were almost no hospital beds. Medicine wasn’t particularly effective and patients stayed in their own homes and often died young. Through the 19th century, people began to realize that offering a clean bed and fresh air and healthy food improved someone’s odds of survival greatly. The number of hospital beds exploded through the 19th century and into the early 20th century following the principles of cleanliness and hygiene outlined by Florence Nightingale, that famous Victorian nurse. We reached a real high point of those hospital beds in the 1940s and 1950s. Then something remarkable and strange happened. During the 40s and 50s, the healing possibilities of medicine improved exponentially. Antibiotics were developed; steroids were developed; effective antidepressants and anti-psychotics were developed; inhalers for asthma were developed. These medicines were absolutely transformative. But in my view, one not-so-great result is that a new kind of techno-medical approach to recovery began to take hold. People began to believe that all you needed to recover to the best of your abilities is the right prescription, which would work like the antidote to your illness, and you would get better. So we didn’t need all these hospital beds. The older idea of recovery as something that required time, the right environment, cleanliness, fresh air, support, and good nursing care was increasingly jettisoned. Starting in the 60s, the number of hospital beds started going down—which is fine if you don’t need them. But we’re now in a position where people are living longer than they’ve ever lived in the history of humanity. It’s normal now to live into your late 80s, and I’ve got a lot of patients in their 90s. And if you live that long, you will become frail and more dependent and need more nursing care. And in my own country now, we have a real crisis. Many of my patients need a hospital bed for oldfashioned nursing support—to get back some strength so they can get back to their own homes. Those beds just aren’t available. We see the same thing in mental healthcare. We had a real high point in the 50s and 60s of what used to be called asylums for people with mental health problems. It’s a lovely word, asylum. It should mean a place of rest and safety, and asylums were places of safety. But again, with the explosion of effective anti-psychotics and more and more effective psychiatric drugs, a lot of asylums closed—and now we’ve gone too far the other way. Now, if somebody’s in real distress with mental or emotional suffering, I can’t get them admitted. Dreaming of My Bed Giselle Dekel giselledekel.com THROUGH THE 19TH CENTURY, PEOPLE BEGAN TO REALIZE THAT OFFERING A CLEAN BED AND FRESH AIR AND HEALTHY FOOD IMPROVED SOMEONE’S ODDS OF SURVIVAL GREATLY. november / december 2023 spiritualityhealth.com 41

You write that you miss the old term “nervous breakdown.” Why is that? Nowadays, no psychiatrist will say you’ve had a nervous breakdown. They’ll say you’ve had a suicidal depressive episode, or a psychotic episode, or a crisis of anxiety. They’ll put lots of labels on you, which can stick to your medical records quite tenaciously—when the illness was just a manifestation of what was happening in their life at that time. A folk term like “nervous breakdown” is a diagnosis that not only makes sense of the patient’s experience but is also something that you can shake off. You don’t go through the rest of your life thinking you’re vulnerable to this medical condition. You go through the rest of your life thinking that was a terrible period of my life in which lots of pressures triggered this breakdown, but I’m in a better place now and it’s not going happen again. How do you choose what kind of doctor you’re going be with a particular patient? A very underappreciated skill is gauging early on what kind of clinician a patient needs you to be. You need to quickly figure out whether this is somebody who wants a purely scientific approach: the facts of their condition, the latest research, and what the stats suggest they should do. Or is this somebody who wants a more companionable approach, more of an arm-over-the-shoulder feeling that they’re setting out to explore the possibilities for treatment together? Or is this a patient who just doesn’t want to know? I’ve met many patients who just say, “You’re the doctor. You deal with that—and keep it to yourself.” If you try and make that patient an active partner, they’ll get frustrated, and you won’t be the best doctor for them. YOUR BASIC PRESCRIPTION No one is getting any younger, and all of us would do well to remember that health can never be a final destination but a balance between extremes, different for everyone, and whether we reach it or not depends on our goals and our priorities as much as it depends on anatomy and physiology. There is no on-size-fits-all in medicine … So, give time, space, and respect to convalescence if you can. It’s an act that we need to engage in, giving of ourselves; a work of effort and endurance, and, to a certain extent, of grace. As much as you’re able to, charge your environment with space, light, cleanliness, greenery, and quiet. Remember that healing isn’t a game of snakes and ladders: With each movement toward and away from health, we have more than dice to guide us, and with every cycle of boom and bust we gather experience that will help us next time. Learn a new language of the body and listen to it with care. Get a sick note if you need one, but beware of letting your horizons get too narrow or your confidence fall. We are social beings who need to act in the world, and work can help us accomplish that. Everyone needs activity of one kind or another. Take sabbatical if you can, and don’t worry too much over the time it might take to recover: Everyone’s tempo of recovery is different and subject to different pressures. Travel if you can, and if you can’t, travel vicariously through the stories of others of through books. Attend to your surroundings, and if they are making you sick, change them. Think about your diet and whether it’s a help or hindrance to your recovery. Health is a balance: Rest, but not too much; get active, but not too much. Find a clinician you trust. Don’t expect all doctors and nurses to be the same; it’s good that they’re all different—they’re fallible individuals and are usually trying their best. Remember the needs and the frustrations of caregivers and those around you. Be your own best physician: Drugs are the least of healing, and there are many kinds of therapies: singing, walking, eating, dancing, or sitting with a beloved pet on your lap … —GAVIN FRANCIS Excerpted from Recovery: The Lost Art of Convalescence by Gavin Francis, published by Penguin. Blanket with Legs Giselle Dekel giselledekel.com 42 spiritualityhealth.com november / december 2023

There’s a wonderful essay written by the book critic Anatole Broyard when he had prostate cancer, called “The Patient Examines the Doctor.” He wrote about all the different kinds of doctors you get: ones that joke; ones that are too serious; ones that blind you with science; ones that are very companionable; ones that are good at using literary metaphors; ones that are monosyllabic. He also acknowledges that sometimes, as a patient, he asks too much because he wants the perfect doctor. I think that he was onto something. I want to encourage the readers of this book to be bold with their physicians and tell their physicians what approach they prefer—how to be that perfect doctor. You have a chapter on travel. I brought up travel in the book because of the idea of pilgrimage. It’s a very ancient impulse when you’re ill and when things are going wrong for you at home to go on pilgrimage. In the Middle Ages, that was often the best thing you could do if you were suffering. You would go on pilgrimage to somewhere that you believed had the possibility of curing you. The point of travel is that sometimes a change really is as good as rest. Moving away from home puts you in a different climate, puts you in a different situation, puts you with different people around you. It can jolt you into a new frame of mind, which can ultimately prove helpful. I had a patient once who was dying of pancreatic cancer, and he had a Catholic faith, and his wife was very keen that he go to Lourdes. So he went, and he really felt that it was a worthwhile trip. It didn’t cure his cancer, but he was very glad to have gone. I would never stand in the way if a patient were keen to go on pilgrimage. What about attitude? There are conditions where your attitude is going to make almost no difference to your outcome. But there’s all sorts of situations in life and in medicine where your attitude can have profound effects. I knew two men who suffered cardiac arrests and had to be shocked with defibrillators back into a normal rhythm. Both men then had defibrillators wired into their hearts under the skin. What was fascinating is that one of the men found the experience absolutely terrifying. He’d been shown in a very visceral way that life could be taken from him at any moment—which is something that’s true for all of us. But his life became a shadow of what it had been before. He became paranoid. He worried ceaselessly whether the implantable defibrillator would work. He slept poorly, his cardiac function and his fitness went down, and he became more unwell. The other man had an almost diametrically opposite reaction. His said, “When I collapsed in that car park, I died—and then I was given a new life. And so all this life I’m now living is extra. It’s a magnificent gift that’s been given to me.” And he called up everyone he loved and told them he loved them. He started to go on trips all over the place and eat out and enjoy fine food and fine wine in a way he hadn’t before. He became much more fit, much more active, much more engaged, much more involved. I wish I had a magic wand to infuse people with such a positive attitude, but just by telling the story, I hope to point people in that direction. Healing is so much more than a prescription. If you’ve got Parkinson’s disease, sometimes a dance class is the best thing. If you’ve got lung disease, sometimes a choir is the best thing. Or if you’re lonely, sometimes a pet is the best thing. I’d choose pets over Prozac. [Laughs.] I’ve got a friend who runs a small holding with many different kinds of animals, and I gave her a copy of this book, and I said, “This is a reminder to treat yourself as well as you treat your animals.” Stephen Kiesling is editor in chief of S+H. Dreaming of a Vacation Giselle Dekel giselledekel.com THE POINT OF TRAVEL IS THAT SOMETIMES A CHANGE REALLY IS AS GOOD AS REST. november / december 2023 spiritualityhealth.com 43

“It takes a spiritual awakening, maybe a near miss where you realize you could have died without fulfilling this dream of getting it down on paper …. You gotta grab yourself by the wrist sternly and say, ‘Stop!’ We’re gonna stop living unconsciously. We’re gonna stop wasting so much of the day. We are gonna sit down for two hours five days a week, or an hour five days a week, or three nights a week— whatever you can budget. And we’re going to get some pages written. That’s how you stop wasting the few precious years you have here ….” A MASTER CLASS FROM ANNE LAMOTT BY STEPHEN KIESLING Afternoon in the Studio Yelena Bryksenkova yelenabryksenkova.com TIME WRITETO THE SAM LAMOTT november / december 2023 spiritualityhealth.com 45

You first wrote about writing as a “debt of honor” in Bird by Bird 28 years ago. What does that mean, and how has it changed for you over the years? Well, most people really don’t want to write or enjoy writing in any way [laughs]. But some of us do—some of us always were the storytellers for the rest of the world. We have a gift with words and a way of shaping narrative into a beginning, middle, and end. I can remember being on the blacktop in second grade, and Robin Anderson stole Vic Von Locke’s lunch, and there was a commotion and an intervention by the authorities: the second-grade teacher. And the kids looked to me to tell the story because I would figure out a place to start. I would start with a little background: “It was a heat wave, and we were all out on the blacktop, and then …” So I always had this gift. And I was always a voracious reader. Books were where I found sanctuary and salvation like what other people found in Jesus. I still do, and will again tonight when I go to bed. And my dad was a writer. Every morning at 5:30, he went into his office and we’d hear tap, tap, tap upstairs, where our bedrooms were. He didn’t wait for inspiration; he might be hungover; he might have a head cold. Five thirty, he was in his office, tap, tap, tapping away. I learned the habits from him. I felt like I had this mysterious gift, but I also had the habit. It felt like a debt of honor—a debt I had to honor. That’s lovely. It was like getting one of Willy Wonka’s five golden tickets. Wow! I got one of the golden tickets, which is that I’m pretty good at it. So, the way it’s changed? Well, I’m going to be 70 next year when my new book Somehow: Thoughts on Love comes out in April. And I’d say the last five or six years, I really haven’t wanted to do it all the time. I’m kind of tired. I’m really into politics, and I’d much rather be watching MSNBC than keeping my butt in the chair. And I really don’t like publication. I really hate book tours. I don’t like flying. I don’t like travel. I hate airports and tarmacs, where I keep getting stuck. But I was given this gift, and I don’t squander it. And so, this time I pulled it off again, and I did it because it’s very mysterious to me that I got picked by the Great Universal Spirit, aka Gus, to be one of the writers for the Colony. Is it the same if you set aside a time to speak into your computer and get a transcript? I don’t have a mental app for technology, so I would never just talk into the computer. Over the years, my students are always explaining why they’re not doing what I tell them, which is to carry pencils and index cards or small notebooks in their back pockets. They’ll say, “I dictate into the phone.” And I always say, “Okay, that’s nice, but if you want what we old-time writers have, do what we do: We stop and we scribble down notes to ourselves, a word that might bring back an entire memory or passage.” When I teach very little kids, I give them sharpened pencils and paper and have them scribble across the page so that they understand that graphite on paper is an ancient and sacred sound. Then, little by little by little, first grade, second grade, they’re learning cursive writing, and we’re putting words down. We’re putting memories and visions and ideas and questions down. In Bird By Bird, there’s a chapter about having one-inch picture frames on your desk to remind you that you don’t have to write whole books. You don’t have to Henry James said, “A writer is someone on whom nothing is lost.” A Collection Yelena Bryksenkova yelenabryksenkova.com 46 spiritualityhealth.com november / december 2023

write whole screenplays. You just have to write one scene that day. You just have to write a couple pages that day. I know that everyone loves their phones, and they dictate and they get transcriptions. But if you want to be a writer, do what we do. We also read everything we can get our hands on. We sit at the feet of the masters. You see how they introduce characters without overwhelming the reader. You see how people wrote memoirs of their family that they didn’t get sued for. [Laughs.] How do you feel about revenge? When we were teaching together about 30 years ago—34 years ago, because I was pregnant—the great writer (who happens to be my great friend) Ethan Canin told his students, “Never write out of revenge.” I told my students, “You need no other reason!” [Laughs.] Men that I’ve been with have written horribly intimate books where I was a character, and that made me crazy. But as much as I believe in anything, I believe in karma, so I’ve never done that. But I’ve written pieces about people who really hurt my soul, people who betrayed me, and one thing that I know that a lot of younger writers don’t know is that if you change a person’s height and hair color, they don’t recognize themselves. You can use verbatim quotes so long as you’ve made them five-two instead of six-four, and you’ve made them blond instead of bald. Never once in 20 books has anyone recognized themselves. Not once! So in this last book, I wrote about the wildness of having stayed with somebody who was so scary, and I just changed everything about him. You mention writing only as far as your headlights go? Yes. Let’s get the quote right. The great E.L Doctorow said, “Writing is like driving with the headlights on. You can only see a little way in front of you, but you can make the whole journey that way.” And I think it’s the most profound sentence about writing since my father told my brother, “Just take it bird by bird.” It’s also the most profound statement about living and life and how to live. You can only see a little way in front of you—and that’s fine. You write a lot about fear. I write about fear a lot because I’ve been a really fearful person. I came to earth, to the incarnation side of things, as an extremely sensitive child, partly because I was very afraid and partly because I was overly responsible. My mom had a baby boy when I was five, and I helped raise him, at 40 pounds, because she was so distracted and had such terrible self-esteem herself. So I became super sensitive, and then I got shamed for that. The battle cry was, “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Annie! Now what?” Henry James said, “A writer is someone on whom nothing is lost.” And I was that way because I was afraid and because they were so unhappy. And then I got shamed for having a big, open heart, which I think is the reason we’re here on this side of eternity—for our hearts to soften and open. That’s my entire spiritual practice. So I have written a lot about that, and I’ve written about the healing from having grown up that way: Why I’ve been addicted to people pleasing and getting esteem from a certain kind of person; usually men who have power or prestige. Why there’s never been enough to fill the God-shaped hole inside of me. Healing from my childhood is going a little bit more slowly than I had hoped. [Laughs.] Maybe it’s a lifelong practice. We also read everything we can get our hands on … You see how people wrote memoirs of their family that they didn’t get sued for. The Reader Yelena Bryksenkova yelenabryksenkova.com november / december 2023 spiritualityhealth.com 47

You married someone who teaches about inner critics. I did. Seven years ago, and Neal is amazing. His work with his clients is about helping them identify the internalized voice inside of them from childhood, when we needed a voice to tell us not to run into the street or not to swim out farther than we had the ability to stay afloat. That voice helped us get socialized and learn the rules and all that. But, at almost 70, I’m good with traffic safety, and I don’t swim where there might be riptides. I don’t need that voice. But every single writer has that voice. For me, with this new book, it was like, “Boy, talk about beating a dead horse.” Or, “Oh, my God, I guess the well has run dry!” What Neal taught me, and what he writes about in his new book Better Days [see excerpt on page 00] is to identify the voice and to realize that it’s not truth. It’s certainly not God. It’s just a voice—a “parasite,” he calls it. And as soon as I realize that, I can go, “Oh, it’s just you again. Why don’t you wait for me out in the library? I’m kind of in the middle of something.” How do you stop not writing? I think it takes a spiritual awakening of some sort, maybe a near miss where you realize you could have died without fulfilling this dream of getting it down on paper. Maybe it’s the story of your childhood, back in a time when you knew the names of every single dog in the neighborhood. Or you want to write for your grandchildren about the years in Appalachia when you were in Vista and how that radicalized you and set you on your way. Or you want to make up stories: You have this idea that keeps tugging on your sleeve that might be a good plot. And you realize we’re all on borrowed time here, and you don’t want to squander any more. It’s like setting a meditation practice. You don’t think, “Oh, I hope I find some time today to sit for 20 minutes.” It doesn’t work that way. You gotta grab yourself by the wrist sternly and say, “Stop!” We’re gonna stop living unconsciously. We’re gonna stop wasting so much of the day. We are gonna sit down for two hours five days a week, or an hour five days a week, or three nights a week— whatever you can budget. And we’re going to get some pages written. That’s how you stop wasting the few precious years you have here. I can’t get anyone to set up a schedule and get to work. I can’t get anyone sober. I can’t get anyone to do what I’m positive would be a better life for them. They have to get sick and tired of waking up and another year has passed and they didn’t get that memoir or that screenplay written. We are gonna sit down for two hours five days a week, or an hour five days a week, or three nights a week …. And we’re going to get some pages written. Kitchen Yelena Bryksenkova yelenabryksenkova.com ANNE AND NEAL 48 spiritualityhealth.com november / december 2023