I spent this past weekend being human at the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Healing. That is, I spent this past weekend letting go and not giving a fuck with Jennifer Pastiloff. Yoga instructor, author, and founder of the online magazine The Manifest-Station, Jennifer is known for her workshop, On Being Human, where women from all over come together to dance, to sing out loud, to write whatever comes to the page, and to share their deepest pains and enduring dreams. If someone were to ask me to choose a single word to describe Jennifer, that word would be lovable. But she’s more than one thing. She is energy, a safe zone, a kick-ass hugger and hand-holder, a super-fun dance partner, a really good listener, an empath. The list could fill my bookshelf.

A friend of mine, who has attended Jennifer’s On Being Human workshop year after year at Kripalu, had told me all about her. I  had also read Jennifer’s posts on The Manifest-Station, followed her on social media, and devoured her book, On Being Human, A Memoir of Waking Up, Living Real, and Listening Hard. Much of what she had to share – her sense of shame and guilt, not feeling good enough, the need to be heard and told “I’ve got you” –  made me think she had written the book just for me. Which is why, after months of inventing one lame reason after the other for why I couldn’t go, I finally decided it was time to get off my scared ass and drive the three-and-a-half hours to Kripalu this past weekend. Why I was so afraid to take Jennifer’s On Being Human workshop I can’t explain. Wait, that’s a lie. The truth is this: The unknown scares the crap out of me sometimes. I had no idea what my experience would be like in Jennifer’s workshop. But we only know when we do, right? So I did. Yes, I thought I’d shit my pants on my way to Kripalu, wondering if I really had it in me to let go and be vulnerable in front of dozens of women I had never met.

I did not shit my pants, but I did sweat, a lot. If anything, the 95-degree heat made it easier to say, “Fuck you fear.” It took too much energy to think, I don’t belong here … I can’t dance … I can’t sing … I can’t, I can’t, I can’t. And the heat melted my body into a let-go puddle. So I had no choice but to dance like a dork, sing “Landslide” and “Don’t Stop Believin'” out of tune while doing Downward-Facing Dog, sing into an orange crayon-turned-microphone, play the air drums with a crayon, cry, and, as Jennifer says, “let snot fly.” It felt good, damn good.

At the end of the weekend, I left with a backpack full of what I call “Pastiloff Vitamins.” I take them everyday, with a large glass of “I am good enough, and don’t fucking forget that.”

I even have some samples of her vitamins for you:

“Ask. Don’t let ‘no’ stop you.”

“Daydream for five minutes every day.”

“Go ‘beauty hunting’. Make something beautiful.”

“Shoulds are assholes.”

“Everything has to be moment to moment, because that’s all we have.”

“Be a human thank you.”

“Say ‘yes’ to yourself.”

“Trust in the timing of your life.”

“Invite ease into your life.”

“Find joy for no reason.”

Read More

It’s been nearly fifteen years since I sustained a traumatic brain injury, and though you would think my brain should have fully healed by now, that’s not the case. In reality, the healing process for most brain injuries is ongoing, a lifetime of ongoing. I’ve submitted to all kinds of therapies over the years – cognitive therapy, herbal therapy, meditation, yoga, medications, e-stim, the list goes on. Now, in my efforts toward continued healing, I am a believer in  vision therapy.

Fifteen years ago, even as recent as three years ago, if someone had mentioned vision therapy to me as a possible treatment for my sensitivity to bright lights, as a solution to the dizzying fatigue I experience when in the grocery store, a shopping mall, at a July 4^thcelebration with dozens of fireworks lighting the night sky in frenzied colors, I would said, “What? Why vision therapy? And what the heck do you mean by vision therapy anyway?” Though knew of certain kinds of therapies for vision difficulties, like a lazy eye (I had to wear an eye-patch when I was a kid to correct my right eye that wandered like a toddler first learning to walk), I had never heard of vision therapy as a treatment option for TBI-related vision difficulties (FYI: not  only injuries caused by external trauma, but also injuries that are acquired, like a stroke or a tumor, can affect visual processing.)

We typically think of vision as what we see, but, dare I use a cliché, there’s more to vision than meets the eye. Vision also includes how the brain processes what we see. So, though I have 20/20 vision (when wearing my glasses), my brain struggles with interpreting images sent from the retina.

I’ve known for a long time now that something is wrong with my brain’s ability to process visual information, but because I’ve become used to melting into a puddle of confusion every time I walk down the cereal isle, with its endless options of whole-wheat, sugar free, and non-GMO, I’ve forgotten what it’s like to feel balanced and solid on two feet. (Thank God my husband loves to shop, sparing my brain the energy depletion of just walking into a store.)

Sometimes my brain signal’s my eye to read words on the page as a blurred mess, or my mind’s eye misconstrues words. When out for a walk, I sometimes see things coming at me from my right or left, like a flying rock, or a rogue tree branch, or an angry bird, when in fact none of those things are there at all. Not too long ago, my brain interpreted a fire hydrant as a dog. (No, I’m not on drugs, not the kind you might think I’m on anyway.)

Finally, just this past month, I decided it was about time I see an optometrist for a visual processing assessment. Honestly, the hour-and-a-half of testing was more like eye gymnastics. Here’s just a fraction of what that workout involved:

A kinetic field test in which I looked through a viewfinder with one eye closed. With that same eye fixed on a center point, the examiner shifted a pointer with a white tip beyond my visual field. Each time the pointer returned, I let her know that I could see it. I did this several times, each time the tip of the pointer a different color. Then I followed the same process with the opposite eye.

After that, I spent more than an hour with the optometrist. She first asked me to read various lines of letters on an eye chart. Then, as I looked through a viewfinder, she flickered a foggy, whitish light onto a chart that made it appear as if the letter U was floating all over the place, and asked me if I could see double. Yes, I did, but only once. Other than that, my eyes had trouble keeping up with the U. Then she had me close my eyes, and while she jingled a set of keys, I tried to touch them with one finger. I can’t explain exactly what the test reveals, but since the auditory and visual neuro-pathways run close together, if you’re struggling with visual processing it makes sense that you might also have difficulties with auditory stimuli, as in hyper-sensitivity to certain sounds. (The sound of crinkling plastic bags drives me crazy.)

Then, while looking through the viewfinder, the optometrist slipped in and out of the machine various shades of lenses, and asked which ones made my vision blurry, versus ones that made me see with clarity. A strange thing happened at one point. As she slipped in one of the lenses (one with a blue tint), I felt my stomach relax, a letting go of something – anxiety, stress. When I told her what had happened, she nodded, explaining that some people experience a visceral relaxation. I couldn’t believe it. I wanted more blue, more of letting go. That’s when she said I would benefit from therapeutic glasses with blue-tinted lenses. They’re nothing like every-day prescription glasses; they’re designed as a treatment for visual processing issues. At first, you wear them for only a few hours a day, slowly increasing the amount of hours over time. I’m still waiting for my new glasses to arrive in the mail.

Meanwhile, in an effort to recruit new brain/vision-related neuro-pathways, I’m following the optometrist’s instructions and practicing in-home eye-tracking gymnastics five days a week. While the exercises are yet one more thing on my brain-health to-do list, they’re worth it. After all, it would be nice to go for a walk without worrying about getting bit by a firehydrant.

Every year, on the last Thursday of November, American families, friends, neighbors, and the otherwise lonely, gather together to celebrate Thanksgiving. For many of us, this year will be no different, and we’ll engage in yet another gastronomic extravaganza. We’ll gnaw on spiced and tenderized turkey wings, eat forkfuls of oven-baked stuffing, scoopfuls of buttered mash potatoes, cleanse the palate with a slice or two of cranberry sauce, and slip into our sweatpants to make room for the must-have dessert: pumpkin pie. We will likely eat ourselves into a tryptophan daze.

Some of us may even dress up in native American costumes, or as Pilgrims, recalling what we learned in history class, how the Plymouth colonists and Wampanoag Indians indulged in a three-day affair of eating, fishing, and hunting in November 1621, celebrating what is acknowledged as the first Thanksgiving. In the winter of 1620, after much of the Pilgrim population was killed, the colonists requested help from the native Indians, who taught them how to hunt, fish and plant crops. In return, the Pilgrims invited the Wampanoag to feast on their bounty of ripe food to celebrate their first successful autumn harvest.

While the narrative of Thanksgiving is partly about how varying cultures and races can gather together and actually get along, the holiday is a time to reflect upon what we are thankful for – in other words, gratitude.

A few weeks ago, while engaging in meditation during a yoga class, the instructor spoke in a melodic chant, with the goal of centering our thoughts on self-appreciation and appreciation for others. She encouraged us to hold onto equanimity and to release ourselves from attachment and aversion, then asked us to imagine sharing that peace of mind with others – loved ones, friends, strangers, even those with whom we are experiencing a somewhat challenged relationship.

As I focused on my breath, filling my lungs with the sweetness of a Sunday morning, I thought about the once-upon-a-time gratitude journal in which I wrote daily statements of thanks each day. I couldn’t recall how long it had been since I had written in that journal. As the yoga instructor had encouraged, I carried my mindful practice into the rest of my day, also bringing with me the theme of gratitude. I told myself I would start a new gratitude journal, in which I would jot down brief observations, thoughts, anything that reminds me I have a lot to be grateful for: the hand-knit afghan my mother-in-law gave me, hot water, a refrigerator full of food, socks with no holes.

In my research about the benefits of gratitude, I learned that keeping a gratitude journal does more than remind me I have a lot to be thankful for. Studies have shown that gratitude improves our emotional, mental, and physical health. It makes us happier, helps us sleep better, inspires us to exercise more, keeps us connected, increases our social capital, makes us more productive and less envious, motivates us to make decisions.

If it’s that easy, writing in a gratitude journal five minutes each day as a means to improve our long-term well being, by more than ten percent researchers say, then I’m in, hook, line, and sinker. Are you? I can’t think of a better time than now, November, National Gratitude Month, to start penciling the page with, “I’m grateful for …”

“This a wonderful day. I’ve never seen this one before.” ~ Maya Angelou