Anxiety: Inside the Box

The more I work with people and listen, it is apparent that we as a nation (world?) are suffering from a chronic low grade to debilitating anxiety.  And the more I listen, the more I understand it is rarely the seeming cause of the anxiety that is the problem (although, the world's collective distress is plenty).  Crisis and even levels of trauma are part of the human experience through our continuums.  We are built and designed to heal ourselves.

What I am hearing and seeing is the lack of inner preparedness, the non-cultivation of more Wholeness and well being in ourselves.   The culture at large does not introduce and nurture in people from a young age the means to navigate this.  We're just not prepared for the speed of life having not known well and appreciated, the slowness.  Most of us are indoctrinated from an early age to be productive, have attainable goals, to note the sequences leading up to success and imitate that.  But most of all, it is the what not to do that westerners have been taught that I believe has the anxiety-meter going through the roof.

We are taught not to value emotional intelligence, the creative impulse and the mysterious.  Indigenous cultures, and peoples whose values are close to nature, close to knowing more subtle and hidden aspects of themselves have this sort of preparedness to deal with crisis.  They have a well developed emotional intelligence  (see Emotional Competence and Autoimmunity).  There is a vertical knowing, a respect and value for a layered emotional connection to self, intuition and a metaphysical relationship to nature, spirit and others.

This type of modus operandi is not the norm in western culture.  We are far from Ourselves.  We put        all our energy into developing our cognitive abilities.  Our systems, paradigms and cultural structures are reason oriented and hierarchical.  There is an external, extend-out-from-ourselves emphasis.  This leaves our core depth, our should-be-solid vertical unsupported, unprepared for stress.  We are living within a tight and often claustrophobic box.  The delight of the unusual, unexpected manifestations and truths that ground our core selves become atrophied.  We operate from a fear-based need to be in control.  Our metaphysical, intuitive, creative self is not used in a balanced relationship with our cognitive capacities.  There is a stunting of this other aspect of ourselves.  This creates a chronic inner state (unseen, unfelt) of being bereft, separated from our inner reality.  There is no wonder we have anxiety.

What can be done? An affirmation of this core strength and a gentle visiting to those places in ourselves is required.  As is seen in the following article, when a corporate (western) approach is taken to encourage people to learn meditation or yoga (Is Mindfulness Making Us Sick?), 

unexpected and un-desirous results ensue.  It's an attempt to go from the (totally unprepared) outside to the In.  As the article points out, the In resists.  It puts up all sorts of resistance because it's a violent attempt (from its perspective) at awakening parts of ourselves that have had little activity.   This would be akin to sprinting a mile when you've been on the couch for a month.  So all the ego-survival mechanisms pull out the stops and what we get is a lot of disturbing body memories buried in a vault in ourselves.  It is a violence of sorts and because of the often insistent approach, not rooted in kindness but force.  A gentle, curious interest needs to be cultivated first.  In this state, knocking on that door might yield a gradual opening (if there is no agenda).  Everything in its own time.

The western approach (cognitive, analytical, systematic, efficient, rational) in a basically eastern method is not possible.  We have to lend ourselves to our more innate eastern capacities.  The creative, the metaphysical, the sensory-based--- all inherent in the human organism.  This is an intelligence of a totally different order.  It is wise when transversing on foreign soil, to be attentive, curious and humble in one's approach.  Temperance. Rome wasn't built in a day, or in a weekend meditation workshop.

Know Thyself.  Know your (present) limitations.  Feel what is keen inside.  If the door is not opening, it has its (good) reasons.  Respect this.  It is just for the present.  Bring a humility and care to all of yourself and your endeavors.  Ask for help.  Be discerning in whom you trust with your Depth.  Is it a hierarchical arrangement? If the relationship is less a mutuality and more a "I know more than you, I will teach you about you/what you should know", be careful (run for the hills).  A healing is always a state of self-empowerment (as messy and non-sensical as it sometimes may be).  A healing and healer finds you when you're ready, you don't have to go looking for it/them; you just have to be available, in a state of receptivity.  Receptivity blossoms when there is a nonjudgmental interest and an authentic curiosity.  With self-empathy and joy, start to experience aspects of yourself outside the box.  Anxiety will be less overwhelming and more manageable.

Patience

“Patience is power.  Patience is not an absence of action; 

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rather it is 'timing' it waits on the right time to act, for the right principles and in the right way.” ― Fulton J. Sheen

Whether you are waiting for a toddler to grow up, body tension to let go in a meditation, an ancient one to get to their destination three feet away, a "presenting" other to drop into a part of themselves a little more real or the paradigm to shift significantly in healthcare or the economy, patience (in good measure) is required.  Patience.  That virtue probably hardest to come by.

"Genius is eternal patience". --- Michelangelo 

In the moment of patience, my ego, identity, my natural rhythm is challenged.  Something or someone else comes first besides my wants and even needs.  This is valuable.  There is a suffering, a sacrifice, a payment made.  And this is unusual.  Rarely do I let discomfort in so willingly.  Behind that moment is a true feeling which merits recognition, an attention.

“Make your ego porous. Will is of little importance, complaining is nothing, fame is nothing. Openness, patience, receptivity, solitude is everything.” ― Rainer Maria Rilke

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Energetically, patience is slowwwww.  A consistent, sustained attempt at patience requires a conscious return to my norm.  My normal rhythm, my usual ego self, putting myself first.  This is an important piece of the patience experience.  Otherwise, masochism and a wrong self-sacrifice evolve.  Patience needs to become part of the self-care piece, not the antithesis.  From this perspective, patience becomes fluid.  It is the water on the stone, the river that finds its own way around the rocks and the bank.

“He that can have patience can have what he will.” ― Benjamin Franklin

To be in the state of patience, is to be in the moment.  To have an attention that is taking in the Now.  The slippery irritations, the held breath, the railing mind screaming 'boredom!', as well as the curiosity and interest of what is before me which is so other.  In patience there is an allowance of this co-existence and the fluid experience of moving in and out and back again with no set range.

“A waiting person is a patient person. The word patience means the willingness to stay where we are and live the situation out to the full in the belief that something hidden there will manifest itself to us.” ― Henri J.M. Noun

What Henri Noun says above is not entirely true.  In patience, there is no belief, agenda or gift guaranteed.  There can't be.  Otherwise, we would be hanging on for the payoff and the state of patience would not be Free(ing).  Patience, like attention, is free in its most true form.  It's the moving breath that may or may not loosen the tensions or irritations from the interior channel.  It's a practice to return to, a renewable flow available to engage.

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Welcome to the Anthropocene

"Anthropocene is an informal geologic chronological term that serves to mark the evidence and extent of human activities that have had a significant global impact on the Earth's ecosystems. The term was coined recently by ecologist Eugene F. Stoermer, but has been widely popularized by the Nobel Prize-winning atmospheric chemist, Paul Crutzen, who regards the influence of human behavior on the Earth's atmosphere in recent centuries as so significant as to constitute a new geological epoch for its lithosphere." --Wikipedia

I've been almost halted in my tracks as of late with the perception of the incredible dysfunction and seeming corruption this planet, this world and nation are currently suffering.  Everything appears upside down with a grim trajectory imminent.  With the statistical research having prompted the video Wealth Inequality in America - YouTube  to go viral, pointing out the illusion of the public as to how bad the inequality is and the general consensus of the broad sampling, to be a country unlike its current state. This along with the ongoing, endless polarization and lack of sense (but a lot of maneuvering) exhibited by our government which will only negatively impact the already desperate poor, and the seeming lack of ownership of that responsibility (when one is oppressed, we're all oppressed).  My alarm isn't so much over the chaos (there will always be that) but the ongoing and continual fracture that continues to divide us, the smoke screen that keeps us passive despite a practically unanimous understanding (amongst the diverse sampling in the mentioned research) of what is fair and equitable.  There appears no awareness in the relationship of environment to health to inequality, to prejudice and manipulation; only a frenzied barreling toward divisiveness.  Where is the long view?  Where is the world community awareness?

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

--MLK  "Letter from Birmingham Jail," April 16, 1963

After looking at the research for the above mentioned video (where from were the statistics gleaned, how was the research carried out, what was the sampling?), I was introduced to some material on Anthropocene and a study being done on alternative business practices created from a larger perspective.
 
"The Anthropocene calls to us to recognize that we are all participants in the ‘becoming world’, where everything is interconnected and learning happens in a stumbling, trial and error sort of way. In the spirit of this participation, many offer the experiment as the only way forward: the only way to approach such a period in which uncertainty is high and one cannot predict what the future holds, is not to predict, but to experiment and act inventively and exuberantly via diverse adventures in living." (Dumanoski 2009, quoting C.S. Holling)

"At the core of J.K. Gibson-Graham’s feminist political imaginary is the vision of a decentralized movement that connects globally dispersed subjects and places through webs of signification. We view these subjects and places both as sites of becoming and as opportunities for belonging. But no longer can we see subjects as simply human and places as human-centered. The ‘arrival’ of the Anthropocene has thrown us onto new terrain. Feminist critiques of hyper-separation are pushing us to move beyond the divisive binaries of human/nonhuman, subject/object, economy/ecology and thinking/ acting. The reframing of our living worlds as vast uncontrolled experiments is inspiring us to reposition ourselves as learners, increasingly open to our interconnections with earth others and more willing to intervene in adventurous ways. In this article we begin to think about more-than-human regional development and regional research collectives that have the potential to perform resilient worlds. For us the project of belonging involves both participating in the vast experiment that is the Anthropocene and connecting deeply to specific places and concerns."

"2013 ingredients of a new world-shaping movement: 1) assemblages that are experimenting with new practices of living and being together, 2) the ubiquity of these assemblages, and 3) the potential global compass of a new discourse of ‘belonging’ linked to a more than-human regional development imaginary. Our working definition of regional development is: how ‘we’ (that is, all the human/nonhuman participants in the becoming world) organize our lives (or how life organizes us) to thrive in porously bounded spaces in which there is some degree of interconnection, a distinctively diverse economy and ecologies, multiple path-dependent trajectories of transformation and inherited forms of rule."

Following are some examples of business practice in relation to this decentralized movement.

"Our first adventure is an experiment in regional development led by individuals and institutions that are motivated in part by an ethic of caring for place and environment. Capturing and democratizing wealth to care for people and environments in place.  The Evergreen Cooperatives are a set of new employee-owned businesses, based on the cooperative model, that hire local residents and contribute to environmental sustainability. In the Greater University Circle of inner city Cleveland, Ohio, investment flows easily into world renowned cultural, educational and health institutions that were originally established by philanthropic industrialists of a past era. Up against these well-endowed institutions are run-down neighborhoods housing some 43,000 residents whose average median household income is under $18,500 per year (Evergreen video 2010). Little of the massive institutional investment in salaries, procurements and real estate development stays within these inner ring neighborhoods. According to Bob Eckhardt (2009), senior vice president of the Cleveland Foundation, each institution acts ‘as if the world ended at its respective property line’. The Cleveland Foundation, established as the ‘world’s first community foundation in 1914, decided in the mid 2000s to concentrate funding and capacity building activities on the Greater University Circle to make sure that ‘as the big institutions grow and prosper, the neighborhood prospers as well’ (Ekhardt 2009). Its mission was to create jobs for local residents in green industries and to generate wealth that would circulate within and help stabilize the neighborhood."

"The Evergreen Cooperative Laundry was the first experiment to get off the ground. It is an ‘industrial-scale, environmentally advanced, state-of-the-art, commercial laundry providing services to area hospitals and assisted living centers’ (Yates 2009). A feasibility study showed that commercial laundries could pay reasonable wages if they were not under pressure to generate profits for owners and shareholders.  Making the employees owners through a cooperative meant that an employee-owned laundry could immediately offer jobs paying a little better than the going rate for such work, offer better benefits and also be a wealth-builder for employees over the years." (Yates 2009, 17) Gender, Place and Culture."

"We draw here on a video report on the rise of peer-to-peer exchanges by the Wall Street Journal’s tech reporter Andy Jordon.  Jordon presents a series of interviews that begin with young corporate executives who trade in Ven, a virtual currency used to ‘buy, share and trade knowledge, goods and services’ (Jordon 2010). Tamara Giltsoff, a sustainable business consultant, is one of the ‘urban influentials’ who are members of Hub Culture, one of many meshworks that have grown out of the social networking capacities of the internet. In selected world cities Hub Culture members flock to Hub Pavilions where they can book space to work, meet, trade non-tangible value and recreate (bookings can be made for a personal chef for 10 or more people, a personal trainer, or a reflexologist/reiki/polarity therapist). Giltsoff describes using Ven: ‘It begins to put a value on intangible exchanges, I guess. I have gained Ven by making introductions to other people or doing favours for people in the network.’ Dan George, a promoter for international music recording stars says: ‘With fluctuating exchange rates you know that if you have a certain amount of Ven you can, sort of, count on it when you are working between countries.’ According to the Hub Culture website (2010): The price of Ven is made up of a weighted basket of currencies, commodities and carbon futures and trades against other major currencies at floating exchange rates. Ven is the first currency to include carbon externalities in its pricing factor, making it the first environmentally linked currency in existence."

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant.  -- MLK,  Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech, December 10, 1964

These ancient/new assemblages that experiment with new practices of living and being together,  and the potential global compass of a new discourse of ‘belonging’ linked to a more than-human regional development imaginary is a relief to what we live with now.  It provides hope for a new paradigm of operating.  It gives breath to more of what matters than is currently acknowledged, in the markets and systems currently in place.  Both for health and well being, these sorts of changes are essential for putting into place justice and equality for the masses.

The world is changing.  Environmentally and health-wise it is not tenable for there to be the magnitude of inequities existent in the world (in this country), as there is.  Both the French and Russian Revolutions are historical indicators to this; the Occupy movement is a heads up in our own time.  The paralyzation of governments holding to this untenable way of operating, resistant to a more equitable shift of power, money and influence has only one cataclysmic outcome.

The "Care" Effect

I have spent a considerable amount of my nursing career studying, accumulating information, practicing and  experiencing healing philosophy and giving statistical based lectures about the power and efficacy of alternative and complimentary medicine.  Research and statistics backed me up.  One such statistic  was: $34 billion dollars is spent annually out of pocket on treatments and non conventional approaches.  As I espoused these statistics to interested health professionals (I thought they were interested-- otherwise why would they take the trouble to come and hear a talk on this?) I could see these facts, wash over their high-browed craniums like an air current over the body of a soaring plane.  Very seldom did I see little pocket of air form within them expand as the information was delivered. Which made me think, their interest wasn't so much in these soft medicine facts and treatments as much as the money that wasn't reaching their pockets.  Then I thought I wasn't presenting well, it was too much "other" information, which although was factually undeniable, was unfamiliar.  They couldn't relate, even though I took great pains to give them statistics and research which were immediately relateable (dollar and cents).  As medical professionals, we are told it's all about evidence-base.  But obviously not, as they weren't assimilating it.  Finally, I decided the stars were not aligned, corporate medicine wasn't ready to take the leap to move toward including these practices, despite the facts.

To be fair, this information on alternative and complimentary medicine has been heard, but in corporate medicine terms.  Integrative medicine centers, associated with major medical institutions, have been formed, in fact it's a big trend at the moment. These centers obviously need financing, and they often get this through donors with deep pockets.  Their continued growth and success is also obviously necessary, so revenue generation is required.  They figured out how to get insurance to pay for treatments (ie: MD provided acupuncture, MD provided health coaching, packaged lifestyle behavior modification classes as prescription). Ok. So, we're moving along, right?

The issue I take in the current approach of integrating conventional with alternative medicine is that it is construed from the old model of practicing medicine.  It's based on Descartes's original and ever present philosophy that we can be deduced down to separable parts and the ill parts can be managed as they need to be, not in relation to the entire person.  This isn't Whole thinking, an approach based on Oneness.  Complimentary, alternative, integrative medicine becomes a "specialty" and is worked into an outdated paradigm that hasn't been effective for almost forever, has always been hugely expensive and ultimately becomes a tepid healing (because it is not based on relationship).

In his article, Forget the Placebo Effect: It's the 'Care Effect' That Matters   Nathanael Johnson makes a case for a soft medicine approach, stating research that shows kindness and a deeper listening skill used by practitioners is actually extremely effective in promoting best outcomes.  What Descartes discounted was the power of trust and relationship in healing.  He was all about promoting curing and hard facts of using a fully scientific approach (in his time, excluding church/religion/spirituality as a useful influence).  And in 15-20% of illness, he's spot on.  If you have a broken leg, saying prayers over it probably won't fix it, a good surgeon would be useful.  However, the rate of healing of this broken leg may vary depending on soft medicine interventions.  Using the science knowledge of positive attitude, mobilizing the parasympathetic nervous system to off-set the sympathetic in the crisis of the trauma gets our blood cells working optimally, reduces "emergency" hormones coursing through the body (an obstacle to healing) and makes us generally feel a lot better than taking pills dealing with anxiety and even pain.  Hippocrates had a more whole healing perspective, an example of a well rounded physician.  Probably Descartes was alive at a time of great political upheaval and was able to establish the model we practice today. Today, we train a lot of doctors in this country and extremely few of them become physicians (whole healers).

In 80-85% of all illness (chronic in nature) a non-conventional approach is mandatory for there to be a healing.  Because medicine has become so militarized and corporate, we are embedded in systems and bureaucracy that aren't meant to budge easily.  There is little flexibility, not much innovation (outside of technology) in approaching what has become the business of health.  The hierarchy is ever present:  hard science is best, soft medicine is tolerated and not really seen as an ever important adjunct to the full and effective treatment of human beings. Respect for knowledge is assumed.  Respect for relationship is (generally) not important.  It is this that is at the base of all healing, it is this that must be cultivated in medicine today.  Of course knowledge and skill are vital.  But without an empathic presence, a fuller present intelligence, a greater skill at listening, knowledge and talent are marginal in the forum of healing.  These skills make our healers (doctors, nurses, therapists) whole in service to others and (great empathy and deep listening) is also in its nature, a reciprocal action, a healing of oneself.

"The 'care effect'—the idea that the opportunity for patients to feel heard and cared for can improve their health. Scientific or no, alternative practitioners tend to express empathy, to allow for unhurried silences, and to ask what meaning patients make of their pain. Kaptchuk's study was a breakthrough:  It showed that randomized, controlled trials could measure the effect of caring. But there was already abundant evidence from nursing science to suggest a healing power in the interaction between practitioner and patient."*

Can this "care effect" proliferate in the old paradigm?  The old paradigm being a corporate compliance-based entity with iron-clad legal implications at every turn?  Nurses, as indicated in the quote above have seen and implemented this "care effect" through the ages but in the old paradigm model, have continually seen it tie their hands as restrictions and standard measurements of care become narrower and more prevalent.  They are expected to ever increase their "caring" while also being required to take on more and more responsibilities (same for MDs as well).  It is unrealistic.  It is not looking at either the whole nurse/doctor or the whole patient and probably the whole system.  Caring becomes a commodity in an uncaring, sometimes hostile environment.  This is not an environment or system that can sustain true empathy nor deep listening.  This is not a paradigm that can provide truly integrative services. This paradigm is broken.

Caring and empathy is a deep part of our humanity.  When it begins to be measured in "accountability" terms like a bookkeeper's numbers, we begin to have a problem that soon turns to dysfunction.  Healing is an often mysterious, varied and flexible process that was never meant for Descartes's small pigeon-hole formula.  We have to take a risk that a new paradigm can sustain an excellence and affordability in healthcare.  We have to have a more empathetic and fluid paradigm to work from.  That paradigm is currently unknown, which is a scary prospect for the millions of people who depend upon a working healthcare model.  But otherwise, we are putting a square peg in a round hole and trying to make it fit.  The body itself might have lessons for us to glean in how to develop a new paradigm.  The fact that the Central Nervous System has these different and varied aspects (sympathetic and parasympathetic) that work together to help us to be whole, is possibly something akin to developing a paradigm that can do the same for our healthcare delivery.  Something to ponder.

*Forget the Placebo Effect: It's the 'Care Effect' That Matters | Wired ...