Spinning Plates

Often when people speak about the many competing demands on their time, they use the metaphor of juggling. For me, I prefer the image of the Chinese acrobat troupe spinning plates atop long poles. It always seems amazing that they are able to get one plate or bowl spinning, let alone seven or twelve. Watching these performers as they add more and more plates, I laugh to myself and reflect on my life. I love the challenge of adding a new plate while keeping the already spinning plates spinning. This usually remains possible. And when it isn’t possible, I have learned (and continue to learn) that it is okay to put down one plate before getting another one going. And sometimes it is even okay to put them all down for a while, walk off stage, and leave the theatre altogether for a while. There are other acrobats in the troupe, others who will keep the audience entertained while I do what I need to do to take care of myself.  During these past few months, this blog was a plate I decided to stop spinning while my gaze turned elsewhere. Today, I am happy to pick it up again and rejoin you in this dialogue.  How DO we care well for ourselves while focusing our efforts on taking good care of others? 

I am someone who keeps myself pretty busy.  Professionally, I like to do a lot of different things and therefore am usually involved in several different work projects simultaneously. I lead a supervision group for those seeking LPC Licensure. I facilitate a women’s personal growth group. Working with couples, I help them learn communication and conflict resolution skills, change non-productive ways of relating, and help them develop greater intimacy and compassion for one another. As an individual therapist, I help people heal unresolved traumas so that they can experience greater joy in their lives. I provide consultation to other therapists seeking certification in EMDR (a comprehensive, trauma-informed therapy model). I teach workshops on practice-building to other practitioners in healthcare and healing arts. I have my hands in many different activities simultaneously, and I love it.

Socially, I enjoy staying in touch and sharing time with many colleagues, friends, and family members. I have remained connected to friends since high school, college, and graduate school. I have friends who are artists and writers, friends who are in the helping professions like me, friends in corporate jobs, friends who are entrepreneurs, close girlfriends, couples friends with whom my husband and I enjoy socializing, and fellow travelers on a spiritual path.

In addition to time in connection with others, I also love seeing live music, attending interesting cultural events, reading, and pursuing a range of hobbies from painting to hiking to photography and whatever else strikes my fancy in the moment.

I cherish and celebrate the diversity in my life. It is difficult for me to imagine “streamlining” my life, or simplifying it, such that I would focus only on one aspect of my work or one type of leisure activity at a time. The way I live my life brings me tremendous reward and joy and really fuels my curiosity and thirst for variety. However, for people who are enthusiastic about life in the ways that I am (if you know the Enneagram, my “type” is “The Enthusiast”), we run the risk of burning the candle at both ends and, ultimately, burning ourselves out if we don’t learn to say “no” to some things, set limits, and prioritize balance and health.

This is an ever-present challenge for me. There is always something new and shiny on the horizon pulling me towards it, enticing me with promises of how fascinating or fun it will be.

I have learned, over time, that the two most important practices that support mindful discernment and balance in my life are sleep and meditation.  When I get at least seven and a half hours of sleep, I think more clearly. My choices are more likely to be in harmony with my long-term goals and my current-day well-being.  Meditation – and mindfulness practices in general – help me to slow down, and slowing down is absolutely essential for someone like me. When I slow down, I remember what is most important. I am able to filter through all the many choices that appeal to me in a given moment and see the big picture of my life.  I am able to pause before saying “yes” to the new gleaming possibility on the horizon and consider how saying “yes” would really impact my life in the short term and the long term.

Even with these practices in place, sometimes my life begins to feel like a locomotive going one hundred and twenty down the tracks with no station in sight. I have committed to too many things at once, and it requires more than sleep and daily quiet reflection to get myself back in balance.  I begin to feel depleted only half way through my day, and I lose the spark, the joy, for my work, my play, and my relationships.  At these times, a walk in nature provides the solace and connection I seek. Remembering the metaphor of the plate-spinning acrobat, I make a choice to walk off stage and devote an hour, a day, a weekend, or even longer to time with myself doing whatever most feeds me in the moment. This time in retreat offers the rest and replenishment I need to re-enter my life feeling replenished, curious, and juicy once again.

If you are a plate-spinning caregiver like me, what do you do that most sustains and nourishes you? How do you keep your feet firmly planted on the ground as you spin plates in your own life?

Laughter Yoga

Laughter Yoga is an exercise and wellness routine that combines fun laughter activities with deep yoga breathing. It was developed in 1995 by Dr. Madan Kataria.  A physician fascinated by medical research demonstrating the positive health benefits of laughter, he decided to start the very first laughter club through an informal “experiment” in which he brought together a group of just five people at a local park in Mumbai, India with just one task: To laugh. They told jokes and funny stories and invited others in the park to join them. Their small group quickly grew to over fifty people! However, Dr. Kataria soon realized being funny was not the best pathway to laughter, as sense of humor is very personal, and offense is as likely to emerge as laughter when jokes are involved.  In his effort to address this challenge, he reviewed laughter research and discovered that the body cannot differentiate between fake and real laughter. We get the same profound health benefits whether we are simulating laughter or engaging in the real deal!

Laughter yoga is based on the principle that anyone can laugh at any time for no reason whatsoever, without relying on humor, jokes, or comedy. Since that first gathering in the park only 16 years ago, laughter yoga has now expanded to over 6000 laughter clubs worldwide.

In laughter yoga, we encourage laughter through simulated body exercises and interactive activities in a group. Using eye contact and childlike playfulness, this “pretend” laughter soon turns into real and contagious laughter. The health benefits from laughter include improved mood, strengthened immune system functioning, decreased stress, lowered blood pressure, and experiences of pain relief. To top it off, laughing is FUN!

For more information on laughter yoga, check out the links below, and enjoy the video of the baby laughing. This baby was born knowing how to laugh. Research has shown that, on average, children laugh approximately 200 times per day, whereas adults laugh only seven times. Laughter yoga helps us reclaim our natural tendency to laugh and helps us learn to take ourselves less seriously. Join Elizabeth Venart on Mondays at 9:30 a.m. at The Resiliency Center for a weekly laughter yoga club. Learn more and RSVP through our Meetup group. 

Laughter yoga can be practiced in groups, done alone, or learned and deepened by working individually with a Laughter Yoga Instructor.  Elizabeth Venart, a Licensed Professional Counselor, and the Founder of The Resiliency Center, gained certification as a Laughter Yoga Instructor in June. Since that time, she has been offering the laughter club and also infusing laughter yoga into her work with individuals and groups.  To learn more about Elizabeth Venart, visit her website or give her a call at 215-542-5004.

Baby Laughing

Introduction to the Steps of Laughter Yoga

Dr. Kataria’s Laughter Yoga Website

Laughter Yoga Program on Discovery Channel

Dr. Kataria, Founder of Laughter Yoga, Laughing Silently at 5:00 am

Yang-Sheng Mind-Body Research Update article

Self-Care is Not Self-Pampering: Republished from Social Work PRN

Self-Care is Not Self-Pampering

Posted: 22 Jul 2011 03:00 AM PDT

Ask anyone what they do for “self-care” and their answers are more likely to sound like “self-pampering” or “self-indulgence,” such as:
“I take a hot bubble-bath. I treat myself to a meal in a nice restaurant or some new shoes. I get a pedicure or a manicure. I get a massage. I have a pizza or drinks with friends when I’m stressed. I do something nice for myself as often as I can afford it.”
Pampering and self-indulgence are fine if you can afford them, but they’re not the things you do to ensure self-care that meets your needs for physical, emotional, spiritual and mental health.
Self-care is personal health maintenance – in other words, it’s anything that restores, improves, maintains, treats or prevents disease. It’s what we do to balance the stressors and demands of our life in a way that benefits our emotional, physical and mental health.
Self-care includes meeting our needs for:

• Physical fitness and exercise and overall health
• Nutrition and medical care, adequate supplements, medicine and treatments
• Hygiene – including a healthy home and work environment and surroundings
• Sleep and relaxation
• Spiritual needs, emotional and mental health needs
• Life Skills such as communication, relationships, assertiveness, boundary setting.

If you’ve felt frustrated after pampering and indulging yourself and still not feeling complete or healthy – chances are that misunderstanding the role of self-care and why we need it is part of the problem.
If you have a client who is unable to find or hold down a job, sustain a healthy and safe relationship, eat healthy foods, give up alcohol, drugs and compulsive behaviors, take responsibility for themselves or their lives, money, health or personal safety, you’re not likely to tell them to “take a bubble bath,” or “buy yourself something nice,” until their most basic self-care needs have been met first.
Self-care for yourself is no different. Social workers who don’t have life skills such as critical decision making, communication, boundary setting, financial literacy, cognitive restructuring, self-soothing, anger management and even parenting skills aren’t going to improve their lives with a manicure, a weekend at the beach or a bubble bath. Those things might distract us from the lack of life skills, or fitness, or spiritual needs – but they won’t meet those needs.
Self-care includes all the health decisions you need to make for yourself in order to get and stay physically and mentally fit. If you’re feeling stressed, burned out, fatigued, exhausted, angry, depressed or anxious some self-pampering might help, but it won’t heal. Self-care is giving yourself the gift of wellness.  Putting yourself first is not selfish. It’s smart. Nurturing yourself and making sure you are 100% fit ensures you’ll be around for a long time to take care of all the people in your life you love and are responsible for. If you can’t evaluate yourself, then find a medical or mental health professional that can.