Perking Up

I recently bumped into something that perked me up immediately--The Little Book of Hygge, Danish Secrets to Happy Living by Meik Wiking who calls himself the CEO of the Happiness Research Institute in Copenhagen.  "Hygge" is a Danish word (pronounced hoo-ga) which the jacket describes as being about "savoring the simple pleasures in life."  Such as staying in with "your tribe" on a winter's eve with board games, a luscious dessert, and cups of hot chocolate or mulled wine.  All ways, the author adds, that Danes manage to survive their dark, miserable winters.

So I decided to come up with a perking-up list of my own.

• First, think spring!
• Engage in, appreciate, and promote humor.  (Think Norman Cousins, the vitamin C man, who in conquering an illness, watched Marx Brothers movies regularly so that he could have the body-and-soul benefit of some good guffaws.)
• Sit in candlelight (or firelight) some evenings.  No electricity.
• Go on a news/media fast.  (Think Dr. Andrew Weil, the holistic health guru, who speaks of the health benefits of no-news/ media.)
• Eat chocolate.
• Buy yourself some daffodils.
• Get out in nature.  Hikes are good.  Family picnics. 
• Plan your garden so that it will be filled with flowers.  Or your windowsill with herbs.
• Give someone a surprise gift.  I received a surprise bouquet recently; I can't describe what pleasure it gave me!
• Play a musical instrument on a regular basis.  Or sing.  Or take lessons.  
• Laugh with your book group.   If you don't have one, start one.  (Ours is currently reading Annie Dillard's An American Childhood.  Highly recommended.)
• Come up with a worthy project:  beginning your memoirs, serving in a soup kitchen, decluttering something, learning to sing jazz, clearing out your storage unit ...
• Appreciate!  Beauty, flexibility, a new understanding about something, a pet, a wise choice you once made, a good night's sleep, your tribe ... 

And right now I appreciate March because all those wintry months are finally taking a powder.  Whoopee!!

"Okay, It's Time For Me To Go To Sleep Now!"

I'm doing better these nights than I used to.  I was a good sleeper for a long time, right through the night. Then I hit a certain age (can't remember now which it was) and I started having weird nights.  Like the time I woke and found it was getting darker, not lighter, only to realize I hadn't slept through the night at all, only part of the evening.  So I had to go back to bed and try again.  And then I was getting to bed so early that when I woke up, I felt as if I'd advanced a couple of time zones and was somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic.  I mean:  I'd wake at 3:45 and feel it was time to get up.  That would be okay if I were in Nuuk, Greenland, where it would be 5:45, but I obviously wasn't in Nuuk, Greenland.

So I began following a few practices to get myself through a night without feeling like the next morning's left-over salad.  For one thing, I didn't have anything to drink after a certain hour--including a nice cup of tea or hot chocolate.  I curtailed evening TV, preferring to read instead ... and evening phone calls so I wouldn't keep hashing the call over in my mind afterwards when I really wanted to start shutting things down. My hope was to keep my evenings as free from distraction as possible.

So, my program includes:

• No liquid after a certain hour.
• Not much alcohol regardless of the hour.  (Wine, especially, seems to wake people in the middle of the night.)
• Nothing sugary after supper. (Otherwise, it just perks me up.)
• Preferably no phone calls after a certain hour.
• Nothing loud so that I can transition into the night. 
• No caffeine ever.  Any tea or coffee has to be decaf.
• A dark bedroom which includes a black shade for full-moon nights.  (Also no TV or electronic equipment in the bedroom.)
• Oh, and a good book to read once I'm in bed which can soon enough put me to sleep regardless of how interesting it is.

Of course, there are still nights when sleep is elusive.  Sometimes, as I'm lying there around 1:30 or 2:00, I call out to the night (as if it had control over things), "Okay, it's time for me to go to sleep now!!"  In other words, get on the stick, please, and help me do this thing. 

Studies

"Harmful to Elderly Hearts"
"Severe Depression"
"Tell Grandpa to leave that glass of wine alone."

Just as we've become Consumers rather than Citizens (in the parlance of the times), doesn't it seem as if we've also become Objects of Study?  Watch out for this; watch out for that. By now, I've got things pretty well figured out for myself and doubt I'm going to be swayed by a study.  After all, wouldn't it be more fun to die after having been on a spree than after having spent years in some nursing facility.  I don't want to go THAT way.  Make it quick and snappy.  After a high on the town ... or rafting down the Colorado.  But don't keep me going because of some study until I'm so frail I can barely move.

And while we're on the subject, what about letting kids enjoy themselves in a park where they can climb trees and drive nails through pieces of wood just for the fun of it.  (As in Tokyo.)  What about not monitoring them quite so much.  I just heard a radio program about children going off to summer camp.  One week at this camp, then home.  Another week at that camp, then home.  When it was better for the child to have four weeks at one camp, do some bonding, and come out with some memorable experiences rather than break the time up so that the parents could hear everything that had been going on and give their approval or disapproval.

It's true, we lived in a nurturing village, but I know when our daughter was growing, my husband once said that we weren't afraid for her because we didn't have television and so didn't have all that fear drummed into us.  We tended to give her a good degree of freedom and let her figure things out.  And the product that we got was truly inspiring ... a joy and treasure of a person, filled with common sense ... someone who is now adventurous and creative.

So my hope is that we can add some fun and humor to our life.  I remember my mother once said she'd rather die than not have butter on her baked potato.  And in France, you see slim, trim women at outdoor cafes digging into ice cream sundaes ... eating with a sense of celebration rather than a sense of guilt.  And then there's that park in Tokyo where children are allowed to take a few risks.  I read about it in a recent book by Amy Fusselman--Savage Park, A Meditation on Play, Space, and Risk for Americans Who Are Nervous, Distracted, and Afraid to Die.  

Some Health Choices

I was reading a piece recently about "the care and feeding of intestinal bacteria."  Oh, fun!  But, for me, it's been an important issue since I needed to load up on antibiotics to (I hope) get rid of the Lyme disease I acquired a couple of years ago.  Which left me with an inflamed gut.  No ... not fun!

So the topic has been forefront for me and I've adopted three foods in particular to re-establish what is called "a healthy microbiota."  My suggestion is that these would be good for anyone to incorporate into their regular diet.  These are three naturally fermented foods with live bacterial cultures, all to be found in the refrigerated section of a place like Whole Foods or a health food store.  (I don't go to regular supermarkets anymore, preferring our local food coop, so I'm no longer familiar with what they sell.)

1.  Raw sauerkraut.  Not the canned version.  And not to be cooked.  I like it layered (cold) on top of a toasted cheese sandwich.  Or mixed with some mayo and slathered on top of fish like a nouveau tartar sauce.  Or added to a beet salad.

2.  Miso or fermented soybean paste.  Also not to be cooked.  Good in flavoring soups--to be added just before eating.

3.  Yogurt.  Only the kind with live lactobacillus acidophilus, please.  Cow, goat, sheep milk--all are fine.

As well as helping to normalize the gut, I like to engage in the regular practice of skeletal, muscular, and energetic manipulations.  These include:

1.  Acupuncture.  Part of traditional Chinese medicine to help stimulate the body's energy/chi and various meridian points.  Particularly helpful for rebalancing the body plus lessening any pain.

2.  Reflexology.  Here, a practitioner stimulates--by applying pressure to--the bottom of the feet, using them as a map to other parts of the body.  I find it both a good diagnostic and healing tool.  (For instance, say that the part of your foot that reflects the adrenals is painful when pressure is applied.  You then know to strengthen the adrenals with appropriate foods and supplements ... and have the practitioner work on that area until the application of pressure is no longer so painful.)

3.  Trigger Point Massage.  By finding a particular muscular knot or trigger point, you can get relief to the referred pain radiating from it.  I found this technique enormously helpful when I had frozen shoulders.

4.  Rolfing.  A massage therapy begun by Ida Rolf involving forceful manipulation to reposition tissues.  It can set the entire body humming again.  The artist Georgia O'Keeffe who knew Ida Rolf had regular sessions and lived to be 98 years old.  Pretty good recommendation!

Finally, I don't own a microwave or have any smart meters attached to my house.  As for my cell phone, I only use it for emergencies.  I simply feel there's a lot of invasive stuff out there so I try to live as simply, as naturally, as healthily as possible.