Last time, I talked a bit about yoga and how I feel it is helpful in supporting not just me but my nursing practice. What I didn't talk about, though, is how the heck I fit it in.
Here's the thing: for a couple of years, I didn't, and then my body decided to tell me what it thought of that. (It was not in favor of this long hiatus.) I had all the reasons why I had stopped lined up. I couldn't find a class at a time that worked with my schedule. There's no room in this tiny apartment. I'm so exhausted after work that all I can do is tumble into bed and sleep till it's time to get up for my next shift.
That last was actually my first big warning sign that I needed to take better care of myself. Outside of active combat (and possibly basic training), I'm pretty sure even the military ensures people have time to recoup beyond just sleeping. How can nurses do any less for ourselves and each other?
Finding a class was challenging. As a second-shifter, neither morning nor evening classes work for me. I'm either at work during most evening classes or not up yet during most morning classes. What I needed was something mid-day, but there really didn't seem to be anything. If I were in a big city, I thought, there might be more options, but not around here.
Then I stumbled upon one single "Lunch Break Yoga" class. Next town over. Going in the same direction as I need to head for work. It couldn't have been more perfectly placed and timed. I've been going for several weeks now, and the instructor has been so helpful in showing me ways to ease my body back into postures it hasn't done in far too long. She is a Kripalu teacher, so the approach and philosophy are familiar.
So there's the first piece: don't stop looking. Somewhere, there is a class that will fit you. It may take awhile to find it, but if this class popped up exactly when I needed it to, I have a feeling you will similarly find one that fits your busy schedule. And finding a class is important, I think, whether you are an experienced yogi/yogini or a brand newbie. Having someone with the training and experience to correct poor form, to adapt the practice to what your body needs, is critical when you're starting out and is still an essential touchstone when you are more experienced.
That said, ideally yoga should be an every day practice, not once a week. There are DVDs and even apps to help prompt you through a flow of poses if you're not at a point where you feel able to construct your own daily practice. I actually have the Daily Yoga (All In One) app on my phone, though I've not really used it yet. It does look helpful in terms of providing cues, though their idea of a "beginner" flow seems a tad advanced to me. I don't know that I would recommend it to someone who is a true beginner. I remember trying years ago to learn from videotapes (yes, back in the Dark Ages), and in my experience it's mostly an exercise in frustration and potential injury. They can be helpful supportive tools but are no substitute for a teacher.
Another approach, a bit more old-fashioned, is to keep a journal. I've been meaning to do so since I started this class. Finally, last week, I picked up a journal and today I started jotting down notes about my practice, postures I want to return to during the week between classes, challenges I encountered, and other thoughts that I want to be able to revisit over time. I'm sure there's an app for that too, but for journaling, I do prefer pen and paper. It took me all of five minutes after class to write it all down. So that was a 45-minute class followed by five minutes of journaling. Not even a full hour total.
I'd love to say that I'll spend that much time each day between now and my next class, but I know that's unrealistic. Ten or fifteen minutes a day, though, should be doable, even in this little apartment.
What are your thoughts on finding space, whether for yoga or any other wellness practice?
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Monday, May 20, 2013
Yoga
Another of my favorite holistic modalities is yoga. One of the things many do not realize is that yoga is more than the postures you may see people doing at a gym or fitness center. That is one piece of yoga, known as hatha yoga, which also includes breath work. It's an important component, to be sure, and many people do practice hatha yoga without exploring the other six "limbs" of yoga much or at all.
While I find it useful to consider the whole of the eight limbs of yoga, like most Westerners, I primarily focus on the postures and breath work of hatha yoga and the health benefits associated with them. The style or approach to this that I find the most resonance with is Kripalu. This is probably in part because this was the first type of yoga I experienced, and I found it to be a very gentle "accept you where you are" approach that was far less intimidating for a beginner with some health challenges than, say, going into a heated Bikram class or a vigorous power yoga class. The gentler, more meditative approach I've experienced with Kripalu yoga is also one that I find aligns well with my own purposes in practicing yoga.
Regardless of style, hatha yoga is about using various postures and breathing patterns to bring the body and mind into alignment. Stress, something many if not most of us find a major challenge to health and wellness these days, often seems to arise from a disconnect between mind and body, particularly the need to override the body's fight-or-flight response because neither punching your boss/customer/whomever nor simply running away from them is usually the best plan. We can and do override the fight-or-flight response, but it is less stressful to do so if we have already taught the body and mind to work together rather than at odds with one another.
An example of how this can work is use of the warrior posture, also known as Virabhadrasana, which has several variations: Warrior I, Warrior II, or Warrior III. I have often experienced teachers encouraging the class to enter into this posture and then bring to mind a challenging situation and breathe through the feelings that arise until what is left is a sort of calm resolve. This is one way to train the mind and body to work together when such situations arise, and the practitioner can recall and evoke that sense of calm resolve in those situations rather than allowing stress to take over. The more practice one has at doing this, the more automatic the response becomes.
At the moment, the main way practicing yoga intersects with my practice of nursing is helping me maintain and improve my own physical health. The healthier I am, the better I can do my job, after all. Are you a holistic nurse who includes yoga in your practice of nursing? If so, I'd love to hear how you do so.
While I find it useful to consider the whole of the eight limbs of yoga, like most Westerners, I primarily focus on the postures and breath work of hatha yoga and the health benefits associated with them. The style or approach to this that I find the most resonance with is Kripalu. This is probably in part because this was the first type of yoga I experienced, and I found it to be a very gentle "accept you where you are" approach that was far less intimidating for a beginner with some health challenges than, say, going into a heated Bikram class or a vigorous power yoga class. The gentler, more meditative approach I've experienced with Kripalu yoga is also one that I find aligns well with my own purposes in practicing yoga.
Regardless of style, hatha yoga is about using various postures and breathing patterns to bring the body and mind into alignment. Stress, something many if not most of us find a major challenge to health and wellness these days, often seems to arise from a disconnect between mind and body, particularly the need to override the body's fight-or-flight response because neither punching your boss/customer/whomever nor simply running away from them is usually the best plan. We can and do override the fight-or-flight response, but it is less stressful to do so if we have already taught the body and mind to work together rather than at odds with one another.
An example of how this can work is use of the warrior posture, also known as Virabhadrasana, which has several variations: Warrior I, Warrior II, or Warrior III. I have often experienced teachers encouraging the class to enter into this posture and then bring to mind a challenging situation and breathe through the feelings that arise until what is left is a sort of calm resolve. This is one way to train the mind and body to work together when such situations arise, and the practitioner can recall and evoke that sense of calm resolve in those situations rather than allowing stress to take over. The more practice one has at doing this, the more automatic the response becomes.
At the moment, the main way practicing yoga intersects with my practice of nursing is helping me maintain and improve my own physical health. The healthier I am, the better I can do my job, after all. Are you a holistic nurse who includes yoga in your practice of nursing? If so, I'd love to hear how you do so.
Monday, May 6, 2013
Reiki and Nursing
Considering that it was one of the two holistic interventions I mentioned in my last post, and probably the one people are least familiar with, I thought it would be a good idea to elaborate on Reiki as part of holistic care, whether of one's patients/residents/clients or oneself.
Reiki is generally translated as "universal life force energy." The "ki" syllable is the same as one finds in T'ai Chi or Qi Gong, though the rendering in the Western alphabet is different in each case. The healing system of Reiki was developed by Mikao Usui, and while the story not only of how he did so but of how it spread beyond Japan is highly symbolic and mythologized, even Western medicine is beginning to recognize some of its benefits. Those benefits come from tapping into the universal life force that permeates and connects everything in order to bring one's own energy into balance.
That's a bit nebulous for many of the hard-and-fast science types, understandably. It's also difficult to evaluate rigorously, because it doesn't behave like a medication, a surgical intervention, or other easily measurable approaches. You can't see it. The recipient determines whether and how much of it to tap into, in a manner that many have ideas about but no one can prove conclusively, and the effects of how they use it may be completely invisible as well. Some try to argue that because a practitioner can not reliably determine whether there is an actual recipient on the "other end" of a distance session, that this somehow disproves its efficacy. I'm fond of the counter-argument that this is like asking an aspirin whether it is aware of relieving a headache as a means of determining how effective it is.
Here are two opposing examples from my own practice. I've had occasion to use Reiki to help someone manage severe and acute pain while waiting for medication to become available, with incredibly visible and obvious results. I've also had occasion to use Reiki with someone who I could sense was pulling through vast amounts of energy whilst I was seeing no change whatsoever in condition, either in physical or visible emotional state. This person was also near end of life, so I hypothesized at the time that the individual was utilizing the energy on a spiritual level to work out whatever spiritual healing was needed in order to transition from this life, but I can never and will never know. In practice on myself, I have observed that when I perform a Reiki treatment on myself before sleeping, my quality of sleep improves vastly and that has enormous impact on my physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual health.
That's all well and good for Reiki, you may say, but how does it fit in with nursing? I suppose that depends in part upon your philosophy of nursing. Mine is heavily influenced by Katie Eriksson and Margaret Newman, who both take a very holistic view of people and their care needs, including body, mind, and spirit. (Actually, my personal philosophy developed before I became aware of either of these theorists, but I find that their theories describe my nursing ideals rather well.) As such, I feel that the care I give needs to address all these aspects of a person in order to be complete. That can be rather a tall order.
Often, there is little time in the course of a shift to give the kind of holistic care one would like, but as nurses, we frequently have occasion to place our hands on our patients during various aspects of assessment and care. As mentioned above, it is the recipient who determines if and how much Reiki energy they will tap into, and while there are specific hand placements (though considerable variation exists in these), all that's really necessary at the most basic level of practice is to place one's hand(s) on or near a person for that energy to be accessible to the client. I have been surprised on more than one occasion to feel the energy "turn on" while re-positioning a client in their bed or wheelchair or listening to their lungs. While my subjective perception of this is by no means necessary for it to be of use to the client, it is reassuring for me to be able to observe that this is available to them even when it is simply not practical to offer a full, formal treatment.
So, now that I've put some of my thoughts on Reiki and nursing out there, what are yours? Are you a nurse who practices Reiki? If so, how do you incorporate it into your practice?
Reiki is generally translated as "universal life force energy." The "ki" syllable is the same as one finds in T'ai Chi or Qi Gong, though the rendering in the Western alphabet is different in each case. The healing system of Reiki was developed by Mikao Usui, and while the story not only of how he did so but of how it spread beyond Japan is highly symbolic and mythologized, even Western medicine is beginning to recognize some of its benefits. Those benefits come from tapping into the universal life force that permeates and connects everything in order to bring one's own energy into balance.
That's a bit nebulous for many of the hard-and-fast science types, understandably. It's also difficult to evaluate rigorously, because it doesn't behave like a medication, a surgical intervention, or other easily measurable approaches. You can't see it. The recipient determines whether and how much of it to tap into, in a manner that many have ideas about but no one can prove conclusively, and the effects of how they use it may be completely invisible as well. Some try to argue that because a practitioner can not reliably determine whether there is an actual recipient on the "other end" of a distance session, that this somehow disproves its efficacy. I'm fond of the counter-argument that this is like asking an aspirin whether it is aware of relieving a headache as a means of determining how effective it is.
Here are two opposing examples from my own practice. I've had occasion to use Reiki to help someone manage severe and acute pain while waiting for medication to become available, with incredibly visible and obvious results. I've also had occasion to use Reiki with someone who I could sense was pulling through vast amounts of energy whilst I was seeing no change whatsoever in condition, either in physical or visible emotional state. This person was also near end of life, so I hypothesized at the time that the individual was utilizing the energy on a spiritual level to work out whatever spiritual healing was needed in order to transition from this life, but I can never and will never know. In practice on myself, I have observed that when I perform a Reiki treatment on myself before sleeping, my quality of sleep improves vastly and that has enormous impact on my physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual health.
That's all well and good for Reiki, you may say, but how does it fit in with nursing? I suppose that depends in part upon your philosophy of nursing. Mine is heavily influenced by Katie Eriksson and Margaret Newman, who both take a very holistic view of people and their care needs, including body, mind, and spirit. (Actually, my personal philosophy developed before I became aware of either of these theorists, but I find that their theories describe my nursing ideals rather well.) As such, I feel that the care I give needs to address all these aspects of a person in order to be complete. That can be rather a tall order.
Often, there is little time in the course of a shift to give the kind of holistic care one would like, but as nurses, we frequently have occasion to place our hands on our patients during various aspects of assessment and care. As mentioned above, it is the recipient who determines if and how much Reiki energy they will tap into, and while there are specific hand placements (though considerable variation exists in these), all that's really necessary at the most basic level of practice is to place one's hand(s) on or near a person for that energy to be accessible to the client. I have been surprised on more than one occasion to feel the energy "turn on" while re-positioning a client in their bed or wheelchair or listening to their lungs. While my subjective perception of this is by no means necessary for it to be of use to the client, it is reassuring for me to be able to observe that this is available to them even when it is simply not practical to offer a full, formal treatment.
So, now that I've put some of my thoughts on Reiki and nursing out there, what are yours? Are you a nurse who practices Reiki? If so, how do you incorporate it into your practice?
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