
Kindness in the Treatment of Traumatic Stress
We all have stories, we all need compassion and beyond all other healing interventions kindness is always of fundamental importance.
We all have stories, we all need compassion and beyond all other healing interventions kindness is always of fundamental importance.
Three things are certain in life: Death, taxes and the flu. Both the common cold and the flu are viral infections that can’t be cured by medication, though symptoms can be mitigated. As with many of life’s problems, time and rest is the greatest healer. It comes for us all eventually, but the best way to stave off a viral infection is to keep in tip-top shape. Support The immune system is a complicat- ed network of reactions that, to this day, is not completely understood. Taking care of your whole body can give it the best chance to do its job. Keep your healthy lifestyle choices consistent. Avoid smoking, eat a balanced diet, make time for a good night’s sleep and exercise regularly. Even a half hour walk every day can make a world of difference to your body. Multivitamins: Especially if you follow a restrictive diet, a good quality
The positive in the pandemic is that it has forced us to re-evaluate our lives. This is the message of Dr. Greg Wells, a performance physiologist and senior associate scientist at Sick Kids Hospital in Toronto. Wells’ latest book, Rest, Refocus and Recharge: A Guide for Optimizing Your Life, comes at a time when we could all use some help for living our best lives. INSTEAD OF MULTITASKING, THINK SINGLE TASKING. Take a step back from the manufactured and imposed busyness of our past experiences and embrace this opportunity to slow down, calm our brains and rejuvenate our bodies. “So, this idea of constantly pushing and having to be busy has been upended recently,” says Wells. “We now have an opportunity to reimagine the future and slow down.” How? By taming those electrical waves in our brain and shifting gears. There are four main categories of brainwaves. All four are active at
Who could predict that the experience of contracting and recovering from this debilitating disease could teach so much? ON January 9 of 2013 I found myself standing at the reception window of the emergency wing of our hospital. By evening I could no longer stand and by next morning I had lost the use of my hands, legs and abdomen. Over the next three days I continued to lose the ability to work any muscle below my throat. I had Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS), a variant of multiple sclerosis, where the myelin coating on the signal lines between brain and muscle was being destroyed. This was scary, to say the least, especially since I had GBS once before, in the year 2000, and knew I could lose ability to breathe, to swallow and to talk. I could die. I was afraid of those possibilities as I lay in the Intensive Care Unit. I