It Really is All About You

The most important person in these radically changing times is you. You are the only man you CAN change.

The radical self care path is for men of heart and courage who are willing to stand up in their wild wonderful sacred masculine selves and let their soul shine. Nothing in this world will change in a more whole and healthy way unless men like you step up. It’s so easy to be distracted, numbed out, resistant, over-worked, or in denial. These are the symptoms of our times.

Radical authentic men co-create the new story of what it means to be awake, accountable, and generative. That new story develops as each one of us accesses the courage to take the small steps everyday to live into being that man.

Perhaps you have seen those big spinning platforms that kids play on in public parks. At the outer edge the big wheel is spinning fastest and it’s easy to get spun off. The more you move to the center, the quieter things get. That’s a lesson. Your fast lane world can grab your attention but it can also throw you off. At the center you can turn 360 degrees, but you aren’t dizzy or distracted and you see the whole picture.

So the radical wisdom shift is to move toward your own center, to be willing to move beyond conditioned external orientation toward genuine self-care. Paradoxically, when you move toward deep self-care you are actually moving from a ME orientation to a WE orientation. When you care for yourself at the most rooted, fundamental levels you are following the golden rule in reverse. By doing unto yourself as you would have others do unto you, you are working at the level where real, immediate, and lasting peace can happen…. with yourself. When you racially care for yourself at the deepest level, then you naturally live into the golden rule and extend that care to others and do unto them what you wish they would do toward you. From that move, the whole world thrives.

 I invite you to join me in finding the pathways to caring for yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, relationally, economically, and spiritually and in so doing co-create a better world from the inside out.

Getting started-

What do you really care about? What are your most essential values? Make a short list (three to seven.)

Pick any item on the list.

How are you already moving in the direction you want to go?

Honor yourself for that movement, however small.

Think of one realistic small step you could take in the coming week to further that movement.

Start each week this way.

Radical Wisdom & Self-Care for Men - Creating a Better World From the Inside Out -

Imagine yourself on your deathbed. You’re with the person or people with whom you feel most comfortable. You’ve spent the last few hours reviewing your life with all its ups and downs. In a whisper you express the four regrets that men say most consistently at the end of their lives:

I wish I had been more true to myself.

I wish I had expressed my love and been more intimate with my family and friends.

I wish I had worked less and enjoyed life more.

I wish I had seen that my satisfaction with life and personal happiness was a inner choice that had little to do with external circumstances.

To be that man whose life ends without those regrets-

★ The one who is true to himself and expressed his uniqueness.

★ The one who has the courage to express his full range of loving feelings and connect intimately with those he most cares for.

★ The one who works just enough and still has time to enjoy life.

★ And the one who is satisfied with life regardless of external circumstances.

You will have to risk caring for yourself in radically different ways than you have been taught. I invite you to join me on the radical path of expressing the depth of your heart and soul and in so doing creating a better world from the inside out.

In these posts I will explore with you how to:

Honor your body and its native wisdom,

Protect your mind and clarify your thinking,

Honor all your emotions and deepen your relationships,

Feel the satisfaction of being the unique man that you are,

And act in service of your deepest purpose for yourself, your family, your community, and our earth.

If you have friends whom you feel would benefit from this work, please invite them to contact me at: tom@livingartsfoundation.com

Categories I’ll be exploring with you will include:

Radical Body Care

Radical Mind & Thinking

Radical Heart & Feeling

Radical Relationships

Radical Being & Leadership        

Radical Action & Service

Radical Community Building

Radical Earth Honoring

Radical Breathing – Getting Really Inspired

Radical Self-Care at the most basic level is about breathing.  Breath awareness is literally and metaphorically the most inspiring radical action you can take toward self-care. The Latin root word is inspirare and means “to breathe.”  

The oxygen in each breath is the fuel for your life. Without that essential fuel you will die quickly. Your brain is extremely oxygen-dependent. The documented world record for holding one’s breath (without pre-breathing pure oxygen) is about eleven minutes but for most of us two minutes is pushing it and at around three or four minutes you pass out. Passing out puts your body back in charge and prevents further brain damage by restoring a regular breathing unconsciously.     

Despite the vital importance of regular deep breathing, most of us are hypo-ventilators. Basically, we don’t breath enough. We get so involved in what we’re doing and feeling that we hold our breath. Think about it…. how aware were you of breathing before you read this sentence? Where do you feel your breath now? Is your chest moving with each breath? Or your belly? Or both. Can you feel the air moving in and out of your nose and at the back of your throat?      

For radical self-care at any level the most fundamental and inspirational practice is to become more aware of your breathing. Being aware of your breathing always brings you back to the present moment and supports physical, mental, emotional, and soul alignment.      

Many disciplines from athletic performance, (swimming, running, dancing) to singing, to meditation practices (Buddhist sitting, pranayama yoga, Tai Chi, and Qi-Gong) teach breath awareness and breathing techniques, and for good reason. Breathing is the only physical life-sustaining process that is both conscious and unconscious.      

Because your breath can be controlled consciously and also operate unconsciously, with training you can create an inner access channel to other unconscious parasympathetic pathways, such as controlling heart rate, body temperature, digestion, glandular activity, and stress levels. Even if you don’t have the desire to learn these advanced body control techniques, daily conscious breathing can greatly improve your mental and physical performance, create more energy, support emotional well-being, help with pain management, release trauma, and deepen any spiritual practice.     

Below you’ll find a few radical moves to get you breathing more consciously. When I was first introduced to these practices they seemed simplistic and I didn’t practice consistently. Now as a result of making conscious breathing part of my daily routine I understand just how transformative and inspiring breath awareness can be. As I continue to become more consistent in my breathing practice, I always find I’m truer to myself, more awake, and inspired.     

I invite you to pick one of these breathing practices each day and watching what impact it has. I believe you will be surprised by how hard these suggestions are to follow and yet what profound positive effects breath awareness can have for your self-care and well being at all levels.

 - Start the day with a few minutes of conscious breathing. Breathe in to the count of four and out to the count of four or six, connecting each inhale and exhale without a pause. Give thanks for whatever you call the source that kept you breathing all night.  - Find times during the day to take breathing breaks. Take a one-minute breathing break right here, right now in this present moment. Open to the silence.  

- Take five conscious breaths before you start eating and after you finish. This has the huge bonus benefit of being more conscious of your food choices and eating habits.  

- Take a few conscious breaths before you start and after you complete anything. Appreciate being awake in that moment.  

- Use red lights and stop signs as signals to pay attention to your breathing.  

- Take breathing and moving breaks every twenty minutes when you are at the computer.  

- End the day with a few minutes of conscious breathing and give thanks for being “breathed” another day.  

Your Best Radical Beverage – Real Water

After breathing, the second most important life-sustaining activity is drinking water. We human beings are mostly composed of water. (About 60 percent by weight.) Every living cell in your body depends on water to survive. So the radical shift here is to stay well hydrated…. with pure water.

 Drinking plain water to satisfy your thirst is the radical move because drinking pure water goes against all the advertising and peer pressure that surrounds us. Making this shift in no easy matter when many of us have become addicted to sugary drinks and caffeine.

Forget the bottled water and so-called health waters and “vitamin water” that cost even more than regular bottled water and provide very little or no actual physical benefit. The quality of bottled water is totally unregulated and questionable. Most of it is simply tap water and/or is being taken from other communities that need it.

When you drink pure water from a personal water bottle you save yourself money and reduce the enormous environmental costs of making the bottle, shipping it to your store (often from thousands of miles away,) recycling and/or ending up in land fills, or at worse adding more plastic debris to our land and oceans.

-Take this radical self-care step…. drink the pure water of life from a local source (filtered if necessary) for your personal health and the health of your family, your community, and our earth.

-Get a steel water bottle and keep it handy. The personal plastic bottles with no spill tops are OK but refresh them often and don’t let them sit in the sun or a hot car because even the safest plastics will eventually contaminate the water.

-Start the day with a glass of pure water to rehydrate after sleep. This has the added benefit of getting your digestive system moving. For even more health benefits add the juice from half a lemon or lime. Have a few more glasses throughout the day. When you want to quench your thirst, water is always the best bet. Be aware that you are consuming other drinks for a variety of reasons, some healthy, some not. Consider what those reasons are and make a conscious choice.

-When you drink water consciously you can use that moment to breath deeply and give thanks that you have clean water to drink. It’s so easy to forget that over 2 billion people on this planet don’t have that blessing.

Get off Your Ass - Radical Movin’ and Goovin’My Morning Routine

Being more aware and radical about how you breathe, what you eat and drink, how long and how well you sleep will give you a powerful basis for creating a super healthy lifestyle.

Another absolutely essential category for physical self-care is how often you stand, walk, and exercise. You are built to walk and move as all your ancestors did. They spent most of their lives hunting, gathering, herding, farming, manufacturing, or building things. For most of human history we didn’t sit in chairs except to eat. For many of us now sitting is how we spend the bulk of our day, either at desks or in cars or both. Sitting is proving to be related to huge variety of health problems. Our bodies are built to be active.

So how do we actually get off our asses and create more opportunities to move? I suggest you start with two of the options listed below and make them happen this week and then add others.

-Stand and stretch for 5 of every 30 minutes when you’re at the computer or watching TV. Set a timer!

-Walk a few blocks at least every other day.

-Take stairs whenever possible, avoid the elevator and walk up the escalator.

-Park further out in store parking lots and walk vigorously into the building.

-Stretch and walk a bit after your commute to and from work.

-If you must sit for long periods during the day, put getting up and stretching high on your priority list and consider standing at your desk for part of each hour.

-Walk and stretch before and after airplane flights and walk up and down the isle every hour on longer flights.

-Put on your favorite music and DANCE for a few minutes every day.

-Create a short full-body workout that you can do without going to the gym, three to five days a week. Most recent research indicates that for most of us short interval training is better than long sustained workouts.

There are many short workout versions online. Search for the New York Times 7-minute workout as a starting point.

Rest or Get “Rest-less”….It’s Your Call

The pattern of overriding tiredness and the consequences for us personally and as a society is perfectly summed up by this powerful piece titled “Sacred Tiredness” by Michael Leunig.

You must rest – otherwise you will become REST-LESS!  The world is sick with exhaustion and dying of restlessness. Tiredness is one of our strongest, most noble and instructive feelings. It is an important aspect of our CONSCIENCE and must be heeded or else we will not survive.

Tiredness has become a matter of shame! This is a dangerous development. Everywhere we see people overcoming their exhaustion and pushing on with intensity – cultivating the great mass mania which is making life so hard and ugly – so cruel and meaningless – so utterly graceless – and being congratulated for overcoming it and pushing it deep down inside themselves as if it were a virtue to do this. And what happens when such strong and natural feelings are denied? We live in a world of those consequences. So I gently urge you to curl up and rest – FEEL YOUR NOBLE TIREDNESS – LEARN ABOUT IT AND MAKE A GENEROUS PLACE FOR IT IN YOUR LIFE.

That first line totally hooked me. No rest…. you get rest-less. It’s as if we have become a world of children saying to their parents: “No, no, I’m not tired, I just want to stay at my screen (TVs, computers, pads, video games, or phones) for a few more minutes.”  And as Leunig makes so clear the consequences are hugely far-reaching at both the personal and collective levels.  

Along with conscious breathing practices, clean water, and great food, sleep is absolutely essential to radical self-care. We need more sleep than any other animal. No one knows exactly why but our large brains need a third of a day to replenish, detox, and repair.

In the US we get about two hours less sleep per night on average than we did 60 years ago. While many of us feel we can get by with 7 hours or less of sleep, the consequences of not getting 7-9 hours are very real and serious.

I’m sure you’ve all had the experience of not getting enough sleep for just one night and know how depleted you feel the next day or the day after. Unfortunately for many of us that depleted feeling has become a low-grade chronic condition. When we push beyond our natural tiredness our will power diminishes, we become less effective at many levels, and prone to much longer term problems including: insomnia, compromised immune function, depression, weight gain, diabetes, sexual dysfunction, addictions, heart disease, premature aging, and dementia.

It’s so important to find out what really works for your body and stick with that. Finding our natural rhythm is a radical move since we’ve lost touch with what really works for us. Even if you do know your best sleep cycle intuitively, you are also probably aware of that list of reasons why you blow past your natural tiredness.

 Here are some radical self-care moves that can help you become aware of and trust your natural tiredness and sleep better. As with all these posts, my suggestion for increasing the likelihood of success is to pick one item from the list below for this coming week.

-In the bedroom cool, dark, and quiet is best. Wear eyeshades if necessary. Remove or cover all blue light emitting devices from your bedroom. That means: computers, pads, TVs, smart phones, video games, compact fluorescents, LCD bulbs, and the digital clocks with glowing numbers. Blue spectrum light is great for getting work done during the day but at night blue light inhibits the production of melatonin, your natural sleep hormone.

If you and other members of your family use blue light devices after dark and have trouble sleeping buy blue-blocking glasses. The health payoffs are well worth the costs.

Another option is to load in an app called F.lux that automatically reduces the blue light emitted from your computer screen after dark. (https://justgetflux.com/)

-Create as consistent a schedule as possible - especially your rising time. Your animal self loves that. Research studies have shown that sleep between 10 pm and 6 am is much more beneficial than 12 midnight and 8 am largely because that schedule is more tuned to the natural light rhythm and our internal clocks.

-Take a power nap of between 7 and 20 minutes during the day.

-Avoid sleep medications such as Ambien that prevent the deeper stages of sleep necessary for renewal. Experiment with melatonin.

-Avoid caffeine at least six hours before bedtime. If you have any sleep issues, giving up caffeine is often the best first step.

-Avoid late night carb snacks, they put your body into digest and activity mode rather than sleep mode.

-Meditate and breathe deeply for a few minutes before going to sleep. Offer yourself a blessing and a few gratitudes for your day. If you and your partner can share a few of those gratitudes with each other, all the better.

Radical Self-Regulation & Will Power

Developing will and self-regulating can have a tremendously positive, life-changing impact in your life. And the good news is that self-regulation is like a muscle. You can strengthen it.

         Start by evaluating your willpower and self-regulation. Cut yourself some slack. Remember that you probably weren’t taught how to increase you willpower and self-regulation.

         Will is actually a limited resource. You do your best at self-regulation when you are rested and your willpower tank is full. Early in the day is better than late in the day. If you can find at least a few minutes early in the day, focus on a goal. If it's exercise, walk or workout early in the day – you’ll be much more consistent than trying to fulfill those intentions to do it after work when the self-regulation tank is closer to empty.

         When setting a willpower goal, define your standards and values. What are you working toward? Why is it that you are dragging yourself out of bed every morning to go to the gym? What would it mean to be healthier and more physically fit? And as you move toward the standard you have set for yourself, explore potential values conflicts. Does spending more time at the gym mean skipping breakfast with your partner and/or the kids before school? Is it worth it?

         Monitor your behaviors. If you are trying to stop being late, keep a log of when you arrive on time and when you are late. If you are trying to eat less, keep a food diary, and avoid eating while your attention is diverted elsewhere (e.g., to a screen or conversation).

         Focus on physical self-care. Your ability to self-regulate is impaired when you are fatigued or stressed, so watch out for those evenings when your reservoir is low. Use routines and schedules to minimize temptations and distractions. For example, if you are creating a healthier diet you might order groceries online or strictly adhere to a list to avoid agonizing moments in the snack and junk food aisle.

         So don't tackle everything at once. Start with one area that could use some work and focus on it. Pace yourself. Remember that even dissimilar activities like resisting a cigarette, making a series of difficult decisions, keeping your cool at work, and persevering on a writing task all deplete the reservoir. Don't make the classic New Year's Resolution mistake and attempt to stop a number of unhealthy habits at once.

         Look for small opportunities to strengthen your self-regulation muscle. If you love sweet desserts, reduce the risk but test yourself mildly. Eat a full meal at a restaurant so that you're not hungry, then deliberately walk by the dessert counter and look at the dessert. If you love to read at night but it keeps you up too late, plan to stop reading one night at exactly the top of the hour, even if you're in the middle of a chapter.

Here are a few suggestions you might consider:

Get a good night’s sleep! And eat a decent breakfast! Don't start your day with your self-regulatory tank (or your stomach) only partially full. (Refer to my blog post on how to improve sleep and how to feed yourself.)