June 2020 – Frantic Shanti

Mindfulness Apps I Love: “The Breathing App”

In my last post, I mentioned yogi Eddie Stern’s breathing app. If there were ever an app that exemplified the beautiful simplicity of mindfulness, this is is!

There are several things that make this mobile app perfect: (1) it does one thing and does it well, (2) it is uncomplicated, and (3) it’s absolutely free, with no in-app purchases.

This app is designed to help guide you in breathing. It is based on the concept of resonance frequency breathing, which is deep, slow, diaphragmatic breathing, between about 4-7 breaths a minute, depending on the individual — true resonance is considered to be six breaths a minute. Resonance breathing, “where oscillations in heart rate (HR) and breathing synchronize” (Pagaduan et al., 2019), has been shown to improve heart rate variability (HRV), which is “a key marker of health, mood, and adaptation” (Steffen et al., 2017). You may be familiar with HRV if you’re in training for a sport.

Set the timer, choose your breath intervals…

As Eddie Stern describes in his app and on his website, “by breathing at resonance, we enter into an even balance between the two branches of our autonomic nervous system, the sympathetic…and the parasympathetic…” The sympathetic is known as “fight-or-flight” and parasympathetic as “rest-and-digest”, and in our everyday lives, we tend to spend too much time with the sympathetic nervous system in charge.

The Breathing App helps us balance out the two systems via resonance breathing. There are several elements to this app: (1) an informational page, with instructions on setting up and using the app, including info on the science and creators; (2) the breathing ball, which helps you visualize the breath; and (3) the sound breath guide, which provides a tone that guides your inhales and exhales.

You set the timer from 1 to 30 minutes, choose your inhale:exhale ratio (2:3 or 4:4 [for kids]; 4:6, 5:5, 6:6 [true resonance] or 5:7), and decide whether you’ll watch the ball or look at a starry sky, with or without the sound.

And that’s it.

There’s nothing to buy and practicing with it is simple. Of all the mindfulness/meditation apps that I use, this is one of my favorites and I use it to augment my yoga practice. Give it a try!

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Fun fact: some well-known names are credited as participating in the development of this app, including Deepak Chopra and musician Moby!

Online Classes: Yoga and Science – Putting It All Together

Please note: I’ve included links to various items below, none of which I’m compensated for. If I’m writing about them, it’s because I think they’re excellent and worth recommending to others.

In my never-ending quest to bring more peace into my life, and with the extra time I’ve found in COVID-19 lockdown, I’ve been taking advantage of online class on platforms such as edX and Coursera, and have been impressed with the breadth of courses that are available.

Currently, I’m mid-way through a class on Coursera from New York University (NYU) connecting yoga and science, called “Engineering Health: An Introduction to Yoga and Physiology,” and I am thoroughly enjoying it. This class can be audited for free, or $49 gets you access to the quizzes, a certificate once you’re done (that can be posted on LinkedIn) and no time limit on access to the materials.

The course is taught mainly by three individuals: (1) Prof. Alexandra (Ali) Seidenstein, lecturer and research scientist in the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department at NYU, who is also a yoga teacher; (2) Eddie Stern, NYC-area yoga teacher and author, co-founder of the international Yoga and Science Conference and creator (along with Deepak Chopra, Sergey Varichev and musician Moby) of the highly-rated Breathing App for mobile devices; and (3) Prof. Tommy Lee, senior lecturer in the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department at NYU. In addition, there are interviews with other scientists who have studied or made use of yoga in their research. For me, as someone who’s always looking for scientific validation, this combination of yoga and physiology is very gratifying.

First and foremost, the class teaches basic physiology. If you took survey classes in high school and college, the material will be familiar, and it’s presented in a clear manner with lots of visuals. Topics include physiological systems such as nervous, respiratory, cardiovascular, immune, digestive and much more. Additionally, there are discussions of homeostasis, epigenetics, and the effect of stress on human physiology.

As a cancer survivor, I find it so empowering to see the science behind how yoga affects my physiology, especially strengthening my immune system!

But woven in between all of these topics are instructions on breathwork and yoga movements for beginners, and this is what really ties the course together for me. The yoga is expertly taught by Eddie and Ali, both of whom make the experience very positive and not intimidating. With each lesson, they take the time to connect the physiology topics with what is being taught in the yoga class. This is a novel approach that I have found very empowering: there is a direct link between the work being done in the yoga lessons with functioning of the body.

For me, making that connection leads to a sense of self-efficacy and patience with myself, as it is with consistency of practice that we make change. Even more than that is the feeling that I can affect my immunity against disease (and cancer?) by keeping my stress levels in check. I have always felt that stress played a role in the development of my cancer, and although I cannot prove this, knowing that there is good science behind using such relaxation techniques as yoga and meditation in prevention of inflammation and subsequent disease gives me a sense of control in a situation that has often felt completely outside my control.

As mentioned, I am only at the midpoint of this class. I look forward to the second half and will report back about my overall impression once I am finished. In the meantime, if this post has piqued your interest, I highly encourage you to check the class out!

When You’re The “Default”, You Don’t See The Problem

While it might not seem like a cancer/meditation/mindfulness blog is the place to bring up the issue of racial disparities, I feel this is exactly the right place for it. Because we should all be talking about this in every situation.

I am white. I grew up with people on television who looked just like me. I had dolls that looked just like me. Companies marketed their products to people who looked like me, using advertisements with actors who looked like me. Even the crayon color called “flesh” looked like my skin, and I didn’t question it. I had school friends who were black, but I didn’t understand their experience. So I really understood nothing. As a child, I didn’t see the problem.

But the problem is massive and we haven’t made much progress since the days of the 20th Century civil rights movement. The main thing that’s changed is that we now have video phones so we’re bearing witness to events that have been going on all along, but unseen by the white community.

You cannot turn 400 years of oppression around with non-discrimination laws, congratulate yourself and proclaim everyone “equal” (read: shouldn’t be complaining), because the inequality has been in our system for so long that it’s what the country runs on. It lubricates the gears of society. And there are people in power who like it that way.

This needs to change and it needs to change now.

If you don’t think that being white infers an automatic privilege, try being a black teen in a hoodie, walking through an affluent white neighborhood.

After All Those Bad Things I Said About Letrozole…

I feel that I need to revisit the whole letrozole thingie, just to be fair.

In my last post I expressed my frustration with the continued side effects of the estrogen-supressing aromatase inhibitors designed to reduce the risk of cancer recurrence. Cancer survivors face a considerable amount of pressure from our oncologists to stay on these medications, but everyone agrees that their use does not come without health risks or hits to one’s quality of life. The latter is a squishy concept that is not easily quantifiable.

Deciding whether to take medications for the length of time prescribed, or stop them early, comes down to an individual’s tolerance of both the side effects and risk.

So after all the complaining in my last post, the big question I have in front of me is that, given that I’m already postmenopausal — regardless of the fact that it was the medication that pushed me into menopause — if I were to stop letrozole, would I experience a significant improvement of my complaints? And if I could reverse the side effects how long would it take? None of that is clear.

Granted, there remains additional risk in taking an aromatase inhibitor, particularly long-term, as the cessation of estrogen production contributes to aging and age-related maladies, including heart issues, bone loss and broken bones. And certainly, there is gradual collagen and hair loss, not to mention suppression of the libido.

But if we ignore that for now, I have to admit that not all days are as bad as how I described them. I don’t lie in bed staring at the ceiling while every single side effect hits me all at once. I experience them here and there. And most of them are tolerable.

My fear is about the future. If I’m feeling this now, what will it be like in another six months or a year? What if things go downhill gradually and I don’t realize it until later when I’ve slid so far down that nothing is salvageable. That’s completely ignoring the realities of the “now” for the imagined troubles of tomorrow. That is not being mindful!

But unfortunately, with medications such as these, the future is a factor that must be taken into account, and with that comes anxiety. Of course, anxiety always makes things worse. For me, it’s one of the most difficult side effects of cancer, because it magnifies all the negatives, both real and imagined.

I realized after I submitted the last post, after I complained about all the things I was experiencing, that not everything was as horrible as I thought. Things are not “normal”, and the situation is still applying a frustrating pressure on my quality of life. But maybe, for now, can I hold on and get the most out of the benefits of letrozole, and then re-evaluate tomorrow?

Yes, I can.