(Title image: still photo captured from “Between2Ears” Twitch stream)
I like finding some calming things to focus on when my brain is in overdrive. In my “Favorite Calm Things” series I’ve been mainly posting about streams on YouTube and Twitch.
Leyla, the star of Between2Ears. (Photo from Twitch page)
So here’s another one that I adore! It’s called “Between2Ears” and chronicles walks in nature from the perspective of a dog named Leyla from Germany. The scenery is lovely, both the environment and Leyla’s soft and furry head. It’s one of those puppy heads that you’d love to sit and scratch.
These are not live streams, but they do run almost non-stop on Twitch (https://www.twitch.tv/between2ears) so there’s always something to watch…and it’s always daytime.
For those who aren’t interested in setting up a free Twitch account, there are also a number of videos of Leyla available on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@between2ears-virtualdogwal771/videos) featuring walks during different seasons of the year and in a variety of locations.
Leyla has a good camera set-up with an excellent gimbal that helps steady the image. There is a slight bounce to her step and while I don’t have any issues with it, check it out for yourself to see whether the movement is too much.
Watching the world between Leyla’s ears. (Still photo captured from stream)
The stream and posted videos do a great job of recreating the experience of taking a curious puppy for a walk. Because the feed is recorded and slightly edited, you get the get good parts without mishaps or camera issues.
For me, as someone who adores dogs (and animals in general) but whose living situation currently prohibits me from having a pet of my own, this is such a sweet, calm way of experiencing the joy of a walk in nature with an inquisitive puppers. Until I’m in a place where I can again have a pet of my own, I can at least have this.
This post doesn’t need a lot of words, the pictures will be enough.
The quick description is that I had the chance to stop by the San Diego Country Orchid Show this past weekend, and the display was as glorious as I expected it to be. Lots of stunningly gorgeous flowers in a brilliant array of colors. It’s the kind of thing that takes my breath away and ushers in a rush of endorphins.
I was happily clicking photos on my phone and I was not the only one. Here is a smattering of the beauty I observed:
(Gallery photos by FranticShanti)
The last image is, of course, not an orchid but rather a very friendly talking parrot who made sure to say “Hi!” to everyone who walked by.
There are good weeks and there are bad weeks…and then there are weeks that you’re kind of managing and getting by, but know that your stressors will still be there for a while.
Last week was one of those for me. On the bright side, such days are a perfect time to practice stress management techniques. Notice the ups and downs. Ride them like waves, understanding that they will peak and ebb in a cyclical manner and eventually wash up on shore. All of this can lead to personal growth, even though we might not have wanted such a lesson in the first place.
At the same time, you might be thinking, “Thanks, but I’d like to pass on the personal growth for now.” In that case, maybe what you need is a short video of a snail doing something that seems impossible.
Here’s a little clip a friend brought to my attention that provides “don’t give up” inspiration for those times when you are waaay out of your comfort zone and will be having to pull yourself along for some time to come.
Hope you get as much inspiration out of this little guy as I did. Enjoy!
When ya gotta keep going, streeeeeeeetch…and then stretch some more.
Sometimes I need to shift my attention from the worries of the day and look at little fuzzy critters. One of my favorite outlets for this has become the Twitch stream @Chipmunks_and_Squirrels, on YouTube as @Chipmunksandsquirrels.
As the name suggests, this is a video stream of small woodland animals set in a lovely little backyard sanctuary built on the edge of a Connecticut forest. The audio is recorded at the same time as the video so you get a true sense of being in the woods, watching the little critters eat all the snackies put out for them.
It’s also touted as the perfect stream to leave on for your cats or dogs to keep them occupied. Sadly, I don’t have a pet to test this with, but it certainly serves as a soothing balm for me during a hectic work day! I often leave the stream on in the background as I’m working. It’s the perfect mix of nature sounds to be calming while not too distracting. And it provides a nice break to look at something other than spreadsheets.
Video of the activity from a live stream — “Chipmunks and Squirrels” streams live everyday on YouTube and Twitch.
The most frequent visitors tend to be gray and red squirrels and the high-definition camera focuses quickly to give beautiful closeups of them. But I’ve also seen an array of birds, including colorful bluejays and cardinals, and in the evening, curious raccoons. That’s just within the last couple of months.
Some of the squirrels I’ve seen often enough that I’ve been able to recognize them, including ones I’ve dubbed “Notch” (who has a notch in one ear) and “Slice” (who is missing the top of an ear). But there are quite a few others who come by.
And this is all in the cold of winter. I’m looking forward to warmer weather, longer days and the variety of creatures that spring and summer will bring. Should be lovely!
The YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/@Chipmunksandsquirrels) also offers a lot of video clips and shorts for those of us without a lot of time or attention span. Check it out and let me know what you think. 😀
Some people may experience resistance to this concept.
But as the United States heads into a contentious election, there are a lot of electrified emotions. People are on edge, tempers short and those who think differently from us are viewed with suspicion, disdain or hostility.
It’s very easy to get sucked into that kind of thinking because “us vs. them”messaging abounds and there’s always someone who seeks to profit from continual polarization.
Perhaps someone supports the “other” candidate and we imagine that they are a certain type of person with numeous negative characteristics.
But I offer a different way of looking at them.
We open ourselves to heartbreak when we close the door to understanding. (Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash)
Consider someone that you’ve met or read about and formed a negative opinion of based on very little information. All you know is that they disagree with you on topics that you feel strongly about.
Then think about what their motivations are. And instead of allowing yourself to follow down the path of immediate condemnation, consider that they might have motivations very similar to yours. If they seem angry, consider that the anger and hatred you perceive is stoked by fear and concern.
They may fear for what happens to their family. Perhaps they feel that their children are at risk. It’s possible that they believe their livelihood is threatened or that they themselves are in grave danger. They may feel very deeply about the same things that you feel deeply about, but their perspective is different.
What if you try to soften your views of them? That doesn’t mean you have to agree with them. But try not to vilify them for how passionately they care about the issues that they do.
Do you find yourself resisting this practice? Perhaps it seems like you don’t want to “give them an inch” because of a plethora of perceived injuries. Or that extending them some grace is somehow morally reprehensible.
But does living with that kind of anger in your heart serve you better? What are the emotions that keep you from wishing someone well: fear, suspicion, anger, pain, obstinance…all these are negative drivers. They will never bring you a sense of peace.
There is a point at which we realize that maintaining polarization takes far more energy than acknowledging that someone thinks differently because they care deeply, even though their solution is different from yours.
Showing respect to people is not the same as agreeing with them. You do not have to vote for their candidate. You don’t have to believe that their way is the only way.
But try to release animosity. Because if there is one right that we should all grant ourselves, it is to live together in an environment where we understand each other, even if we don’t agree.
In honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, I decided to try an “Ask Me Anything” stream on a streaming platform called Twitch.
Twitch is primarily a game streaming platform although there are also art streams, animal streams, science streams and a variety of other worthwhile (and some not-so-worthwhile) streams.
I’ve streamed video games there before—because after cancer, playing horror games in virtual reality is not as scary—so I was familiar with the workings. Additionally, with progressively more younger women getting diagnosed with breast cancer, I felt that it was appropriate to reach out to a younger community.
I wanted to give people a chance to ask questions about the breast cancer experience that they might not feel comfortable asking someone they know who has the disease. This was based on my own experience decades ago; a fellow student was diagnosed, and suddenly I wasn’t sure how to talk to her. I didn’t want to say the “wrong” thing, afraid that I might upset her or otherwise “remind” her about her cancer, as if she had forgotten.
All this was, of course, ridiculous, because she herself was very open about the disease and talked about it to us freely. She’d let us know how it was going, sometimes came to class wearing only a hat on her bald head, never showing any indication that speaking about cancer made her uncomfortable.
The issue wasn’t my friend, it was me, and I honestly didn’t give her as much support as I could have. I probably looked like I was pulling away but the reality was that I just didn’t know how to speak to her for fear of hurting her.
I’m here to answer all those questions that people don’t feel comfortable asking…but want to know the answer to. (Photo by 愚木混株 cdd20 on Unsplash)
There were questions that I could have engaged her with like, “how sick do you get from chemotherapy”, “what does your treatment plan look like”, “what type of breast cancer do you have”, “what are you looking forward to most when you’re done?”
Additionally, I wondered about things like, “what is the survival rate for your cancer”, that I would have never asked her for fear of really being inappropriate. But I was still curious (keep in mind, this was prior to widespread usage of the World Wide Web/Internet, so I couldn’t google the info).
All of those questions are the ones that I wanted to be available to answer on my stream. If you’ve been reading my blog posts, you probably know a lot about my own situation. I’m not shy about sharing.
But a person with a co-worker who was recently diagnosed, like my younger self, might not want to ask them.
So, I gave the Q&A session a try…to a whopping zero viewers. And that was okay because I wasn’t sure how it would go. I talked almost non-stop about what my breast cancer experience was like. It was cathartic to be sure and I was surprised that I was able to speak for as long as I did. Eventually, my throat started to hurt (water? I’m supposed to drink water?) and I called it a day.
It was also a touch out of my comfort zone. I feel like I need to do something useful with my life and I’m running out of time. This stream is one way to shake myself up at the age of 58 and get used to taking risks again. Ouch.
Just for kicks, I’ll be posting the unedited video that I created from the Q&A session although I admit, it took a bit for me to get going so it’s very stream-of-consciousness. I’m still in the process of uploading it, but will post it once that’s all done.
I’m tentatively planning to do this again next Saturday morning at ~9am PDT, assuming my voice recovers by then. If you’re interested it taking a look, you will be able to access the stream here: https://www.twitch.tv/franticshanti.
I’ve been posting a lot about yoga, specifically about yoga for cancer populations.
Yoga programming for such populations is *not* your garden variety beginner/intermediate yoga. With the possible exception of well-practiced, life-long yogis who experience a cancer diagnosis, most of the people taking these yoga classes will have limitations to their movement and will need thoughtfully-designed sequences that offer appropriate modifications.
In a number of cases, these individuals may be older (for example, the average age at diagnosis for a woman in the US with breast cancer is 62). Many of them will not have an established yoga practice but may be attracted to yoga due to its reputation as being a mind-body activity: people with cancer not only have to deal with the disease and physical side effects of treatments, but also the emotional repercussions of being diagnosed with a life-threatening illness. Yoga can help.
So why am I irritated? Because the photo databank I use for my blog is replete with photographs of bodies in yoga poses. However, the poses shown are nothing that I would ever consider twisting a cancer patient into.
Make no mistake: the photographs are lovely, the yogis are impressively advanced, but what kind of a message does seeing mainly *these* kinds of yoga photos send to those cancer patients considering trying out yoga? (Photo by Oksana Taran on Unsplash)
The yogis shown almost without exception are young and flexible. And when I’ve searched for “senior yoga” etc. to increase the diversity of the images…sure, I can find some but they’re locked behind a paywall (mine is a free blog without a budget for such niceities). Apparently, an older individual doing yoga is considered “exotic”.
This type of exclusivity feeds the narrative that yoga is for youthful, injury-free people who have the funds to attend studio classes. Someone who might be older, recovering from surgery, limited in range of motion and conscious about their budget due to treatment costs…well, I wouldn’t be surprised if they felt that yoga wasn’t welcoming of them and their needs.
This is, of course, so ironic, because of all the different exercise modalities, yoga is one of the most perfect for cancer patients. These are the people who need yoga the most!
Yes, I’ve written (griped?) about this topic before. Yes, we’re becoming more accepting of diverse bodies in diverse situations. But good luck trying to illustrate a blog post on yoga for cancer patients with actual photos of cancer patients doing yoga!
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I’m not expecting to easily find every type of person depicted doing yoga in a given (free) photobank. But in the US we have a problem with making yoga accessible, and the more images that we run of only a certain kind of human doing yoga, the more we inadvertently push the idea that yoga is only for that certain kind of human.
As I’m stumbling through a bad cold, I got a reminder that you can find good stuff in bad situations.
Let me see if I can string this together somewhat coherently…
The cold I have came with an eye infection (relax, not posting pics!) that makes me light-sensitive enough that I need to be chauffeured around. Went to the doc last week, got a prescription for eye drops, then swung by to do some shopping, which I needed to wear sunglasses for.
And as I’m picking my way through a busy Costco, I’m holding onto a phone that I just bought–has a case but no screen protector yet–and I’m really worried that I’m going to drop it or lose it if I get distracted.
And why do I get distracted? Because anxiety and a touch of chemo brain (aka Cancer-Related Cognitive Impairment (CRCI)) have a summative effect that makes me loopy. Not a “scare-your-children” kind of loopy, but a constant “what-was-I-just-doing” kind of loopy. Over and over and over again.
I’ve been dealing with this over the past couple of months while juggling stressors. My eye infection introduced a new wrinkle–I am very much a visual person and use visual cues to manage the anxiety/CRCI problem.
But the good news? The Memory and Attention Adaptation Training (MAAT) classes I took for managing CRCI focused on mindfulness as a way of dealing with the lapses in memory.
And when I was in a Costco bathroom stall, I realized that I was acutely aware of where all my things were–purse on the door hook, phone on top of the toilet paper dispenser. I was ALL THERE and 100% present. I couldn’t afford not to be.
Not an earth-shaking revelation, but it was another reminder that there are all sorts ways to ground ourselves in the present. If I hadn’t taken the MAAT class I don’t think I would have felt so confident that what I was doing (being mindful) would work so well to help me stay focused and aware.
So, yes, I can be grateful for chemo brain for that.
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Today my vision has improved to the point where I can tell that the kitchen floor is really dirty, and that is most unfortunate indeed.
Following up on last week’s post on taking a coffee break, I’m sharing my daily matcha experience with you.
During my workday, I need to stop periodically and ground myself so I don’t get sucked into a hectic hole. And for me, there’s no better way to do that than to stand up, walk around to get some movement into my body and extra blood flowing to my brain…and head to the kitchen to make a matcha latte.
There’s nothing like taking a soothing break from my hectic day.
There is something about the process of making that tea drink that offers opportunities to focus on a soothing distraction that grounds me in reality. From pouring water into the tea kettle…scooping out the bright green powder…measuring out the water…whisking the solution into a brilliant verdant tornado…I find it so blissful.
This is reminder to there is more to my day than what shows up on the computer monitor. Those stressors will pass like a wave…new ones will arise…and those too will pass by.
For anyone here who has celebrated Advent, you know it as the period of time comprised of the four Sundays (and the weekdays in between) leading up to Christmas in preparation for the arrival of the Messiah. The 2023 season of Advent starts this coming Sunday, December 3rd. [Edit: Many consider Advent to run from Dec 1 – Dec 24, and that suits the purpose of this post also.]
Advent has historically been observed by Christian religious dominations and is marked by the lighting of four candles, one for each Sunday. But it is most famously known by everyone as the four or so weeks before Christmas when you “give up” something.
Advent wreath with four colored candles representing hope, peace, joy and love, one lit every Sunday of Advent. The white candle can be lit on Christmas Eve or Christmas. (Photo by KaLisa Veer on Unsplash)
Growing up, we’d usually give up sweets during this time, only being allowed a little something each Sunday, with the idea that we would appreciate the candies and cakes at Christmas all the more.
But you know what? I don’t really think it had that effect. That was something geared more towards our stomachs than our souls. Sure, we’d look forward to finally indulging in holiday goodies…but that was about it.
And as the years went on and treats played an ever-decreasing role in my life, I flailed around looking for something else to deny myself. Let’s face it, I was missing the point.
More recently, I’ve turned Advent into a different kind of spiritual opportunity.
So I’d like to offer a most positive way of observing those last weeks of the year for everyone, regardless of religious affiliation. And it has nothing to do with depriving yourself of anything.
Rather, it’s a blissful gift for yourself…and your soul, if you will.
Not everyone lives where the winter weather is warm enough to pick up trash on the beach…but I’m willing to bet that most of us live in a place where we can lend a hand to a charitable organization. (Photo by Brian Yurasits on Unsplash)
For this Advent, I invite you to commit to several weeks of establishing a new thoughtful behavior. This can look different for everyone:
Perhaps, it’s time to set aside a few minutes in prayer and contemplation, as it suits your own spiritual tradition.
Perhaps it’s an opportunity to commit to volunteering for a charity, giving to others without expecting anything in return.
Perhaps it’s a time to establish a simple meditation practice, a few minutes a day at a specified time.
Perhaps it’s an opportunity to practice daily mindfulness, say, when you make your morning coffee or tea, truly focusing on the process and what the items feel like in your hands.
Perhaps, it’s time to think before reacting, pausing before getting angry and saying something hurtful.
This Advent might be the perfect opportunity to establish a practice of mindful contemplation. (Photo by Ümit Bulut on Unsplash)
Perhaps this is the time to go through your belongings, a little every day, and gather up what you can give to others in need, or discard if the item is no longer of use to anyone.
Perhaps this is time to think about all the things for which you’re grateful, starting or ending your day in this way. And if there’s nothing that you can be grateful about, then consider what you’re grateful that is *not* happening.
Choosing what to focus on for Advent can be a very mindful process in itself. And after about a month of this practice, you will emerge with a beautiful new habit.
Give it a try and I wish you a beautiful Advent season!
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Please note: I realize that there is a much deeper religious meaning of Advent for Christians, and I’m not trying to minimize that. However, in this time of hyperpolarization when we’re so focused on what sets us apart from those around us, this is a thoughtful way to share the Advent tradition with everyone, with love. And isn’t that the spirit of Christmas?
Frantic Shanti 