Practical Stuff – Page 8

Mindfulness 101: Avoiding Avoidance

There is, unfortunately, a trap that some people may fall into when practicing mindfulness meditation.

In the context of selecting a point of focus that anchors you into the present, there is that teensy possibility that someone just starting out with meditation might focus without equanimity.

Equanimity is the ability to maintain balance and a sense of calm in both good and bad situations. It is the acceptance that impermanence and suffering are a part of life, and it is the state of allowing all feelings to pass through you, observing them without judgement or expectations brought on by previous experiences.

Equanimity is being able to allow in both the good and the bad without getting dragged through it.

Allowing emotions in when you’re trying to stay calm and collected might seem a little counter-intuitive, but in fact, I consider it to be to goal of mindfulness meditation. That’s because the most important time to maintain a sense of inner peace is exactly when the proverbial sh!t hits the proverbial fan. Mindfulness meditation provides us with a safe space within which to practice just that.

The tendency, however, is to try to keep difficult emotions out. I myself encounter a lot of resistance when doing guided meditations that focus on bringing up uncomfortable thoughts, particularly in the evening, when I’m most susceptible to anything that might perturb my sleep.

However, not allowing those thoughts in can set up a pattern of avoidance, depriving us of the opportunity to learn to deal with them. And this avoidance can imbue difficult thoughts with even more power, as if they become the boogeyman lurking behind a door that we’re terrified to open. That’s not a good thing.

So how do we get around this?

Pick a good time to explore the stickier side of things; I would caution against the evening, when, as I mentioned above, bringing up tough feelings can agitate you and make it more difficult to fall asleep. Keep the environment quiet, comforting and safe, with gentle music in the background, if that suits you. I like mid-morning time and natural light, with a cup of tea or cacao or anything else that feels soothing.

Choose your anchor: your breath, a bodily sensation like tingling in your hands, a constant sound in the the background…even lofi music from YouTube.

If you feel too drifty, keep your eyes open to help ground you. Perhaps focus them on an object that brings you peace, such as the photograph of a loved one or an image of a peaceful place.

Give yourself a calm opportunity to explore complicated emotions.

Breathe deeply and pay attention to gripping or tightness in your body, especially forehead, jaw, neck, shoulders and belly. Consciously release any areas that seem to clench as you go along.

And then allow whatever comes up to come up. Observe them…and then let them go. No need to analyze or justify. Imagine that you’re made of Teflon and those uncomfortable images slide off you.

If needed, sit further away from them. When the intensity gets too high, you might need space, so imagine that they are flowing past as if you’re on the bank of a river and they are the leaves that float by on the surface of the water. They come and they go and you breathe deeply through it all.

As you practice, maintain your focus the best that you can. The point of your focus is not the thoughts, it’s the breath or whatever other anchor you might have chosen. This way, the thoughts move independently and subside as smoothly as they appeared. If you find yourself getting stuck, return to your anchor and remind yourself that in this moment, you are safe.

IMPORTANT: If your thoughts are tied to trauma or the intensity seems unbearable, please seek out the help of someone professionally qualified to help you deal with them. Mindfulness meditation is a wonderful tool, but sometimes it’s not enough.

“Dropping a Plumb Line”: Dealing with Disappointment

This is a follow up of my last post, where I described the unending saga of unfinished repairs following a leak in our apartment, something that left me feeling helpless.

Before I posted last week, I removed a section that I’d written about fears of kitchen cabinets not arriving on schedule, and that they’d be hung after our upcoming houseguest had arrived and the place would still be torn apart. I cut it out because I thought, “Come on you’re catastrophizing, no one needs to read about that.”

Except that that’s exactly what happened. I got a call that there was another delay. All the expectations I’d had came crashing down in one big pile of disappointment. That is, disappointment mixed with shame, self-judgment, embarrassment, depression, etc. because I’d mixed so many feelings of self-worth into having our apartment be fixed up prior to our guest’s arrival.

This was something so biting for me as a middle-aged women who, despite being an employed “professional”, was still locked into the idea that whatever else I accomplished didn’t matter if my home wasn’t in guest-ready condition.

I tried to do a meditation on imagining what it would feel like if everything that had happened was the way it was meant to be, but I couldn’t even muster that feeling of acceptance.

Again it was the expectation, the need that I had to have things be different. I tried sitting with my disappointment but the feelings were sticky and pulled me down even more.

So then I thought, if it’s the unrealized expectation that I had, the one that had built up over the last two-plus months of restoration agony in which I had no control and was at the mercy of the HOA, our landlord and anyone else…how do I soften that expectation to make this better?

Oh, how differently things look when you drop down into a situation without prior expectations.

I regrouped and tried meditating again, but this time I was dropping straight into the situation, vertically, without those weeks of built up frustration and need. As if I were sitting on the tip of a plumb line, called into action and ready to problem-solve.

What would it feel like to come into this situation right now? If I were to start out by knowing that I’d have to deal with the kitchen being in boxes in the living room area where our guest is supposed to sleep and then move forward from there.

I imagined myself arriving without baggage and it felt so much better. Suddenly, my focus was on dealing with the situation instead of lamenting about how things could have been. This was more productive and less agonizing. Yes, potentially still frustrating, but it took me out of the magnified disappointment that didn’t even make sense from this perspective.

It was such a small shift but it made a significant and immediate difference. That emotional wall that I’d been hitting fell away and I could see solutions. And now things didn’t look that bad. Yes, things looked different but given that I felt so much better and more in-control, this was the best outcome that I could have expected, given the situation.

Again, perspective came to the rescue and I was reminded that there is always a path out of every situation if we give ourselves space to consider it.

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And now, off to clean the bathroom.

“Am I Clenching?”; or “Wait, Where’s My Tree?”

A few days ago I realized that we were missing a tree out in front of our balcony. Not some little sapling that could be easily overlooked, but a tall, mature pine tree that offered us shade during hot summer afternoons.

It was gone, only stumps remaining. I was stunned. After I furiously texted my family for answers (WHERE IS THE TREE???), my husband texted back that it hadn’t been there for weeks, and I hadn’t noticed its disappearance even though I’d been out on the balcony numerous times.

That was weird.

So, you might be wondering what that has to do with this post. Well, it’s easy to cruise through life not being fully aware of what’s going on around us…or in our bodies. Just like I was imaging the tree was still there (while also wondering why the plants on the balcony were drying up much faster this summer), many times I’m also not aware that I’m holding tension in my body.

Perfect example: I had trouble falling asleep a few nights ago. After lying awake in bed for some time, it struck me that I was clenching just about every part of my body. My jaws, neck, shoulders, back, glutes…everything had tightened into knots.

I had been concerned about preparations for a party that we were to attend the next day–and I was aware of that–but all of those worries had passed into my physical being, and that I wasn’t aware of. Good luck trying to get to sleep when you’re as rigid as a board!

So I started a little dance of releasing those muscles, then drifting back to my “normal” state of what can only be described as oblivious unattention, until I noticed that I was still not sleeping and–oh look!–everything was rigid again, so I released my muscles again…

Sometimes I find myself clenching just a teensy bit too tightly…

Yes, I went through the process of relaxing my face, my jaw, my neck…blah blah blah…if you’re a meditator, you know the drill. But a few minutes later, everything had clenched up again without me realizing it.

This went on for a while. When I get caught in a “loop of oblivion” like this, one of the first things I do is stop. Just halt the dance. And take a very deep breath.

That’s the first start in resetting things. Think of it as a much kindler, gentler version of someone slapping you in the face and yelling, “Get it together!”

And that’s when my broader awareness returned and I was able to get out of autopilot mode, acknowledging my mental tension and thereby the physical one. It was a perspective shift because I wasn’t just thinking, “Will we get everything done in time?”

I realized what was actually happening: “All this concern about getting everything done in time is keeping me up.”

That slight shift enabled me to pull back and out of myself, brush off the worries about things I could do nothing about at the moment, and drift off to sleep. But it also reminded me that I need to practice awareness more than I had been. In a sense, I was now more aware of the need to stay even more aware.

Yes, even after years of understanding the importance of mindfulness, I must return to square one and refocus. I don’t think I’ll ever not be restarting, especially not as long as trees keep disappearing from under my nose. But that’s okay…the journey is soothing and the practice itself is a destination. My main task is to not stop practicing.

Sinking into the Depths, but in a Good Way: A Meditation Visualization

As I return to really sinking down into my meditation practice, I am reminded of what I’ve been missing out over the past few months when my practice gradually changed and “shallowed”.

Due to pressures and stressors the start of this year, I had been skittering over the surface of my meditations, much as you would imagine barefoot skiing over the surface of a large body of water, and I use this as a visualization of my experience.

It is *not* fun trying to keep my head up and focused through my distractions.

Up on the surface, you have wind and waves to contend with. The more time that you spend up on top of the water, the more tumultuous distractions you find there and it becomes more difficult to find a sense of calm. The more you do that, the more it becomes habitual.

But when you stop charging across the surface — resisting the enticing attraction of thoughts — then you find yourself slowly sinking…but in a good way. Thrashing winds disappear, sounds become muffled and fade into the distance, movement slows. The deeper you descend, the more quiet you find there.

There are times that I think I’ve been meditating, only to realize that I’ve floated up to the surface and am actually bobbing around in the choppy waves of my thoughts. That realization comes more quickly the more time I’ve spent in the depths, and when I return to the process of sinking, it feels like such a relief.

The deeper I allow myself to descend, the quieter I become. It becomes less of a struggle to stay down.

I can learn to sit with frightening creatures the way I can learn to sit with unsettling thoughts…and vice versa.

And as I get progressively deeper, light dims. Initially, the darkness felt a little intimidating (I’m not a fan of dark water). But then I remembered, this is my ocean. I decide what dwells in the darkness. I can fill my ocean with fearsome, aggressive creatures — and sometimes I do this — but then because I realize that they are mine, they don’t hurt me and I am able to sit with them peacefully.

What an accurate analogy for our thoughts, no?

In this way I feel my own inner strength and power. The darkness does not have to be frightening — it is a gentle darkness that signals rest, allowing my mind to slow and focus inwards.

If that darkness is too disconcerting to you, imagine that there is a soft blue brightness in the water, illuminating your entire area of vision, and perhaps even an underwater staircase you can use to control your descent. Tweak it however you like so that it fits with your level of comfort.

This visualization is the perfect reminder of how good meditation feels when I don’t get in my way about it. Nothing to do but relax and let myself sink down…

Quitting This Stupid Job…and Going Back to Training

For a number of months now, my meditations have been “sub-par”.

I know I’m not supposed to judge, but objectively I’m aware that I’ve veered off course somewhere. In the past, I’d have good days and bad days, transcendent meditation sessions and really distracted, “no-way-I’m-gonna-focus” ones. But that was okay, because a large part of mindfulness meditation is coming back to the breath AFTER losing focus.

Rabbit holes are very enticing places to disappear into.

This has been a little different.

It started with a few weeks of distractibility as I was navigating stressors in the early months of this year. But gradually, things went downhill until I seemed to make it my job to use meditation time to go down rabbit holes.

Maybe I was too tired, meditating in the evening before bed or when I woke in the middle of the night and couldn’t sleep, so I didn’t check my wandering mind because I was dozing off.

If I had music in the background, my mind would dance off in a tangent and I wasn’t meditating anymore, forgetting that this was a time for calm and presence.

I’d get lost during my meditation with little hope of finding my way back on the path that I was on.

So I’d start a guided meditation — listening to someone’s voice would keep me on track, right? Nope. My ability to allow that voice to fade into the background was nothing short of impressive.

Day after day, I had dutifully taken on the task of wandering way off my meditation path until I realized that I was going nowhere and it was time to quit the restlessness and stay still for a while.

Even after years of daily meditations, I had to re-learn the habit of staying… because over the past few months, I’ve established a new habit of not coming back to my center regularly enough. And this new habit of spending my session mindlessly had managed to supplant my previous meditation flow.

So here we go again: setting aside some quiet time when I’m not particularly sleepy, finding an anchor like the breath to focus on in a patient, non-gripping manner, maintaining a gentle awareness of where my mind is, and when it inevitably wanders away from my point of focus (which it always will), calmly guiding it back.

Going back and consciously setting an anchor again. And enjoying that comfortable feeling of being present and aware of this very second.

When the breath seems like a boring place to drop my anchor, I turn to the sensations in my hands and feet (particulary useful when I’m stressed) or the sounds of automobile traffic outside ebbing and flowing or opening my awareness to all my senses and accepting whatever shows up. My focus is on the present and that’s where I aim to keep it.

So it’s true, that old “muscle memory” is bringing back my meditation practice and strengthening it as it does so. This serves as a good reminder to not get complacent, calling myself a “meditator” and throwing around stats like how many days in a row I’ve been meditating. In the end, the important thing is not my meditation streak, it’s the fact that today I will choose to meditate again.

Ushering in Summer with a Gentle Attitude

With the upcoming longest day of the year on June 21st, many yogis celebrate the Summer Solstice by performing 108 repetitions of the series of movements known as a Sun Salutation, or Surya Namaskar in Sanskrit.

Why 108? The number 108 is significant in a number of dharmic traditions, including Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism and Sikhism, and appears many times in sacred ancient texts (see more info at sites such as himalayanyogainstitute.com, yogajournal.com, hinduamerican.org).

Practicing 108 Sun Salutations traditionally has been done during the changing of the seasons to usher in the new phase of the year by generating an internal heat for purification (stoked by the energy of the movements), cultivating a will that pushes the practitioner forward and breaking through mental and physical barriers (youaligned.com).

sun-salutation-a_franticshanti Download

Prior to getting cancer, I would have reveled in the challenge of 108 Sun Salutations. My body was ready to go hard and fast and have everything be perfect. Today, I approach such practices more mindfully, so this post is about a more forgiving alternative to churning through so many Sun Salutations.

This is because high repetitions of these movements are not for everyone, and even otherwise fit people may begin having wrist, shoulder and back issues as they move through the repeats. Proper preparation is essential in avoiding injuries. My own body protests high volumes of some movements so I accept my limitations, reset my expectations and opt for gentler variations.

Does participating in this tradition interest you but you find the high number daunting? Don’t insist on doing all 108 repetitions; set out to do one. And if that flows well, do another. Feel into your body from the very first sequence to the very last one you do, no matter the number.

However, if it helps, set a repetition goal for yourself — keeping in the spirit of the practice, let it be a factor of 108 as there many ways to evenly divide this number: 9, 18, 27, 54 — but don’t make that goal your sole purpose. Instead, keep your attention on your breath and the flow of your body.

This is a meaningful sequence to immerse yourself in as you cycle through the movements.

Avoid worrying about how you look, wondering whether you’re “beating” the pace of others, thinking about what you’re going to do afterwards or how many calories you burned. I would argue that a single Sun Salutation done consciously, appreciating the connection between the ancient origins of the sequence and the present day, is more valuable than 108 repetitions done with your mind elsewhere, focused only on the achievement.

For this practice, send your ego off to wait patiently by itself until you’re done.

IMPORTANT: For this post, I am focusing on the mindful and spiritual benefits of Sun Salutations. It is true that there is the purely physical practice of the sequence, a full-body exercise that has benefits in its own right. If you are more interested in treating this as a workout rather than a symbolic detoxification as you transition to the next season of the year, I’m the last person to try to talk you out of it. But be aware that this is a very sacred practice for some; I encourage you to pause and approach it with respect.

Whatever number you end on, let that be the right number for you, no judgments. This is a beautiful way to add meaning to your yoga practice and nurture a connectedness to everyone else engaged in this tradition.

The next change of seasons, the Autumnal Equinox, is only three months away…

Perhaps this Solstice’s Sun Salutations will lead to a mindful daily practice of Surya Namaskar. This may blossom into the next opportunity to join everyone in the tradition for the Autumn and welcome in a season full of new possibilities…and maybe even the full 108 repetitions.

But for now, start with just one.

For a beginner-friendly version of Surya Namaskar, try the version below:

sun-salutation-a_beginner-variation_franticshanti Download

Putting Pen to Paper for the Ultimate Mental Vacation

When I wrote my last post — a visualization and body scan for helping calm yourself and prepare for sleep — I knew I would enjoy immersing myself in describing a space that felt safe to me.

But what I didn’t expect was the effect that the actual process of writing the visualization would have on me.

As I continued describing the “healing bath” scene, searching for reference pictures and letting my imagination create a restful place, I realized that I myself was feeling more and more relaxed — breathing slower and experiencing a sense of placid grounding.

This got me thinking.

Beautiful journals may be appealing to some. But making use of technology in searching for images and recording your words provides you with the most flexibility for documenting ideas and bringing in visual aids…without risking writer’s cramp.

While there is no doubt that listening to a guided meditation can be very soothing, sitting down and writing one yourself takes you to another level. This is an exercise in finding what the most salient relaxing cues are for you personally.

Immersing yourself in locating photographs of environments that you consider your ideal for a retreat getaway helps you isolate those elements that exemplify what relaxation and grounding mean to you. I highly recommend sites like Pinterest for this; if you’re not interested creating an account there, just start out with Google image searches and see where they lead.

And when you start writing, turning your focus towards describing the scene that you’re imagining means that you are truly “in it” in your mind. As you write about sights, smells, sounds, textures and other sensations, and hold them in your imagination, you sink deeper into them than you might even in a meditation where someone else is describing the surroundings to you.

It’s your writing and therefore everything you select is your choice, suited to your tastes. There’s no need to use complicated language, simply tune in to your mind’s eye and write what you see. Because this is for you alone, there’s no requirement that it be a complete representation of your safe space and no need to judge the quality of your mental picture. There only has to be enough imagery there to trigger the wonderful feeling of peace and calm that you have when you’re there. However, the more descriptive you can be, the better you can lock in the imagery.

Not a scribe? An oral description of your special place can be just as immersive as writing it out. And if you feel so inclined, recording it for yourself can help you preserve the images to return to at a later time.

Finally, each one of us has different experiences with putting words on a page. If you feel that being required to write out your thoughts will be frustrating, then find a quiet space where you have privacy, close your eyes and audibly describe your safe space, perhaps even record it. Imagine that you’re moving through it and explain to yourself what’s there and how it makes you feel.

Whether you choose to write or speak, the reason this can be such a powerful tool is because you focus on something that feels so relaxing. This may turn out to be the ultimate grounding meditation for you.

Give it a try and see where it takes you.

“Healing Bath”: A Body Scan with Visualizations

As a visual person, I have days when my “mind’s eye” has difficulty focusing during meditations. For those times, listening to guided visualizations is my best option for a calming tool.

Additionally, body scans are excellent pre-bedtime wind-downs. So when I recently heard of a great visualization that includes a body scan, I wanted to share it here.

Your private pool can be anywhere you want, even indoors. Source: https://pin.it/4UeEa1U

This one is based on a “healing bath” visualization that was presented by an MSW/Oncological Therapist who leads Friday morning meditation at my cancer center. Putting the focus on vivid visuals and including your other senses fills your awareness with rich imagery that works so well to soothe an overworked nervous system. While this will not be an auditory experience, use your imagination as you read this to paint yourself a picture of a safe, soothing space that you will remember.

Here’s the basic imagery (add details that resonate with you): you arrive at a beautiful natural location, walking down a path surrounded by lush greenery, wearing a luxurious fluffy robe and cushy slippers. As you follow the path, flowery fragrances waft on a gentle breeze that carries bird songs to you. The sun is at a height most soothing for you; for me, it is early morning with a mist in the air. Bright enough to see everything, but imparting a feeling of safety and privacy.

As you continue down the path, it opens up into a small secluded beach with a round pool of water, clear and sparkling; part natural pond and part constructed, with beautiful white stone steps leading into it. Surrounded by flowering plants, it invites you in.

Create a secluded place for yourself. Source: https://pin.it/3j88oEw

You feel the sensation of the fluffy robe and slippers sliding off of you as you leave these items by the entrance to the steps. Then, you dip the toes of one foot into the water and find that the temperature is perfect for you. Notice the sensation of the warm water as you step onto the stone stairs with both feet, holding onto a sturdy railing. You stand up to your ankles in the pool and sense the difference in the temperature between the misty air and inviting water.

Take two more steps down and the water slides up to your calves, soothing your lower leg muscles. Then step further in as the water line slowly travels up past your knees and halfway up your thighs, so that most of your legs are submerged in the placid, warm pool, now feeling more like a bath.

The bottom of the pool is easily visible through the clear water. Unhurriedly, take a few more steps down as your toes reach the white sandy pool floor and the water rises up to your waist, enveloping your lower body in warmth.

By one side of the pool is a smooth sculpted stone bench to which you glide, feeling the slip of the water against your skin as you move, drawing the tips of your fingers across the pool’s surface, leaving gentle streaks as you go.

As you lower yourself onto the seat, sense the warmth rise up your torso and arms, traveling up as you settle down. The bench is deep enough for your body to submerge but comfortably keep your head out of the water.

The soothing water supports you as the seat cradles your body. Rest your head on the side of the pool – the edge is sloped and comfortable. Then listen. What do you hear? Sweet songs of birds? The meditative buzz of gentle honeybees that flit among the flowers? Waves on a faraway beach?

Can you smell the fragrances of the flowering plants that surround you? As you breathe, as your chest rises and falls, feel the water glide around you. Warm, secure, safe, secluded. This pool is whatever you need it to be for you to feel nurtured and loved.

As evening falls, lights illuminate the pool. Source: https://pin.it/2KpwRO8

Stay here for as long as you like, watching light sparkle on the surface of the water. If you stay until evening, warm lighting illuminates the pool and surrounding plants, dispersing dark shadows and bringing a sleepy tranquility into the area.

Finally, when it’s time to return to present world, lift yourself out of your seat and glide back to the stairs, keeping yourself submerged to your shoulders until you take a hold of the handrail. Slowly, slowly release yourself from the pool, noticing the sensation of air on your skin as you emerge, feeling the waterline move down your body as you climb the steps.

With the final step, you leave the pool and take up the fluffy, soft robe waiting for you, wrapping yourself in it. Slip your feet into the cozy slippers. Your body dries quickly. Make your way up the path. And although you leave this magical space behind, it is always available for you whenever you want to return.

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If you are uncomfortable with water or if the visualization keeps bringing in disturbing images such as a very deep pool, dark water or something foreboding lurking underneath the surface, or it feels constrictive or claustrophobic, substitute a sparkling mist or a golden light for the water. You can still feel the body sensations as you enter into the pool. There are no rules here, it is your safe space and you can set it up as you please.

Finally, to bring this from a visualization into reality, create a real-life pool for yourself in your bath, with ample tealights, a soundtrack of nature sounds or gentle music and water temperature that is right for you. Feel your arms and legs float, prop up your head with a towel on the side of the tub. Breathe deeply. This is a perfect way to end the day and prepare yourself for a restful slumber.

Protection Against Doxorubicin’s Cardiotoxicity: Exercise?

One of the strongest chemotherapy drugs used for breast cancer is doxorubicin, a drug in the anthracyline family that you might know as Adriamycin. It’s called “The Red Devil” due to its bright red color and tendency to temporarily dye the bodily fluids of its recipient red, but also due to its toxicity.

While it is highly effective, its use is limited by its potentially serious side effects, including damage to the heart. According to Drugs.com, “[b]ecause of its heart toxicity, doxorubicin has a maximum cumulative dose that can be given to each patient. The higher the total dose you receive over time, the greater your chance of heart side effects.”

Doxorubicin is a highly effective chemotherapy, but carries with it a considerable risk of heart toxicity.

There has been interest in discovering other drugs that can decrease the cardiotoxicity of doxorubicin, particularly since in addition to breast cancer, it is used against a variety of other cancers.

But as with so many things cancer-related, the drugs given to protect against chemotherapy side effects themselves have side effects, so it’s useful to explore other means of achieving protection from the toxic effects of doxorubicin.

Can Exercise Help?

In a webinar for the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) that I attended on May 18, 2023, University of Florida, Department of Applied Physiology and Kinesiology researcher Dr. Ashley Smuder and her lab presented research about the protective effects of exercise on the heart and muscle doxorubicin.

Importantly, Dr. Smuder’s lab was able to demonstrate that exercise-trained rats who were then given doxorubicin showed a decrease in the amount of drug that accumulated in the heart and diaphragm compared to sedentary rats, echoing the results of Parry and Hayward (2015, Am J Physiol Regul Integr Comp Physiol). Those results had suggested that exercise didn’t diminish and even increased the amount of doxorubicin that made it to the cancer tumor while decreasing the amount of the drug that went to the heart (left ventricle) and diaphragm.

Exercise keeps rodents healthier, even under a punishing chemotherapy regimen.

While the actual mechanism of this protective effect is still being researched, once again these studies show the benefits of exercise in a cancer situation.

Additionally, a doctoral student in Dr. Smuder’s lab, Brendan Nguyen, reported on work that he’s done showing the differences of exercise on fat mass and lean mass in rats administered doxorubicin using the same infusion schedule that a human patient would received (4 doses, 3 weeks apart). There were four conditions: (1) a sedentary group that received saline injections, (2) a sedentary group that received doxorubicin, (3) a moderate-exercise group that received doxorubicin, (4) a high-intensity exercise training (HIIT) group that received doxorubicin.

Moderate exercise: rats ran on a treadmill 3 days/week at a speed of 30 meters/min for 60 min/session.
HIIT exercise: rats ran on a treadmill 3 days/week, four 4-min bouts at 45 meters/min with 3 minutes of active recovery in between the bouts.

Not surprisingly, the exercise training had a significant effect on the body composition of the animals. Sedentary rats in both groups had an increased risk of obesity. Both groups of exercising rats (both moderate exercise and HIIT) saw a decrease in fat mass during this time and were able to avoid doxorubicin-induced cardiorespiratory weakness. Also, the HIIT exercise animals showed a significant increase in lean mass in addition to the drop in fat mass.

For reliable protection from the negative physiological effects of chemotherapy, exercise is still your best bet.

These findings in rats reflect similar results that have been obtained in humans (Battaglini et al, 2014, World J Clin Oncol; Lee et al, 2019, BMC Cancer; Lee et al, 2021, Support Care Cancer). Brendan noted that particularly HIIT exercise “may prevent unfavorable changes in body composition” compared to a sedentary condition.

The take-home message here remains the same as it’s been in my other posts. If you don’t currently exercise, start now. And then don’t stop. It’s easy to keep laboratory rats active and fit, but humans find many reasons not to challenge themselves with physical activity. If you needed a reason, these studies provide a little encouragement to find your favorite movement modality and make exercise a life-long habit.

REFERENCES

Battaglini CL, Mills RC, Phillips BL, Lee JT, Story CE, Nascimento MG, Hackney AC (2014) Twenty-five years of research on the effects of exercise training in breast cancer survivors: A systematic review of the literature. World J Clin Oncol, 5, 177-190. https://doi.org/10.5306/wjco.v5.i2.177.

Lee K, Kang I, Mack WJ, Mortimer J, Sattler F, Salem G, Dieli-Conwright CM (2019) Feasibility of high intensity interval training in patients with breast Cancer undergoing anthracycline chemotherapy: a randomized pilot trial. BMC Cancer, 19, 653. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12885-019-5887-7.

Lee K, Norris MK, Wang E, Dieli-Conwright CM (2021) Effect of high-intensity interval training on patient-reported outcomes and physical function in women with breast cancer receiving anthracycline-based chemotherapy. Support Care Cancer, 29, 6863-6870. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00520-021-06294-7.

Parry TL, Hayward R (2015) Exercise training does not affect anthracycline antitumor efficacy while attenuating cardiac dysfunction. Am J Physiol Regul Integr Comp Physiol, 309, R675-83. https://doi.org/10.1152/ajpregu.00185.2015.

Smuder AJ, Nguyen BL (May 18, 2023) Cardiorespiratory muscle response to chemotherapy and exercise. ACSM’s From Around The Field webinar.

Can Meditation Fight Cancer?

While it seems like a pretty fantastical concept, a group at the University of California San Diego just received a five-year, $10M grant to examine just that.

Specifically, the InnerScience Research Fund will support ongoing research at UC San Diego’s School of Medicine to determine the biological effects of meditation. Researchers led by Dr. Hemal H. Patel (Dept. of Anesthesiology) are exploring whether meditation can modulate the progression of serious illnesses.

From the UC San Diego Today press release (May 16, 2023):

Researchers are gathering a variety of information from a large group of participants.

“As part of a continuing study entitled “QUest to ANalyze a Thousand hUmans Meditating,” or QUANTUM, Patel and his team are assessing the impact of meditation on nearly 2,000 individuals undergoing intensive meditative experiences. The goal is to capture a depth of unbiased information from a large cohort of healthy and non-healthy individuals to gain insights into the impact of meditation.”

Study participants are contributing a plethora of biometric data obtained via wearable technology, “including heart rate, heart rate variability, sleep, activity and more. That data is then coupled with health survey results and “omic” studies being conducted on blood, microbiome, urine and tears.” Brain activity has also been measured and analyzed.

Perhaps the most unexpected statement in the entire press release was the following: “Early analysis is showing promising results from meditation in impeding serious illnesses such as cancer.”

This is quite an announcement coming from a highly-respected research institution, so I am particulary intrigued.

It would be wonderful to find that the benefits of meditation go far beyond improving one’s sense of calm — lotus position optional!

On the one hand, it’s not difficult to believe that harnessing the mind through meditation could have a dramatically positive impact on one’s health. As I reported in an older post, researchers have elucidated the biochemical pathway by which stress can lead to cancer recurrence in breast cancer survivors. So if we’re able to do the opposite–inviting in a sense of peace and keeping stress at bay–it stands to reason that we affect disease progression. After all, we’ve known for a long time about the benefits of meditation on one’s mental well-being, why not one’s physical health too?

On the other hand, it’s important to understand that meditation alone should not be considered a treatment or cure for cancer. But as my last post on complementary medicine pointed out, cancer patients are increasingly turning to practices such as meditation to help them navigate the cancer experience as they undergo conventional treatment. The added benefits of helping halt the proliferation of a tumor would make meditation an important adjuvant therapy.

This is one story that I will be keeping a close eye on!