Tag: Strength

Tall Like a Mountain: A Meditative Visualization

In dealing with anxiety, I’ve come to accept that while fearful thoughts come and go, I remain the same.

Visualizations have been helpful in realizing this. One of my favorites, the one made famous by Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD — creator of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program — is the Mountain Meditation, and I value this visualization particularly because it is so meaningful in its description.

For this meditation, you settle into your seat and bring your attention to your body. Scanning your different parts, from your feet to your head. Feeling yourself breathe as you go. No need to change anything; you’re simply noticing sensations.

Imagine your ideal mountain…and then become it.

As you sit with eyes closed, shift your thoughts to a beautiful mountain, tall and stately. Imagine the details about it, it can be whatever kind of mountain you choose. Steep or gently sloping, rocky or carpeted with greenery. Allow the image to form itself: the mountain is stable, majestic and unperturbed regardless of the season or weather.

Then, once you have a clear picture of your mountain…allow yourself to become the mountain, settling into its form and taking on its characteristics. Feel yourself grounded in its stillness.

Sitting as the mountain, imagine the seasonal changes and the different weather that each brings. Through the snow of winter that blankets everything, the spring thaw as nature awakens and buds burst open, the summer teeming with life under the warmth of the sun, and autumn with its changing colors and cooler breezes that move you into a quieter state in preparation for the coming winter again.

All these bring wind, precipitation and occasionally harsh conditions whether they be cold or heat. But the mountain still sits as it always has, unmoving and unbothered.

And so you, as the mountain, also sit in the midst of different conditions. When you take on the garb of the mountain, you link with its strength and stability and unchanging nature from day to month to year. This meditation encourages us to see through the chaos of our everyday lives and find the persistent calm behind it.

This is one of my favorite meditations because it carries so much meaning. Below is a YouTube video of Dr. Kabat-Zinn leading a 20-minute Mountain Meditation:

Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Mountain Meditation

If you would like to read a version of it, PalouseMindfulness.com has provided their own adapted transcript of Kabat-Zinn’s Mountain Meditation in a pdf file. Alternatively, googling “mountain meditation” will also bring up a nice variety of recordings.

I encourage you to try this when you feel you need extra grounding.

This Is Your Arm On Drugs, Part II

While my previous post had focused on appearance, how I looked was a relatively small part of getting back to where I’d been physically. Much more important was the hit my strength and endurance levels took, and those don’t really show up in the photos I posted. While there’s not a huge change in muscle size, my strength did decrease significantly, not surprising given that I was going through cancer treatment. At the “height” of each chemo infusion, I had trouble walking, sometimes even lifting my head from the pillow. Movements required a lot of effort.

All that rest time affected my physical ability. I’d been told not to row (Concept2 erg) for four weeks after the lumpectomy on my left breast. That was tough because rowing is a form of meditation for me, the quintessential mindful movement — it was stress management that I desperately needed. I wanted to follow the rules so I stayed off the erg, but incorporated light weights into my “weenie” workouts. That helped, but I felt frustrated and weak.

Then, after those four weeks were almost over, I had my chemo port implanted on the right side of my chest wall, and again was told not to row for 3-4 weeks. Well, a week after port placement, I had my first infusion. ARGH! Sooooo, I wasn’t able to get back to rowing until I’d recovered from my first chemo.

My strength continued to increase after each of the first three infusions, which was gratifying. I’d gotten to about 2/3 of my pre-surgery strength training weight load. But after the 4th infusion, the fatigue started to catch up with me and I had to slow down. I was tired! To make matters worse, my bloodwork before the 5th infusion revealed an increase in the levels of two liver enzymes, ALT and AST. Chemo is hard on the liver, which works overtime to clear out the drugs from your system. If those numbers continued to go up, my 6th infusion would be delayed.

Now, you might think: what’s the big deal, waiting a week or two longer for the last infusion? Psychologically that would have been devastating. For me, getting through chemo was more than enduring its physical effects; the mental component was huge because of the stark contrast between my level of fitness previously compared to where cancer had knocked me down to. The dates of each infusion were seared into my mind, and I really needed chemo to be over.

My solution was to implement every means imaginable for decreasing liver enzyme levels. That included foregoing heavy lifting, according to my research. Anything, to finish on time. For the weeks before my last chemo, I was a green-tea-guzzling, dark-leafy-green-devouring, turmeric-supplement-popping, hyper-hydrated couch potato. Thankfully, my numbers went down and I finished chemo as scheduled.

The final infusion required the longest recovery. Once I got over the worst of the side effects, I could still only row 500 meters at a time at a harder pace, and my weight load and repetitions had dropped dramatically when strength training. While I was done with the hard chemo, I still had Herceptin infusions (and still had the port implanted, which got in the way) and those affected my heart, so I got tired more quickly. Not chemo-tired, but tired enough. I focused first on improving muscle endurance (lighter weights, higher reps) and then gradually increased the weight and dropped the reps to build muscle back.

There was a fire under my butt to get back to my version of “normal”. Ultimately, regaining strength was the easy part. The hard part was getting back to where I had been mentally, and even now I’m not sure I’m there yet. But who knows if I was in as good a state pre-diagnosis as I think I was?

My focus now is to train as hard as I can, stay as active as possible and not succumb to the weight gain that seems to afflict the average middle-ager. I guess I’m trying to find a “recipe” that will keep the cancer from coming back. It probably doesn’t exist, but seeking it is one way for me to maintain a semblance of control over something that is ultimately uncontrollable.