Castor Packs for Pain

The Problem with the Castor Bath The first time I went to Mysore to study with my yoga teacher, Sri K. Pattabhi Jois, in 1993, I noticed that he was often prescribing castor oil baths. He suggested that we lather our bodies in castor on Saturdays-which is the day we don't practice-- in order to detoxify the body from all of the heat or inflammation that showed up in our bodies from yoga practice and various other toxins that we took in, either through food, water, or any of the offenses our bodies experienced through living and eating in India. The problem with the castor bath is that it is so darn messy. It stains your clothing and is impossible to scrub out of the shower and bath. And on top of that, in order to get the castor off of the whole body, you have to use gram flour or soap nut.  Yuck!!!  While I do think that a castor bath has amazing effects on the body, it's a mess.  However, I know from experience that castor is an amazing tool to both detoxify the body and alleviate tightness, stiffness, and chronic pain. Used in conjunction with heat, Castor has a salve-like quality. It draws out toxins from the organs, muscles and skin. The heat dilates the blood vessels, thus increasing circulation through the area of discomfort. The combination of increased circulation and the salve-like quality promotes quick healing and really eases pain and inflammation, showing up as pain and stiffness, irritability, liver inflammation, loose stools and constipation, irregular menstruation, and cysts, and fever.

The Castor Oil Pack

The castor bath can be replaced by castor oil pack.  Castor oil packs are made by soaking a piece of flannel or a paper towel in castor oil and placing it on the skin. The flannel or paper towel is covered with a sheet of plastic, a towel and then a hot water bottle is placed over the plastic to heat the pack.  It is easy to do, easy to clean up, location specific, and very, very relaxing.

A castor oil pack can be placed on the following body regions:

A) The right side of the abdomen. Castor oil packs are sometimes recommended by alternative practitioners as part of a liver detox program. B) Inflamed and swollen joints, bursitis, and muscle strains. C) The abdomen to relieve constipation and other digestive disorders. D) The lower abdomen and lower back in cases of menstrual irregularities, uterine and ovarian cysts, and pain.

Safety

Castor oil should not be taken internally. It should not be applied to broken skin. It should not be used during pregnancy, breastfeeding, or during menstruation.

Materials

A)Three layers of undyed wool or cotton flannel large enough to cover the affected area. A paper towel will do, in case you don't have flannel. B) Castor oil C) Plastic wrap cut one to two inches larger than the flannel or paper towel (can be cut from a plastic bag) D) Hot water bottle E) Old clothes, sheets and towel. Castor oil does stain clothing, bedding, and towels.

Method

1. Soak the flannel or paper towel in castor oil so that it is saturated, but not dripping.

2. Place the it over the affected body part.

3. Cover with plastic. And place a towel over the plastic to moderate the heat. The more folds in the towel, the more separate the hot water bottle is from the skin. Heat should redden the skin but not burn it. The point of the heat is to dilate the blood vessels in the area, thus, increasing circulation to it.

4. Place the hot water bottle over the towel. Leave it on for 45-60 minutes. Rest while the pack is in place.

5. After removing the pack, cleanse the area with the towel. Be sure the towel is old because the castor WILL stain it.

Please drop a line to let me know how it goes...

Creating Authentic Relationships

For the most part, people take relationships for granted. We assume we know what the other person wants and needs, and they assume we know what we need. The main source of relationship breakdown is because we assume that they should know how we want to be treated. In order to have authentic relationships, it helps immensely to design them, both in the beginning and throughout. It doesn’t work to leave relationships to chance. When we design our relationships, we ask our friends, family, co-workers, superiors, subordinates, and community at large who they need us to be; what we need from them; what to expect from us; and what we can expect from them. This alliance creates the foundation for an authentic, real ongoing relationship. It gives the relationship freedom, responsibility, and commitment. It gives both people the freedom to speak to whatever is needed in the moment and to ask for what is wanted 100% of the time. It empowers both people to take responsibility for honoring the relationship, its growth, upkeep, and cleanliness. It asks that both people not skip over hard-truths, and that they wake up when they’ve gone unconscious. Finally, it creates a commitment not to tolerate or endure; to tell the truth; and to tap into and speak from authenticity without filtering.

It may seem a bit artificial, at first, to sit down with someone in the beginning or even in the middle of an ongoing relationship, however, the results are powerful, magical, and pivotal to a powerful and enduring relationships. People with emotional intelligence naturally do this. They also understand that once this conversation has ended, that the design is never over. In order for relationships to endure and for both people to experience one another in new and fresh ways, relationships are constantly being redesigned. In other words, the design doesn’t end after the first conversation. It is constantly being re-negotiated. That way relationship remain flexible.

Below are some questions that may give you a sense of how to design an alliance in your life.

1. What exactly do you need and want from our friendship, in our working relationship, and/or from this project(s)? What I need and want is… 2. How do you want me to be with you when you’re shut down, hurt, angry, and/or sad? How I want you to be is… 3. How do you do with saying, “no?” How I do at saying, “no” is… 4. What will really support you? What will really support me is… 5. How do you want me to handle you when you have taken a risk and failed? How I want you to handle me when I have taken a risk and failed is… 6. If our relationship were to have a huge impact in your life-personal and/or professional- what would it look like? What it would look like to me is… 7. What do you want contribute to our personal/professional relationship that is unique? What I want to contribute is…. 8. How do you get evasive? How do you want me to be when you do? How I get evasive is... How I want you to be when I do get evasive is… 9. How are you about doing what you say you will do? How I am is… 10. Where do you usually get stuck? When you are stuck, what can I say that will return you to action? Where I usually get stuck is… What you can say to return me to action is…

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Getting Real

I was working with a coaching client this morning, and he was pretty anxious. As we started to explore the anxiety, what we discovered was that he wasn't being real with himself. He wasn't being honest about certain things that were happening in his life. In addition, he was waiting for and anticipating a different period of time. He's not alone. All of us get stuck in the waiting game. We are waiting for the raise, for that special moments when someone says the perfect thing. Whatever it is that we wait for is what stop us. Waiting is a big fat lie. And most of the time we won't be real with ourselves about the fact that we are waiting.

What's important here is is that we stop waiting it's almost as if we have to create an artificial death sentence for ourselves to wake up. We need to create our own wake up calls. That's one reason people hire a coach. A coach is trained to see ways in which we won't be real with ourselves. It's only when we get real that we can actually start to make change.

So often we try to make change on top of what we already have. We don't see how we've actually been being. We just try to change. The change doesn't happen until we get real can. Getting real just means being honest. Seeing what's actually so and also seeing what's not so. It means giving up the lie, whatever lie that you're telling yourself about the current situation you're in. More often than not we blame our circumstances, someone or something else for our current situation. When you can get real, when we can get honest that, in fact, our circumstances are your own choice, then we can actually start to create change.

Stop “Should-ing” on Yourself

Below is a quote from the section of a book that I’m reading by Claudia Naranjo. Naranjo was a student of Fritz Perls, the well-known gestalt psychotherapist that led encounter groups at Esalen Institute in the late 60s. What I like about this quote is the distinction Naranjo makes around the subject of achieving goals. He describes how we often “should” ourselves when we have a particular goal or target in mind. Our “shoulds” really only act as self-punishing games. Moving forward on something important to us doesn’t require the “should” game. What it requires is simple, pure awareness. Read on...

A “should” is different from either a call or an ideal; “shoulds” constitute a way of being at odds with reality that cannot be other than what it is. When we blame ourselves for something already passed, for instance, we are indulging in a feeling that neither improves the wrongness we incurred in the past, nor provides anything necessary to do better in the future. Perhaps the only benefit of our guilt is that, at some level, it makes us feel “better.”

The same may be said of our stance toward the present area our experiences and actions here and now are what they are and could not possibly be otherwise. Self–blame or self–praise do not make them more or less. And they certainly did not make us better. If there is a way towards the fulfillment of ideals, it is clearly not the practice of turning them into shoulds.

Yet, “shoulds” exist to the extent to which we do not believe the foregoing statement. We believe that we must “push the river”––that if we do not make things right, they will certainly be catastrophic. In this sense, shoulds are an expression of our control madness... Our catastrophic expectations usually takes the form, “what would become of me ( or the world) if it were not for my (our) trying?” People should, to keep out of trouble.

Awareness is enough... If we have a conception of the desirable, and we know where we stand, that is all we need for our movement to perceive in the desired direction. Perhaps a good analogy is that of a child learning to walk or to climb. Warnings of danger and criticism, however accurate, will only detract from his attention to the task at hand and make contents areas if chronic, such “help” will make him less secure and not more skilled. Just as the adult in overprotecting the child lacks trust in the child’s potential for learning and developing, we, in ourselves–manipulation, through prodding or blaming, lack trust in our psycho–physical organism.

-- Claudia Naranjo, M.D., Gestalt therapy: The Attitude and Practice of an Atheoretical Experientialism, Gateways Publishing, pp. 64-65

Hoping and Waiting, Waiting and Hoping

  I just got off the phone with a potential client. He was feeling stuck in terms of his work. He’s transitioning from a service oriented job to an investment field. After a bit of exploring his ‘stuck feelings,’ he came to the realization that he’s been so busy learning and preparing for this transition that he hasn’t actually stepped into the actual act of being in his new career. He’s been waiting for that ‘perfect moment’ when he has all the information. That way, if he speaks to a potential employer or client, he has all the information.

The desire to have all the information before we step forward is the equivalent of hoping. We’re all told never to give up hope, hope that something better might come along, but the only power hope gives us is to wait…and to continue to hope…and to wait. What are we waiting for?

We’re waiting for Santa Claus to come down the chimney, for the day of judgement, for prince charming to wake us from our slumber, for the pill or the regimen to make it all better. I am not saying that none of these will happen--except maybe Santa Claus. I am suggesting that hope is no more than a waiting game.

Looking for signs of hope is like walking through an unknown house in the dark. Each step in the dark requires a degree of hope that we will get to where we want to go. We have to grope our way through the darkness and try not to trip. One step in the wrong direction may leave us in peril. So we start looking for signs that we are going in the right or wrong direction. When it feels good, we assume we are heading in the right direction, and when it feels bad, we assume that we are going in the wrong direction. Our prognosticators are our feelings.

The tricky thing about our feelings and our emotions is that they are great reactors and terrible prognosticators. I am not referencing our gut reactions, this is a different topic altogether. However, most of us cannot distinguish our gut reactions from our emotional roller coaster rides. The only thing you can be sure about your emotions is that they are never consistent. And yet when we are at the whim of life’s circumstances, hoping for great things to happen, we use the pleasant feelings to mean that we are on track and we use the painful or negative feelings to mean that we are off track. Frankly speaking, our emotions are a pretty shoddy radar systems.

There is only one method to turn on the lights in this mysterious house of darkness, stop looking for signs of hope. In fact the best methodology I know is to give up hope, altogether. Hope leaves each of us powerless to the circumstances of life. Hope rarely ferries us through the rapids of our lives. Hope cannot nurse us back to health. Hope cannot settle the debt. Hope cannot resolve the conflict we experience with another.

I am not suggesting that we just pull ourselves up by the bootstraps. Instead, I am positing that hope is the unwillingness to take responsibility for how life goes and how it does not go. When we won’t captain our own lives, we are left in the hands of fate, karma, self-help books, rising or falling incomes, pleasant feelings, and unpleasant feelings. When we take on our lives as the opportunity to fulfill commitments, we become the captain and source of all that occurs, we live from a very unusual space.

Our commitments arise out of a very separate space than our need to succeed in life. They arise out of the space of inspiration. When we are committed to something, that something breathes life into us. It regenerates us and continues to regenerate us. It makes life worth living. It brings meaning to our lives. It is our sense of purpose. Our commitments are what drive what we do and what we have in life.

Whether it feels good or doesn’t feel good, living life from our commitments, is a place stand in life that is unique and distinct from that of hope. Living from hope is like waiting to win the lottery. It happens only sometimes. Living life from the commitments that breathe new life into us is no easy task. It requires letting go of Santa Claus. It requires that we profoundly appreciate our responsibility for the way life goes down. In one sense, we stop waiting to win the lottery, for prince charming, for someone else to do it for us. And if we crash, hit another, or are hit by someone, we get to take responsibility for the impact.

The Saturn Return: Ages 28 to 31

A 28 year old client of mine came in yesterday feeling absolutely overwhelmed. He’s at a moment in his life when he feels the pressure of time. He was saying things like, “There’s not enough time in this life to accomplish what I want.” “I know I am meant to be doing much more meaningful work, but I am seriously scared that I won’t make it up the mountain or that I will fail.” This sounds a lot like The Saturn Return.

The Saturn Return is an astrological phenomena when the planet Saturn returns to where it was when you were born. For most people, the Saturn Return happens sometime around 28 to 30. The deal is that Saturn doesn’t just land and then leave. It lands on the spot, goes retrograde, lands again, leaves, etc. So when we go through the Saturn return, it happens over an extended period of time. It kind of is like having a mood over a period of time.The mood is often pretty serious.

I, personally, think it’s really good news. It doesn’t always feel like it, but it’s an amazingly transformative period of life. If you think about it, most of our 20’s are spent trying on varieties of masks. We pick up ‘the partier mask’ and then put it down. Then we try on ‘the professional mask’ and then put that one down, or we try the ‘philosopher mask,’ ‘the adventurer mask,’ ‘the lost person mask,’ etc. Throughout our 20’s we’re trying out lots and lots of stuff. Well, the Saturn Return is all about taking a few masks that do work and fit and refining them into a persona that works for what the soul needs to learn in the 30’s. The whole point of this refining process is to have a useful set of masks that can be worn throughout the 30’s. They create a sort of solidity or foundation.

One thing I think is interesting is that this period of time is when the frontal cortex of the brain completes its development. I have a hunch that this is why a lot of people in their early twenties are not particularly adept at seeing the long-term consequences of their decisions. Choice in our early 20’s is primarily about what’s going to make us happy, now. When we get into our Saturn Return, we start to see that the choices we make have the possibility of creating long-term ramifications. This is probably what that final development of the brain creates, foresight.

Most Saturn Returnees feel a ton of pressure to BE something. Often this this the time when they go back to school and get a degree, when they get married and have a kid, or they just feel paralyzed with fear. This is when Saturn can feel like a malefic force and when a good coach--or if there is severe depression, a psychotherapist--can be really useful especially if you’re not particularly skilled in the arena of decisions.

Coaching during this period is the perfect time to get connected to a sense of who you authentically are. Now that you’ve tried on all those masks in your 20’s, which ones fit, which ones speak to who you really are and what’s important to you? Which ones are going to serve your long-term goals and purpose? These are the sort of questions you’d explore in coaching. When you have a coach, you have an ally to support and encourage you to take action from this authentic place.

Meta-View

My wife, Melissa, friend, Peter, and I were on Mt. Tam early this morning having a great conversation. Nature has a funny way of giving you a fresh perspective. At one point, we were discussing the notion of lifetimes. While we all agreed that the idea of having many lifetimes was hard to rationally accept, we all liked it as a lens to see our lives differently from.

To get the paradigm of lifetimes, consider the time it took the Buddha to attain enlightenment. According to Buddhist scripture, it took the same amount of time it takes for a bird to wear away at a mountain six miles long, six miles wide, and six miles high. This bird flies over the mountain once every hundred years with a silk scarf in its beak brushing the tip of the mountain with it. The amount of time it takes for the scarf to wear away at the mountain is how long it took the Buddha in lifetimes to attain enlightenment.

Peter and Melissa had an interesting perspective on lifetimes. If we have multiple opportunities to learn from our many lifetimes, then we can really of give ourselves a break and not take each experience as if we NEED to overcome it, achieve it, or transcend it. In other words, if you and I live multiple lifetimes, we need not be so hard on ourselves. After all, what’s the rush?

I, personally, would give myself much more of a break. That’s not something I am particularly skilled at. One thing I am in the early, early learning of is to both take it easy on myself and, in addition, to be sweet to myself. I suppose that this kindness that I am learning also need not happen overnight. Who knows, maybe in several thousand lifetimes, I will master it.

In coaching, we call this grand view on life a meta-view. We use it to help our clients to see the big picture and what’s really important. Often my clients get so preoccupied with the most minute of particles that they rarely look at the space in which the particles exist. This is what’s at the heart of a coaching conversation. As a coach, I am always encouraging forward movement, but only as long as it is in service to the big picture of my clients life.

In the end, we don’t want to look back on our lives and say, “Boy I did a bunch of stuff.” We want to say, “I did some stuff that meant a lot to me.” And that’s what’s important about being connected to the meta-view. It’s about staying connected to the deeper meaning we’re all looking for in our lives.

Remembering the Basics

  When my clients are down, I notice that they often forget the basics. They’re often searching and searching for the ‘reasons why’ they’re not feeling right. And in the search for ‘why’ they overlook some really basic things that help.

First, it often isn’t the ‘why’ that solves the problem. It can sometimes help to know the root cause of things. If you can do something about the cause, that can be useful. If there are dietary changes that need to be made, then you can make them. If there are apologies that need to me made, you can make them.

A lot of times, though, we cannot do something about the cause of why were down. If, for example, we need to forgive someone, but we just cannot get rid of a grudge, we have to find gentleness, for ourselves and others. This is where the 12-step Serenity Prayer can be useful:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

The main thing that my clients forget to do that ACTUALLY they can do something about is take simple steps to take care. The most important is sleep. We often forget how rejuvenating 6-8 hours of sleep can be. Rest is another form of rejuvenation. Oh yeah, and then there’s that really, really basic thing that we HAVE to do but often forget, eat. Just sitting down and enjoying 2 or 3 nutritious meals a day can be very healing. Oh, yes, then there’s the bit about meditation or prayer. Whatever that is to you, it’s really helpful to connect inward. Whatever form of meditation or prayer that you use, this can often be the most significant source of healing when we’re down.

Then there are things that are just additive:

1. Going to a yoga class can be extremely helpful. Moving the body, stretching, and connecting with group support and the support of a good teacher can help a lot.
2. Getting acupuncture can also be helpful because it increases serotonin and endorphins in the brain. These neurotransmitters are known to boost the mood
3. Spending time with a good friend who can really listen to you can also be extremely healing. You may have a friend who is a great listener, and if you don’t it can be very helpful to hire a professional, like a coach or a psychologist.
4. Herbal medicine and homeopathy are very, very useful mood enhancers. Saint John’s Wort, for example has been shown to be just as effective as SSRI’s but without the side effects. You can find it at an health food store. A good herbalist can help find just the right medicine that is specific for your needs.
5. Connecting with nature is extremely healing. Why that is is a mystery, but it is just a known fact that getting out into nature just FEELS GOOD.

When it really boils down to it, though, good sleep, some relaxation, and solid eating can make a world of difference when we have the blues. Instead of getting lost into trying to figure out why you’re down, when you are, why not just commit to taking care of the basics and see what happens.