Saturday Morning

Good morning. It is 30 degrees and sunny here in Upstate NY. The snow from the storm we had earlier in the week is receding, parts of the lawns are back to pre-spring shriveled looking grass and the snow has mostly melted off the roof. I would say we are 25% melted this morning. I'm just back from a walk around the block with the new dog. After the walk she wants to play in the backyard and so she runs after the repeatedly kicked slightly deflated small basketball till she's out of breath. Now she's sleeping by my side.

I'm studying the parasympathetic nervous system, literally reading and taking notes. This is the system people want to activate in order to de-stress, reduce anxiety, reduce depression, and generally feel that overall sense of well being that seems so elusive in our sprint paced, pressure cooking world. I was watching TV the other night and even the mere act of watching TV seems to be stressful. It's not just that the news is as always horrifying or dumbfounding, it's that we are bombarded with information in rapid fire sequence while the body passively sits there on the potato couch. So there's an imbalance, the body is passive and the mind is doing it's best to keep up the high velocity information pace. It would probably be better to watch TV in small doses or to perhaps jog in place while watching, that way at least body and mind are moving quickly and are more in sync.

I would like to once again suggest that anyone interested in a extraordinarily good publication on how to de-stress, and reduce anxiety and/or depression read this book and read it from cover to cover, emphasizing cover to cover, no skipping, got it - Yoga for Emotional Balance: Simple Practices to Help Relieve Anxiety and Depression. The link takes you to Amazon and notice that the book has an unusual rating in that out of sixteen reviews, sixteen are 5 stars, not even one 4 star.