Have you ever had an experience that has upset you? Or felt anxious about an upcoming academic or medical test or procedure? Or felt stressed about a loved one’s health or the COVID-19 pandemic? If you’re like most of us, the answer is yes, yes, and yes. And you are not alone! 

Like you, I’ve experienced those feelings many, many times. After an upsetting experience, I might find myself feeling agitated for several hours. I may feel uneasy or worried for several days preceding a medical exam or procedure. And the stress of the pandemic has become a constant, always in the background and often front and center. 

Among the many stress management tools available, I have found the Pyramid and Parallel Breath meditations to be particularly helpful because they are both so effective and, once learned, are easy and don’t take a lot of time to do. 

I first experienced both meditations while taking a Zero Balancing (ZB) class. The ZB class started, and still starts, each day with creating a Pyramid and breathing Parallel Breaths. Sitting quietly and guided by the teacher, these meditations helped me feel more present, attentive and enlivened, which enhanced my class experience and made learning easier and lots of fun. I’ve often had helpful insights about myself or my Zero Balancing practice during these meditation sessions. Once I learned how to do these meditations, I realized I could use them on my own outside of class, individually or together, to help me in a number of different situations. 

For example, the Parallel Breath meditation helped me many years ago when I worked as a Home Care Physical Therapist. I had been assigned a new patient and was to begin his treatment in his home. About 5 minutes into the Physical Therapy evaluation process, I asked him if he had any pain. This was a standard question asked of all new patients. In response, he began to yell at me. He got up and walked through his house for about 15 minutes, screaming at me the whole time about his dissatisfaction with his prior medical care. While I knew his anger wasn’t personal and my heart went out to him for his frustration and pain, it was very upsetting to be on the receiving end of all that rage. I was still shaken when I returned to my car. My next patient appointment was in 15 minutes and I needed to compose myself. So I sat there in my car and breathed Parallel Breaths for about 3 minutes. It helped me to quiet and organize myself internally so I could drive safely and be professional, calm and caring with my next patient. 

The everyday usefulness of the Pyramid meditation was demonstrated many years ago when I taught a course on Complementary Medicine to graduate Physical Therapy and Nursing students at Simmons College in Boston, MA. Because the 3-hour lecture took place at 5pm on Wednesday evenings, the students in these arduous training programs usually arrived tired from a long day in the middle of a week of long days. I began each class with a Pyramid meditation. As we moved through the meditation, I could feel the environment in the room shift. Many students told me how much they looked forward to the meditation each week, how it calmed and focussed them, and especially helped them midweek. One of the students shared that when she spent her weekends at her parents’ small, family-filled, noisy city apartment, she created a pyramid over her desk to help her focus on her studies. And it worked! 

I also use the Pyramid meditation when I’m hoping an upcoming event will go smoothly or successfully. I create a pyramid over my experience prior to travelling, either the night before or the morning of. I invite in all those things I think would be helpful, such as a well-rested and alert airplane pilot, kind fellow passengers, a smooth experience going through security, arriving at my destination with all my luggage. Likewise, I create a pyramid over my Zero Balancing class the night before I teach as well as before the ZB classes I take. I’ve created pyramids for friends, family, students and clients, at their request, prior to surgeries, medical procedures, the GMATs, whatever they may feel anxious about. 

Would all these events go smoothly without a pyramid meditation? I don’t know. I do know that creating a pyramid in these instances helped me to feel better in the moment, conveyed my caring in a concrete way to others, and most often, the desired outcomes occurred. As my grandmother used to say…”It couldn’t hurt!” 
Are you curious to experience a pyramid and parallel breath meditation? Information about weekly live guided meditations as well as recordings of past meditations are here. Join us! 

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Feeling stressed? Zero Balancing can help!

For many of us, these are the most stressful times we have ever experienced. Whether it’s the changes in our daily lives caused by COVID-19, the fires and poor air quality here in the San Francisco Bay area, the state of our country, or the state of our world, we are being called upon to manage a veritable avalanche of stress. With this much stress, our autonomic nervous system, the nervous system that regulates our heart rate, blood pressure, and many other basic body functions, can get stuck in a high alert response. This high alert, AKA fight or flight, is our body’s way of responding to both a real or a perceived threat. Not only do we feel very uncomfortable under this much stress, it’s not good for us. The unhealthy consequences of stress are well documented and include lowering our immune system’s ability to fight infection. To state the obvious, when in a pandemic, a strong immune system is vitally important. And so is reducing stress. 

Zero Balancing can help. Research on Zero Balancing is revealing how a 30 minute session can decrease stress by 61%. Researchers at the NeuroSynchrony Institute in Austin, Texas used polygraph (lie detector) technology to measure stress levels in people who were receiving a ZB session. This first study on the effects of Zero Balancing showed a 61% reduction in stress in those receiving ZB compared to a 12% reduction in the control group; people who lay quietly for 30 minutes without receiving ZB. Read more about this research here:  

https://zbtouch.org/2017-nsi-research-results-and-overview/

While more research is needed, these results are impressive. The research is confirming what I see in my clients every day and what I’ve experienced myself after receiving a ZB. We feel better after the session than we did before. We feel more relaxed and more ready to face the world. For those who use Zero Balancing for pain relief, the relaxation may seem like a side effect, albeit a good one! In truth, Zero Balancing sessions can be used to great advantage purely for stress relief and relaxation.  

Self care to manage stress is more important now than ever. Are you yearning to feel more relaxed? Consider adding a biweekly or monthly Zero Balancing session to your self care regimen! 

When speaking with a client about their long-time pain or recent injury, I usually offer many different ideas to help them create a Pain Control Toolbox. Therapeutic use of thermal modalities like heat or cold is a common and readily available tool. One of the most common questions I am asked is which one will work better. If you search Google to ask this question, multiple websites will appear with information and guidance. While the decisions are sometimes straightforward, in my experience it can be helpful to consider several unique factors not addressed in many online articles. 

“I hate cold.”

Some people really don’t like cold. Some people really don’t like heat. I’ve observed a basic human trait over the years and this is true of myself as well…we usually don’t continue things we don’t like! When it comes to continuing one’s self care, this becomes very important. If your back hurts every time you garden, you may have been advised by your doctor or Physical Therapist to ice your back right after gardening. If you hate using ice, it’s not likely you’ll continue this potentially very helpful practice long term. However, using heat will help as well and if you like heat, you’ll be developing a routine that may spare you a lot of discomfort for many years. Using the modality you prefer, even if it’s not identified as the “best” choice, will be better than doing nothing at all.  

There are certainly a few exceptions. For an acute injury, like a sprained ankle, it’s very important to use ice and avoid heat for the first 48-72 hours. However, even if you hate cold, in this instance, you only need to use it for a short time. 

So in this example, the answer to WHAT’S BETTER…HEAT OR COLD? is…whichever one you like best! 

“It doesn’t help. The pain keeps coming back.”

Many people stop using heat and cold because it doesn’t keep the pain away. While it may feel better during the application or for a short time after, the pain comes back. You conclude it didn’t help and therefore wasn’t worth the time. This can be especially true for people whose pain has become chronic. 

To understand the reason the pain comes back, it’s helpful to think about the nature of tools. Tools are often limited to a particular use. A hammer, for example, is very useful if the task involves nails. We know the hammer will not help to tighten a screw so we don’t usually choose a hammer from the toolbox for jobs involving screws.  

If we look at heat and cold as tools, here are the “nails” for these particular “hammers.” Thermal modalities work by causing a temporary change in local blood flow and, in the case of ice, a temporary slowing of nerve conduction, meaning the message from your muscle takes longer to get to your brain, so the pain hurts less. The key word here is temporary. That defines the limitations of these particular tools. From this perspective, it might be anticipated that the pain would return.  

“If the pain keeps coming back, why should I bother to use it?”

One big reason is you feel better for the time the heat/ice is on! Let’s use heat as an example. If your pain was 6/10 and for the 20 minutes while using heat, your pain drops  to 2/10, that’s a much more enjoyable 20 minutes. The heat may also feel soothing and relaxing, which also helps pain. And if you use heat multiple times during the day, that’s potentially a much more enjoyable day. 

Another important benefit is what I like to call  the TLC effect. The TLC effect is one explanation for why Mommy  kissing your skinned knee takes the pain away. From an integrative medicine perspective, this loving attention is a powerful healing factor. When we apply ice or heat, we are in essence giving ourselves TLC. The overall healing effect of this simple act should not be underestimated. In my years of work with people with chronic pain, I’ve witnessed people transforming the quality of their lives by implementing consistent TLC, even something as simple as  using a heating pad twice a day. 

For information on using heat and cold as well as do’s and dont’s, this is a good article.  

https://www.healthline.com/health/chronic-pain/treating-pain-with-heat-and-cold#applying-heat-therapy