John Du Cane

John Du Cane

The Giving Game

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“The wise man does not lay up his treasures. The more he gives to others, the more he has for his own.”—Lao Tzu

In our using days, we tended to be hoarders and takers. We weren’t too famous for our philanthropic acts. When our lives were dominated by the bottle or the needle we were less into “sharing is caring” and more into “finders, keepers.” To give, felt dangerous. We would be risking our safety net. We would be leaving the door wide open—to be stolen from blind. Or so we thought.

What we discovered as we hit bottom, seemed counter-intuitive. The more we tried to keep, the more we lost. We were a fist tightening around sand—watching the grains spurt out from our grasp, the harder we squeezed.

In early recovery, we—perhaps rather grudgingly—accepted the gift of support and care from our new fellow travelers. As we grew in our recovery, we became ever more capable of reciprocating that care. We learned to love to give—for the sheer pleasure of the giving. And a magical thing started to happen for us: the more we gave freely from our hearts, the more we received back. A process we might once have dismissed as a spiritual cliché, became a self-evident truth… A remarkable and wonderful change.

Giving

As addicts, we would often write checks against our bodies that we could barely cash. We would rip off our own adrenals with the same negligence and disregard that we would rip off our friends and loved ones. We stole from our own energy with reckless abandon—depleting ourselves and putting our resilience at risk. In recovery, we need to give back as generously to own bodies as we now do to others. Here’s a squat variation that will help to energize and restore those depleted adrenals:

Stand about three inches away from a wall, feet facing forward and about six inches apart. Exhale as you slowly sink down into as low a squat as you can manage, while keeping your back relatively straight. The wall is in front of you to make sure you don’t lean forward too much while performing the movement. Inhale as you come back up.

According to Traditional Chinese Medicine, if we put our attention at the bottom of our feet and run our attention up our legs as we rise up, we will help enliven our kidney/adrenal energy. Our bodies can be considered as a series of ever-more-subtle hydraulic systems. When we perform this Wall Squat we are pumping the various levels of our hydraulics, be it the blood, the lymph or the chi… We influence the pumping by brute physical action, by breathing and by guiding the chi with our attention. The more you practice the attention part, the more natural and potent it will become. Just like the persistent activity of giving to others…

It feels so satisfying to be restoring my body by giving it the care and attention it deserves.

 

The Terrible Twins

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“I think of myself as something of a connoisseur of procrastination, creative and dogged in my approach to not getting things done.”—Susan Orlean

In recovery, when we baulk at a challenge, we are encouraged to “act as if” and “fake it till we make it.” This is particularly great advice when we look to handle an attack by the Terrible Twins. Ok, so we could use that moniker to describe a number of pernicious combos. For today, though the Terrible Twins are those undeniable and annoyingly persistent rogues, Perfectionism and Procrastination.

Procrastination feeds on fear. Fear of discomfort. Fear of difficulty. Fear of failure. Fear of conflict and confrontation. Fear of action. Perfectionism sprays gasoline onto the fire of Procrastination’s fear. Perfectionism grabs its twin by the wrist and whispers into its ear “It’s never going to be good enough, so why even bother to begin at all?” The twins feed each other’s frenzy to avoid jumping into action.

Lack of “right action”—even if it means the action of “acting as if’—is not a safe option for us in our recovery. It’s a must to keep on keeping on… and the magical thing is, by just doing something—anything—to handle the perceived challenge, good things start to develop—whether the Terrible Twins like it or not.

Procrastination

The secret here could be called Progressive Refinement. Begin with the battle cry “Good enough is good enough!” Surge forward and just start splurging into action—with no care as to how beautiful or ugly the action might appear to be… The Terrible Twins may kick and scream a while, but their annoying kerfuffles will start to fade away as you refuse to give them oxygen…

Your strategy of progressive refinement will initially yield you anywhere up to 80% of what you’d hoped for. That’s good enough—because at this point, good enough is good enough. The hard part’s over. Now you just wait a little, then jump in on a second round—refining your “good enough” material. Wait some more, then on to the next round of refinement… And to your pleasant surprise, in one tenth the time you thought it’d take, you’ve got it done!

For so many of us, taking action to stay fit brings on a major attack from the Terrible Twins—with Procrastination being the prime culprit of the two… (By the way, we’re over two weeks into our New Year’s Fitness Resolutions. How IS that going?)

Well, when it comes to movement priorities to take action on, it’s possible we most often ignore our hand-health. Too bad too—because when it comes to taking action, it’s all about our hands. And the beauty of it is that it is really, really easy to help our hands feel more mobile and pain-free.

Today’s movements will be a high-reward breeze:

Rotational joint exercises are a superb way to warm up, as well as to increase flexibility and reduce pain. The wrists are the gateway to our hands. To heal our hands, then we are going to rotate and open up the wrists. Whether from high-mileage exercise, compulsive keyboarding or sheer neglect, our long-suffering wrists can take quite the beating. Eventually—like any abused or neglected joint—they will not be shy to broadcast their displeasure! Better to be nice to your wrists up front, so they will be nice to you over the long haul….

Stand or sit with good posture. Extend your forearms in front of and at right angles to your torso, with your elbows resting gently on your stomach. Circle your hands at the wrist joints making a full 360-degree rotation. One hand will be rotating clockwise, the other counter-clockwise. Reverse directions. Do 24 to 36 rotations for each wrist. We will be revisiting other beneficial movements for the hands throughout the year…

It feels so relaxing to know I don’t have to go on trying to be perfect!

Confessions of an Emotional Eater

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“You may continue to eat emotionally until you take consistent action to create a satisfactory and meaningful life.”—Laura Houssain

When we suddenly feel vulnerable, what do we turn to for relief? When emotional distress triggers a craving for release, what do we reach for? When the pain won’t stop, what do we grab? When the dull ache spreads out from our heart, how do we numb it? When sorrow spills its slick, how do we soothe it?

In our using days, we often turned to our drug of choice to handle or run from those emotional challenges. In recovery, we have learned many skills to cope successfully with the emotional flares ups—or the chronic unease of long-held, long-stuffed feelings. However, food can be a cunning foe—because it is so much our friend and benefactor in the normal course of things. No food, no life.

It’s one thing to crave something salty or sweet when the mood is upon us—and to wolf down a few extra crackers or chocolate donuts. Little harm in the occasional food fling—it can do the soul a world of good to indulge without guilt once in a while. Right?

However, if we find ourselves compulsively gorging on dollop after dollop of sugar-saturated health bombs; if we find ourselves guiltily munching on fistful after fistful of oily fries; if we feel bad and immediately think of food—then we might just be “emotional eaters”.

Anything that puts us out of whack, creates a vulnerability for those of us in recovery. It just makes staying straight and serene that much tougher. Emotional eating, by its nature, sets up a dependency pattern that masks our feelings and can put our recovery at risk.

From the menu of fitness options available to help dis-empower the beasties of emotional eating, let’s order up a heavy-duty entrée: the push-up. The push-up requires significant energy expenditure and determination to accomplish. So, we are going to really push that push-up here. Time to grim and bear it—so a little while later we can smile and be glad we are not stuffing down our tenth donut…

Here we go:

Kneel on the ground. Place your hands on the floor at shoulder’s width. Raise your knees up and extend your legs until your whole body is in a plank-like posture. Keep your butt in line with your spine. Tighten your abs. Take about two seconds to gently lower yourself down until your chest almost touches the floor. Push up into your original position. Inhale and hold your breath on the way down. Exhale when you push up. If the full push up is initially too challenging for you, perform the movement while resting on your knees. Do as many complete repetitions as you can manage with good form. Leave a little in the tank at the end of your set. Get up and walk around for a minute. Do another two sets. Or three. Or four. Burn out those beasties! Scatter their ashes to the winds!

push-ups January 14

Yes, depending on your current conditioning level, this may leave you sore. Sore—but satisfied. Satisfied in your body and satisfied in your mind. You just successfully torched that emotional upset—which, you have to admit, feels pretty darn good…

I am grateful to discover how vigorous exercise can help safeguard me against unwise eating habits.

A Tap. A Rap. A Hit.

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“Inaction is followed by stagnation. Stagnation is followed by pestilence and pestilence is followed by death.”—Frederick Douglass

Stagnation. It conjures images of ooze and slow-bursting bubbles of gas, of green slime, of sticky, fetid muck, of something softly rotten. Stagnation occurs when the life force has been blocked from its natural flow. In humans, that life force would be oxygen, blood, nutrients, chi… Our channels have become strangled through inactivity, poor diet, stress, unrelieved tension, emotional disturbance—and perhaps the extended abuse of drugs…

To allow stagnation to continue to fester within us, is to march ourselves that much faster into our decline. The symptoms may be reduced energy, foggy thinking, chronic pain, irritability, lack of mobility, poor digestion or uneasy dreams. We are allowing ourselves to be dragged down by the weight of the sediment silting up those vital channels.

But fortunately, it is never too late to jump back into action—and start turning our energy around. Simply moving around for a few minutes a day can begin to work wonders on clearing that sludge from our interior systems—bringing back a shine to the eyes and a bounce to the gait…

A magnificent way to enliven our energy systems—and to start exorcising those demons of stagnation—is to tap, rap or hit key acupoints along the body’s meridians. Depending on the condition we want to work with, we can enliven ourselves with some delicacy (tapping), some vigor (rapping) or some outright tough love (hitting).

Today, it’s time to administer some tough love:

Sit on the edge of a firm seat, with your knees bent. Or even better, stand with feet shoulder width apart and knees slightly bent. Place the heel of the right palm on the left kneecap. Rotate the hand about forty five degrees, counter clockwise. Note where the tip of your middle finger is situated. It will be resting on a famous spot known as the “Walk Three Miles Point”—so-called, because enlivening this acupoint will give us greater stamina and strengthen our legs. Now, find the same acupoint on the right leg.

A Tap. A Rap. A Hit.

Good, you are all set. Turn your hands into fists. You are going to strike those Three Mile points with the inside part of each fist. Because of the size of the fist area, you don’t have to be too concerned about the exact strike zone for the acupoint (AKA Stomach 36). Hit the point 24 to 36 times. How hard you hit is very much up to you. Naturally, go easy to start with, then ramp up the force and volume as you feel what you can manage.

I am excited to reduce stagnation in my body and enjoy a safer, healthier life.

Stepping Up to Change

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“We are only stable because we constantly change.”—Charles Richet

Change is a core condition of life that in and of itself has no value attached. Change becomes good, bad or indifferent, only when we attach our own particular perspective to it.

As addicts, we tended to want to lock down change as our personal property. We would try to muscle change to obey our will—bend it to our own desires. We would attempt to control and manage change into our own image. Got a difficult partner? Change them or lose them! Not high enough, satisfied enough? Grab more and more and more… Work getting you down? Quit! Not enough money? Steal some! The list goes on and on…

Often, we would bang our heads against an unchangeable force until we’d be left with cracked and bleeding skulls… Or we’d slink away, tails in the mud, from the changes we could—and needed—to make.

In recovery, we famously learned to accept change when it was clear there was no other sensible option. We learned to be courageous and make change happen—when the change was there for us to make. The art and wisdom though, is to discern what can indeed be changed and what cannot. In recovery, we cultivate this discernment one careful, considered step at a time. We step up to make a change. We step down from a misguided attempt to force ourselves on change. Step up, step down. Step up, step down.

The Next Step

Here’s a secret: if you meditate on something while you are in a physical activity, it helps empower that meditation—when the movement is practiced with good attention. So, when you do the very simple drill below, meditate on the nature of change—and your relationship to change—while you perform the movements.

Find a stable surface that’s anywhere from one foot to around knee height. Select a height that is somewhat challenging, but which you can manage with good form. It could be a bench or a staircase, for instance. Stand close, then step up with your left leg onto the bench. Step up now with the right leg, so you are standing upright on the bench. Step back down with the right leg, keeping the left leg on the bench. Repeat the stepping up and down with the right leg for from ten to twenty repetitions. Switch to the other side.

Voila, you just made some positive changes to your strength and mobility!

It feels great to take an action today that has a positive effect on my body.