#let's bring up the fact that a lot of artists have chronic pain from repetitive motion injuries

[fashion4ducks]

I have tendonitis in both wrists and probably scoliosis in my lower back. I still make art. It requires adjusting and taking time off to recover but I still do it.

Fuck AI with a hot metal cactus and fuck you for even floating the idea that AI makes art "accessable".

"ai is making it so everyone can make art" Everyone can make art dipshit it came free with your fucking humanity

[theoldaeroplane]

Rambling

Had a semi-major health scare Monday (I'm okay) and have been recovering from that for the last week. In an hour I go in and get onboarded for a company that places people in factory jobs---I'm literally so worn down from the last two years that I don't want to let myself hope, but if I could get placed somewhere that pays a living wage and just do repetitive tasks to my music all day that would be incredible.

Monday's scare knocked the wind out of me creatively which is actually painful with how inspired I was for the last few months. I seem to be able to get over myself and write with very specific circumstances so that's better than nothing. I cut up some paper for artist trading cards and I'd like to try to make some of those soon too as a low effort, low stakes creative thing.

As ever, I struggle to keep myself from perceiving myself as a burden to people around me. On a logical level I believe them when they say I'm not, because they're my friends and they've proven that over and over, but the wicked goblin that lives in my brain loves to point out that's what my parents would have said too. And look how that turned out. I have a dedicated playlist for grieving the fact that my parents' love was conditional.

It's started to become clear to me that I think I am more damaged than I previously thought, and I guess I would rather know that than otherwise. Ive spent a lot of time thinking about a line from a song: "for once I want to be the car crash, not always just the traffic jam." I've always identified with that line, with the idea of "if I'm going to get hurt, at least do it in a way loud enough to get help." To not feel like a chronic nuisance, because I think I've always had that sense of being A Nuisance. A Bother. An Inconvenience. And I'm sure that I was that to my parents much of the time (I recall the time my mother informed me I was an unplanned child), and that's surely why I have such trouble with it now. I spend so much energy and time trying to do things to convince people (read: myself) that I'm worth the effort to put up with. I'm certain it's why I get so afraid and anxious when something I do is met with silence or a lackluster response, because oh no, this is it, they're finally sick of me, they're going to tell me I'm annoying and needy and troublesome just like my former best friend once did. (That's another thing I should really bring to therapy. It's been ten years since that happened and I still haven't really talked about it.)

If I can just get work that doesn't drain me. If I can just get work that pays enough to let me afford the things I need to support myself without burning out. (I live in fucking Iowa. It's a low bar here, the cost of living.) If I can just stabilize, if I can just start to get enough money to feel secure again, if I can start to look for a new car that doesn't feel like it's going to fall apart at any moment. If I can meter my energy out in the right way to let me be a person after work. If I can just, if I can just. I'm so tired. I'm so so tired.

[meditativeyoga]

Yoga for Chronic Pain Management - Breath, Movement, and Mindfulness

Backaches, stomach pains, discomfort in the calves-- it feels like nearly every person in contemporary Western society has some of type of discomfort that continuously nags them. Yoga has actually entered the West just in the previous hundred years or two, yet its concentrate on achieving wellness via a whole-person overview has a lot to use around. Yoga exercise, in types from Bikram to Yin to Restorative, could assist specialists take care of various kinds of pain. All those forms-- also if rather various on the surface area-- highlight breath, release of unneeded tension, and also healthy motion patterning. Those as well as other facets of yoga could aid people who endure from persistent discomfort return to a much better regular in their body and minds.

Breath is important in handling pain due to the fact that it could assist bring pain into viewpoint, emotionally and also literally. An excellent number of peer-reviewed, empirical mental researches have confirmed that discomfort can seem even worse when anxiety climbs. In the "fight-or-flight" mode, the body is extra-sensitive to feeling-- including pain-- as a survival device. Key to decreasing anxiety is discovering stable, deep breathing, because this activates the parasympathetic (" cool-down," we might call it) part of the anxious system.

That breath doesn't always need to be sluggish, as it needs to give enough oxygen for the needs of the body's current job. By doing this a Vinyasa yoga exercise practice may require a quicker-- yet full, continual, and also rhythmically stable-- circulation of breath than does a Hatha yoga exercise course. The Kalabhati (" bellows") breath, generally a part of Kundalini yoga, helps practitioners create as well as keep the faster flow within that form. In any one of these asana forms, professionals could find out how you can locate the style of breath that suits their demands at today minute. Exercising pranayama workouts could just boost that discovering and also strengthen its associated skills. Via such a process, persistent discomfort sufferers could discover how to mindfully utilize their breath as a device to reduce just what ails them.

Yoga could likewise assist practitioners learn how to release unneeded tension, a main reason of chronic pain, via aiding them to develop extra reliable, anatomically informed movement patterns. That can take stress and anxiety and strain off areas of the body that are demanding mercy via discomfort (read: pain is the body's method of saying, "Please, stop doing that, or get assist to earn it stop!"). For instance, a person has the tendency to raise his/her shoulders (and because of this, tense his/her neck muscle mass) in Tadasana as well as Warrior poses. Surprise-surprise, doing so is a practice in daily life, as well as he or she has persistent migraine headaches. See a link? A yoga exercise instructor can discover this pattern and also, with physical cueing and associated spoken guideline, help the trainee discover how to release his/her shoulders down the back in those positions and also throughout practice.

With a mindful method as well as constant self-correction, the trainee could simply have the ability to carry out that new shoulder placing off the floor covering, in everyday life. The neck muscle mass are not stressed via having to operate in ways they just weren't implied to, with staying contracted to assist elevate the shoulder blades. Hooray, much to the individual's alleviation, the migraines become much less severe and also frequent. That type of process could be really valuable for those that have chronic pain from their work-related obligations, such as athletes, professional dancers, artists, retail workers, building workers, mail service providers, and so on. In similar methods, they might discover how they position a great deal of strain of certain parts of their body through just what they do at the office day in and day out.

Learning new, healthier means of accomplishing physical tasks could first help them to see exactly how moving in certain ways is most likely creating, or at the very least substantially adding to, their pain. New patterns can initially feel weird, however the positive difference is clear before long. A service to-- or at least decreasing of-- their pain is right there in those far better means of removaling. Much more active, "yang" designs of yoga exercise (such as Ashtanga and Power Yoga) offer enough possibility to check out and also develop improved motion patterns via many repetitions of codified positions as well as motion circulations. As an example, it could not be as well far from exact when a trainee really feels like that Chaturanga Dandasana has actually been the 30th of the class!

Yin, or fairly slower and also gentler, forms of yoga exercise (such as Corrective and also Hatha) can supply trainees the time to approach motion in conscious means, experience the body's action, and react accordingly. Flying via a Sun Salutation could be exhilarating, but one can miss a probably refined-- but nevertheless crucial-- physical sensation, such as a sore hamstring or modify in the back. Taking that same sequence extra slowly, or possibly including fewer postures and also motions, can enable a yogi( ni) the time as well as mental area to observe and appropriately react to such sensation.

Beyond these physical realities, yoga exercise offers a psychological element that could be useful for pain management. The yogic values of mindfulness, maintaining feeling in perspective, and focusing could assist individuals to fairly examine such situations, and afterwards to make a prepare for renovation and stick with it. The Niyamas concentrate individuals on personal regards-- important in managing discomfort, because it takes listening to the body's messages to offer it what it needs for the discomfort to reduce. Dharana tests specialists to genuinely focus, as well as dhayana challenges them to devote themselves to a task. All this is necessary for healing any kind of condition, however especially for something persistent and often debilitating such as persistent pain.

All in all, yoga exercise provides physical as well as psychological devices to help ease pain in lots of kinds. Whether rapid or slow, with objectives of health and fitness as well as weight-loss, or relaxation, any kind of form of yoga exercise can supply various-- yet similarly legitimate-- sorts of such tools. Persistent, major clinical problems call for the care of doctor. That being said, let's not forget the wisdom of old yogis. Those tools they produced are vital ingredients in the mix towards real continual healing from persistent discomfort.

Kathryn Boland is a third-year Master's degree trainee in Dance/Movement Therapy at Lesley College (Cambridge, MA), and an E-RYT 500. She is originally from Rhode Island and attended The George Washington College (Washington, DC) for an undergraduate level in dancing (where she first experienced yoga exercise). She has actually shown yoga exercise to varied populaces in diverse places. As a dancer, she has actually always loved to keep moving as well as flowing in practicing a lot more energetic Vinyasa-style types. Her rate of interests have actually lately progressed to consist of Yin as well as therapeutic yoga, and also lining up those types with Laban Motion Analysis to serve the needs of numerous teams (such as Alzheimer's Condition clients, children identified with ADHD, PTSD-afflicted experts, all demographically broadening). She thinks in locating the opportunity within every hardship, as well as doing all that she could to aid others cope with a little bit a lot more breath as well as flow!

[sarahburness]

Move Your Body, Calm Your Mind: 5 Practices That Ease Anxiety

“Get out of your head and get into your body. Think less and feel more.” ~Osho

Do you want to meditate but the idea of sitting with your thoughts for twenty minutes gives you anxiety? Or maybe meditation seems like one more task you have to add to your ever growing to-do list, so you take a pass?

As a working mother of three, I’m no stranger to daily stress and routine overwhelm. Life in the twenty-first century can be pretty hectic, especially for busy moms, and so many of us search for practical ways to minimize the stress and anxiety that are so common in our society.

Meditation seems like a perfect solution. It’s “easy,” accessible, and it’s good for our health, both mental and physical. It reduces stress and improves emotional regulation, concentration, and sleep. It helps us develop more kindness and compassion, for others and ourselves.

Sounds like a perfect cure. Except it’s hard. It can feel like a chore or a time thief. And it often triggers our fears and anxieties, especially if we have a history of trauma we’re still healing. 

So why not adjust the traditional meditation practice to reflect our modern lifestyle and constrictions? Why not mimic the practice of mindfulness while moving your body? Instead of sitting still, why not focus on gentle, repetitive movements that are enjoyable, all while reaping the benefits of mindfulness?

Believe me, you can have it both ways.

I am a Type A person. I am driven, full of energy and ambition. I’m competitive, over-scheduled, and always on the go. And I don’t have much patience, or time to kill. Sitting still for twenty minutes is often the last thing I want to do.

Another hurdle for me was anxiety, which often peaked when I opened up to my internal world of thoughts and feelings, as one does while sitting in meditation. I do better now, but in the first year of practice I often felt triggered and overwhelmed—precisely the opposite of what I was going for.

This is common for people with trauma or chronic pain. We tend to numb, distract, or ignore distressing sensations in order to make it through the day. Mindfulness requires the opposite of such disassociation.

When sitting in meditation, I was to focus on and “befriend” my body, along with the residue of trauma still lodged in it. Despite my best intentions I would become fidgety and agitated instead. Noticing my pain, both physical and emotional, seemed to increase it. I’d find myself trying to resist it, run from it, beat myself up for not being able to just “observe” my experience, and then criticize myself for beating myself up. It was a vicious cycle.

I understood that the goal was to learn to be with my experience, and it did get easier over time, but often it was too much to handle.

Needless to say, I’ve searched for alternative ways to meditate, ones that didn’t involve sitting still but were movement-based instead. And I found plenty.

The Meditative Benefits of Rhythmic Movement

Many of us have experienced some type of trauma or significant stress in the past. It’s part of a human experience. Even if we were lucky enough to avoid trauma, we live in a world of chronic stress and overwhelm. We often operate in “survival mode” and experience chronic muscle tension and fatigue. We feel anxious and maxed out too often.

Anxiety is often a symptom of a freeze response in fight-flight-freeze—the feeling of helplessness, our inability to change or escape a difficult situation, such as the daily stress that comes with our modern lifestyle. Movement is a great antidote to that freeze state. It gets us unstuck.

Stress gets stuck in our bodies. We carry this tension around with us and it affects us on a body-mind level. Movement is a great way to release that tension and get back to a relaxed state. Repetitive movement can also bring us into the state of mindfulness, giving our body a chance to press the reset button and kick in our natural healing and renewal processes.

Rhythmic movement, just like meditation, can be very therapeutic and healing. It helps integrate our body and mind, reset the nervous system, and rewire the brain for healing and wholeness. It’s not only good for your physical body but your mental health too.

Meditative movement activities are grounding as well. Feeling grounded is the exact opposite to perpetual worry.

Anxiety is about getting stuck in our internal world of thoughts and feelings. The repetitive movement, however, helps us get out of our head and reconnect with our body, grounding and centering us, connecting us back to the earth and to ourselves.

Grounding reduces inflammation and emotional stress, elevates our mood, and improves our immune responses. It brings us back to feeling centered and secure. And it’s exactly what we need in times of struggle and overwhelm.

5 Movement-Based Meditative Practices Perfect for Anxious People

There are a number of activities that have a meditative effect that don’t require you to sit still for twenty minutes. In fact, any movement that’s relaxing and repetitive can give you similar effect as meditation. The trick is to go slow and bring mindfulness to the practice. And if you enjoy doing it, you will find it easier to add to your daily routine, so it won’t feel like a chore.

Here are my favorites:

1. Walking

Walking is one of the easiest anxiety-reducing movement-based techniques. It can invoke mindfulness, clear your head, and release stress from the body. And if done in nature, you will feel more wakeful and alert and, at the same time, open, relaxed, and spacious.

2. Hatha yoga

The most rewarding for me personally, Hatha yoga is a gentle practice of body-mind integration. Yoga combines awareness of breathing with asana practice, enabling you to achieve the state of mindfulness and wholeness. It’s easy and accessible to everyone—you don’t have to join a studio, simply search YouTube for inspiration and lesson videos.

3. Gardening

Nothing connects me more to my surroundings than gardening. Great for anxiety and taming the monkey mind, gardening is a perfect activity to help you become mindful and engage with the world around you with all your senses. The calm of gardening can bring about the state of flow, as you become fully absorbed in the activity. Gardening is grounding; my garden is my personal Zen.

4. Swimming

Swimming is a gentle exercise that allows you to focus on deep breathing and the rhythm of your stroke, both lulling you into a state of deep relaxation. It comes with minimal distractions and is a great tension reliever. All you need is a body of water.

5. Dancing

Focused on expression on a bodily level, dancing allows you tap into your body’s own healing resources. It’s therapeutic. You connect with your body in elemental ways and allow it to express feelings often hard to convey in words—something especially beneficial for trauma victims and people suffering from anxiety or depression.

By being mindful while dancing, you also learn about yourself and your body and embrace your creativity and the comforting flow of pleasant physical sensations, fully re-engaging with the present moment. And that’s healing.

—

Whatever practice you choose, use the movement and sensations of your body to bring your awareness to the present moment. Draw your attention to your hands and feet, the sensations of touching the ground, and your arms swinging or shifting in motion.

Follow your breath as you inhale and exhale deeply and air travels in and out of your lungs. Let the rhythmic flow of your movements relax your mind.

Listen, notice, smell, and feel into your surrounding, using your senses to anchor yourself in the present moment.

Observe your experience, including your thoughts and feelings, without judgment. Notice when you get lost in thoughts, and bring yourself back to the movement, back to the now.

Try to add mindful movement to your daily routine, if possible. It’s a great way to reset your mind and remove stress out of your body, in a gentle and supportive way. Weave your favorite meditative activity into your daily life, without the distraction of technology. Make it your self-care habit.

And don’t forget to tap into mindful movement in times of struggle and overwhelm, to gently shift your body and mind out of stress and into relaxation. It’s a great alternative to sitting meditation when anxious energy is stuck in your body, ready to be released in an active way.

Mindfulness Takes Practice But You Are Worth It

I used to ruminate a lot on my walks. With practice, I’ve learned to let go of my onslaught of thoughts and bring myself back to the present moment. I now focus on the smell of freshly cut grass and the feel the breeze on my neck and sun on my face, and pay attention to each step and how it resonates through my body. As I walk, I realize the beauty around me and fill my heart with joy and gratitude. That uplifting energy fuels the rest of my day.

I do practice sitting meditation, and I have found it to be very useful. But my temperament begs me to move and be in nature.

Think of what is healing, relaxing, and brings you pleasure. Then bring awareness to your body as you develop a practice of bringing that joy into your every day, whether through movement, a creative pursuit, or play.

You are worth it!

About Joanna Ciolek

Joanna Ciolek is a self-taught artist, recovering self-critic, and a firm believer in the healing and transformative powers of mindfulness. She runs a free 20-week mindfulness & self-discovery workshop. She is also the author The Art Of Untangling, a writing journal/coloring book for deeper self-inquiry, healing and transformation! Follow Joanna on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

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