Bike Trainer for Bad Weather
One of my big challenges with working out, training, and staying in somewhat decent shape with my bicycling has been 'bad' weather. In truth, I'm a fair-weather rider. I don't…
Re-evaluating My Relationship to Alcohol
My favorite! This post is inspired by an article in Sunday's (1/17/21) New York Times (NYT), Reimagine Your Relationship to Alcohol. I am trying its suggested 30-days abstinence program to…
Going Deeper in Your Spiritual Practice
One of my New Year's goals (a.k.a. resolutions) this year is to go deeper in my spiritual practice. My spiritual practice is Zen Buddhism, but hopefully these words will apply…
Sewing Machines for Real Men?
Yesterday, the New York Times (NYT) ran an article on the increase in the number of men that had bought sewing machines and learned or learning how to sew as…
Working with Our Natural Ultradian Bio-Rhythms
In my previous post, I wrote about working with our 24-hour, circadian bio-rhythm. In this post, I address the other type of bio-rhythm I mentioned, ultradian bio-rhythms. Ultradian rhythms, also…
Dancing with Our Natural Circadian Bio-Rhythms
I am a big believer in working with one’s body and its natural bio-cycles, genes, physiology, etc., as well as the biorhythms of nature in general. I am using “bio-cycles” here as a broad category of natural biologically-driven cycles, including, but not limited to, our daily circadian and ultradian, the subject of today’s blog, female minstrel, developmental, aging, Kreb’s citric acid cycle (from biochemistry), cell division, etc. And, more from Nature, the daily diurnal light-dark cycle, the yearly cycle of the seasons and months, lunar, solar, the nitrogen, carbon and other elemental cycles, ecosystems, and so forth. As I write in my Guru book, Turquoise Woman is my archetypal symbol for these cycles in her role as Navaho’s, Changing Woman.
We have two types of natural bio-rhythms I wand to address: circadian and ultradian (see figure below). Circadian refers our 24-hr wake-sleep cycle. Ultradian refers to the 90-120 minute rest-activity cycles that we go through within our circadian cycles. In this post, I am focusing on the circadian cycle, In a later blog, I will write about ultradian cycles, which are also very important.
This post was inspired in one of my early morning awakening periods and my recurrent question of, “instead of fighting it, how can I work with it,” which goes back to my Guru story’s vision quest’s ending of “how do I dance with it?”
For decades I have had what is known as Early Morning Awakening: no matter what time I go to bed, I awake somewhere usually around 3:00a.m. I have tried all kinds of ways to deal with this, including melatonin and many other informed recommendations, but not medications, prescribed or OTC’s. I wanted to find a more natural way to work with this issue.
On top of this, is that as we age, we need less sleep. For years (decades), I wake up after sleeping for five hours. Very aggravating! With only five hours sleep, I feel sleep deprived and drag through my day with low energy. With six hours sleep, I feel pretty okay. With seven hours, I feel great! Usually, I just lay there trying to go back to sleep, or, more accurately, hope that I will go back to sleep, often giving up and getting up around 6:00a.m. My body’s circadian cycle is from about 3:00a.m. to 3:00p.m., and I want to come back to this below.
I compensate for lack of sleep, and also just to take rests when I feel tired, or in between projects, or, actually, any excuse for 20-minute power naps. I’ve done the power nap thing ever since I got out of graduate school back in the Stone Age (1975). And, no, skipping the naps doesn’t effect the five-hour/early morning awakenings. That is, except of Sundays when I often take a longer nap, especially after a long bike ride. These longer naps sometimes can affect my ability to get to sleep, which is countered by the intense exercise I got that day. Sundays are kind of my days off. I usually do a lot of cooking on Sunday’s too.
My natural circadian rhythm is from 3:00am-3:00pm. My cycle is common for day-owls. Plus, I am an early morning person. I do my best writing, thinking, creativity, etc. in the early mornings. By 10:00am, I can feel my efficiency at these dropping off. By around 3:00pm, it is like the bottom drops out of my energy level. I grow tired and more fuzzy-thinking. This is when I try to turn my attention and efforts into doing more mindless type of activities, e.g. house or shop cleaning, bringing in firewood in the winter, or going for a walk with the dogs or a bicycle ride, etc.
At about 3:00am for us “normal” people, our body/brain starts making the transition from its sleep cycle to its wake cycle. At about 3:00 pm it shifts to making the transition for our upcoming sleep cycle.
Unfortunately, when I wake up around 3:00a.m., my mind starts cranking up. The downside of it cranking up is that I jump from topic to topic. The upside is that it is often a very creative period. I come up some of better ideas during this time–like this morning. It is sort of the “Good, the Bad, and the Ugly”. The “Good” is the creativity that often comes up. The “Bad” is feeling sleep deprived if I don’t get enough sleep. The “Ugly” is that this is also often my Shadow time.
(more…)Emotional Self-Sufficiency
Old man on a bicycle tee I awoke thinking about this this morning. One of my goals at this stage and place in my life is the cultivation of self-sufficiency.…
Making Sauerkraut
I have always liked sauerkraut, usually as in with brats. Well, as an older adult anyway. As a kid you wouldn’t have been able to get me to touch the stuff. Now, it’s German potato salad, brats, and sauerkraut, yummy! With a nice German beer, of course.
With my hermit lifestyle, I’m doing a lot more experimenting and have discovered a whole wide world of sauerkraut. My eldest daughter, Elian, has been preaching the gospal to me for years about “fermented” foods. I had ran later across an article in Mother Earth News on fermenting not too long ago. When I used to think about “fermenting,” it was about beer, wine, and such, not cabbage and other veggies.
Then, just a few months ago, attending a continue education workshop for counseling (mental health) on the gut-brain connection and health, the speaker brought up fermented foods for their pro- and pre-biotics, and their many health benefits., both mental and physical health. The universe was trying to send me a message maybe?
Then, several months ago, Elian brought me a pint of jalapeño sauerkraut. She and her business partner, Lance, own and run the Clemson Area Food Exchange, which is an internet farmers’ market specializing in locally grown, mostly organic produce, meat, eggs, and crafts. Someone had ordered the jalapeño sauerkraut but not picked it up. She had plenty of fermented sauerkraut on hand already. Plus, she likes a little spice, but honestly, jalapeños? I tried it. It was indeed “spicy.” I loved it!
(more…)Dinning Out and Landfills in a Coronavirus World
Wednesday, after spending a hot, sticky, muggy, mosquito-harassed day doing equine assisted psychotherapy at our boys school, Cherokee Creek Boys School, where we have been going now for some 14 years, I decided to splurge and pamper myself a little. I went out to my local favorite Tex-Mex place here in Liberty, SC. A cold draught beers (XX Amber), AC, and Tex-Mex. I keep forgetting all the changes that restaurants have had to make to be safe and stay in business.
To put things into perspective, pretty much living a life of a hermit and alone, and being a good cook anyway, I usually prefer my own cooking. I seldom went out to dine before the pandemic. After it hit, I have since only gone out a few times. This also has to do some with trying to live more frugally and eco-friendly in my hermit lifestyle tradition.
At the restaurant, I sat down in the cool, dimly lit booth area where I like to sit–away usually from the larger dinning area–ordered my beer. It quickly came. After a few sips, I placed my order, deciding to try a new dish they had on their menu instead of my usual. Several minutes and sips later, out came the waitress with my order. She placed on my table, a styrofoam to go container that contained my food and a plastic fork. I looked at the order is disdain and disgust. If I hadn’t been drinking the beer, I would have picked up my “take-out” order and taken it home to eat.
Okay, now another bit of important background here. Trying to live a more eco-responsible lifestyle, I have quit doing business with any cafe, restaurant, or fast food, that serves with plastic and styrofoam. Plastic and styrofoam go into the landfills and just set there. It takes hundreds of years for styrofoam to decompose. Plastic even longer. You can’t recycle styrofoam. Some plastic you can thankfully. Also, as styrofoam and plastic decompose, they release toxic compounds to the surroundings, air, and eventually, water table itself. So nasty stuff.
I carry my own take-home containers as I usually can’t or don’t want to finish whole meals when eating out. I take it home in my container, which is reusable. If I don’t want it, the dogs are always willing to do their share. I also carry in my man-bag flatware and stainless steel straws. I’ve done this for some time now, but the pandemic has made me even more conscientious about doing it. I carry a set in my truck and in my bicycle trailer, as I do face masks, and hand sterilizer.
Enters the coronavirus pandemic….
(more…)Evolutionary Religious Naturalism
This be me at this stage in my life, or as close as I can figure it, an evolutionary religious naturalist. I actually talk about this in my Guru book in more detail, but I woke up thinking about it this morning. What do I mean by evolutionary religious naturalism?
I used to say that I was a atheistic religious naturalist and that my spiritual practice was basically Zen Buddhism. Maybe it is just me, but “atheist” is a word with a lot of baggage, and I have never really felt comfortable with it. This is probably left over from my West Texas, fundamentalist, Bible Belt upbringing where the word “atheist” was on same plane as Satan. A descriptor I like better is nontheist as there is no the (God, supreme being, etc.) in my -ology.
Religious naturalism posits that nature is all there is. There is nothing beyond nature; nothing outside of nature. That means no omnipresent, omnipotent, super being out there above and outside of nature. Religious meaning is to be found in the natural world, not in some supernatural world. Moral and spiritual implications are derived from the nature and nature’s natural processes. A good overview of religious naturalism can be found in Jerome Wilson’s, Religious Naturalism: The Rebirth of a Forgotten Alternative.
I add the term, evolutionary, to my description to emphasize the role I see of the evolutionary process in shaping our religious views starting with our primal Selfish Genes. Superimposed on these were our selfless, altruistic genes/DNA driven by group selection that made us such a successful social species. I cover this much more fuller in my Guru book. Then, superimposed on this was cultural evolution and the evolution of religious memes.
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