Blog Posts

– Arwen Kittelson-Aldred (www.arweniansoundscapes.com)

Lately, I have been hearing more and more theories about the potential of intentionally used sound to support people. While there is some interesting research out there on the efficacy of sound, there are many more fascinating stories from sound workers and their clients on the ways that sound has transformed their experience of life, which I can relate to. When I was 7, I began to study piano, and it quickly became my escape when life felt unsafe. That set the trend of music being my safe space, which basically translates to music being a tool that I used (and use) to calm my nervous system.

And there’s a lot of evidence that shows I’m not alone in that! Decades after my relationship with the piano began, as a teacher for elementary school kids on the autism spectrum, it was fascinating to see what types of sounds helped them relax and self-regulate when they were struggling. One girl would hum Rihanna’s “Disturbia,” another calmed down to “Just Dance” by Lady Gaga, and one of my students was the most engaged when we would sing to each other as if we were in a 2-person opera. Others would play with Bjork’s Biophilia App, arranging and rearranging sound patterns, if they were allowed to.

I spend a lot of my life engaging with sound. Recently, I have been creating soundscapes with my gongs, singing bowls, tank drums, and other instruments. It is fascinating to observe the changes that happen in myself and my clients over the course of a sound meditation, as we tune into the soundscape.

All of us live in a constantly changing soundscape, regardless of if we are consciously aware of it or not. Electricity, traffic, fans, the far-off hum of airplanes… these sounds are just a normal part of our existence, something that we often don’t notice until it isn’t there. Turning our focus to sound, deeply listening to the sounds that surround us, be they pleasant or displeasing, is a form of meditation that can be easier to access for some folks than traditional silent meditation.

When my anxiety spikes and I can feel my nervous system moving into fight or flight mode, I often turn to sound to bring myself back down to center. At times I go into my music room and play, sometimes I turn on music that feels soothing to me. Other times I focus on the sound of my breath, and then my awareness naturally expands out to the soundscape around me.

A question that I often get is: does sound have healing properties or will playing specific frequencies or notes have a profound effect? The answer is a definite “maybe.” Everyone has their own experience, and a note or frequency that feels transformative for one person may not have any impact on another. What I do know, from my personal experience and observation, is that sound can help our bodies to calm, and our nervous systems to downregulate. The specifics of what sounds produce that result vary from person to person but putting our focus on the sounds that we have sought out can soothe our nervous systems and help us self-regulate.

So, consider adding sound meditation to your personal toolbox! I teach Sound & Meditation classes at Red Willow periodically and use a variety of instruments at each class to create a soundscape that is designed to be restful and peaceful. There are also free sound meditations available on YouTube and through the Insight Timer app. Experiment and start to notice which sounds are soothing to you and your nervous systems, and which are not. The beauty of using sound is that there is such an enormous variety available, and more than likely there will be something that works for you… it’s just a matter of finding it.

by Tom Camel

I chopped weeds yesterday. As I moved while chopping, I tried to balance the amount of effort in my movements—left and right, up and down, side to side. I tried to loosen all the muscles I had tightened with one movement and shift that effort to the muscles on the other side. I tried to pay attention to my feelings of balance so as not to be totally in one part of my body. Moving my energy back and forth, I was mindful.

I also wanted smoothness and flow as I shifted my attention back and forth from being mainly within in my body and out in the world around me. I took time to come to a stop, to let go of muscle tension that was not needed, to sense my body fatigue, and to use that information on my decision to change what I was doing and how I am doing it. It is helpful to have an awareness of excessive tightness in your muscles and awareness of muscles that are working too much or muscles that don’t need to be working now. Awareness of a sense of direction in parts of my body as well as the whole body helps me stay balanced.

I learned all this in the Mindful Movement class. I learned (and continue to learn) to have a relationship with my mind and body that’s kinder and more respectful. The education and mindful movement practice helps me find more ease and less pain and I use the activities, education and awareness to find my whole self over and over again. With Mindful Movement, there is an unlimited amount of movement I can have, there’s always ebb and flow happening. The class helps me move in ways that move away from tenseness and pain. I have even learned how to better be in stillness. At the end of the class we lie down and come to quiet. Sometimes when Mari says something about the class that we just experienced, she says it in a way that pulls the activities together in a way that sounds like poetry.  She asks us to visualize animals and how they move.  It’s like the Native American Medicine Wheel.  The Eagle is vision and perspective the wolf is courage and fierceness when necessary to protect ourselves.  Imagining these animals and being like them helps me.

As a veteran with an artificial leg, I find ways to move that uses my inner awareness to find balance that is in a different place than if I had two legs. I don’t have to wear my artificial leg to benefit from the Mindful Movement class.

The ways of Mindful Movement gradually soften my body and moves it away from holding and tightening and the principals of balance and wholeness reminds me of Native American ways of the Medicine Wheel. I have learned about being kind to my body and how to have more freedom. I have learned I can do much so more with much less effort using these practices.

 

by Christine Lustik, PhD

Mindfulness has become a do it all drug. Could it really help support those living with PTSD?

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a response to trauma that can cause a person to relive the event and cause the brain to change in certain ways. Most notably, the amygdala gets stuck in high alert and at the same time, the hippocampus, which is trying to make sense of things for us, connects the current event to the previous traumatic event to warn us and keep us on alert. The brain often makes this connection through a sound or some other sensory clue. This causes high anxiety and exhaustion to occur, among many other possible outcomes.

Now, let’s look at mindfulness. First let’s remember, the goal of mindfulness practice is to bring us back to the present moment. This is most often practiced through mindfulness meditation. This is helpful when done carefully as it can help those with PTSD return from the memory arising of the past event before getting stuck in that memory. In addition, regular mindfulness practice is shown to increase activity in the pre-frontal cortex and decrease reactivity in the amygdala, both of these counteract the effects of the PTSD. This all sounds positive and when applied can help those with PTSD interrupt the brain when it’s remembering the traumatic event as if the event is happening in real time. The more we interrupt and redirect the brain, the more it’s able to create a different neural pathway for those situations.

In 2015 and 2021, systemic reviews of the research to date on PTSD and mindfulness were completed. These reviews determined that there are a lot of promising results, but there is more work to be done. It was determined that we need to study if there are specific types of trauma that respond more positively to mindfulness and also which forms of mindfulness are most effective for PTSD.

So yes, mindfulness practice can support those with PTSD. That said, for mindfulness practice to be effective, it takes regular and dedicated practice to begin building new neural pathways. In addition, researchers have yet to understand fully why some people develop PTSD after a traumatic event, while others don’t, and what triggers traumatic events. Therefore, it is suggested individuals with PTSD work with programs and guides that are trauma-informed to be as safe as possible.

One of the cornerstones of Red Willow Learning Center is belief in the resilience of the human spirit. At the center of this belief is the understanding that we can all get better at this thing we refer to as “bounce-back”.  Building this capacity requires that we come to understand and utilize our inner resources.  In short, it requires self-awareness.

This journey is a very personal one.  It is, of course, an inside job.  We believe that within each of us lies the desire to find our place in the world and to live a life of meaning.  This very human journey is usually not a straight path.  There are twists and turns and plenty of false starts.  Yet, given a nourishing and supportive environment, we see the strength of the human spirit triumph over and over again.

Dr. Stephen Porges, the psychiatrist and neuroscientist, who developed the Polyvagal Theory, does an excellent job of helping us understand the importance of feeling safe in this process.  When we do not, we just don’t do well.  Our biology takes us into states of being that can look like rigid thinking, anxiety, being defensive and even shut down.  We cannot be at our best under these circumstances.

How we go about developing the ability to feel safe in this world depends on many factors.  In our early years, were we able to learn safe emotional regulation with an adult?  Do we currently live and work in a safe environment?  These things are, of course, crucially important.

Let’s not forget the inside job part of this.  As individuals, we also need to understand ourselves well enough to know whether our environment is truly dangerous or toxic or whether it is the lens of past traumas that we are looking and experiencing the present though.  Learning to put the past in its place is our work and requires self-awareness.

What if everyone had the opportunity and the necessary support to take this journey to self-awareness?  What if each of us had the skill to persevere despite obstacles?  What if we all had a sense of self-worth and place?  What would it be like to be a community that supported and even celebrated the journey?  What if we all were living to our potential?  Now this sounds like a community I would like to be a part of!

Kathy Mangan

“Human freedom involves our capacity to pause, to choose the one response toward which we wish to throw our weight.”  – Rollo May

Yoga and meditation have been offered in the detention and prison settings since the mid-1970’s.  Although not considered a mainstream approach to health and well-being, these practices are gaining wider acceptance throughout Europe and North America.  Studies continue to show the benefits of both yoga and meditation for the incarcerated population.  A study reported in 1987 in the Journal of Criminal Justice reported a 35% drop in recidivism for yoga and meditation practitioners after one year as compared to the general population.  A more recent study published by the National Library of Medicine in 2017, reported “reduced criminal behavior and re-arrests and recidivism. In particular, 80% of the control group were rearrested by the three-year post-release point, while only 62% of the REVAMP group were rearrested.”  The study concluded that the practice of mindfulness may be a significant help to returning citizens as they leave incarceration.

This is all really intriguing.  My question always is, “what does this look like in real life?”  Since taking over program administration from its founder, Erin Giefer, Freedom on the Inside (FOTI for short) instructors have made well over 2200 participant contacts so I think we can weigh in on this.

Lower anxiety and stress levels.  For a full year prior to the COVID-19 lockdown, we collected pre-class and post-class anxiety questionnaires from adult participants participating in yoga and meditation in the Missoula County Detention Facility.  Admittedly, 209 complete data sets do not a robust study make; BUT what we found was a marked reduction in anxiety-related symptoms such as racing heart, feeling dizzy and fear of the worst happening.

Why this matters.  First off, correction officers report fewer behavior problems in the jail.  That in and of itself is probably enough.  In addition, we know that an increased ability to manage stress levels leads to more capacity to choose responses appropriate to the situation at hand.  This is nearly impossible to do when we have already shifted into the activation of fight/flight.  We just behave better when we are not stressed.

Restorative sleep.  When the body is tense and the mind is racing, good restorative sleep can be elusive.  Learning to stay in the present with what is and gaining clarity on what you do and do not have control over is a really effective way to start to quiet mind chatter and relax the body.  Learning to follow the breath and relax both the mind and body is a useful skill for all of us, not just for those who are criminally justice involved.

Why this matters.   It is well documented that sleep deprivation has detrimental effects on both the mind and body.  Our mental health is CLOSELY connected with sleep.  Add to this that sleep problems are very common for people diagnosed with anxiety, depression and bipolar disorder.  We know that the imprisoned population are disproportionately affected by mental health concerns, some of what landed them in jail to begin with.

Substance Use Disorder Recovery support.  Mindful practices are useful support strategies for drug and alcohol self-control.  They have become widely used in both the outpatient and residential setting.

Why this matters.  Mindfulness practices literally change the structure of the brain.  This means that the well-worn pathways associated with substance use begin to weaken with time and practice while the prefrontal cortex (planning, working memory and self-control) becomes more robust.  We feel less threatened and less activated and more able to think things through.

Mind/body Interventions such as yoga and mindfulness practices are relatively inexpensive to provide.  They also teach life-long skills and can be practiced by everyone.  More importantly, perhaps, is that these practices help foster compassion for ourselves.  That sounds like the community I want to live in!

 

Kathy Mangan

A consistent yoga practice offers strategies and tools to manage and help reduce the impact of Parkinson’s symptoms.  When you’re working with a neurological disorder, you’re not just working with the body…you’re working with the brain/mind/body connection.  Yoga has a direct neuroscience connection and excels at this.  Besides strengthening the mind-body relationship, it helps:

• Improve balance
• Create strength and stability
• Loosen tight muscles
• Reduce anxiety and depression
• Create fluidity of movement

Practicing yoga can help you walk, turn, move and live with more ease and confidence.  It helps with daily activities, such as putting on a jacket, carrying and putting away groceries, reaching for an item, getting up from a chair, staying independent longer.

In my seven years of teaching of teaching Yoga for Parkinson’s, I have witnessed the immediate and cumulative impact of our group practice…better posture, easier movement, resilience, hope and raised spirits.

The camaraderie in our classes is uplifting, healing, and the group energy is powerful.  My sincere gratitude to our students living with Parkinson’s Disease who face each day’s challenges with courage, grace, and humor.  Thank you for coming to class with your stories and jokes and for your compassion and friendship to all who join us.

Please widely share this Yoga for Parkinson’s Class information.  We welcome all with Parkinson’s to become part of our community!

Jolyn Ortega
C-IAYT Yoga Therapist