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Breathe:

More Kindness for Ourselves and Each Other

Pass it on: New research shows nourishing food might save your brain

9/26/2017

7 Comments

 
Picture of bowl of berries with coconut
Worry wakes up before you do. It must, or it wouldn't be so ready to greet you before you wake. That unsettled flutter in the chest. The reluctance to face anyone, least of all your own mind. It can feel like this at a funky time like 4 AM or when the alarm goes off for work. The edginess can return in force in the afternoon, with that crashed-out, craving-a-pick-me-up feeling as the workday ends and before dinner appears.

Discovering the connection between food and mental health has been a revelation. It’s made a necessary difference in my sleep and chronic pain. Once perceived, it seems so clear. Yet not all doctors and therapists are making these connections yet. I'm passionate about letting you know how you can nourish your mood and give your brain health what it needs. I hope you will share this profoundly hopeful message with others.

I love geeking out on topics like the human microbiome, blood sugar and cortisol, microglia and inflammation, and the gut brain, our second brain. Not everyone wants to read dozens of books from my favorite teachers, like Nutrition Essentials for Mental Health by Leslie Korn and The Ultra Mind Solution: Healing Your Broken Brain by Healing Your Body First by Mark Hyman, MD. But the research is there, and it’s compelling.

Nutrition mental health research is slowly starting to come into more mainstream awareness, with review articles from the American Psychological Association; a collection of peer-reviewed articles in Clinical Psychological Science; and a review of the impact of food on neurotransmitters in Harvard Medical School's
blog. Just this week, the Harvard Medical School had an article about the impact of leaky gut -- which has been recognized and treated largely by the leaders in the field of naturopathic and functional medicine whom I follow --on autoimmune conditions, fibromyalgia, and mental illness.



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Mama Earth gets a mammogram

4/24/2017

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PictureImage: Earth from space, Blue enrobed with abundant ice on South pole, Apollo 17, 1972, NASA, https://www.nasa.gov/content/blue-marble-image-of-the-earth-from-apollo-17
Mama Earth gets a mammogram
 
she gets up with the sun
for her appointment
and has to take two buses
 
on the second one, she stands holding onto the strap
and the young people glowing into their screens
don't offer her a seat
 
she gets up slowly
with a rocking motion that propels the great globe
of her belly forward
with an audible sigh
 
the driver kneels the bus down
taking pity on her slow progress
aluminum walker with split tennis balls on the hooves
 
she looks around with the sun
squinting at an angle into her eyes
cradled by their rivers
carved by years of laughing and concentrating
to puzzle through
 
sees the semicircular driveway and metallic windows
and shuffles her bulk
through the door to information
 
spells out her name
for the unfazed ponytailed volunteer
chewing gum
who sends
Ms. Earth
to mammography
without looking up
 
the plates are cold
and seem to smash her breast
between them
with unnecessary force
 
her breath tightens and catches
against the pressure
but that's been going on for a while now
like a century
 
she hasn't had time to get it checked out
so many other fires to put out
the job she has seems always to take more than 24 hours in a day
if that's possible
and never came with the kind of insurance or sick days
that would allow her time to get her lungs checked
 
it's harder to remember details these days
but it seems like she hasn't had a raise
since the Rockies popped up
mmmmm, that was a hard birth, too
 
the tech asks her to switch breasts
and the plates descend again
 
she heard through the grapevine
there was this new preventative care plan
free mammograms every year
or in her ancient case
eon
 
she doesn't know what she'll do with a positive result
a biopsy sounds not only painful but expensive
and she doesn't know if it's covered
the little she'd been saving for retirement
disappeared in the
crash
 
the tech’s eyes behind her glasses
look concerned
mama knows the tech isn't really allowed
to tell her anything
but those women are always the first to know
 
she hopes it's not too serious
and if they do find something
that it's not
too late
 
Reba Connell, Berkeley, California, USA, 37.9° N, 122.3° W, June 2013, Cenozoic era



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YUM! Mindful Eating, Mindful Nutrition: Eating with the Brain in Mind

9/1/2015

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Picture“Tuscan Plate and Eggplant” • Sally Baker Watercolors, click image for www.sallybaker.com
"YUM!"

My Food as Medicine conference teacher, chef and culinary translator tells fellow cookbook author Mollie Katzen in an interview that "yum" is an involuntary response to pleasure.
"Yum!" is a common response to her Everything Drizzle or Triple Triple Brittle in her book, The Healthy Mind Cookbook. "Yum" is so different, she says, than we expect to respond to healthy food, which we imagine as deprivation on the edge of sorrow and grief for what we are losing.

It can also be a delicious feeling to find new ways of understanding and caring for ourselves.

This next course combines the powers of mindful awareness and research-based brain nutrition.

Each class invites our inner wisdom to taste, perceive, and notice.

In the following week, we learn about the latest research related to the foods we have eaten and their potential impact on anxiety, pain, and sleep.

Eating with the brain in mind references my fascination with the current research on the role of nutrition, the gut organisms in the microbiome, and mental health. Did you know that serotonin is made in the belly?

As we eat many times a day, bringing kind awareness to eating is an opportunity to practice for all of us.

Mindful Nutrition means that instead of letting others decide, or just going by taste, we pay attention to which foods nourish us individually.

Next Class:
Tuesdays 9–11:15 am, 9/22-11/17/15
free orientation for class members and the public, Tuesday 9 am, 9/22/15

Sliding scale.

Early-bird pricing this week until 9/8/15.

Click here to register.

Interested but the class doesn’t work for your schedule?
Click here to learn about the benefits of individual mindful therapy for anxiety, pain, and insomnia and here to learn about weight loss and body acceptance counseling.

#mindfuleating #mindfulness #yum #sba  #mbsr #ibs

You can sign up for the classes here.

May you and all beings be nourished.


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    Author

    Reba Connell teaches Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and Mindful Eating classes in the Rockridge neighborhood of Oakland.

    She has completed several levels of study in teaching Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, including a professional training program under the direction of Dr. Saki Santorelli and Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn and a training in teaching Mindful Eating, through UCSD.

    She is deeply engaged with science-based and traditional approaches to healing through food and self-care. Her trainings include Food As Medicine; The Gut Brain; and Preventing and Managing Chronic Inflammation: Special Focus: Nutritional Interventions.  She has been practicing meditation and yoga since 1999.

    Finding mindfulness, movement, and food to make big differences in her own healing from chronic pain, she feels called to share what she is learning with others and to help people make their own discoveries. She is committed to a feminist approach that honors all body shapes and sizes while collaborating in radiant wellness.

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Integrative Health Education for Anxiety and Depression,

Emotional Freedom Techniques and Energy Psychology, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction,

Mental Health Nutrition, Body Liberation, LGBTQIA+

Couples Counseling & Psychotherapy


Continuing Education for Psychologists, Therapists, Nurses, and Health Coaches


Oakland, Rockridge, Berkeley, East Bay, San Francisco Bay Area, live online in California

Spanish-speaking therapist • psicoterapia y consejería en español

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Copyright © L. Rebecca Connell. All Rights Reserved. Images courtesy of Margaretta Mitchell, deflorare.com, Sally Baker, and L. Rebecca Connell.