Choicetimes

Occasionally, Animas Corporation puts on free seminars about the insulin pump or about diabetes in general. Today I attended one of those seminars. In attendance was an older man who liked to talk about his experiences, One lady who has had diabetes for about 12 years, two moms and an eight year old boy newly diagnosed (last 6 months). The seminar was to be on advanced pump training. We covered a little bit on that but, as usual, my attention was directed to the person who needed the most acute assistance. And that was the boy. I felt so much empathy for his mother and the other mom who was there to get as much information as they could. There is so much to know. The context that is given people is more useful to the medical profession than it is to the people who need to deal with diabetes every day. I have been searching for a way to develop this context. I got a flash of insight as I was driving home from the class. All of my yoga, meditation and “spiritual” study and work have revealed to me that diabetes is a disease that mirrors disharmony. The disharmony in ourselves, our family and our society. The whole object of the game we must play as diabetics is to manually create harmony. Yoga, meditation and spiritual endeavor lights the path for this game and may be the ingredients needed to create a more useful context for all the knowledge and skill that must be acquired to become a master of the game. As with life so with diabetes. I gave the two moms my blog site and hope they get to read some of the posts on diabetes.

It has been awhile since I have written a post here. I went into a kind of funk and did not feel much like writing. So here it goes. I have made a change in my yoga practice. For ten years I had been going to a Bikram Studio. For the past three years I have supplemented that with yoga teacher training at Kripalu. Even though I was training in Kripalu my practice stayed with Bikram. Well, I have moved on from from Bikram. I am now a member of a yoga Shala (school) called Anuttara. Their website is anuttarayoga.com. The yoga room is beautiful and the head teacher is amazing. He is filled with knowledge about the history and philosophy of yoga. The classes are dynamic and focus on opening up the hips and upper body strength. There is a lot of vinyasa flow with sun and moon salutations. This type of yoga is more aligned with Kripalu. The Shala is becoming certified to become a training center for teachers. The first teacher training is scheduled for March. I am considering participating in this training. I feel a little on my own in making this transition. My sister (who is a Bikram teacher), my mother, my father and my brother continue to do Bikram. I have invited them to come to the new studio but no one has taken me up as of yet. I hope they will soon.

I recently attended an Advanced Yoga Training Program at Kripalu up in the Berkshire Mountains.  Yoga has become a metaphor for what I do on a daily basis in attempting to maintain blood sugar balance.  I always write an assessment of my training experiences.  I got some keen insights into diabetes while at this training.  Here are some excerpts from my written assessment.

Quite frankly, I had not planned on attending another Teacher Training Module at Kripalu after  my participation in Module 1 in May of 2007.  It is not that I had a bad experience.  Rather, I felt at the time, as if I had taken my yoga teacher training as far as I desired.  I attended the 200 hour training in October of 2006.   I had been going to 5 Bikram classes per week for the past six years and I wanted to deepen my yoga practice.  I looked at the Bikram training but it did not appeal to me.  A dear friend of mine had attended the 200 hour training a year prior and recommended I look at Kripalu.  I decided to do it.    My mindset was that I was making an investment into a month of work that I hoped would assist me in navigating the path I was on.  I wanted to receive validation that I was on the right path and I wanted to be able to move faster.  At the time, everything pointed to yoga teacher training  at Kripalu as a possible right direction.

I wish to provide a bit of history.  I moved to Florida in 1997.  I was 35 years of age.  I moved from Rochester, NY where I was born, grew up, went to college and worked.   My father was the town doctor of Churchville, NY, a beautiful suburb of Rochester.  I am the oldest of four children.  One brother and two sisters, all within 6 years of each other.  My childhood was seemingly perfect.  The ideal middle class family.  Then, at age 14, I was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes.  My father was able to “fix” about everything but he wasn’t going to be able to fix this.  The dysfunction in the family started to become apparent right around this time.  My mother would leave my father five years later after a slow deterioration in health, money, productive relationship behavior, etc.  I survived the diagnosis, school and the breakdown of our family and continued to survive.  At that time there were no blood sugar meters and the insulin worked on a 24 hour curve.  Type 1 diabetes presents a difficult task and it wasn’t until 2005 when I was able to take a break from work and redirect my approach that I have been able to master blood sugar control and achieve acceptable results.  During high school I played soccer, hockey and golf at highly competitive levels.  Each year was more of a challenge as others were progressing at a faster rate than I was able to keep up with as I was struggling with the physical, mental and emotional challenges that Type 1 diabetes presented me.  I graduated from the University of Rochester with a degree in Political Science.  The idea was to go to law school.  But finances made that an impossibility.  So, I got a job as a litigation legal assistant at a large law firm in Rochester.  That was enough to persuade me not to be a lawyer.  After a year of that I became an associate with a small business consulting firm.  I helped develop, market and facilitate training programs that enhanced managers’ and leaders’ skills and abilities.  From then on I would be a business training developer/facilitator and systems flow designer.  I learned a lot with this company and took much of what I learned to my next corporate level job with a hotel franchise company called Microtel.  I was the original Director of Training and Quality Assurance for Microtel.  Eventually the company was sold and after cashing in some stock options I began to pursue graduate studies in psychology and human development.   That was fun (sarcasm).  I then moved to Florida, still unable to truly get a handle on the task of balancing blood sugars but still alive albeit broke, tired, frustrated and a bit down.  

After a couple of years at odd jobs my brother and I started a company that had, at its core, an internet based software application.  My role was the development of the application and training and my brother’s role was to lead the company.  Things worked and success followed.  Four years into the venture I negotiated a deal to relinquish my interest in the business partnership. I was so blessed to have been given this opportunity and while some of it is due to the work I did a great deal of the blessing comes from my brother who is very generous and one of the few enlightened people I know on this planet.  He has continued to grow the company and make the right moves.  This was about four years ago.  I made some significant changes to my approach with my diabetes and to my life.  I increased my yoga practice, supplement intake, acupuncture, cranio sacral work, spiritual inquiry and exercise.  I focused more on food,  replaced daily injections with the insulin pump and, perhaps most importantly, made a commitment to get healthy.  A training mentor of mine once said, “99% commitment is a bitch, 100% commitment is a cinch.”  I was able to experience this truth.  Now that I did not have to go to work I made my number one objective figuring out how to balance my blood sugar.  I did it.  In fact, I have had four years of very acceptable results.  Since moving to Florida 11 years ago I had landed on the healing path I had been searching for most of my life.  The Universe was supporting me in magical and wonderful ways.  Every year was getting better.

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I recently hosted a good friend of mine at my house for a week intensive.  For the past 5 years he has been battling with the issue of addiction and its effects.  He has been going through fairly intense treatment (Re-hab, AA meetings, other group meetings, counseling, incarceration, etc.) and has had success in the last 2 years abstaining from alcohol and his drug of choice.  In designing my approach in working with my friend I decided that what we would attempt to do is make a kind of paradigm shift in how he viewed himself.  My theory was that if this shift could be made it would loosen up some of the chains that were attaching him to his addiction.  Specifically, I wanted to have him entertain, at first, the thought that perhaps the way he was seeing things might not be the only way.  For any change to occur it is critical to start where one is so we discussed his present beliefs, assumptions, conclusions, judgments, prejudices, thoughts, opinions, etc.  Then I presented to him several maps that offered a different way of looking at “The Territory.”  The territory is one’s view.  And one’s view is structured with the beliefs, assumptions, conclusions, judgments, prejudices, thoughts, opinions, etc. that one currently holds.  I think we accomplished our goal.  He did make a shift.  But the work does not end with one week of work.  It continues.  Forever.  As part of our agreement in working together I asked him to write about his experience.  Here is what he wrote…………………………..

I recently spent a week down in Florida with Michael and experienced his “wholeness” workshop.  He exposed me to a variety of readings, meditations, videos, exercise, diet, and pod casts.   Prior to my week with Michael I had been feeling  depressed and  wallowing in self pity.  I consider myself a well educated individual who has had many supportive people in my life.  I had a typical childhood with loving parents who provided me with everything a child can be given growing up.  I was very active in school, athletics, and surrounded myself with very giving and gifted friends.  Of those friends, I consider Michael to be one of the most caring, giving and gifted.

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I recently completed another week long one on one intensive.   Yoga, meditation, spiritual and metaphysical studies and talk therapy made up the bulk of the work we did.  As I mentioned in the previous post this person has been dealing with the issue of addiction and has been in recovery for a few years.  However, his recovery process has led him to be “stuck” in a pattern of not knowing what to do next.  Better to be stuck here then drunk or in jail or worse.  So, the goal of the week was to help him get “unstuck.”  He is writing an assessment of his experience and I will post this as soon as I get it.  In the meantime, like the mirror that is life or rather the life that is like a mirror, I find myself battling with my own “stuckness.”  To add to my dilemma, I recently read several books by Daniel Quinn.  His most famous book is “Ishmael.”  I also read “The Holy,” “The Story of B,” and “My Ishmael.”  The impact Quinn’s writing has had on me is both disturbing and validating.  The ideas and perspectives set forth by Quinn have put into question a few of the foundational assumptions that most all of us have.  At the same time, he has helped to validate some of the paths of inquiry I was instinctively pursuing albeit in the approach -avoid manner in which I pursue.  The concept and the reality of competition are the two paths, in particular, that have been aroused.  I recommend reading Daniel Quinn.  I would caution any new reader of Quinn that he or she proceeds at their own risk.  I see the picture that Quinn is painting as another map of the territory.  I am glad that this is not one of the first maps I was introduced to.  After my recent week long intensive and the reading of Ishamel and the other books as well as watching the apparent instability and insecurity of our world ripen to the point of bursting I feel like the deer caught in the headlights.  I know I should calmly proceed in the direction I was going and make a successful trip to the other side of the road but I feel frozen in my tracks.  Part of me wants to go back in the direction I came.  If I choose to do this will I make it without getting clipped?  And if I do make it back from where I came will I just be going backwards?  Another part of me wants to jump right into the front windshield in attempt to stop the madness of reform and so called progress. But what good will this do?  Maybe I will take out a few of the “evil doers” but there are a freakin army of them and it would be a certain suicide mission.  I am not quite ready for that.  I just hope I make my mind up before it is too late.