By Lisa Miller, on Wed Jan 16, 2013 at 8:30 AM ET “Each Person’s life is like a mandala—a vast limitless circle. We stand in the center of our own circle, and everything we see, hear, and think, forms the mandala of our life. We enter a room, and the room is our mandala. We get on the subway, and the subway car is our mandala, down to the teenager checking messages on her i-phone, and the homeless man slumped in the corner. We go for a hike in the mountains and everything as far as we can see is our mandala: the clouds, the trees, the snow on the peaks, even the rattlesnake coiled.”
~Pema Chodron, Living Life Beautifully with Uncertainty and Change
Standing in the center of our own lives is a powerful place to be. If life is in fact a vast limitless circle, it means that not only are all our experiences meaningful and brimming with potential, it also means that our loved ones have their own mandalas to create—even if that means they must make mistakes and experience painful struggle at times.
This was, is still sometimes, a tough concept for me as a mother. I want to prevent problems before they occur especially because my acute foresight spots a snag just as it begins to unravel. And why should it have to unravel if it doesn’t have to? Unraveling is bad. Bad unraveling, bad!
I have lost many nights of sleep and found many a pizza and pint of ice cream in my fretful worrying about unraveling. There are so many people in my life for who my help, if only they would follow it exactly as directed, could be spared struggle, disappointment, anguish, a sore throat, even.
But the truth is that considering the magnitude and mystery of the grand scheme of things here, there’s no way to tell if someone else’s experience is actually an unraveling. Chances are quite good in fact that one’s perception of another’s pitfall is really an incomplete view. You can only stand in the center of your own mandala, not someone else’s. What if their struggles, disappointments, anguish and re occurrent sore throat are meant to lead them to more deeply intricate aspects of personal mandala design?
This realization could unburden many a Catholic and Jewish mother.
What’s more, Pema Chodron goes on to say, “But it’s up to you whether your life is a mandala of neurosis or a mandala of sanity.”
If I habitually lose sleep and gain pizza because of someone else’s problem, I have carefully created a new problem where none existed, and, am choosing to live it as I decide to create a life of neurosis for myself.
Phew. Well, when I put it that way…
 Conversely and coincidentally, as I sit down to edit this article this morning—waiting for my computer to boot up—I glance at Facebook on another device and see right there in my news feed the proof that this is all true: “My happiness depends on me, so you are off the hook.”
This realization could unburden many a spouse, parent, friend, employee, parent, grocery checker, teacher, aunt, and parent.
Dear loved ones, you are officially off the hook. And, I will officially really, really try to stop worrying about you—I know I’m off the hook. See you from the center.
Love,
Lisa
P.S Take your vitamins
By John Y. Brown III, on Mon Jan 14, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET Things I keep in my trunk so I am not unprepared:
1) clean shirt
2) razor and toothbrush
3) spare tire
4) blunt instrument
5) two double A and triple A batteries
6) Umbrella
7) Windshield scraper
8) Flare gun
9) Passport
10) Superman cape
 You just never know when you’ll need these.
Especially Triple A batteries
By John Y. Brown III, on Fri Jan 11, 2013 at 10:00 AM ET Sign up for the fitness challenge right here:
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 It’s a numbers game, right? Of course, it is.
When I started I knew 15 pounds was a lot of pounds to drop from the same body. That’s why I had “or at least 10” as a back up. A sort of high goal and low goal.
What I didn’t anticipate is how hard it would be to lose 10 pounds.
This whole weight loss and improving your health thing actually takes work. And change.
And change isn’t easy. Especially if it means doing something different, which is kind of what change means, I think. Or not doing something the way you’ve always done it –and frankly enjoy doing it (like eating what you want because it tastes good and not exercising because it hurts). That’s just plain hard! And gives one pause. And makes change seems like a really bad idea. You know? Which means you won’t change.
And, of course, change is especially tough if on this journey to change all alone.
You’ve heard the saying “There’s power in numbers”
I have to. But am not sure why I mention it here.
Oh! No, that wasn’t it. It will come to me….
 Oh, I remember now. Yes, if you are …fat or overweight and lazy, like me, you may decide you want to change.
Well, good luck with that. If you are trying to do it alone.
There’s no accountability. No sense of commitment. No plan. No mentor. No process. No reliable resource offering guidance.
Just a fat, lazy guy who wishes he weren’t as fat and lazy as he feels at this moment. And no matter how intensely you feel that, it’s not enough in itself to lead to any sort of measurable change.
So what can help?
You have two choices.
1) You can be a miserable overweight and unhealthy person who hates yourself and will fail again trying to diet and get in shape.
If you are satisfied with this option, stop here. There’s no need to even go to the other option. I’m going to sleep on it myself (I joke) But if you aren’t satisfied with #1, try #2.
2) Sign on with The Recovering Politician and Jonathan Miller and me to try to make some real, incremental and lasting changes. Not for fun. It won’t be fun. Not for torture, even though it will feel like torture at first. Unless you are in to torture, which is none of my business. But rather because the pain of staying the way you are is greater than the pain of changing. That’s when I get motivated. And you can too. And not have to do it alone.
Seriously.
Jonathan and I joke a lot and try to have fun with our little weight loss undertaking, but if we had to identify a single silent health problem in America today, few would argue it’s obesity and lack of exercise. And as guilty of both as I am. I’m trying to make some small changes…that could create some pretty big results for me in the long run.
I hope you join me in trying too.
And, yes, there is power in numbers to go back to that topic…but there’s much more the RP can offer to help you get serious….and then get fit. Or at least fitter. Hey, I will not be part of any health improvement process that allows striving for perfection to undermine small measurable progress. Real change is the most probably with realistic assessments and objectives combined with a liveable plan that has worked for others.
Click for details. We have all that here. Read about it.
And then sign up: either at the top of this post, or right below here:
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By RP Nation, on Thu Jan 10, 2013 at 9:15 AM ET Our nation prides itself on intellectual achievements. We seek rational solutions. We live in an “information age” where knowledge is king.
Yet we are not solving drug addiction, violence, or war. After a record eleven years, war is routine. Mass gun murders occur monthly. One-third of us take anti-depressants. We have the biggest gap between rich and poor, and the smallest middle class, in three-quarters of a century. In a country that prided itself on education, debt increasingly precludes college and our international ranking is at new depths. Chronic disorders including autoimmune, intestinal, brain disorders at all ages, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, and diabetes, are growing rapidly. Is this where intellectualization leads?
We glamorize the brain and its abilities. The future, we insist, will be the result of technology, the product of a vast brain trust. But is that a future we want? Will that bring more social ineptness and alienation, more mass murders, more routine war?
Sage Mohammed Nasser says we must “speak from our heart, not our brain.” Can the heart be the next plane of evolution? Energetically, the electromagnetic field created by the heart extends 15 feet, and is 5000 times more powerful than the brain. The heart is mostly nerve tissue! It has a deep memory and a consciousness. When we interact, do we assess the heart more than brain?
Deep inside, we know the heart’s worth. We have watched Ebenezer Scrooge, and vowed that would never be us. We know baby monkeys given nourishment, languish and die without a mothers love. Alienation and loneliness shorten longevity.
Read the rest of…
Dr. Jim Roach: Heart Intelligence
By Josh Bowen, on Thu Jan 10, 2013 at 8:30 AM ET I have written a blog about this topic many times but at this very moment I am watching the Biggest Loser on NBC. Jillian Michaels, Bob the trainer and some other guy are imposing their fitness will on a select group of people for the world to see, all for a cash prize determined on how much a number on a scale decreases. Does anyone else see something wrong with that? First of all, I have been known to push people beyond their limits and I am by no means scared to make someone sore or scream uncle. However, pushing around a number of 300 plus pounders and treating them like United State Marine Corps privates doesn’t sit well with me. Neither does judging a contest by a number (yes it is “reality” TV but these things give people complexes). There are great things about weight loss shows but I often think this drives your everyday gym goer to obsess about the scale, when in all reality it’s not the end all be all. And as a side note, you have to inspire change in people not demand it. To get the very most out of a person, you must INSPIRE them to do it themselves, not force them into submission. This is not what personal training is about.
Off my soapbox. Back to the topic at hand….
 I’ve often wondered about certain strategies gym goers employ. The one strategy that has vexed my mind is a ritual of sorts and a lot of people do it every day. You know if you do something every day and expect a different result, that makes you crazy rightJ. It is at like the Holy Grail, the very reason people come to the gym and try to eat right, it’s the difference between a good day and a bad day, it is the end all be all. It is stepping on the scale! Don’t try to pretend you don’t do it because we all are guilty, especially in a place where there are scales and we are trying to lose weight, gain weight or stay the same. But the very fact people are control by this instrument, this measurement of body mass can be alarming and skewed. The end all be all may not be “all” it’s cracked up to be.
Let’s back track for a second. What are we trying to do? Most people? Answer is losing weight. Statistics show the most common goal for any gym goers is losing weight. But that should really be the goal? The answer is yes and no. If you are 50 lbs overweight and you need to lose 50 pounds then I would say losing weight would be a great goal for you. However, if you are trying to lose 10-20 pounds, does it really matter what the scale says as long as your body fat changes? Of course not! I tell clients all the time; if I could have you weigh the same weight you are today and look 100% different, would it matter what the scale said? 9 times out of 10, the number didn’t matter.
Read the rest of…
Josh Bowen: A Lesson from the Biggest Loser
By Lisa Miller, on Wed Jan 9, 2013 at 8:30 AM ET I used to ask myself how I could become part of a world of solutions that create peace, if I as an individual, did not really feel peaceful most of the time. How could I have happy peaceful relationships if I knew that my own happiness and sense of peace was dependent on external factors that were fleeting at best: new jobs, latest diet, purchases, trips.
This was a distressing awareness, especially because I was professionally drawn to the fields of family counseling, social work, rehabilitation, motherhood! How could I represent health and vitality without living it in the way of enduring longevity?
To live at a heart-aware level of consciousness, where taking the deep breath that integrates head and heart can create profound changes, is really a simple process actually.
We begin with ourselves, with self-care strategies, and they become not only magical remedies for daily stress-reduction, but they serve as the foundation of how we extend ourselves forward into our personal and professional relationships, into the community, into the world.
Simply, meditation and deep breathing as regular practices can do it for you. There is no club to have to join, no equipment to have to buy, no complicated process to learn; it involves just sitting quietly and allowing yourself to clear your mind and in effect, to strengthen your heart, immune system, spiritual life.
By sitting in silence and really breathing for just 20-30 minutes out of 24 hours in the day, compelling scientific evidence shows the effects of decreased fight/flight response by way of lowered blood pressure, reduced production of stress hormones (like cortisol), and reduced anxiety.
 But most compelling is how we feel in the remaining 23.5 hours of the day. There is no separation between our minds and bodies; when the mind is relaxed, physiology relaxes, rebalances, and can respond rather than react to the environment. Responding to the external world of chaos and change from a heart-head integrated place, can only come from an internal world of restful awareness.
This was an amazing realization for me and brought on some profound changes that I could never dream possible for myself. And the realization didn’t come from the data and information about how reactive, restless, and irritable I tended to be; it came as I began to feel the results of the actual practice of sitting in silence and breathing for at least 20 minutes a day.
Meditation and deep breathing are tools for rediscovering the body’s own inner intelligence. Practiced for thousands of years, it’s not about forcing the mind to be quiet; it’s about finding the silence that’s already there and letting it lead the way through your life.
Here are brief instructions for a personal meditation and deep breathing practice. If you are interested in personal coaching or in having me lead a workshop in your community, get in touch. For today, this can be a first step into this amazing realm of mind-body-soul medicine that reduces stress, strengthens immunity, and begins to open that space in yourself that transcends space and time.
Read the rest of…
Lisa Miller: Meditation — A How-to Guide for Beginners
By John Y. Brown III, on Mon Jan 7, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET Being sick with the flu is a double curse.
You feel awful physically, of course.
But you also view everything in your life through the same miserable, feeble, nauseous lens…making everything around you less beautiful, special, worthwhile or even tolerable.
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I have cursed at my cold/flu (whatever it is) to no avail.
I’ve tried using rare curse words I haven’t used in months –or even years. I’ve tried new combinations and several hyphenated curse words
I’m not sure even exist. And, of course, I’ve used the standard fare curse words we are all familiar with and often turn up in
ordinary distressing situations –that aren’t cold/flu related.
But not a single curse word, hyphenated or otherwise, or any combination thereof has helped one whit!
D*****t!
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Does anyone know what keys to press to Restore the Brain to Factory Settings?
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You know your case of this cold/flu thing going around is bad when you see the old Bon Jovi “Dead or Alive” video and your first response to it is, “Dead? Alive? Why such a big deal about the difference?”
By Josh Bowen, on Thu Jan 3, 2013 at 8:30 AM ET
Sign up Here For The RP Fitness Challenge:
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Welcome everyone to the #TeamRP versus #TeamJYB3 Fitness Challenge Extravaganza!
I will be serving as the resident fitness extraordinaire/referee/personal trainer. To increase your interest and to curve your appetite for all things funny and fitness, we will be documenting everyone that will be occurring between John Y. Brown III and Jonathan Miller on their quest to their fitness Mount Everest. We will also be supplying the most up to date fitness tips and tricks from yours truly.
Now who am I and why should you care about what I say? For the past 10 years I have dedicated my life to fitness; through training clients, educating trainers and writing fitness articles. I graduated from the University of Kentucky with a Bachelor’s degree in Exercise Science and along the way I have collected 15 nationally accredited certifications.
 More important than all the accomplishments, my experience in dealing with most every situation imaginable holds to be the greatest aspect of me as a trainer. I am currently training at Fitness Plus 2, a training studio off Harrodsburg Rd. in Bellerive Plaza next to Kroger’s, on the Lexington/Nicholasville line
Now that you know who I am and what I do, let’s talk about the challenge. Jonathan and JYB3 will be competing to see who can influence the most amount of people to enlist into our fitness challenge. The challenge is simple, just pledge to workout and eat healthy for the next six months. On a weekly basis I will be emailing everyone in the challenge fitness tips and motivational quotes to keep everyone going. Also, everyone will be receiving a consultation, via email, with yours truly! I will also be offering discounted personal training session with me as we go along.
So join the challenge and see the changes both Jonathan and JYB3 go through on their quest to be in the best physical shape of their lives.
Follow me on twitter @jbtrainer, follow me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/joshjbbowen and check my blog out at www.joshjbbowen.com. Welcome to the challenge, you won’t regret it.
By Jonathan Miller, on Wed Jan 2, 2013 at 8:35 AM ET Sign up for the fitness challenge right here:
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 If you are like us, each new year begins with a resolution to live a healthier lifestyle. And if you are like us, that resolution is long forgotten soon after Punxsutawney Phil sees his shadow.
As Yogi Berra might have said, “It’s Groundhog Day all over again.”
Join us in proclaiming that 2013 will be different. And we at The Recovering Politician are here to help.
For the past few weeks, we’ve been recovering from years of political stress by engaging in a fierce (OK, mostly hilarious) fitness challenge, supervised by one of the region’s finest personal trainers, Josh Bowen.
  Follow these links to read how our competition was launched, how John Y. resisted temptation on a Mediterranean cruise and then tried to tempt Jonathan with a candy gift basket, and how Jonathan learned that emulating a movie character played by the Sexist Man Alive (see pics at right) wasn’t necessarily the optimal fitness plan.
But this isn’t about us. A key objective of our Web site has always been to identify ways to serve the public from our private posts. And our philosophy remains the same: The optimal kind of help anyone can provide others — whether government or individual — is neither a handout nor a cold shoulder, but rather empowerment with tools they can use to improve their own lives
So as the New Year begins, we open up the challenge to you. Whether you are interested in losing weight, firming up, or simply living a healthier lifestyle, joining our New Year’s Fitness Challenge will provide you the following assistance:
- A FREE email assessment and fitness plan design by our personal training expert, Josh Bowen.
- FREE weekly emails with tips from Josh, and “insights” (read: struggles and jokes) from John Y. and me.
- The option to help you find a certified personal trainer in any city in the U.S.
- The option to PUBLISH your progress reports on the pages of The Recovering Politician.
- The FUN of participating in a fitness challenge with millions (OK, maybe dozens) of other people like you, going through the same challenges.
Best of all, there’s no catch, no hidden print, and no cost.
Simply sign up in the form at top or below:
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You will hear from Josh soon after, and the challenge begins.
So please join us, and ensure that we aren’t the only losers in the new year.
By Lisa Miller, on Wed Jan 2, 2013 at 8:30 AM ET Happy happy happy new year! What a great time to think about what we want for ourselves.
Catching up on a few seasons of recorded television programs this winter break, I watched another Oprah’s Next Chapter and found some intriguing inspiration from her interviews with former Olympians: Carl Lewis, Bruce Jenner, Mary Lou Retton, (and my childhood gymnastics idol) Nadia Comaneci.
Despite having quit a promising career in ballet myself by age 6, despite having only ever hit foul balls in all my 4 years of girls’ softball, and having always been too afraid to kick my legs straight up from a bridge into an actual back-walk-over, I still recognize in myself some Olympic-status qualities.
Yes! I rock, it is true!
But really, we all have it. It’s woven into our DNA, and we see it even in new babies born too early, fighting to survive. Simply, it is one of the most basic of human qualities: Perseverance, and with a capital P.
While I have not persevered toward excellence in athletics, these Oprah interviews triggered my realization that I absolutely deserve some serious gold, or at least a bronze here and there, in a few significant areas of my life.
None of these athletes medaled before YEARS of training. Bruce talked about his 6 years of daily dedication, Mary Lou described her single-pointed focus, Carl said that he was never competing against people as much as he was competing against perfection itself.
Well I computed my own personal stats and it seems that I too have quite a record here. I’ve been a dedicated, focused, striving toward excellence mother for nearly 19 years. 19! My kids are in pretty good shape, so this is some measure of success.
Read the rest of…
Lisa Miller: The New Year, Olympians & Perseverance
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