Eat your vegetables. Exercise every day. Say your prayers. Have fun. Be Kind. Don’t eat so much sugar. Remember your friends. Don’t forget to floss. Go to meetings. Oh yes, be grateful.

For those of us that have a not-so-nice and-maybe-a-bit-too-big seam of OCD this part of our user manual can be oppressive. The inner voice that demands we be good can get hold of the responsibility to take care of ourselves with such vengeance that we have a hard time measuring up to our intentions. We might end up in a place where we don’t like ourselves so much.  That might not be good for us!

Kathleen has been teaching me for the past few years about health coaching and the importance of keeping our values at the center of things. What does our heart want?  For many of us that question may be more difficult to answer than we realize. She is showing me the real importance of mining that question – especially in the presence of another. First it puts us in relationship. If you’re an introvert like me, that is not a particularly easy space to explore – especially where suspending judgment and being honest is really called for. I like to go inside my head, make up my mind and then go show off. This works for some things I guess. But maybe not so well for discovering our own most cherished wishes. I find that when I talk about deep things with others I get deeper. I find when I talk about deep things with myself I get lost.

I used to swim for exercise. I was a competitive swimmer in school and I love the water. The beach is one of my favorite places. I have some pretty natural instincts when I get in the water and can get in touch with my inner fish. But I’ve found that a pretty lonely form of exercise and for me a bit boring. Many years ago I switched my regular exercise to a racquet sport. It’s more social and competition is a piece that can give me energy. The mutual obligation to meet on the court at the agreed upon time can overcome the inner voice that says, with a convincing tone, “It’s cold out there, you really better stay under the covers.”

A few years ago I began to develop enough arthritis in a knee that I couldn’t continue to play. Through the magic of an HCG program I’ve lost a fair amount of weight. Surprise – my knee is better. So I’ve gotten back to the courts. Wow. I really like it. Because I think it might be better on my knee, I’ve added another racquet game to my routine and it has caused me to go from being a moderately good advanced player of one game to a rank beginner of the new one.  My new game is characterized by mis-hits, poor timing, lopsided scores not in my favor, feeling really clumsy.  Guess what?  I’ve discovered myself in relationships exploring values – like the value of humility vs humiliation, or angry impatience vs accepting patience, or anger at self vs seeing the place I might do it better, or too much concentration, or the very low value of comparing myself to others. This is becoming a spiritual practice – a game of the soul, the craftsmanship of creating a good sport!

I’m not perfect at this. As I reflect on the value of getting back to swatting at little balls in a small room I realize how fortunate I am to be doing this with some really good sports. They are patient with me, offer me with praise when I make a good shot, and celebrate with me when we get out of breath. They laugh with me when I do something silly. They are honest in their feedback. They are generous with their advice – but not overly generous. We laugh. We sweat together. I’m not saying winning isn’t important but I do think that the fun of being together has become as important as the cardiovascular workout. I’m guessing this is better for my heart than swimming laps.

I’ve been out of town for a couple of weeks and just sent an e-mail to the crowd asking when we get to chase little balls around a small white room again.  David wrote back and said we are having a sunrise service Monday morning.  Amen.

In my last column I mentioned my emerging attraction to the concept of “wellbeing” as a major determinant of overall health.  Having declared myself a student of wellbeing, I’m discovering that its recipe is complex.  As I work with others to help them chart a course that addresses illness or symptoms of un-wellness, I often wonder if our worries don’t have an inordinate influence.  At the same time I wonder if our ambitions don’t get in the way as well.

I hang around with a group of individuals that think about these things.  An image gets raised about being comfortable in our own skin.  I’m thinking this image may be a window into the sources of wellbeing.

An image that may help us understand the sources of un-wellness in our lives is that of the roller coaster.  When we’re at the top of the roller coaster we think well of ourselves.  But this feeling is fragile.  It depends on measures of wellbeing that can too easily be lost – such as the number of our possessions or our judgments of ourselves in comparison to others or of the size of our bank account. This is the place where our egos feed. When we are at the bottom of this roller coaster we dwell in fear – a place of inadequacy, insufficiency, insecurity, guilt, and shame.  While we all know this place intimately, I worry we don’t know how to share it adequately.  Sharing seems to be one of the few ways to diminish fear’s power over us.  Unfortunately, the other self that rides the top of the roller coaster doesn’t think it would look good to allow others to see this part of ourselves.

As a fellow says, at the beginning of this journey to the place of serenity, the middle place is a spot we pass through briefly on our way from one extreme to the other.  We begin to learn that the middle place, where we are right-sized between the highs and lows, is a source of wellbeing.  How might this insight apply to the theme of Ages and Stages?   Some of you know I was a pediatrician for 25 years before becoming a functional medicine practitioner.  I spent many years watching families deal with the challenges of illness and abnormal growth and development.  In my observation, when parents were able to help the child find the middle ground, things went well.  What that middle ground looked like to me was a realistic acceptance of what is, and a place of genuine problem solving to get through each and every hard spot.  What a beautiful path that can be when traveled well.  I saw many families do it with grace and patience – and falls along the way of course.  When things didn’t go well it was often because the parent was overly influenced by the need to be high on the roller coaster, or was depressed by the certainty that their life was destined to be full of pain and loss. Possibly the most common problem I saw was a consequence of the natural and instinctual desire on the part of the parents to protect the child.  Clearly, protecting children is one of parents’ (and adults’) most important responsibilities.  At the same time, helping children accept and cope is necessary, and often our desire to protect gets in the way of allowing them to find that middle ground – where how we look or what might happen doesn’t get in the way of doing the next right thing.  Fear and worry for your child can elicit the stress response of fight or flight – neither of which is likely to help in the moment. On the other hand, peer support and sharing of the hard parts can be a powerful means of coping.  I was witness to many families coping. I can say with confidence that the material possessions of the families had little to do with what part of the roller coaster they travelled. Their willingness to reach out and connect surely did.

To your health.

A story runs through my family. It weaves the theme of the challenges of women manifesting themselves. My daughter Corinna has a photo blog called Bird Wanna Whistle.  She’s a writer by profession and a mother and she’s good at both. Very good. Ezra is at a challenging age. He is stubborn and willful. If you say, “Go west young man” he runs east. Her professional life is stepping up very well too. She’s had a couple of promotions over the last few years and a lot of people depend on her. It’s my impression that when she tells people to go west, they go in caravans – well-organized caravans. Will is a research scientist and is at that stage in his career when a lot depends on what he says too. Their life is super full and yet, a year ago, she decided she needed to stretch herself. She had started using her camera regularly to post pictures of Ezra for all his admiring family. She had warmed to its use. “I find the click of the shutter sends a little ripple of wakefulness up my spine and my eyes search the details of my environment like never before. It gives me the feeling of being a traveler in my own life and encourages a mindfulness that the familiar patterns of the day-to-day can blur.”

So she made a commitment to post a picture every day on this blog. More than that, though, she found herself exploring these images with words “because that’s the realm I’m most at home in”.  The year comes to an end in a few weeks. What a journey it’s been. I’m not sure what she’ll end up saying about this experience but it has been a powerful and moving thing for me to observe.

The name of the blog, Bird Wanna Whistle comes from the song, Corinna Corinna.  It evokes a powerful image of that woman, my daughter, making a commitment to let out of her something natural. In the process, using a ritualized discipline, she has learned how to stir up a sort of music that is beautiful, explores the great unknown and comes from a deep and soulful source.

Of course, and I am sure she would be the first to say, it doesn’t happen every day. But she gets it more often than she doesn’t.

And where does this tie into the family story?  My grandmother had a song she wanted to sing too. She had the dream of being a doctor. I’m not familiar with the details and neither you nor I need to be. That was an extraordinary and rare dream then. But she was a stubborn and willful woman by all accounts and she became one of only two women to graduate from the University of Michigan – School of Medicine in 1900. She did practice briefly, but as the story goes, the prevailing belief of the day was too strong.  In order for her to have a family she was forced to retire before having children. My own mother faced similar prejudice when after graduating near the top of her law school class also at the U of M, the only job law firms were interested in offering her were as a legal secretary.

And what does this family story have to do with Women’s Health?  I’ve been using the term “wellbeing” with a number of my clients lately. I like it. As a word, it encapsulates my belief that a person’s wellbeing may the most powerful index of how healthy they are and how healthy they will be. My grandmother was well until near the end of her life, as was my mother, but I have it in my mind that neither of them ever really were able to sing their most beautiful songs because of a subtle and pervasive societal view that women shouldn’t really sing – at least not very loudly. They both led lives full of meaning and influence but I also think there was a hint of sadness in them both and perhaps a touch of anger that may have hurt them. Go look at Bird Wanna Whistle. See what the change in our world’s tolerance of, if not celebration of, the songs of women means.

And be well.

Raindrop study -- Bird Wanna Whistle 09.19.2011