A Few Good Things

First, I want to share with you a special encounter my son had on his birthday with a beautiful barred owl (commonly known as a hoot owl) on Gabriola Island. Owls truly captivate me with their ancient and unreadable faces.

NPR LIFE-KIT

Secondly, I just received a Life Kit topic from NPR on a subject close to my heart – social prescribing.

“It’s the idea of health professionals literally prescribing you a community activity or resource the same way they’d prescribe you pills or therapies,” she explains. The prescriptions include exercise, art, music, exposure to nature and volunteering, which are known to have enormous benefits to physical and mental health.

And it all starts with “flipping the script from what’s the matter with you to focusing on what matters to you,” Hotz says. “What are your activities that you love? What gets you out of bed in the morning?”

This a favourite topic of mine and I have written about it under the headings ikigai and salutogenesis – the gradual shift in medicine to a health-creating rather than disease-preventing culture. The work that I do, based on Morita Therapy – is a health-promoting methodology.

I greatly appreciate NPR’s LifeKit – their topics are timely and always useful. I hope they can continue as their funding is currently under threat. The link to the article will be in the notes.

Third a poem

Forgotten Corners by Jeff Foster

Feed the cat.

Fold the Towels.

Clean the lint from the dryer.

 

Say thank you for someone’s kindness

And mean it.

 

This is the temple –

Not on some distant mountaintop,

but here,

in a messy kitchen,

in a real apology,

in a long exhale

when you’re stuck in morning traffic.

 

Enlightenment isn’t an escape,

It’s seeing, really seeing,

What’s right in front of you.

 

It’s staying.

Even when it’s uncomfortable.

Even when it’s brutally mundane.

There’s holiness in every breath

Notes

1:) Life Kit Link for Social Prescribing. Besides the story, there is a four-minute audio, or you can choose the transcript. I recommend the whole thing.

2:) It’s hot, which is inevitable because it is summer. I hope you get to spend time cooling your feet in a river, lake or ocean this season or strolling through a forest trail. I have been having a few walks in the early morning hours, which is a great time to do absolutely anything. That is, if you went to bed at a reasonable time the night before. :-))

3:) Please accept my thanks for taking time to read my blog. I love your emails and messages, and do hope I haven’t missed replying to any of you. I hope you take to heart and to action some of the ideas in LifeKit. We have heard them all before but it is a great reminder – do things that you love to do- it’s good for your health. All my best wishes, Trudy