Your Hallelujah

One of my favourite things about this time of year is listening to Christmas music.  Over the last few years I’ve really enjoyed Leona Lewis’s album Christmas, With Love, which delivers the perfect balance of fun and lower-tempo songs, originals and classics, and really showcases lots of different sides of her personality and musical talent.  Anyway, one of the slower tracks on the album is Your Hallelujah, a beautiful, emotionally charged song.  I was driving home from work the other day and found myself almost in tears when the song came on, which compelled me to write a few words about the song and what it means to me.

The song, for me, brings absent loved ones to mind.  Not just my own, but others’ too.  In fact, the first time I heard it was around the time I’d found out a colleague had lost his dad.  I didn’t even know the guy that well and he’d probably think it a bit strange if he knew this, but I felt quite affected by the incident and wished there was something I could’ve done to help.  I remember thinking of this guy and his family when the song came on, and now it reminds me of other people whose absence is always felt more at this time of year.

Remembering lost loved ones at Christmas

The first verse and chorus of Your Hallelujah go like this:

Winter's cold, in the light
Somebody's waiting
Feel the warmth, safe and sound now
All the joy, all the fears
You can let go now
Watch the snow gently fall down

Someone needs you
Someone loves you
Hallelujah
Now you're coming home
Hallelujah
Angels calling out to you
You can hear them sing your hallelujah

These lyrics, along with the beautiful melody, strike a chord with me and make me feel a little more connected to those I know who are no longer with us.  I envisage those people at peace, and wish a little that they were coming home as the song suggests.  In my post Save You I talk of a chap I knew who had recently taken his own life, and how I wished, as most of us do in these situations, that he could have known how many people would have begged him to stay.  The lyric someone needs you; someone loves you reminds me that we should always make sure the people around us know how much we value them.

So, at this time of year, I feel it’s really important to tell and show our friends, family, admired acquaintances, inspiring colleagues, and any other important people in our lives, that they are important to us.  That we need them and love them.  And this has also got me thinking of those people who are unfortunate enough not to have any loved ones to celebrate Christmas with.  When I see homeless people in the street, particularly around Christmas, I occasionally sit and have a chat with them as I think sometimes this might be more needed than a few coins or a coffee - well, actually, a chat AND a coffee is my preferred offering! – just to give them a feeling that they are valued; they are needed as much as anyone else in this world.  I hope I’ll find some time this year to spread some festive cheer to the less fortunate members of my local community, perhaps even by doing some volunteering with the Salvation Army or some such organisation.

To sum up, I’m making a big effort this Christmas to make as many people around me as possible feel needed and loved.  Spending as much quality time with friends and family as I can, making sure they know how grateful I am to have that time with them, and extending some of that kinship to those who may be lonely.  I love that by doing this I will be lifting my own spirits as well as that of those around me (hopefully!) and hope that you will all do the same and have a very Merry Christmas :)

The Trouble is, This Trouble is Ours

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the drinking culture we have in this country.  I’ve never been a massive drinker, but my current job involves, amongst other things, helping people to cut down on their alcohol, which has made me think of alcohol in a slightly different light in recent months.  I’ve become acutely aware that we have a huge drinking problem here in the UK, and I find this deeply concerning.

 

What’s the Problem?

It’s not unusual to enjoy a drink or two of an evening or weekend.  In fact, you’ll most likely be considered a little bit odd if you don’t.  Most of us would think nothing of having a couple of glasses of wine after work, a few pints on a Friday evening, or even getting absolutely smashed on a Saturday night.  It’s an incredibly normal way to behave, and those who decline to participate are often made to feel a little socially outcast.

Concern starts to creep in when you realise how easy it is to put your health at increased risk through drinking.  Even a few drinks a few times a week can increase the risk of problems like high blood pressure, diabetes and some cancers, not to mention weight gain.  It’s recommended that women drink no more than 2-3 units a day on a regular basis, and men 3-4 units.  Consider that a pint or a glass of wine usually contains something between 2 and 3 units, and it soon becomes clear that the majority of us are drinking more than the guideline amount on a regular basis without batting an eyelid. 

Unless you’re pregnant or driving, you’re likely to be mocked for not drinking, and often bullied into consuming more.  Drinking games are a key source of entertainment for many young people, intake of enormous amounts of alcohol is usually a rite of passage in university sports clubs, and a weekend without alcohol is considered unthinkable by many working people. 

So, as a nation, we’ve become culturally programmed to drink to levels that are almost definitely going to harm our health.  But for me, the main issue is not the mere fact that people are drinking too much.  More importantly, we need to be asking the question: why is this happening?  Yes; alcohol causes health problems, but the way I see is, the main issue is that drinking it is in itself a symptom: a symptom of living in a society where people no longer know how to keep themselves healthy and happy and lead meaningful lives.  I’ve talked before about how modern Westernsociety is not conducive to wellbeing.  Our drinking culture is one of the many manifestations of this problem.  To speak in extremes, our collective obsession with drinking alcohol is a symptom of deep-seated societal unhappiness.

What’s the solution?

This question has a very simple answer, and simultaneously a very complex one!  In simple terms, if unhappiness is the cause of the problem, the solution is to increase happiness at the population level.  If everyone had ways of maintaining their wellbeing without the use of alcohol or other substances, binge drinking would be far less common.

Of course, if the solution really were so simple, we wouldn’t have the problem on our hands in the first place!  The perceived need to drink alcohol arises from a complex range of factors.  Workplace stress, family situations, self-esteem, social pressure, hectic schedules, financial hardship, emotional trauma and lack of knowledge, to name but a few, are all things that contribute to the need to drink.  Take a moment to consider the fact that it is highly socially acceptable to use a substance to deal with everyday stress and emotions, and hopefully you can see why I find this so concerning.

What can we do about it?

There’s actually a lot of good stuff already going on to combat the problem of binge drinking.  The Sober for October campaign encourages people to stop drinking for the month, with a view to raising awareness of the harms of alcohol and helping people to realise how good they can feel for not drinking.  There’s also a wealth of smaller campaigns doing great work on helping people to cut back on their alcohol intake, for instance, My Happy Hour and the Purbeck Pledge in my local area.

Each one of us is the master of our own wellbeing if we give ourselves half a chance to be.  That means that you have the power to make a change to your own lifestyle and improve your health and wellbeing. 

As a starting point, you can learn more about the effects of alcohol and the units and calories in your favourite drinks, find out how risky your own drinking habits are and get support to make a change on the Drinkaware website.  Most importantly, you can figure out and use other pastimes and coping strategies to manage stress, enjoy your evenings and weekends, and become healthier and happier.  Try asking yourself the following questions to explore the possibility of cutting down on drinking.  Why not challenge a friend to do the same?

• Why do I drink?
•  What are the pros and cons of drinking?
• What are the pros and cons of reducing my drinking?
• What impact might drinking be having on my health and other aspects of my life?
• How might my life be better if I drank less?
• How can my friends and family support me to reduce my drinking? 
• What other things can I fill my time with instead of drinking?
• How much do I feel I should be drinking each week and how can I work towards this?

Whether you want to go sober for October, reduce your alcohol intake long-term, cut it out completely, learn more or make no changes at all, I hope you’ve found this piece interesting or helpful on some level.  I hope you’ll be joining me on the journey towards a healthier, happier nation.

What Dreams we Chase

Over the last few days I’ve been thinking a wee bit about what it is in life that makes me happy, what makes me tick, what keeps me feeling well and balanced.  I think it’s come out of the fact that I’ve been having to adjust my expectations of myself a bit: I’ve been feeling a bit under the weather with an ongoing, unresolved health issue – nothing major (as far as I’m aware!) – but enough that it has an impact on the way I’m living my life.  In recent years, physical fitness and keeping in shape have become really important to me, and a huge part of my identity (see this post about my days of racing my bike!).  Now that I’m not feeling so on form, I’m having to accept to the fact that at this time in my life I’m not destined to be super fit and doing intense exercise nearly every day, which not only means changing my lifestyle a little but also adjusting the very identity for myself that I’ve formed over the last few years!

Another side-effect of my slightly ill health is that I’ve found myself choosing to spend more time at home, especially in the evenings, when usually I’m out and about all the time.  This is in a quest not to over-do it, but I fear I may have been under-doing it as a result!  Naturally this doesn’t have the best effect on my mood, hence the philosophising about what I want out of life - which, of course, isn’t such a bad thing – silver linings and all that!

So, what have I come up with?  Well, firstly the fact that I can still do gentle exercise to keep in shape, which is a lot more than can be said for a lot of people so I should stop feeling so sorry for myself!  AND that time not being spent exercising can be spent doing other things that are important to me, of which there are plenty to keep me occupied (blogging being one of them)!

I’ve put my vague sense of discontent over the last few days down to being too inactive and just generally being fed up of not knowing quite what’s wrong with me physically (if anything) and how best to deal with it.  And it probably is those things.  But still, I got myself thinking about what I want to achieve in life.  I’ve got the best job I’ve ever had and it feels like the best things I could be doing right now.  Every day I help people on their journeys towards healthier lifestyles, which is pretty much the stuff of my dreams.  But I’ve realised it’s also important to keep alive my quest to be a part of radical change in the world of mental health.  To Western civilisation move away from the horrifying grip of medical psychiatry and start treating distressed people as people and not diseases. 

At a work event recently a discussion about mental health cropped up.  Currently the service I work in does not explicitly support people through mental health difficulties (although this may be a by-product of supporting people to make lifestyle changes for the benefits of their physical health!).  The upshot of the conversation was that our service is non-clinical, which makes mental health fall outside of its remit.  Anyone who knows me well (or has seen my posts such as Freedom and The Stairway to Heaven... may well guess where I’m going next with this…!

Mental. Health. Is. Not. Clinical.  That’s what I think!  Some of you may be sick of hearing me talk about it, but it’s something I feel very strongly about but have not put much time or thought into recently, so now seems a good time to bring it up again!  Antidepressant prescribing has been rising at great speed over the last couple of decades, with accelerated increases from 2008 (the year the economic recession hit, in case you didn’t know).  Can we really be so naïve as to think this is a result of a pandemic of the horrible ‘illness’ of depression?  No.  People are more stressed because of job insecurity and financial hardship; kids are bombarded with pressure to do well academically, look good and be ‘cool’; we are all constantly glued to some form of electronic communication, stifled by it without even realising, unable to truly connect to our actual surroundings and the people we love.  Are drugs really the solution to all of this?  I’ll leave it to you to answer that question…

Now, to get back on topic (sorry!).  I was thinking this evening about how my aspirations in life, my dreams, have changed.  Two years ago I was convinced that all I wanted to be was a clinical psychologist and I’d do whatever it took and never give up till I got there.  How crazy that seems now that I’ve come to realise how fervently I contest the clinical conception of mood and mental state!  But deep inside I haven’t really changed: my dreams of being a clinical psychologist were born from an intense desire to make things better in the world of mental health.  And that desire couldn’t be truer today.  And it’s no coincidence that I’ve ended up studying and working in public health instead of clinical psychology: public health is the art and science of promoting health and preventing illness, and it is helping people realise how the art of resilience, the science of exercise, nutrition & neurology and the joy of a balanced and meaningful life can help keep mental health in check, and that remembering these principles and treating the person as an individual when difficulties strike can curb this mental health crisis that modern Western society faces. 

So, with that in mind, I’m picking myself up, dusting myself off and reconnecting with the things that make me happy:  starting from now, I’m spending my evenings writing, listening to delightful music and seeing friends; I’m planning to go to Raw Fest next month; I’m exercising when I can and not being too hard on myself when I can’t.  And I already feel a heck of a lot better for it!  

 

The beautiful piece of music this post is named for

Run For Your Life

Me time trialling - perhaps
mindfulness could have helped me?!

Hello friends and welcome to ‘my cloud’!  I hope you find this to be a good read, and would love it if you could leave comments and share with others.  I am writing in a post-workout endorphin-enhanced state, which I have just realised is probably my favourite state to write in!  And my realising this, I think, is down to my newfound mindful way of living - having started practicing mindfulness a few months ago, I’m so much more aware of my thoughts and feelings in everyday situations - see my previous post for a bit more on the general benefits of mindfulness.

So, to get to the point of this post: I’ve just been for a run (and by run, I mean short jog!).  Of course, the fact that I went running is not the whole point of this post, but bear with me!  In recent times I’ve been making an effort to be more mindful during everyday activities, especially exercise.  This basically involves being fully aware of what I’m doing while I’m doing it, and noticing with curiosity how I feel physically and mentally whilst exercising. 

We all know that exercise is good for our mental wellbeing, and more and more of us are coming to realise that mindfulness is another powerful tool for maintaining and enhancing our psychological health.  Combine the two, and the result, I think, is magic!  It opens up a whole world of benefits, which I see as coming into two main categories.

The first is that exercise sessions are wonderful opportunities to practice mindfulness.  This in itself is a great thing, as the more we practice, the more benefits we reap.  Not only that, but it can make the experience more enjoyable and meaningful that it otherwise would be.  For instance, on my run today I noticed that the upright posture I was adopting made me feel strong and powerful (see this TED talk for more on body language and feelings of power).  On a recent bike ride I found noticed how soothing the easy feeling and sound of my slick tyres on a smooth road surface was, and the soft vibrations coming through my padded handlebar tape on a slightly rougher road surface.  One also notices a lot more of the natural beauty around you when you running, walking or cycling mindfully, and this in itself is a wonderful mood-booster.  Another way of bringing mindfulness to exercise is to simply notice the feeling of the feet touching the ground or turning the pedals, or of the wind in your face and hair.

Mindfulness can turn pain into power and enhance performance!

The second key advantage of mindful exercise is performance enhancement.  I realise that if you’re a serious athlete, the idea of leisurely taking in the scenery or enjoying a smooth road surface may not be quite up your street!  The good news is that I also think it has enormous potential to enhance performance.  This is because mindfulness is very much about paying attention to how we feel in a non-judgemental way.  So, by adopting a mindful approach during exercise, when pain kicks in you can get through it by simply noticing and allowing the sensations, without attaching negativity to it or wishing it felt different. 

I toyed with the idea of using mindfulness to improve performance a little on my run today, and genuinely think it helped me to go a little faster.  I’ve also tried it whilst going uphill on my bike and doing weights.  I think it’s something that’ll take some practice to get big performance enhancements from, but can really see the potential.  Another idea I have is to build it up slowly (after all, mindfulness is like the gym but for your mind: the more you do it, the easier it gets).  For instance, on my recent mindful bike ride I quite enjoyed the feeling of tension and power when going up a short hill.  With practice, I think this technique of mindfully noticing the sensations in my legs could help me a lot with harder climbs.

One to read for more
on mindful cycling

Of course, my experience so far is with a limited range of activities, but I think it can be applied to anything.  I’m especially interested to apply mindfulness next time I go climbing and see where it gets me!

So, there it is: a whistle-stop tour of my thoughts on the magic of mindful exercise!  I’d welcome comments from anyone who uses mindfulness when exercising, and hope to write more on this later when I’ve tried the technique out a bit more and looked into what research is out there on the topic.  In the meantime, I hope I might have inspired you to give mindful exercise a go and that you can reap the benefits from it.  Run, walk, climb, lift, cycle, row – or whatever your chosen activity – for your life!