My faith in humanity was shaken to the core by the events of the last few weeks: the murder of Dr. Tiller, shootings at the Holocaust Museum, and well before that the gunman who killed 13 at an immigrants' resource center, etc. etc.
In all of these instances, it seems to me, these horrible deeds were perpetrated by people who simply could not let go of the past. It is especially the case with Von Brunn. He was a master at holding grudges, going back to his college years. That is almost 70 years of holding grudges for the 88-year old man. How tormented in mind must he be that he simply cannot get over the events over his whole life?
As Frank Rich writes in his column, there has been an increased volume of hatred coming out that is bordering upon some sort of eschatological "purgation and annihilation." These people are so incapable of grasping the events of the recent past that all they see is the end of the world as they know it. It is as if they are so pathologically obsessed with the past that all they see is the culmination of all of their past fears in some sort of an armagedon. What is neglected, of course, is the present. They can't wrap their heads around the fact that Obama is now the president, their anger fueled by Palin, Limbaugh, Hannity, O'Reilly, all they are able to say is "kill, kill, kill." Limbaugh, and other were around even before Palin, but Palin really made hatred fashionable, gave it a pretty face. I really, really resent her for giving hatred a pretty face.
I think that what we need to do as a nation is to focus on the present. And the present looks bleak. 1 in 10 out of work, possibly more. People are hurting. Children are not being fed. How can we possibly miss that?
I read somewhere that when debris is burned, it is the rats and cockroaches that come out first. Our nation is undergoing a transformation with a black president. We are changing, but it is not just us. The whole world is changing. So we are symbolically burning our past in order for us to be free of it. So that we may now forge a new future. We don't know what the future holds, and to guess would to drive ourselves crazy. So while I realize that it is necessary for these crazies to come out, I hate to see lives lost at the hands of these crazies. Why is some of humanity this way?
So those of us feeling shaken just as I am, let's practice letting go. It's liberating. It helps us deal with the present, and helps us get ready for what is coming.
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Summer Is Here! How You Can Avoid the Sun and Still Have Fun
As I wrote in a previous blog, I am Korean-American. Although I have lived in this country for many, many years and consider myself "well-assimilated," some cultural lessons I have taken from my very Korean parents will never be forgotten.
One of these lessons is that I still do not like to be out in the sun. It has been rather difficult to reconcile this culture of sun avoidance with the American lifestyle of sun worship. It was hard living in sunny Southern California as a teenager, and it has been hard living in the coastal region of North Carolina as an adult where the sun is superabundant and it is searingly hot during the summer months. You just cannot avoid being out in the sun in these parts of the country unless you just didn't go out at all during the day.
My dislike of the sun is actually the result of a combination of both the Korean cultural upbringing and the photosensitivity I suffered as a child. When I spent any time in the sun, my skin would get raw and scaly and stay that way for the entire summer. Sunscreens had not been invented yet, and I was forced to wear hats and use umbrellas. They didn't invite glares from other people, however, since fair complexion is prized in Korea and women often use them in the sun. When we wanted to swim, we would start in the morning, then take a break during midday over watermelon, and then swim again in the late afternoon. I can't remember swimming when the sun was beating down on us.
Now the American sun culture is completely different. When we go to the beach, for example, it is impossible to find parking during the day. The local pools are filled with children at mid-day and clear out at about 4:00pm. I routinely see children playing and splashing around in the water in the searing sun. The only thought in my mind is, "what's wrong with these fair-skinned people? They are baking in the sun!"
My American husband has had to learn to adapt to my attitude toward the sun, so my family always goes to the beach or the pool after 4:00pm. But this decision was not hard to make for both me and my husband, for my younger child was born with the same photosensitivity as I was. My child seems to have built up more immunity now, but from about when he was 2 until just this year, we did not dare take him outside on a sunny day without a thick coat of sunscreen of at least SPF 60 on him. Starting in March and until September, we would religiously apply sunscreen on him.
When I found out how sensitive my child was to the sun, I researched about the dangers of sun exposure. Here are the facts about the sun and skin cancer according to Skin Cancer Foundation:
* Skin cancer is the most common form of cancer in the United States. More than one million skin cancers are diagnosed annually. Even one childhood sunburn doubles the risk of skin cancer later in life.
* Each year there are more new cases of skin cancer than the combined incidence of cancers of the breast, prostate, lung and colon.
* One in five Americans will develop skin cancer in the course of a lifetime.
* Basal cell carcinoma is the most common form of skin cancer; about one million of the cases diagnosed annually are basal cell carcinomas. Basal cell carcinomas are rarely fatal, but can be highly disfiguring.
* Squamous cell carcinoma is the second most common form of skin cancer. More than 250,000 cases are diagnosed each year, resulting in approximately 2,500 deaths.
* Basal cell carcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma are the two major forms of non-melanoma skin cancer. Between 40 and 50 percent of Americans who live to age 65 will have either skin cancer at least once.
* In 2004, the total direct cost associated with the treatment for non-melanoma skin cancers was more than $1 billion.
* About 90 percent of non-melanoma skin cancers are associated with exposure to ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the sun.
* Up to 90 percent of the visible changes commonly attributed to aging are caused by the sun.
* Contrary to popular belief, 80 percent of a person's lifetime sun exposure is not acquired before age 18; only about 23 percent of lifetime exposure occurs by age 18.
Both Skin Cancer Foundation and American Cancer Society have produced clear guidelines for preventing sunburns and sun damage that lead to skin cancer. Some are just simple commonsense.
* Avoid the sun between 10:00am and 4:00pm when the UV index is the highest.
* Seek shade.
* Use Sunscreen with SPF of at least 15 everyday and higher during the summer.
* Do not burn.
* Cover up with clothing.
* Wear hats.
These are just about all the things that I learned as a Korean child growing up in a Korean household. Except for the sunscreen. We didn't have it.
The way I feel about the sun exposure is like the way I feel about smoking. There is no safe amount of exposure, so any exposure ought to be treated as bad. Needless to say, both my husband and I are now very careful around the sun when it comes to our children. My husband, who has a lot of Italian in him and does not burn, grew up playing in the sun in sunny California and remembers having just lots of fun playing in the sun. I am determined that this idea of baking in the sun will not be a part of my children's childhood memories.
My children will remember their childhood slightly differently: going to the beach after 4:00pm wearing swim shirts, going swimming always well after the sun is no longer hot. But they will still remember having fun. After all, what can be more fun than swimming in the pool and going to the beach? No one says that it has to be at mid day. Children can have lots of water fun any time of the day. My children have come to prefer swimming in the evening, for they always come home refreshed and seem to sleep comfortably throughout the night. I sincerely hope that my children will be thankful to me when they are older and they cannot remember getting sunburned. They will hopefully say, "my mother did all right protecting us from the sun."
Unfortunately, for the librarian at my children's elementary school, a middle-aged redhead, it is too late. She remembers how her mother always took her children outside to play in the water in the summer. She remembers spending all her time in the sun during the summer. Now every few months she goes in for a check-up. Every few years she has surgery to remove a cancerous growth from her body. She told me one time, "my deceased mother would be sad if she knew that making us play outside has caused us so much harm." I decided that that is not what my children would say about me after I am gone.
As much as I love to consider myself well-assimilated, when it comes to sun safety, it is the one cultural divide that I am happy not to bridge.
One of these lessons is that I still do not like to be out in the sun. It has been rather difficult to reconcile this culture of sun avoidance with the American lifestyle of sun worship. It was hard living in sunny Southern California as a teenager, and it has been hard living in the coastal region of North Carolina as an adult where the sun is superabundant and it is searingly hot during the summer months. You just cannot avoid being out in the sun in these parts of the country unless you just didn't go out at all during the day.
My dislike of the sun is actually the result of a combination of both the Korean cultural upbringing and the photosensitivity I suffered as a child. When I spent any time in the sun, my skin would get raw and scaly and stay that way for the entire summer. Sunscreens had not been invented yet, and I was forced to wear hats and use umbrellas. They didn't invite glares from other people, however, since fair complexion is prized in Korea and women often use them in the sun. When we wanted to swim, we would start in the morning, then take a break during midday over watermelon, and then swim again in the late afternoon. I can't remember swimming when the sun was beating down on us.
Now the American sun culture is completely different. When we go to the beach, for example, it is impossible to find parking during the day. The local pools are filled with children at mid-day and clear out at about 4:00pm. I routinely see children playing and splashing around in the water in the searing sun. The only thought in my mind is, "what's wrong with these fair-skinned people? They are baking in the sun!"
My American husband has had to learn to adapt to my attitude toward the sun, so my family always goes to the beach or the pool after 4:00pm. But this decision was not hard to make for both me and my husband, for my younger child was born with the same photosensitivity as I was. My child seems to have built up more immunity now, but from about when he was 2 until just this year, we did not dare take him outside on a sunny day without a thick coat of sunscreen of at least SPF 60 on him. Starting in March and until September, we would religiously apply sunscreen on him.
When I found out how sensitive my child was to the sun, I researched about the dangers of sun exposure. Here are the facts about the sun and skin cancer according to Skin Cancer Foundation:
* Skin cancer is the most common form of cancer in the United States. More than one million skin cancers are diagnosed annually. Even one childhood sunburn doubles the risk of skin cancer later in life.
* Each year there are more new cases of skin cancer than the combined incidence of cancers of the breast, prostate, lung and colon.
* One in five Americans will develop skin cancer in the course of a lifetime.
* Basal cell carcinoma is the most common form of skin cancer; about one million of the cases diagnosed annually are basal cell carcinomas. Basal cell carcinomas are rarely fatal, but can be highly disfiguring.
* Squamous cell carcinoma is the second most common form of skin cancer. More than 250,000 cases are diagnosed each year, resulting in approximately 2,500 deaths.
* Basal cell carcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma are the two major forms of non-melanoma skin cancer. Between 40 and 50 percent of Americans who live to age 65 will have either skin cancer at least once.
* In 2004, the total direct cost associated with the treatment for non-melanoma skin cancers was more than $1 billion.
* About 90 percent of non-melanoma skin cancers are associated with exposure to ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the sun.
* Up to 90 percent of the visible changes commonly attributed to aging are caused by the sun.
* Contrary to popular belief, 80 percent of a person's lifetime sun exposure is not acquired before age 18; only about 23 percent of lifetime exposure occurs by age 18.
Both Skin Cancer Foundation and American Cancer Society have produced clear guidelines for preventing sunburns and sun damage that lead to skin cancer. Some are just simple commonsense.
* Avoid the sun between 10:00am and 4:00pm when the UV index is the highest.
* Seek shade.
* Use Sunscreen with SPF of at least 15 everyday and higher during the summer.
* Do not burn.
* Cover up with clothing.
* Wear hats.
These are just about all the things that I learned as a Korean child growing up in a Korean household. Except for the sunscreen. We didn't have it.
The way I feel about the sun exposure is like the way I feel about smoking. There is no safe amount of exposure, so any exposure ought to be treated as bad. Needless to say, both my husband and I are now very careful around the sun when it comes to our children. My husband, who has a lot of Italian in him and does not burn, grew up playing in the sun in sunny California and remembers having just lots of fun playing in the sun. I am determined that this idea of baking in the sun will not be a part of my children's childhood memories.
My children will remember their childhood slightly differently: going to the beach after 4:00pm wearing swim shirts, going swimming always well after the sun is no longer hot. But they will still remember having fun. After all, what can be more fun than swimming in the pool and going to the beach? No one says that it has to be at mid day. Children can have lots of water fun any time of the day. My children have come to prefer swimming in the evening, for they always come home refreshed and seem to sleep comfortably throughout the night. I sincerely hope that my children will be thankful to me when they are older and they cannot remember getting sunburned. They will hopefully say, "my mother did all right protecting us from the sun."
Unfortunately, for the librarian at my children's elementary school, a middle-aged redhead, it is too late. She remembers how her mother always took her children outside to play in the water in the summer. She remembers spending all her time in the sun during the summer. Now every few months she goes in for a check-up. Every few years she has surgery to remove a cancerous growth from her body. She told me one time, "my deceased mother would be sad if she knew that making us play outside has caused us so much harm." I decided that that is not what my children would say about me after I am gone.
As much as I love to consider myself well-assimilated, when it comes to sun safety, it is the one cultural divide that I am happy not to bridge.
Saturday, June 6, 2009
I squat, do you?
I come from a family of squatters. In fact, my family comes from a land of squatters. I don't mean anything figuratively by it, as in, I like to go into empty houses and occupy it illegally. I mean literally that I like to squat. I like to squat with my knees apart, with the backs of my ankles against my sitting bones and my elbows gently pressing on the insides of my knees. My brother likes to squat with knees together wrapping his arms around them with a graceful curve to his back that looks completely natural.
I am of Korean heritage, and believe you me, it is not an uncommon sight to see people of all ages and both sexes squat, especially on the countryside. My husband, who is a white American, does not like this sight. It unsettles him to see people in this position because he thinks that it exposes some kind of vulnerability. It is as if humanity is now so beyond this way of sitting that to squat would mean some sort of recidivism.
When I incorporate squatting, or malasana, into my yoga classes, I see all kinds of responses from people. There are those who proceed to squat with ease with all points of their feet touching the floor, gently rocking side to side until they find a comfortable position to settle in. Then there are those who have their heels way up off the floor that they are barely balancing on the balls of their feet. They try to rest their elbows or hands on the knees, but struggle to keep the equilibrium. They don't look particularly graceful, but they try. And there are those that just don't try. It hurts their back, it hurts their feet, it hurts everything.
In many exercise routines, repetitious squatting is touted as one of the best and most effective ways to tone all muscles in your legs, in the core, and the back and the butt. One simply cannot squat without engaging all these muscles especially when weights are involved. Can you imagine a weightlifter who can't squat? Weightlifters always start from a squat because, when performed correctly, it is one of the most optimal ways to engage the whole body in lifting that weight.
In many Chi Kung books some form of squat with knees pulled in close to the body is invariably recommended for stomach troubles. The position of legs puts gentle pressure on the abdomen and helps alleviate any pains that may be caused by poor digestion. Squatting is also touted as the nature's best way to eliminate waste. There are many websites that will describe exactly and vividly how that is, although we can imagine that how pressure on your lower abdomen would promote elimination, I will not get into detail. (You can follow the link here to find out if you are so inclined.)
But it is not just my American husband who finds squatting so primitive that it is almost repulsive. The history of this intense Western dislike of squatting goes even as far back as the 19th century when the British Empire ruled India as
Galen Cranz describes in his book, Rethinking the Chair: Rethinking the Culture, Body, and Design. Squatting was seen as a sign of primitiveness while sitting on chairs was seen as a sign of civilization. Squatting became one of the compasses with which the progress of civilization was measured while the chair, and all variants thereof including the infamous couch, became the measure by which to gauge a society's civilized status.
So then we finally come to the culture of the supreme civilized being by this measure, the couch potato. The couch potato has completely abandoned squatting (egad!) and thoroughly embraced the art of sitting on the most comfortable chair one can think of. Moreover, as the term "couch potato" implies we completely abandon the involvement of a single muscle in the body when we sit now. We are left wondering, is this what civilization means?
Besides the benefits of squats in terms of modern-day fitness, the simple act of everyday squatting instead of sitting can be beneficial. Yogis do it now as yogis have done it for thousands of years. Denise Kaufman explains it well in the following video:
In yoga, malasana, or the garland pose, is used to invite openness in the hips and in the groin area. The benefits of open hips is obvious. When runners come to my class and complain that their hips are really tight, I invite them to follow a hip-opening routine. I see this tightness in runners all the time. Their muscles are so tight that they almost pop out of the skin in a neat line from the top of their upper leg down to the top of their knee. This muscular tension keeps their hips from opening, and the leads to tightness in the area, leading to injuries.
Squatting is one of the easiest ways of opening the hips. It has nothing to do with the impoverished Third World, primitiveness, or recidivism. Rather, it has everything to do with what we have given up in the name of civilization.
So let's get off the couches and squat. After all, what do we have to gain here? Stronger muscles in the back? Sure! Flexibility in the hips? Absolutely! Stronger core? Of course! Wider range of motion for the feet? You bet!
I would like to think we also gain openness, which we as "civilized" beings unfortunately interpret as vulnerability, through squatting, not just literally, but also figuratively, in our bodies and mind.
I am of Korean heritage, and believe you me, it is not an uncommon sight to see people of all ages and both sexes squat, especially on the countryside. My husband, who is a white American, does not like this sight. It unsettles him to see people in this position because he thinks that it exposes some kind of vulnerability. It is as if humanity is now so beyond this way of sitting that to squat would mean some sort of recidivism.
When I incorporate squatting, or malasana, into my yoga classes, I see all kinds of responses from people. There are those who proceed to squat with ease with all points of their feet touching the floor, gently rocking side to side until they find a comfortable position to settle in. Then there are those who have their heels way up off the floor that they are barely balancing on the balls of their feet. They try to rest their elbows or hands on the knees, but struggle to keep the equilibrium. They don't look particularly graceful, but they try. And there are those that just don't try. It hurts their back, it hurts their feet, it hurts everything.
In many exercise routines, repetitious squatting is touted as one of the best and most effective ways to tone all muscles in your legs, in the core, and the back and the butt. One simply cannot squat without engaging all these muscles especially when weights are involved. Can you imagine a weightlifter who can't squat? Weightlifters always start from a squat because, when performed correctly, it is one of the most optimal ways to engage the whole body in lifting that weight.
In many Chi Kung books some form of squat with knees pulled in close to the body is invariably recommended for stomach troubles. The position of legs puts gentle pressure on the abdomen and helps alleviate any pains that may be caused by poor digestion. Squatting is also touted as the nature's best way to eliminate waste. There are many websites that will describe exactly and vividly how that is, although we can imagine that how pressure on your lower abdomen would promote elimination, I will not get into detail. (You can follow the link here to find out if you are so inclined.)
But it is not just my American husband who finds squatting so primitive that it is almost repulsive. The history of this intense Western dislike of squatting goes even as far back as the 19th century when the British Empire ruled India as
Galen Cranz describes in his book, Rethinking the Chair: Rethinking the Culture, Body, and Design. Squatting was seen as a sign of primitiveness while sitting on chairs was seen as a sign of civilization. Squatting became one of the compasses with which the progress of civilization was measured while the chair, and all variants thereof including the infamous couch, became the measure by which to gauge a society's civilized status.
So then we finally come to the culture of the supreme civilized being by this measure, the couch potato. The couch potato has completely abandoned squatting (egad!) and thoroughly embraced the art of sitting on the most comfortable chair one can think of. Moreover, as the term "couch potato" implies we completely abandon the involvement of a single muscle in the body when we sit now. We are left wondering, is this what civilization means?
Besides the benefits of squats in terms of modern-day fitness, the simple act of everyday squatting instead of sitting can be beneficial. Yogis do it now as yogis have done it for thousands of years. Denise Kaufman explains it well in the following video:
In yoga, malasana, or the garland pose, is used to invite openness in the hips and in the groin area. The benefits of open hips is obvious. When runners come to my class and complain that their hips are really tight, I invite them to follow a hip-opening routine. I see this tightness in runners all the time. Their muscles are so tight that they almost pop out of the skin in a neat line from the top of their upper leg down to the top of their knee. This muscular tension keeps their hips from opening, and the leads to tightness in the area, leading to injuries.
Squatting is one of the easiest ways of opening the hips. It has nothing to do with the impoverished Third World, primitiveness, or recidivism. Rather, it has everything to do with what we have given up in the name of civilization.
So let's get off the couches and squat. After all, what do we have to gain here? Stronger muscles in the back? Sure! Flexibility in the hips? Absolutely! Stronger core? Of course! Wider range of motion for the feet? You bet!
I would like to think we also gain openness, which we as "civilized" beings unfortunately interpret as vulnerability, through squatting, not just literally, but also figuratively, in our bodies and mind.
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