As someone with ADHD, I am always looking for ways to improve my ability to focus. My medication, my planning, and environmental cues all help but it can still take a lot of energy to keep myself on task, so when I came across some music that made it easier to stick to my work plan, I was delighted.
I’m not sure how I happened upon Greenred Productions ADHD Relief Deep Focus Music (embedded below) but I can only assume that it was something the algorithm churned up after I watched a How to ADHD video at some point.
Embedded YouTube video from Greenred Productions called ‘ADHD Relief Deep Focus Music with Pulsation, ADD Music for Concentration, ADHD Music’ The video includes 12 hours of music but there is a single still image on the screen for the whole video. The image is of a mystical looking stag with antlers that look like gnarled tree branches. The stag is standing in light that seems to be shining through the trees that surround it. There are broken tree stumps, plants, and a large rock near the stag.
Maybe there is a scientific reason why this music works for me or maybe it is a coincidence but, either way, playing this video helps me to focus. And the fact that it is almost 12 hours of music means that I won’t lose track of time while selecting music or creating a playlist.
I don’t always have music on when I am working but it has been great to have this on hand when I need a little extra help to focus.
A couple of weeks ago, I was returning to the video over and over throughout the week but, for some reason, I wasn’t resetting it, I was just letting it play from wherever I had paused it the session before.
So, even though it is a 12 hour video, I eventually reached the end and THAT’S when I found the best meditation/relaxation/body-calming music (embedded below) that I have ever encountered.
Embedded YouTube Video of Greenred Productions video “Deep Cello Meditation Music: Dark Meditation Music, Relaxing Music, Dark Cello Music for Relaxation” There is two hours of music but there is no actual video just a still, black and white image of a person with shoulder length hair playing the cello outside a stone house with a set of double doors and a window set in the front of it.
It turns out that I find cello music incredibly calming. In fact, when I listen to this music, I feel the same kind of sensory-soothing calm that I feel when I put on a weighted shoulder wrap or lie in my hammock. Something in the music just really grounds me and puts me at ease.
I have been playing it while I meditate, draw, colour, or read and I swear I can feel myself sinking deeper into those relaxing activities as a result.
Do you find specific types of music help you to focus or to relax?
Does music contribute to your peace of mind?
Did YOU know that cello was so relaxing? Am I the last person on earth to discover this?
Tell me all about it in the comments. Pretty please!
PS – I really wanted to call this post ‘Cello, it is you I’m looking for’ but then the first embedded video wouldn’t make any sense and besides, I wasn’t sure if the Lionel Richie reference was too much of a reach for the joke to work. š
Flouranguishing: the state of simultaneously flourishing and languishing (see also: being human)
Recently a number of my friends circulated an article about the blah many of us currently feel as COVID drags on. The author named the sensation as languishing. Even as we get vaccinated, so much still seems risky or is outright closed off to us. We arenāt quite depressed, but we arenāt quite happy. We are in the doldrums. Sigh. Some days I languish more than others. Yesterday, for example, halfway through breakfast, out of the blue, I was afflicted with a deep sense of oh-whatās-the-point. As the day progressed, I started to perk up, but I could still feel the layer of languish in the background.
Because, generally, despite all during this pandemic, I feel like Iām flourishing (about which I feel some guilt and self-consciousness and even shameābecause, how dare I flourish during these dark times, doesnāt that just indicate Iām an entitled, selfish so-and-so?).
The pandemicās Zoomification of our world made it possible for me to start training toward a certification in Non-Violent Communication (maybe ā¦ Iām not 100% committed to the certification process yet, as I write this the sign-up page for the next phase is open in my browser).. NVC then led me to some Internal Family Systems training. I have discovered new ways of working and being. Iām exhilarated every time I uncover yet more ways in which NVC and IFS connect into and inform the work I was already doing (workshops on emotional intelligence, among other things). Athena Casey recently interviewed me for The Intolerance Podcast, which gave me a great chance to synthesize this understanding for myself. Talking with her got me excited all over again about this path Iām on.
Except ā¦ for the days when I wonder why I thought it was a good idea to add in a whole different discipline at well into my fifties; and further wonder whether all this curiosity can actually lead where I want it to lead, or whether Iām just an eternal dilettante, destined to pedal as hard as I can, but never go anywhere, a stationary bike I canāt get off. Uh oh. Languishing again.
Then, I perk up. Again. A friend recently mentioned that when we are low about the future, it is helpful to simply change the time horizon. That is certainly true for me. When I look forward a year or further, I can see where Iād like to be, but not how to get there. Thatās a languisher, for sure. But when I shorten the time horizon to, say, the next two days, Iām looking at a 2.5-day NVC workshop on gratitude and I know itās going to be fantastic and Iām going to love it. Thatās a flourisher.
Back and forth. Again.
Oh, and thatās not all. There has been other flourishing, too. In response to the languishing article, another friend sent a piece about flourishing during the pandemic, which pointed out a bunch of ways we might discover new richness in our lives these past months. One was connecting with friends and family in a different rhythm. Well, thatās happened for me, too. Pre-pandemic, I was in regular communication with my mother via text, but we virtually never talked on the phone. Iām a phone-o-phobic, so Iāve never been good about calling. Now? āwe are having long Zoom confabs twice a month. Sometimes my two brothers join, one of my sisters-in-law and some nieces and nephews. Weāll have New York, Calgary, London (Ontario) and the other London (UK) all together. Iām also zooming with friends in other cities and countries, with whom I was only sketchily in touch before. An IRL friend recently asked me why I was still doing friend-zooms. Why would I stop? Iāve made space for them in my life. Why would I want to diminish the joys of being more in touch with geographically distant friends?
Because, it turns out we can use space, just as we used time, to alchemize some flourish out of languish. Hereās a Zen story:
A student of Zen came to their teacher and asked her how they could learn to feel less frustrated and angry and sad and disappointed. They wanted to know how to calm their pervasive anxiety and sometime depression. The Zen teacher asked the student to bring her a teaspoon of salt. When the student came back, the teacher presented the student with a beautiful, clear glass of water and asked them to mix the salt into the water and drink.
āPthaugh. Yuck,ā the student said, spitting out the salty water. āHow is that going to help me?ā
The teacher then invited the student to get another teaspoon of salt and meet her down at the lake. At the lakeshore, the teacher asked the student to mix the spoonful of salt into the lake, then fill their glass with the lake water and drink it (this is the land of Zen myth, the lakes are unpolluted, pure and potable).
āAah. Delicious,ā the student said. āBut ā¦ ??ā
āYour mind is a glass of water. Now, make it a lake.ā
Lake, Emma Harper on Unsplash and glass of water, Manu Schwendener on Unsplash
I already mentioned how we can change time to our advantage. Well, it turns out we can fiddle with space, too. Gratitude, for example, is a huge space maker. For me, if I can make my mind a lake, I make room to access the flourish-nutrients available just from noticing what is going well and being grateful. Iāve stayed healthy, so far. I have continued to run and mountain bike and ski and spin and Pilates and, and … The spring cherry blossoms were fat and fabulous this year. My partner and I celebrated 27 years together.Ā Ā Ā
Flouranguishing is the art of being present to our humanness. We are rarely all one thing. And we are certainly not a duality either. We do not languish OR flourish. We are rarely (if ever) experiencing one single emotion, one unique condition of being. We live in a soup of simultaneous states. How we use time and space determines which ingredients dominate.
Hereās the constant that Iām trying to work with right now. I have the power to choose what flavours I focus on in the soup. Languishing may feel like it is imposed on me from the outside, due to circumstances beyond my control (the pandemic, the inherent uncertainty of the future). Yet, I can still make the choice to focus my attention on whatās flourishing. As hard as it may seem at times, I want to be present with what is good, right now. To be grateful, even and especially for the smallest things. To engage with life. None of this is to say that Iām pushing the languish away, or compartmentalizing. No. I recognize and even honour the languish. At the same time, I set the intention to notice the flourish.
Running this morning, my body was so tired. I heard out the part of me who was exasperated with my exhaustion. In fact, there was a pretty extended discussion between the various voices in my head about whether I should cut my run short. But then I picked my eyes up off the pavement and noticed what a beautiful morning it was, how good the air felt on my skin and remembered that the only measure of success that mattered today on my run was pleasure. So, when the option to abridge my route came up, I ran right past. I wanted to stay with the trees in all their fresh green. And, when I made that choice, my body suddenly felt more ease, the run more fluid.
Another day, the choice to shorten my run will be the one that resonates for my body and grants ease. My work is to listen for when a decision is about languishing and when about flourishing. With time and space at my disposal, I have powerful tools to support my intention to savor the flavour of flourish.
The wellness trend is surging, so weāre told. Women are taking care of themselves more these days. Prioritizing their needs (an idea whose time has surely come). Paying attention to nourishing foods. Getting more exercise. Starting to think about the health of their minds and spirits. These are good things, right? Yes!
paper with the word mindfulness in calligraphy on a windowsill
breath in neon signage
Iām on board. I have a curious bent. As much as I like to try new physical activities, I also like to try new health and wellness protocols. Why wouldnāt I want to feel as good as possible physically and emotionally? Iāve had some kind of meditation practice for more than a decade. I incorporate acupuncture and massage into my schedule with some regularity. Thereās a Korean spa just over the George Washington Bridge we like to go to with friends for a stiff scrub and some time in the saunas and under the far infrared light. Yes, my vagina has been steamed with mugwort vapors (enjoyable, not life changing). And I have succumbed to the promises of quite few skincare products; the best of which deliver on about 25% of their hype, which is more than I really expected, if Iām honest with myself.
Have we gone too far?
Lured by the wellness industryās promises of eternal youth and beauty (also great sex), are we trying to buy our way out of reality? Goop is one of the industryās most high profile villains-du-jour. High on the list of accusations lodged against Goop are that it is marketing products that are not scientifically proven.
amber tincture bottles on a desk with books and decorative straw ball
As an aside, researchers (at Harvard, no less) are hard at work studying the surprising efficacy of the placebo effect. Virtually all of us engage in some magical thinking that has worked. There is a good chance that we will discover that a lot of pseudoscience may be less pseudo and more science than is currently understood.
In the meantime though, Goop has been taken to task (and court) more than once for grandiose claims it makes about the products it hawks. The clientele, largely white women of privilege, is disdained as gullible over-spenders with too much money and not enough sense. Itās so easy to question the priorities and intelligence of someone who buys a jade egg for her vagina; even if the whole idea of the egg is pretty ancient.
Yet, the very success of enterprises like Goop demonstrates that for all the privilege (whether real or notāthe infamous jade egg was only $66), money is not buying us peace of mind. I havenāt actually bought anything from Goop, but Iām pretty certain I wouldnāt feel better about myself. Rather, our unease with ourselves enables companies to offer more and more outrageous and outrageously priced āsolutionsā for unsolvable challenges, like aging (and fear of aging). As this article in Quartzy points out, #skincare is just a code word for anti-aging. The marketing language may be coloured with all sorts of body positive words, but the root emotion thatās targeted and monetized is the same as always with these kinds of productsāshame. Shame about our bodies. Shame about getting older.
I struggle with this. I spend too much time studying the wrinkles on my face, trying to decide if they are worsening, or if whatever new miracle product Iām using is actually smoothing them away, even a little. I have strong feelings about cosmetic surgery. Denying my aging feels like a betrayal of women. Yet it is also a high horse that is precarious. As much as I want to accept the inevitable with dignity and grace, to stay strong and healthy by eating well, drinking water, exercising, sleeping and such, I know that at any moment I might fall off my hobbyhorse, landing on needles full of Botox and fillers, or UPS boxes full of promise-y Goop products.
We women are not alone in our susceptibility. Men are just drawn in by different language. For men it is the language of performance optimization that closes the deal. Deploying knowledge to biohack a more efficient personal ecosystem are their code words for lose weight, get strong and stay young.
We are not idiots for falling for these bright, shiny promises. We live in a society that delivers a torrent of messaging, which tells us that we arenāt young enough, fit enough, beautiful enough, rich enough, famous enough, or really enough of anything. Even when anti-aging is rebranded as the dewiness we all deserve, we know the truth of what we are buying. We are spending money to put a finger in the leaky dyke of our not-enoughness. Intellectually, I know I should always think that I am enough. But I donāt. I know Iām not alone in this. Itās a big part of why the health and wellness industry is growing.
We have the actual, literal possibility of more and more comfort, yet we live with less and less ease.
I wonder if thatās because we know that our society is askew and our subconscious senses this dis-ease. The gap between have-a-lot and have-not is widening exponentially. Some women are spending a small fortune and enormous amounts of time on wellness, while in the same country other women are working multiple jobs and still canāt put dinner on the table for their children. Coming home from a dermatologist appointment during which I had a little skin tag on my neck removed (a voluntary procedure), I walked past a homeless man, sleeping out in the pouring rain. A wave of guilt washed through me. Should I have given the money Iād just spent to him instead?
Iām not saying we shouldnāt take care of our health and wellness. Iām not going to stop trying to stay physically and mentally healthy, or stop buying any beauty products. Iām not saying we shouldnāt indulge.
I am proposing that if we do so more mindfully, perhaps we can indulge just a little less and share just a little more.
We are optimized when we are comfortable in our bodies and with who we are. Thatās the brass ring of health and wellness.
