Tag Archives: health

Reminder about the myo-​​fascial sytem in the human body

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I chanced across this ref­er­ence, Fas­cia and Struc­tural Inte­gra­tion with Robert Schleip, who is one of the leader in the expand­ing under­stand­ing of the myo-​​fascial sys­tem in the body, and the video:

Finally, an arti­cle in ref­er­ence to a DVD that gives some links to other resources. It all just reminds me that I have some much more to inves­ti­gate about the mind-​​body connection.

I also found two resources to deal with yoga injuries: Yoga Injuries and Pre­vent Yoga Injury, all via the it’s all about yoga, baby blog of Roseanne Har­vey. There is a book called The Con­traindi­ca­tion Index for Yoga Asanas (TCIYA), which would be help­ful to any­one try­ing to make the most of a yoga prac­tice, avoid­ing the pit­falls and shar­ing its gifts with others.

Taking an alternative route to lower back pain treatment

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In the past, I’ve been ret­i­cent to use a chi­ro­prac­tor to treat injuries or other prob­lems because I’ve heard sto­ries about how the pro­fes­sion was allied with ambulance-​​chasing lawyers ready to sue peo­ple involved in acci­dents and their insur­ance com­pa­nies, as well as the charges that chi­ro­prac­tic is not based the sci­en­tific method, espe­cially when com­pared to the con­ven­tional West­ern medicine.

Over the past few months, I’ve been forced to change my mind. I noticed that sev­eral friends vis­ited chi­ro­prac­tors reg­u­larly. I’ve also con­firmed that West­ern med­i­cine does not ade­quately address all health con­cerns. Finally, my iliop­soas spasms made me re-​​examine whether it was worth­while to call in dif­fer­ent opinions.

A new health­care provider

Photo: Donald McGriff in his chiropractic office

Cheer­ful and car­ing, even at 6:30 in the morning

Dur­ing the 40-​​day yoga chal­lenge at Thrive Yoga, Susan and David Bowen brought in Dr. Don­ald McGriff to give a talk to the group about chi­ro­prac­tic and gen­eral well-​​being. I missed the talk because I wanted to take a yoga class at the same time. But Susan and David said that they used his ser­vices so that was high praise.

On April 15, I got an appoint­ment at McGriff Chirprac­tic to see if Dr. McGriff could do any­thing for my iliop­soas spasms. He looks more like a pro­fes­sional wrestler than a doc­tor, a burly build topped off with a shaved head. After an ini­tial exam­i­na­tion and a check of my med­ical his­tory, he sent me off to get an MRI of my lower back. That took a lit­tle longer than expected because of sched­ul­ing con­flicts, but I was back in his office on April 27 with the CD in hand. After tak­ing a look at the MRI, Dr. McGriff came back with the news that I might have a spinal disk her­ni­a­tion (4-​​5 L ver­te­brae), but the MRI was not really that clear. I also seemed to have a dis­placed sacroil­iac (SI) joint on the right side. Since I did not take notes, I can’t be sure three weeks later whether I’ve mis­un­der­stood any­thing. In any case, he pre­scribed 2-​​3 vis­its a week to his office to work his magic.

The nice thing about Dr. McGriff’s prac­tice is that he opens at 6:00 am on three morn­ings a week so I sched­ule my vis­its so that I hop out of bed, get into fit­ness cloth­ing and drive over for a 6:30 appoint­ment, usu­ally on Mon­day and Fri­day. I am out of his office in time to go back home, shower, dress, grab break­fast, and head to the Metro by my usual time. There are also office hours on Saturday.The loca­tion of his office, which is only 10 min­utes from my home in Rockville, sealed the deal.

Treat­ment starts with 15 min­utes of electro-​​stimulation with hot pads on my lower back. There are four elec­trodes sprayed with some kind of liq­uid to increase con­duc­tiv­ity (The spray must come right out of the refrig­er­a­tor because it is cold). Hot pads are placed over the lower back (to com­pen­sate for the cold elec­trodes, I guess). The elec­tri­cal cur­rent goes through vary­ing pat­terns of puls­ing, but can be adjusted to the point where it does not cause dis­com­fort or pain.

After chill­ing for 15 min­utes, Dr. McGriff leads me to his exam­i­na­tion room where he checks my align­ment and then usu­ally has me lie down on my left side and gives me a firm twist of my torso to the right. My SI joint usu­ally pops with the adjust­ment. That’s usu­ally fol­lowed by adjust­ments to my hips, rib cage and upper spine, and upper neck.  He has a firm touch in his adjust­ments that gives con­fi­dence in his skills.

Once he’s done with me, I may get an addi­tional ride on fancy equip­ment: a table that stretches my spine, a vibrat­ing plat­form that loosens my hamstrings.

Dr. McGriff applies more than an exclu­sively chi­ro­prac­tic focus, empha­siz­ing the value of   holis­tic approach that includes nutri­tion, cor­rec­tive exer­cises, phys­i­cal ther­apy, fit­ness and life style coach­ing. His web site has lots of infor­ma­tion to under­stand his approach, the gen­eral prac­tice of chi­ro­prac­tic, and other services.

Pass­ing the grade

Has the treat­ment improved my injury? That’s hard to say. My iliop­soas have not been a source of pain or dis­com­fort recently. With a more than a month of rest and avoid­ance of aggra­va­tion (no yoga classes), my hips and lower back may have healed itself. I sim­ply have not been test­ing their lim­its. On the other hand, I do feel the effects of the treat­ment: after a ses­sion, I feel gen­eral mus­cu­lar fatigue by the end of the day, which is usu­ally a sign that my mus­cles are adjust­ing to a realign­ment of my frame. I have noticed that my thighs seem to set fur­ther apart. I can sit in easy pose more com­fort­ably and my knees fall  closer to the ground naturally.

My daugh­ter warned me that I should avoid active yoga classes or gym work on that days that I have chi­ro­prac­tic treat­ment. Dr. McGriff told Howard Rontal, my body­worker, that it’s best if the body­work hap­pen the day before a chi­ro­prac­tic ses­sion to be the best results out of his ses­sions. Finally, Howard told me that I should not have acupunc­ture and body­work done on the same day (within 24 hours of each) since the Ori­en­tal merid­i­ans run through the myo-​​fascial tis­sues. So there are now a whole new slew of sched­ul­ing fac­tors that I have to take into account when plan­ning my healthcare.

With less than a month of treat­ment, it’s far to soon to say that my chi­ro­prac­tic has worked mir­a­cles or oth­er­wise. In the real world, it’s almost impos­si­ble to iso­late the fac­tors  (chi­ro­prac­tic, acupunc­ture, rest, restora­tive yoga, relax­ation exer­cises, body work, pos­i­tive thing, placebo effect) so I have to go with just my gut feel­ing. It has not hurt me.

2011 — the year of losing my grip

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This past year has had some huge changes for me: the deaths of my father and mother in a four month lapse, my own attempt to play out my role as the “good son,” and the pro­gres­sive dete­ri­o­ra­tion of my well-​​being as I no longer could keep up with the “pro­to­cols” that main­tained my per­sona (exer­cise, yoga, med­i­ta­tion, self-​​development, etc.). I was only par­tially aware of how these changes were affect­ing me, but they became con­cen­trated in one symp­tom: my periph­eral neu­ropa­thy and its man­i­fes­ta­tion of numb­ness, phan­tom pain (pin pricks in my feet that kept me at night) and sleep depri­va­tion. This symp­tom dis­tracted me from see­ing the deeper “dis-ease” — I feared los­ing my hold on life’s moor­ings (as seen in my par­ents’  deaths), on my capac­ity to deal with life’s daily tasks and uncer­tainty, and on my con­di­tion as an adult who has to take full respon­si­bil­ity for his life.

This fear of los­ing my grip trans­lated into a sys­temic phys­i­cal trait — I held on ever more tightly through my myofas­cial tis­sues. I was the per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of being “uptight” —  stiff, con­strained, and suf­fo­cat­ing. My lig­a­ments, fas­cia, ten­dons, mus­cles and other tis­sues were engaged to the max­i­mum until I was stran­gling myself, to the point that large parts of my body was numb, unfeel­ing. There was a hid­den lever in my head that was con­stantly wind­ing me up, with minute twists to the gears, con­stantly engaged should some exter­nal force or inter­nal flaw make the whole machine blow up under the pressure.

For years, I par­tially sensed this prob­lem. That’s why I sought out yoga seven years ago. But this prob­lem is so much big­ger than start­ing an exer­cise regime, devel­op­ing good work skills or chang­ing eat­ing habits because of a food allergy. That’s why I have put off writ­ing about it here; just one entry is not going to cover it adequately.

A lighter touch

Since my diag­no­sis of periph­eral neu­ropa­thy and the start of treat­ment with myofas­cial release ther­apy with Howard Rontal in August, I have begun a grad­ual process of releas­ing the ten­sion, of let­ting go. My weekly ther­apy ses­sions were oppor­tu­ni­ties to explore the psycho-​​somatic nature of my con­di­tion and the mind-​​body con­nec­tion. There was no promise of “cur­ing the dis­ease” but increas­ingly I saw the pos­si­bil­ity of con­trol­ling my worst symp­toms and even find­ing and devel­op­ing a more relaxed state.

As of mid-​​December, my treat­ment with Howard has been sus­pended because of the Hol­i­days and travel, so I’ve exper­i­mented with tech­niques that can help me self-​​soothe and self-​​heal (more on that in another blog entry). I’ve also made it back to yoga classes, put some time in at the gym and even done some jogging.

Mark Epstein has an insight­ful book, Going to Pieces with­out Falling Apart: A Bud­dhist Per­spec­tive on Whole­ness, and that title cap­tures my predica­ment. I read it four years ago, and only now real­ize its mean­ing. There comes a point when you have to let go and reside in the present moment, no mat­ter what hap­pens, no mat­ter the consequences.

Tying a bow on my birthday present

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I’ve now been tak­ing treat­ment from Howard Rontal for a month now, cur­rently with a fre­quency of once a week for 60 min­utes. As a birth­day present to myself (turned 62 yes­ter­day), I took an 90-​​minute ses­sion in which Howard gave me his “lig­a­ment treatment” — basically going pro­gres­sively from soles to neck and stretch­ing out all the mus­cles and assorted fas­cia, with spe­cial atten­tion to places that were seri­ously com­pro­mised (in my case, hips, sacrum, lower back, neck — Howard was much more spe­cific in nam­ing mus­cles and ligaments).

A full 48 hours later, I am still feel­ing the impact of this body read­just­ment, a dif­fer­ent kind of expe­ri­ence than what I had expe­ri­enced in pre­vi­ous ses­sions. Rather than just reliev­ing symp­toms like numb­ness, ten­sion, or pain (which I did on Tues­day), I’ve felt as if I’ve been put thor­ough boot camp. I’ve gone to bed feel­ing exhausted and sore, and woken up feel­ing fatigued and sore, espe­cially in my hips, thighs, shoul­ders, arms, fore­arms. I almost felt as if I had flu symp­toms — or some­thing had gone wrong with the treat­ment. Obvi­ously, some­thing dif­fer­ent is hap­pen­ing; it’s no longer just the “happy talk” of reliev­ing ten­sion and pain. Because of the work done on my core, I am using mus­cles dif­fer­ently, in new ways, with new lines of ten­sile stress. I’ve only done one Hatha yoga class (Tues­day evening) and my evening yin yoga ses­sions, so I’ve not be overex­ert­ing myself in a more tra­di­tional way (as if I’d gone to the gym for weight lift­ing for the first time in years). Rather, I am car­ry­ing myself (body frame and mus­cles) in a dif­fer­ent way. So the very process of hold­ing myself upright, walk­ing, bend­ing over is more phys­i­cal exer­tion for me.

Howard told me that giv­ing me a mas­sage is like stroking a tree trunk: my mus­cles and fibers are thick, dense, hard­ened, inelas­tic, stiff, some more than oth­ers.  It takes an enor­mous amount of energy on his part to get a response, but even­tu­ally my body does respond. There’s not a lot of give in my fibers.

I don’t look like some­one wound too tightly. I’ve always been slen­der, un-​​athletic, and rel­a­tively lightly built. At around 40, I put on 25 pounds; when I quit smok­ing the first time, I added another 10 pounds; and by the time I fin­ished my MS degree, I had added another 15 pounds, push­ing me over 210 pounds. So I’ve bulked up over a rel­a­tively wiry, tight frame, adding layer over layer.  And for the past seven years, I’ve been try­ing to reverse that tight­ness while reduc­ing my weight, with mod­er­ate suc­cess since I can do a yoga class with­out look­ing like a com­plete klutz. I half joked with Howard that he’s lucky he did not have to work with me when I started yoga.

So what Howard did on Tues­day (and prob­a­bly in a less con­cen­trated form pre­vi­ously) is to start stretch­ing out some of those sinews, free­ing them to move­ment. Which means that instead of rely­ing on rigid­ity to hold together and mobi­lize my body, my mus­cles are hav­ing to work. To use a metaphor, instead of using wooden struts to prop myself up, I am using the ten­sile strength of wire that has to be adjusted con­tin­u­ously to keep me upright. I may have felt it less before because we’ve tended to focus on a sin­gle area (feet and calves, core, shoul­ders and chest, neck and back). This time we were more ambi­tious in treat­ment scope.

Howard explained to me that the model for under­stand­ing the body is based on geo­met­ric prin­ci­ples — called Tenseg­rity:  rather than think­ing of “flesh hang­ing off of bones,” it’s bet­ter to think in terms of a dynamic ten­sion in which the bones are sus­pended by the fas­cia much like a sus­pen­sion bridge. The con­cept is fas­ci­nat­ing, but right now I am deal­ing with the dis­com­fort of the tran­si­tion to being a more embod­ied form of plas­tic­ity from a wooden prototype.

Happy birth­day to me

I see the time and money that I now am invest­ing in this treat­ment as more than just pain relief or injury repair, but as a down pay­ment on future well being in my “senior­hood.” This past year, with my par­ents’ deaths and all the upheaval and dis­rup­tion in my per­sonal life, I let my per­sonal care slip and saw a dra­matic drop-​​off in my well-​​being as my periph­eral neu­ropa­thy and other symp­toms wors­ened dra­mat­i­cally. With the myofas­cial release mas­sage, I feel a renewed inter­est in my yoga practice.

What is really sur­pris­ing is that the ther­apy seems to have more than tran­si­tory effect (reliev­ing pain or loos­en­ing up mus­cles). You would think that “mov­ing around mus­cles and lig­a­ments” would even­tu­ally mean that they fall back in place. I sus­pect that if I might slip back into old pat­terns if I did not do yoga (or exer­cise or stretch­ing) to lock in the new range of movement.

Keeping me awake at night

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Graphic: Human nervous system via Wikipedia

Human ner­vous system

I’ve known that I had periph­eral neu­ropa­thy since early 2010 when I checked in with a podi­a­trist about other issues. I saw my per­sonal doc­tor and he took a full bat­tery of blood tests to deter­mine if there was any­thing obvi­ous. The results ruled out any of the “bad things” (dia­betes, HIV/​AIDS, etc.). He did detect a vit­a­min D defi­ciency so he had me tak­ing mega dosages of vit­a­min D. Because the sup­ple­ment would not have imme­di­ate effect, I did not get back to him right away and then for­got about the problem.

How­ever, this year, I’ve noted a wors­en­ing of the symp­toms (pin pricks and numb­ness on my feet, espe­cially the left foot) to the point that it was keep­ing me from falling to sleep. Symp­toms seemed to flare up about 1:00 or 2:00 am. My home med­i­cine con­sisted of Aleve, restora­tive poses on my mat, using a ten­nis ball to stretch the sole of my foot, and apply­ing ice to the foot. I tried to do some of these things before going to bed. Results were incon­sis­tent, and I would usu­ally dose off when I was com­pletely exhausted. Some­times, I could pull myself together to go to work. Dur­ing the day, I would not notice the pin pricks because my shoes and socks applied a uni­form pres­sure that tended to lessen my sensitivity.

Since my father’s death in Jan­u­ary and accel­er­ated by my mother’s death in April, I’ve been liv­ing off reserves (don’t ask me to explain; I’m search­ing for a con­cept that doesn’t sound too “New Age-​​ish”). I attended yoga class in fits and starts, I did not make to the gym either, and each new begin­ning seemed to start from a more degraded sta­tus. Because I had to pri­or­i­tize my time and energy to take of my job respon­si­bil­i­ties and the set­tling of my par­ents’ estate, I have not been tak­ing care of myself as well as I should.

This sum­mer, I could feel that things were catch­ing up with me: just run together a string of nights with just 4-​​5 hours sleep each, and anyone’s per­for­mance suf­fers; and pain med­ica­tion and sleep­ing pills did not seem to have an effect. I finally went to my doc­tor again and we did another round of blood work, which revealed that I was in oth­er­wise good health.

The next step was to see a neu­rol­o­gist, who con­firmed the orig­i­nal diag­no­sis — the con­di­tion of idio­pathic periph­eral neu­ropa­thy — the “idio­pathic” means that the doc­tors don’t know what the cause is, and the “periph­eral” means that the con­di­tion is out­side the cen­tral ner­vous sys­tem (brain and spinal cord). The neu­rol­o­gist did not find any impair­ment (grip, bal­ance, coor­di­na­tion, etc.) aside from the pain, and because I can remem­ber the pin prick sen­sa­tion as far back as 12 years, it’s not some­thing of recent onset. He then ordered up an elec­tromyo­g­ra­phy and nerve con­duc­tion test — basi­cally elec­tro­cut­ing my feet, legs and arms for two hours and mea­sur­ing the speed of the periph­eral nerves. The results showed that the nerve cir­cuits in my feet and legs had a degraded capac­ity, but no clear cause was iden­ti­fied.  I was given a pre­scrip­tion of Gabapentin (a generic drug to treat epilepsy, but also effec­tive for neu­ro­pathic pain) and told to ramp up the dosage until it relieved my pain.

Con­clu­sion: After a three-​​week blitz, West­ern med­i­cine has deter­mined that what­ever the cause, the only option is to treat the symp­toms by help­ing me man­age the pain and to mon­i­tor my con­di­tion to see if it got worse. I could prob­a­bly con­sult some more spe­cial­ists or look for some obscure dis­ease (does Dr. House receive patients from DC?). I’ve con­sulted with my acupunc­tur­ist and he said that he could help with the pain and, per­haps, slow the neu­ropa­thy, but did not hold out much hope for revers­ing it. I am going to have to take own­er­ship of my pain and body, and learn to man­age both, which is a trial-​​and-​​error process.

Better than the cure

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The New York Times seems to be on another yoga binge, putting out sto­ries on Ana Forrest’s niche appeal and for­mer Cor­nell bas­ket­ball play­ers doing yoga dur­ing off-​​season, to men­tion the most recent ones. Jane Brody has a col­umn about Ancient Moves for Ortho­pe­dic Prob­lems men­tion­ing the work of Loren Fish­man, a physi­a­trist — a spe­cial­ist in phys­i­cal and reha­bil­i­ta­tive med­i­cine affil­i­ated with NewYork-​​Presbyterian/​Columbia hos­pi­tal. I’ve already used the mod­i­fied tri­an­gle head­stand pos­ture to get my shoul­ders aligned. His longer ref­er­enced arti­cle is avail­able (PDF, 1.76 mb) from a spe­cial issue of Top­ics of Geri­atric Reha­bil­i­ta­tion (April/​June 2011 – Vol­ume 27 – Issue 2, pp. 93-​​166) on yoga as therapy.

I was even more struck by what Fish­man writes in the Fore­ward of the spe­cial issue:

There are few ther­a­pies that boast about their side effects. Both med­i­cine and surgery are under­taken because there is a favor­able cost-​​benefit or risk-​​benefit ratio. The 2 (sic) are placed on oppo­site sides of the bal­ance of good judg­ment. In yoga, the side-​​effects, irrel­e­vant to the actual rea­sons for its ini­tial adop­tion, may turn out to be more to the practitioner’s advan­tage than the pri­mary ther­a­peu­tic effect! Almost any style of yoga brings with it reduced blood pres­sure, less obe­sity, and less back pain, improved range of motion, safe strength­en­ing, reduced asthma and reduced anx­i­ety, bet­ter recov­ery after surgery and chemother­apy and almost stun­ningly low cost.

Fish­man is no stranger to yoga: he prac­ticed in Inida for three years before going to med­ical school and has co-​​authored mul­ti­ple books on yoga ther­apy. he has a web­site on sci­at­ica. He has sev­eral audios on Yoga Spirit.

A bloody nose gets in the way of pranayama

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The last two days I’ve been hand­i­capped by hav­ing a bloody nose. It started late on Mon­day evening after a shower, and kept me from get­ting a good night’s sleep. The next day, I seemed to be doing OK, except when I started to do  bas­trika breath, my left nos­tril started to bleed again so I cut short my pranayama prac­tice. These episodes have been con­trolled fairly eas­ily, but I plan t con­sult a physi­cian about this problem.

I’ve tried to trace my bloody nose to a change in diet, sup­ple­ments or med­ica­tion but have not found a good cul­prit to blame. Since I’ve revived my pranayama prac­tice over the past week, that may be the cause because the vig­or­ous air stream may dry out and irri­tate my nasal pas­sage. In the past, I’ve prob­a­bly gone over the edge in push­ing and pulling air, but this time around, I’ve been stay­ing more controlled.

I’ve never had a prob­lem with nose bleeds until this year. I had one in April at work, but that seemed to be con­nected to the use of an anti­his­t­a­mine nasal spray for allergy sea­son. I no longer use it.

DC Mind-​​Body Week now scheduled for October

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You have five months to clear your sched­ule of the DC Mind-​​Body Week, which is to take place on Octo­ber 13-​​16. An ini­tial dab of infor­ma­tion is avail­able at the web­site, with devel­op­ing news also flow­ing out through the LinkIn page. Among the orga­niz­ers are my friend, Rachel Permuth-​​Levine,  Dr. Deb­o­rah Nor­ris and Thrive Yoga, among others.

Her­bert Ben­son will be the keynote speaker at the event. He is Direc­tor Emer­i­tus of the Benson-​​Henry Insti­tute (BHI), and Mind/​Body Med­ical Insti­tute Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor of Med­i­cine, Har­vard Med­ical School. He has defined the relax­ation response and explored how it affected health and well-​​being.

More news about loca­tion, speak­ers, demon­stra­tions and other details will emerge as we get nearer the event. Rachel has orga­nized sim­i­lar events in the past.

Wasting away

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Not much to add. My mother is close to the end. She’s no longer speak­ing, eat­ing, even swal­low­ing water. She is grad­u­ally leav­ing behind her body, like a dis­carded exoskeleton.

The peo­ple at Mont­gomery Hos­pice have been extra­or­di­nary in giv­ing my mother, my fam­ily and me sup­port and solace in this time of suf­fer­ing. Casey House has cre­ated a wel­com­ing, shel­tered space where I’ve been able to find peace while accom­pa­ny­ing my mother through this pas­sage. I’ve fre­quently come home to rest and imme­di­ately gone back to the hos­pice because it offers a more mind­ful envi­ron­ment at this time. At home, I just get swept up into busy-​​ness in front of my computer.

Mindfulness’s impact on healing explained online

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Photo: a relaxed hand rests on a knee during meditation

A relaxed hand rests on a knee dur­ing meditation

Mind­ful­ness tech­niques are appear­ing every­where, with incred­i­ble data show­ing the health ben­e­fits of devel­op­ing a med­i­ta­tion prac­tice. Med­i­ta­tion is proven to be a reli­able prac­tice for man­ag­ing the stress response. Since stress has been linked with most forms of chronic ill­ness, this may account for how med­i­ta­tion is so therapeutic.

Health Pro­mo­tion LIVE has an audio record­ing of a recent webi­nar Mind­ful­ness in Med­i­cine and Heal­ing with Dr. Deb­o­rah Nor­ris, who is the Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of Sci­ence for Health Energy, Inc. and Founder of The Mind­ful­ness Cen­ter in Bethesda. Nor­ris packs a lot of sci­en­tific infor­ma­tion into the open remarks (20 min­utes) and webi­nar play­back shows the Pow­er­Point pre­sen­ta­tion (Debor­rah, you need some graphic relief: too much white, small, text on blue back­ground; gets some pho­tos). An excel­lent sum­ma­tion of the most recent research find­ings and their impact on heal­ing and med­i­cine. In the sec­ond half, there’s an inter­est­ing exchange among sev­eral pan­elists and sev­eral par­tic­i­pants who tuned into the webinar.

The Mind­ful­ness Cen­ter is a “well­ness cen­ter pro­vid­ing Med­i­ta­tion, Yoga, Mas­sage, Acupunc­ture, Tai Chi, Aer­o­bics, Nia Dance, and other Mind-​​Body pro­grams to bring mind­ful­ness to all dimen­sions of life,” Deborrah’s site says. The webi­nar con­firmed in my mind that The Mind­ful­ness Cen­ter is an invalu­able resource to have in the DC area. It opened up recently so it’s good to see that it’s find­ing its fol­low­ing (I assume from the crowded sched­ule of classes and workshops).