Hacking the Good days…

A good friend of mine has been complaining about her wrists that hurt so bad she has started visiting the physios regularly – and she’s only in her twenties!  That made me think, how many of us (who sit in front of a computer all day) are constantly suffering from back pain, shoulder pain and wrist pain?  I hope you’re not one of us, but if you do, I hope this blog helps.

I have started doing yoga about 6 years ago, and have been a total convert only a couple of years ago when I learnt how to relieve any kind of strain and pain by going into certain poses.  I also wrote about the main benefits of yoga for geeks in particular.

But as action speaks more than words, I feel oblige to share with as many of you all my favourite stretches for relieving pain around the wrists and shoulders, so easy that you don’t even go into a class to try!  But of course, boring reminder here, when there’s any extreme discomfort or sharp pain, make sure you check with you GP.  Otherwise these are great little exercises to give yourself a little impromptus massage.  I have linked all exercises back to their source, but I have added my own personal comment to bring out the maximum effectiveness of each stretch.

Enjoy!

1. Basic Wrist Stretch (ninja mask’s optional!)

This one is so simple that you can do it while you’re sitting in front of your desk.

• Remember to sit properly with your both feet parallel hip-width apart
• Inhale as you extend one arm (or if your neighbour colleagues don’t mind, both), remember to tighten your fingers and arm muscles, that way you can feel the the stretch more intensely
• Exhale while you stretch up, on the next inhale point your wrist up
• Exhale, return to neutral (hands pointing to the side)
• Inhale pointing down, exhale return to neutral
• For the creative type – feel free to use this exercise to focus on the breath and try to maintain longer exhale than inhale, that way you clear your mind and come back with more good ideas (sans the caffeine and hello good night sleep!)

* also take time to notice you *are not* slouching – imagine an invisible string pulling yourself up from the tip of your head.  No, I’m not trying to imply that you’re the sock-puppet mucking around on Wikipedia, it’s just that in the long run slouching messes up with your spine alignment and exerts prolong pressure in the wrong place.  And that can really, really hurt, now we don’t want that, do we? :)

Great for wrist relief!  Once you get into the hang you can start introducing variations, such as rotating your wrists clock-wise and anti-clock-wise, also great for relieving the tight tendons around the wrists.

2. Counter shoulder stretch

Knowing my blog’s audience, I am tempted to make this pose more macho sounding, like, Couching Tiger pose.  Right. ;)

As you know, but probably not often think about, that our shoulders are composed of highly intricate joints, muscles and tendons and we tend to stuck them in the same position whole day (arms 90 degrees typing/mouse maneuvering).  By now with all the damage done, you are probably like me – a quick test here -  if you reach your left arm above your shoulder to the centre back and right arm from below up, do your hands touch touch one another easily?  On both sides?   heh.  After years of trying (definitely not hard enough), I still can’t do that on my left side.

If you are like me, you’re going to *love* the couching tiger stretch,

This pose should bring immediate relief to upper back and shoulders, as well as relieving strains on the arms.  Also it clears the head a bit, too.  And if you’re good in holding your spine steady and lock your knees, you can get a great hamstring stretch too, great for the cyclists.

Finally!  I’ve been building up to this funky one!

3. Funky hamstring-lower-back stretch:

I love this one when I start feeling sleepy – and it’s so easy to sneak into an empty meeting room when you feel stale, uninspired, or just having bad shoulder strain!  Easier done than how it looks, too, I promise.  Not to mention having all the blood rushing to your head, guess how I quit my coffee addiction slowly and steadily?

Hope you like the stretches, and feel free to share if I have missed something obvious.  Now time to show some love to your shoulders, wrists and lower back… and let me know if these poses work for you!

One of those days you sit in the park with a friend that clicks with you, and you start talking like Plato (or Plato-wannbe) ;).  My mate and I were talking about what makes people lucky.  It reminded me of a scientific research I have read and it’s a fascinating finds – there are actual significant differences in personality traits that contribute to people’s perception on their luckiness.

So this psychologist, Richard Wiseman, devised an experiment to test his two groups of people – one group consistently counts themselves as lucky, and the other group as unlucky,

I gave both lucky and unlucky people a newspaper, and asked them to look through it and tell me how many photographs were inside. On average, the unlucky people took about two minutes to count the photographs, whereas the lucky people took just seconds. Why? Because the second page of the newspaper contained the message: “Stop counting. There are 43 photographs in this newspaper.” This message took up half of the page and was written in type that was more than 2in high. It was staring everyone straight in the face, but the unlucky people tended to miss it and the lucky people tended to spot it.

It is shocking to see that the ‘lucky’ group tends to remain oblivious to the ‘lucky’ opportunities right in front of them.  I like how Wiseman puts a positive spin to the research outcome – being lucking is actually a *skill* that you can learn:

Unlucky people often fail to follow their intuition when making a choice, whereas lucky people tend to respect hunches. Lucky people are interested in how they both think and feel about the various options, rather than simply looking at the rational side of the situation. I think this helps them because gut feelings act as an alarm bell – a reason to consider a decision carefully.

Unlucky people tend to be creatures of routine. They tend to take the same route to and from work and talk to the same types of people at parties. In contrast, many lucky people try to introduce variety into their lives. For example, one person described how he thought of a colour before arriving at a party and then introduced himself to people wearing that colour. This kind of behaviour boosts the likelihood of chance opportunities by introducing variety.

Lucky people tend to see the positive side of their ill fortune. They imagine how things could have been worse. In one interview, a lucky volunteer arrived with his leg in a plaster cast and described how he had fallen down a flight of stairs. I asked him whether he still felt lucky and he cheerfully explained that he felt luckier than before. As he pointed out, he could have broken his neck.

So the keys are ICP: Listen to you Intuition/Instinct, be Creative, and stay Positive.  Wish you all luck and please do share with friends who find themselves lucky and more so those who don’t!

Special thanks to another good friend of mind who builds this MiniMotivation hack: keep refreshing it for more positive vibes.  I feel lucky already. :)

Here is a Chinese story,

There were two brothers who lived on the 80th floor of a building.

They went out together for a party without noticing there’s no lift service on the day.  The brothers were very frustrated when they realised that they were kind of doomed, but they decided to slowly start climbing the stairs flight by flight.

By the 20th flight, they decided that they were going to drop their heavy knapsacks and planned to pick them up the next day.

By the 40th flight, they started to blame and yelled at one another for not being attentive and missed the notice.

By the 60th flight, they came to accept fate, slowly and peacefully they inch up and eventually reach to their door.

Only then, they realised they left their keys in the knapsacks…

If the keys are like our dream and passion and vision when we have in our 20s: With all the pressing needs in life, like paying off loans, getting a mortgage, finding a partner, raising children, many of us decide to set our dreams aside.  Eventually we work hard and move up, from the beginning till the end, in our 40s we start blaming one another for not having the vision and strength to carry forward.  And then we come to accept fate and become serene for the rest of our journeys in our 60s.  At the end, do you have the keys with you?

Where are you and your keys?

I read the story and something switched today, thought it’d be nice to share with you.  Thanks for swinging by.

Someone made me happy today, and I thought I was happier and I defined that as (1+x%)happy. And then I was asked ‘can you be more than 1 happy?’

Got me thinking,

Happiness is a 1/0 thing.
Imagine you are a happy person, you make someone happy, and that someone makes someone else happy, like butterfly effect it triggers down.

1/0 happiness seems like a probable notion. Sorry it does sound like an xkcd strip :).

But something said by a yogi inspired me the other day, ‘Have no fear. Not courage, because courage is a reaction to fear. Have no fear, and peace be with you. And that is beautiful’.

So it got me to conclude that ‘Be not sad. Not happy, because being happy is a reaction to sadness’.

Well doesn’t make too much sense, does it? I think it’s time for a good glass of wine.

A wonderful thoughtful exercise created by Erik on Flickr, beautiful.

1. I hate not being able to keep up with my thoughts.
2. Not being able to keep up with my thoughts means that you think more than you will ever be able to share and articulate the signals among the noise
3. Too many ideas go wasted because of that
4. Wouldn’t it be great if we log all of ideas down as stubs and open it up so that other people with a different personality inclination (convergent versus divergent) can pick up and create something cool out of your ideas?

‘The water of the valley stream is always flowing.  It races on, not pausing for even an instant.  Its sound, to me, is the sound of time.

The water of time glistens on the riverbed of the universe.  Though theirs is a much slower flow, Human beings and all things that have life flow.  Thought and culture, too, flow.  That all these appear to be unchanging is but illusion.

We make every effort to keep things as they are, because human beings, alone, lament transience. Yet no matter how we grieve or protest, there is no way to impede the flow or anything.  If we but see things as they are and flow with them, we may find enjoyment in transience.  Because human life is transient, all manner of figures are woven into its fabric.

[...]

When we listen subconsciously to the sound of flowing water, does it not seem to create a rhythm?  Yet not a single drop of water passes over the same rock twice, and the murmur of water rushing over a rock is constantly changing.  Sameness is but an illusion of the human ears, eyes, mind.  Water has once flowed along a riverbed can never retrace its course. Human life is no different.  It is only our mundane eyes and minds that see yesterday as being the same as today.

Enlightened eyes and minds should recognise that each moment has a form different from that of any other moment.’

Shundo Aoyama. (2001).  Zen Seeds (pp 1-2). Tokyo: Kosei Publishing Limited.

Buddhism maintains that the source of suffering is our inability to accept impermanence.  In ’secular’ geek terms, you won’t wake up thinking that all the data of your unback-up hard disk can be all gone for no reasons.  Obviously I cannot articulate as beautifully as Aoyama in her book Zen Seeds, hence reading her book is like looking at flaking candle flame for the first time – so magical, but yet so natural and non-contrieved.  I wish we possess enlightened eyes and minds and recognise that each moment IS different, be peaceful, see that there is nothing we can do and enjoy it as just it is.

About a year ago I wrote this post, A few words from the Wisemen on how to survive and be sane in a corporate world.  A year from then I learnt a lot, not just from work, but from meeting different people, realising it’s important to just be and discovered that we all possess healing energy.  The importance of sharing and to let go – whether you’re my friend or you just happened to stumble upon my blog – it is all due to a trillion conincidences happening at the same time.  So bear with me on this slightly long post on revisiting the wiseman as my annual reflective piece.  I hope you like it and let me know if I miss something important!  Okay here we go!

1. Love yourself before you can love others

‘I love him(her), why doesn’t (s)he love me back?’

‘I want love’

I hear that a lot from people I come across, but sometimes we confuse the need to love and to be loved by someone with the notion of love.  If you have to mould someone into what you want him/her to be, you probably don’t love him/her, but the ideal image of something you invented.  Now this is interesting and critical.  Why do you want to project your love energy to this external ‘thing’?  What kind of void are you trying to fill in?

Do you love yourself?  The paradox is that, the more you try the seek love externally, the less loveable you become.  Only when you truly accept and love yourself as who you are, you will then attract the right kind of energy and people.  I know I sound crazy and new age, but this is one of the most important lessons I have learnt.  And that will require some practices, hence point 2:

2. The arts of just be
If there is a button in front of you, and once you press it you can become anyone else in this world other than you, what would you do?

[please pause and really think about it].

What’s your answer?  Are you ultimately contented to be you, or you feel that you are better off being someone else?  To those who are contented, you can skip the rest of this point.  To those who are tempted, why?  Why would you want to be someone else?  Why is not enough to just be you?

When you look at little happy and curious kids, sometimes you hear them aspiring to be an astronaut when they grow up.  It’s weird that as we grow older, we lose sight that we indeed can still become what we want to be, instead of who we want to be.  No, we will never be that 5′11 skinny model, but we can learn to love our body.  No, perhaps we will never make a billion dollars, but we can learn to enjoy what we have.  The media and the fast-pace society always prompt us to believe we are never adequate instead of believing in ourselves, and that we need to worry about our morgage, not getting married early enough, not earning the same money as our fellows…

Have we asked ourselves what we truly needs?  Do you remember to drink 2 litres of water everyday?  Are your shoulders strained?  When was the last time you gave your shoulders some nice stretches?  The answers are never external.  The more you seek externally, the more you lose yourself and your essense. 

3. We all possess healing energy

It hard to live the modern life when you are constantly reminded that you need to do better, but ultimately we all possess amazing healing power.  It’s amazing how much difference you make by just being someone who cares.  Think about people around you, how many of them care?  Care about themselves, care about their friends and family, care about the world around, a little toddler falls next to you.  Aren’t you drawn by them?  People who care are people that are in touch with their healing energy.  Ultimately they like to see others happy and the world’s a better place to be.  You are one of us.  Don’t forget that.

I learnt the most when I volunteered on the skills of listening.  Being listened by someone who cares is one of the most amazing priviledges that we easily forget.  For more information, I quite like this note on reflective listening.

4. Change is constant

For most of us who live and work in the city, 2008 is not a forgiving year.   Redundancy, reorganisation, resizing, £ falling behind all currencies, it’s tough, it’s stressful and sometimes it’s deflating.  But why is it so tough?  We definitely had our good time as well, but the challenge actually does not come from the outside but again, in ourselves.  Human beings are weird creatures – we are made to notice changes, but also to assume consistency.  For example we don’t really notice things in a room that doesn’t move (e.g. like books on shelves), but things that move (e.g. puppy running around).  Push this notion to the extreme, you wake up everyday you’d assume you still have everything you had from yesterday, such as your laptop still working, you sister still brewing her morning coffee, your mom and dad engaging in their small talks… but wait – this is actually a gift.  The chances is that, one day we wake up we MAY LOSE them (/touch wood).  Chinese we believe that it take millions of coincidences for you to happen to be having dinner with some new friends, and it take trillions of little coincidences for someone to become husband and wife.  It may come natural, but think of the odds for you to meet somene in a world where billions live, and to have a connection, and to engage in meaningful acts together… cherish it, but also (and particularly because) you know that anytime things can change.  Whether for the good or for the worse, change is the only constant in life.  Be ready to cherish, and be ready to let go.

5. Draw the right kind of energy

Go away, whiner!  I curse you!  Okay i may be kidding, and although I try to be kind, I have no patience for people who are not grateful and keep on complaining about life.  You can’t change life by complaining, and the more you delve into the down sides of things the more likely you fail to see the plus side, and draw in more negative energy into you.  So if you whine, I am afraid I’ll have to ignore you.  (note: to my dear friends, occassional whining is healthy – here I mean people who whine about *everything*).  I think you probably know some of those fellas…

6. Learn how to be with yourself

Who says holiday is easy?  I tend to get more stressed out right before and at the beginning of a holiday – what am I supposed to do?? Do I just read, lie around, eat and do nothing??  Initially the notion of holiday without family around stresses me, because I used to spend my holiday with my family and living abroad does not always allow the luxury to do so.  But come to think about it, the way I was raised as an Asian kid actually has not encouraged time to myself, such as just a week of camping (I never camped), or on holiday (no, never have a beach-side holiday either).  So this x’mas/new year is actually my first real holiday and I am learning how to be with myself.  On the first few days I did try to look up my friends, organised my schedule so that I was packed with everything (and consequentially *more* stressed out than working).  But then after my lovely yoga retreat (at Clare Island and will blog about it soon), I came home and I just want to chill, read, eat, run and sleep.  Finally, I think I started to get the hang of it.  So for those natural holiday-people, it’s an art man.  I think we need life-hack tips on how geeks ‘deal’ with their holidays…

7. To care, is the most powerful form of energy

One of those days at work, you see someone else done something and you think, ‘what the hack was that dude thinking??’ Does it sound familiar?  When we see bad codes, malpractices, or just pure negligence, apart from the importance of assuming good faith, it is also important to know that there are people WHO JUST DON’T CARE / GIVE A SH*T.  It’s okay.  Yes, it’s shocking, and annoying, when you take pride in yourself, in what you do, and care about people, or even the planet around you, but there are people who just don’t.  Now, on the plus side, remember that when you care, you can do *ANYTHING*.  No, not in a way of an obsessive-compulsive freak, but in a way you want things to be in place around you.  You care if your friends are upset, you are there for them.  You care about your work, you fix the bugs you see.  You care about your parents, you think of them and you call them.  People feel it, even dogs feel it (it’s debatable where your computer feels it, but I do believe my mac can feel it…).  It is the most profound energy God (or the universe whatever you believe) gave us.  Do use it with caution and DON’T WASTE it on THINGs/PEOPLE who are NOT WORTH it.  Really.  Life’s too short for those idiots.

8. The art of giving and receiving

Now this is the trickiest and to me the most fascinating point – the art of giving and receiving.  What do you find easier?  To do stuff for your friends, like cooking for them, grabbing them the book that they always want?  or to be the recipient, to be invited over by friends for home-cooked dinner, or to be surprised with the little book that you always want and be given by your friends?  You may agree that recieving is sometimes as hard as giving.  I very much so.  It is difficult to recieve gracefully because when someone is giving, there is an implicit social contractual terms that you are of certain degree of closeness or trust with someone.  Hmm if I have to translate this to human language (haha, pardon my nerdy side), when someone gives, they expect something in return.  Always.  Even for altruistic deeds like donating money to UNICEF, you expect the world’s to be a better place, for example.  Appreciation, joy, gratefulness… doesn’t have to be materialistic but it shocks me how many people fail to simply bloody REGISTER the fact that someone done something for you!  It is work, it is of certain level of thoughts and care that someone does something for you.

Now the trick is, on the other hand, if you are a natural giver, you don’t want to stress the recipient too much either – I tend to over-attend to my friends sometimes, say, I am known to introduce people whom already knew one another.  And when you do stuff and expect return, you are putting yourself into unnecessary stressful situations as well.  It is tricky.  Last but not least, when people receive too much and fail to register the kindness, the weirdest things happen – they demonise the giver, and treat them miserably because they can’t handle the cognitive dissonance. (i.e. I receive a lot from this lady.  I didn’t thank her the way I should.  Either I am rude/insensitive or she is an idiot in treating me so nicely.  She is an idiot, because probably I am not rude or insensitive.)  This topic is a book on it’s own, but here’s my little summary of thoughts..

9. Healthy body, healthy mind

Enough said from my last blog post, don’t want to bore your brains out.

10. Life is a journey, enjoy meeting not just people, but souls

Finally I dedicate this blog post to my lovely friend whom father just passed away.  I wish her well and her father enjoying some peace and tranquility at the other side of the universe.  Life is a journey.  Due to millions and trillions of coincidences we meet and leave people around us.  We come with bare hands and leave with bare hands… But what we can take away is our the learning and exert kindness around us that ripples off.  You never know when that extra glass of clean water saves someone, you never know what something you say click with someone and make that person feels love and care.  Hope in the year 2009 you will enjoy being yourself, meeting kind souls, continue learning and grow.

To all of my dear friends, happy new year.

Okay Staples tagged me on this meme on the five things that keep me in check, so get ready for my reflective post!

My five things:

1. Talking to friends and family – I need to *share* my life, whether it’s something ups or downs, news just random ephiphanies.  My friends make me happy and calm me down.  And I hope I have the same effects on them…

2. Exercise – Yoga, running and a bit of resistence training and random classes – anything that makes me move and sweat is good!  I am a keen believer that sweating once a day makes you happy.  And pushing your body a little further from its comfort zone also builds confidence.  Doesn’t seem to be that direct but once you start doing that, you can’t do any less!

3. Quality food – vegetables, fruits, lots of fibre and occassion freshly grilled salmon fillet with honey and mustard saurce or freshly steamed sea bass with ginger and spring onion… the list goes on!  Good, fresh food makes me super happy, and feel good too.  Sadly I have to confess that I need my occassional dose of McDonald’s fillet O’Fish.  Horrible, I know.  Sometimes I even get migrane the next day I have one, but it’s sooooo delicious.  Oh well.

4. Detox your skin – When I first came to London I get irritated by the low humidity and the lime-rich water.  It was only when I realised at a ski trip that by going to sauna and exercise crazy for 6 days, my skin restores itself!  Skin is definitely the largest organ in the body and when you treat it nicely but proper exercise (sweat), exfoliation and moisturisation, you get happier too!

5. Thinking about thinking – this is key.  Sometimes people call that meta-cognition, it’s the ability to analyse you own thinking critically.  I am chicken-little – super risk adverse and sensitive, so very little thing can make me very stressed out, obsessed for a while, or just down for a bit.  But sometimes if I think about, ‘hey if i were xxx in the same situation, or if it’s not me in the situation but xxx, how I would be feeling now?’.  Having this mind-floating experience helps calm me down and makes me realise the importance of not to sweat over small stuff.  And everything is small stuff.

Finally as my yoga teacher said yesterday during the meditation, ‘Think about what really you are, instead of the external pressure that try to tell you what you need to be.  What is it that you truly want?  Who are the real you?‘

What are your top 5?