Nature – Serenity Through Sweat

Belonging

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. Last week I stumbled into a little hipster coffee shop on a long layover in Oklahoma City. They had a bourbon maple pecan latte that caught my attention.

I typically load up my coffee at home with a lot. Creatine, resveratrol, NMN, collagen, cinnamon, and turmeric all make a regular appearance. Even still, there was a lot going on in that latte. To include chopped pecans for an oddly satisfying chewy sensation I was surprised to enjoy in my mid morning cup.

Between the heavy history of linguistics research and the multitude of flavors in the latte I was surprised when my attention was drawn to the window outside.

It was a windy day in Oklahoma. I had spent the morning running along the brick town canal and then the Oklahoma River. It was mostly quiet and just a few other walkers or cyclists were out. There was however, a small army of landscapers weilding leaf blowers.

It seemed like an exercise in futility, but there they were, it seemed a new team around every corner, battling the wind with their air cannons trying to corral the rogue leaves.

This was especially apparent outside the coffee shop window, where the small army and their mini jet engines could be heard through my ear plugs and over the hipster coffee shop music as I tried to work.

I finally looked up and saw this silly tree across the street. A lone act of defiance in an otherwise concrete jungle landscape. From my seat at the window it was hard to tell where the roots even had access to any dirt.

This was the source of all those rogue leaves. Which drew the army of jet blasting landscapers. Which in turn was providing a myriad of distractions from my project at hand. This tree obviously didn’t belong here.

Or did it.

I am very grateful for these long layovers. Away from the inevitable busyness of a flying day or life as a father and husband, I am able to have such trivial contemplations.

The tree certainly didn’t fit with the rest of the scene, and my initial reaction was that it didn’t belong. The landscaping team certainly shared my belief, fighting their uphill and upwind battle illy equiped against the leaves.

What if I got it wrong? What is the tree did belong there. What if it belonged there more than the sidewalk, or the condo, or the hipster coffee shop? Who gets to decide what belongs and what does not.

I smiled to myself as I chewed on my latte, suddenly much more appreciative of the distraction from my project. My initial reaction was unnecessarily hostile and misguided. As quickly as it came though, a competing idea bubbled up.

I thought about my boys, growing up in a world that seems to be increasingly divided and polarized. A world with spaces were belonging can be artificially defined.

I’m not sure they are old enough, and even when they are they might not fully appreciate this story. It is after all one trivial contemplation among many that I hope to bequeath them.

Maybe you had to be there. Trying to block out the hipster music and the leaf blowers, oddly chewing on pecans in a latte, reading esoteric linguistic research to really appreciate that renegade growing tall out of the concrete and peppering passers-by with it’s foliage.

But, I think it’s lesson is a valuable one. Our first reaction to who or what belongs, is not always the right one. There is beauty to be found especially in outliers, that might not seem to belong.

Thanks for joining me, stay safe and stay sweaty my friends.

Reset

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. After a short hiatus for a family vacation I’m back and better than ever, and that is exactly what I want to talk about.

My wife and I drove out two boys nine plus hours from Florida into the North Georgia mountains for a family getaway. A change of pace and a change of scenery. There is something about cresting that first ridge about an hour north of Atlanta, seeing the southern tip of the Appalachians standing solemnly yet inviting in the distance, that raises my hopes as much as it raises in elevation.

I didn’t realize how much I missed terrain, until I moved to a place that has so little of it. Florida has its own natural beauty for sure, but there is a majesty in mountains that is sorely lacking in the sunshine state.

We settled into a daily routine of sorts with the boys. We would traverse the steep and winding switchbacks of the mountain roads each morning, trying to appreciate that aforementioned majesty while also fighting back motion sickness (especially for El Duderino and my wife) each day brought a new hike, waterfall, or state park and a small mountain town to explore.

Ana Ruby Falls, Helton Creek Falls, Rocco’s Swinging Bridge

The boys loved it. There is something magical about the mountains, the outdoors, new places, and the synergy of all three for little boys. My two Florida babies where totally unencumbered by the low temperatures and their embarrassingly bulky winter clothes. The Buffalo native in me would be unable to resist poking fun at the collective family’s attire if my thinned out Florida blood could stop shivering long enough to do it.

I loved it too. I cherished it. It was a special time and place to share with family, but it was also a reset for me. Reflecting back on the month of December and the posts I wrote, there is a sense of melancholy. There is pride, and accomplishment, and desire, but it is somewhat tainted by that nagging feeling that all of these things did not awaken in me a sense of joy or fulfillment that I had hoped they would.

That is not to say that the time or activities from December were without value, or that melancholy is negative in it’s entirety. But, it made me appreciate the reset in the mountains that much more.

This study from Japan, shows significant decreases in oxidative stress, pro-inflammatory markers, and serum cortisol levels (a stress hormone) from a cohort who engaged in “forest bathing”

This study from a University of Utah professor shows an increase in problem solving, creativity, and other prefrontal cortex mediated executive processes, after spending a prolonged time in nature, both hiking as well as disengaging from multi media technology.

There was no shortage of cell phone usage, Disney shows, or championship football (how bout them Bills) while we were in the mountains, but the rejuvenation I know I felt, and I believe my family shared in, was tangible.

I have talked in previous posts about the almost temple like sanctity of a wrestling or jui jitsu mat, or a frisbee field. There can be a special feeling crossing the threshold, like the baseball players from Field of Dreams, nothing exists there but the purity of the game. Everything else melts away. Serenity, even if only for the briefest of moments.

The mountains gifted me that same sensation. Sometimes in small doses, and sometimes in heaping truckloads. It was a much needed and very welcome reset. One I am delighted to have shared with my family, and in some small part with you, the reader, as well.

The kettlebells made the trip to the mountains too

Thanks for joining me, stay safe and stay sweaty my friends.

Galanin to the Rescue

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. Today I want to talk about galanin, what it is and some of the many ways it helps us.

Galanin is a neuropeptide, which is fancy word for a protein produced by neurons. (don’t worry I had to look it up because it sounded more like one of king arthur’s knights to me). Galanin is found in many different parts of our brain as well as our GI tract.

A recent article in the Journal of Neuroscience, shows an increased galanin level (derived from unfettered access to cardiovascular exercise) was correlated with a conferred resilience to stress in mice.

Two groups of mice were observed after a stressful event (foot shock). The respective galanin levels were measured in each group, with the experimental group having access to a running wheel in their cage and the control group having none. After three weeks there was a correlation between the elevated galanin levels, the amount of time exercising, and the degree of stress resilience, in the group of mice who used the running wheel. (After building in the first week they were averaging 10-16km per day, if you needed some motivation for your own running)

The test then went on to elevate galanin levels in otherwise sedentary mice and the observed the same stress resilience effects. It is obvious but worth stating that people are not mice, but we do have very similar galanin receptors. This experiment shows that repeated cardiovascular exercise increases galanin, and increased galanin helps us deal with stress.

Doing further research on galanin, I found this article in Nature, which shows that increased galanin levels are responsible for regulating aggression toward pups in male mice, and increasing their tendency towards parental behavior.

I’ve always felt that I’m a better father, husband, and overall person after a good sweat session. There are obviously multiple chemicals in play there, but galanin has a big role to play. This is especially true as stress levels have been elevated these past few months, as has time with my sons without daycare.

Increasing galanin levels seems like a great thing to do no matter what, but an especially great thing with all the stresses of Covid life, and the best way to do that is some good old fashioned SerenityThroughSweat.

Thanks for joining me, stay safe and stay sweaty my friends.