APP REVIEW: Haiku Wind Pro HD

I recently found an app for the iPhone and iPad that is a true joy!  I don't even know how I happened upon it, but I discovered Haiku Wind for the iPhone and Haiku Wind Pro HD for the iPad, and I have been using it frequently since.

Billed as "A poetry game for the Twitter generation", it's a really well done app.

Now I do NOT fancy myself a poet, but this app lends itself to use by anyone, of any poetic skill level and any level of interest.  With it, you can view the Public Timeline, see the Top 100, check out the Hall of Fame, review your own Haiku or just look over some of your favorites.  It's a brand new app, and the community is small for it right now (looks like about 300 users from their statistics page...and I became one of the first ten Haiku Gods!), but it's taking off fast.  There's a lot of great enjoyment to be had just by reading the Haiku on their web site, which is considered to be an important aspect of the app.

The app allows you to earn your way, via public voting on your anonymous Haiku, to a "Haiku God".  The final of many levels based on the number of votes you get.  The higher level you are, the more votes you can cast for a single Haiku.  I'm not certain, but it sounds like once you make the "Haiku God" level, you can't lose that status, although you definitely can on the way up!  I lost my status at one point after taking a severe hit on one of my Haiku that must have not been popular.  It had a mis-spelled word (darn iPhone correction!!) and I think I got voted off the island because of that.

Anyhow, why am I writing about this Haiku app on my Weight Loss and Self-Improvement blog?  Well, because I found that it has some real serious benefit in terms of mindfulness efforts!

As we all shoot for Mindful Eating, Mindful Living (as we learned from "Savor"), and general Mindful Practice it can sometimes be difficult to focus.  It's easier during meditation, but with all the distractions of a day pressing on us, it's not always easy to be mindful.

That's where Haiku Wind Pro HD (or the iPhone version) seems to aid us.  I have found that if you pick a topic you want to be mindful of, and compose a Haiku about it, you are rather forced to think only about that thing and how to best describe it in ample detail, with few words.  This is exceedingly more difficult to do than you might think and - at least for me - helps you clarify your own feelings on the thing in question.  Not to mention it is relaxing and beautiful at times.

A variety of beautiful backgrounds are available in-app.  A look to please most anyone!

For you Buddhists out there (I did haiku on the Four Noble Truths!), this app does not require an account, and while you do retain a list of your own Haiku, the app is anonymous.  You get no recognition for them, so no one knows which ones belong to whom.  This means you aren't attached to them, and therefor they offer a nice lesson in impermanence as well.  If you're not Buddhist, this could be a put-off for you, but I think it's a lesson well needed for most folks in this day and age.

So check out Haiku Wind Pro HD for your iPad or Haiku Wind for iPhone.  It's a really nicely designed app, with a tiny bit of room for enhancement, but it's nearly perfect!  As with all my favorite apps, it is a single function app that does one thing very well and looks great doing it.  It's a pleasure to view as well!

Here's a few anonymous ones that, as you can tell by their excellent quality, were clearly done by a handsome fellow with a knack for this sort of thing ;-)

My beautiful child,

I want to give you the world!

For you gave me mine.

~

Full moon in the sky,

as daylight fades to darkness.

Mindful Walking now!

~

Strangers until now,

A common thread discovered.

Serendipitous!

Go forth and write! ;-)
MondoSamu

Giving Thanks

Today was Thanksgiving Day, and I had a great day! I have more to be thankful for this year than ever before. My health is almost better than ever, as I have now lost 60 pounds. My family is great, my job is wonderful and much, much more.

The interesting thing is that once you begin living a mindful life, every day is thanksgiving day! The only difference, in terms if giving thanks, is that I get to say it out loud to the people I love, rather than giving thanks internally as I walk mindfully or meditate.

Above all, this year, I am grateful for mindfulness itself. The mindfulness i discovered in "Savor" by Thich Nhat Hanh and Dr. Lilian Cheung has helped me in every way imaginable, but none more so than that of mindful eating. Today is, quite literally, the first time I can recall in my life that I indulged in tremendously good Thanksgiving fare and walked away from the table not in pain. And, if that's not enough, I then walked three miles! All of this would have been impossible for me to fathom a few months ago.

I definitely gave thanks to the authors of "Savor" today, for they have both - in different ways - helped me to change my life!

I don't fancy myself to be a poet, but I enjoy playing with Haiku. I find it helps focus your thoughts and aid mindfulness. Anyhow, I jotted down this one today, and thought I would share:

"Cornucopia,

Recipes passed on from past.

Mindful Indulgence."

And this one:

"Plentiful bounty,

Family and friends surround.

I want for nothing!"

And lastly I share with you what I commented to my friends and family today:

"I am thankful for my body, for taking care of me until I finally started taking care of it. Thankful for my beautiful wife and daughter! I'm thankful for my family and friends, one and all, past and present, here and gone. This beautiful world and the good people in it. And my life! Happy Thanksgiving everyone!"

I hope you, too - whether you celebrate this holiday or not,  gave and received gratitude in your life today! I leave you with a picture of the town Christmas tree as it was lit for the first time this evening.

Happy Holidays!

MondoSamu

BOOK REVIEW: Unbearable Lightness by Portia DeRossi

I recently heard about the new book by Portia DeRossi "Unbearable Lightness".  I used to watch Ally McBeal with my sister long ago.  It was the only thing she and I really did together, and I loved Portia DeRossi!  I'm also a big fan of Ellen Degeneres.  Not so much her comedy, though she's certainly funny, but mostly I find Ellen to be a very sincere and wonderful person, from what I have seen of her.  There's a sincerity that can't be faked, and she's got it.

Anyhow, with all of that in mind, I was astonished to hear that Portia DeRossi had once been anorexic, and suffered from eating disorders.  I don't recall her being so small as the pictures in the book show, I just remember her from the show.  I never followed the tabloids and such, so never was aware of the rest.

So when I heard of this, and of her book "Unbearable Lightness" I snagged it on my iPad and read it almost straight through!  First off, I love the title.  It says a lot of different things to me, and is a clever one.

One reason I was interested in reading it is because I already knew it had a happy ending as anyone who has ever watched the Ellen show is aware that they are happily married.  And again, you can't hide or fake that kind of happiness I don't think.  Also, I felt that a lot of the things she went through were just the opposite side of the same weight loss coin we "fat" folks are on.

Whether you are too skinny, unhappy with yourself and trying to diet to get smaller or too heavy, unhappy with yourself and trying to get smaller, I think a lot of the feelings and challenges are the same.  Ultimately it's the exact same thing, and has little to do with the body, and lots to do with the brain.

I don't know squat about anorexia, nor do I know anything about depression as I was very fortunate to be blessed with a strong self esteem all my life.  I do know countless others who have struggled with depression that led to their eating issues.  I do know countless others, including myself, who got on the yo-yo diet train and descended further and further down it's track without success, which leads to more and more troubles with your health.

There isn't much I can tell you, after having read the book, that you either haven't heard already elsewhere or that will be any more insightful than any other review has been.  What I feel I can tell you is how this book might be useful to you if you are overweight or obese as opposed to anorexic or bulimic.

The first, and most striking, thing about the book to me was the overwhelming sadness and isolation that Portia DeRossi must have felt and gone through.  She strikes me as a very loving person from what little I know of her, and the sense of her self-imposed loneliness in this book was palpable.  When one binges and purges as she was, there is an automatic requirement for a lot of privacy.  And it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.  The more you do it, the more you recede from life.  The more you withdraw, the more you feel bad about yourself.  The worse you feel about yourself, the more you you binge and purge.  And the wheel keeps on turning.

Overweight people have the same cycle sometimes, just without the purging.  I know a lot of overweight people who hide in their cars or elsewhere to eat large quantities of food like she says she did in the book.  I know many who keep food stashed in hiding places so that others don't know they are eating so much.  They lie about the amount they eat, and feel compelled to tell you how little they are eating even though it's not true.  And it goes on and on.

The point being that I feel this book is a valuable look in to the life of someone who had as much problem keeping themselves tiny as many of us do in getting ourselves slimmed down from obesity.  If I were to boil the books message down to one short simple sentence, it would simply be to live mindfully and connected to the world and the rest will be ok.  At least that's what I took away from "Unbearable Lightness".

The book is sad, wry, scary and eye-opening.  I get the sense that Portia DeRossi has gained a lot of knowledge in her quest for health that would be useful and enjoyable to hear, but the book focuses primarily on the things she went through and only briefly talks, toward the end, about the positive things she did and does to stay in power over it.

Toward the end she discusses, a bit, the influence of Dr. Wayne Dyer (Whose movie, "The Shift", Portia starred in)  in her life, she gives a good bit about the influence of her horses, nature, Ellen and about Love and "Connectedness" more than anything.  This part of the book will ring a bell for any Buddhists out there, as what she is discussing is essentially mindful living and interbeing.

I particularly enjoyed this part most of all.  I feel that if she and Ellen ever released a book about their lives - such as their food, spirituality, beliefs, etc - it would be a great read.  I know them both to be animal lovers, non-meat eaters, spiritual and caring people who have access to people like Deepak Chopra and Dr. Wayne Dyer just to name a couple.  Anyone who has Wayne Dyer officiate their wedding has something going right in their life!

When you see Ellen's sparkling eyes and Portia's heart warming smile, there's no doubt these two have certainly found happiness despite anything else.

I'd like to share a quote Portia says in the book, toward the beginning.  She talks about some words her mother gave her as a girl.  Some of this may have not been good, but a line that she shared stuck out to me as being very true and spot on.

"After all, it's in the way an insult is received that makes it an insult.  You can't really give offense unless someone takes it."

I like that.  It's really a statement of mindfulness.  If you are mindful, and in the moment, then no off-hand comment can really hurt you because you are not a part of the reality that person is trying to place you in, you are firmly rooted in your own present moment where nothing anyone else says about you has any actual bearing on you yourself.  The insult is aimed for your ego, but living mindfully eliminates the ego.

Later in the book, toward the end, she shares this:

"Being sick allows you to check out of life.  Getting well again means you have to check back in.  It is absolutely crucial that you are ready to check back into life because you feel as though something has changed from the time before you were sick.  Whatever it was that made you feel insecure, less than, or pressured to live in a way that was uncomfortable to you has to change before you want to go back there and start life over."

That's very powerful, especially that last bit.

Lastly, I liked this part as well:

"It's important to find something other than your body image to be passionate about."

I firmly agree with this statement regardless of WHAT your predicament is.  I've mentioned that I never have really struggled with depression about my weight, and that I have always been lucky to have good self esteem.  I don't know if this is because of my parents, or myself, or because I'm lucky.  All I know is that I've always been able to recognize when I am starting to feel bad or depressed and I've been able to manually alter my mood direction.  So for me, depression has never hit full force, especially due to size.  I was always comfortable with my size, but it was when I recognized that I was getting TOO unhealthy and that the depression and problems were heading my way in a much more severe way, that I was able to do something about it, and do it quickly.  "Savor", for me, was the solution.  It allowed me to apply mindfulness to my life immediately and move on in the correct path.  For someone reading this, perhaps "Unbearable Lightness" will offer you the strength to do the same.

Whatever the case, I strongly recommend "Unbearable Lightness" by Portia DeRossi if you have ANY sort of weight or esteem issues.

Is there a book or person who has helped you solve the health issues you face?

MondoSamu

Wonderful week of mindful fun!

Hello all! Sorry this week has been light on posts, but I was in Trinidad for a week. I worked hard, played hard, ate like a king - yet mindfully, lost two pounds in spite of it, enjoyed the local music, saw live bands, hung out with many locals and made great new friends, shared mindfulness with them, discussed their current events such as the 14 school girls who were demonically possessed (top news story on all channels that week), went boating around the island and much more.

It was a great week of fun and work, and now I'm back! I'll post some of the poignant mindful moments as I can, but wanted to quickly let everyone share some of the enjoyable sights I caught on film. More soon!

MondoSamu

Don't leave home without it!

If you travel, particularly by airplane, then you know that it can be a very stressful event.  Getting ready, packing, planning and all the other things that go in to just getting out the door offer a variety of stressful scenarios.  Then there's the drive to the airport.  Depending on where you live, and what airport you use, the trip TO the airport can be very grueling.

And then there's the airport itself.   That bastion of befuddlement.  The continent of confusion.  The sea of stress. The isle of irritation.  The....well...you get the idea.   And that's to say nothing of the compounding of these issues if you are also overweight!

Thich Nhat Hanh touches on dealing with this kind of stress in "Savor" very briefly when he talks about "Standing-In-Line Meditation".  He offers a nice meditation for the security check line or baggage check line.

"Breathing in, I use this time just for myself,

To unite my body and mind. 

Breathing out, I feel refreshed."

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Mindfulness will serve you very well in the entire adventure though.  You can practice mindful mediations like the one above in any of the stressful portions of your travel I mentioned.

Another thing that I like to do, and which helps me immensely, is making sure I get to the airport extremely early.  I always allow myself three hours at the airport before my flight.  This allows me to walk calmly amid the sea of people running wildly to catch their flight.  I can't "stress" (sorry for the pun) enough what a difference this will make in your entire trip.  You'll not only find you are much calmer, and more able to deal with unexpected challenges that inevitably arise, but I believe that you will actually derive great pleasure from the fact that you are so calm when everyone else is stressed.

You'll find that when you are so calm, you'll be ready with a friendly smile for the stressed airport workers who are berated all day, and they will be very grateful for your kindness.  You'll spread your calm and joy to the people you encounter, thereby spreading your mindfulness to others who sorely need it.

In "Peace Is Every Step" Thich Nhat Hanh also talks about this.  He says he does the same thing with arriving at the airport early.  He also suggests using walking meditation to help with airport stress as well.  Most airports are large, offering ample opportunity for walking.  In the Atlanta airport, which is gigantic, I no longer ride the tram to my terminal.  I started taking Thays' advice and walking to my gate.  In ATL this can easily add up to a few miles!

As I write this, I am sitting in the airport waiting for an international flight. I did a little quick research and found an interesting item that I wasn't aware of.  Apparently a lot of airports now offer meditation rooms, or they may refer to them as quiet rooms, which people can use for meditation or prayer.  It seems they are offered to people of any, or no, religion for their spiritual or relaxing needs. VERY cool.  Check out the story on meditationgeek.org.  I was not familiar with this blog, but it looks like the author is also a "Savor" fan himself.  Skimming through while looking for this link, it looked like there were a lot of useful articles on meditation during stressful times there.

Another item I discovered while I was writing this post is minutesuites.com.  They apparently operate rooms by the hour, and not the bad kind that springs to mind when you hear that!  Meditation Geek mentioned it in the same article I believe.  Check this out, it might be a very big benefit for your state of mind during travel!

If you're traveling today, give some of these things a try.  I think you'll find it's worth it.  Just be sure that when you leave home, you bring mindfulness with you!

Travel safe!

MondoSamu

Buddha was a Technician!

One of the things I really like about Buddhism is the really simple, straight-forward logic it uses. I'm not a Buddhist (yet). I guess I'm more Buddhish, as they say. But, what I have learned of it, I really like.

I've been in the Technical Support/Software/I.T. business for most of my life. I'm a logic kind of guy. I'm a problem solver. I'm so much a problem solver, that it sometimes drives people (my wife) crazy. As soon as I hear a problem, I start separating negative and positive areas of the issue, and providing solutions and workarounds. It's what I do. It's what I've ALWAYS done. My whole life, not just in my work. I guess it's what makes me good at the work I have chosen to do.

Anyhow, while reading "Savor", I was noticing how the Four Noble Truths are exactly what a good technician uses to solve a computer problem!  Check out the following applications of the Four Noble Truths:

The Four Noble Truths:

1. Dukkha - Life is Suffering
2. Samudaya - Identify the cause of suffering.
3. Nirodha - Believe that you can end the suffering.
4. Magga - There is a path to ending the suffering.

The Four Noble Truths of Savor:

1. Being overweight is suffering.
2. You can identify the roots of your weight problem.
3. Reaching a healthy weight is possible.
4. You can follow a mindful path to a healthy weight.

The Four Noble Truths of Tech Support:

1. Identify the problem.
2. Identify the root of the problem.
3. Believe that you can solve the problem.
4. Follow the path to the solution.

Whether you are a coder like my buddy over at DharmaLoss or you are a tech support guy, or just a problem solver in general - the Four Noble Truths is really the way to solve any problem! I've done this my whole life, without ever knowing that it was part of the Buddhist way.

When I have hired technicians in the past, I always looked for guys who were good at problem solving. I didn't care what certifications they had, or what school they went to. I cared how many different solutions they could give me to a problem I would pose, and how they got to the root of the issue.

One of my favorites was always "If I ask you to get me an item out of the stock room, which is locked, how would you retrieve the item?"

Then I would see what their answer was, and how many answers they would give me. The best ones always asked a couple of questions. My favorite question being "May I have the key?" A few more would give me really creative answers (such as climb through the drop ceiling or tunnel under it), and lots of them. These are the guys I usually hired. Then there were the ones who stared at me numbly. We won't get in to them.

While all Four Noble Truths are equally important, I've always found that the Third Noble Truth step is perhaps the hardest, yet most critical, to cultivate.  I have always felt that belief and confidence that you CAN solve a problem is the biggest part of doing so.

Anyhow, the point of all of this is simply that I think one of the reasons that buddhism appeals to me so much is that I have always unknowingly followed the Four Noble Truths without even realizing it. So when I was introduced to them officially by Thich Nhat Hanh and Dr. Lilian Cheung in "Savor", it just seemed very natural to me.

It's possible that THAT is the reason that "Savor" has clicked so well with me. I've often said here in the past that I wasn't sure why "Savor" made so much sense to me, or why it has worked so effortlessly for me…perhaps it's because (I believe) for a person with a problem solving personality, it's probably something they are very comfortable with already.

Buddhism is really a very logical path to follow, and it follows that a "technician" would find this a natural fit.

Hmmmmmm…..

MondoSamu

BOOK REVIEW: Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer

I LOVE steak.

And Chicken.

And Pork.

But I married a vegetarian which, for the first several years of marriage, made me a sort of Megetarian.  A vegetarian by proxy who ate meat when I could, but rarely.  I still ate meat, but not nearly as much because it simply wasn't made for me at home.  I only had it when eating out.

Then, around the time our daughter was born, my wife fell off the veggie wagon, and we started eating chicken.  Still to this day, that is the main - almost the only - meat eaten in our house.  I got my steak fix any time I travel for work.  While traveling for work, my company provides me with the ability to eat pretty much whatever I would like and I like STEAK!  So, while traveling, I usually would have a nice filet mignon steak every day.

Please understand that going in to this book, I was a meat eater and quite happy with it.  I had heard stories of chicken farming that was insane, but I honestly just didn't ever think much about it.  Sort of put on the ol' blinders and trudged ahead.  The same way I never liked cooking meat…because it made me think too much about the animal.  (Interesting to note that the more you practice mindfulness, the more you discover that this is how we live our lives in many areas)

Well, almost a year ago, I started reading "Eating Animals".  Honestly I did this because I was desperate for a good book, and I saw this one by the guy who wrote the book "Everything Is Illuminated".  I loved the movie of that book, and was intrigued that the same guy had written this non-fiction book about vegetarianism.  That and I had seen the author, Jonathan Safran Foer on a talk show and he seemed VERY reasonable.  He didn't seem like he was trying to shove his agenda down anyones throat, but rather was saying that he just wanted people to TALK about the issue.  No matter what the reader decided, he just wanted to get a conversation happening openly.  I thought this was VERY savvy, so I got the book.  Having watched my wife struggle through her efforts to eat a plant based diet every time we had a get together at a friends house and constantly be harassed, cajoled, questioned or just plain ignored with regard to her choice (never meant to be those things, but always how it felt) I wasn't in any hurry to join the veggie team, but I think the time has come for me.

I got about halfway through the book, and was getting rather tired of the negativity and depressing nature of the book.  Don't get me wrong, I was very impressed with it, and had already heard enough that I asked my wife what she would think about getting back to a vegetarian lifestyle again.  She was very willing, and we decided we would.  But - I still stopped reading the book.

At the half-way point in the book, and having decided to go vegetarian already, I wasn't sure I wanted to finish the depressing book.  Well, during this time I read "Savor" and had become very devoted to losing weight and eating mindfully.  Mindful eating makes it very hard to put out of your mind the fact that you are eating what was once a living creature.  Furthermore, if you have any knowledge of factory farming, it makes it near impossible not to envision the horrible treatment that the animals, the land and even the workers in the industry receive.  As "Savor" says, when you eat mindfully, you may find yourself becoming an inadvertent vegetarian.  Sure enough, I did.

I started going out of my way to try and eat vegetarian at every opportunity including when traveling for work.  I also stopped eating all red meat.  I didn't (and still haven't completely) give up chicken, but I'm working on it.

Anyhow, I decided to finish reading "Eating Animals", and I'm very glad I did.  Once past all the statistical and descriptive bad stuff - a necessary evil to hear, I think - the book gets down to some of the good things happening, and also how to move ahead in the world and LOTS of talk of reason.  Reasoning on how to make a choice, why you should, etc.

In the end, while the "Eating Animals" book is not a lot of fun, it's DEFINITELY worth the read, and more than a little upsetting if you are an animal lover, but be forewarned that if you read this book you are very likely to decide that you no longer want to be a part of the way in which your meat is currently provided to you.  And make no mistake…if you eat meat, and you don't buy it from your friendly neighborhood farmer, you are very, very likely eating meat that was factory farmed.

At it's core this book is shining a light on a challenge that is facing all of mankind today, and it is asking us to simply consider it.  To be mindful of what we are doing, and then to make a knowledge-based choice using our own values.  Be mindful.  They didn't put it in those words, but that's what it is.  Know where it comes from, know how it gets to your plate, and know thy self.  If you do these things, then the decision you make will be the right one for you.

As this fit so well with the "Savor" ideal of mindfulness, I felt real need to share this review with you all.  Like the book, I do NOT judge you for your choice.  I've enjoyed an animal based diet for most of my life.  When I am mindful, however, I find I must now take a different path.

Enjoy the book, and whatever you choose, go out and have conversation about it.  In fact, let's have one here!  I'd love to hear your thoughts on factory farming, vegetarianism, your own decision to go one way or the other.  Whether here, or with your friends and family, let's remove the judgement and emotion from the issue, and just discuss it openly with care.

MondoSamu