Themes and Playlists

As we round the corner into a new decade, how will we look back on this first decade of the 2000’s? I think it will be as monumental as the 1960’s or the 1940’s. With 9/11, two wars, and the election of an African-American president, some pretty significant stuff took place over the past 10 years. But there are 3 pressing sociological issues that I believe will make or break us in the new decade.  One is obvious, one is gaining notoriety, and the other is still a bit beyond the horizon. Following are these issues:

1. Food

Last night my girlfriend and I had a pleasant dinner of ground beef, a salad, and a nice Cabernet.  Oh so delicious. 2 hours later, we sat on the couch dumbfounded, awestruck, my girlfriend reduced to tears. Why? We just watched the movie Food, INC which shares the sheer horror, abuse, and disgust of the food industry. I’m not gonna lie to you. I love a good burger, a steak, rotisserie chicken, you name it. But after Food Inc, I’m confused. Something has to change. Consider the following:

–More than 9 billion chickens and turkeys are slaughtered each year. As the Humane Society Reports, “They’re shackled upside down, paralyzed by electrified water and dragged over mechanical throat-cutting blades … all while conscious. Millions of birds each year miss the blades and drown in tanks of scalding water.”

–Crated calves are tethered by the neck, pigs in severe confinement bite the metal bars of their crates, and hens get trapped and can even be impaled in their cages. These animals can barely move for months on end.

–90% of consumed meat in this country comes from factory farmed raised animals who are pumped full of antibiotics, hormones & corn all of which are unnatural & harmful to the animals.  Chickens have become so genetically modified to have larger breasts because that is what the American consumer wants, that they are unable to stand up for longer than a few seconds and spend the majority of their 40 day life-span sitting in their own feces.  Unless you get your meat, milk, and eggs from an independent family farm, this is the meat you eat. *

2. Health Insurance

It’s not just the food industry that is troublesome. We all know about the health care crisis. Much of it is caused by greed.  Consider this: 47 million Americans were without healthcare insurance in 2008. However, the heads of the major healthcare insurance companies earned as follows:

-CEO of United Health Group:  $124.8 million
-CEO of Aetna:  $57 million
-CEO of Cigna:  $42 million.

While these executives were padding their bottom line, there were 22,000 “excess deaths” last year amongst Americans between the ages of 25-64 because they were denied health insurance.**  The healthcare crisis is clearly at the forefront of everyone’s mind.  While it seems we are moving in the right direction, try telling that to the families of the 22,000 people who perished in 2008.

3. Endangerment of the Present Moment

While more abstract than the food industry or the healthcare crisis, something we’ll begin to hear a lot more about in the 2010’s is the endangerment of the present moment. As Facebook and Twitter take over and as the iPhone and Blackberry become smaller, faster, and cheaper, our free moments will suffer the sad fate of the polar bear or any endangered species. Is it me or is every waking second spent texting, emailing, websurfing, status updating, tweeting, etc.  I emphasize in my book Yeah Dave’s Guide to Livin’ the Moment that if we’re not careful, entire days go by without one single memory.

Think about it. A normal person, take me as an example, wakes up, gets right on the iphone, answers emails, talks on the cell phone on the way to work, does emails all day long at work, talks on the cell phone on the way home, and returns home to surf the web, play on Facebook, talk on the phone, watch TV. There’s less and less time free of techonology. There’s less and less time to daydream, to actually talk to the person in front of you in line at Starbucks, to lie down for a snooze, to savor life. The busier we get, the less memories we have to cherish. Right now, we don’t think twice about it. But in the very near future, I believe there will be a desperation for the present moment, for richer memories, for the very essence of life.

*http://www.humanesociety.org/issues/force_fed_animals/
**http://www.nchc.org/facts/coverage.shtml

It happens to all of us. You’re walking down a hallway and your shirt gets snagged on a doorknob. You are stopped dead in your tracks but worse, your shirt is torn. You turn around, untangle yourself, and move on, a little more vigilant of protrusions in your path.  Worrying works in much the same way. Things come up in our mind which gets snagged and dragged into a worrisome cyclone of fear and doubt. Worrying takes us away from the moment whether the moment means playing with the kids or being present in a meeting or being attentive to our partner. But worst of all, worrying prevents us from tapping the true power of the mind.  Amazing things happen when we learn to stop worrying. Following are three examples of how life blossoms in a worry-free environment.

1. Belief
Andrew Weil tells a story where he never once found a four-leaf clover. He recalls meeting a woman who could find four-leaf clovers in any clover patch. She would bet people that within a minute, she’d find one. Weil soon realized the key to this woman’s ability to find four-leaf clovers was her belief. When we unsnag the mind from all that holds it back, belief becomes possible and with belief, everything is transformed.  As Joan de Arc said, “to live without belief, that is a fate more terrible than dying.”

2. Trust
If you think back on your life, it’s often when we are most relaxed that the most meaningful encounters happen. In my book, I share a story about a particular moment in 1994 when I was perusing the aisles in the university Munch Mart. I asked the woman to my left, “Do you think these ‘microwavable bologna and cheese cracker sandwiches’ are a good call for a snack?”  Little did I know the woman would one day become Bon Appetit magazine’s Food Artisan of the Year. Her response to my inquiry about the ‘microwavable bologna and cheese cracker sandwiches’:  “Disgusting!”   We fast became great friends and partners in business. If that same moment were to happen in 2009 instead of 1994, I’d probably have been looking at emails on my iphone, worrying about something I wasn’t getting done, and I would have missed the encounter with my future best friend. When we live in the moment, we begin to sense there is a flow that delivers to us just what we need, right when we need it.

3. Visual imagery
Another great story from Andrew Weil (obviously I’m a fan) details a kid who would always day-dream in school. The teacher was hesitant to hastle the kid because he could voluntarily increase his body temperature and the teacher would have to send him to the principle’s office who would subsequently send the kid home. Weil discusses how the link between daydreaming and control of body temperature is very interesting. When the part of the brain responsible for processing info from the eyes (visual cortex) can shift its attention from the outside world to the inside world (as occurs during daydreaming), it has increased power to connect mind and will with the controls of the autonomous nervous system.  That means suddenly enhanced abilities to control body temperature but more importantly, according to Dr. Weil, to elicit spontaneous healing. Again it comes down to worrying. When we let go of our worries about the outside world and turn our attention inwardly through yoga or meditation or daydreaming, we gain tremendous power over our health.

So if you, like me, are a worrier, give yourself a chance:

-Trust in the moment to deliver the relationships, opportunities, and encounters that can forever change your life. When the moment is flooded with worry, it’s impossible to notice all the good that is coming right to your doorstep.

-Never doubt the power of belief to forever transform your life. When your shirt is snagged on the door, it’s impossible to “believe” in anything but untangling your shirt.

-Allow time each day to let go of all the things that bind you to the world. Even if you’re really worried, give yourself a chance to close your eyes and imagine yourself healing, triumphing, living your life of dreams.

by David Romanelli (www.yeahdave.com)

For tips on learning how to release fears, worries, and struggles through chocolate, wine, and music, check out my book Yeah Dave’s Guide to Livin’ the Moment: Getting to Ecstasy through Wine, Chocolate, and your Ipod Playlist.

As we head for the home stretch in 2009, I think many would agree on an enduring lesson. Those in authority, whether Wall Street executives, bankers, or trendsetters, need to be challenged.

In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell breaks it down by socioeconomic factors and shares research on how wealthy children feel comfortable challenging teachers in school while less privileged children are more likely to accept what they’re told.  Later in life, this inclination to question authority leads to better negotiating and decision-making skills. Just another reason why the rich get richer.

So if your bank account is feeling the grind in 2009, will you be quiet and reserved as Gladwell suggests? Or will you speak up and challenge the authorities, trendsetters, and pacemakers? As a yogi, I’d like to personally challenge the single most impactful voice in my industry: the Yoga Journal.

Here’s my letter to the editor:

“Having spoken with many yoga teachers of my generation who pack their classes and are committed to spreading the joy of yoga, we’d love the opportunity to share at your Yoga Journal Conferences. Beyond the Shiva Rea’s and Seane Corn’s, there’s a whole new generation of yoga teachers out there. This generation is less interested in physical alignment and more interested in alignment with the challenges of the day; less intent on a diet of seeds and water and more intent on a post-yoga bite of chocolate and sip of wine;  less focused on speaking perfect Sanskrit and more focused on speaking the language used in New York, Santa Monica, Duluth, and Detroit. Someone recently shared an awesome quote that I think applies to your readers: ‘People don’t care how much you know. They wanna know how much you care.’ ”

Namaste,

David Romanelli

In the matter of 2 hours, I met 2 different people who’d been told  they have 6 months to live. In their presence, I felt all of my worries, issues, and concerns fall by the wayside. These people know the true value of each and every moment.

I was presenting at the National Cervical Cancer/HPV Cancer Coalition conference this past weekend in Chicago. It was totally mind-opening and absolutely life-changing.  I’ve never met a group of people who enjoy life more than the ladies attending this conference. They laughed harder, smiled wider, and lived each moment as if it could be the last.  I chatted it up with one attendee for an hour about sports, sleeping late, and countless other topics. Only later did I discover this lady has stage 4 cervical cancer with a diagnosis of 6 months to live.

Winding down the evening, I spoke with another attendee from my hometown of Santa Monica. We complained about parking tickets and the cost of living in Southern Cal while trumpeting the healing power of our shared passion, yoga. I was again shocked to learn that this lady also has 6 months.

To be in the presence of two human beings filled with so much energy and passion yet told by doctors that their number has been Chosen…  This made me think very very carefully about life. Here I am worrying about my ever-increasing Blue Cross premiums, my chronically clogged bathtub drain, the zit on the tip of nose, and why a client won’t return my calls. Contrasted against the ladies at the conference who squeeze each moment for all its juice, my anxiety was an even darker sludge. As Arthur Somers Roche said, “Anxiety is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind. If encouraged, it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained.”

In the Great Recession of 2009, so many of us have been sucked into that channel, feeling as if each day we’re being swept toward some new conflict, illness, or headache. These cancer survivors taught me how to say “To hell with the current!” They taught me how to latch onto the shore and climb on the back of laughter to a lofty perch in some brilliantly tropical corner of the mind.  They taught me that while death will come for each of us, why not let it pluck you from the mountaintop rather than slurp you from the sewer of doubt, fear, and anxiety!

The cackles, hoots, and haws of these joyous cancer survivors served as a reminder of the age-old question facing every human being.  “Is each day a step closer to death? Or does each day fill you with another drop of life?

Following are 3 tips to break free from anxiety’s current and reclaim your passion for life:

1. Honor death, don’t fear it

When we live in fear of death, we give in to the current. I invite you to think a little differently about Halloween 2009.  A few years ago I traveled to Mexico during Halloween season and observed the most intriguing tradition. In Mexico, the people mark November 1 and 2 as a window when they believe its easier for the souls of the departed to visit the living. Rather than Halloween, the natives call it “Dia de los Muertos” (see above photo). The graveyards turn into a scene of raucous celebration. I always thought the graveyard to be such as solemn site but after seeing the festive Oaxacans sing and drink tequila while dancing on their loved one’s final resting place, my perspective on death forever changed. This Halloween, consider taking the festivities a step deeper. Celebrate the lives of those have passed to another world. As the Oaxacans would tell you, on these sacred days, they are closer than you could possibly imagine.

2. Consider the Beautiful, Funny, Delicious mantra

There’s a mantra that I embrace to maintain my passion for life. Each day, check off one funny moment, one delicious moment, and one beautiful moment. While it might seem over-the-top, consider how busy we are and how easy it is be stuck emailing instead of watching the sunset…or sorting thru your thoughts instead of stopping to enjoy the street musician on your way to work.  There’s nothing more healing than a hard laugh or a delicious piece of chocolate to lift your mood and sweeten your day.

3. Open up

If troubles in love and relationships are fueling your “current,” the yogis would tell you the solution is easier than you think. When we are rigid and closed off to life, love has no way of finding us. The yogis believe that simply by opening your heart, love moves through you. Whether by reading a book or taking a yoga class or going to an art museum, open up. Rumi put it perfectly, “Don’t seek for love. Seek to find and remove the barriers you’ve built against love.”

If you feel like the current has already sucked you into the sewer in this long and painful year, why not claw your way out? Live, love, laugh…take in a breath of Fall air, give someone a big ol’ hug, and let loose tonight with a little laughter. As goes the Chinese proverb:  “Enjoy yourself. It’s later than you think.”

For more on the National Cervical Cancer Coalition, check out: http://www.nccc-online.org.