Combine 8-10 hours of sleep (or more, as needed) per day with regular exercise, also shown to aid brain function and healing, and we are well on our way to a solid long-term brain injury healing plan!

May God startle you with joy!

#TBI #brain

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Getting Started

Sit on the floor. Chances are your core is weak and hips tight. Discomfort will come quickly. It is simply telling you to shift position. This is also a sign you will benefit from floor living, as your body is weak and will become much stronger as you use it well and properly, instead of weakened by cushion and support. Shift positions as needed, which may be every few minutes. Get up and walk about now and then when it all becomes too much. Then sit again. Experiment and learn. Read. Work at the computer. Write. Draw. Paint. Engage in creation. Shift position as needed. Walk as needed. Return and repeat.

Over the coming days and weeks, notice how you move differently, better, all the time, whatever you are doing. When you do sit in a chair, notice how weird it feels, especially the cushier it is. Persevere. After about three months, you will likely notice you are going twenty or more minutes without realizing it, making subtle shifts in position without realizing it.

Floor living has been around a long, long time. Grin. Jesus and the disciples reclined at the Last Supper.

Sleep on the Floor or a Wood Platform Bed

The simplest way to rapidly see benefits is to sleep on the floor or wood platform bed with a thin pad. I use a few wool blankets as my pad on a wood 2x4 platform bed we made. I do not use a pillow. Instead, my head rests flat when I am on my back or front; on my arm when on either side.

Sleep is deeper and my body and mind well rested when I wake. We use light blocking curtains so the room is dark.

Furniture

Furniture will need to shift to be floor living height. Desks and tables all need to come down to your level. Grin. Coffee tables make great desks. Kneelers are a great way to be at a desk and work for hours (working up to doing so, of course). We have cut our kitchen table to coffee table height and sit on thin cushions on our tile floor.

Where can we get Furniture and Cushions?

I don’t know. We’ve made our own or re-purposed coffee tables, end tables, and the like to be desks and work spaces (or we just use the floor spread out before us). There are meditation cushions, but they look very thick and we’ve never tried them.

How Much? How Little?

As with all aspects of God's engineering, our family started as bare and simple as we could go for three months. We removed all chairs and stools, and slept on the floor and gave ourselves three months to get stronger and be able to decide what, if anything we needed to add back in. Less is more, until it isn't. More is great, until it diminishes our capacity.

After three months, each family member assessed if they had difficulty doing things without a chair. Some things are designed for chair use, such as harp playing, sewing machines, but these are specific, defined activities, and so using a minimal stool or chair is workable. We build platform beds and couches, having found the floor too cold in winter and arm rests far more cosy. Our couches are deeper, so we can sit cross-legged or kneel on them, but they have minimal padding. We added just enough to make things work for each person.

How Long’s this Gonna Take?

I’ve found for myself, my family, and most folks I’ve worked with that any bodily transition, including to floor living, going barefoot, diet, etc., takes three months of doing it full time before it feels like a “new normal” vs. “I’m transitioning.” The shifts and strengthening continue, with marked milestones around one and three years. After that, it’s just ongoing, subtle learning rather than paridigm shifts.

How does this help, especially brain injury and caregivers?

We function better when we eliminate the “noise” of cushioning and support, allowing our bodies to strengthen and move as God created them to. Science is catching up with this idea, though it doesn't know it yet. Grin. Studies show sitting in office chairs are bad for health.

Life with brain injury, either as a survivor or caregiver, is chronically stressful. That takes a toll on our health and capacity to function. But sitting and sleeping on the floor works those muscular stresses out, increases circulation, keeps us moving and shifting regularly, and increases mental alertness — all of which relieve stress. If you are struggling with stress in your life, wouldn't it be great to have those stresses melt away as you sleep, working themselves out because you are on a hard bed instead of working themselves deeper and hidden to harm your capacity to function because you are on a cushioned bed?

I no longer need to sit in a zero gravity chair, as I did before floor living. Floor living positions are solidly rooted, core to the earth, and my brain isn’t trying to figure out where I am in space (I have constant double axis neurological vertigo). Plus, my “chair” is always with me. Just sit down and I’m in my favorite chair. Grin.

How’s hospitality work when people who can’t sit on the floor visit?

Because of my brain injury, most people are too scented to come in the house, so we are poor hosts in that regard, long before the issue of seating comes up. Sardonic grin. Our somewhat amorphous plan for the possible future when folks who can’t sit on the floor visit inside is to make available the few chairs we still have, or pile more cushions on the platform sofas so they have a “normal” spot to sit. Rather like hosting someone vegan in a paleo household and attempting, however poorly, to extend hospitality. Grin.

Questions?

This ain't easy. Grin. Simple is always hard. You understand the idea in five minutes, but it takes a lifetime to learn. I'm happy to help, however I can. Please, feel free to Email me with any questions.

#TBI #BrainInjury

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What has this to do with brain injury? If society doesn't recognize the clear and established scientific facts that:

1. Life begins at conception
2. Life conceived of a human egg and human sperm is human

... there is nothing to prevent society from deciding that non-contributing members of society aren't human either, so people with disabilities could lose the right to their insurance, social assistance, legal states as individuals ... if a full-term baby isn't recognized as human and alive and thus murdering her or him is legal, we live in a society without moral fabric and any evil you can imagine could become legally justified. As we treat the most vulnerable among us, so may we too be treated one day, no matter our age.

Human life is sacred, begins at conception, and a just society protects it until death, for every human life has value, meaning, and purpose beyond reckoning, no matter their capacity. Social justice that denies this reality isn't social and isn't justice.

#prolife #TBI #BrainInjury #SocialJustice

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Brain injury is the invisible injury and, while every brain injury is different, one very common symptom is the loss of the ability to filter out stimulation, so it hits our brains hard and full like an explosion. For me, very few things in nature overstimulate me (though I do not hang out around loud water falls often). A field of wild flowers in morning dew at 10,000 feet the summer? Amazing scents! The vanilla-rum scent of a water hole from several miles away alluring me in to the shaded niche in the scorching desert till it was a veritable symphony of scents as I ran through the surrounding horsetails with various subtle changes? Delicious.

No, it is the mechanized sounds and manufactured scents stimulations that impact my brain as weapons bento on destroying my capacity. And it works. But it does so, in part, by releasing adrenaline and friends.

Adrenaline is deceptive. At the rush of it we suddenly feel capable and able to handle the situation that triggered our fight or flight response. Do not be deceived! Get out, get away! To sanctuary!

This is, of course, the very purpose of adrenaline and friends. Fight or flight. Give us a short term boost of super power to handle the life-threatening situation at hand. But that boost is a debt against future capacity. Worth it so we can live rather than die, but when we are constantly accruing debt because of overstimulation, our functional capacity is diminished and may well be hard to recover.

In yesterday’s encounter with my doctor’s office (30 minutes, ending in a burst of TBI rage, aka adrenaline, out the office), the adrenaline gave me the capacity to overcome the deficits I’d incurred from the over stimulation (sound, scent, tactile). I was able to escape without having to be wheeled out. (Note, this gives the false impression to the ignorant observer, doctors often included, that I was making a bigger deal of the stimulation, and I really have a anger issue and need psychological help not brain injury help.). Education is essential!

Getting home at 9am-ish, I spent the rest of the day in my Hobbit Hole sanctuary, barely able to walk using the walls. Fortunately, I can often write in such a state, given a quiet enough environment, and my Hobbit Hole is newly fortified against more of the outside invasion of increased town noise, so I wrote about the experience as adrenaline coursed through me, giving me shakes, a racing pounding in my head, skull bones collapsing inward and exploding outward simultaneously, and a mind that is like a hamster on speed that can’t run fast enough on it’s little wheel.

I took my Adrenaline and friends protocol:

• 1000 mg Calcium Citrate
• 5000 iu Vit. D3
• 400 mg Magnesium Citrate
• 10,000 mcg V B12 Methylcobalamin, Sublingual
• 5 balls arnica montana 200CK
• 2 balls chamomile 12C
• Dark chocolate as desired (85% or greater)

Immediately after Bonk: Take 1 round of above 2 hours, 4–6 hours, 12 hours post Bonk: repeat.

Following day or two: take 4–6 rounds of arnica, chamomile, and B12 Methyl.

Return to aerobic, non-jarring exercise as soon as possible, even for brief periods. Aerobic = able to easily talk to someone next to you.

That protocol has cut the effects I feel from adrenaline dramatically. It still takes 2–4 days to recover from the small exposure I received yesterday. When we’ve made the mistake of continuing to car camp despite the fact that I was not doing well then was doing “magically” better (due to adrenaline), I’ve taken weeks or months to recover (generally 1–2 times the length of the trip).

At some point n the day or two after the adrenaline trigger has abated comes the adrenaline crash: I stop generating heat and can be cold no matter the temperature. I have no energy and no brain energy. I may sleep for much of the day or at least several hours (under heavy down comforters).

Then, in the days it takes to flush out adrenaline and friends, I always have a much shorter fuse to triggering my adrenaline again. So I have to lay extra low lest I dig myself into an adrenaline debt pit I need weeks or months to climb out of. That’s happened before. One big thing happens, then multiple little things kick me into the pit while I’m still recovering. The snowball effect, but with adrenaline rather than multiple concussions.

The silent price we pay for seeing doctors and being tested in environments that harm us is invisible, including to many of us because we are always paying it. To see the price, you have to escape out of overstimulation recover to whatever your actual capacity is, and then experience the sudden drop in capacity when again exposed to over stimulation. It is certainly invisible to the doctors.

I’ve found the best thing for adrenaline recovery is to use the above protocol, law low and quiet in my Hobbit Hole for several days, then emerge and begin doing aerobic activity in a quiet, natural setting.

Update

It’s taken three days to reach the point that my head is no longer imploding and exploding simultaneously. It’s now in the “cottony” vacuous feeling stage. Experience says it’s another 2–4 days to recover fully, presuming my heightened adrenaline trigger doesn’t get triggered in the meantime, in which case I fall back into a deeper pit to crawl out of. Seven days of lost capacity is a ridiculously high price to pay for spending 30 minutes in a doctor’s office (and not even getting to see him) but instead be berated and belittled by him. The. System. Is. Broken.

Update 2

Day four. Still feeling cottony and vacuous in the head and now unable to generate heat, so I am quite cold.

Update 3:

Day 13. Och! I got sucked into the quicksand pit of hair-trigger adrenaline rushes. It goes something like this. Had I been able to go two more days after day 4 without adrenaline, I would have recovered to the point that adrenaline would not be triggered by the smaller things. Unfortunately, I had to leave town and go winter camping on day 6, but a minor event in that triggered my adrenaline, causing me to come out early (fortunately, we’ve been blessed with a newly fortified sanctuary, and so the construction noise does not incapacity me as it would have otherwise). So, I am home now, and the whole family being stressed by the construction noise and debacle with my doctors has everyone on edge and little things keep happening before I recover, triggering my adrenaline rush anew and deepening the pit from which I must crawl. It is very challenging to break this cycle, and that is with understanding it.

Update 4

Day 20. I’ve managed to get out on a few aerobic activities, and they are helping flush the residual adrenaline and friends out of my system. Of course, as that happens, I get the chills and crashes all over again, along with sinus activity (stuffy/runny nose). I’ve managed to not trigger my adrenaline for about a week now, so am hopeful that a few more days will see me through.

Update 5

It’s is now Mach 26, 2014, and I am finally out of the adrenaline pit and I have a bit of brain cushion building up again, so I am roughly where I was when I when to the failed doctor visit 36 days ago. It took 36 days to completely recover from an attempted 30 minute doctor visit. I’ve heard narry a peep from the doctor I fired and am searching for a doctor who will see me. (found one, a great General Practioner)

What is your experience with adrenaline and friends?

#TBI #howto #caregiving

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