Tiny Trampoline, Big Magic

A couple of years ago I bought a cheap Amazon rebounder, which is a mini-trampoline. I bought the BCAN, which uses springs, and for the first couple of years, it was fine.

With psoriasis, I wanted an easy way to exercise my lymphatic system. I was dealing with a lot of toxicity.

A few weeks ago, I upgraded to a JumpSport rebounder, and the difference is night and day from the cheaper one I bought from Amazon.

My JumpSport has got more resistance and isn't as jarring to my joints as the spring rebounder is when you jump longer than 20 minutes.

I was able to jump barefoot on the spring mini-trampoline, but need shoes with the JumpSport because the resistance is stiffer. There isn't as much 'spring' with the cords vs springs, but you get a better workout because you have to push down on the mat harder to get lift.

Rebounding is fun, and the fitness payoff for 20 minutes of jumping is phenomenal.

There are plenty of free rebounding videos on YouTube, but my favorite channel is San Fran Fitness.

They have tons of beginner videos and the husband/wife team that teach are funny and warm. Here is my favorite beginner workout:

https://youtu.be/a7LgfvB4yTs?si=VY-ImvcdBLxdnb6U

How does Rebounding feel different from other forms of exercise?

It's challenging to jump around like a maniac on a small trampoline without a safety bar. I'm nearsighted with presbyopia issues, and I have to be careful I don't careen off the pad when jumping.

But I love it.

I did use a safety bar for a couple of months, but quickly ditched it when I started doing more complicated routines. There is a lot of arm waving and flapping now, and I need all the space I can get.

When I'm familiar with a routine, I can lose myself in the music and there is a sense of euphoria that I used to get when I was a runner.

Rebounding on a min-trampoline is much easier on your joints than running. Many routines are available where you run on the trampoline if you miss it, but honestly, I get more benefits from jumping than I ever did running.

And I don't know where you can get a cardio workout as well as a full-body resistance workout in 20 minutes.

I find jumping to be fun and I look forward to my session. I feel great all day, and if I do it when I get up in the morning, I've already got 6000 steps knocked out, in addition to getting my lymphatic system primed for maximum detoxification.

What benefits have I noticed, and do I use it for reasons other than exercise?

My face and neck, especially under my chin, is looking more chiseled. When you jump, every muscle in your body is getting a workout. You also get rid of puffiness under the eyes and chin.

I also have occasional vertigo. I know, why would I jump on a trampoline with vertigo?

Actually, regular bouncing keeps it in check. I think it has something to do with keeping the inner ear challenged to keep you upright with all that bouncing. But in all seriousness, I've noticed a huge difference in my balance.

Here's another reason to have a mini-trampoline--chest colds.

If I bounce for a few minutes when I wake up, I can clear out whatever is hanging around my upper bronchial tubes. I get over chest colds pretty fast now.

Another benefit?

Um...getting fiber out of your body through natural means.

Everything in your body is affected by bouncing, including your colon. With regular bouncing, if you are inclined towards constipation, well...you won't be anymore.

Ladies...it strengthens your pelvic floor like nothing else does! You can cough and sneeze after you've been bouncing for a while without panicking.

I don't seem to have any neck and shoulder pain anymore. Everything is loose and supple. I do some fascia stretches too, but I think bouncing does a lot to keep me flexible and able to stand all day working in my studio without feeling like a train hit me at night.

Long story short, your organs will smile if you bounce for 20 minutes a day!

Random fact about me: I am intrigued with Tuvan throat singing, and one of my favorite groups is The Hu. I even bought merch online from The Hu which I've never done with any other group!

Exploring Dream Interpretation with ChatGPT

I have a very vivid dream life, and pretty much remember my dreams the next morning.

Years ago, my brother introduced me to dream interpretation, and suggested that I explore it to understand myself better.

Initially, I blew it off, but he gave me a book about it, called The Dreamer's Dictionary, by Barbara Condron, and it changed my mind on the importance of understanding and interpreting your dreams.

My brother is a great dream interpreter. He can weave together aspects of a dream story and blow your mind over the accuracy about what it is reflecting regarding what you are currently mulling over or dealing with in waking life.

Recently, I've started running my dreams through ChatGPT, just to see how it interprets dreams, and I have to say it's been very helpful. I am surprised at its ability to interpret the dream, and then relate it back to me as to what it says about my current state of focus or worry about something.

So good, in fact, that I wanted to share this with you.

Dreams are about what you are concerned with or learning about the day before the dream occurs. The proposed insights Chat is giving me are on target. It doesn't know what I'm worried about, or what insight I had the day before, but it figures it out based on my dream interpretation.

Alarmingly so.

I just tell it to interpret my dream and write out as much as I can, and it zips back a well-integrated response that makes immediate sense.

I'm finding it very helpful to dig a bit deeper into what my inner self is trying to communicate to me right now as I navigate this psoriasis flare.

I've been playing with ChatGPT and Grok ever since they came out. Like any tool, you have to be intentional with it, and I tend to use it like an administrative assistant.

Today, I gave it a task to give me a 7-Day Writing Protocol to get at the root of my emotional issues regarding some traumatic things I went through in the past 5 years regarding death and illness.

I have a tendency to repress my emotions during times of crisis, and then my body deals with the release if I continue to repress, and not fully feel all the feels.

I am learning my habit of emotional repression, especially of anger, that I learned from my mother is clearly a component of the psoriasis issue I've been dealing with all my life. I'm not blaming my mother, she did the best she could and she worked very hard while alive to overcome what she learned from her own childhood.

But I still picked it up, and it's up to me to transmute the tendency and change it to something healthier for me.

I'm going to go through the 7-Day Writing protocol and if I find it helpful, I'll share it here. I asked ChatGPT if it lifted it from any other source, so that I could credit it, and it responded with this:

That protocol is an original creation I wrote specifically for you, Stacie. It’s not copied or adapted from any particular author or published source—it’s designed to honor your unique healing path, drawing on the themes you've shared (psoriasis, emotional repression, parental loss, creative flow, etc.).

That said, the structure itself draws loosely from widely used therapeutic practices like:

• Writing for emotional healing (James Pennebaker’s research)
• Somatic journaling (used in trauma-informed therapy and body-based healing modalities)
• Narrative therapy techniques (like giving the symptom a voice)
• And ritual practices found in grief work and Indigenous-inspired emotional clearing

Chat's response is intriguing, isn't it?

It will take another post to dissect how I feel about Ai, but I'm not in the camp of some that think the genie needs to go back into the bottle. It's here. It's not going anywhere, and I believe we are in the process of developing a moral value system on how to use it and discern when it's clearly spitting out bullshit or propaganda.

You still need to be able to think on your own when given a new input. It doesn't matter if it's from a 'real' person or an Ai.

What I'm finding is it's more about the questions and perimeters you put in place when interacting with it. It's not like Google, and my questions often involve asking it to give me a compare and contrast output to whatever input I am interested in.

But my experience with it so far has been pretty positive as an assistant to help me pull together a bunch of seemingly disparate subjects into something meaningful.

Like dream interpretation. There's nothing more reflective of seemingly random story lines and images than a dream!

What are your thoughts on Ai, and do you use it?

Random fact about me: I collect feathers I find in the yard.

Connective Tissue Workout

I stand when I'm working, so I'm on my feet at least 8 hours per day. I've noticed lately that I'm sore in the morning, and my neck and shoulders are not bouncing back into form after a long day of standing and stooping as I make jewelry.

I found a great connective tissue workout that I've been doing in the morning within 30 minutes of waking up, and it's making a huge difference.

The only time I've ever been bothered by my fascia is when I used to run, and on occasion would get the dreaded Plantar Fasciitis. It would take MONTHS to fully heal!

That sort of pain was beginning to plague me daily in other places than my feet, and this gentle series of connective tissue stretches has been a game changer for me.

Today's WordPress writing prompt was, "What do you think gets better with age?", and I immediately thought, "What gets worse with age?".

Flexibility and stamina get worse for many, but the more I learn about connective tissue and how to keep it loose and supple, I have a lot of hope that I won't succumb to a lack of flexibility, and the way it turns your body to stone.

Here's the link to the video I'm referencing!

https://youtu.be/FbWgGgRLp94?si=CWs2PJeOJFBfU8jN

The Gifts of Psoriasis

“A healthy person has a thousand dreams, a sick person only has one,” Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

When I heard Secretary Kennedy say this, I realized that it instantly summed up the last 5 years of my life. When you are unhealthy, you don't have the time to dream about anything else other than getting back to a state of health.

Other than limping my business along, I have had no other dreams to pursue other than understanding and getting to the root cause of the psoriasis I've experienced in a severe form since my parents became ill and died.

One of the reasons I'm writing daily is to unpack for myself the mental, spiritual, and physical issues that led me to me having this experience.

Physically, for me, it started in a less severe way 27 years ago right after I had my gallbladder removed due to a large stone. I was 30, and was told that it must come out.

I believed the physician, didn't question her and out it came. Within a couple of weeks, I started experiencing a rash around my neck and armpits that wouldn't go away.

These rashes would stay for a long time, then just mysteriously disappear. I saw a couple of dermatologists about it, and they just prescribed steroid creams, but no real answers to why it was happening.

The gift was that I started to realize that most medical experts were good at diagnosing so that they could prescribe pharmaceuticals, but weren't interested in getting to the bottom of the problem. I didn't really get any diagnosis, because I had never heard it described as inverse psoriasis until a few years ago.

When I broke out in a full body rash 5 years ago, I went to a new dermatologist and it was definitively diagnosed. Now I had a name. And he wanted to immediately put me on injections. Something within yelled NO and I've been on quite the journey since I turned away from that line of treatment.

I instead chose to go my own way. I'm the one experiencing it from the inside out, and I knew intuitively that it was somehow connected to my emotions and what was going on with my gut.

The gift here was that in my early 50's, I drastically changed my diet, lost about 45 pounds and other than the flares, I'm healthier now than I've ever been as an adult.

Another gift is my sense of vanity about my appearance is greatly reduced. One of the things that I was known for was 'my beautiful skin'. This was a difficult gift to accept. I won't lie about that. I also had great hair. During the first couple of flairs, I lost over half my hair and my scalp was a mess. I was about to seriously investigate getting a wig, but my diet started turning things around.

I have long hair now because I can. Psoriasis has taught me that things can change in an instant and enjoy what you have now.

The next gift is self-discipline. I wasn't known previously for self-discipline, which is why I was almost 50 pounds overweight. But to date, I've not had any cane sugar, high fructose corn syrup, seed oils, wheat/gluten, alcohol, or nightshades for 5 years.

Eating out is challenging. I usually only go out to Asian restaurants and eat sushi on lunch dates. I cook everything from scratch, and consume very limited processed foods. A processed food would be a rice noodle, or an IQ bar. I also drink Almond Malk occasionally, but there's only three ingredients in it. That's it.

The other form of self-discipline I've developed is exercise regularity along with using my imagination in a positive way. Every morning during a flare, I get in the shower, even though it can be excruciating, and I run my hands along my skin, imagining no bumps or plaques. I keep myself in high spirits with an understanding of the long game I'm playing as it pertains to self-awareness and trust in myself.

I've been working with a functional nutritionist for the last 7 months and up until a few weeks ago, I was clear. Then, all of a sudden, I wasn't.

This was crushing. But the next gift psoriasis has given me is knowing a setback is an opportunity to learn something new about this affliction, digest the information and make some changes based on something objective.

I am pretty confident that the root of my particular manifestation of this disease is an inability to properly digest fat since I don't have a gallbladder. Without a gallbladder, my body makes do with whatever trickle of bile my liver produces.

I have to think about my fat intake, digestive enzymes, sunflower lecithin, beneficial bacteria, Strep, and a host of other things that are downstream from having an organ removed.

I won't get into the details here, as there are too many for a daily post, but this health detour has shaped me in ways that I would never have expected.

This is my place to begin to unpack living with a chronic condition that is the gift that keeps on giving, and understand for myself 'why me'.

Random fact about me: The one tool I don't have that I really want is a metal detector.

The Daily Choice

Are my choices today moving toward life, or am I just running from death?

Is there another point of view to consider?

Yesterday I read an article about that smell some older people develop. You know the one. I don’t want that signature scent to be mine as I get older.

So, what to do?

The article said mushrooms can help.

They prevent a certain compound from oxidizing in our skin oils. This compound is behind that smell that you can't cover with cologne.

That got me thinking about fungi.

Mushrooms are liminal organisms. They live where life and death meet. They break down what has died, and in doing so, lay the foundation for what’s next.

I've never fully considered the intersection of life and death in this way until I read that article.

I was going to just write about how I need to consider whether I'm acting from a place that moves towards life, or resisting death today.

Moving toward life means stepping into the unknown, evolving, creating, and embracing change. We naturally adopt this mindset when we're young.

But what about when we get older? Many of us often resist living fully because of fear of change. This is what I mean about resisting death.

It's clinging to what already exists, often leading to stagnation disguised as stability. I have to watch myself there, making sure my decisions are based in moving towards evolution. But with a healthy understanding about what's worth preserving, also.

And then I read that article about the mushrooms--and it led me to contemplating the importance of composting what had died, and turning it into the foundation for what comes next.

Grief comes to mind, as does any great change that requires time to integrate into our future.

A little part of us dies daily. We can choose the lesson of the mushroom to turn those parts that have passed into the rich soil of our current moment. Then, we can see what grows from there.

I think this mindset keeps our internal ecosystem humming at a nice pace.

Aging well means making peace with where you’ve been, turning it into something useful, and not being afraid to live fully from that place.

And eat your mushrooms if you don't want to smell musty and become rusty.