I heard about Operation Mend on the local LA news and it brought tears to my eyes. Through Operation Mend, local Los Angeles families open their homes to “provide returning military personnel with severe facial and other medical injuries access to the nation’s top plastic and reconstructive surgeons, as well as comprehensive medical and mental-health support for the wounded and their families.”
Receiving top-notch medical care is critical to the healing process for these soldiers, but it’s not the only care they need. They need the love, concern, and embrace (literal and figurative) of a family while they’re undergoing treatment at UCLA. Volunteer families open the doors of their homes to offer emotional support, a warm meal, a comfortable bed, and relaxation time during a stress period of the soldiers’ lives.
In its 6th year, Operation Mend has helped 88 soldiers and their families rebuild their lives. While to our eyes the most dramatic transformation of these soldiers may be physical, to the families who come to know and love them, its their spirits that are rebuilt stronger by these incomprehensible circumstances. These families testify that the soldiers help them feel a tremendous sense of gratitude and purpose. In my short-term adopted city it puts a smile on my face to know that on these long and winding streets that I don’t yet know, there are hearts as big as any I’ve ever met anywhere.
I am by nature an efficiency hound. I hate wasting time, I love to be productive, and I feel an outsized sense of pride as I check off items on my to-do list. Yoga and meditation have taught me a subtle truth about efficiency that I didn’t know for a long time: sometimes what looks inefficient in the short-term is the most efficient thing to do in the name of long-term productivity.
At the suggestion of Anne Lamott, one of my favorite writers, I started reading God’s Hotel: A Doctor, A Hospital, and a Pilgrimage to the Heart of Medicine. The book chronicles the 20+ year career of Dr. Victoria Sweet at Laguna Honda Hospital in San Francisco, the last almshouse in the country. Low-tech and human-paced the work of Laguna Honda is a far cry from any hospital I’ve ever been to or read about. Early on in the book, Dr. Sweet gives samples of surface inefficiencies that proved to be tremendously helpful when viewed with the gift of time.
There was a nurse who dedicated a good chunk of her work time to hand-knitting blankets for each patient. Efficiency consultants were aghast and put a stop to it. However, those blankets were tangible symbols of how personally vested the entire staff at the hospital was to all patients. It let the patients, many of whom were so ill that no other hospital would admit them, and their family members know how much care and attention was being paid to their health.
Another example of inefficiency was the process of giving Christmas gifts. Collected and wrapped every year, the nursing staff would dole out the gifts randomly and then a day of festive trading between the patients would ensue. It made for a lively atmosphere with plenty of interaction throughout the entire hospital community. Again, the efficiency consultants saw all of this festivity as a terrible waste.
Rather than collect random gifts and wrap them up without any indication of what was inside, the nurses were instructed to ask each patient what they wanted, including size and color, and then that is exactly the gift they would receive. Though the gifts were still lovely, the loss of the trading process deflated the celebration. Christmas at Laguna Honda lost its sparkle when it lost the activity of swapping. And with the loss of celebration, they lost some of the spirit of deep, true healing.
These examples made me think about the efficiency of my own life – my to-do list, the structure of my days, and my constant pursuit of more productivity in less time. These things have their purpose and they’ve served me well but perhaps there’s a bit more wiggle room than I typically allow.
Maybe it’s okay to spend part of my afternoon at a museum today rather than spending that time on business development. Going to the museum probably won’t yield a client contract, but what it may give me in terms of inspiration may be just what the doctor would order and exactly what I need to be at my best tomorrow.
“If you don’t have a reason for your heart to keep beating, it won’t.” ~ Dr. Oz
In 2000, I developed a mild obsession with a show called Hopkins 24/7, a show that went behind-the-scenes at Johns Hopkins to show the lives of medical residents. Since then, dramatized versions of hospital shows have all fallen short. Real-life was so much more riveting.
Yesterday I read a feature piece in the Times about a new 8-part series on ABC called NY Med. (Incidentally, Hopkins 24/7 was also an ABC show and created by the same producer.)NY Med goes inside New York’s best hospitals to show real-life situations as they unfold from a wide variety of angles, including the perspective of Dr. Oz, who is a cardiothoracic surgeon at New York-Presbyterian, among many other roles. (He is also a Penn alum which is one of my alma maters so I have to give him a special shout-out.)
If you have even a mild interest in our healthcare system, this show is an incredible eye-opener. It is thoughtful, thorough, emotional, and professional. In other words, it’s a rare example of network reality television done right in every way that leaves us with more questions than answers and more hope than despair. The first episode ends with one of the doctors singing a a gorgeous version of Let It Be in the hospital’s chapel. I was crying.
Check out the show’s website – http://nymedshow.com. The remaining 7 parts of the series will air on ABC on Tuesdays at 10pm Eastern.
Estimates now show that there are 70,000+ yoga teachers in North America. 70,000 people do exactly what I do. We all have roughly the same basic level of training and seek to do the same type of work.
On its own, a statistic like that could be enough to scare me into hiding. But here’s the real trick of inventing, whether you’re trying to invent who you are, a new business idea, or any new adventure:
We don’t need to reinvent the wheel – it’s a damn fine piece of machinery. What we really need to do is invent a new way to make it roll.
Yoga is my wheel.
I’m grateful for the 6,000+ years of yoga teaching lineage that is available to all 70,000 yoga teachers in North America. What I want to do with Compass Yoga in expand reach. I want yoga and meditation teachers to stand side by side with MDs, medical scientists, and pharmaceutical companies in the collective and collaborative pursuit of optimal health for all people everywhere.
I’ve been a fan of Dan Gilbert since I read his book Stumbling on Happiness about 5 years ago. Kelly, a dear friend and one of my housemates in graduate school at Darden, suggested it to me after it was assigned in one of her leadership classes. I’ve always been fascinated by happiness, primarily because it seemed like such an elusive thing to me for so long, though this book helped to intellectualize happiness for me, to start to realize the profound influence of the mind-body connection.
Last year, Gilbert put together a 3-part series for PBS called This Emotional Life. It’s roughly a 6-hour documentary exploring relationships, facing fears, and rethinking happiness in the context of these two complex areas. It’s remarkably well-researched with experts from a wide array of fields sharing their personal and professional stories. There is a piece on veterans in the second part of the documentary that features, Penn, my other alma mater. Another piece of my history fell into place. The documentary was so successful that it has now become a multi-platform source of information on the topic.
This documentary opens our eyes to taboo subjects – depression, therapy, anxiety, and fear – and makes the subjects palpable. It opens up the communication channels and shows that when we can discuss these subjects in a public forum, there is a great amount of freedom to gain. Truth be told, these are not isolated instances that happen to a minority of people. It is wide-spread, and there is help available.
As someone who has struggled, mostly in silence, this these types of issues, I’m grateful that so many top scientists and researchers have taken such an interest in tackling this difficult and uncomfortable subject. Coming through the other side of the issues, I feel so empowered to be able to help others on this journey to rebuild their own vitality. This Emotional Life reminded me of how much work there is to do and how much relief Compass Yoga can bring to so many who need it.
How would you like a half a million bucks with no strings attached? All you need to do is be a genius, and by genius I mean someone who is “creative, original, and has potential to make important contributions in the future.” The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation awards 25 people every year with their Genius Awards. The Genius Awards for 2008 have been announced and the variety of recipients is encouraging.
When I heard that they were awarded based on originality and creativity, I naturally assumed that the awards were primarily for artists. And many of the recipients are indeed artists from many different areas of the arts. But there’s also an urban farmer, a critical care physician, and an astronomer. This variety supports the sentiment that artistry and creativity can, should, and will be found in every discipline the world over.
We are all creative, inspired people regardless of our title at work or the discipline in which we work. The trick is how to leverage that creativity for the greatest benefit of the world at large. In short how do we take our precious, common gift of idealism and make it extraordinary? Geniuses take what we all have – this innate ability to imagine things the way they could be – and they go global with it. Well worth a half million dollars for their priceless contributions to humanity.
I’ve been given a project by my boss to track what’s happening at CES (the Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas. The trick is I need to track it from my office in New Jersey. Thanks to publications like Wired, CNET, USA Today, Business Week, and the plethora of bloggers at the show, the tough part isn’t getting the information – it’s sifting through all of it. I’m not complaining in the least; I am a master sifter. And this project feels much more like play than work- my gratitude for this terrific job has now reached an all-time high!
I came across a post on Amazon Current’s blog regarding Sony’s OLED TV, one of the hottest products at the show. http://www.amazon.com/gp/blog/post/PLNK30ULMBBBDWULY Among their many features, these TVs feature “super deep black” levels. Pictures pop with a vibrancy never before seen in a TV. This started my nerd wheels going – can our own eyes even experience “super deep black” on their own?
After a few hours of looking far and wide on numerous medical sites, I couldn’t find any evidence of whether or not this color contrast is something we can naturally experience without the aid of technology. (I did discover that the human eyeball weighs approximately 28 grams, can discern between 500 shades of grey, and that sailors once thought that wearing a gold earring would improve their eyesight!) It’s possible that the answer to my question is out there living on some website I have yet to discover. It’s also possible that these advanced technologies are helping us experience the world “out there” from the comfort of our own couches in a way that we could not see it on our own.
I heard about Operation Mend on the local LA news and it brought tears to my eyes. Through Operation Mend, local Los Angeles families open their homes to “provide returning military personnel with severe facial and other medical injuries access to the nation’s top plastic and reconstructive surgeons, as well as comprehensive medical and mental-health support for the wounded and their families.” 
Christa Avampato 