The Two Arrows

Like many others in our field of dementia care, I have found that mindfulness practices like meditation gives me the resilience that is so essential to sustain my work. I was inspired for this month’s blog after a meditation during a podcast I follow: Home | The On Being Project.   Buddha observed and explained many aspects of human nature and suffering 2500 years ago that remain ever relevant today. The Buddhist allegory of The Two Arrows is a lesson related to how we choose to respond to a painful event. The first arrow, or triggering experience, causes the initial pain. The second arrow “is our reaction to the first. This second arrow is optional.” Looking at the Two Arrow analogy in a bio neurological way, our limbic system automatically kicks when triggered by a painful event, like the impact of an arrow, leaving us with only three options: fight, flight, or…

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What the World Needs Now is Love Sweet Love — Dionne Warwick

We revisited the Summer of Love last Friday during Healing Arts with Diane Stenlund. She played a wonderful mix of songs from 1967 and created a scrapbook of album covers with colorful artwork inspired by the times.  Wherever one falls within a cultural phenomenon like the Summer of Love, the impact can be lasting. Reflecting on earlier experiences can reunite us with our unique identities, and offer a different perspective whether we have memory impairment or not.  We sang along to the Beatles and shook our tambourines; making connections to each other and bypassing the differences of several generations.  Memory loss can be devastating at times. We all hope that the last Alzheimer’s patient will come in our lifetime. One of the important steps in tackling this sticky neurological disease is getting standardized testing for primary care physicians. It looks like we have such a test: The p-tau217 blood test combined…

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