Merrimack Valley Magazine

Generations – A New Path

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Renewal Academy Offers Help for Those Seeking Health and Healing

Katlyn Boucher and her husband, Brandon, have always lived a life of service and wanting to help others.

Seven years ago, Katlyn, a former elementary school teacher, and Brandon, a veteran, were individually struggling with trauma and mental health issues. Each were pointed to a new path that ultimately brought them together and allowed them to heal some parts of themselves that were hurting.

That journey led them to open Renewal Academy in 2018, a center for “Advanced Spiritual Training & Healing.” At the academy, they share those meditation and healing techniques to help others overcome challenges and trauma as they did.

Brandon served in the military for 8 years, returning after Sept. 11, 2001, to serve in Afghanistan for two years. Upon his release in 2003, he struggled with the lasting effects from the war. 

 

“I knew there was something that didn’t feel quite right,” he says. He tried self-medicating and numbing the pain. It was only after he attended the funeral of a friend he served alongside who died by suicide that Brandon says he had a wake-up call. He knew if he continued down the path he was on, he would also end up a statistic. In 2007, he visited the VA clinic and received a diagnosis — he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder like many other veterans who had been in Iraq.

He asked around for a cure and was told his best hope was to “manage” the disorder. As someone who refuses to take no for an answer, he set out to prove that theory wrong. He spent the next few years trying many different types of therapy and medication.

“There had to be something out there that could actually fix this,” he says.

In 2014, he found his answer when a friend invited him along to a meditation class. As he took part in the session, the underlying anger he’d lived with for the past decade since leaving the service dissipated. 

“I had a profound experience,” he says. “Literally, I felt peace. It was such a drastic shift — I noticed it immediately.”

He began practicing daily exercises and attending weekly sessions. He began studying the science behind why he was feeling better.

At his next doctor’s appointment when he completed his PTSD symptom checklist, the number was staggering — 19. When he was first diagnosed, it was at 54. This was the first time in 12 years of treating combat veterans that his doctor had seen such a drastic change. She told Brandon to keep doing whatever he was doing and to share that knowledge with other veterans.

He began training to become a healer himself. Through the program, he met his future wife, Katlyn, who got involved to face her own past traumas. After escaping one abusive relationship, she had found herself in another controlling relationship. “Women don’t survive those relationships,” her doctor explained.

Katlyn was diagnosed with anxiety and depression and prescribed medication. Like Brandon, she wanted to know how she could treat those conditions without a lifetime of medication.

“I started thinking, how do I heal what’s underneath the depression,” she says.

After leaving her teaching job, she found herself burnt out, trying to manage her mental health while deciding on her next career move. Her therapist suggested she attend a Life Activation Healing session. She also attended an Empower Thyself class, in which participants connect with their higher life purpose.

“It woke something up in me,” Katlyn says. She realized she would be OK and she would figure things out. Over time, she decided she wanted to learn how to bring this sense of understanding to others.

Seven years after attending the Healers’ Academy training, both Katlyn and Brandon are fully weaned off their medications. Katlyn has come through the other side of the abusive relationships she endured. 

They both are certified Healers and Life Activation Practitioners. 

“Together we have been this Team of Light to help people,” Katlyn says. They now help those going through struggles as they went through their own. They have seen their clients get new jobs and promotions and start new relationships.

“We get to serve people on a daily basis,” Brandon says. “We show them what’s possible when you align life with your life purpose.”             

Renewal Academy
Lowell, Mass.
(978) 710-8860
Renewal.Academy

Wellness Wednesday – 9/30/20

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WELLNESS AROUND THE WEB

What to Do If You Suffer Parental Burnout

Parents today are expected to provide optimal nutrition for their kids while also encouraging participation in sports, extracurricular activities and educational tutoring. Combine this with being a round-the-clock chauffeur, and it’s no wonder why parental exhaustion affects upwards of 20% of parents.

Academically, the term parental burnout has a specific meaning. In 2018, Belgian researchers developed the Parental Burnout Assessment, which comprises four factors: exhaustion, self-doubt, feeling fed up and emotional distancing from one’s children.

By this definition, burnout is more than just stress, worry, or fatigue, which all parents experience sometimes. MarksDailyApple.com describes it as a deep weariness that drains one’s ability to parent effectively. Left unchecked, it can lead to parental neglect and violence.

To combat this, experts recommend taking the time each day to focus on what went right, instead of resorting to self-deprecation. This might mean going around the dinner table and each naming something that made you happy, or writing a simple gratitude statement in your journal each night.

Additionally, it’s important to actively reject the intensive parenting ideal. Tt’s ok if the laundry isn’t done, your kid is five minutes late to soccer practice, you forgot to brush their hair on school picture day or the Tooth Fairy failed to pick up the tooth last night.

This is not an overnight process, but it helps to realize that a lot of burnout stems from buying into societal standards — standards that you don’t have to live up to to be a kind and loving parent.

 

Death by Black Licorice

A recent article from the New England Journal of Medicine describing the death of a middle-aged construction worker from eating black licorice will make you think twice about binging on your Halloween spoils.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reported that it was aware the naturally occurring compound found in black licorice can have adverse health effects.

The FDA advises that no matter what your age, you should not eat large quantities of black licorice; if you have muscle weakness or an irregular heartbeat, you should stop eating it and call your doctor. And you should consult your doctor about interactions it may have with your other medications.

In the case of the 54-year-old Massachusetts construction worker, described Wednesday in the medical journal, eating one or two large bags a day for three weeks threw his nutrients out of whack and caused his heart to stop. He collapsed at midday at a fast-food restaurant.

The problem is glycyrrhizic acid, found in black licorice and in many other foods and dietary supplements containing licorice root extract. It can cause potentially deadly mineral imbalances.

The doctors treating him found he had dangerously low potassium, which led to heart rhythm and other problems. Emergency responders did CPR and revived him but he died the next day.

Meditation for Mind-Control

Carnegie Mellon Biomedical Engineering Department Head Bin He and his team have discovered that mindful meditation can help subjects learn and improve the ability to mind-control brain computer interfaces (BCIs), MedicalXpress.com reports.

A BCI is an apparatus that allows an individual to control a machine or computer directly from their brain.

He and collaborators conducted a large-scale human study enrolling subjects in a weekly 8-week course in simple, widely-practiced meditation techniques, to test their effect as a potential training tool for BCI control.

He’s work shows that humans with just eight lessons in mindfulness-based attention and training (MBAT) demonstrated significant advantages compared to those with no prior meditation training, both in their initial ability to control BCI’s and in the time it took for them to achieve full proficiency.

The work of He and his team presents a new application for a well-known and widely practiced form of meditation, and may even offer insights into the neurological effects of meditation and how it may be adapted for better BCI training. This study offers novel information for researchers of BCI’s and presents a new tool for both understanding the brain and preparing subjects to use a BCI.

Teddy Roosevelt’s Inhuman Coffee Consumption

With his naval expertise, domination in physical competitions and expeditions through Africa and North America, Teddy epitomized manliness. What fueled the 26th president more than anything else was his coffee, CoffeeOrDie.com reports.

In fact, Roosevelt loved to imbibe his coffee from a cup that was “more in the nature of a bathtub,” according to his son, Theodore Jr.

For the president, his breakfast coffee was half coffee, half milk, and he poured the cups for everyone else as well. It didn’t stop at breakfast, however. Roosevelt drank coffee all day long, adding five to seven lumps of sugar to each cup. The National Park Service, which oversees Roosevelt’s birthplace, says the president drank up to a gallon of coffee every single day. One witness even claimed to have seen the president down 40 cups in one day — that’s two and a half gallons.

When little Teddy was 5 years old, the most widely prescribed remedy for asthma was drinking an insane amount of coffee and puffing on a cigar. While the tobacco habit didn’t stick with the future president, the coffee definitely did.

It should surprise no one that the next generation of Roosevelts loved the black bean as much as their famous father. He was pouring it out to them over breakfast every day. The young Roosevelts loved it so much that they started their own chain of coffee houses in New York City called The Brazilian Coffee House. It was later changed to The Double R Coffee House.

 

Comfort…Until a Cure

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Lucy’s Love Bus Provides Relief and Support for Families Suffering from Childhood Cancer 

It is almost impossible to describe the anguish a child endures while undergoing cancer treatment. In an effort to help, Lucy’s Love Bus in Amesbury is providing relief for both families and children contending with life-threatening illnesses by offering services that ease the side effects of harsh treatments such as chemotherapy and radiation. 

The organization’s founder, Lucy Grogan, was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia when she was 8 years old, and she battled this rare, aggressive disease for four years before her death in 2006. While undergoing her own cancer treatment, Lucy recognized how severely these medicative therapies affected other children. 

 

Lucy’s mother, Beecher Grogan, recalls a time they were at Tufts Floating Hospital in Boston’s Chinatown. “She asked me, ‘If I’m in Chinatown, why can’t I get acupuncture here?’ ” Beecher recalls. This sparked a larger conversation about integrative therapies for children. “She thought that it was coming through the hospital or through insurance,” Beecher notes. However, they were “paying for tens of thousands of dollars for services for her out of pocket.”

Lucy was inspired by this conversation, and, with her mother, began discussing ideas for a nonprofit when she was 11. 

Photo by Raya on Assignment.

Beecher’s fundraising efforts for children with cancer began after Lucy’s death. In 2010, she and a group of volunteers held a butterfly release event and raised more than $50,000.

Beecher worked with volunteers — including many of Lucy’s old friends — for four more years before leaving her job to work full time for Lucy’s Love Bus. 

Her mission is to improve the “quality of life for children with cancer or other life-threatening illnesses with integrative therapies [that] ease children’s pain and anxiety during and after traditional medical treatments.” The name of the nonprofit came from Lucy herself. “The ‘Bus’ name comes from a suggestion that Lucy loved, because we’re delivering comfort. She was funny and quirky,” Beecher says. 

Lucy particularly enjoyed horse therapy during the worst of her treatments. Lucy’s Love Bus raises money to help provide this and other forms of integrative therapies, including acupuncture, massages, meditation, yoga and music.

Lucy’s Love Bus provides integrative therapies such as meditation, acupuncture, reiki and horseback riding to children with cancer or life-threatening illnesses. Photos courtesy Lucy’s Love Bus.

Lucy’s Love Bus’ reach extends throughout New England, and the organization currently helps about 250 kids and 75 families. It also offers various programs, including Lucy’s LoveSquad, a school-based leadership program that provides students with the opportunity to become activists for the nonprofit. 

The most recent addition to the nonprofit is The Sajni Center, erected in 2018. The Amesbury facility is a space for hope and healing, offering numerous meditation and yoga workshops. “The center is about helping the whole family,” Beecher says. 

“[At the center,] we try to fill in the missing pieces and support the family,” Beecher says. “It is so stressful to go through this, financially, emotionally, spiritually … it can really break a family apart. We are trying to keep the whole family intact and do things that are creative and different.”

Despite the spread of COVID-19, the nonprofit continues to evolve and is planning to team up with Tough Warrior Princesses and North of Boston Cancer Resource, two area organizations that help adults with cancer. Lucy’s Love Bus recently established Lucy’s Emergency Fund for necessities such as gas, diapers and groceries. Information on donations can be found on the nonprofit’s website.    

Lucy’s Love Bus
Amesbury, Mass.
(857) 277-1984
LucysLoveBus.org

Wellness Wednesday – 4/29/20

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WELLNESS AROUND THE WEB

Suddenly, we have made it to the end of April. A full month of quarantine down, many of us are itching for an end date, or a timeline of how long this pandemic will last. Last week we discussed routines and staying mobile while social distancing, and this week we want to emphasize our equally important mental health. Caring for our mental health is not only important, but necessary during these times of high stress, anxiety, fear and uncertainty.

 

Mental Health and Quarantine

Health.com offers five ways to lift your mood during the coronavirus pandemic. What sets these methods apart is how simple and easy they are. These accessible methods, which include reminding yourself to be grateful, tapping into your creativity and treating yourself, boost the feelings of confidence and control we all need during this time.

A necessary component of mental health is a good night’s sleep. Claire Gillespie from Health.com describes causes of quarantine-induced insomnia and offers advice at how to improve your sleep, which you can read here.

As always, I recommend meditation to anyone suffering from mental stress, whether it be chronic or simply induced by current events. When I first began meditating, I found it extremely difficult to sit still and clear my mind. What is the trick to overcoming this? Walking meditation. Healthline describes the benefits of meditation walks, which includes reduced anxiety and depression as well as improved blood circulation. There are a variety of free meditations on YouTube, or you can use one of the numerous meditation apps offered for smartphones. Personally, I prefer Calm’s 15-minute walking meditation while I hike the trails of Winnikinni Castle in Haverhill.

Alan Wolfelt at Yahoo offers one of the most interesting pieces of advice: look at this situation not as one that confines us, but one that frees us. A simple shift in perspective can boost our positivity and give us a sense of much-needed optimism during this time (this is a highly recommended read).   

Finally, boosting our own mental health is just as important as supporting that of others. Nicole Pajer at Huffpost offers ten ways you can support others who are struggling during this time. Social distancing may keep us physically apart, but technology allows us to remain in contact and check in on those who rely on connections with others.

First Timers

For most of us, a global pandemic is something we have never experienced before. We are all adapting to intense changes in our daily routines, but some more than others. Healthline offers advice for both those who are living with a partner for the first time, and for new parents who are caring for an infant for the first time during quarantine. Everyone is experiencing a new normal; even from a distance, we are all in this together.

Helpful Discounts

As businesses remain closed and financial burdens grow heavier, Today has compiled a list of helpful discounts to alleviate the stress of cabin fever. There is something for everyone: from auto, entertainment and educational to health, insurance and restaurants, this list will help you save money while entertaining the family and keeping up with daily maintenance.

Feel-Good Stories

Last week, I left you with some feel-good stories, because your overall health is about feeling good. I’m going to continue that with two great stories from the web. Let them make you smile, comfort you or even inspire you to spread some goodness throughout your day.

First, a 55-year-old woman in Iowa has created a face mask giving tree. She has sewn over 100 masks and leaves them on a tree in her neighborhood, free for her neighbors to take as needed.

Although Earth Day was last week, this inspiring story from Associated Press News sheds light on how Earth is healing as we practice social distancing. Air pollution levels across the globe are decreasing; even India is finally getting views that have been blocked by smog for decades. As this story will make you feel good, let it make you aware of our own carbon footprint and consider how we can help keep our planet clean in the future.

Wellness Wednesday – 4/15/20

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WELLNESS AROUND THE WEB

Countering Cabin Fever

There are a lot of stories floating around the web on the topic of cabin fever. The Boston Herald has a nice one about how best to work from home while also living with a partner or roommates. One big tip: be sound-conscious! Now might not be the time to crank up the Motorhead or dig into that giant bowl of nachos while your dear ones are on deadline.

Yahoo has one about how to cut and color your hair. That’s one I probably won’t be writing, as I’m firmly in the Grizzly Adams aesthetic camp when it comes to pandemics. But I realize that me and my pet bear are in the minority.

Kidding aside, cabin fever is real, and the effects it can have on people are dramatic. Healthline provides a few additional coping tips here. It even lists a symptom guide. I’ve cleaned out my garage and turned it into a makeshift escape pod — makes a huge difference when I need to clear my head. There are also sorts of other ways to leave the walls behind and stage a momentary flight to freedom. I’ve noticed a few neighbors have built fire pits and are occasionally having what looks like inviting s’mores sessions under starlight. I’m tempted to join them, and maybe I’ll invite myself over after we get the safe signal.

 

The Known Unknowns

Siobhan Roberts at the New York Times offers an in-depth look at what the data shows on how people face uncertainty. The piece examines numerous studies on public response to ambivalence and unpredictability. The takeaway? People are more resilient than we often think, and transparency and honesty might be the best policy, even in times of crisis.

 

©Sławomir Fajer – stock.adobe.com

Kitchen Connections

Emi Boscamp, writing on Today.com, discusses how her family uses video conferencing while preparing meals to maintain a sense of harmony and connectedness. It’s a sweet story, and good food writing to boot. As my own long-suffering family know, I prefer to chop alone and rigidly enforce a “no one in the kitchen when dada’s cooking policy.” (This only serves to turn the oven into a giant toddler magnet.) So while I might not be bringing the laptop while I prep my mise en place, I’m inspired to try some of the dishes Boscamp mentions. Chicken katsu, anyone?

Home Fitness

Also on Today.com, Stephanie Mansour gives you a short workout to help reduce ailments that plague sedentary laborers: stiff necks, shoulders and back. The workout only takes a few minutes.

In a related workout story, Casey Gueren offers some advice about how to make home workouts fun. Gueren is a New Yorker and has had to make some serious adjustments to her routine. Read her thoughts here.

©finwal89 – stock.adobe.com

And finally, here’s something our spring intern Kristin Cole wrote about her own experiences during the pandemic. Cole is a very talented up-and-coming writer and is currently studying at Merrimack College. She also compiled this week’s Wellness Wednesday links.

 

Cole writes:

I left the Merrimack College parking lot on March 6, assuming that I would be back in a week. While I had no legitimate vacation planned, spring break would come as a huge relief after the previous week of midterms. But what my peers and I were not expecting was that this would be an abrupt end to our semester (in-person, at least.)

Frightening news of the coronavirus pandemic in the Merrimack Valley seemed to spread as rapidly as, well, the virus itself. One day we were social distancing, the next schools were closing, then essential businesses and after that we were all advised to stay at home. As a young woman who has battled chronic anxiety since childhood, this sudden lifestyle change has been a shock to the system.

I have dealt with my anxiety in almost every way except medication. Movement always seemed to be a cure for my frantic thoughts, so over the years I have developed an extremely active lifestyle, one that is threatened by this overwhelming time. I have grown to love a busy schedule: juggling work, commuting to class, extracurricular clubs, exercising, visiting family and relaxing with friends. It seems overwhelming, but it has become a coping mechanism that keeps me both happy and motivated.

 So, what happens when all of that is canceled? School, clubs, work, even time with friends have all faced the chopping block as the effects of this virus increase. It is no doubt that these times can be difficult for everyone, whether they struggle with a mental illness or not. Without a clear end in sight, what is there to do but fret and sterilize every corner of our living space?

Here are some of the things that I have been doing to keep my sanity, with the hopes that it can help others maintain theirs, or at least try something new. Hang in there everyone, and remember, six feet!

  • Get dressed every day. It is easy to sit around in your pajamas but getting up and actually putting fresh clothes on (just a new outfit, no need to be fancy!) will help you start the day with a new perspective.
  • Start a new routine. Looking to pick up a good habit? Now is the perfect time. I have started using a face scrub every morning, which is not only good for the skin and wakes you up. Implementing it into my routine gives me something to look forward to each morning.
  • Get outside! Walk, run, hike, jump, skip. Fresh air is one of the best things for your mental health. Take a break from working, cleaning or homework. If you have pets, bring them along, too!
  • With a national emergency occurring, most fitness centers have closed. But thanks to the internet, there are thousands of workout videos available electronically to follow. A simple search on YouTube can bring a variety of classes, from yoga to Zumba, straight to your living room.
  • Numerous scientific studies have confirmed many benefits of meditation, from reduced stress relief to enhanced emotional health, and it only needs to be done for a few minutes a day. iPhone apps such as Calm and Headspace offer short meditations for people of all levels.
  • Limit the social media … Being stuck inside can lead us to scroll endlessly through our social media feeds. Trade the screen for a new book or magazine.
  • … but not the social contact. Social distancing can be difficult, but thanks to technology, there are many ways to communicate with friends. Facetime, Zoom, and Google Hangouts are great ways to see friends without being physically with them.

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