O'Grady Psychology Associates

Psychotherapy, Marriage Counseling, Neuropsychological Assessment

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Accepting Life’s Turbulence: Fasten Your Seatbelt

Life brings ups and downs and finding a way through the stormy turbulence takes courage and grace.
Thunder Cloud from 37,000 ft

This dramatic cumulonimbus was captured at 37,000 feet over the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. Pilots know to avoid going near these thunderclouds, charting a course around them for the comfort of passengers and safety of the aircraft. Even coming close will cause turbulence—the jet trembles and shakes, often violently.

Pilots rate turbulence as mild, medium, or severe. Thankfully, excellent communication between pilots means that patches of bumpy air can be predicted well ahead of time and avoided by changing elevation or course. But sometimes turbulence is unavoidable. In that situation, fearful flyers grip armrests, pop benzodiazepines, and turn up the volume on their headsets. Eventually the air smooths out, and everyone releases their breath…and their grips.

Staying Steady During Turbulent Times

Jet travel is a great metaphor for life. Sometimes the bumpy moments are so extreme that there’s nothing you can do but sit with it and hope you don’t have to pee. But sitting with the rocky ups and downs of life isn’t always easy.

When a pilot acquaintance asked me how to survive the turbulence of his current marriage problems, I asked him what he tells his passengers to do when the flight encounters a rough patch.

He said, “I tell them to fasten their seat belts.” We have all heard the familiar words, “The captain has turned on the seat belt sign. Please return to your seats and fasten your seatbelts.” Now, I confess I sometimes use this moment to zip down the now suddenly empty aisle to use the lavatory (but only in mild turbulence.)  But basically, in bad weather you need to stay seated and wait it out.

I enjoy flying, but that wasn’t always true. I was a fearful flyer for about six years. I wasn’t phobic, I didn’t avoid flying or have panic attacks, but I was alert to every squeal of the engine, movement of the wing flaps, or ring of a cabin bell,. During euphemistically described moments of “bumpy air,” I would glance up at the flight attendants’ faces to see if they were showing signs of concern.

I wasn’t afraid of heights or of being in an enclosed space—my fear was simply of crashing. Kaput, end of life, and the imagined 60 seconds of sheer terror I expected to feel going headlong into death.

We have no control over death. Once I came to terms with accepting that I could die in a plane crash, I became less afraid. It wasn’t that I was convinced by statistics showing how rare such deaths are; fearful flyers are rarely comforted by the statistics. Acceptance, in contrast, goes a long way in dealing with the bumps we encounter in life.

I found out this week that I have a 50/50 chance of having the genetic mutation associated with hereditary breast and ovarian cancer (HBOC). My family on both sides has had lots of cancer. But through advanced genetic testing, I now know that my family members have the BRCA2 mutation going back three generations. As I await the results of my blood test, I am again reminded of our lack of control. For me, it’s the toss of a coin: I either have it or I don’t. If I do, I have an 85% chance of developing breast cancer and lower risk of other cancers (ovarian, pancreatic, melanoma, and stomach). I am not comforted by those odds.

Flying has infinitely better odds. But after a week of emotional turbulence, I will meet my fate with HBOC with as much grace as I can muster. It hasn’t been an easy week, to be sure, veering between certainty of bad results and certainty of escape. So while I wait and hope that I end up on the happier side of the 50-50 split, I will fasten my seatbelt and try to steer as safe a course through the thunderstorm as I can, with all the support I’ve gathered over the years: family, friendship, work that I love, and resources (such as FORCE). Coping skills, like seat belts, keep us safe. While we generally don’t enjoy restraints, a seatbelt helps to contain our emotions so they are less likely to overwhelm.

I am reminded, once again, of a lesson taught by Thich Nhat Hanh: “When we have a toothache, we know that not having a toothache is a wonderful thing.” (Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life, 1992, p. 38). Finding comfort in the face of difficulty is possible—by riding out the painful moments and trusting that the next moment contains a potential fullness, some simple pleasure waiting to be noticed. So when the seatbelt sign is again turned off,  you are free to move about the cabin. Add take a deep breath.

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Psychotherapy: A Safe and Sheltered Space

Psychotherapy is a safe place to explore what is causing you pain and how to cope.One size does not fit all when it comes to finding a good therapist. Many variables influence the extent to which people get better, solve problems, and grow. While empirical support is important in choosing what treatment to provide, psychotherapists shouldn’t stick rigidly to what studies suggest; instead, they should work from the position of evidence-informed practice. This allows for treatments that respond to what clients bring to therapy—their unique histories, temperaments, and narratives. Sometimes what may be most helpful in the therapy is intangible and unmeasurable by any study. In research, these are referred to as non-specific effects. These are uncontrollable factors: the usually small, barely noticed interactions that create an unexpected effect in the subject. In other words, they are not a part of the research experiment.

In Irvin Yalom’s book Existential Psychotherapy, he describes how, during a cooking class, he wondered why the instructor’s meal always tasted better than any of the his attempts at the same recipe. He learned why after catching the teacher’s assistant throwing fistfuls of various spices in the dish before putting it in the oven. This story has stayed with me since reading it in the early years of graduate school. The crucial ingredients—the “throw-ins”— of good therapy may be unquantifiable, and untaught; even the therapist may be unaware of them.

In a previous post I wrote about love as part of the therapy. Love is a challenging factor to study because it is difficult to quantify and because love overlaps significantly with other emotional reactions such as respect, compassion and empathy, and curiosity.

What is the art of therapy? Sometimes it is as simple as being really present with clients during their pain. Being present means not interrupting, giving advice, or falling asleep, but instead staying tuned to a client’s process. As in meditation, a therapist who notices his or her mind wandering should first notice where it has gone (and if there is anything in that mental tangent that could provide meaning about the client’s situation) and second, return that attention to the client.

A safe and sheltered space

In ancient times a holy person who would descend into what was called an incubation chamber—a dark underground space—with someone in turmoil or grieving. They would remain together in the darkened underground space for three days. This practice illustrates how healing  comes through being present with feelings. When someone is suffering, the willingness to go into the dark with them as they express and move through their feelings is a large part of what we do as therapists. When suffering people can take what’s vague and private, locked inside their heads, and speak out loud the unspeakable, they can gain a depth of understanding and new self-compassion.

The popular 2015 Pixar film Inside Out shows how this works. Riley, the young protagonist must endure her family’s cross-country move, which takes her away from her friends, her home, and her beloved hockey team. Believing she must be perfectly mature, she suppresses her sadness. Five personified emotions–Joy, Sadness, Anger, Disgust, and Fear –live in her head and influence her actions and memories. The dominant voice is Joy, because being happy and not expressing our negative feelings is socially rewarded. But all emotions have a role to play in living well. When Riley tries to silence Sadness, she becomes numb to all feeling, including Joy, and pandemonium ensues. It’s only when Riley can fully acknowledge the sadness in her life that she can also remember the tender, loving moments. Therapy patients must similarly accept and not disown their most difficult feelings.

Good treatment isn’t always easily available. Many therapies lend themselves to apps and downloadable protocols, making these treatments more accessible for people who are unable to find (or afford) a good-fit therapist. Videoconferencing, mobile applications, g-chats, and web- or text-based therapy have a place, and can be powerful ways to change behavior and improve symptoms, especially for those who feel shy or stigmatized about talking to a therapist. But with something gained, sometimes something is also lost with techniques that avoid human interaction and relationship.

What’s missing are the powerful nonverbal communications that shed so much light on the intangibles of what might be contributing to a person’s issues. A blush, an eye-roll, a tear welling up; the fidgeting of someone with a secret, the nervous giggle or shy smile—these nuanced communications can speak in ways where texting is mute. Staying safely in front of a screen provides shelter, to be sure, but possibly also a place to hide.

To illustrate the importance of face-to-face therapy, there’s the example of my former client who returned to therapy after a seven-year break. He told me his physician kept increasing his antidepressant dosage, but he was getting worse, not better. After sitting with him for close to an hour, listening to the many stresses he described, I gently inquired about his subtle, yet noticeable twitching. His movements were suggestive of a genetic disorder and not merely anxious fidgeting. He immediately told me “My biological father [he was adopted at birth] was really strange before he died. He moved and twitched all the time—I haven’t thought about it in years but I know he had something wrong.”

At the conclusion of our session, he promised me that he would contact his cousin and find out the name of his father’s condition. I suspected it was Huntington’s disease, a rare genetic disorder. When he emailed me the confirmation, I was able to suggest genetic counseling and testing.

So what appeared to be depression and anxiety—and was being treated as such—was in fact a neurobiological condition. While the news was not good, he could be treated by the right physician for his condition and not keep taking medication that only made him feel worse.

The opportunity to look at your darkness with someone who respects you and your process can allow you to speak the unspeakable, giving room to the ineffable—those moments of awe that come only when we let the full range of who we are be seen and known.

Rumi stated it well in his mystical poem “A Garden Beyond Paradise”:

Everything you see has its roots in the unseen world.

The forms may change, yet the essence remains the same.

Every wonderful sight will vanish; every sweet word will fade,

But do not be disheartened,

The source they come from is eternal, growing,

Branching out, giving new life and new joy.

Why do you weep?

The source is within you

And this whole world is springing up from it.

 The joy of which he wrote cannot spring forth without awareness that it will also fade. Trust that the source of life is in sitting with and sharing the difficult parts of ourselves in a safe and sheltered space.

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Division of labor in relationships: How to make it work

Division of labor in relationships -- learning to talk about without conflict.
Artwork by Peter Berkowitz

Conflict is inevitable in marriage, and how to divvy up chores is one of the most common conflicts. Virtually every couple I have seen for counseling over the last twenty years has argued about the division of labor in their marriage. As the mental scorecard of who does what grow longer with each year, the couple’s friendship and good feeling is eroded.

First, a few words about conflict in general. We know that not all conflict can be resolved. That’s to be expected; learning to tolerate conflict is something all people who live or work together must do. Some issues will come up many times over the course of a long-term relationship, but this is not a sign of failure . Think of managing conflict rather than resolving it. Framing disagreement this way gives you the opportunity to talk over issues and work toward compromise. Remember, couples that never fight are not necessarily happier. Anger that’s papered over, denied, or unexpressed doesn’t disappear; it tends to compound over time.

In fact, anger and conflict can strengthen relationships when you express your needs in ways that will be heard (as opposed to harping, nagging, constant complaining, criticism, and negativity).

For example, don’t go into a conflict discussion with guns blazing. A softened startup helps set a friendly context that will determine the way the whole thing goes. Being able to follow basic rules of good-faith engagement will lead to deeper understanding and more productive discussions. Of course, screaming, threats, sarcasm, name calling, and criticism are never okay.

Common areas of conflict around division of labor

Disagreements can arise in several ways. Couples can have very different ideas about what “clean” means, for example. The stereotype is the slob who claims not to see the dirt paired with a hygiene-obsessed neat freak. While it’s easy to understand the role of laziness in conflict, over-vigilance can also be problematic. An over-controlling gatekeeper may set onerous rules and methods for exactly how housework gets done, what kids can eat, how much screen time they can have, and so on.

Women tend more toward gatekeeping—of course, this is a generalization, and roles are fluid and changing today. But in the case of a conflict around a gatekeeping mother, a deeper understanding of the pattern might include appreciating how women often feel heavy cultural pressure to run perfect households. Stay-at-home mothers, especially, may feel that their power in the husband-wife relationship lies in setting domestic rules. But like everyone, such mothers need a break with housework and kids sometimes—and that means letting their partners do things their own ways, within reason (children aren’t neglected and chores get done).

If one partner makes up all the rules, the other will feel resentful. If there are significant differences in how things are done, find ways to communicate about them and find solutions both can agree on. Stepping up on the one hand, and accepting good-enough help on the other, can go a long way toward resolving this conflict.

Another common but not always acknowledged conflict is, for couples with children, agreeing on what counts as time with the kids. Mothers typically consider activities such as shuffling kids to activities, packing lunches, or coordinating after-school activities as parental involvement. But dad may think that throwing around a ball or playing a video game together counts equally well. Fun is important, but no one parent should have to shoulder all the mundane activities.

Dividing household jobs

As hinted above, gender plays a role in labor division, even if not deliberately. Often, gender roles established by the couple’s parents become the template of how household and parenting jobs are divided. Some couples will consciously avoid doing things the way their parents did. But certain jobs are still likely to get divided along gender lines—men take out the garbage, pick up dead animals, do the yard work, and plunge the toilet, for example.

Even when both partners have jobs, women do considerably more housework. Data from the National Survey of Families and Households conducted by the University of Wisconsin shows that women who don’t work outside the home spend about 38 hours a week on housework compared to 12 hours for their husbands. Working women continue to do the bulk of the cooking and cleaning, around 28 hours a week, while husbands of working women contribute about 16 hours a week on chores.

Assessing labor division is further complicated when some work is invisible. Certain time-consuming jobs routinely fall to women but don’t count as “housework,” such as planning the social calendar, play dates, childcare, and birthday parties, including buying birthday gifts and supervising thank-you note writing. This work matters: teaching good manners and assuring that children don’t get left out of the ever-shifting social hierarchy of childhood is important to their development and happiness.

When this issue comes up in counseling, men will routinely tell their partners not to worry so much, but unfortunately this does just the opposite of reducing conflict. It feels and is dismissive.

Even couples that have full time childcare don’t escape the division of labor struggles. Surprising to couples who do not have live-in childcare, even managing the nanny has to go on the list of who does what. No one turns over the care to their children without giving sufficient time to forming a good working relationship with the person charged with caring for them.

When you think about who does what, pay attention to the little things, such as taking out the garage, cleaning up the dog poop, getting oil for the car, taking clothes to the dry cleaners—they may seem like minor errands, but they add up.

The list of common household jobs below shows many things that go into running a home and managing a family. Use it to discuss who does what in your relationship. Next to each activity, put the initials of the partner who does that job. Then go through the list again and see if there are chores you’d like to restructure.

Remember that things don’t have to be balance out 50/50, so long as you each agree on how to structure the tasks that need doing. If there are things that no one wants to do, consider taking turns or finding other ways to make up the difference. It’s also worthwhile to consider which chores are occasional or seasonal and which are weekly or daily tasks.

 Who does what in the relationship?

General household tasks

  •  Going to the cleaners
  • Washing windows
  • Planning the food menu
  • Grocery shopping
  • Cooking dinner
  • Setting the table
  • Cleaning up after dinner
  • Cleaning the kitchen
  • Cleaning the bathrooms
  • Putting out clean towels
  • General tidying up
  • Getting the car serviced
  • Putting gas in the car
  • Sorting incoming mail
  • Paying the bills
  • Managing investments
  • Balancing the accounts
  • Keeping social calendar
  • Returning phone calls or e-mail
  • Taking out garbage and trash
  • Recycling
  • Washing clothes
  • Folding the laundry
  • Ironing
  • Putting the clean clothes away
  • Vacuuming
  • Washing floors
  • Replacing light bulbs
  • Repairing appliances
  • Making the beds
  • Cleaning the refrigerator
  • Shopping for clothing
  • Planning travel
  • Making home repair
  • Remodeling
  • Buying furniture
  • Redecorating the home
  • Buying items for the home
  • Buying new appliances
  • De-cluttering
  • Organizing kitchen cabinets and drawers
  • Doing yard work and lawn maintenance
  • Banking
  • Caring for house plants
  • Straightening and rearranging closets
  • Getting house ready for guests or a party
  • Buying gifts for family members and housewarmings, etc.
  • Keeping in touch with family
  • Preparing for holidays
  • Planning vacations and getaways
  • Arranging couple dates

Childcare tasks

  • Coordinating kid’s activities
  • Taking children to school
  • Picking children up from school
  • Doing or arranging childcare after school
  • Preparing child meals and lunches
  • Spending time with kids
  • Planning family outings with kids
  • Taking children to medical, dental, and similar appointments
  • Supervising homework
  • Supervising child baths
  • Meting out child discipline
  • Supervising bedtime with kids
  • Dealing with a sick child
  • Handling child crises
  • Dealing with a child’s emotions
  • Attending teacher conferences
  • Communications with the schools
  • Attending special kid events
  • Arranging kid birthday and other parties
  • Arranging kid lessons
  • Arranging kid play dates
  • Shopping for kids’ stuff

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Learning to Notice What is Already There: The Rose Itself

Being aware of pleasant events is an important skill in mindfulness and Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy.Behavior therapists have long used a technique to distract clients from their difficult thoughts. The client wears a rubber band around their wrist; when they have an upsetting thought, they snap the rubber band so that the sting wakes them up and interrupts the thought. This always seemed silly to me. And when I tried it myself, it didn’t work very well. The reasoning behind the rubber band is that distraction from a difficult thought will interrupt, not just the thought itself, but also the chain reaction that painful thoughts set in motion.

Distraction works for children quite well. If a child is crying about a lost toy, we show them another toy and they forget what they were crying about. But as we get older, emotions become more complex. The typical pattern is that when something difficult happens, we make a negative appraisal about it. Then we start thinking about the difficulty, which brings up negative feelings, sending us down the rabbit hole of rumination and worry. For example, a co-worker points out an error you made. Your thoughts might go, “Oh no, a mistake. I shouldn’t make mistakes. I’m a fraud and my co-worker knows it. I’m going to lose my job. Everything always goes wrong for me.” Our often-silent judgment triggers mental elaboration of what could have been simple awareness of a thought or feeling in the moment: “I made a mistake. It feels bad to get things wrong.”

We often go through the day thinking of what’s next. We plan dinner and dread the grocery store even as we’re walking around our home or office, long before we actually get to the store. Being 20 steps ahead of where we actually are misses opportunities that exist in the moment. But what if some of those moments aren’t very good? Wouldn’t avoiding them just make sense? The problem is that avoiding thoughts and feelings that evoke sadness or anxiety usually just postpones problems while they get bigger. There are endless ways to distract ourselves from even benign feelings such as boredom, or the effortful focus needed to complete a project. Constant phone checking may keep us from feeling bored or focusing on what we should be doing in the moment.

I did 6 Google searches for ‘North Coast silver cuff raven steals the light’ –to find information about a bracelet I purchased at a thrift store over the weekend. Do I feel better for putting off writing this post? No I don’t feel better after my  search, but I tell myself, “Ok, that wasn’t a great use of time, but now I am back to it.” I don’t need to chastise myself, but I don’t need to continue to distract myself either.

Being able to experience our thoughts and feelings without judging them opens up the possibility for experiencing the richness of the moment. It may be as simple as feeling engaged with what we are doing, or acknowledging our humanness and bringing forgiveness to the moment.

In practices like mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) and mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), therapists have people keep track of pleasant and unpleasant moments in their day. This doesn’t have to be a tiresome homework assignment; it’s just jotting down, at the end of each day, something you noticed that was pleasant, or the opposite. By doing so, you can more easily increase awareness of the experiences when they are happening.

The most important component of mindfulness is attention to the moment. This awareness helps us notice what triggers ruminative thoughts. Rather than mechanically snapping a rubber band, we notice the thought and where our minds want to take it next. We don’t need to add to the thoughts, take them further, or elaborate on them. We also don’t need to classify or analyze them. Being attentive but nonjudgmental in this way helps us not only to let go of negative thoughts, but to notice pleasant things that may escape our awareness because we so often rush around, either literally or in our heads. As a result of paying attention to small bursts of pleasure, happiness grows.

In a commencement address to Colorado College, the poet Billy Collins described the power of mindfulness as being like an atom smasher:

Matter is composed of atoms and subatomic particles. Through the use of a particle accelerator it is possible to make these tiny bits collide which releases energy. Time, on the other hand, is composed of moments. And by arresting one of those moments, by concentrating fully on it, by smashing it under the intensity of your gaze, an energy will be released.

Poetry, Collins says, can help you slow down and pay attention, but you don’t need to be a poet. What do you notice right now? Are you aware of something pleasant—the shape and feel of your coffee cup and the color of your coffee, the song of a bird, or the light coming in the window?

In the same talk, Billy Collins says that gratitude “for simply being alive” goes along with mindfulness:

The taking of breath, the beating of the heart. Gratitude for the natural world around us—the massing clouds, the white ibis by the shore. In Barcelona a poetry competition is held every year. There are three prizes: The third prize is a rose made of silver, the second prize is a golden rose, and the first prize: a rose. A real rose. The flower itself.

Though we spend so much time worrying about the future or the past, it’s what’s real and present in the moment that is “the flower itself. “ To tell it another way, there’s an old Zen koan (teaching story) that illustrates these concepts.

 

Muddy Road

Tanzan and Ekido were once traveling together down a muddy road. A heavy rain was still falling. Coming around the bend, they met a lovely girl in a silk kimono and sash, unable to cross the intersection.

“Come on, girl,” said Tanzan at once. Lifting her in his arms, he carried her over the mud.

Ekido did not speak again until that night when they reached a lodging temple. Then he no longer could restrain himself. “We monks don’t go near females,” he told Tanzan, “especially not young and lovely ones. It is dangerous. Why did you do that?”

“I left the girl there,” said Tanzan. “Are you still carrying her?”

The whole way back to the temple, Ekido missed the birdsong, the breeze, and the fragrance of the cherry-blossom trees—and thereby deprived himself of the pleasure around him, just so he could fume and ruminate about what someone else did.

To increase mindfulness, try printing the chart below and filling it in each day. Make a point of remembering to notice just one thing each day that you find pleasant. If, like Ekido, you are still carrying unpleasant feelings, notice how far you take them, and see if you can find something in the moment that is even briefly pleasant.

Awareness of Pleasant Experiences

Instructions: For one week, be aware each day of one pleasant experience or occurrence while it is happening. At the end of the day, on this calendar or in your journal, record in detail what it was and your experience of it. (Click on image for a larger view.)

Keeping track of pleasant experiences during the day is a core component of MBCT and MBST.

 

 

 

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Marriage and Parenting: Balancing everyone’s needs

Work-life Balance —  Making Time for Yourself

When I was born, my father’s colleagues congratulated him with the cartoon below.

Being a parent requires balancing personal needs with family and couple needs.

The proud new dad is wearing a halo and peering up at a trophy of me, his firstborn, hands on my hips. Behind him is a trash can filled with his favorite toys: skis, golf clubs, bowling ball. As this cartoon acknowledges, we all understand that when kids enter the marriage, parents have more work and less free time for previously enjoyed activities. When I ask couples during their initial therapy sessions about what they do for fun, they often look at each other, shrug, and say something like “Well, we sometimes watch TV together after the kids are in bed.”

One of the hardest things about having kids is the loss of identity. Parents often feel that they have to give up their recreational pursuits because children demand all their time. But is this necessary? In fact, parents today spend much more time with their kids than they did in previous generations. Fathers spend twice as much time in child-oriented activities than they did in 1965, and mothers spend an average of 20 percent more time with their kids. Where does this extra time come from, and what is sacrificed?

Generally, when both parents work outside the home, that extra time has come from mothers dropping some housework chores since 1965, and dads picking some up. But most of the additional child-oriented time has come at the expense of time spent with partner, friends, and on personal interests.

 

 The Venn Diagram of Marriage

 

Making time for yourself in marriage as well as time for your partner, and your children is important .Think of your relationship as a Venn diagram composed of two circles, one for each partner. The circles overlap for couple time—date night, activities together, time alone together. If you have children, add a third circle for kid-oriented or family time. Depending on the ages of your children, that circle will be larger at some times than others, but the important thing is to have your own circle, large enough to have time for individual pursuits not involving your partner or the kids.

This was what my dad threw away. He trashed all those fun activities to support his family. For him, as for so many men of his generation, ”support” did not mean participating in child-oriented time; it meant working. In my parents’ conventional marriage, he was the wage earner and provider: so much so that by the time his cancer was diagnosed, he had accrued three years of sick time. Which was just the exact amount of time he used before he died.

Don’t make that mistake. Give yourself permission to pursue your passions (within reason; maybe not 18 holes of golf every weekend, as this will surely cause conflict in the marriage) and reclaim the things you loved doing before kids or find new interests that nourish you.

What we know for sure:

  1. Don’t give up friendships. Friends are good for marriage because marriage doesn’t have to meet our every need. Friends also spread the load of stress so the marriage doesn’t have to bear it all.
  2. Express your needs for support and negotiate compromises. Fairness in distributing chores and caregiving tasks will reduce stress in your relationship. Read my post about the division of labor in marriage.
  3. Make time for fun together. Having enough fun strengthens your relationship and protects it during hard times. A good rule of thumb is to schedule two dates a week, where you get a sitter, a friend, relative, or neighbor to watch the kids and you go out for coffee, a walk, or dinner. Try to make it new and invent different activities to do together. In Gottman’s work, this would be called turning toward each other.
  4. Make time for yourself. Taking time for self-care is as important as caring for your family. Self-care includes a wide range of activities: taking a yoga class, doing formal meditation, exercising, skiing, painting, or gardening, (and bowling, golf, scouting.)