Lightbox Quotes

The common man pays for the internet,” he went on. “He pays for cable, for Christ’s sake! Because he needs more and more and more! Like anyone could watch one hundred channels. What good is a life if you live it like that? Glued to a lightbox showing you pictures. Telling you when to laugh and what to fear. The common man lives this way because he has lost the intuition of our ancestors. All you need in order to live is this.” He took two fingers and pressed them to my mother’s wrist.

Thirty-Nine Ways to Lower Your Cortisol 1 Meditate. 2 Do yoga. 3 Stretch. 4 Practice tai chi. 5 Take a Pilates class. 6 Go for a labyrinth walk. 7 Get a massage. 8 Garden (lightly). 9 Dance to soothing, positive music. 10 Take up a hobby that is quiet and rewarding. 11 Color for pleasure. 12 Spend five minutes focusing on your breathing. 13 Follow a consistent sleep schedule. 14 Listen to relaxing music. 15 Spend time laughing and having fun with someone. (No food or drink involved.) 16 Interact with a pet. (It also lowers their cortisol level.) 17 Learn to recognize stressful thinking and begin to: Train yourself to be aware of your thoughts, breathing, heart rate, and other signs of tension to recognize stress when it begins. Focus on being aware of your mental and physical states, so that you can become an objective observer of your stressful thoughts instead of a victim of them. Recognize stressful thoughts so that you can formulate a conscious and deliberate reaction to them. A study of forty-three women in a mindfulness-based program showed that the ability to describe and articulate stress was linked to a lower cortisol response.28 18 Develop faith and participate in prayer. 19 Perform acts of kindness. 20 Forgive someone. Even (or especially?) yourself. 21 Practice mindfulness, especially when you eat. 22 Drink black and green tea. 23 Eat probiotic and prebiotic foods. Probiotics are friendly, symbiotic bacteria in foods such as yogurt, sauerkraut, and kimchi. Prebiotics, such as soluble fiber, provide food for these bacteria. (Be sure they are sugar-free!) 24 Take fish or krill oil. 25 Make a gratitude list. 26 Take magnesium. 27 Try ashwagandha, an Asian herbal supplement used in traditional medicine to treat anxiety and help people adapt to stress. 28 Get bright sunlight or exposure to a lightbox within an hour of waking up (great for fighting seasonal affective disorder as well). 29 Avoid blue light at night by wearing orange or amber glasses if using electronics after dark. (Some sunglasses work.) Use lamps with orange bulbs (such as salt lamps) in each room, instead of turning on bright overhead lights, after dark. 30 Maintain healthy relationships. 31 Let go of guilt. 32 Drink water! Stay hydrated! Dehydration increases cortisol. 33 Try emotional freedom technique, a tapping strategy meant to reduce stress and activate the parasympathetic nervous system (our rest-and-digest system). 34 Have an acupuncture treatment. 35 Go forest bathing (shinrin-yoku): visit a forest and breathe its air. 36 Listen to binaural beats. 37 Use a grounding mat, or go out into the garden barefoot. 38 Sit in a rocking chair; the soothing motion is similar to the movement in utero. 39 To make your cortisol fluctuate (which is what you want it to do), end your shower or bath with a minute (or three) under cold water.

He saw the origins of illness. And in many cases he saw family here too, the hereditary nature of these conditions bearing a whisper of those who had gone before. History and family carrying on into the present, into the future, and he never failed to be fascinated, to reflect that our upbringing is apparent not just in our manners or mannerisms or speech, it is there too on a cellular level, proving its presence on an acetate sheet, aid against a lightbox, fifty years after our birth.

He had believed it was the way to hold on to the best part of them, believed in that moment of impact, right at the start - when their strangeness hit you, when you saw them clearly, when you took in all at once their shape, the way they stood, their hands, their skin, their eyes, when the air was full of them, when the world stopped for them, when if there were words the words would be, Hold it, hold it right there.

He had believed it was the way to hold on to the best part of them, believed in that moment of impact, right at the start - when their strangeness hit you, when you saw them clearly, when you took in all at once their shape, the way they stood, their hands, their skin, their eyes, when the air was full of them, when the world stopped for them, when if there were words the words would be, Hold it, hold it right there.