Compounded Recovery: A layered recovery approach for the busy person.
“You should sit in meditation for 20 minutes a day. Unless you’re too busy, then you should sit for an hour.”
– Zen proverb-
“In addition to sufficient rest, hydration and quality nutrition, what elements are critical for an optimal recovery practice?”
The answer is simple. The challenge is to integrate the following on a regular basis:
- Mobility
- Breath work
- meditation
- Intention
- Gratitude
- Inspiration
- Contrast therapy
- Journaling
- Exercise
- Time in nature
This article shares a pain-free strategy that checks all of these important boxes.
The ironic reality is that the only people with time and resources to prioritize recovery practices are the people who have the least to recover from!
As an active husband, father of two and small business owner I use something that I call “compounded recovery” to layer multiple self-care and recovery techniques into one elevated experience.
For me this fits into one of three time slots:
- Daily morning routine before I leave the house for my 6am workout (Fall and Winter)
- 10 Kriya Yoga breath cycles in the cold plunge. 3-5 minutes
- My cold plunge is a simple 2x2x4 galvanized horse trough. I only use it during the cold times of the year. I don’t use a chiller or filter. It is good to go with a lid I made from a plywood sheet. Rinse a refill a few times a month and it stays clean and clear.
- Contrast therapy between sauna and cold plunge compounding hip mobility in the sauna with with Transcendental Meditation mantra. 20-40 minutes
- I use the 6 person barrel sauna from Redwood Outdoors. Check the link for video on how we made the most out of it.
- Link to vid of how I set up the barrel sauna at home to optimize the Broasis
- The big one. 1-2x week in the Spring through Fall seasons get out into the Alpine Lakes for a few hours for a full reset. 3-6 hours.
The following is my process for that big weekly reset. Future articles will cover the details of the smaller daily practices.
Mantra: Sounds hokey but I’m not talking about chanting or anything cultish. The way I use mantra to my advantage is to intentionally choose how I will think over the next several hours. In these outings I’m whipped into a flurry of endorphins. Endorphins are powerful gateways to clarity and inspiration but they don’t care what you are inspired about. Endorphins just pour fuel on whatever fire is burning. I use a simple mantra to direct an otherwise endorphin fueled manic state into something productive, Here’s what I do:
- Ask a question of myself
- If I’m in business mode “What does my company need from me right now?”
- If I’m in relationship mode: “what does my son need from me right now? “What does my friend who I haven’t reached out to in a while need from me right now”
- Then I pick a 3 or four word mantra to direct myself in a useful way.
- Wisdom, courage, and gratitude is a common series for me.
- Openness, abundance, peace I’ll use sometimes.
- The problem I’m hoping to solve or the relationship I’m trying to enhance determines the words as well as the order.
- After I’ve settled on the question, I begin repeating the chosen mantra in my head while I ramp up exertion.
- For me, that is typically a 5-8 mile ascent to a lake in the I-90 corridor, but this works in any cardo setting.
- Also for me I like to be fired up on strong coffee and Thorne beta alanine SR pre workout for this part of the process. (If you’re going full “vision quest” your preferred enhancement goes here)
- Thus far we’ve compounded the mantra with exercise and nature. Next comes journaling. I stick with the mantra until ideas start to flow. They come fast and furious so I verbally dump everything that comes up into verbal notes on Google docs. (This ongoing note has now grown into an embarrassing and revealing unfiltered 49 page document titled “Optimized Runner’s High”)
- Getting an idea recorded keeps me from clinging to it and frees space for the next thing to flow to the top of mind. I’ll often reach a place where I’m content with the answer to the initial questions and my notes go everywhere from small changes to improve the clinic’s effectiveness back to relationships. Often there’s some dumping of old grudges and grievances too. I let it all out. I record it all. Even recording the petty stuff is a cathartic unburdening process.
- If it is a hiking day this intermittent journaling process transitions into cold plunge compounded with breathwork and a gratitude meditation when I reach a frigid isolated alpine lake.
- For me it is time to strip down to swim shorts, open my arms wide and let overwhelming gratitude in before getting into the water. One time this past early Spring at an isolated lake while standing on a floating log jam, a small bird gripped my hand and tried to land on me while I stood with my arms open! I wish I could say that I calmly stood there like a wise wilderness man with my new friend but not so much. It scared the shit out of me and I couldn’t coax him back to my hand/perch.
- I use either my Transcendental Meditation mantra or Paramahansa Yogananda’s Kriya Yoga meditation when I’m in a cold or heat exposure. Unless it’s super cold and I’m just surviving. This routine compounded nearly my entire recovery list: Mobility, Breath Work, Meditation, Intention, Gratitude, Inspiration, Contrast therapy, Journaling, Exercise, Time in nature.
- The only element that doesn’t fit into this routine for me is mobility and that is fine. BANG! Efficiency!
- The way back down to the car is practical.
- I organize my recorded thoughts and insights into a bullet list of immediate action steps that I can initiate before getting back to the clinic for my 2pm patients. I’m already making calls on the return hike to the car.
Compounding for me does not fit into my high intensity exercise as smoothly and that’s fine. No need to force things that don’t naturally elevate each other. No hippie mantras for me when I’m sparring at jiu jitsu or lifting weights. I do however compound mobility and spinal decompression between heavy lifting sets and jiu jitsu rounds. Bang? Some efficiency? I’ll take it.
Experiment. Take what works. Change what doesn’t.
ENJOY THE RIDE!
Dr. Pond
