I loved the honesty in this post, about yoga, the ego, and damaging your body. I think he must be referring to Paul Grilley’s Yoga Anatomy video, which shows clearly how skeletal structure varies from body to body.
“Going deep” should never mean trying to emulate another person’s yoga without taking into account your own unique body. As meditators know and as Patanjali knew, you can “go deep” without moving.
Thank you, James MacAdam, for sharing your story.
via James MacAdam
I read this article, The New Humanism, in today’s New York Times. It’s an op-ed piece by columnist David Brooks about how our culture’s predominant way of thinking and viewing the world, through the lens of reason, has led to major policy errors, such as invading Iraq, the financial collapse, futile efforts to improve the educational system.
Brooks writes:
I’ve come to believe that these failures spring from a single failure: reliance on an overly simplistic view of human nature. We have a prevailing view in our society — not only in the policy world, but in many spheres — that we are divided creatures. Reason, which is trustworthy, is separate from the emotions, which are suspect. Society progresses to the extent that reason can suppress the passions.
Of course, we brain geeks know that it’s the glorification of the left brain at the expense of the right.
He continues:
Yet while we are trapped within this amputated view of human nature, a richer and deeper view is coming back into view. It is being brought to us by researchers across an array of diverse fields: neuroscience, psychology, sociology, behavioral economics and so on.
This growing, dispersed body of research reminds us of a few key insights. First, the unconscious parts of the mind are most of the mind, where many of the most impressive feats of thinking take place. Second, emotion is not opposed to reason; our emotions assign value to things and are the basis of reason. Finally, we are not individuals who form relationships. We are social animals, deeply interpenetrated with one another, who emerge out of relationships.
These points bear repeating:
Got that? Good. That’s thinking with an integrated brain.
Brooks goes on to write about the difference this makes in what we pay attention to:
When you synthesize this research, you get different perspectives on everything from business to family to politics. You pay less attention to how people analyze the world but more to how they perceive and organize it in their minds. You pay a bit less attention to individual traits and more to the quality of relationships between people.
Then he lists the talents this new paradigm requires and develops:
Attunement: the ability to enter other minds and learn what they have to offer.
Equipoise: the ability to serenely monitor the movements of one’s own mind and correct for biases and shortcomings.
Metis: the ability to see patterns in the world and derive a gist from complex situations.
Sympathy: the ability to fall into a rhythm with those around you and thrive in groups.
Limerence: This isn’t a talent as much as a motivation. The conscious mind hungers for money and success, but the unconscious mind hungers for those moments of transcendence when the skull line falls away and we are lost in love for another, the challenge of a task or the love of God. Some people seem to experience this drive more powerfully than others.
Which of these talents have you developed? Which do you want to develop more deeply?
This article is not about Buddhism or NLP or ecstatic dance, by the way, although given my history, I couldn’t help but make those connections.
It’s about how thousands of researchers in multiple displines are coming up with a new view of what it means to be a human being. Brooks concludes:
It’s beginning to show how the emotional and the rational are intertwined.
I suspect their work will have a giant effect on the culture. It’ll change how we see ourselves. Who knows, it may even someday transform the way our policy makers see the world.
Let’s hope so. Let’s do our parts to make it so.
Okay, people. let’s get to work changing the world! One savasana, one trance, one meditation session, one ecstatic dance, one meta-position, one moment of transcendence at a time.
Apparently body tremor research is not a new thing in sports. Russians preparing gymnasts for Olympic competition in the 1970s induced trembling. It was called vibrational therapy then.
Since then, numerous studies have demonstrated that low-amplitude and low-frequency mechanical stimulation of the neuromuscular system has positive effects on athletic performance (Cardinale & Bosco, 2003; Torvinen et al., 2002; Bosco et al., 1999). For many years it was primarily used by elite athletes to help increase the strength and coordination of the musculoskeletal and nervous systems and to increase the rate at which athletic injuries heal (Bosco et al., 1999).
I’m not a competitive athlete. I had no idea. Maybe I’ll become more coordinated and heal more quickly!
I must say that I have been feeling really, really excellent lately, even given the stress of a new job, repeated repairs to my car, selling my house and moving.
This is after doing the trauma releasing exercises about eight times this month so far.
The web page goes on to say:
Over time vibrational therapy has developed as a serious field of research known as Biomechanical Stimulation ([BMS], Bosco et al., 1999). It is being used in physical therapy and rehabilitation programs to correct restricted body mobility, range of motion, the coordination of musculoskeletal and nervous systems and to increase the rate of healing injuries (Bosco, Cardinale, & Tsarpela, 1999; Bosco et el., 2000). BMS research has demonstrated that exposure to vibration frequencies between 20-50Hz increases bone density in animals. It is also helpful in providing pain relief and the healing of tendons and muscles (Muggenthaler, 2001). Vibrational stimulation between 50-150 Hz has been found to relieve suffering in 82% of persons suffering from acute and chronic pain (Feldman, 2004).
I could use more bone density and healing of tendons and muscles from my long-time alignment issues.
Hmmm. I’ve heard that cat purring speeds bone healing. That could be related. Thinking aloud here…
My father had Parkinson’s disease. I got excited when I read this! The shaking that happens in my left hand is similar to the Parkinson’s shaking.
Speculation in the field of BMS research suggests that tremors in humans associated with certain diseases may not be a symptom so much as the body’s attempt to detoxify itself through increased metabolism and lymphatic circulation which is produced by the body’s self-induced tremors (Feldman, 2004).
So maybe if I tremble and detox now, I won’t get Parkinson’s disease. It’s worth the effort.
Just came across a blog post by the spiritual teacher Marianne Williamson, dated Feb. 2, during the darkest days before the Egyptian people prevailed and dictator Hosni Mubarak stepped down.
Maybe she’s onto something!
February 2, 2011
IN THE LAND OF EGYPT
In a radio interview this morning I was asked if I have hope for the future… whether I think love will ultimately prevail on earth.
From a spiritual perspective, yes love will ultimately prevail. Buddha became enlightened; the Jews made it to the Promised Land; Jesus resurrected. All those are religious tales that inform us of the basic imprint of the universe. No story is over until the happy part, and if it’s not happy yet then the story isn’t over.
But that is only the beginning of a framework for understanding. We mustn’t let the phrase,”Love will ultimately prevail,” be a mere platitude that serves to justify complacency…either spiritual or political. For whether we learn to love one another through wisdom or through pain is completely up to us. How long it takes before love prevails is completely up to us. How much human suffering occurs before love prevails is completely up to us. Free will does not mean we get to determine what ultimately happens, but it does mean we get to determine what happens in the immediate future to us and to those we love.
When you have thousands of people acting out a high-emotion, high-stakes drama such as that which is occurring in Egypt today, almost anything can happen.
On the one hand, we are witnessing the purity and power of the quest for freedom. The demand for basic human rights, the repudiation of a dictator, and the protest of an economic order in which 40 per cent of one’s population lives on less than 2 dollars a day – all of this is a pure, democratic rising up of the human spirit. And if America doesn’t stand in support of those things, then we’ve completely lost our own moral center.
At the same time, this situation has gone from volatile to violent. Freedom is rising, but the forces of oppression are cracking down. Chaos overrides not only the impulse to freedom but also the impulse to basic human decency. Blood is spilling. People are dying. The situation has gone from liberating to tragic.
Right now, let’s pray for a miracle.
May a great wave of sanity and peace flood the minds and hearts not only of the protestors, but also the military and police and government. The phrase “may cooler heads prevail” comes to mind. May men and women of honor and good will within every corner of Egyptian society be listened to, and their words and ideas heeded. May thousands of small miracles that you and I will never ever know about quiet down a conversation over here, cause a peaceful solution to emerge in a neighborhood over there. May a general sense of peace and good will – something we’d seen almost miraculously on display at the beginning of the protests — return to the streets of Egypt.
Try closing your eyes and see, with your mind’s eye, legions of angels roaming through the streets of Cairo. Do this as frequently as you can throughout the day. It is no idle fantasy. This is the exercise of spiritual power, and in the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., such power is “more powerful than bullets.” Even when we are materially passive, he said, we can still be “spiritually active.”
The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle means that as the observer changes, there is a change in that which is observed. Worldly news anchors report the news: miracle-workers help change the news by the nature of their thoughts. And the greatest medium of miracles is prayer. So today, let’s pray for Egypt.
Dear God, please pave a miraculous path for the people of Egypt, to peace and freedom and joy unending. Bless their hearts. Guide their minds. Illumine this moment. May love prevail. Amen.
I’m ready to visualize legions of angels roaming the streets of Tehran. And Washington, DC.
How about you?
This article from Scientific American is about the enteric nervous system (gut intelligence).
Some excerpts:
The second brain informs our state of mind in other more obscure ways, as well. “A big part of our emotions are probably influenced by the nerves in our gut,” Mayer says. Butterflies in the stomach—signaling in the gut as part of our physiological stress response, Gershon says—is but one example. Although gastrointestinal (GI) turmoil can sour one’s moods, everyday emotional well-being may rely on messages from the brain below to the brain above.
The enteric nervous system uses more than 30 neurotransmitters, just like the brain, and in fact 95 percent of the body’s serotonin is found in the bowels. Because antidepressant medications called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) increase serotonin levels, it’s little wonder that meds meant to cause chemical changes in the mind often provoke GI issues as a side effect. Irritable bowel syndrome—which afflicts more than two million Americans—also arises in part from too much serotonin in our entrails, and could perhaps be regarded as a “mental illness” of the second brain.
In a new Nature Medicine study published online February 7, a drug that inhibited the release of serotonin from the gut counteracted the bone-deteriorating disease osteoporosis in postmenopausal rodents. (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.) “It was totally unexpected that the gut would regulate bone mass to the extent that one could use this regulation to cure—at least in rodents—osteoporosis,” says Gerard Karsenty, lead author of the study and chair of the Department of Genetics and Development at Columbia University Medical Center.
Serotonin seeping from the second brain might even play some part in autism, the developmental disorder often first noticed in early childhood. Gershon has discovered that the same genes involved in synapse formation between neurons in the brain are involved in the alimentary synapse formation. “If these genes are affected in autism,” he says, “it could explain why so many kids with autism have GI motor abnormalities” in addition to elevated levels of gut-produced serotonin in their blood.
I’ve reached day 20. The gratitude challenge ends tomorrow. Today I’m reviewing.
Here’s my parade of gratitudes so far, day by day:
(By the way, as of this moment, this blog has gotten 5,019 views. Thank you again for reading, connecting energetically, commenting. I appreciate you.)
I see from this list a mix of specific gratitudes, for specific people, a video, a book, a company, a sutra, and more.
I also see broad areas of gratitude — insights, awareness, inner bigness, life as it is, no, yes.
Hmmm. I passed my own “chunk size” test! Yay! The object is not to be stuck in the details or in the big picture. It’s to have flexible perspective, to be able to see both the forest and the trees.
I am grateful to have the flexibility to zoom in and out on life with a measure of ease. I believe this skill is something I began developing since my very first day of NLP practitioner training several years ago. I hold the universe and an acorn in the palm of my hand. It helps tremendously with my equanimity — it helps me know I can be ready for anything. That confidence is priceless.
~~~
This 21-day challenge has coincided with selling my house. I had no offers on day 1, and now I have a contract and what looks like a pretty solid bet on closing February 18. Since I’ve often marked eras in my life by the home I was living in at the time, I am in transit, ending one era and beginning another.
It’s also coincided with a lot of attention to my work. On day 1, I was happily jobless, except for my joyous work as a yoga teacher and an NLP coach/change shaman offering free or low-priced sessions to get experience and build a reputation.
Meanwhile, my vision of my future work/identity keeps evolving. My plan had been to start as a full-time student at AOMA in July. I still love AOMA, and now I’m not so sure that becoming an acupuncturist is right for me. Nowadays it is hard to build a full-time practice in Austin, which has two acupuncture schools. I have time to get clear on this.
I believe I could become an exceptional acupuncturist, as long as I can practice “everything else” alongside it. But for me, maybe “everything else” is more to the point. I’m still working on this.
I’m considering getting other training, which may include classwork at AOMA. I have a couple of key words to guide me: blockages and beliefs. These words are about working with the body and the mind, i.e., touching and talking, and came to me during this challenge. That’s the big picture. Maybe massage school is where I need to start, to get a license to touch.
I can do Reiki now, without a license. Thank you, Jonathan, for attuning me.
I can do the verbal changework now under the banner of a coach or consultant, or, my favorite, well-being shaman.
It’s all energy work.
In the practical realm, due to the uncertainties of when I would actually close on my house, and desiring to keep my technical writing skills marketable until I have fully made the transit to self-employment, I updated my resume one day and spent the next day responding to job postings and sending it to recruiters for contract work. I heard from a recruiter that day, had an interview a few days later, and received and accepted an offer the day after that.
Honestly, I didn’t know it would be that easy, and that it was has touched my heart. Thank you, Universe, for showing my humble self that I’m on the right track. I hope to be doing contract work over the next couple of years to pay the bills as I get the training I need.
~~~
I’m incredibly grateful for the freedom I have. Especially when I compare myself to so many people in the world who can’t live where they want or do the work that they want, to people who feel trapped. (Actually, these are the people I want to work with.)
I can sell my house and buy a trailer!
I can quit a “permanent” job and do contract work to pay the bills and keep my skills marketable and have an adventure!
I can teach yoga and offer NLP/changework sessions and do The Work!
I can explore my desired life work and how best to learn and do that!
I can literally change my mind!
I am incredibly lucky and grateful that my life gives me these choices.
If you’re interested in learning more about Byron Katie and The Work, please check out her website.
She mentioned several times yesterday that she makes her worksheets and other resources available for free on her website. They’re on the Do The Work page.
She also helps people find certified facilitators in The Work, some of whom work for free or on a sliding scale, or use Skype so that location isn’t a problem.
I see that there is also a helpline.
Her first book, Loving What Is: Four Questions that Can Change Your Life, came out in 2002. This book covers applying The Work in all kinds of situations: couples and family life, work and money, self-judgment, underlying beliefs, children, the body and addiction.
There’s even a chapter on trauma, Making Friends with the Worst That Can Happen.
She’s also written:
Most recently, she and Eckhardt Tolle have contributed to a gift book, Peace in the Present Moment, which consists of selected quotations from them with photographs of flowers.
There are also Byron Katie audiobooks available on Amazon.com.
I attended a weekend workshop with Byron Katie. Friday night I didn’t write down anything she said. On Saturday I did.
Here are the sayings I was moved to write down:
I need everything I’ve ever experienced
Velcro!
Mind has to compare to create jealousy.
living out of the “don’t know” mind
My mind got clear, and Haagen-Dazs quit me.
Everyone is a saint.
The mind seeks identification.
Drop the “I guess.” Drop the “I think.” Drop the “we.”
There’s only three kinds of business: yours, mine, and God’s. (I don’t think this is original, but she used it and I like it.)
Our true nature is pure love.
What you believe about anything is what hurts you.
It all happens for your awakening, enlightenment, and joy. There is nothing that is not for us.
We’re born of the “I”, not of the mother’s womb.
The personality is the ego.
The world is a projection of your own mind. It’s your world.
I’m always on time. People don’t agree with me, but I’m always on time.
Enlightenment means there’s no mind at all.
Oh, the mind wants to jump in with its defenses and justifications.
You’ve got this computer running with past and future, and you believe this “I”.
Be co-dependent at home. There’s one person to talk to and listen to: you.
If I could hold you in my arms the rest of my life, I would, but I’d have to go to the toilet sooner or later, or you would.
If my husband told me he’d met someone else, I’d really want to meet her. Because she’d have to be pretty fantastic for him to be attracted to her! And then I’d ask for half the money. And if he said no, I’d let him have it and make my own money.
I’d say “bless your heart, sweetheart,” but it’s too late. You’re already blessed.
Blindness is a state of mind. It’s not physical.
The mind believes the images. It creates images to make me an authority.
It’s about meditation, silence, stillness, and contemplation.
On this 19th day of my 21-day gratitude challenge, I am very grateful that Friday and Saturday, I got to spend hours in an auditorium with Byron Katie and my friends Thomas and Val and a whole bunch of other people, watching Katie, as she’s called, working with several people who were troubled about something.
Katie’s technique is called The Work, and the way we worked was to fill out a Judge-Your-Neighbor Worksheet (available online for free along with a lot of other resources) about a recurring stressful situation, something that reliably pushes our buttons. She encouraged us to be our meanest, pettiest selves when we filled out the worksheet.
Then she asks, or has us ask ourselves, four questions:
Then you turn the thought around three ways and find three specific examples of how each turnaround is true for you in that situation. For example, if my thought is “I hate him,” the turnarounds would work like this:
So from an NLP perspective, she’s working at the belief level, and she’s helping people reframe their experiences and emotions and beliefs and even identities. She refers a lot to people’s internal images (but not voices). On an energy level, she’s helping people move from contraction to expansion.
On Saturday, her first guest onstage was an attractive, polished woman who had flown here from San Francisco. Her husband of 30 years cheated on her with “a 27-year-old Brazilian whore” while she (the wronged wife) was undergoing treatment for breast cancer.
Katie took this woman through the process. She realized that she had stopped loving her husband but was willing to live a charade, she knew he was lying to her, et cetera. It took her out of her victim story. She also got huge applause for getting here with her frequent flyer miles since her husband had denied her access to all of their bank accounts. This woman is resourceful!
In the turnaround, Katie asked the woman to say, “I’m a whore,” and the woman couldn’t get the word “whore” out.
The unflappable Katie said, “What the heck. I’m enlightened. I can say it for you. ‘I’m a whore.’ There.” Big laughs and applause.
Later she worked with a woman who was so distraught because her husband, a diabetic, wouldn’t take his meds that she herself was on medication.
Once again, I’m grateful I got to see Byron Katie do The Work in person. If anyone wants to play with me, ping me.
~~~
In this moment, I’m grateful for life as it is. That’s what enlightenment is. That’s what Zen teaches. That’s what we practice when sitting in meditation.
~~~
I’m grateful to those who read my blog. Today it looks like I will cross the threshold of 5,000 views! Thank you for reading my posts. Thanks for connecting. Thanks for commenting.
Today’s three gratitudes are pretty ordinary. My car, my house, my friends.
I’m grateful to have my car back. It’s been disabled or out of my possession since December 22 and has been at three different mechanic shops.
I took it back once because the dashboard warning light for the electric battery (it’s a Honda Civic Hybrid) was on. It wasn’t on before the accident.
I did not get that issue resolved satisfactorily. The light is still on. However, the electric battery appears to be working just fine.
All Honda has said is that because of the age and mileage, I need to replace the battery. I get that State Farm really wants it to be my problem, not theirs, because those batteries are expensive.
I feel frustrated because I don’t believe that any of these mechanics actually laid eyes on the wiring and cabling from the engine compartment, which overheated, to the electric battery behind the back seat. All repairs are based on electronic testing and what’s in the database. If it’s not in the database, they’re not going out of their way.
Anyway, I am grateful to have my car back, to have the collision damage fixed, and to (so far) have it running well.
I’m grateful to have learned something about the way insurance companies work, when a car is a hybrid and they don’t have a ton of information in their database about what can go wrong and how to fix it.
This is the dark side of owning a hybrid.
~~~
The option period on my house contract expires today.
Yesterday the buyer tried to get me to come down $10 grand because of a ridiculously high overestimate on foundation work. My realtor told his realtor that I refused.
I’ve had two people express interest in being backup buyers, but they never put it in writing. If this deal had fallen through, I feel certain I could have gotten my asking price.
Today I agreed to come down $2600. That’s reasonable. A bird in hand is worth two in the bush — sometimes. In this process, several people have advised me to take low offers and to cave.
My realtor says we’re about eighty percent of the way to closing. Next, an appraiser has to state that the buyer is not paying more than the house is worth. Once that’s done, we’ll be ninety-five percent ready to close on Feb. 18.
Although I had no idea there would be so much drama involved in selling my house, today I’m grateful for the progress.
~~~
I had lunch today with my friend Katie, and my friend Thomas called and wants to go a weekend workshop that Byron Katie is doing in Austin tonight and tomorrow. I bought a ticket from someone who had an extra one, and it’s even more of a pleasure to be sharing this workshop experience with Thomas.
I’m very grateful for my friends.
The Well: bodymindheartspirit 