Becoming Hanuman » Bodymind

Life mastery unsolvable

Terribly Beautiful — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 10:13:01 +0000

To return to domain-specific knowledge needed for life mastery. Definitive sources would be very helpful. While I’m confident of my nutrition knowledge, it is continually refined and with supplements, I’m not sure (other than omega 3 from fish or krill is needed, and vitamin d if not enough sun).

The real key to life mastery is what the post doesn’t address: what do you want out of life?

Now, that doesn’t mean I believe every answer to that question will lead to anything like what I would call “mastery” (a poor word choice in some ways). But the real key is passion.

Passion can make the joints and breath feel better without conscious practice and can overcome the effects of what it doesn’t make feel better. But not all passions are equal and not all are sustainable. I think there’s more than one answer to the question of what passions will lead to a full life, but it’s partly subjective in terms of mastery: do you feel mastery in your life if you do X? People can both answer that question the same but get different results in terms of what an onlooker would call “mastery.”

So what is “solved” about life mastery is the question: What is a reproducible way to execute a well defined, conscious practice to influence one’s life in the direction of having the most resources available to contribute to life and meet its various challenges? Passion/hope/relationships/luck/etc. can replace this conscious practice, sometimes temporarily, sometimes permanently, but they can not do so in a way that is reproducible in another person.

The core of the daily personal practice to achieve life mastery is creating mobility: exhaling through stress and effort, moving the joints and muscles to transform the fascia and posture, learning to reintegrate breath, movement and structure in the face of strain to them and developing resiliency to strain. This is found in the work of Scott Sonnon’s system of Circular Strength Training.

One can master “CST” and not master life (but if one has mastered CST and is passionately and diligently trying to master life and failing, I can’t imagine another path to mastery that would’ve worked for that person). One can master life and not “CST” or something like it (but that person would either benefit from CST or has unconsciously reproduced it in subtle ways–normally I would bet on a mix).

How to master/practice life?
Passionately.

What well-definable, reproducible daily personal practice best trains the bodymind to nurture, house, express, grow that passion?
Circular Strength Training.

Life mastery solved: speculative notes

Terribly Beautiful — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 10:00:20 +0000

What is life mastery? Depends on what you want out of it.

The goal should not be “having no problems” but being able to meet challenges with the most resources.

Every area of life feeds into this in different ways.

Research and theory-building in terms of understanding each area (which supports the intellect’s theory building).

Nutrition: Animal fat, animal protein and organs, omega 3, limited/no grains, sugar, fructose or veggie oil.

Work out: sprinting, walking, moving heavy things around.

Social relationships: can pull you down, or make up for doing everything else wrong. How to figure that out? ”You just know”/learn to trust your gut and heart and not lie to yourself–which is partially learning but more removing pain (hypothesis).

The above is mostly “objective”–perhaps wrong or limited but ideally, one can research, define an outcome, work to achieve it. But most don’t. For the majority who don’t, this can be attributed to various social factors. But for those who do attempt this with diligent research and big plans, most fail. Why? While the social factors loom in the background, most immediately the cause that is changeable: emotional challenges. The above must be researched to go beyond “common sense”, but whatever one’s conclusions, most fail in putting them into practice. There’s the rub.

Solution: The issues are in the tissues.

Motion leads to emotion is the ground for thought. (Add in notes on motion and cognition and exception that proves rule of Hawkins.)

Motion is composed of structure and breath (as well as other things that are less influenceable, such as heart and chemicals/hormones/et al.).

Recovering flow in motion takes conscious practice to reduce deformations from chronically stressed, anti-flow modern lifestyles.

Joint mobility and moving the body through its degrees of freedom (yoga) are the primary means to do so.

The bigger emotional “issues”–from mood to character traits that inhibit one’s enjoyment of life–can be addressed through the conscious practice of creating the flow of breath, movement and structure throughout one’s day. Some issues are directly addressed, whereas others are “trained” for by creating the habit of responding to stress and negative emotions with “flow” (spontaneous, joyful, aware).

The details of fascia, heart rhythms, breathing patterns, hormones, movement patterns, etc. are interesting and perhaps necessary for motivation, but are unnecessary for the process to work.

The rub of this is in 1) one’s emotional pain blocks the process of creating a daily practice to expand one’s ability to flow through life, 2) one’s emotional pain limits the expression of this flow outside the practice in one’s day, and 3) one’s emotional pain can make it appear one is doing 1 and 2 but is doing them in a way that is avoiding certain issues/tissues. Most common is 1, most potent perhaps is a combination of 2 and 3: a certain situation (say a certain complaint from a loved one) triggers a whole ensemble of physical, emotional, social responses from you that are less than life affirming but also work to hide even that reaction. How does one bring awareness to those things? The meta-patterns? Journaling may be a help, though if one’s journaling about it then one’s there with the proper techniques and dedication, or at least dedication. I think one gets there through building a stronger foundation through a daily personal practice of widening and deepening one’s flow. Other techniques: counseling, journaling, etc. may all play a role but are ancillary to changing the body’s (e)motion.

So I suggest the key to life mastery is a daily personal practice focused on mobility: joint mobility and bodily flow. (Think tai chi plus yoga, see Scott Sonnon’s work.) Plenty of people who don’t do that as a conscious practice achieve far more than those who do it as a conscious practice.

I speculate that some do do it unconsciously and not as a separate practice. Others doing it would increase through contributions to the world. So I still say…speculatively…that it’s the key.

The details are interesting and necessary to talk about, but there’s the basics. …?

Loose research into serotonin, genes and depression

Terribly Beautiful — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 12:56:10 +0000

Written back in 2006:

A NY Times article on a gene related to ‘resilience’ inspired me to do some research on it. The gene is 5-HTT and it encodes a protein that sits in the cell membrane and its function is to ‘re-uptake’ serotonin. There are two ‘versions’ (alleles) of the gene: a long and short. The part that encodes the structure of the gene is the same in both. The ‘promoter’ region is longer is the ‘long’ form, and so the long form is expressed more. In other words, those with one long or two long have more 5-HTT proteins re-uptaking serotonin than those with short.

Now, if you’re familiar with anti-depressant drugs and haven’t read the article (which I’ll link to later), you may assume that those with longer forms might have a tendency to be more depression, because one of the main kinds of antidepressant drugs suppresses the re-uptake of serotonin (Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors: SSRI’s). In fact, the opposite is rather drastically true, though only one source I found mentions this contradiction. Those with LL are much less likely to be depressed after a tragic event than those with LS/SL and they’re less likely than those with SS.

Something else to consider is that serotonin and 5-HTT are active elsewhere in the body, not just in the brain, and those with the rare and possibly deadly disease Primary pulmonary hypertension (PPH, a lung disease) almost all have LL! And no article I found draws this connection, so when the drug companies start rolling out drugs to make up for having one or two short versions…watch your lungs.

It’s rather depressing to me that in an hour of google research I’ve caught (I think) 2 misstatements (in press reports, but still) and connected 3 things related to this gene that no other article I found did (I did some cursory PubMed searches too, not just news articles). The task at hand–understanding the complex interaction of various hormones and cells and genes and environment–is so complex and broad, and yet the current social organization of science puts shackles on the first baby steps.

(Another connection would be the research presented by neuroscientist Elkhonon Goldberg in the Wisdom Paradox that connects curiosity at least partly to a hormone connected to serotonin, which leads me to think that LL expression may lead to less relative curiosity. Given that and the link to lung disease and SIDS, the S version may be more evolutionary advantageous if one doesn’t live in a chronicly stressful environmental as we do.)

I think a rather obvious mechanism is that having more ‘re-uptake’ of serotonin leads to more efficient processing of it (the cell that reuptakes it can reuse it and the signal it’s sending is probably more precisely sent–it’s not as if more and more and more is better) leading to someone going through a stressful event to be better able to deal with it (as well as already being used to lower levels of serotonin perhaps), but someone with less reuptake would have a more precarious processing of serotonin that a stressful event could throw out of wack, leading to, among other things and through various mechanisms, too low levels of serotonin, with some of the resultant symptoms partially rectified–apparently ironically–by further inhibiting the reuptake of serotonin. Remember: those with the short version are only more prone to depression depending upon the impact of stressful events–they are not ’sadder’ by default. (This understanding would imply that while SSRI’s ease some symptoms, the underlying hormonal problem(s) still exists and are probably having other effects.)

Inspired by NY Times article on ‘resilience’.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/30/magazine/30abuse.html

[Sidenote: The article says "It seems that only under dire circumstances — abuse, the strife of war, chronic stress — is the gene triggered [this isn't true at all, b/c the gene is being 'trigged'/expressed just as much as before].” Given that this gene is being ‘triggered’ in higher and higher numbers in the US and abroad, one is left to ask–since the NY Times apparently didn’t think it fit to print–what kind of world we live in that ‘dire circumstances’ are becoming more and more common.]

Chakras, rationalism and science

Terribly Beautiful — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 01:14:28 +0000

Chakra overview

This is an attempt to present some of my thoughts on the usefulness of the chakras for living and for science. I adopt a pro-science position, but one that views science as a process of publicly accessible knowledge that constrains expectations so that it’s a more useful means to live in/change the world and that separates out a particular strand of ‘rationalism’ from the definition of science.

First, I want to contend that the chakra system is a more useful template for psychology than Western rationalism. This is not a systematic defense of that position, not the least because neither the chakra model nor Western rationalism have a single widely accepted model.

Rationalism tends to not just privilege, but nearly deify, the verbal over the non-verbal, the mental over the physical. While I reject the anti-rationalist/naturalist position of merely flipping that division and even in some ways I accept it in a certain sense: in the sense of having a more holistic perspective, seeing how the mental is grounded in and is itself physical. The neuroscience book The Brain That Changes Itself by Doidge would be great background reading for this post. Something in it that blew my mind was an exercise that involved tracing complex patterns that lead to increased fluency in speech. Why? Because tracing the patterns trained part of the brain involved in coordinating micro-movements, and speech (and thought) are not just “words” but are created through micro-movements. I also think that the chakra system is more useful than Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, though I will not make that argument explicitly.

So let’s look at (one version) of the Chakras. As in the above picture, there are seven, and here from the bottom up is one angle of looking at them, the right to exist, the right to feel, the right to act, the right to relate, the right to communicate, the right to perceive, and finally the right to create.

Seems pretty simply right? Let’s look at what we can do with just that:

A template to replace Maslow (esp. if one uses a more detailed chakra model): one can ask “What right is being violated in my life right now?” as a quick test…or use it as a quick and sophisticated template for character-development in fiction writing.
The unfolding and interplay between the chakras: Existence is the basis for feeling which is the basis for action which is the basis for…etc.
The second level of interplay: The opposite ends parallel and especially relate: existence/creation, feeling/perception, action/communication, relation/relation.
The third level of interplay: Moving up through the chakras is actualization, moving down is ‘grounding’: both are necessary processes and can be used as a psychological template/diagnostical tool as well for one’s self and characters, etc.
Presents a model for the evolution of matter (rocks to bacteria to animals to nervous systems) contra idealism
The Rationalist model (which concentrates on the top three in the reverse order) leads to a lecture mode of education, whereas the chakra model dovetails with both older and new educational models that are more effective than lectures.

Just the link between feeling and action makes it closer to our knowledge of neuroscience and the body than the rationalist view which too narrowly focuses on abstract conception and fails to explain many phenomenon (see research on neuroplasticity).

Another angle of the chakras is that each one is associated with a certain color (see above) and tone (as well as different chants, hand positions and other things). This is difficult for the rationalist to accept, or it was for me at least. Yet, think of “seeing red” or the “green eyed monster”–certain colors are strongly associated with certain emotions. Note that those two colors correspond to the chakra colors above (anger relates to base level threats, jealously to relationship). As for tones…I don’t know (but present an experiment idea below), but I do know that Doidge used tones for reading (?) training that had a side benefit of helping some autistic children. My point is that most rationalist theories would dismiss the a relationship between tone, color, and emotional functioning out of hand and this is wrong.

More on chakras and the body: especially in the past but even now, the deepest feelings are often associated with…the gut. Early Christian disciples would sign letters: “I love you in the bowels of Christ.” We have “gut feelings.” And now we know that…the gut produces lots of neurotransmitters, such that anti-depressants can affect digestion. Of course the heart is strongly associated with love. A rationalist views this with superstition, yet the work of people like Damasio shows how emotions are felt with the body, and the changes in heart rhythms and other aspects of the heart’s functioning are key to emotional experience.

Now let’s move more to the brain proper.

Sensory and motor maps in the brain

The brain develops models of the body for sensing and for movement (and it develops it: Doidge shows the research that shows how it can change over time: the hands are bigger in the motor model than the sensory one because of their relative use for instance, whereas if your hands are immobilized the map will shrink). Something else we know is that “neurons that fire together, wire together” and “neurons that fire apart, wire apart.” A phenomenon familiar in massage for instance is that relaxing certain muscles can release stored emotions. Now this sounds woo woo to a rationalist (or it did to me), but besides the research literature showing the strong relationship (if not identity) between physical experience and emotion, if one hunches forward, frowns and breaths shallowly and then sits up straight, breaths into the abs, and smiles, one can easily experience the relationship between physical state and emotional state.

Add in the formation of neurological associations, and one can see a speculative basis for “the issues being stored in the tissues.” As well as a possible basis for becoming associated with certain colors and tones and hand positions.

Take the throat chakra. There isn’t as much of a physical correlate as with the GI tract and heart, but consider what censoring one’s self means. A rationalist views it as a “choice” that happens…inside the little man in the head. However, especially imagine a child having the impulse to speak and then having the impulse that “oh, daddy said not to say that.” The “choice” to not speak doesn’t occur in the air, but at least at times occurs through an immobilization of the throat muscles. One can imagine that the feelings of self-censorship could become associated with the throat area (through firing together, wiring together), and that therefor through the opposite (firing apart, wiring apart) massaging the throat area while concentrating on being relaxed could undo those associations.

Some aspects of the chakras I suspect are purely neurological but feel physical. For instance, halos may be related to the feeling of contentment with the right to create associated with the crown chakra. A healthy ‘crown chakra’ could feel like a ‘halo’ (perhaps as a sprandel/arbitrary side effect of other ‘architectures’) leading to a basis for that cross-cultural symbol.

Second, pro-science: constraint expectation for use-value.

For many reasons, but including feeling dismissed unfairly by the rationalist model, probably most who accept the Chakra model do not fully embrace science. The question is: How do you avoid quacks? How do you choose between the different systems?

If one says the different systems are equal, that’s the same as saying they’re mostly worthless: in general, if two contradictory things can explain or produce the same thing, then it’s something else that’s actually doing the work/explanation.

Three self-tests:

Try studying the chakra model and using it as a psychological diagnostic tool. Compare to using other psychological models.
Try to distinguish between gut feelings below the belly button and those above. In general, a ‘bad’ feeling below it stems from your own self-relationship (feeling) and one above it stems from you not taking an action your feelings want (action).
Put one hand on your heart and one on your gut. Imagine breathing in through your heart into your abs, and contracting the abs to breath out, while massaging your heart and gut area (in a clockwise motion, as if the clock in on your chest facing out).

A more quantifiable experiment

I said I’d mention an experiment for the relationship of chakras to color and sounds. I recommend a priming test, using colors and tones as the primers. A priming test is when they give groups the same survey and the only difference is something in the background or a flashed picture for instance that the subjects don’t even know is part of the test. For instance, one test showed people taking the survey with a screensaver showing money in the corner of the room lead to more greedy answers than people who took it without those symbols. So one could construct very similar surveys and prime with tones associated with certain chakras to see if the answers change from the control groups. One could also prime with self-massage on the chakra points (versus no massage or massage elsewhere) or with flashes of color or hand positions.

This is just one example. The main point is that if the chakra system is at least partially true, it is useful and its results should be distinguishable from other systems. Further, I would suggest that all aspects of our knowledge are under continual refinement, and especially if one looks at the many varied chakra systems, it too needs to be brought into the scientific process, if it is indeed useful for our lives. The rationalists must cast off their prejudices against basically the body and knowledge that doesn’t come from double blind studies (see Bayes for instance), and perhaps more importantly, chakra supporters must begin to take the question of ‘evidence’ more seriously. An incomplete and imprecise but useful definition of science is publicly accessible knowledge that constrains expectations. The exploration of chakras meets this to some extent but fails in many ways. The ways in which it fails represents either a limitation of its effectiveness or an area where it’s either useful or perhaps even damaging. The present process of hard-nosed researchers ignoring it and practitioners being only very inconsistently scientific about it helps no one.

Chakra system