We don’t have to do anything in particular in order to play (be in the play-state), other than to release certain inhibitions we have about ourselves, others, and “rules.”
To do that, it may be beneficial to practice identifying the other states we assume throughout the day. For most of us, these other states will be characterized by certain “selves.”
For instance, I’ve already discussed The Victim. There are also the roles of “the persecutor,” “protector/rescuer,” “coach,” “challenger,” “cynic,” “skeptic.” And above those there may be others, like the “controller,” the “buddha/enlightened one,” etc.
For more information on this, check out the book (or videos) TED –
We each have our own unique cast of characters. And, though they’ll often assume similar roles, our cast is unlike any other cast. Each role may be played by a different person, depending on our own personal history.
As we go through the day, and experience emotions of different sorts, different characters come in to play.
In order to witness these folks, it is necessary to learn to notice shifts in our energy state – in our emotional or attentional state – as they occur.
When we feel “high,” who is in charge? When we feel “stressed,” who is in charge? When we are in love, who is in charge? When we are angry, who is it? If we feel like we’ve failed at something, who is the voice, the character, that comes up to the front of the stage of our mind?
This process requires awareness and attention, which requires slowing down.
It’s just like learning any new skill. Think about the first time you played a new game of some sort. You had to slow down to learn the technique. You may have “frozen” certain parts of your body or movements in order to work on the technique in pieces. In motor learning it’s called “freeing and freezing degrees of freedom.” You may have moved very clumsily at first, and felt awkward.*
That’s normal.
Now aware of this – that learning requires slowing down, and that awkward and clumsy is normal at first – we can begin to play with these selves when they arise.
Here’s a scenario:
I’ve failed at a big task. The “persecutor” self steps forth and begins his monologue about worthlessness, about me being crappy at this thing, about me not being good enough.
But something has changed. I’m aware that it’s the Persecutor talking. And I say to myself, perhaps, something like, “That’s interesting.”
He begins to get anxious. He looks around for help. He tries to find things to distract me…where did I leave my car keys? What time is it?…so he can continue his act.
But I stay aware, calm, slow, breathing, watching him.
Aight…if you’ve been reading recently, you may be wondering what all of my recent posts have to do with physical activity, health, or athletic performance.
It has come to my attention that most people seek personal trainers for motivation, support, or encouragement, over/above knowledge, instruction, or learning.
First, I think that this is a culturally-based bias. I think that because of the way we treat what we call “physical education” in this country.
Children (at least when I was a kid, in “one of the best school systems in the country” – Fairfax Co., VA) in PE classes are “taught” extremely little. The only instruction we received usually had to do with “rules” of various games we played.
There was one section of the class on “health,” which covered sex education, drug awareness (scare tactics), and something else I can’t remember.
But there was no real physical education happening. If I learned the names of any muscles in high school it was either in a biology class, or through my own readings. We didn’t learn anything about human physiology.
Worst still, we didn’t learn anything about our bodies from a somatic awareness perspective. For instance, what happens in our physical bodies when we experience a trauma (whether it’s an accidental bump or fall, a major accident, or the experience of abuse from some external source), how to trace that experience, how to allow our feelings to happen without judgment or restriction…
And then, how to help ourselves to heal, by playing between the feelings elicited by that trauma within ourselves and the natural healing responses our bodies create.
This is not “touchy feely” bullshit that I’m writing about. We can point, using “science,” to everything good about a somatic awareness practice.
For instance, it is well known that the body responds to distress with chemical flows that, if lasting, are incredibly destructive. Adrenaline and cortisol, while helpful in emergency situations, are killers if they are present for too long.
This type of ability, and the practice of it, go to the heart of everything we do. This ability is the foundation for the creation of lasting self-worth, self-respect, and ultimately self-responsibility – all of which are, in turn, the foundations for deep feelings of others’ worth, respect of others, and the holding responsible of others for their own selves.
As I’ve said before, emotions are physical states. They are characterized by particular postures/expressions (that is, muscular patterns), and by internal chemical profiles.
The body is always a two-way street. So, similarly (and again, as I’ve said before), if we hold certain postures/expressions, we reproduce internal chemical profiles associated with those postures, and “create” that emotional state in ourselves.
If you are in a “stressed” state, your body cannot perform optimally. The longer that state continues, the less-optimally you can perform.
If you experience a trauma that you do not resolve, your body sets into a self-sustaining cycle that, while it is attempting to resolve the trauma, reinforces the fact that you were unable to resolve it.
Play is one way out of this. Play is the ability to creatively approach situations. I don’t mean “play” as it is commonly construed (another problem with our society). I mean play as creativity, openness, vulnerability, expression.
As the cycle continues, it becomes a habit. Soon, your reaction to certain things (relationship problems, conflicts, physical challenges, etc.) “just happen,” and you “have no control” over them.
The only way to break the cycle is through an intervention. And the way we intervene in our own psycho-physiology is through awareness.
This awareness requires the ability to focus internally, on feelings as they are occurring, observing them as they happen, and sitting quietly with them. When we feel those patterns occur, of reactivity to stress, and can sit with them, we can feel their usefulness. We can feel their reality (are they still applicable to the now, or are they representative of a past event).
Oftentimes, athletes (or others) succeed in spite of the mental/physical/emotional blockages in their lives. But equally often, these successful people eventually – and when it happens, always tragically – succumb to these restrictions. It may come in the form of a torn ACL. Dog-fighting charges. Rape or murder. Suicide. Depression. Etc.
I have yet to see a single discipline that encapsulates all of the areas needed – physical, mental, emotional/spiritual – to address these issues. And perhaps such a discipline is impossible, due to the sheer amount of information needed to work in all of those areas…or useless, due to the incredible variety of individual experience in the world (i.e., “one size cannot fit all”).
But I encourage (and implore) you to explore your life in this way.
In addition to your “physical education” of working out, building muscle/strength/size/shape, or performing well, find a somatic practice that encourages deep awareness of your body and its movement, such as:
Feldenkrais Technique
Alexander Technique
Mattes Method
Hanna Somatics
Qi Gong/Chi Gong, Tai Chi, Yoga, and some other martial arts
Autogenic Training
Network Care
Here’s an example of what Network Care is about:
Similarly, seek out a method of psychological awareness that allows you to attune, listen, feel, release, and ultimately accept yourself, such as:
Meditation – Zen, TM, Buddhist, Taoist, Eckart Tolle’s works, etc.
Psychotherapy – Psychiatry, Psychology, Coaching, Therapy, etc.
Group Practices – Toastmasters, Religious groups, Wo/Men’s groups, etc.
Somatic Experiencing
Here’s an example of what Somatic Experiencing is about:
One size does not fit all, so you’ll have to do some searching to find what works for you. But please search. You can find videos about any of the things I’ve mentioned above on YouTube.
It’s worth it.
The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.
I see one source in the dissociation of people from their “tools.” From everything they use, they are further and further removed. Things become “mere things.” We suddenly are no longer connected in a cycle of creation and destruction. We stand outside of it and look on…passersby, observers, voyeurs of our own self-destruction.
“Coincidentally” (if you believe in coincidence), I was reading a book today called “Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma,” by Peter Levine.
He describes the official definition of trauma as a stressful occurrence “that is outside the range of human experience, and that would be markedly distressing to almost anyone” (pg. 24, which he takes from the DSM III).
He goes on to mention that trauma can include anything, from falls or accidents, to illnesses and sad events, to the “typical” things we consider traumatic such as rapes, drive-by shootings, war, disasters, etc.
I really really (yes, that’s right, I wrote it twice) like this book, and his approach, which is based around the evolutionary/physiological response to trauma, and an approach to treating it from that perspective. More on that in a second.
The author then describes how modern civilization and technology have taught us to ignore primary, instinctual, bodily-centered resources that once helped us to deal with traumatic events.
Previously in our history, we would encounter life-threatening events, which eventually resulted in finely-tuned responses to danger. I think this capacity is part of the “thrill-seeker’s” profile – they feel a need to experience this aspect of themselves more regularly than others.
As Levine says, “Modern life offers us few overt opportunities to use this powerfully evolved capacity. Today, our survival depends increasingly on our ability to think rather than being able to physically respond…The fundamental challenges we face today have come about relatively quickly, but our nervous systems have been much slower to change…When [the need for the successful facing of challenges] is not met, or when we are challenged and cannot triumph, we end up lacking vitality and are unable to fully engage in life” (pg. 43).
Later in the book, he even quotes Tom Brown, Jr. about the process of tracking. Clearly, he is describing a method of dealing with trauma that uses what I like to call “physiology tracking” in this book.
But it was the paragraph just before a section called “Dissociation” that really grabbed my attention. In it, he writes, “When constriction [as a response to a perceived threat or danger] fails to sufficiently focus the organism’s energy to defend itself, the nervous system evokes other mechanisms such as freezing and dissociation to contain the hyperarousal. Constriction, dissociation, and freezing form the full battery of responses that the nervous system uses to deal with the scenario in which we must defend ourselves, but cannot” (pg. 136).
Levine recommends, specifically, that one not try to avoid dissociation, but rather, to become aware of the feeling of that state in the body, so that one can, first, recognize it, and, later, be able to be in a state of dissociation while still cognizant and active in the world. This leads to the ability to discriminate between physiological events that lead to (or have lead to) trauma, and those that do not.
I resonate extremely strongly with this book, for many reasons. The author’s approach to dealing with one’s problems through a continuing and ongoing process of deepening self-awareness seems to be the type of powerful medicine that everyone can use in their lives. But he also recognizes that physiological responses are rhythmical, as well as the need for play and a playful attitude when confronting survived trauma (at a certain point in the process, of course).
To the last point, about play, the author talks about wild animals’ tendencies to “reenact” traumatic or dangerous events, where they will play the role of hunter and hunted, and either experiment with new strategies for evasion or survival, or repeat the tactic used in the recent event. The physical act of evasion or survival itself is immediate and therapeutic.
In humans, reenactment happens both internally and externally. Internally, it represents itself in states associated with trauma, such as hypervigilance, anxiety, psychosomatic issues, sleeplessness, or other problems. It can also represent itself through repeated thoughts about the traumatic event.
Externally, reenactment can happen either in the “acting out” of previous traumas, either by inflicting those traumas on others, or by creating ritual behaviors that reflect and temporarily mitigate those physiological upwellings; or, external reenactment can take place in the recurrence of traumatic events in relationships, where we seek out situations with others through which our trauma presents itself, again and again, the body searching for a path to resolve that old wound.
Unfortunately, usually, our initial response only repeats itself again and again. With our minds not realizing that we’re replaying these patterns for a specific reason, we succumb to habitual responses, sometimes watching before our very eyes as things crumble apart and wondering “how can this be happening again?”
More subtly still, external and internal reenactment, at some point, collide, and the victim of trauma acquires patterns of behavior that simultaneously save them from further experiences like the first, but also prohibit them from being able to confront that traumatic experience and move beyond it.
Which takes me to his final point, his solution to this dilemma. Since we are confronted with traumas that we cannot resolve through physical means, and have developed habitual physiological patterns of response to situations in which we feel the same types of threat, we have only one tool by which to work with, on, and through those physical manifestations and feelings – awareness.
Through awareness of the traumatic event, awareness of our initial response to it, acceptance of ourselves and the fact that the event happened, and finally, a developed ability to pay attention and slow down when those feelings manifest themselves again, we have acquired tools to operate in a new dimension. Eventually, the nervous system will heal, the process will become second-nature, and life can be rich and fulfilling.
On a side-note, this process, of trauma, the formation of “protective” mechanisms which ultimately lead to further repetition of trauma reminds me strongly of the pain-spasm-ischemia cycle I was taught in massage school. In that process, damage occurs to muscle, the muscle “spasms” to protect itself from further damage, but in doing so, restricts blood flow to the area, preventing oxygenated blood (and white blood cells) from getting to the area to begin the healing process and remove restrictions. The “knot” gets bigger and bigger, till it causes overt pain and movement restriction…
Levine notes that our fast-paced culture doesn’t make this an easy task. Which brings me around to the final bit of my essay here (his book continues…if you’re interested, you should buy it and read it).
As I mentioned in my previous blog entry, it isn’t just the fast pace of our culture that “shields” us from slowing down and tracking our physiologies.
In fact, it seems that much of our culture has that exact effect.
Since reading Andrew Weil’s book “Eight Weeks to Optimal Health,” back in the 90′s sometime, I’ve engaged in what he calls a “news fast.” I don’t read or watch the news. Not at all. Haven’t in years, actually. And…nothing has happened to me because of it.
Weil recommends this practice because the news has a few qualities that cause human beings trouble, and for no good reason. First, the news is typically all bad. As Gary Gnu said, “No gnus is good gnus.” Second, the news is aggregated bad news from all over the world. So, not only are you getting a dose of bad news, but you’re getting a large dose of bad news composed of all of the bad news that happened today…anywhere. Needless to say, that news doesn’t really reflect the happenings in your habitat. Fourth, almost all of the news (because of its distant relation to your habitat) will make you feel completely helpless, frustrated, sad, or angry.
Learned helplessness, reinforced, twenty-four hours a day. Thank you?
But the news, or the way we “do” news, is just one symptom of a larger thang – of our approach to life…the philosophical underpinnings of our culture, expressed through or visible in the actions of our culture, and, of course, our selves.
a quick “thang” intermission:
I think one of the roots of that philosophy is a trauma-cycle, associated with something that happened to us culturally, maybe somewhere back in the mid-sixteenth century…in fact, when we were most susceptible to trauma, in our early-childhood…the Renaissance.
Not to be a conspiracy theorist here, but I hope Dan Brown is reading this blog and writes a nice book about this idea…and figures out what that event was, because I have no idea…hahaha.
However, it does seem that some “crisis” (which in Chinese is a character composed of the two characters for “danger” and “opportunity”) occurred, which we could not mitigate or win against, and have repeated ever since.
Hell, maybe it goes even further back than that.
But what stands out to me most is the point at which we dissociated from our tool-making.
We’ve been dissociated from our habitats for thousands of years. Human beings have lived in cities and such for around 8-10,000 years. Sure that could be a factor.
And life has been relatively “distracting” ever since we’ve been in cities. Fast pace, hustle and bustle, are nothing new.
But the loss of consciousness that we are using tools – that symbols are tools, machines are tools, that mathematics and language are tools – that seems more important.
When did that happen? And why? When did we lose sight of the fact that we make technologies to help us?
Because it was at that point that we committed ourselves to a path of recurrent trauma reenactment. It was at that point that we closed our eyes to a process within ourselves (as a culture).
It was at that point that it became “necessary” to pursue pain in order to deserve pleasure. This thing we see in cubicles and offices all over the world.
It was at this point that we begin to see scarcity as our ruling dictum, and fear as its messenger.
In it, he describes the ways in which contact with dirt can positively affect (and effect) your mood and health.
As I said in my comment to his post – since we ARE dirt, dirt is good for us. As we used to say when we’d drop our ice cream cone on the playground back in the day – “God made dirt, so dirt don’t hurt.”
Yesterday I posted a review of the book “Anticancer,” in which the author talks about the Tibetan traditional medical approach to the body as “terrain.” That’s a perfect description.
Our terrain comes from our parents’ terrain to begin with (what Traditional Chinese Medicine practitioners call our “original chi“), and then, once we’re off the breast, from the food we eat, the air we breathe, the fluids we drink, the thoughts we think (what the sociologist/philosopher Pierre Bourdieu called “habitus“), the movement we do (or don’t do), and the company we keep.
The larger terrain, our unique, individual habitat, at that point becomes our full “terrain.”
If any parts of our terrain are polluted, it comes into our terrain. If our air, food, water, thoughts, movement, or social lives are toxic, it leaches into us, and causes trouble.
Can you see your environment in these terms? Can you see yourself as continuous with your environment? With your:
air
food
drink
thoughts
actions, and
social interactions?
It’s a good daily meditation, to look at your unique habitat, your full terrain, and to try to see how it’s affecting you on the smallest, middle, and largest scales.
Focus on honing in on these things. How pure is your air? If you work in an office, you might want to try to get outside for some deep breathing exercises.
What about your food? Try to buy organic foods, and eat foods that have been as little tampered with as possible – that is, in their natural state, not processed.
Drink water. Pure water. The author of anticancer also recommends green tea and red wine (one glass per day : ( ) for their antioxidant power.
Keep your thoughts free from anger and fear. If there’s something you’re angry about, or fearful of (worry is a form of fear), resolve it! Life is too short to hold those thoughts, and by doing so, you only make your life shorter!
Try to get good healthy movement into your life. Walking is fantastic. Try to go for a walk after dinner every night!
Make sure your social circle isn’t polluting your life. That’s all I’ll say about that one!
I want to give a brief explanation of the reasoning behind the workout paradigm I did a video of yesterday. Here’s the vid:
Now here’s the rationale.
There’s something called Henneman’s Size Principle (I know, right?). It says that motor units are recruited by the nervous system from smallest (slowest) to largest (fastest).
The small/slow muscles, because they are used all the time, are more fatigue-resistant. The bigger/faster units aren’t able to sustain contractions for very long, but when they do contract, it is very powerful.
The only way to recruit those large/fast/powerful motor units is through very intense (high-tension) work. Things like jumps, explosive/ballistic movements, and very heavy lifting will recruit more of these fibers.
Typically, those types of movements require greater stabilization assistance.
So, if you do endurance stuff before heavy lifting, 1., you won’t have any energy for it, and 2., you may be injured because your synergists (assistance-muscles) are too fatigued to help you maintain form/posture.
Therein lies the rationale for the sequence. Warmup (get things loose/fluid, neurologically prepared), Explosive or Ballistic movements (get those fast/large fibers, and the nervous system amped up) without weight, Max Effort (work up to a 3RM maybe), then Endurance or Hypertrophy work. If you want to do Isometrics, do them at the very beginning, in the warmup, at the very end, or at a different time.
That said, I only briefly mentioned the importance of good skeletal structure/alignment, and good movement patterns in the video. I’ll do another session about this topic later this week, but for now – make sure your posture is good, and you have good range of motion and control in your joints before doing any of this stuff!!!
Pay particular attention to the pelvic girdle, shoulder girdle, and neck…and then the peripheral joints (elbows/knees, wrists/ankles)…
Here’s a great way to experience what I like to call “physiology tracking.”
The next time you go visit friends, and have some good times for a while, pay attention to your physiology. There is a chemical composition of “happiness” or “joy” happening inside you during that time.
But the time you might notice the effect the most is afterward, when you go through chemical withdrawal.
Some people will call this “sadness” or “feeling blue,” and it is…but it is also “happiness withdrawal.”
The symptoms will be the same as any kind of withdrawal. What will you feel? A lack, as if something is missing. Maybe you’ll notice how much/little of that feeling you had before. That, at least, can help to determine in part how powerful the withdrawal might be – a marker of how much you’ll crave that feeling.
You might notice, upon reflection, that the feeling of withdrawal means that you aren’t feeling that enough in your life…happiness. You might need to figure that out.
If that is the case, the withdrawal feeling points to something we’ve excluded from our lives. Why has it been blocked out?
In that way, withdrawal can help to point us in the direction we want to go (or don’t want to go!). It can serve as a homing beacon (come closer).
Perhaps a lighthouse is a better analogy…it signals both potential safety and potential danger – the shoreline is here, you are safe!… or…the shorelines is here, watch out! dangerous rocks!
In either case, this is the place where you can sublimate your withdrawal into wisdom and action.
The “internal alchemy” here is to follow the feeling of loss or lack…to stick with it, and to track it well. Find what it points to within you, and meet it face to face.
Most “indigenous” cultures have methods for doing this that often involve dancing, singing, playing, (and sometimes, drugs) that allow the tracker to pursue more deeply, free from inhibition.
I think you’ll get plenty deep without the drugs, so try it that way first…but it’s almost always fruitful at some point to take your feeling out into motion in the world. Run, feel your breathing, and use your feeling of withdrawal as your mantra, your training device/guide. Keep it right in front of you. Let it tell you where to go, how far/fast, how many repetitions, and keep pursuing it more and more deeply…listen…listen…
I recently had the pleasure of hosting Barefoot Ted here in SF.
While we didn’t get to discuss this topic while he was here, I’ve been thinking about it since, and figured I’d share these thoughts, and see what everyone out in the web-world thinks…
I ordered some leather huaraches from Ted’s site, and was pondering my choice of leather over the Vibram rubber soles that he offers, and that I think he (and many others) prefer to the leather.
I was thinking more about the leather/rubber debate, and started to think about these things:
leather is a natural material, and is not much of an insulator…especially compared to rubber, which is a powerful insulator.
(I’ll refrain from the “production” debate for these materials here)
our blood contains hemoglobin, which has at its center an atom of iron (in the heme)
iron responds to electromagnetic charges.
the earth is a giant electromagnet (its core is partly iron)
when we stand on the earth, we receive that electromagnetic flow through our blood (iron).
further…
“polarity therapy” in massage says that one side of the body is positively charged, and the other negatively charged
if that’s the case, when we move on two (bare) feet, we alternately contact the electromagnetic field of the earth with our oppositely-charged sides, creating a current through our body
when we run, that current is even more divided (a true “alternating current”), since we completely separate contact with one side for a period in a running-gait.
further still… bone forms along lines of stress
that’s because bone is piezoelectric
that is, the lines of stress cause an electric charge to flow through bone
that electric flow is what directs the osteoblasts to break down the bone in places, and the osteoclasts to build in other places.
and…
though the “proof” is controversial, man-made electromagnetic fields are known to disturb natural bodily functions, for instance
high-tension power lines may be related to an increased risk in cancer
microwave ovens can have effects on people
the electrical impulse through natural stone walls has been linked by some to the presence of “ghosts” (as electromagnetic hallucinations)
etc.
final questions:
what happens when we insulate our bodies from the earth’s electromagnetic field
what happens when we don’t…
After my recent post on communication (or “training” as its called in certain circles, or “teaching” as its known in still other circles), I was pleasantly surprised to see Bernie DeKoven’s recent post on the DeepFun blog.
Bernie doesn’t say much, rather, he quotes extensively from an article written by Jessica Pierce and Marc Bekoff, titled “Moral in Tooth and Claw.”
Just wondering if they got approval from that Wolf to use his image on their book cover...
Bekoff and Pierce’s argument is that all animals have “morality,” it just looks different for different species.
I don’t see why not!
I’m still working on this idea, and appreciate your feedback on it, or any sources you may know of, but basically – emotion, morality, “justice,” or any other ABSTRACT name we give something, is a representation of an event.
In animals, that event is, specifically, a physiological event. Every action is an outward expression of something occurring within the animal.
“Morality” is a word (an abstract symbol) that we have created to capture a host of physical attitudes and emotions that we associate with a certain quality (“being moral”). That is, “morality” (the word) is an abstract symbol that stands-for (in language) a variety of physiological happenings that we think are interrelated.
Another "sign" - actually, two signs in one...
The Problem With Symbols
I think this area of learning is called “semiotics” – the study of signs or symbols. I’m not too familiar with it, but will read up on it soon. If you know about it, please add to the discussion.
In the time being, I’ll make some general statements about what I observe as being “the issue” with this type of approach to “animal” behavior.
First, let me say that I think that human beings are animals. Specifically, human beings are mammals. Just like dogs, cats, mice, cows, etc. As mammal, we have things in common with every other mammal that exists on this planet. Granted, there are things that separate us from one another – capabilities, physical attributes, etc. – but we are also very very similar in many ways.
Most folks don’t think in these terms. In fact, if you go to Pierce and Bekoff’s article and look at the comments, the very first comment says:
“Do not compare animal with man.Animal have not developed brain just like man.They are innocent compare to man.Developed brain is more selfish.Just watch child she had also innocent brain compare to adult.”
This is, I think, highly indicative of the problem with language.
Hang ten
Origins and Insertions
First off, we must agree that every animal communicates.
The definition of “communication” is “a process of transferring information from one entity to another.” Though single-cell and multi-cellular organisms may use different forms of communication, it still occurs.
Human beings, thanks to certain evolved structures, developed the capacity to communicate in a different way than other mammals. We probably began communicating the same way that they do – through body language, vocalizations, tonal qualities, etc. But eventually, we figured out that we could make certain things (tones or hand signs) represent other things.
The birth of symbols.
Once that occurred, we probably started to experiment with a variety of symbols to represent different things. Initially, it would make sense if we just used very easy representations – representations of communications we were used to hearing or seeing already. For instance, if we were hungry, we might make a sad face and grab our bellies, as we do when we get TRULY hungry. If we saw a buffalo on our trip, we might make horns on our head with our fingers when we got back to the tribe.
Things became more advanced with more advanced mimicry. We may have begun to use the sounds we associated with certain things – sounds alone. For instance, when the sun warms you, as you lay on a hot flat rock and relax, you make a certain sound with that feeling in your body. “Aaaaaah.” Feels good, right? If you get hurt, that “aaaah” might turn into “AH!” or “OH!”
Further along, the abstraction became more and more complicated.
At some point, something happened where we realized that we could represent certain things with drawings. In the beginning, it may have been exact replicas, precise drawings of the things we had seen.
Cave paintings from Chauvet, France. 32,000 years old.
The Birth of Alphabets
During this period, maybe we figured out that a simple circle could represent the sun. The Chinese ideographs are full of direct-pictorial representations of the physical things they stand for. Their language is not “alphabetic,” but symbolic, purely.
Other languages abstracted those symbols further, into individual symbols representing certain sounds.
Now, remember, those sounds represent certain physiological experiences – certain bodily experiences. At least, they did at first.
Once we could do that, we could begin to make words. But how do you make words? Have you ever thought about it?
One theory, which I agree with, is that the sounds (the physiological experience) come first, and then the letters that represent those sounds (those physiological experiences) are put into order, and a word is made.
Once we have words that we can agree on – in the beginning, likely very simple things, very accessible things, and not too many of them – we can begin to string those words together to form more detailed communications.
Dekooning - Almost Abstract
Distraction by Abstraction
We get to a place where we can reference words (abstractions, or symbols, of physiological occurrences) with other words.
We are referencing symbols with symbols. We are modifying meanings of symbols with the use of other symbols. This is “meta-symbolism.”
But what happens when we do that?
I think things become very confused. Our attention spans are very short, and we tend to focus on one or two things at a time (maximum, whether we try to convince ourselves that we’re “multi-tasking” or not).
Eventually, we forget that those words stand for something physical. We forget that they are representations. We believe that the symbol is real.
But it is not. It’s just a symbol.
At this point, we’ve taken the land, put it on a map, and then moved to outer space.
We begin to modify our words, our symbols, and their meaning, through convenience, through culture, through geography. Which is great, don’t get me wrong!
Get to the Point, Leeger
Alrighty, then.
Here’s the point – the meaning I give to a word (a symbol) may be a completely different meaning from the meaning you give to that word.
Even if we do agree on the meaning of the word, the associations you have with that word may be very different from the associations I have with that word. If you’ve experienced physical abuse firsthand, and I have not, when I say the word “abuse,” a very real and very different physiological event will occur in you than will in me – and it will lead us to different (more or less “emotional”) forms of communication about that word.
But the real point is this – “morality” is a word. It is a symbol that we have created to represent a series of actions, of visible communications, abstracted into words. “Justice,” is a similar word. It represents an “idea,” which represents a physiological experience.
Why does any of this matter? I think that this is one of the keys to expanding human potential. We have to admit that we are animals, first. Then, we have to admit that our modes of communication (our dominant mode – spoken or written language) are actually hiding us from the experience of our animal-ness.
Why does that matter? Take a look around you. Look at the “obesity epidemic,” or “non-communicable diseases,” or “global warming.”
None of those terms, those phrases, has any direct meaning to you (unless you are obese, or have a non-communicable disease). Yet these terms are bandied about as if they are meaningful. They become “hot topics,” and nothing changes.
Why does nothing change? Because we are divorced from the physical experiences that those words represent.
I’m not saying “do away with language.” Instead, I’m saying – understand it better. Learn language more clearly. Feel it in your body.
As my Sensei, Mick Dodge says – “We should quest for the most direct sensory touch that we can endure in order to awaken our animal, our animus, our spirit.”
A few weeks ago I commented on a blog post by my friend JR Atwood. He had posted a brief clip from the Uncommon Schools‘ teacher training methodology. My comment, essentially, was “That looks just like dog training!”
In a private response, he mentioned that it would be interesting to see a comparison of the two – teaching methods for children vs. dog-training methods.
True to my word, I hit the books over the course of the past couple of weeks and read two dog-training texts. One of them, was Lew Burke’s “Dog Training”
Burke's book is about very specific techniques...
Ready for the comparison?
The first rule of dog training is that dogs require clear (matching your training method with your desired outcome from the dog), concise (one word), and consistent (always the same command for the same desired outcome) communication.
Regarding this first video from Uncommon Schools, we can focus on the “clarity” bit. But there’s another point, I’ll share with you after you’ve enjoyed this video:
Reward is a better motivator than punishment. More importantly, it’s crucial to discriminate between normal communication (acknowledgment, above), and praise. This is true for dogs as well. Giving a dog a friendly word is different from giving a dog a treat.
Only give a dog a treat when it has done something to deserve it.
Dog training actually goes a little deeper than that, but you have to earn that lesson…
Strong Voice
It is important to use proper TONE when speaking to your dog.
NLP literature points out that 87% of communication is body language, 10% is the tone of your speech, and only 3% of your communication is conveyed in the actual content of your words. (I’m guesstimating those percentages…too lazy to look up the exact reference right now).
This lesson carries over to dog training as well. Your dog will discern a lot about you from the way you hold yourself. Raise a fist to strike it, and it isn’t going to respond kindly. Act wildly, and it will think you’re unreliable.
Tone is equally important for dog-training. Most people who have ever had a dog have used the old trick of saying a bunch of nasty names or things about their dog in a candy-sweet voice. The dog invariably wags its tail, not connecting the content to the tone.
Few dogs – showdogs, mostly – have the range of vocabulary to really understand that last 3% of human communication anyway…
Now watch this:
Eye contact is used here. In dog training, the books used for this post mention that either direct eye contact, OR removal of attention, can be used equally well to convey your “leadership” status.
For instance, when giving the dog food, you might look directly (and seriously) into its eyes as you give the “sit” command. Again, the dog must earn everything it gets from its leader (you).
Or, you might say “sit” and look away from the dog, removing your attention (a valuable thing to a dog). When it does sit, you can bring your attention back to the dog, lavish it with praise, put the food down, and leave it to eat.
Cold Call
A dog must respond to your command any time you issue it. It cannot be sporadic response.
That being said, once a dog has learned a skill, the best way to reinforce it is through random reinforcement.
More Thoughts
Now, before you go yelling at me, telling me how insensitive I am to suggest that children are just like dogs, think about this for a second. First, I’m not just talking about children here (read my previous post on the difference between “children” and “adults”). Second, and more importantly, I think it’s time we begin looking at how we actually behave, instead of how we’d like things to be.
The use of motivational tactics is nothing new. I’ve seen plenty of parents these days with leashes on their children!
I think what is (relatively) new in our culture is the lack of consistent understanding about how animals (dogs, pigs, cattle, human beings, monkeys, whatever) behave, and how to treat animals if you want something from them.
In older times (here I go, romanticizing the past…) we dealt with animals quite a deal more. We also had very real “survival” demands to take care of (for instance, if we were farmers). Now that we’re removed from those things, we think there is some sort of “distance” (real and figurative) between us human beings and the other animals in the kingdom of animalia.
Do you think so?
I’ll leave you with this, a quote from Nicholas Dodman’s book, “The Well-Adjusted Dog”:
“Think about it. You have removed your pet’s need to hunt by supplying food. You have removed his romantic interests by neutering him. You have removed his social needs by depriving him of pack interests and competition. He can’t even wander and explore his outside territory, let alone try to resolve his own problems – because there aren’t any…So what’s a poor dog to do? Channel his energy in unacceptable ways, that’s what.” pg. 136
Aside from citing a bunch of studies and trying to draw general conclusions from them (which is an incorrect use of science, by the way, for a great discussion of this, see John Sifferman’s most recent blog post), the author describes the field of ecopsychology, from its inception to present attempts at connecting individuals’ psychology and environment.
I dare you to look inside...
The article cites a study by Marc Berman, at the University of Michigan, whose study “The Cognitive Benefits of Interacting with Nature” describes attentional gains after participants have walked through a setting full of “nature” (in this case, the Ann Arbor Arboretum…is that redundant?!).
But what is “psychology?” Until that question is answered succinctly, all “psychological” studies are potentially redundant and misleading.
But what is the “mind?” (let’s leave questions of the “soul” out of the discussion for now). Apparently it’s a combination of “mental functions and behaviors.”
Most of psychology, if you’ve ever taken a psychology course (or several) addresses “mind” as a thing separate from physical reality. Theorists make up their own paradigms of mind and mentality, of “mental functions and behaviors.”
The terrible redundancy can be seen most clearly in the field of Child Psychology, or Child Development. There are five or ten competing theories of child development at different stages of maturation. All are right, most are completely redundant with one another. Many (if not most) create definitions of the child’s developmental process that are obviously derived solely from the researcher’s personal experience…no “objectivity” there (the question of “objectivity” is quite another question entirely).
This redundancy seems extraordinarily silly to me. For one, can’t we all just get along?! But for another, where does this “mind” come from? I mean, “mind” doesn’t just exist on its own, apart from the physical body…apart from “behaviors.” Does it?
I think the development of the field of psychology stems largely from the Cartesian mind/body dualism, and an underlying belief in “human supremacy” in the Order of Things.
Foucault me.
That is, human beings always believe that they are somehow specially different, better, “more special” than anything else in nature. We always try to find qualities that separate us from the “lower animals.”
But, one by one, all of those arguments have been disproved. I’ve heard them all – human beings have language (all animals have language); human beings are creative (ever see a spiderweb?); we use tools (ever see an ape catch termites with a long blade of grass?); we are self-conscious (debatable, and impossible to prove that other animals are not also self-aware/conscious)…etc.
The list goes on, but always with the same result – we are no “better” than anything else this planet has produced, we’re simply “different.”
This led, in combination with the Cartesian separation of mind from body, to a belief that our thoughts were somehow separate from our bodies, from our “physical” selves.
“Ecological Unconscious” or “ecopsychology” is one attempt to put those things back together, but it has skimmed over one of the most important questions – “When studying psychology (the mind), what exactly is it that we are studying?”
In reference to this, I’d like to cite a 2007 study by Japanese researchers (following up on several earlier studies of a similar nature). The study is called “Psychological effects of forest environments on healthy adults: Shinrin-yoku (forest-air bathing, walking) as a possible method of stress reduction,” and, similar to Berman’s study, looked at the effects of walking or sitting in a wooded environment on physiology.
Needless to say, the effects were drastic, and positive. Physiological markers of stress (salivary cortisol, resting heart rate, blood pressure, etc.) decrease in a “natural” environment.
Do the participants’ “psychologies” change? Undoubtedly, yes.
I guarantee that changing your breathing will change your mind.
You see, for me, “psychology,” or “mind,” is just a product of the physical body. Sure, at some level it also becomes the product of the interaction of itself (recursive thought) and anything else (mind-to-mind, mind-thinking-about-itself), but without the physical body, there is no mind.
How can I assert this? Well, you can “change your mind” by changing your body. If you’re feeling blue, go out for a run. It will change your mind.
So when fields like “ecopsychology” spring up, or talk of an “ecological unconscious” begins, I wonder why. Why is it that we want to separate our physiology from our thoughts (or vice versa)? Why is it that we hold onto this belief that there is some “magic” happening in our gray matter?
While it is magical that we have such a complex brain, the brain is not the mind. The entire body is your brain. To quote George Leonard:
Some researchers in the comparatively new field of psychoneuroimmunology (PNI) argue that the interplay of peptides with peptide receptors on the surface of cells throughout body and brain carries considerably more information than all previously discovered brain mechanisms combined. Imagine a pharmacy with well over a hundred potions that can be mixed in all possible combinations and proportions, and you can begin to understand the power of this chemical information system.
So don’t speak of an “ecological unconscious” as something separate from your body. Don’t speak of nature as something separate from your body. You are continuous with your habitat, with your environment. This is why people living in cities get chronic diseases associated with urban environments – associated with pollution. This is why people have the same diseases as their friends.
Everything “external” to your body can and should be considered your “external organs.” There is nothing you see that does not affect your physiology on some level. There is nothing you hear, smell, touch, that does not do the same. At the same time, there are many things that you cannot sense in any way that are affecting your physiology…that are “creating your mind” – the invisible pollutants in your environment, the trees you do not notice that supply you with oxygen, the microbiomes that inhabit your body.
Stop separating your unconscious from your physical self. And stop separating your physical self from the totality of your environment. When you do that, you regain control over who you are and how you behave.
Only then can you finally say that you have a “mind.”
