L.I.F.T.

David McRaney has a great post on the You Are Not So Smart Blog.

He’s talking about conditioning, and our ability to act with “free will,” specifically in his post, with regards to diet.

McRaney mentions the work of BF Skinner, the “father” of Operant Conditioning.

“Skinner became convinced conditioning was the root of all behavior and didn’t believe rational thinking had anything to do with your personal life. He considered introspection to be a “collateral product” of conditioning.”

I’m not sure if that’s 100% true or not, but it’s an interesting viewpoint.

There is leverage, I believe, in what you choose or disagree to become conditioned to/by.

The author makes a distinction between three types of conditioning states:

Classical Conditioning – An “unconditioned stimulus” (a neutral stimulus such as a bell ringing) is used in coordination with a “conditioned stimulus” (one that generates a certain response, such as meat) to create a “conditioned response.” The classic example is Pavlov’s dog salivating with the ringing of the bell. Food was placed before the dog (conditioned stimulus), and a bell was rung (unconditioned stimulus) when the dog began salivating. Over time, the dog would salivate merely when the bell was rung (conditioned response).

Operant Conditioning – The alteration of behavior punishment or reward (“reinforcement”) of normal behavior. For instance, give the pigeon a food pellet every time it presses a lever, or a shock if it presses the “wrong” lever. Obviously, animals usually seek behaviors that lead to reinforcement responses, and avoid behaviors that lead to punishment responses from their environment.

Extinction – Is an element of Operant Conditioning in which a behavior is neither punished nor rewarded. The behavior declines in frequency.

An “extinction burst,” according to the author, is when you have a strong negative reaction to the lack of expected response from your environment.

The author finishes by saying:
“To give up overeating, or smoking, or gambling, or “World of Warcraft,” or any bad habit which was formed through conditioning, you must be prepared to weather the secret weapon of your unconscious – the extinction burst.

Become your own Supernanny, your own Dog Whisperer. Look for alternative rewards and positive reinforcement. Set goals, and when you achieve them, shower yourself with garlands of your choosing.

Don’t freak out when it turns out to be difficult. Habits form because you are not so smart, and they cease under the same conditions.”

Yes, I couldn’t agree more with this. But how do you do that? How do you “weather the storm?”

Goal-setting has always seemed extremely arbitrary, and less than motivating to me. The process has always been my concern – right here, right now.

I prefer to focus on something that grounds me to the present in order to weather my “extinction bursts.”

For me, that comes from a practice of increasing sensitivity, and awareness, or sensitive-awareness, through deeper connection to my physical being (which, for me, is also – spiritual, mental/emotional, environmental, communal/social).

I think this practice also leads to the shedding of “unnatural” habits.

Please consider taking action to support the welfare of marine life at the Miami Seaquarium. This is from a Facebook post by John Kielty:

To whom this may concern:

As you may be aware, Andrew Hertz, General Manager of Miami Seaquarium, Miami, FL has recently stated his intention to file a $3 to $5 million dollar claim against BP citing his requirement to upgrade the marine park’s filtration system should the waters of Biscayne Bay become contaminated from oil resulting from the Deep Water Horizon incident in the Gulf of Mexico (www.justnews.com/news/23910898/detail.html). By this action, the Hertz family has admittedly demonstrated that they are not prepared, equipped or otherwise capable of carrying out a disaster contingency plan to provide emergency sources of water and/or arrangements for relocating marine mammals as is required by APHIS Regulation 9 CFR section 3.101(b). The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicts an 80% chance that the oil will hit the Miami area in August and I am deeply concerned the Miami Seaquarium wildlife is in jeopardy. In addition to Killer Whale Lolita the lives of 30 dolphins, 15 seals and sea lions, dozens of reptiles/fish, sea turtles, and at least eight manatees are in peril. Your immediate action is required to ensure their safety.

Should the Hertz family be successful in securing funds for this major reconstruction effort, it is my contention that Miami Seaquarium be required by USDA-APHIS to bring ALL provisions of animal welfare, including marine mammal housing size, into compliance with current APHIS Regulations under the Animal Welfare Act.

Since the brutal capture of killer whale (orca) Lolita in 1970, she has been kept in a tank that is illegal by current APHIS standards for space requirements as provided in Regulation 9 CFR section 3.104. Now 42 years old, Lolita (also known as Tokitae) is approximately 21 feet long and 7,000 pounds. Her tank is 20 feet deep at the deepest point, a mere 12 feet deep around the edges and 35 feet wide. Lolita’s life of misery in these substandard confines has continued long enough. The Hertz family has been profiting from Lolita’s exploitation for more than 40 years and the time has come to end her suffering and provide her the protection and quality of life she deserves. They should not be allowed to continue operating with no emergency contingency plans, under outdated regulations, and making piecemeal improvements aimed solely at protecting profits. Now is the time to act on Lolita’s behalf. Time is running out!

As a part of Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service at The US Department of Agriculture, I know that you are concerned with the future of marine mammals in captivity and the urgent crisis developing at the Miami Seaquarium. Please do your part and ensure immediate action is taken and provisions are provided that require Miami Seaquarium’s compliance with all current APHIS Regulations under the Animal Welfare Act for this emergency and any future construction and/or upgrades at their marine mammal park. If the Hertz family finds that complying with all current APHIS Regulations is not cost feasible, alternative viable solutions are under development to provide a safe retirement for Lolita in her native habitat in the Pacific Northwest. Details of this proposal can be found here: www.orcanetwork.org/captivity/2007proposaldraft.html. There are many wonderful people and organizations willing to work with the Miami Seaquarium and are ready, willing and waiting to move forward with a rehabilitation/retirement plan for Lolita.

Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter.
Sincerely,

There are several tendencies and assumptions we have in our culture, here in the United States. Here are a few:

Being a specialist is better than being generalist
You have to have certain credentials in order to do certain things
Only experts are allowed to have opinions about things
People who publish things or appear in media (film, tv, etc.) are experts
Boys are X way and girls are Y way

What all of these things have in common is this – we recognize certain differences between oppositions that we’ve created in our minds and then we cling tenaciously to those differences.

Once we’ve done that, we do what’s called “meaning making” – we create the reasons why the differences we’ve decided upon are right (correct).

We do it after the fact. Rarely are we allowed to come to our own decision about something. As a matter of fact, once you’re old enough to read and understand the words in this blog post, you have enough prejudices about the precise definitions and meanings of different things, words and relationships, that, unless you’re consciously trying to be open (or doing some kind of drug), you are automatically using meanings that were given to you from the day you were born by your parents and culture.

A person’s “qualifications” (usually seen, in our culture, in their resume or “curriculum vitae”) simply list the types of things they did before they started to do what they’re doing now.

That is, a resume or CV is relatively meaningless by itself. When the person began doing what they’re doing now, they were in the same position as any beginner.

This is not to say that you can just start doing something and be as proficient as someone who has been doing it for 10 years. That doesn’t make any sense.

What I am saying here is that everyone starts from where they’re at, at the moment at which they start.

What I’m saying here is – no matter how far you’ve gone down the wrong road, turn back.

What I’m saying here is – whatever it is that you want to do in life – START NOW.

Imagination is the capacity to make stuff up. You can do it right now. I guarantee that you are. Just by reading these words, you’re creating relationships in your mind to try to understand what I’m saying and judge its usefulness to you. (Visualization is a little different – it’s the act of using imagination to “see” something in your mind’s eye).

We’ve known for a long long time that imagination is a powerful, and seldom-used, tool in living.

From the paper “Think of Capable Others and You Can Make It! Self-Efficacy Mediates the Effect of Stereotype Activation on Behavior”

Previous research has shown that activating a stereotype can influence subsequent behavior in a stereotype-consistent way. The present research investigates the role of self-efficacy beliefs in this effect. Specifically, we demonstrate that being primed with the stereotype of professors increases knowledge confidence compared to being primed with a less educated profession (Experiments 1 and 2), and that these higher self-efficacy beliefs result in higher performance at a general knowledge test (Experiment 2). These findings are corroborated in Experiment 3 that shows that participants primed with the stereotype of athletes show higher persistence in a physical exercise than participants primed with a stereotype less associated with persistence. Again, behavior was mediated by self-efficacy beliefs. The findings are in line with the active-self account (Wheeler & Petty, 2001; Wheeler, DeMarree, & Petty, 2007) that proposes that priming with a stereotype influences a person’s behavior through altered self-representations.

What do dat mean? It means that whatever you imagine, see, or visualize, will influence how you behave.

Story-telling
We are all constantly telling a story to ourselves. Choose your story. Make one up that makes you a super-hero. We did it as kids, and that story led us on all of our best adventures.

You can do it again. Get your pencil and paper.

You can have any qualities you want. You can do anything. Write it down. Draw a picture of it. Tattoo it on your arm. Look at it every day. Feel yourself become Superhero-You more and more every day, every second. Let every breath take you closer. Only move toward things that fulfill that image. Seek them out. Do them. And only move away from things that do not.

Do it now.

When I was younger, I always associated “love” with the feeling of sexual passion – the intense desire, the suffering in that desire, the longing…and the consummation of that longing and desire.

For a while, “love” was just my addiction to the chemical “squirt” in my body that I felt in moments of passion.

Now, love means much more to me. It isn’t an instantaneous thing, but a process. Love is still passion, still that desire/fire, but it is also the process of suffering the wound of separation…remaining within yourself, appreciating the other person’s path as their own, and not interfering…loving them from “so close, yet so far away.”

Or, updated a bit…

This recent article in Parade – A Connecting Flight – sums up part of this so well, I had to post it. Please read it, I think it’s worthwhile.

We often forget, in moments or relationships, in that wonderful gush of chemicals flooding our body, that there is another person, another individual, there with us. Or that we are an individual person, with our own history, issues, joys, and desires – that all are only, ultimately, experienced by us alone.

And what happens when that high wears off? When we become used to the presence of that cocktail in our system?

No one else feels what you feel. We agree on meanings of words, and approximate agreement on what we’re feeling inside by using those words…but it’s only ever an approximation.

No one ever feels what you feel. And you never feel what someone else feels.

To try to even get close requires so much space, so much observation, so much silence, and listening, that most of us never get there. But that’s what love really is…the attempt to get there. The attempt to give that much space, observation, silence, listening, care, facilitation, whatever you want to call it…

We’re so busy with our lives, with our own feelings, and our ideas of what the other person may be living or feeling, that we rarely clear space to see if we can really experience that connection.

In the article above, it often only hits us, as with so many things in life, too late. Or, if we’re lucky, when we meet someone who can wake us up to that.

Part of the goal of “physiology tracking” is knowing your own physiological responses to things, so you can see those in others. So you don’t have to rely on words – which are never good enough.

But to track, you have to be silent. You have to be careful. You have to clear your mind of opinions, and let the signs guide you.

Another goal of physiology tracking is to stay true to yourself. Only if you know yourself, your physiology, can you be aware enough to keep it in check when it threatens to overrun you, or allow it to overrun you when you most need or want it to.

Learn to be a tracker.

Desire, as my Sensei, Mick Dodge says, is Fire – it is an ember within you, and you have to carry and protect it, to tend to it, like a fire bundle, and to stoke it into life.

The rhythmic process of the rise and fall of desire/fire can be encouraged. And then it becomes a relationship with yourself, a new lens through which to see things, a new way to experience different dimensions of “reality.”

Part of love is respecting the other person’s path, their full path – the place where their desire ebbs and flows – as the thing that you loved, inseparable from the rest, and the thing that you love now.

Even if it’s the pair of slippers you trip over every day.

But to feel this, you have to agree to suffer the wound of love, the suffering (which is what “passion” really means, by the way) of the whole person of the other, of the realization that the other is complete, and you are too, and you embrace it all.

I’m not sure what the source of human seriousness is, but it is strange indeed.

I understand being serious in life-and-death situations. Yes, that’s good. Grave, no, but serious, yes.

I understand being serious as “meaning business.” Like “s/he means business! S/he is SERIOUS!”

But serious as in gravity, or as in a constructed deep meaning to something that, really, probably doesn’t have any meaning other than what you’re ascribing to it…?

That I don’t understand.

Can anyone help?

After my previous post about the possible loss of connection between human electrical fields and the earth-based field (or “geomagnetic field,” the GMF), I checked out this book:

The Geomagnetic Field and Life, by Aleksander Dubrov, outlines the myriad ways that the GMF affects terrestrial biology, and gives some suggestions as to how the GMF may have shaped the development of life on this planet to begin with.

I won’t go into details here. Too many to note. If you’re interested, Dr. Dubrov has actually posted summaries of all of his books online for free, here.

There’s a lot there, a lot to think about…take your time.

My friend JR Atwood posted a great TED talk by Liz Coleman, regarding the nature of education in our day and age.

I’m more concerned with something more foundational – the use of common sense.

My father is in the hospital. He’s been in before – most seriously, when he underwent emergency surgery to replace his aorta with a gortex tube, four years ago.

He’s been having some issues, and went back in recently. The doctors have him on so many medications, it’s hard to tell what’s causing what.

And that’s my problem.

The doctors have no faith in the human body to heal itself.

In days of old, before “internal medicine” (which is anything but “internal” – consisting as it does, mostly of “external” items leveraged against the internal state), the body was regarded as a delicate and powerful system. To attain health, one usually only needed to do things (or do fewer things) to return that system to balance…

Called “homeostasis” – the balance of activity within the body.

What’s Up, Doc?

Where did the faith go?  Where is the faith in the human body to heal itself?  Only in “alternative” medicines?  Even there, many alternative practitioners have taken on the cultural values of US culture, and peddle pills and external “cures.”

Doctoring the Evidence

Another faith disappeared around the same time as the faith in the human body – faith in the healing power of the Earth.  I don’t want to get too crazy with this (you’ll be calling  me a “hippie” in a minute if I’m not careful, boxing me in), but the point is salient.

As the values of “science” (the “expertism” that Liz Coleman mentions in her talk) overtook common sense, it killed any other thought process or options.

When society realized that this expertise-value could be used to sell more products, it took the reins.  As people have become more and more inculcated in the idea of “the expert,” other options disappear.

And so does common sense.

Doctor My Doctor

Now we’ve reached  a point where it has become commonsense to refer to “experts” for our opinions – for our common sense.

My father lies in a hospital bed tonight.  The doctors have not healed him at all.  They can’t figure out what’s wrong.  Because they’re incapable of asking questions.

The foundational of all common sense is found in a single question:

Why?

I was prompted to write this post, finally, after avoiding and/or forgetting about it the past seven or eight times.

People Watcher

Whenever I’m out in public, I watch people.  I love to watch the way they move, and to try to imagine what’s happening in their bones and muscles.

Do they favor one leg over another?  Why?  Is it the foot, ankle, knee, or hip on one side or another?  Or is it something else?  Sometimes, people look like they’re “favoring” a leg because they’re carrying a heavy bag on one shoulder.

But I also see people whom I think might be in for some serious musculoskeletal difficulties in their future.  Women wearing high heels, clonking like Clydesdales, slamming their already out-of-place feet into the ground, with their pelvis tilted forward…I don’t know.  Maybe they’ll have issues, maybe not.

And that’s what I thought today.  I was driving down the street, and saw a distinguished-looking older gentleman walking along.  His feet toed-out a little as he walked…a slight “duck walk.”  This type of walking position typically means there are some dysfunctions up the kinetic chain, which can lead to more serious issues over time – as the unbalanced wear and tear on the joints destroys or malforms them.

Then I realized something.

This guy most likely won’t ever experience any issues from this style of walking.  In fact, he’d probably been walking exactly that way for most of his life.  And here he was, walking just fine, looking happy as can be.

Leave Me Alone!

We have a tendency in this country…at least, I know that I have it – to think that people should be doing something better.  That things need to be different in order to be good.  When that may not be the case.

In the same token as the man I saw, many people will never experience disability from not being physically active or following a good diet.  They’ll never notice.  It doesn’t matter to them.

It doesn’t matter.  It’s not important.  In fact, it seems silly.

I’ve gotten that reaction from people a lot over the years – “you’re crazy,”

Craig Weller’s recent post on the Elevating Fitness blog had the type of message I usually give – do something, pay attention, change, live, appreciate what you have!

But, while I personally agree with Craig 100%, I don’t think that’s as meaningful as I used to.  You have to meet people where they are.  And many of them don’t care if they’re fit or active.

So if that’s the case, how do you convince them?  Or should you even try?

My recent post on the Paleo diet raised some great questions and comments from various sources.

I want to say something about diet here.

A “healthy” diet varies by region, by geography. YOU ARE NOT SEPARATE FROM YOUR ENVIRONMENT.

Your physiology is determined to a great degree by your environment. The type of terrain you have to navigate, and how you navigate it. How frequently you have to move through that terrain, similarly, and what types of tasks you need to accomplish in what type of frequency, will also determine your physiology.

The weather in your geography – the barometric pressure in your area, the amount of rainfall every year, of sunlight – will determine how your body looks, feels, and can move.

The types of animals and plants available for consumption in your area represent natural energy that is in synchrony with the seasons your body is in. Eating outside of that synchrony (the old “I live in NYC, but eat strawberries from Brazil) creates metabolic discord in your system.

Yes, human beings need a certain amount of nutrients, but not as much as you’re told, or as you think, or from the sources you’ve been told (or think) that those nutrients are “supposed to” come from.

Before I go much further, consider the wide range of climates and geographies that human beings inhabit. From deserts to ice-packs, from coniferous and deciduous forests to rain forests, from tropics to temperate zones to the arctics.

In each of these places, human animals live just fine. They can, if times are good, live to the same ripe old ages that human animals in any other area live to (given the same good conditions).

It’s not about a specific diet.

Consider This
Instead, I think it’s more important to consider the state of the physiology the diet is going into.

If you are happy, and feel safe and secure, things in your body tend to run smoothly. Homeostasis is achieved and maintained easily. Your body heals faster. Things correct themselves.

If you are unhappy, your body is constantly releasing stress-hormones that break things down. They tear your body up from the inside.

Don’t Worry, Be Happy
In the happy state, the food you ingest, whatever it is, will flow through that smooth-running system. Your body is miraculous in its ability to take what it needs and discard what it does not (as long as you’re moderate in consumption).

In the unhappy state, the food you ingest will not be processed well. Your body won’t be capable of digesting, it will be busy constantly preparing to defend itself. Things won’t go right. You’ll have gastro-intestinal disorders – ulcers, heartburn, acid reflux, poor digestion.

In that unhappy state, it doesn’t matter what you eat.

Not only that, but what does get absorbed will simply be put to use continuing the bad state. That sounds like hell.

Eat What’s In Season, Where You Live, Now
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t advocate eating McDonald’s. And I agree with Michael Pollan, to a point. Not every locale produces the same foodstuffs. Pollan’s dictum, to “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants,” is not actually how we evolved. Our brains got bigger from eating a lot of protein. Plants don’t have a lot of that. I have a different idea.

Eat as much organic, locally-grown food as possible. Reduce or eliminate processed foods (including breads) from your diet. Whatever is in season, is what is best for you at that point.

Part of the thing we Northern-European humans used to do was to rest more in the winter. It would be cold, it would snow. It wouldn’t be a good time to work. And there wouldn’t be much work to do. We could live off of dried goods for a while, till those ran out. Then we were stuck with whatever we could gather from the land. Pine needle tea. Hardy winter greens. Root vegetables. Animal meat.

It’s not hard to imagine.

What Determines Your Happiness?
Your happiness is directly related to your feeling of safety and support in the world. A community of like-minded individuals, a “tribe” (a word/concept that’s catching on these days).

In the womb of the tribe, you are complete. Your worldview is reinforced and supported. You are cared for. You are able to do your work, and step back, without attachment.

You are able to be happy.