Relaxation…science says it’s good for you! Duh.

Posted on September 21, 2009 by Josh

Just wanted to post a response to my Bagua teacher’s most recent blog entry that I posted today.

Now, understand, I mean no disrespect to George. He is my teacher, for one. For two, he’d kick my ass. Hahaha.

The article is a good one, and the advice is sound…it’s just that I think it’s very one-sided, and it kisses up to science, which is a very limited way of looking at life.

Anyway, the article says that science is finally proving that relaxation is good for you. They quote Herbert Benson, who actually proved that relaxation was good for you back in the 70′s. Read his book – The Relaxation Response.

Here’s my response to the article (not to George, per se):

Totally great. Glad that “science” finally approves of what people have known for 10,000 years. Integrating relaxation into your practice is a different matter…

I personally think that relaxation by itself (relaxation meditation, or relaxation massage) is only really good done very infrequently. Relaxation, like meditation, or like exercise, or life, should be an active process. Then you learn something about your state…you become a participant in the state of your body.

For people interested, look into a nice Autogenic Programming or Progressive Relaxation recordings, or Eckhart Tolle’s first book – The Power of Now. All of the exercises from Power of Now are in the “Practicing the Power of Now: Essential Teachings” book, if you’re short for time or want to just get right to it.

Alternately, you can just stop what you’re doing, breathe deeply, and try to feel your muscles, starting at your feet, and progressing up your body to the top of your head. Tell your muscles to relax as you go, and feel for “tight spots.” Once you’ve done that, start back at your feet, and try to feel your bones. Get them to relax too.

A bee-da bee-da bee-da…that’s all folks!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBzJGckMYO4&hl=en&fs=1&]

The Philosophical Baby

Posted on September 6, 2009 by Josh

Just finished reading another book…”The Philosophical Baby,” by Alison Gopnik. In all, I really enjoyed it!

Interestingly, Gopnik mentions how critical the child’s early environment is to their mental image of the world. This goes hand in hand with my review of the book The Future of the Body. Raised in a culture that believes in faith healing, esp, or telekinesis, a child would believe in and attempt to practice those abilities.

She discusses Bayesian statistics – the idea that we create probabilities of possibilities, since nothing is certain – and experiments that seem to show that children are interacting with the world in a statistical fashion.

Well, from the point of view of a psychologist who has spent her career doing statistical behavioral research on children, of course it looks as if they’re thinking statistically about the world. But is it necessarily true?

The issue is that our definitions of things (babies are statistically solving causal relationships in the world) will define not only the things themselves, but how we are able to think about other things in our world. Once we see through statistical glasses, everything looks like a statistic.

But it’s not.

The best example I can give is the one that Gopnik uses herself. Say you have an experiment in which you test a medication on high blood pressure. The group on the medication has a decrease in high blood pressure. You assume that it must be the medication causing the decrease in high blood pressure. Fine.

But then, someone else does an experiment in which they give both groups a pill, neither of which is medication, but they tell one group that they’re receiving the real medicine. The group that received the “real” placebo sees a decrease in HBP.

What was the medicine?

What happens, I think, as we become “adult” is that we rely more and more on the “causal” relationships we’ve identified in the world around us. We believe our own press…or do our own supply…however you want to look at it. Life becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts. Wherever you look, you find evidence for your beliefs. Because it’s all you are capable of seeing.

I really liked this book. It comes so close, throughout, to really showing how there is no true difference between children and adults – it just doesn’t quite get there.

For instance, the author frequently cites “habituation” studies of infants. “Habituation” refers to the tendency for infants to become disinterested in repetitive stimuli. That is, when the same thing happens over and over, you stop paying attention to it. However, habituation isn’t unique to infants, or to children…it’s common in all animals, at all “stages” of life. TV advertisers are very familiar with habituation. They change their commercials frequently enough to have a consistent effect on you. If they just played the same Coke commercial for five years, its effectiveness would be lost.

As a brief aside, it’s interesting to observe that habituation is a physical phenomenon. Most of the studies done on habituation are “psychological” studies. How long does it take till this person gets bored of xyz? But the brain is a physical entity, and the mind is a product of that physical brain. We can observe habituation in our bodies through exercise, or, say, caffeine. Have a cup of coffee in the morning, and it spikes your adrenals. Have a cup every morning for a year, and suddenly, it doesn’t have any effect at all.

All of the examples that Gopnik uses to illustrate how children’s minds operate really end up showing that, through culturally-crafted pruning of behavior, we become the self-fulfilling automatons of our culture.

While that statement is a little forceful, it isn’t too far from reality.

A great example of this shows up in the book, around the middle, where the author describes a researcher who was studying Mayan culture. Mayan mothers begin teaching their children basic skills at a very very young age, and they are careful to make sure that the children are paying attention. This particular researcher was stunned to find 18 month old babies wielding machetes against coconuts, without any concern from their mothers – just as amazed as the Mayan mothers were that the researcher’s young daughter could operate the sink and toilet in a modern bathroom without any supervision.

My biggest point of concern for what is not said in this book goes back to James Carse’s book “Finite and Infinite Games.”

I would say that the definition of “adult” in our US culture is – “one who plays only finite games.” If you play infinite games, you are “childish.”

You can play many finite games at the same time, but they all must be finite. For instance, you can simultaneously be Christian, a scientist, and an NRA member. But, as Carse says, you must play, so you cannot play.

The thing I love is the thing I hate. Alison Gopnik, through her exposition of psychological studies of infants and children (which necessarily draw a dividing line between them and adults), shows us the qualities that we, as adults, have given up…

That we can take up once again…

Still Unconvinced

Posted on September 3, 2009 by Josh

I’m unconvinced that science has offered us anything in the way of real improvements in sports science, fitness, or health.

I’ve read a lot of books. I’ve watched a lot of videos. I’ve attended a lot of seminars and classes. I’ve spoken with friends and clients. I’ve worked with clients. I’ve worked with friends.

And I’m still unconvinced.

First off, to a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

If you don’t know all of the following names, forgive me. They’re some of the leaders in the health/fitness world right now, and I’m just trying to make a point.

Tom Myers sees fascial lines everywhere. Well, that makes sense, he was a Rolfer for the first 20 years or so of his career, focused on adjusting people’s fascial structures.

Paul Chek sees a hodge-podge of things from different places. That makes sense. Paul was a boxer in the Army, trained boxers, worked as a massage therapist in a PT clinic, and is a Renaissance Man.

Gary Gray has people move in a “matrix.” He was trained as a physical therapist. His recommendations come from that training. Same with Gray Cook. (let’s get all of the gray’s out of the way, for more black-and-white). The Functional Movement Screen is one way (PT-based) to look at the human body.

Folks from Somatic disciplines will see what they’ve been trained to see.

None of these people are wrong. They all have something good to offer when it comes to working with the human body. And I think the lines are starting to blur, but there’s still a lot of confusion out there, and it’s disheartening.

The one thing that has kept me going in this industry for the past ten years has been a desire to get to the bottom of things. As mentioned, I’ve read about, studied and tried (on myself first, then on clients) almost every type of training out there.

What keeps pulling me back, though, is the body. The human body. And I should say, “the bodies,” because no two are alike. Just as our fingerprints are different, so too are the shape and size of our internal organs, of our muscles, our brains, our nerves, or bones. Everything about everyone you see is inherently different. The similarities are very general in nature.

Those generalities are helpful. They allow us to offer certain guidelines. Like “do 8-12 reps to gain muscle hypertrophy,” or “train in your lactic threshold to improve cardiovascular endurance.”

But those generalities can also be harmful. They are things that people know about because they watched enough individual human beings doing those skills. Science is about observation, not prescription. Science seeks to understand how things work. It doesn’t make rules. The “laws” of science are just things we’ve noticed that happen over and over again. And only in the ways that we’ve noticed them (there are many ways of noticing).

Science has been counting how many people have been capable of what, when, for about a hundred years now. It has a pretty good idea of how an “average” human being would work.

Given that, science can make certain recommendations. But they are recommendations based on an “average” person. Not you. Science doesn’t know you. It can’t. That’s not science’s job.

Yet we tend to think, in our culture, that science gives us answers. It doesn’t. It can only point in the direction that would be an answer for the most average human being. Not for you.

Looking at the answer that is correct for the most average human being, makes us lose our individuality. If we define ourselves by what is proper for something average, we become average. Non-unique.

People attribute success to all kinds of things. Nowadays, lots of hype is given to sports science, sports medicine, and supplementation. However, I don’t think those things amount to that much.

Starting a skill young, getting enjoyment from it, being encouraged in it, observing yourself well and having a good external observer, and continuing to challenge your limits – those are the things that make champions.

More importantly, though, they are qualities that support individuality. They are based on the individual, in the moment, their own history, their own abilities, their own likes/dislikes.

Listen to yourself. Be who you are. If you don’t know anymore, that’s okay. Most likely, it’s been wrung out of you at every turn – in favor of the most average person. Drop all of those externals, and start to look.

Shoes, Wine, Culture – and Exercise

Posted on February 13, 2009 by Josh

After reading Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers, I just can’t stop thinking about the impact of culture on our bodies, minds, and spirits. I’ve been wearing my Vibram FiveFingers just about all the time since I bought them. I’ve had a number of reactions/questions from people about them, that reveal a lot about our culture.

Most people look at them as a gag, or something silly. Very few ask “why would you wear those?” Most want to know what they’re made of, and, especially, if they’re “safe.” Well, there is a sole, though a little thin. So in San Francisco, where I live, they’re safer than actually going barefoot, but maybe not as “safe” as wearing a running shoe. I mean, a nail that might stop in the half-inch sole of a running shoe will most likely go through my foot if I step on it in the FiveFingers.

While the FiveFingers aren’t as “safe” in that way, they are much safer in another, much more important way. Wearing them forces me to be aware of my environment. This is a habit I’m happy to get into.

Aside from creating postural/muscular distortions, etc., shoes dull our minds to our environment. Ever hear someone who walks like an elephant? I’ve heard the lightest 95-pound women walk in high heels and sound like they must weigh 300 pounds. They’ve lost all sensitivity to the way they walk. It isn’t important to them. What is? Creating an illusion of height, having a big booty, and legginess, that’s what.

Okay Josh, but what does this have to do with wine, culture, and exercise?

I was speaking with one of my esteemed clients this morning about a wine bar she visited recently. The owner serves all wines in the same type of glass. He says that that’s how they do it in the Old Country, where he’s from. They drink out of small cylindrical glasses…or canning jars.

For those of you who don’t know, many wine connoisseurs believe that it is critical to drink different types of wine from differently-shaped glasses. The different shapes of the glasses are supposed to provide more or less oxygen to the wine, and allow for a more or less intense smelling experience. Some even go so far as to claim that the shape of the glass helps to determine the exact place on your tongue that the wine will hit first, and so, what your tasting experience will be like.

While all of this is undoubtedly true, the question is – so what? I have a few more questions about this concept of wine-specific glasses. What level of wine-tasting experience/ability does one need in order to be able to tell the difference? Is it important for the “novice drinker?” What about the quality of the wine? I mean, is there a perfectly-shaped glass out there for my $5 bottle of Chianti?

What does all of this mean? I think it’s a symptom of our culture. The “scientific-mindedness” of our culture says that there is a perfect way to do everything. It tells us what our perfect cholesterol and blood pressure (and any other) levels are. It tells us exactly how many calories we need to eat per day. It tells us how much sleep we need at night. And then it shows up in a fitness magazine, and tell us the perfect workout to get our “summer body.” It does the same thing that shoes, or specially-shaped wine glasses do – it cuts off our awareness of ourselves, and funnels our experience into its own narrow structure.

There is another symptom of our culture that is related to this – that is our culture’s commercial/capitalist view of material goods, success, or work. A few years ago Nike’s campaign was “It Must Be The Shoes.” Sorry, Nike, shoes did not make Michael Jordan great. Countless hours of practice, skill, and a few lucky breaks did that. The glass you use won’t change the wine inside.

Yet we’re supposed to believe that the shoes do make a difference (both for Jordan and for our 95-lb debutante); that the wine glass is critical to our experience of the wine; that a pill will make you skinny; that you need to be a size 0 to shop here; that your breasts are too small; that your cholesterol is too high; that vegetables you cook in the microwave inside the plastic bag they came in are really good for you…

I guess, if it makes you happy, it’s not that bad. As long as you’re willing to suffer the lower back pain and dowager’s hump from your years of high-heel use. And as long as you don’t mind the stress you feel when the chardonnay you ordered comes in a glass designed for a beaujolais, or the miserable side effects of that diet pill or cholesterol drug, or the suffocating of the natural world in a sea of plastic. Strange, they don’t show you those things in the adverts…

As I hint at above, the world of exercise is no different. There are a million certifications out there for personal trainers. They all have a different “scientific” approach to fitness. Most of those approaches are based on isolating certain principles of the human anatomy and physiology – muscle mass, explosiveness, maximal strength, leanness, cardiovascular efficiency, postural alignment, mobilization, etc. They’re based on programs and techniques used by athletes, or physical therapists, or body-workers. Very few, if any of them are based on you learning more about yourself and the world around you during your movement. Very few are truly aimed at you becoming a more complete individual. Most, instead, will do what the shoes and wine glass do – tell you where you’re wrong, and how to get in line.

I’m here to tell you that you can save all of that time, worry, and effort by doing less. Learn to enjoy the wine, regardless of the glass. Feel the grass under your feet again. Exercise without a plan or a goal, but instead, just to feel your body doing what it was made to do – to move. Find the joy in life, instead of in “the rules.”