Author: Leaman Ralph

Really sugar is shaky because it originates from a straight stick see the play is Granny yes Grandma plus new style luv MaryJane so listen (Granny Apple last years blue ribbon production winner AKA) I, I, I ain't on the right side of my house Jane something or the other is in my room: finally after an extermination Grannie speaks once more "let my (old man) Pacman step on it". See it is home on the range so solo as it be truity speaks got a problem it is your own. But alter scenario: Z/n time; narcotics I got that candy s.p.ee..d360 Bar itch its' and Mickey Mouse for the Sultan 7 1 4er well a hem a hem, it went early in the morning like a smack chanting sugar structure 7 -one 1 +eleven and 4 do an ate 'er 8 eight 'er? Well that aint nice. NARCO says do you know them numbers change (response) Yes it is a FiX they are MF's Ope yeah Ope Douglas is it. Surrounded by Alkaloid is both Mary and Grandma in an never ending circle of membership. French mandates declare put up their dukes... ZEN Pepsi can talk half Chocolate and your ole man Pacman down in Cuba posing as the worlds one and only Coffee Wizard "back 1:1" tis Coffee time... ||

Vagus Nerve Stimulation – 3 Tricks to Stop Anxiety Fast

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rJvWLN8rtE
Do you get stressed out and anxious? Do you find  yourself just overthinking things that are totally   out of your control? You know when I was growing  up, I had this dog named Zack and he was just as   anxious as me. He’d get all worked up and  shake and tremble. But with my dog I could   just scratch on his belly and every single  time within about a minute he would completely   calm down. And I thought wouldn’t it be great if  me and you, what if we had a technique like my   dog where we could just scratch our belly when  we’re feeling overwhelmed and stressed out and   calm ourselves down? Well, I later in life  learned there is a technique and it’s called   vagal nerve stimulation and I’ll show you how to  do it. Hey, my name is Lucas. I’m a yoga teacher   and in this short video I’ll show you some  ancient yoga techniques for stimulating your   vagus nerve to calm down, to de-stress, and  to find more peace and balance in your life.   Just a quick disclaimer: if you’re suffering from  generalized anxiety disorder, clinical depression,   any serious mental illness, please check with  your doctor. I’m a yoga teacher, I’ll just be   sharing with you things that I’ve picked up  over two decades of teaching and practicing   yoga. Let’s talk about the vagus nerve. What is  it? Well, your vagus nerve is your tenth cranial   nerve and the name vagus comes from the Latin “to  wander” like a vagabond. Your vagus nerve wanders   throughout your thoracic cavity and your nervous  system, of course. This is your body’s electrical   signals. And the vagus nerve innervates and  also gives signals to lots of the most important   functions of your body. Things like breathing,  and heart rate, and blood pressure, and orgasm, so   many different things. For the sake of this video  let’s think about the vagus nerve in relation to   your parasympathetic nervous system response.  In our body we have different nervous systems   but your autonomic nervous system this is, like  the name suggests, usually automatic. And there   are two main branches to your autonomic nervous  system. One is called your sympathetic nervous   system, that’s your fight or flight response.  This is for exercise, for busy work, through   physical exertion, through hunting. And then you  have your parasympathetic nervous system response,   and this is rest and digest, peace and love,  deep cognition, and those feelings of cool, calm,   and collectedness. The reason I’m sharing with  you this is because our vagus nerve is largely   responsible for our parasympathetic nervous system  response. Now our autonomic nervous system, in an   ideal world it’s automatic, and we have periods of  our day where we’re fight-or-flight, go, go, go,   clean the house, do the laundry, empty the inbox.  We have periods of our day when we’re resting and   digesting, and problem solving, and thinking, and  loving, and collected. In our modern life it’s not   really like that. In our modern life you open up  your phone and you’re bombarded by crisis news.   You go to work and you’re overwhelmed with more  work than a person could really handle in a week,   and many of us are managing family and work and  lifestyle stress that’s really through the roof,   not to mention things like air pollution, noise  pollution, processed food. It’s a lot to take in.   And so our autonomic nervous system it gets  dysregulated and many of us get stuck in a   fight-or-flight response. That’s where  at 11 o’clock at night you’re feeling   completely physically exhausted, but  you’re mentally wired. You’re wired,   but tired. I’m sure you know the feeling. Despite  all of your best efforts, you just can’t seem to   self-soothe, like my dog rubbing its belly. And  this is where your vagus nerve can be really,   really important. Now many of you know the feeling  of being wired but tired, but sometimes you’re not   really sure what’s going on. When we think about  your vagus nerve in relation to the self-soothing,   we often talk about vagal nerve tone. The  terminology can get a little bit confusing,   but if you think about this vagus nerve and you  think about its role in your rest and digest   response, when you have high vagal tone that  means your ability to self-soothe is really high.   That doesn’t mean you don’t get stressed out, that  doesn’t mean you don’t get anxious or worried,   you will, but it does mean that you’re able  to respond rather than react. That means   when somebody cuts you off in traffic, rather  than spinning out with anger for three hours,   within a couple of minutes you’re able to respond  and collect yourself. That doesn’t mean you never   get worried or anxious about the future, but it  does mean that you’re able to let it go at night,   put your head on the pillow and go to bed.  That would be indicative of high vagal tone.   Now the opposite is what a lot of us suffer from.  Low vagal tone. We’re not able to self-soothe.   What happens is somebody cuts you in line at the  grocery store and you’re angry and ruminating   about it for the rest of your day. What happens is  you get an angry email from a vendor at work and   again you just can’t let it go and it’s 11 o’clock  and you’re spinning, and spinning, and spinning.   This is low vagal tone. To check in with your  vagus nerve, to check in with your nervous system   in general, there’s a few techniques that can be  really helpful. The first one I’ll share with you   is called the nasal cycle test. Some of you have  done this with me before. It’s a very simple test,   doesn’t work for everyone, but it’s pretty  effective for most people. Take your index finger,   put it underneath your nose, and let’s  exhale three times through your nose.
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What we’re looking for is to identify which  nostril, right or left, is dominant. Which nostril   is the air flowing through more freely? Your right  nostril is indicative of a sympathetic nervous   system state. Your left nostril is indicative  of a parasympathetic state. Let’s check again.
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Right nostril, fight-or-flight. Left nostril, rest  and digest. Why is this relevant? Well it’s not   that fight-or-flight is bad and rest and digest  is good. There are times in our day when we’d   like to be stimulated with our sympathetic nervous  system, we need blood flow to our muscles and our   heart and our lungs, we need to get things done.  But there are other times when we need to be cool,   calm, and collected. So if it’s 11 o’clock  at night, like I mentioned before, and you’re   wired but tired, and you’re in your right nostril,  that’s indicative of low vagal tone. Let me give   you another test. Now this is a weird one. You  need your phone. So hold up your phone and put   on a selfie video. Stick out your tongue and  make a “ha” sound like this “haaaaa”. And now   take a look at the video. What you’re looking for  is in the back of your throat there’s this thing,   you’ve seen it before when you’re brushing your  teeth, it’s called your uvula. Your uvula is   this little piece of tissue that hangs down in  the back of your throat. And because your vagus   nerve innervates your soft palate, remember I told  you this nerve wanders all over the place, it also   wanders up into the back of your mouth, your soft  palate. When you have a vagal nerve dysregulation,   sometimes that uvula can actually be deviated, it  can be off to the side. This test is really easy   to do with a selfie video or just in the mirror in  the bathroom and it can give you an indication if   you’re in an imbalanced state. The third technique  is subjective but it works really well too. What   we’re looking to do is cultivate interoception,  understanding what’s going on inside your body,   not just what’s going on in the news, or in  your environment. And a simple way to do that   is to close your eyes and check in. How are you  feeling right now? Are you ruminating about things   that happened earlier today? Are you worried and  anxious about things in the future? Do you feel   like there’s a dark cloud of anxiety hovering  over your head? Or are you able to let things   go? This simple check-in, again, can be indicative  of high vagal tone if you can self-soothe,   or low vagal tone if you’re out of balance. OK,  now that we understand what the vagus nerve is,   its role in your parasympathetic nervous system,  now that we have a few techniques for checking in   with our nervous system and checking in with our  vagal tone status, let’s take a look at three,   simple, weird techniques for stimulating  your vagus nerve. Remember we’re   looking to do what I used to do with my  dog, scratch its belly to make it relax.   These techniques, there are lots of different  techniques for stimulating your vagus nerve,   these are weird ones you probably haven’t seen  them before, but they’re very, very effective and   they’re pretty well researched. The first one is a  yoga technique called Bhramari. It’s a humming bee   technique, where we make a low resonant humming  sound to oscillate and vibrate the back of our   throat. Your vagus nerve comes down either side  of your neck and it’s wrapped in a carotid sheath.   This is essentially like a plumbing tube that goes  down the side of your throat and inside that tube   you have your jugular vein, you have your carotid  artery, but you also have your vagus nerve.   And when we vibrate the back of your  throat it can massage that biggest nerve   and stimulate it, like the dog, and help  you to relax. Here’s what it looks like. Try to make a low, slow, resonant sound. It  looks kind of funny, sounds kind of funny. If   you’re embarrassed just go in the bathroom and  close the door. Let me show you one more time. I’d encourage you to do 10 rounds of Bhramari,   slow, low, oscillating exhales, that  will massage your vagus nerve. It also,   as an added bonus, it helps to release  nitric oxide in your perinasal sinuses,   which is a vasodilator and a bronchodilator.  Really helpful for your cardiovascular health,   but also helps to relax you as well. The next  practice is a pranayama practice, a yoga breathing   practice. Of all the different things you can  do to stimulate your vagus nerve, breathing   is probably the most effective and consistent.  This practice has a couple of important elements   and one of them is the chin lock. In yoga this is  called jalandhara bandha and it looks like this. We’ll use the chin lock at the top of the breath  to hold our breath, and when my chin is locked   in towards my chest it puts pressure on that  carotid sheath where my vagus nerve is and   again will help to massage the vagus nerve. The  second thing I’ll do is I’ll breathe very slowly   and deeply. In fact, I will exaggerate my  diaphragmatic breathing. Your vagus nerve   passes through the opening of the diaphragm, so  when you do exaggerated diaphragmatic breathing   it massages your vagus nerve. It  can help to relax you as well,   so we get kind of a double whammy effect.  It’s called triangle breathing because we   breathe in to the count of four one side of  the triangle, we’ll lock and hold for four,   we’ll release and exhale for four on the  way down. Let me show you how it works.   I’ll use a traditional pranayama mudra with my  right hand to control my nose and I’ll inhale. Close my nose, lock and hold. Lift my chin, exhale.
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I’ll show you one more time but without talking. So that’s triangle breathing. It’s four on  the way up, lock and hold, jalandhara bandha,   the chin lock for four, and then exhale for  four. I’d encourage you to do ten rounds   and see how you feel. It’s a very, very  effective practice. This last one is perhaps   the most unusual, the most strange. If you take  your index finger and your thumb and you make   kind of Pirates of the Caribbean earrings for  yourself by placing your index finger inside your   ears. And let’s massage by making small, gentle,  circular motions forward, one, two, three, four,   five. And now backwards, five, four, three, two,  one, very, very gentle. Let’s go forward, one,   two, three, four, five, and now backwards, five,  four, three, two, one. Remember I mentioned before   your vagus nerve is a vagabond, it goes all  throughout your thoracic cavity, it also goes   up into your neck, it also goes up near your  ears, your auricular branch, your ear branch   of the vagus nerve goes right up here. And so this  massage technique, it doesn’t work for everyone,   but for some people it works really well and the  reason I’m sharing it with you is because you   can do this one while you’re at work, you can do  this one while you’re driving, you can do this one   while you’re on a plane, and no one will even know  what’s happening. What we’re trying to do here,   what we’re focusing on, is stimulating your  vagus nerve to stimulate your parasympathetic   nervous system response to help you to manage  and mitigate the stresses of your life in a more   adaptive and a less reactive way. Great to have  you here. I hope you find that helpful. Here’s   what we covered. We talked about how our modern  lives just are a constant onslaught of stress,   mental, emotional, physical, all of the above.  We talked about how very often we get stuck   in our fight-or-flight response and we lack  the tools and the ability to automatically   self-soothe. So like my dog scratching its  belly we can use these techniques like Bhramari,   like triangle breathing, and like this ear  massage, to stimulate our vagus nerve. If you’re   interested in learning more about the vagus  nerve I’d really encourage you to check out   the work of Stephen Porges, also Deb Dana. Deb  Dana also teaches polyvagal theory. She’s been   a guest on the podcast, I’ll link up down in the  show notes. And lastly, Stanley Rosenberg’s work   on the vagus nerve is very, very helpful. I’ll  include references to all of these down below. If   you’d like more science-based yoga videos please  hit subscribe down below. Very helpful if you   hit that like button and if you have questions  I answer all the comments down below. You can   find my teaching schedule at yogabody.com and  I look forward to seeing you in the next video.
Source : Youtube

How To Reset A Dysregulated Nervous System (in under 60 seconds!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3wf2x2vCLk

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Foreign [Music] okay so you may have heard this term disregulated nervous system but what does that actually mean and most importantly what can you do about it hey I’m Ben Ahrens co-founder
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of re-origin® where we teach you how to reclaim your health by retraining your brain and in this video I’m going to share with you a pretty quick technique that you can use to essentially reset a nervous system that’s been dysregulated and do it in under 60 Seconds so first what
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is the nervous system well we have a central nervous system which consists of the brain and spinal cord and then we have a peripheral nervous system which is all of the nerve endings that Branch out throughout the body that stem off of the spinal cord in this case we’re
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really talking about the central nervous system as that is the main resource allocator and sort of control center for all of these other various organ cells and systems in the body that need to be coordinated in certain ways in order for us to feel at ease healthy and
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what we basically know as homeostasis now you may have heard that the nervous system has these two main branches the sympathetic and the parasympathetic now the sympathetic branch of the nervous system you can think of as this part of you that’s fight or flight
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that gets you energized and basically shunts all of these bodily resources like blood and oxygen and nutrients to the extremities to your muscles and limbs to mobilize you for action you’ve I’m sure heard the classic analogy of being chased by a saber-toothed tiger if
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we were back in Paleolithic times the sympathetic nervous system would become activated to help you avoid the threat so obviously this is a good thing we want to have this if we’re crossing a street and a car whizzes by or something happens we need to escape the area
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we need this fight-or-flight mechanism intact to get us out of danger now the nervous system never just wants to bring you up and leave you there it always wants to give you a Fail-Safe or a mechanism for coming back down to Baseline to that homeostasis and that we call the parasympathetic
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nervous system and a good way to remember that is by the word power you can think of the word parachute it’s meant to slow you down return you back to the ground sometimes however if we’ve been dealing with ongoing stress or chronic illness or anxiety for a
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long period of time the brain can effectively effectively learn to over protect the body it can even become somewhat sensitized to regular stimuli and things in the environment and set off that it’s like setting off a car alarm when in fact there’s no burglar present
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when that’s the case we say that the nervous system may be dysregulated meaning it’s throwing out these survival outputs based on neutral or benign inputs and just to be very clear here the sympathetic nervous system or that state of fight or flight is not bad I know
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there’s a lot of conversation that we want to avoid fight or flight or get out of that state of course what we want is to avoid spending the majority of our time there we want to spend the majority of our time in that parasympathetic that calm rest and digest state where those
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bodily resources can be freed up and made available for long-term healing building digestion and procreation so the dysregulation or the problem comes in where somewhere down the line our brain and nervous system may have gotten the message wrong and is now continuing
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to keep us in that fight or flight State beyond the period where it’s really necessary and what that feels like can be like elevated heart rate nervous can feel like I’m tired and wired you can feel like there’s things going on in the back of my mind that I I need
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to attend to such that if I don’t attend to them everything might collapse right some of it can be that subtle feeling of like did I leave the coffee pot on all of these types of things may be indicative of a disregulated nervous system or what we also refer to as
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limbic system dysfunction now the good news is that the same way that your brain learns to over protect you it can also learn to come back to Baseline and I have a separate video on this if you want to search limbic system dysfunction with reorgan that video will pop
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right up and we’ll put a link in the description below but for now what do you do when you notice that your nervous system may be dysregulated well the number one thing is to know that the brain and nervous system likes order whenever we feel like we’ve been thrown for a loop
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or we’ve blown a fuse is how some people refer to it it can feel like being thrown into chaos our mind our thoughts are ping-ponging around and it’s hard to get a handle on ourselves so think of it like a car that’s kind of careening down the highway and instead of sitting in
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the driver’s seat we’re just sitting in the back seat going along for the ride and what we want to do of course is climb our way back into the driver’s seat get our hands on the wheel and essentially come back into that feeling of Safety and Security where we know
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we have control so there’s a few simple ways to do that and one of them is deep breathing specifically taking a breath with a double inhale at the top and a long exhale at the bottom I’ll give you an example and I’ll explain why this is so effective so it looks like
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this once more [Applause] so you see I inhale for a count of three or four and then at the very top
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I sniff in a little bit more air and then let it go so a couple of things are happening here one we’re actually getting a little bit more oxygen into the lungs which we know oxygenates the blood and the brain and can help us to focus so kind of like in martial arts when
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they do this type of breathing it puts a little bit of adrenaline into the bloodstream and can help sharpen our sense of focus so our focus goes from ping-ponging all over the place to more centered now the second reason is that the brain really likes Rhythm especially
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when it feels like it’s been thrown into chaos one of the things that can help us climb back is following a rhythm and for this reason putting on a song or something that has a strong beat or a steady Melody can be great but even creating that rhythm with your breath
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with your body can give your brain something regular to latch onto so it doesn’t feel so out of control or out of sync now another layer you can add to this is bilateral stimulation so this can be done by snapping fingers of your opposite hands so going back and forth
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and what we’re doing here is we’re now engaging the left and right Hemisphere and giving your brain something concrete to focus on again it’s rhythmic it’s easy it’s kind of enjoyable it’s interesting and lastly we can bring our hands to meet in the middle and we can put
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this whole sequence together so I’m going to share with you now the technique that I like to use to quickly in 60 seconds or less get myself out of that fight or flight feeling disregulated State and back into calm homeostasis I’m just going to demonstrate it then you
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can practice this on your own and share in the comments below if you found this effective for me it consists of the first part is taking that long inhale with the the double inhale and long slow exhale followed by a snap with the right hand a snap with a left hand and
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a clap in the middle it looks like this bear with me here foreign [Applause] [Applause] in if you like once more
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there you go so that’s something that I would do for about a minute as you can tell it incorporates all of those different aspects of breathing double inhalation long exhale bilateral stimulation and Rhythm putting it all together in a kind of neat little sequence give it a try let
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me know how it worked for you if you have any questions or comments drop them in the comment section below and I really look forward to hearing from you foreign [Music]
Source : Youtube

How the body keeps the score on trauma | Bessel van der Kolk for Big Think+

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTefkqYQz8g
(text clicks) (pensive music) – Trauma is so ubiquitous that if you think you have never seen it, you have not looked.
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We meet people who fly off the handle. We meet people who shut down.
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We meet people who are very difficult. You know, it is a rare family that doesn’t have a drug addict, alcoholic, disturbed person.
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You know, one thing I like to say when I give a lecture, “Are there any normal people, who come from normal families, in the audience?” And sometimes one or two people raise their hands. I say, “Can I please come to your family for Thanksgiving? Because I’ve never been to a normal family.” My name is Bessel van der Kolk.
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I’m a psychiatrist, neuroscientist.
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I have been studying trauma for about 50 years now. I’ve treated a whole variety of different traumatized populations, see trauma in many different countries around the world, and I am the author of the book “The Body Keeps the Score.” (pensive music) It’s important for people to realize that not every mental health professional knows what we’re talking about here.
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The mainstream system of psychiatry-psychology is that there is something wrong with you and I need to fix you.
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That’s a very different attitude than dealing with trauma. Around the time that I first started to work for the VA, a group of us started to define what trauma is and started to define what happens to people. 1978 was the year, and the Vietnam War was over by about six or seven years. The very first day that I met Vietnam veterans, I was just blown away.
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They kept referring back to their dead comrades. Their hearts seemed to be with the people who were no longer around.
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They had a hard time loving their wives and girlfriends.
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They had a hard time being in any way meaningfully involved in the present.
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These were guys who were my age, who were smart and competent, but they clearly were just a shadow of their former self. And what was also really striking is they were sort of passive much of the time.
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And then people told them something that was disappointing, and they went from zero to 10 and blew up and became extremely angry. Something seemed to have happened to them that made it very hard for them to modulate their responses to their environment.
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My colleagues and I started to think about how is what these guys suffer from different from what other people who are in psychiatry textbooks suffer from? So I dug up a book that was written in 1941 by Abram Kardiner who had been working with World War soldiers.
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He wrote, “These guys suffer from a physioneurosis. Their bodies continue to re-experience that very terrible, frightening situation, and that event keeps coming back in terms of images, behaviors, and physical sensations.” So that became the core of our definition of PTSD. We write, “These people have been exposed to an extraordinary event that’s outside of normal human experience.” And in retrospect, that shows us how ignorant and narrow-minded we were because it turned out that this is not an unusual experience at all.
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Trauma is actually – unlike what we first thought – extremely common.
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One out of five women in America has a history of sexual molestation.
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Even a lot of men have histories of sexual molestation.
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One out of four kids get beaten very hard by their parents. One out of eight kids see physical fights between their parents.
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People usually think about the military when they talk about trauma, but when we started to work with inner city kids, the amount of trauma that these kids experienced was just unspeakable.
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The nature of trauma is that an experience enters into your ears, into your skin, into your eyes, and it goes down into a very primitive part of your brain that automatically interprets what’s going on. Is this dangerous or is this safe? An event becomes traumatic when there is nothing you can do to stave off the inevitable and your body starts automatically going to the state of fight/flight or collapse.
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The lingering effect of trauma is that you continue to react to mild stressors as if your life is in danger. And so you tend to become hyperreactive. Somebody may irritate you in the supermarket. You may develop road rage.
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You may have a difficult time putting up with misbehavior from your spouse or your kids.
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And most people actually are barely aware or not aware at all that their reactions that they’re having right now are actually rooted in experiences that they’ve had before.
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That event itself is over, but you continue to react to things as if you’re in danger. So the big challenge of treating trauma is how do we help people to live in bodies that feel fundamentally safe? The tradition in mental health is to dismiss the reality of people’s lives.
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For example, it’s only in the past few years that people are beginning to talk about the impact of poverty or the impact of racism or the impact of unemployment. And people have sort of been labeling people, “Oh, there something wrong with you. Let me fix you.” But if you go to a physician or a mental health practitioner who doesn’t understand that, they’re going to try to fix you with drugs or cognitive behavioral treatment to not do these crazy things anymore. It usually doesn’t work very well.
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What was very clear is that being in a relationship where people can hear you, where you can talk about how badly you feel, where you can talk about your guilt, and where you can start opening up where these feelings come from, how old these feelings are, and how you develop these feelings in response to particular things that happen to you, that was actually quite helpful because you need to really develop a deep sense of, “This is what happened to me.
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This is what I’m dealing with, and I need to take care of the wounds that I’m carrying inside of myself.” This issue of self-compassion and really knowing that your reactions are understandable and are rooted in you getting stuck in the past is a terribly important part of beginning to recover from trauma.
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Most of us are survivors of one thing or another, some much worse than others.
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And so if people say what do you wish your legacy were, I’d say, I want our society to know about trauma and to really do all the things that are necessary so that people who grow up under extreme adverse conditions can develop a brain and a mind that can help them to become full fledged members of society. That’s our big issue, and that’s the big challenge that we have.
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(pensive music)
Source : Youtube

ATOMIC HABITS – Tiny Changes that Create Remarkable Results – James Clear

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gdkBt9it84
[Music] it’s not that luck and Randomness and uncertainty  don’t play a role in life they do you know luck   luck is a part of all of our Lives to a certain  degree both good fortune and bad but by definition  
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you don’t have control over luck and your habits  also matter and I think that the reason they’re   so worthwhile uh to focus on and understand is  that they are the portion of your life that you   can influence that also determines your outcomes  it’s not just luck it’s not just habits but one  
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of those you have control over and so it makes  sense the only reasonable strategy is to focus on   what you can control if you spend all of your time  focusing on things you can’t control then you’re   just going to end up frustrated and so I think  habits are maybe the best lever for that talent  
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and genes uh they play a role and it’s important  you know people have natural predispositions to   things that make them better but what you find  is that nearly always when someone is a great   performer in a particular domain they are both  Well Suited so naturally talented or have some  
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kind of predisposition to that area and well  trained and so even if you are talented you   can’t succeed without having great habits to  to execute and to fully realize the potential   that you have your outcomes in life are often  a lagging measure of your habits you know like  
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a lot of the time people talk about you know I  want to have more money or I want to lose weight   or I want some kind of result but the truth is  your bank account is a lagging measure of your   financial habits your weight is a lagging measure  of your eating habits your knowledge is a lagging  
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measure of your learning and reading habits and  so it’s actually we think the thing that needs   to change is the bank account or the test score  or the number on the scale but actually the thing   that needs to change are the habits that precede  those outcomes every action you take is kind of  
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like a vote for the type of person you want to  become and if you can Master the right actions   if you can Master the right habits then you  can start to cast votes for this new identity   this desired person that you want to be and I  think that’s one of the reasons why small habits  
00:02:07
matter so much they don’t necessarily transform  your life overnight right right away like doing   one push-up does not transform your body but it  does cast a vote for being the type of person   who doesn’t miss workouts or meditating for one  minute might got not give you an immediate sense  
00:02:24
of calm in your life but it does cast a vote for  being a meditator the real goal is not to run a   marathon the goal is to become a runner goal is  not to write a book the goal is to become a writer   because once you’ve adopted that identity you’re  really not even pursuing Behavior change anymore  
00:02:40
you’re just kind of acting in alignment with  the type of person you already see yourself to   be it’s kind of like true Behavior changes really  identity change because once you’ve changed that   internal story it’s way easier to show up each  day you’re not even really motivating yourself  
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that much to do it you’re just like this is who  I am now there’s a sort of an a misalignment of   rewards that often happens with habits so there’s  an immediate outcome an immediate reward and then   an ultimate reward and for your bad habits one  reason bad habits stick so readily that they they  
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form so easily is because bad habits often the  immediate reward is favorable right like what’s   the immediate reward of eating a donut it’s kind  of great it’s sweet it’s sugary it tastes good   it’s only the ultimate reward if you repeat that  habit for six months or a year or two years that  
00:03:26
is unfavorable meanwhile good habits are often the  exact opposite the immediate reward of going to   the gym or going to the gym for like a week isn’t  really that great your body’s probably sore you   don’t have much to show for it your body looks the  same your weight hasn’t really changed but it’s if  
00:03:41
you stick to that for six months or a year or two  years then the ultimate reward is favorable and   so a lot of the balance or a lot of the challenge  of building good habits and Breaking Bad Ones is   figuring out how to pull the long-term costs of  your bad habit habits into the present moment so  
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you feel a little bit of that pain right now and  have a reason to avoid it and pull the long-term   rewards of your good habits into the present  moment so it feels good and you have a reason to   kind of make it through that like valley of death  in the beginning and stick with it while you’re  
00:04:11
waiting for those delayed rewards to accumulate  I think we could just summarize that whole uh   cognitive bias or mismatch uh misalignment of  rewards by saying the cost of your good habits   is in the present and the cost of your bad habits  is in the future and the fact that we prioritize  
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the present over the future ends up making a  lot of habit change difficult for that reason   if I was going to give some practical takeaways  uh I would say first thing that you can do is   probably optimize your environment because  sometimes that’s all you need to do so might  
00:04:43
as well start there and then maybe it’ll take  care of itself you know like I mentioned putting   the apples in a bowl on the counter that  was all I need to do and then the habit   of eating apples every day was done uh or  maybe uh you know putting your TV inside a  
00:04:53
wall unit or something maybe that’ll be enough  to reduce it or curb the The Habit unsubscribe   from the food blogs and now you’re not tempted  to eat as many cookies or something like that   um mobile phone super important yes right things  like that removing the the applications or like  
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you deleting Instagram off your phone well that  was enough now your Instagram habit is roughly   where you want it to be and you just look on  the desktop instead of on your phone and that   that was enough and now you’re you’re fixed  so environment design good place to start next  
00:05:21
thing that I would recommend is the two minute  Rule and scaling your habits down making them   as easy as possible basically just down scale  it to a point where you can answer the question   can I stick to this habit 98 of the time without  fail no matter what the conditions and if you have  
00:05:37
to say no to that then it’s probably too big to  start so you know pretty much every habit has   an entry point uh or the first thing that you try  to do just focus on mastering that and uh I think   that’s a good place to focus and then building  off of that the the last one that I recommend is  
00:05:56
um there’s this great story that I mentioned  in the book about Twyla Tharp the famous dance   choreographer and instructor and she trains  for still even now she trains for two hours   a day she’s you know 50s 60s she’s been  training for a long time dancing her whole  
00:06:09
career but she doesn’t actually focus on the  exercise habit The Habit that she focuses on   building is I put on my workout clothes and  my sweatshirt and I hail the cab on the side   of the street and if I’ve done that then I’ve  completed the habit and I think the the Insight  
00:06:25
that she realized is that habits are often  the entry point not the end point they’re   the cab not the gym they’re like an entrance  ramp to the bigger routines in your life and   if you can master that habit that like little  decisive moment that determines what happens  
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in the next chunk of time then the rest of it  kind of Falls in line like I have this moment   each morning where either I open up Evernote  and I start writing the next article I’m going   to work on or I go to ESPN to check the latest  sports news and what happens in the next hour  
00:06:55
is really determined by what happens in the  first like 30 seconds because if I go to ESPN   then the next hour is kind of shot but if I start  writing the article if I master that entry point   then I’m kind of speeding in the right direction  and the momentum carries me into the rest of the  
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task and I think that for me that’s a little bit  inspiring when it comes to building habits because   what you realize is that there’s actually not  that much to change there may be five or ten of   those little decisive moments those little entry  points throughout your day that determine whether  
00:07:25
the next chunk of time is productive or not and  if you can organize your environment or join   a community or restructure your habits so that  those entry points are mastered then you’re much   more likely to live a good productive day and so  I think that those three things environment design  
00:07:40
scale your habits down and master the entry points  those are some really good places to start foreign [Music] the information in this video comes from  the Fantastic book Atomic Habits by James Clear   this book is jam-packed with simple tools  that you can apply to change your habits and  
00:08:08
dramatically improve your life right now you can  listen to Atomic habits on Audible which has the   world’s largest library of audiobooks and makes it  incredibly easy to digest the material while you   are working exercising gardening or on the go I  use it all the time while drawing these animations  
00:08:25
let audible help you discover new ways to laugh  Be Inspired or be entertained new members can try   it free for 30 days visit audible.com after  skool or text after skool to 500-500 that’s   audible.com after skool or text after skool to  500 500 to try audible free for 30 days [Music]
Source : Youtube

Harvard negotiator explains how to argue | Dan Shapiro

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDj1OBG5Tpw
– I personally feel uncomfortable around conflict.
00:00:03
– Now, we’re here today to find out how to argue. – But conflict is useful.
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The question is, how do you deal with conflict the most effectively? Here we go.
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I am author of Negotiating the Nonnegotiable: How to Resolve Your Most Emotionally-Charged Conflicts.
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Have you found yourself in an argument that felt so frustrating, so at a core aggravating? – That’s the silliest opinion I’ve ever heard. – It felt just nonnegotiable? Well, congratulations, you’re a human being.
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We all experience conflict in our lives, and seeing what’s going on in our world today, my hunch is you were probably having at least one of these conflicts about politics.
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Our country has fallen into what I believe is a tribal trap. Anything that that other side says, I shall not believe, I shall not give any credibility to, and I’m gonna do everything I can to prove I’m right, you’re wrong, and to stifle you down to raise me up.
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The problem is not with the what, what are we arguing about, the problem is with the how.
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– How should we argue? – How can we be more effective? And what I’ve found is that there are three big barriers that we can actually overcome to have more effective conversations.
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The big things, one, identity, two, appreciation, and three, affiliation. Let’s start with identity.
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– Now, first of all, this is a hot issue. – Why do we get so emotional in these conflict situations? It often goes back to something deeper: identity. What are the core values, the core beliefs that are feeling threatened inside of you as you’re having that conversation with the other side? The moment your identity gets hooked in these conflicts, all of a sudden your emotions become Boy, this is a wholly different conflict now. It’s now your pride.
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Your sense of self is on the line.
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You need to know who you are and what you stand for. What are the values and beliefs that are driving me to fight for this stance on this issue? The more you understand who you are, the more you can try to get your purpose met and stay balanced, even when the other threatens those core values and beliefs.
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Each side wants to feel appreciated, and yet the last thing they wanna do is to appreciate the other side. That’s a problem.
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– Listen and understand.
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– When you’re in the midst of the conflict, don’t talk. Take the first 10 minutes.
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Consciously listen to the other side.
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What’s the value behind their perspective? What’s the logic, the rationale? Why do they hold this perspective on immigration or healthcare? Once you truly understand and see the value in their perspective, let them know I hear where you’re coming from, and you know what? That makes sense.
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There is nothing more in the world that we like than to feel appreciated.
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Recognize your power to appreciate them. Third, affiliation. What’s the emotional connection like between you and the other side? We typically approach these conflict situations as me versus you.
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My opinion on healthcare versus yours, my party’s perspectives on immigration versus yours. That’s just gonna leave the two of you like rams butting heads.
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– Find common ground. – Turn that other person from an adversary into a partner, so it’s no longer me versus you, but the two of us facing the same shared problem. Ask the other person, “Look, what’s your advice “on how we can get as many of our interests met “at the same time?” Change the nature of your conversation.
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Now, you put these three things into practice, it can transform your relationships.
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Imagine what would happen if we started a revolution, but a positive revolution of greater understanding, greater appreciation, greater affiliation, how we could transform politics, how we could transform our country and ultimately our world.
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I believe it’s possible, but it starts with each one of us.
Source : Youtube

When Life Hurts, Care Less About It | The Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGXRpbDuDGE
Once the most powerful man in the known world, Marcus Aurelius attempted to live virtuously, following Stoic principles.
00:00:07
Unlike many Roman Emperors, he did not indulge in the many pleasures he had access to, like getting drunk on wine and watching sadistic games in the Colosseum.
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Marcus Aurelius wanted to fulfill the task Fortune had given him, which was serving humanity. So, he cared deeply about fulfilling his purpose.
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But to do so, he had to care less about the things that aren’t worthy nor wise to care about.
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And these things are many.
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One of the essential concepts in Stoicism is the schism between things we control and do not control, which Epictetus’ Enchiridion explains so clearly. Most (if not all) things beyond our own actions are not up to us. Does that mean we should renounce the world? Not necessarily.
00:00:53
But the Stoics believed that we should be realistic about our limited influence on these things and that we create an unnecessary burden for ourselves if we aren’t. When life hurts, it often means that we care about things we have no control over, and by doing so, we let them control us and play with us like puppeteers.
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Then, we blame the puppeteers for pulling our strings while, in actuality, we allow them to do so.
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But if we stop caring about them, they lose power over us, and we’ll be undisturbed. For Marcus Aurelius, being unperturbed by things outside of his control allowed him to cope with the many responsibilities and challenges he faced as an emperor and to focus on the task he believed he was given by the gods. For Epictetus, it meant freedom.
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For other people, not being moved by external forces (or a selection of them) could be a way to focus on goals that do matter.
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And for others, it could simply be a path to a happy, carefree life. When life hurts, what are the things we should stop occupying ourselves with? And how do we do it? This video is an exploration and free interpretation of Marcus Aurelius’ philosophy on how to care less about things that aren’t worth caring about.
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By the way, you’ll find more Stoic wisdom in this book – Stoicism for Inner Peace – which contains my collected works on remaining calm and focused in these challenging times. You’ll find a link in the description.
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In his Meditations, Marcus Aurelius repeatedly differentiates between present, past, and future.
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In each category, the ancient Roman Emperor has valuable things to say about how we either care too much about them, or in the wrong ways, or about the wrong things.
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For clarity and structure, this essay is subdivided into these categories, starting with… The future As Seneca once stated: we suffer more in our imagination than in reality, implying that our thoughts are the source of our suffering.
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When it comes to the future, our imagination often goes wild, inventing countless scenarios of what could happen (but probably never will).
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Beforehand, we think of ways to handle possible outcomes while shivering because of the idea of ‘not knowing how the future will eventually play out.’ In some instances, what happens is what we anticipate.
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But in many other instances, Fortune surprises us, overwhelming us with events we couldn’t have anticipated.
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For example, we could have spent years preparing for a well-earned retirement only to receive, right before the first day of our twilight years, a deadly cancer diagnosis that gives us just a few more months to live.
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The possibility of such events leads many to continuous worry: the best could happen, but the worst as well! And what if the Third World War breaks out? What if I lose all my money? Such adverse outcomes are very well possible.
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But as long as they aren’t happening in the present, we cannot deal with them, as these events simply aren’t happening (at least, not yet): they only exist in our thoughts. The future only bothers us because we think about it, as it does not exist outside the mind.
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Marcus Aurelius wrote that it’s not the weight of the future pressing upon us but that of the present alone.
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It’s not the future that hurts us but how we deal with it in the present. The misery of the future happens in the present.
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And ironically, it’s not the future unfolding in the present, as when we encounter it, it’s already present.
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The misery of the future is our worrying about it now.
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When we care too much about future events, life eventually begins to hurt as we suffer them in our imagination, letting them dictate our present.
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So, what does Marcus Aurelius say about caring too much about the future? First, let’s consider the following quote: Never let the future disturb you.
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You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present. End quote.
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He pointed out that if he could cope with the present, he could also cope with the future. He told himself not to picture everything dreadful that could happen but instead stick with the situation at hand.
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When he focused on the present, he realized he could bear it.
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And if that’s the case, why wouldn’t he be able to handle what’s yet to come? This attitude resembles the idea of ‘Amor Fati,’ the love of fate, but then fortified with trust that we’ll be able to get through it. (2) The past Marcus Aurelius reminded himself of how fast existence passes by and disappears in the infinite beyond our grasp.
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The past, as the future, is a realm we cannot operate in.
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What’s gone is gone, and unless we invent the time machine, we can’t change anything about it.
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Marcus Aurelius stated, and I quote: Remember that man lives only in the present, in this fleeting instant; all the rest of his life is either past and gone, or not yet revealed.
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Short, therefore, is man’s life, and narrow is the corner of the earth wherein he dwells. End quote.
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Despite the narrowness of our lives, which only occurs in the present moment, we’re often overly occupied with these areas that lie outside of it and cannot be entered: the future and the past.
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Marcus Aurelius stated that the past “signifies as much as nothing and is at present indifferent.” It’s not that events that have happened in the past don’t influence the present or that we cannot learn from past events.
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It’s just that we cannot work with the past, as it’s out of our reach.
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And often, our memories of the past are scrambled, and ways to verify what exactly happened are limited.
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We rely on recollections from personal perspectives and different viewpoints of ourselves or others. So, the past is not only out of reach; our remembrance of it is most likely inaccurate.
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Yet, we keep caring about past events, often repeating them in our minds, re-experiencing the pain they caused us.
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Some believe that by thinking about the past, we may have some control over it. But that’s an illusion.
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The past is gone.
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All we try to control are our thoughts about something that’s been flushed away, never to return.
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“I wish I could have done this differently,” many people say. But they wish for the impossible.
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Nothing can be gained from such thoughts, as they evoke desires we can never fulfill. Instead of focusing on the past events in themselves, Marcus Aurelius focused on his reaction toward them.
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We cannot control past events.
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Most likely, we also couldn’t prevent them when they occurred in the present.
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But we can control how we position ourselves toward these events. Initially, we might consider the past unfortunate.
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We might have had difficult childhoods or experienced the ending of friendships or failed business ventures.
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But, according to Marcus Aurelius, the nature of these events isn’t so important; what counts is how we handle them. He stated: It’s unfortunate that this has happened. No.
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It’s fortunate that this has happened and I’ve remained unharmed by it—not shattered by the present or frightened of the future. It could have happened to anyone.
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But not everyone could have remained unharmed by it.
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Why treat the one as a misfortune rather than the other as fortunate? Can you really call something a misfortune that doesn’t violate human nature? Or do you think something that’s not against nature’s will can violate it? But you know what its will is.
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Does what’s happened keep you from acting with justice, generosity, self-control, sanity, prudence, honesty, humility, straightforwardness, and all the other qualities that allow a person’s nature to fulfill itself? End quote.
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Interestingly enough, Marcus Aurelius doesn’t discard the value of the past entirely. He believed we could learn from the past by looking at its rhythm: how things come and go, repeating themselves, so we can “extrapolate” the future. (3) The present Marcus Aurelius frequently mentions that the present moment is all we have; it’s the narrow field we’ve access to.
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From the present, we can stare into the endless abyss of the past and the impenetrable darkness of the future.
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Marcus Aurelius encouraged himself to stick with what was in his control: this moment. But even when we let go of the past and minimize our worries about the future, we may still very well care too much about things not worthy of concern: the things happening as we speak. We are often dissatisfied with the ways life plays out in the moment.
00:10:01
And when things don’t go as we wish, we tend to get angry, sad, or depressed.
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But according to Marcus Aurelius, being emotionally disturbed by what Fortune throws at us is pointless.
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How the world around us unfolds itself is not up to us; how we react to it is. Yet, we tend to get disturbed because we don’t like what’s happening or what we want to happen doesn’t happen.
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Marcus Aurelius stated that we shouldn’t fight what we’re compelled to.
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He compared people who struggle with Fortune to pigs, kicking and squealing when sacrificed: it’s no use, as we can’t avoid what the gods have in store.
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We cannot stop people from wanting to fight wars; we cannot stop natural disasters from happening; we cannot prevent our bodies from aging.
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In the same way, we cannot force the world to grant our wishes; we’re not guaranteed that the people we’re attracted to are also attracted to us, nor assured that all human beings have the same shots at life. It’s just not possible.
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Yet, we spend a lot of time and energy resisting what is and what we cannot change through any means in our arsenal.
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We’re angry because we don’t have what we want and sad because we’ve occurred what we don’t like, and thus, the present moment becomes a torture chamber in which we suffer at Fortune’s every whim.
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Or, reversely, we’re so enamored with the present moment that we cling to it.
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We’re afraid to lose what we have, so again, we let Fortune control us.
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But from our total entanglement in all around us, fleeting and ungovernable, we’re often unable to see what’s truly up to us: our choices, actions, and opinions. Marcus Aurelius saw the law of nature as our master; if we run from it or feel grief or anger about it, we’re nothing more than deserters and fugitives.
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We must accept the ways of nature, embrace them, and focus on dealing with them instead of wasting our energy being disgusted by or clinging to our circumstances. A way to accept the present he wrote in the 7th book of his meditations, arguing that we should focus on what we have, not what we lack, but with caution. I quote: Treat what you don’t have as nonexistent.
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Look at what you have, the things you value most, and think of how much you’d crave them if you didn’t have them. But be careful.
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Don’t feel such satisfaction that you start to overvalue them —that it would upset you to lose them. End quote.
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Nevertheless, accepting one’s circumstances can be difficult; especially when we face significant hardships and life gives us lemons repeatedly. Can’t we just have a break? But to Marcus Aurelius, adversity is not an excuse to behave like squealing, screaming pigs.
00:12:53
He argues it’s an opportunity to “practice virtue,” or in other words, to apply Stoic philosophy to one’s life.
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The art of living isn’t about how amazing and fortunate our external circumstances are, as they’re unreliable, weak, fickle, and not our own.
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It’s about how we face the events we meet; that’s what we should care about, according to the Stoics.
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As Marcus Aurelius stated: Because to me the present is a chance for the exercise of rational virtue—civic virtue—in short, the art that men share with gods.
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Both treat whatever happens as wholly natural; not novel or hard to deal with, but familiar and easily handled. Thank you for watching.
Source : Youtube

How to Think Clearly | The Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HekZLSZ2mpU

00:00:08
Almost everyone thinks they are a good thinker, but in reality, few people really are. A truly great thinker is constantly growing and evolving, so take a look around you: how many people do you see moving forward in life? How many people do you see solving problem after problem? And on the contrary, how many people do you see running in circles? How many people do you see still trying to solve the same problems they were working on years ago? The better you get at thinking, the better you get at solving problems. And good thinking begins with clarity.
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A clear thought is unambiguous, captures the essence of a thing, and is formulated logically. A clear thought can be communicated through a simple if-then statement.
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For example, if you turn on the tap, then you can get water. A clear thought leads to clear and intentional action.
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For example, the statement “if you turn on the tap, then you can get water” leads to clear action when you’re thirsty.
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And clear and intentional action leads to clear feedback.
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When you go to test the tap for water, you will immediately find out whether your original thought was true or not.
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Either water will come out or it won’t.
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And because clear feedback proves or disproves your thought, it helps improve your understanding of the world.
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Either you’ll find out that your understanding of the world is correct or incorrect, and finding out you are incorrect helps you move closer towards correctness.
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And the more correct your worldview is, the better you’ll be at solving problem. Let’s take a look at an example.
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Marcus Aurelius earned the titles of “the last of the Five Good Emperors of Rome” and “philosopher-king” by becoming a great leader.
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And he became a great leader by becoming a great thinker.
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And he became a great thinker by learning to think clearly.
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And he learned to think clearly by writing a private philosophy for himself which we now refer to as his _Meditations_.
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In his _Meditations_, Aurelius organizes his thoughts in a logical way, reflecting on the relationship between his actions and their effects.
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And if you want to think clearly and improve your ability to solve your own problems, it would be wise of you to do the same. Organize your thoughts.
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Reduce their ambiguity and make them clear by turning them into simple if-then statements. Clear logic leads to clear thoughts.
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Clear thoughts lead to clear and intentional action.
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Clear and intentional action leads to clear feedback. Clear feedback leads to an improved understanding of the world.
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And a clearer understanding of the world leads to a better ability to solve problems.
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For example, let me formulate a clear, logical thought: “if I publish a how-to video with a philosopher in the title, then it will get over 100 000 views”. That’s a clear thought with clear logic.
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That clear thought leads to clear action: I will write that video and publish it. Now when this video is published, I’ll get clear feedback.
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We’ll both find out if that thought is true.
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And once I find out whether that thought is true or false, my understanding of the world will improve.
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And by improving my understanding of the world, I’ll be better equipped to solve my problem of being a successful YouTuber.
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So in conclusion, good thinking begins with clear thinking, and clear thinking begins by turning your thoughts into unambiguous, logical statements.
Source : Youtube

The three secrets of resilient people | Lucy Hone | TEDxChristchurch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWH8N-BvhAw

00:00:17
So I’d like to start if I may, by asking you some questions. If you’ve ever lost someone you truly love, ever had your heart broken, ever struggled through an acrimonious divorce or being the victim of infidelity, please stand up. If standing up is inaccessible to you, you can put your hand up, please stay standing and keep your hand up there.
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If you’ve ever lived through a natural disaster, been bullied, or been made redundant, stand on up. If you’ve ever had a miscarriage, if you’ve ever had an abortion or struggled through infertility, please stand up. Finally, if you or anyone you love has had to cope with mental illness, dementia, some form of physical impairment or cope with suicide, please stand up. Look around you. Adversity doesn’t discriminate. If you are alive, you are going to have to or you’ve already had to deal with some tough times. Thank you. Everyone takes seat.
00:01:34
I started studying resilience research a decade ago at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. It was an amazing time to be there because the professors who trained me had just picked up the contract to train all 1.1 million American soldiers to be as mentally fit as they always have been physically fit. As you can imagine, you don’t get a much more skeptical, discerning audience than the American Drill Sergeants returning from Afghanistan. So for someone like me, whose main quest in life is trying to work out how we take the best of scientific findings out of academia and bring them to people in their everyday lives, it was a pretty inspiring place to be. I finished my studies in America and I returned home here to Christchurch to start my doctoral research. I’d just begun that study when the Christchurch earthquakes hit. So I put my research on hold and I started working with my home community to help them through that terrible post-quake period. I work with all sorts of organizations, from government departments to building companies and all sorts of community groups, teaching them the ways of thinking and acting that we know boost resilience. I thought that was my calling my moment to put all of that research to good use. But sadly, I was wrong, for my own true test came in 2014 on Queen’s Birthday weekend. We and two other families had decided to go down to Lake Ohau and bike. At the last minute, my beautiful twelve-year-old daughter Abby decided to hop in the car with her best friend Ella, also 12, and Ella’s mum Sally, a dear dear friend of mine.
00:03:41
On the way down as they traveled on Thompson’s track, a car sped through a stop sign, crashing into them and killing all three of them instantly.
00:03:55
In the blink of an eye, I find myself flung to the other side of the equation, waking up with a whole new identity. Instead of being the resilience expert, suddenly I’m the grieving mother, waking up not knowing who I am, trying to wrap my head around unthinkable news. My world smashed to smithereens. Suddenly I’m the one on the end of all this expert advice and I can tell you, I didn’t like what I heard one little bit. In the days after Abby died we were told we were now prime candidates for family estrangement, that we were likely to get divorced and we were at high risk of mental illness. Wow, I remember thinking, thanks for that. I thought my life was already pretty shit.
00:04:48
Leaflets describe the five stages of grief. Anger, bargaining, denial, depression, acceptance. Victim support arrived at our door and told us that we could expect to write off the next five years to grief. I know the leaflets and the resources meant well but in all of that advice they left us feeling like victims totally overwhelmed by the journey ahead and powerless to exert any influence over our grieving whatsoever.
00:05:19
I didn’t need to be told how bad things were. Believe me, I already knew things were truly terrible. What I needed most was hope. I needed a journey through all that anguish, pain, and longing. Most of all, I wanted to be an active participant in my grief process so I decided to turn my back on their advice and decided instead to conduct something of a self experiment. I’d done the research. I had the tools. I wanted to know how useful they would be to me now, in the face of such an enormous mountain to climb. Now I have to confess at this point I didn’t really know any of this was going to work. Parental bereavement is widely acknowledged as the hardest of losses to bear. But I can tell you now five years on what I already knew from the research, that you can rise up from adversity, that there are strategies that work, that it is utterly possible to make yourself think and act in certain ways that help you navigate tough times. There is a monumental body of research on how to do this stuff. Today I’m going to share three strategies with you. These are my go-to strategies that I relied upon and saved me in my darkest days. There are three strategies that underpin all of my work and they’re pretty readily available to us all. Anyone can learn them, you can learn them right here today.
00:07:08
So number one: resilient people get that shit happens. They know that suffering is part of of life. This doesn’t mean they actually welcome it in. They’re not actually delusional. But when the tough times come they seem to know that suffering is part of every human existence. And knowing this stops you from feeling discriminated against when the tough times come. Never once did I find myself thinking why me? In fact, I remember thinking why not me? Terrible things happen and to you just like they do everybody else. That’s your life now. Time to sink or swim. The real tragedy is that not enough of us seem to know this any longer. We seem to live in an age where we’re entitled to a perfect life where shiny happy photos on Instagram are the norm when actually as you all demonstrated at the start of my talk, the very opposite is true. Number two: resilient people are really good at choosing carefully where they select their attention. They have a habit of realistically appraising situations and managing to focus on the things that they can change and somehow accept the things that they can’t.
00:08:43
This is a vital, learnable skill for resilience.
00:08:50
As humans, we are really good at noticing threats and weaknesses. We are hard-wired for that negative – we really, really good at noticing them. Negative emotions stick to us like velcro, whereas positive emotions and experiences seem to bounce off like teflon. Being wired in this way is actually really good for us and served us well from an evolutionary perspective. So imagine for a moment I’m a cave woman and I’m coming out of my cave in the morning and there’s a saber-toothed tiger on one side and a beautiful rainbow on the other. It kind of pays for my survival for me to notice this tiger. The problem is we now live in an era where we are constantly bombarded by threats all day long. And our poor brains treat every single one of those threats as though they were a tiger. Our threat focus, our stress response is permanently dialed up. Resilient people don’t diminish the negative – but they also have worked out a way of tuning into the good. One day when doubts were threatening to overwhelm me I distinctly remember thinking “No, you do not get to get swallowed up by this. You have to survive. You’ve got so much to live for. Choose life not death. Don’t lose what you have to what you have lost.” In psychology, we call this benefit-finding. In my brave new world it involved trying to find things to be grateful for.
00:10:41
At least our wee girl hadn’t died of some terrible, long, drawn-out illness. She died suddenly, instantly, sparing us and her that pain. We had a huge amount of social support from family and friends to help us through. And most of all, we still had two beautiful boys to live for, who needed us now and deserve to have as normal a life as we could possibly give them. Being able to switch the focus of your attention to also include the good has been shown by science to be a really powerful strategy. So in 2005, Marty Seligman and colleagues conducted an experiment and they asked people to think of three good things that had happened to them each day. What they found over the six months of this study was that those people showed higher levels of gratitude, higher levels of happiness, and less depression over the course of the six-month study. When you’re going through grief, you might need a reminder, or you might need permission to feel grateful.
00:11:54
In our kitchen, we’ve got a bright pink neon poster that reminds us to accept the good. In the American Army, they framed it a little differently. They talked to the army about hunting the good stuff. Find the language that works for you, but whatever you do, make an intentional, deliberate, ongoing effort to tune into what’s good in your world.
00:12:22
Number three: resilient people ask themselves “Is what I’m doing helping or harming me?” This is a question that’s used a lot in good therapy and boy is it powerful.
00:12:35
This was my go-to question in the days after the girls died. I would ask it again and again. Should I go to the trial and see the driver? Would that help me or would it harm me? Well, that was a no-brainer me. I chose to stay away but Trevor, my husband, decided to meet with the driver at a later time. Late at night I’d find myself sometimes pouring over old photos of Abby, getting more and more upset. I’d ask myself “Really? Is this helping you or is it harming you? Put away the photos, go to bed for the night, be kind to yourself.” This question can be applied to so many different contexts. Is the way you’re thinking and acting, helping or harming you in your bid to get that promotion, to pass that exam, to recover from a heart attack, so many different ways. I write a lot about resilience and over the years, this one strategy has prompted more positive feedback than any other. I get scores of letters and emails and things from all over the place of people saying what a huge impact it’s had on their lives, whether it is forgiving family transgressions, arguments from Christmases past, and whether it is just trolling through social media, whether it is asking yourself whether you really need that extra glass of wine.
00:14:09
Asking yourself whether what you’re doing, the way you’re thinking, the way you’re acting is helping or harming you puts you back in the driver’s seat. It gives you some control over your decision making. Three strategies. Pretty simple.
00:14:31
They’re readily available to us all, anytime, anywhere. They don’t require rocket science. Resilience isn’t some fixed trait. It’s not that some people have it and some people don’t. It’s actually requires very ordinary processes. Just the willingness to give them a go. I think we all have moments in life where our life path splits and the journey we thought we were going down veers off to some terrible direction that we never anticipated and we certainly didn’t want. It happened to me.
00:15:15
It was awful beyond imagining. If you ever find yourselves in a situation where you think “There’s no way I’m coming back from this,” I urge you to lean into these strategies and think again. I won’t pretend that thinking this way is easy.
00:15:38
And it doesn’t remove all the pain. But if I’ve learned anything over the last five years, it is that thinking this way really does help. More than anything. It has shown me that it is possible to live and grieve at the same time. And for that, I will always be grateful. Thank you.
Source : Youtube

Decisions and deliberations: how schizophrenia is more than psychosis | James Kesby | TEDxUQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5CZiuT-g3M
Transcriber: Frank Cao Reviewer: Trina Oršić What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word “schizophrenia”? Psychosis? Recreational drug use? Danger, perhaps? These are commonly the focus when we think of psychotic disorders like schizophrenia due to both fact and myth.
00:00:31
And although our dialogue is much more open about mental illness these days, severe mental illnesses like schizophrenia still carry a stigma. As a behavioral neuroscientist, I spent most of my adult life trying to understand how the brain ends up manifesting the behavioral syndromes we see in disorders like schizophrenia. Our brain, this little thing up here has as many neurons as there are stars in the galaxy. Each neuron has thousands of synapses, the little mouths used to talk to each other.
00:01:06
Somewhere near 100 trillion in our brain. If you took one second to count each one, you’d be there for over 30 million years.
00:01:17
So understanding how the brain functions is a truly daunting task.
00:01:21
But it’s really important if we’re going to find ways to prevent and alleviate the problems associated with schizophrenia, one of the most severe mental illnesses a person can suffer from.
00:01:34
So let’s talk some facts and myths about schizophrenia. One: Psychosis is a key feature of schizophrenia. Fact. Psychosis is actually a group of symptoms and they tend to surface in early adulthood when trying to figure out who we are and what we want to do.
00:01:56
Hallucinations are common, often hearing things that aren’t real.
00:02:01
These can be narrative, “James is putting his hand up, he’s putting his hand down.” Or they can be more disturbing, “What are you doing here? The audience hates you!” Delusions are another symptom.
00:02:13
Believing in something that’s clearly not true.
00:02:15
And this is unshakable, regardless of the evidence presented against it. These are often laced with a level of paranoia: “The government’s put a chip in my brain to read my thoughts.” But psychosis affects other disorders too, including psychotic bipolar disorder and neurodegenerative diseases. Or you can experience psychosis after taking drugs like methamphetamine.
00:02:42
Two: Psychosis makes people angry and violent.
00:02:47
Myth, the classic Hollywood trope is that every serial killer has schizophrenia. This somehow explains all their scary and villainous behavior.
00:03:00
Now, views of psychotic disorders are shaped by these representations. But more likely, you could be having a chat with someone, and have no idea they’ve been diagnosed with schizophrenia.
00:03:11
One thing I love about my job is I get to do exactly that, and talk to a lot of people with schizophrenia.
00:03:16
Anything from chatting about music to talking about the symptoms the lived experience they have. It’s a real privilege.
00:03:25
Around 1% of the general population will be diagnosed with a psychotic disorder in their lifetime. So let’s just unpack that a little.
00:03:34
Here in Queensland, Australia’s third largest state, the average public high school has 1200 students.
00:03:41
Statistically speaking, 12 students or half a class from each high school will suffer from a psychotic disorder in their lifetime. That’s not a trivial number, but it just shows how common these disorders are in the community.
00:04:00
Three: People with schizophrenia are always psychotic. Myth.
00:04:06
A psychotic episode represents the most severe end of the psychosis spectrum, and it’s a terrible event in someone’s life.
00:04:15
But the severity of these symptoms differ between people and over time. With treatment and interventions, most people with schizophrenia go through their daily lives confident they won’t have a psychotic episode.
00:04:28
So we’ve cleared up a few common misconceptions regarding schizophrenia. You’ll notice I focused mainly on psychosis. But what if I told you that even though it’s the most obvious behavioral aspect of the disorder, it’s not the biggest problem? Many people think that if we can stop the psychosis, we can cure the disorder.
00:04:52
Unfortunately, cognitive problems such as issues with planning, memory and decision making are considered to be the biggest burden for these individuals.
00:05:02
And to be clear, we’re not talking big problems.
00:05:05
It’s the little things that most of us take for granted every day. The calculations our brains make in the background that we use to progress through the days, weeks, and years of our lives. What does this mean for someone with schizophrenia when their psychotic symptoms are under control? To explore this, I’m going to take you on a theoretical tour of decision making.
00:05:28
So cognition and decision making are fundamental to our ability to build and maintain a successful life in this complex world. Think of all the decisions you might make in a day.
00:05:41
If you’re like me, probably counting on your fingers.
00:05:44
I had toast for breakfast, I finished that project at work. (Chuckles) I caught a late bus home. Three decisions.
00:05:54
Now, we all know that’s a gross underestimation.
00:05:58
Throughout each day, our brain is seamlessly making thousands, if not millions, of small calculations and decisions without us even realizing it. Many of these decisions take very little thought or none at all because the outcomes are really clear.
00:06:13
I’ve experienced them thousands of times before. Take looking before you cross the road.
00:06:19
You don’t think about it but you’re aiming to avoid being hit by a car. That would be a bad outcome.
00:06:25
Now our brain navigates this with ease for the most part. Different areas acting in collaboration, using our past experiences to predict the future. But sometimes outcomes aren’t as clear. Say you’re driving to an appointment and you get stuck in traffic.
00:06:44
You have two lanes and you’re worried you might be late. First, you have to consider the speed of both lanes.
00:06:51
Is one traveling faster? Should you switch into that lane? Now, some people will switch as soon as a lane changes speed, trying to save every last second of their trip. Other people are content in their lane, thinking that overall the difference between the two is negligible.
00:07:07
It’s the situation that determines which of those strategies is actually best. The switching strategy is best when a lane is stopped up ahead. You get into the faster lane earlier.
00:07:20
But we’ve all seen someone change up ahead and then we slowly pass them by. (Laughter) The key is to avoid the noise and figure out which lane is travelling faster overall. And as easy as that can be to see after the fact, “Ah,I should’ve changed lanes back there,” in real time, that can be quite difficult. In Behavioral Neuroscience, we design tasks to see how people make these choices.
00:07:49
Rather than traffic, we use pictures, and we can provide money, rewards for good choices and losses for poor choices. Now we’re not mean, but we do like to trick people. So we’ll throw in some misleading feedback and maybe change the rules without people realizing.
00:08:07
But it’s all in the name of trying to imitate real life scenarios. So let’s make some decisions together.
00:08:16
And don’t worry, I’m not going to pick on anyone.
00:08:20
On the screen, you’ll see two shapes: a triangle and a circle. I want you all to choose one.
00:08:29
Okay, so who chose the triangle? Hands up. And who chose the circle？ Okay. So we expect about 50-50, right? We don’t know anything about this. It makes sense.
00:08:41
So for those of you who chose the triangle, I tell you, “Good job! You’ve earned 50 cents.” (Laughter) Okay. Now, I want you to make that same choice again. Who here chooses the triangle this time? So you see, some people chose the triangle first. They want some money.
00:09:07
So they chose the triangle again.
00:09:10
Now, I’m really interested in choices like this as my research and research from other scientists have shown that people with schizophrenia are less likely to choose the same picture after a reward than someone without schizophrenia.
00:09:22
So in this example, someone with schizophrenia is slightly more likely to choose the circle after that first triangle. Let’s up the ante a little.
00:09:32
We still know very little about these shapes. Maybe the circle won a dollar.
00:09:38
Let’s say I offer you a bonus 20 dollars if you can tell me which of the two shapes will win the most of the next 100 trials, the way I’ve coded it to be.
00:09:49
But the catch, if you choose the wrong one, you have to give me $100. Who here is confident picking the triangle? (Laughter) Not many takers. It’s a real shame, those odds heavily favor me. What if I let you peek into the future? I’ll show you what you’ll get if you chose each shape five times.
00:10:18
So for the triangle, you can see one on that first attempt, but then lost the next four.
00:10:26
And the circle, Ahh, the circle. You won four times and only lost once.
00:10:35
I’m feeling generous, so I’m going to offer you that same deal as before. Who here would now pick the circle? Okay, so we’ve got some more takers. See, that’s not good for me, but I think it shows how our past experiences helped shape our certainty what a future choice will give us in return.
00:10:57
Research has shown that people with schizophrenia use less information to make these same choices as people without schizophrenia. And we call this “jumping to conclusions”. It’s really interesting as this could also shape some of the psychotic symptoms we see, the formation of inaccurate associations.
00:11:15
When some of us walk into a room, we see a flashing light up in the corner. We think nothing of it.
00:11:19
It’s a fire alarm or something insignificant.
00:11:22
But someone with schizophrenia might jump to the conclusion that it’s actually a video tracking monitoring system following their whereabouts.
00:11:31
My research is interested in how the decision making changes we see and psychotic symptoms intertwine.
00:11:38
Can we reduce psychotic symptoms by improving decision making in people with schizophrenia? I think we can, but it’s going to take time to figure that out. So these are just a few examples.
00:11:52
And it’s important to know that no matter what test you did, I could not tell if you had schizophrenia.
00:11:59
Many people with schizophrenia perform above average, and many people without schizophrenia perform below average. When we look at the group differences, we see this shift towards different decision making in people with schizophrenia.
00:12:15
Our brains are constantly comparing our current and past outcomes to try and predict what a future choice will give us in return.
00:12:23
And when you’re making millions of micro decisions every day, small differences add up.
00:12:30
They make things like maintaining productivity at work more difficult for people with schizophrenia.
00:12:36
Even the simple traffic analogy from before.
00:12:38
Poor planning for delays means potentially more rushing or more being late to work.
00:12:45
These cognitive changes in schizophrenia and other severe mental illnesses currently have no treatments, so they are ever present in these people’s lives.
00:12:55
That’s the end of our short Behavioral Neuroscience tour. I hope you’ve learned a few things.
00:12:59
Psychosis is only one part of schizophrenia and maybe not the most problematic.
00:13:05
But also our brain is amazing at navigating this complex world without us even realizing it. So next time you get a chance, I ask you to slow down and focus on all the little decisions you might make without realizing.
00:13:20
Next time you’re getting ready for work or school, or any outing for that matter, take stock of each little decision and choice and all the outcomes that are possible. When you realize you’re running late, you’ll appreciate how seamlessly our brain does this in the background, and you’ll understand how difficult it could be for some people and make the advantageous choice less often or not as quickly. We should all appreciate that people with schizophrenia and other severe mental illnesses suffer from symptoms that make their daily lives more challenging.
00:13:57
By understanding how our brain makes decisions and how that’s affected in disorders like schizophrenia.
00:14:04
I trust the neuroscience community can and will find ways to overcome these problems. And I look forward to working towards this goal with my research.
00:14:14
But in the meantime, we can all be more mindful, accommodating and supportive of the different challenges people face.
00:14:21
We can all help to reduce the stigma associated with mental illness. (Applause)
Source : Youtube

Psychosis or Spiritual Awakening: Phil Borges at TEDxUMKC

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFtsHf1lVI4
Translator: Mika Fukasawa Reviewer: Maria K. Good evening.
00:00:16
One of the things I love about visiting indigenous cultures is it lets me step back in time and see how we all lived centuries ago. In doing that, I’ve noticed so many things, things that we’ve gained and things that we’ve lost. One of the things I’ve really noticed is the fact that our relationships are much different. First of all, our relationship to the land.
00:00:44
In indigenous cultures there is no grocery store, in tribal cultures, especially, no utility districts, no water districts, no fast food restaurants.
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Nothing stands between them and their survival, other than their own ingenuity and their own knowledge of the earth. They have a very intimate knowledge of the earth.
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It’s always astonished me.
00:01:11
This one Hawaiian woman, who was at the beach and I met her, she saw this crab flipping out sand out of the hole. She said, “Look, sand is going to the North. There will be a storm coming tomorrow.” Sure enough, the storm, it shows up tomorrow.
00:01:28
They’re more or less the PhDs of their place on the planet. The other relationship that I’ve noticed is so tight is their relationship to each other.
00:01:40
Again, they don’t have the institutions.
00:01:42
They don’t have social security.
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They don’t have an IRA or a 401(k) plan. They don’t have elder-care facilities.
00:01:53
They completely depend on each other for their survival, again. That produces a real tightness.
00:02:02
I’ve noticed women at a well in Africa for instance. They’re all sitting around, joking and talking. They’re nursing their babies.
00:02:11
The woman that needs to go to get the water will take her baby and pass it to another woman. She’ll start nursing it.
00:02:17
That woman will see her goat run off, and she’ll pass the baby to a third woman. She’ll start nursing it.
00:02:22
These kids are kind of even raised communally.
00:02:27
They live in extended families, and that brings a real tightness. The other relationship that I want to talk about tonight is the relationship to spirit. It’s a very strong one. This is Malik and her great grand daughter Yasmina.
00:02:47
They spend all their time together, 14 hours a day working in the garden.
00:02:53
I’ve seen this in Africa, Asia, South America.
00:02:57
I ask, “Why are these two people that are so different, together all the time? There is a big age difference.” They said, “No, no. You don’t understand.
00:03:07
Yasmina is just coming out of the spirit world, and Malik is just about to go back into the spirit world. So they really do have the most in common.” They literally pray to the spirits of the forests, the mountains, the rivers. They put spirits in everything.
00:03:27
Their ancestors’ spirits are so important to them. In the beginning, I sort of looked at this as superstition, uneducated, naive thinking. Over the last 30 years, I’ve slowly changed, and I want to talk to you a little bit about how that change came about. About 25 years ago, I was doing a project in Tibet on the human rights issues there, and I had the opportunity to go and meet the medium that channels the oracle of Tibet, the Dalai Lama’s oracle.
00:04:09
It took place in this little monastery. There were about 60 monks in there; they led the medium in, sat him down, put this big hat on his head, a very heavy hat. His face turned red.
00:04:24
The monks started chanting and beating their drums. He kind of went into this trance, and he started talking in a real high-pitched voice. The monks started writing down everything he was saying, and then, after about five minutes of that, he fainted, and they literally had to carry him out of the room. I just watched this, and I was wondering, “Is this a performance? Did he have a heart attack?” But two days later, I was able to interview the medium. His name is Thupten, he was 30 years old at the time. He is 50 now.
00:05:05
He said that he didn’t remember a thing that he said when he was in this trance.
00:05:11
He felt very weak right afterwards, for a day afterwards. So I said, “Well, how did you become the medium? How did you get this job?” And he said, “You know, when I was younger, I had started hearing these voices.
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I started feeling very ill, and I was very confused, and in fact, I thought I was dying at one point.
00:05:36
An older monk came to me and said, ‘Hey, you’ve got a gift.’ He taught me how to go in and out of trance; he nurtured me; he stayed with me for the whole year.” Now he’s the Dalai Lama’s Oracle, the Oracle of Tibet. Two years later, I was doing a project for Amnesty International up in the Northern part of Kenya, in the Samburu area, and I was taking pictures of these people.
00:06:03
My guide turned to me and said, “You know, their predictor has told them that you were coming to take pictures of them.” I didn’t think too much about that because there I was taking pictures of them.
00:06:16
He went on to say, “They also said that she said that you would hide from them when you took their picture.” I said, “No, I don’t hide, I use very short lenses. I’m usually right in front [of] the person when I take their portrait.” That night I was home, cleaning my lenses, packing my bags, and I realized, yeah, I’ve brought my new camera that I’ve never used before.
00:06:43
It’s this Panoramic camera.
00:06:45
And this is the way I’ve got to focus that, in total darkness. All of a sudden I thought, “Well, that’s a coincidence.” My assistant said, “That’s amazing.” It was just something we kind of filed away, but at that point, I decided what I wanted to do is start actually seeking out these people that go into altered states of consciousness in order to heal or predict for their tribes. That’s what I started doing.
00:07:17
By the way, here is the woman that was the predictor. I did take her picture with a panoramic camera. Her name is Sukulen.
00:07:26
She is 37 years old – or was, at the time – five kids.
00:07:30
She had the very same story as the medium of the Dalai Lama. When she was 12 years old, she started having visual hallucinations. She started feeling sick and dizzy. Her grandmother came and said, “You know, you’ve got a talent,” and she nurtured her through it. I literally went around the world and doing my human rights work and started finding these shamans. The way I would find them – they never introduce themselves as shaman.
00:08:03
You would never know who they were unless you ask the community members, “Who is the healer here? Who goes into trance?” And they would tell me and lead me to the person.
00:08:11
So this is Nomage. She is a Mongolian shaman. I’ll just show you some of the 40 I interviewed.
00:08:18
This is Morgan Yazzie, he is a Navaho medicine man. This is Lindsa.
00:08:27
She is a shaman in Eastern Siberia. Mengatohue, a shaman in the Romani tribe, in the Amazon in Ecuador.
00:08:42
One of the last shamans I interviewed was right on the Pakistan-Afghan border. There is a group of animists there, called the Kalash.
00:08:51
There’s only 3,000 of them left, and they are surrounded by Islam. They hold on to their animistic beliefs.
00:08:59
They are very interesting-looking. They are blond-haired, blue-eyed.
00:09:03
They say they are the remnants of Alexander the Great’s army. They are very fun-loving, they make their own wine, but I went there because I was told that there was a six-year-old boy that was being initiated to be a shaman, and I wanted to see him.
00:09:20
Everybody I had interviewed up to that point had been a shaman for years.
00:09:24
I wanted to find somebody in that process of initiation.
00:09:27
When I got there, I found: no, he wasn’t six years old, he was a 60-year-old goat herder up in the mountains. (Laughter) So that’s the shaman rumor mill.
00:09:37
But anyway, I had taken my 16-year-old son with me as an assistant.
00:09:44
We had to hike for about a day and a half to get up to the top of the mountain where Janduli Kahn was herding his goats. He was the shaman for the Kalash people. And again, I asked the same questions.
00:09:58
“How did you get into this? What do you do for your tribe?” He had the same story of hallucinations, being mentored by an older shaman.
00:10:07
The shamans, in different cultures, induce their trance in different ways. By the way, shamanism is a universal practice. It’s the world’s oldest spiritual practice. There is a lot of common denominators, but the way they go into trance can differ.
00:10:25
In Mongolia, they beat a drum next to their ear.
00:10:29
In South America, they take psycho-active plants, like Ayahuasca. In Pakistan, they use something that is quite unique: they burn juniper branches, they slaughter an animal, pour the blood over the burning branches, and then the shaman inhales the smoke to go into trance.
00:10:48
Here I am trying to talk him out of doing a ceremony for me because I don’t want him to kill one of his animals. He said, “No, I have to do it.
00:10:57
My spirits are telling me I have to do it. You’ve come so far.” So the next morning, his sons started the fire, started burning the juniper branches. He started praying to the mountain spirits, the spirits of the forests.
00:11:13
They slaughtered the animal, and he started inhaling the smoke, and then he went into trance.
00:11:18
He stayed into trance for about five or 10 minutes, and when he came out, he was very silent, he hardly said anything. He was very talkative before he went into trance. And I thought, “Well, this is kind of strange.” I asked one of his sons through my interpreter, “What happened to him? What did he say? Did he see anything?” And the son just said, “The only thing he said is, ‘Your journey is going to be extremely difficult, but you are going to be safe.’ That’s all he said.” The next day my son and I took off.
00:11:55
We left his camp and walked down the mountain and headed up further into the Hindu Kush Mountains. We were out in the middle of nowhere, we had a jeep, and my son started getting sick.
00:12:08
He evidently picked up a bug in the water around Janduli Kahn’s camp. First day went by, he couldn’t keep anything down.
00:12:16
Second day, third day, fourth day. Couldn’t keep anything down for four days. He was getting so weak he could hardly walk. I was totally freaked out.
00:12:27
We pulled into this little village, and we happened to run into a doctor from Islamabad, who was visiting his mother, and he happened to have a bag of glucose and saline and an IV drip and some oral rehydration salts, and we brought Dax around.
00:12:48
To me it was like a miracle that the whole thing happened. I’ll tell you a little bit about the shamans. First of all, this is the common things with shamanism; it’s not always true, but in general.
00:13:04
They typically are identified with what they called the “Call.” And the “Call,” [for] the ones I interviewed, almost all of them, it was a psychological crisis.
00:13:15
Secondly, they almost always had a mentor. Somebody that has been through it, and has come out the other end of this psychological crisis, and can show them the ropes, and show them, and tell them, and comfort them along the way. And then they have to face what they call the initiation. It’s almost always this death.
00:13:39
A death of their old self and a rebirth of a new self. And this rebirth – I don’t know how to explain that. It’s like they …
00:13:53
take on much more of an elevated consciousness. They expand their consciousness.
00:13:59
Their awareness of who they are expands. They expand their circle of compassion; I guess that’d be the quickest way to say it.
00:14:09
As such, they learn to go into the spirit world, where they believe the spirit world informs our world of reality here. That’s where things really happen.
00:14:23
They go there, get the information, come back to help people. And then, after they’ve learned their trade, they begin their life of service, either a healer or a seer, a priest, and they typically do this for no money.
00:14:41
This is something they just do, it’s just something added to what they do. In the beginning many of them resist it because like Janduli Kahn, he’s still a goat herder, he still has to do that.
00:14:52
But on top of that, he is the healer for the community. Sukulen has five kids that she has to take care of.
00:14:58
On top of that, she is the healer of her community. So it is a lot of extra work.
00:15:05
So it happened – I put that whole project aside because I didn’t know what to do with it. I didn’t know what to say about it.
00:15:12
I felt I was getting in over my head, into the world of consciousness, and spirits, and all this. But a year and a half ago, I met a young kid who had one of these psychological breaks.
00:15:23
I just want to introduce you to him, just a moment here. (Video) Adam: “It was just this total shattering, and my mind just opened, and I started thinking of all these different things. And in that sense, it was beautiful. I found it was – How I found my – The first time I’d ever experienced a real connection to the universe, where I really felt like a part of this.
00:15:48
That I was this, this was me. It was just like … incredible! And so simple – Yeah, I mean, absolutely amazing.
00:15:56
And then I kept going, and then I went way too far. And then it got scary.
00:16:04
It was just kind of like a panic. I don’t know.
00:16:07
‘Put some medication in this kid and just hope for the best,’ but it – I don’t know if it hurt or helped.
00:16:15
It was at the point where I was being diagnosed, I think, for side effects of medications.
00:16:19
Like, there was a point where I was taking 15 pills in a day.
00:16:24
And I felt like a lab rat, and the side effects were just awful. Absolutely awful.
00:16:33
Vomiting all day, I couldn’t leave my house for so long, from just these awful anxiety attacks, and the thought of interacting with people would make me sick to my stomach. It was just so much. I still don’t know what was the side effect and what was my mind.” Phil Borges: Adam was on drugs, on pharmaceuticals, for about four years. He was having a such a hard time that he decided to go cold turkey, cut them off, and did a Vipassana meditation retreat. And those of you who don’t know what that is: They come in various forms, but this one was 10 days silent meditation, 10 hours a day. It’s very rigorous.
00:17:19
I did one just to see what it was about.
00:17:21
And it was one of the hardest things I’ve done. He was able to stabilize himself.
00:17:28
He got a job at Whole Foods Market, which he hadn’t been able to do before. He started having what he called “synchronicities,” where he’d have a thought and the thing would happen. And by the way, he is very psychic, he has very strong healing potentials.
00:17:44
But he has no confidence in what’s happening to him, there’s no one that’s been able to conceptualize it for him. Anyway, he had these, and he decided he needed to go back and do another Vipassana. Well, they learned that he had this history of mental illness, and they sent him home.
00:18:04
So the one avenue that he could have gotten relief from cut him off because of the stigma of his mental illness. Adam isn’t alone in this by the way.
00:18:19
In having bipolar [disorder], schizophrenia, depression, any of these heavy psychological episodes. Here’s some statistics from the National Institute of Mental Health.
00:18:32
One in five of us will suffer a psychological crisis in our lifetime. By the way, that’s a rising figure right now.
00:18:41
The other thing is, one in 20 will become disabled because of it. Another interesting fact about this phenomenon is 50% happens before the age of 14.
00:18:54
By the way, most of the shamans, it happened either in their adolescence or in their teenage years.
00:18:59
Seventy five percent before the age of 24.
00:19:02
So it’s more or less a phenomenon of young people. Here is the difference in cultures that I noticed. The shaman’s advantage.
00:19:15
One, they have a cultural context.
00:19:19
The physiological crisis, although it’s difficult, it’s believed to be – they put it in a positive light. It’s something the person is going to come out of and be stronger in the end.
00:19:31
Have more abilities in the end.
00:19:34
The other thing that’s a big advantage is it’s not stigmatized.
00:19:39
If you have the stamp of mental illness on your forehead, or on your dossier, or whatever, you are not going to get a job. It’s not like having diabetes or even cancer. It’s one of the most stigmatized things that can happen to the person in our culture.
00:20:01
And especially, if some kid is having these visions, and he’s not knowing what’s happening to him, and the doctor comes and says, “You’re broken and you are this,” you can imagine how that adds to the problem. The other thing they have an advantage of, they have a mentor, they have somebody that has been through this process, that can take and hold their hand and say, “Listen, I know what this is all about, and this is how you manage it.” And the third thing that’s a huge advantage is they have a community that buys into what they’ve gone through. Not only that, they have an outlet for their talents.
00:20:40
Many of these people have specific talents that the normal person doesn’t have. So, that’s what is an advantage if you’re in one of these indigenous communities. I don’t know if you heard the recent TED Talk by a woman by the name of Eleanor Longden. Has anybody heard that one? It went viral. She did it a couple of months ago. This is a young woman, when she went to college she started hearing voices. She said, “My nightmare began when I told my roommate I was hearing voices.” Her roommate said, “You’d better see a doctor.” So she went [and] saw the doctor.
00:21:18
The doctor said, “You’d better see a psychiatrist.” She went to see the psychiatrist.
00:21:22
The psychiatrist gave her the label “schizophrenia,” put her on medications.
00:21:27
By the way, these medications suppress the symptoms, they don’t get at the root [of the] problem.
00:21:33
She said, from that point on, she just spiraled down.
00:21:37
You ought to listen to her video on how she brought herself out of that. She eventually got to the point where she said, “I realized that those voices were helping me resolve this old childhood trauma of sexual molestation.” But it took her and a couple of friends that believed in her, to get her out of that hole that she had gone down in because of that stigma.
00:22:03
So, if you do have one of these issues, if one of us does have one of these issues, we go to somebody.
00:22:10
The common method of treatment is to suppress the symptoms with pharmaceuticals. So, with Adam, we’ve been following among, and so I’ve been posting this on our blog over the last year and a half, how he’s doing and what’s going on.
00:22:24
By the way, he’s homeless now, like so many end up.
00:22:27
And we’ve started interviewing professionals that take a whole different approach to this problem.
00:22:35
And in fact, some of the psychiatrists, psychologists we’ve interviewed, and we’re posting them as well, claim many of these instances, not all of them, but many of them, as spiritual emergencies. And they believe, just like I do now, if you hold these people, if you don’t stigmatize them, if you don’t scare them with the label, and tell them they’re broken, and if you give them a place of support, that the psyche itself is self-healing.
00:23:10
It will take them, and it will eventually work out whatever is going on with them, and they’ll typically come out at a higher level of awareness and consciousness then when they went into the problem in the first place. There are many people that believe – we’ve interviewed cultural historians, cultural anthropologists, they believe that our species right now is in crisis.
00:23:39
You look at the environment, you look at the economic system, you look at what’s happening with our continual wars, and we’re being asked to raise our consciousness to a whole different level.
00:23:57
I just want to end with this statement from one of our most famous scientists, and I love this statement, he says, I’ll just quote: “We human beings tend to experience ourselves as something separate from the whole we call the Universe. This is actually an optical delusion of our consciousness. It’s like a prison for us.
00:24:25
Our task is to free ourselves from this prison by [widening] our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of Nature in its beauty.
00:24:37
This striving for such an achievement is a path to our liberation and the only true foundation of our inner peace and security.” That was Albert Einstein. Thank you very much.
00:24:51
(Applause)
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