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Archive for January, 2014

Introduction to Integrative Medicine

Posted in from the consulting room, from the living room, from the viewing room, life, science, video on January 11, 2014| Leave a Comment »

I’m often asked what I and my colleagues actually do at the NHS Centre for Integrative Care.

Here’s a 20 minute video where I explain what Integrative Medicine is. This is based on a talk I’m giving to GPs next week so the intended audience is health care professionals but I thought anybody might find it interesting or thought provoking…..I hope it is!

In essence I think Integrative Medicine is a holistic approach to health making, and my understanding of health and illness is framed by the lens of complexity science, or, specifically, through the lens of the Complex Adaptive System.

 

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View from on high

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, movies, perception, personal growth, philosophy, photography, psychology on January 10, 2014| 5 Comments »

jupiter over ben ledi

 

When I looked out of the window this morning I saw a bright star shining over Ben Ledi.

My Starwalk app tells me that what I was looking at was Jupiter, and it was sitting smack in the middle of the constellation Gemini. It was too light to see any of the constellation but you can see how easy it was to see Jupiter.

There’s a saying in French about taking a view from on high (vue d’en haut). The meaning is pretty clear. When you think what it is like to look out over a land or seascape from a cliff or hilltop, you get the idea. In other words, its about taking an overview, seeing the bigger picture, seeing things in their context.

Iain McGilchrist describes how the left and right hemispheres approach the world differently. The left tends to focus in on things. It’s like using a telescope or microscope. It’s great for seeing the details and analysing them. It’s a kind of digital approach. The right however gets first claim on all the information flowing into the brain. It takes the overview, the more holistic, analogue approach. In some ways, you could say our right hemisphere is well designed to allow the view from on high.

The French take a variation of the view from on high, and include the concept in the expanded one of a “view from Sirius”. Sirius is the brightest star in the sky (the planets might look brighter but they aren’t actually stars).In 1752, Voltaire wrote a story entitled “Micromegas” about a giant from Sirius traveling across the universe and coming to Earth to have a look around. Not only does the view from Sirius include the idea of an overview, but it also captures the idea of everything being seen or experienced for the first time. When you travel to a new land, the everyday reality can seem strange and new, and stimulates your curiosity.

So, when I look out and I see the bright shining Jupiter over Ben Ledi, it sets off my thoughts about taking the “view from Sirius” and takes me into the day with a sense of wonder, of open-ness, and of being able to see the bigger pictures.

Taking a look from higher than Ben Ledi, but not as high as Jupiter or Sirius shows us just how thin the biosphere is…..its a pretty thin layer in the scheme of things!

biosphere

 

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Happiness

Posted in from the consulting room, from the living room, health, life, personal growth, psychology on January 9, 2014| 2 Comments »

I’ve read a lot of books about happiness, but this little article on the Huffington Post really caught my attention with this simple and useful infographic. Click through on the link to the Huffington Post in that sentence to find the links to the studies backing the creation of this image.

2013_HappinessMatrix

Nice, huh?

Good to see how you can easily boost happiness simply by smiling (warning: the smiles have to be authentic – artificial smiles don’t work!) And I am really struck by the power of gratitude, and by performing acts of kindness.

So, how about just taking those three, and trying them out for the next few days. Start a gratitude journal and write in once a day, maybe preferably at night before bedtime……just list, and write a sentence or two about, whatever you experienced today that you feel grateful for, or write about who you are grateful to, and why. Set out each day to perform at least one act of kindness, or, even better, see if you can speak kindly and act kindly all day long. Finally, play some music which makes you smile, or look at some photos which make you smile, or delve into your memory banks for moments in your life which made you smile.

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Active care in dementia

Posted in from the consulting room, health, psychology on January 8, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Here’s an interesting article about patients with dementia.

It focuses on interaction. This particular piece gives examples from America where Catholic and other Christian care homes introduced regular services of prayers and hymns, and showed how these old traditions connected with the patients when other forms of care didn’t. I don’t think this means that Catholic or other religious people have, or can have, a better experience of dementia than others, but I do think it highlights yet again the need for carers to be non-judgemental. Where a person has strong religious beliefs, engaging with them through their lens of understanding can really bring about surprising changes.

But what I especially like about this article is how it highlights three things – the need for compassion, the need to remember that all human beings are individuals, and the need to enter into active engaged relationships.

Like anything else in medicine, helping someone suffering from dementia requires understanding, compassion, and dedication. Care needs to be tailored to each patient’s personality, life history, and stage in the development of the disease. When this is done well, new possibilities open up. What might have been an atmosphere of regret and hopelessness centered on the disease’s relentless progress can be transformed into an upbeat outlook that celebrates abilities, rejoices in moments of recognition, and looks to the future with hope.

and

We simply do not know what is transpiring in the mind of another person. It is all too easy to place all the blame on the dementia patient, lamenting and even despising their disability. But were we to do so, we would be letting ourselves off the hook a bit too soon. Awareness, understanding, and affection are not merely the outputs of some inner dynamo. They also emerge in response to what others do, say, and feel. In some cases, unresponsiveness may say less about a patient’s disability than a failure on our part to offer something worth responding to.

 

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Family horizons

Posted in from the living room, life on January 7, 2014| Leave a Comment »

IMG_0656

 

Most days, most of us are focused on present needs and desires. We are good at knowing when we are hungry, thirsty or tired, and knowing what we’d like to do about that.

If we have children, our horizons are pushed out a bit – when we think about where to live, once we have children (or are considering having children), we think ahead to the next few years of their lives. What are the local schools like? What is there for them to do as they grow older? What kind of environment is this for children to grow up in?

That got me wondering about how many generations ahead we ever think.

Think about life from the perspective of a 25 year old this year, 2014. Let’s assume a reasonable life expectancy of 75 years. So when your horizon is yourself, at 25, you have about 50 years of living to consider, or till about 2064. Many of the decisions you take about how you are going to live now will affect how you will be living over the next 50 years. Now, what if you have children this year, when you are 25? If they have the same life expectancy as you, then they’ll live for the next 75 years, until 2089. You might well consider how the choices you make now may influence the kind of world which they will live in until 2089.

Take another step and think  about them also having children when they are 25 years old, (that would be in 2039) and life expectancy remaining at 75, then those grandchildren will live till 2114….a hundred years from now.

This is starting to get a little shocking, but let’s push it, a not unimaginable distance further and consider your grandchildren’s children. Sticking with the same pattern, your grandchildren’s children will be living in the world of 2139, and their children to the year 2164.

Yikes! Your grandchildren’s grandchildren will live in the world of 2164 (if you are 25 this year and having your first child).

That’s a hundred and fifty years from now.

Between 1850 and 2000 the world population increased from about 1 billion, to 7 billion people. The growth rate is not even – it’s exponential. In that same period we have consumed probably about 80% of the world’s non-renewable resources, and that consumption is increasing exponentially too.

WorldPop-7billion-102811

What kind of world will your grandchildren’s grandchildren be living in?

Does thinking about these increasingly distant family horizons influence any of the choices you might make this year?

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Stoner’s view of love

Posted in books, from the living room, from the reading room, life, personal growth on January 6, 2014| 3 Comments »

Did you read “Stoner”, by John Williams last year? It’s been quite a phenomenon in the UK, having sold precious few copies in the author’s lifetime, then suddenly becoming a bestseller with rave reviews here this year.

I liked it. A lot. But let me just share with you a couple of wee passages which describe how the main character, Stoner, comes to think of love as he gets older. Firstly,

…he began to know it was neither a state of grace nor an illusion; he saw it as a human act of becoming, a condition that was invented and modified moment by moment and day by day, by the will and the intelligence and the heart

and, also

….that the person one loves at first is not the person one loves at last, and that love is not an end but a process through which one person attempts to know another.

Well, I’m sure if you’re a regular reader here, you’ll know why that first passage grabbed me – “a human act of becoming….” and I especially like the thought that love changes all the time, and that the will, the intelligence and the heart are all involved in creating that change.

Then, well, how wonderful….to describe love as a “process through which one person attempts to know another”. I do think that is so often forgotten….that love isn’t just a feeling or a state, but it is an ongoing act of trying to know another. Funnily enough, that makes me think of my verb of the week – attend, particularly, with regard to the latin origin of ‘attend’ being about a reaching or stretching out towards….

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The A – Z of Becoming. A for Attend

Posted in from the living room, life, personal growth, photography on January 5, 2014| 10 Comments »

Over the course of the next six months, I’m going to share with you some thoughts on 26 verbs….one per week. Each verb is an action. Each of these actions will support your process of becoming as fully YOU as you can be. I believe that’s why we are here – to develop and manifest the uniqueness of who we are. Every single one of us is an utterly unique expression of the universe. There is no other, has been no other, will be no other, expression of the universe with the same uniqueness as YOU.

This is a life process, and its a process of becoming. It’s not a process with a fixed end point, and we never quite know how it’s all going to go but I’m working from the core belief that every day I can contribute to this process of becoming by choosing how to live, by choosing which actions to take.

So, let’s start with A.

My A verb is ATTEND.

Let’s think about some of the meanings of the verb, attend.

  1. to be present at
  2. to go with, or accompany
  3. to take care of
  4. to wait upon
  5. to watch over, or look after
  6. to listen to, or give heed to
  7. to wait for or expect.

The English word, attend, comes from the 14th century French, “attendre”, meaning “to direct one’s mind or energies”, “to wait for, pay attention”, and from the Latin, “attendere” which literally means “to stretch toward” (or “give heed to”)

So, what are you choosing to be present with today? What, or who, are you choosing to be with, to accompany?

What, or who, are you taking care of, looking after, listening to, or giving heed to?

What are you waiting for, or what do you expect of today? What are you “stretching toward”, reaching out to?

Attending to something involves paying it attention, and it seems to be that whatever we pay attention to gets bigger. The more we think about a particular issue, the more that issue looms large in our minds. Attending to, in that sense, is a bit like a magnifying glass.
Attend

Lotus root and yen

So, when we attend to something, or someone, today, whether that be our thoughts or feelings, or objects, people, activities……whatever it is will grow.

What do we want to grow? Which thoughts, which feelings? Who, or what, do we want to nurture?

I’m only going to share one verb a week, and I’m going to explore that verb every day for a week (that doesn’t mean I’ll write about it here every day, mind you!) I invite you to share this with me. I’m inviting you to explore these verbs with me and share as much of your exploration as you want, in whatever way you want…..comments, your own blog, Facebook, tweets, instagrams…..whatever works for you.

This is an invitation to participate in becoming more truly, more fully YOU.

 

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Has 2013 really gone?

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, personal growth, photography on January 4, 2014| 3 Comments »

Where did 2013 go?
Where does the past go?
Does it go anywhere?
Is time like this long road?

DSC_0167.JPG

Was 2013 like a car, making its way along time’s highway? And disappearing into the far distance as we look?

That’s one way to look at it, but then look at this tree….

DSC_0062

The very shape of the tree tells a story, contains a history, reveals its past. Doesn’t it?

So what if time isn’t like a straight line, with the future speeding towards us, and the past soon behind us and out of sight?

What if time is cumulative? What if the past doesn’t go away anywhere, but instead continues to exist underneath the present?

Doesn’t the present emerge from an ongoing interaction between what’s possible, what’s happened already, and what else is happening now?

Think of 2013 as still here, underneath today, and out of which 2014 will grow. After all, if 2013 wasn’t still here, then what would 2014 emerge from? Nothingness?

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January – the month of Janus, God of gateways and doorways

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, personal growth, photography on January 3, 2014| 2 Comments »

Japanese Garden

January is named after Janus – who looks both forwards and backwards. Janus is often represented over a gateway or doorway, and it strikes me that January is a kind of doorway. We say goodbye to the previous year, looking back, reflecting, remembering, and using that recall to inform our hopes, ideas, and even plans for the coming year.
I don’t think this is something to do just on the 1st, or even in the first few days (by the way, I read a study today which said 26% of men give up diets after ONE DAY!), but that we could take a theme for this month – make this the theme of gateways, of doorways, a moment to pause, reflect and dream – both of those entwined, letting reflections stimulate dreams, and dreams stimulate reflections.
This is different from making resolutions (even sustainable ones!).
Why not get yourself a notebook, or create a new document on your computer or tablet, and allow yourself to record your daily reflections and dreams for the month? See what emerges…..

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Sustainable resolutions

Posted in from the living room, life, personal growth on January 2, 2014| 5 Comments »

through the round window

I don’t know if you’ll be making any resolutions in the next few days, but I know a lot of people do.

One of my problems with resolutions is that they are often either so vague that they quickly dissipate, or so reduced (eg to lose x pounds), that once they are achieved, the old patterns and habits and quickly re-emerge (eg regains x pounds!)

What I’ve been thinking about these last few days is “sustainable resolutions”.

I started with thinking that a sustainable resolution is one you keep – and what that really means is creating new habits or patterns of living – but whilst that might be a useful thing to consider, I’ve gone on to thinking about “sustainable resolutions” as ones which contribute to sustainability more broadly.

What I mean is that is seems clear we (the human race) are not on a sustainable path. It’s just not possible to continuously increase the number of people in the world consuming more and more of the finite resources of the planet. It’s just not possible to continuously increase the number of people in the world consuming more and more drugs every year. It’s just not possible to continuously increase the “growth” of the economies of every country in the world every year if “growth” is shorthand for growing consumption or growing material wealth.

Marc Halévy’s writings have made that ever so clear to me over the course of last year. In one of his books, “Prospective 2015 – 2025” he asks us to think about the work we do, or the activities we carry out, and to ask ourselves three questions. I’ve adapted them slightly to produce “sustainable resolutions”

Will this activity/work/habit

  1. be excellent for my personal health – physically, mentally and spiritually?
  2. add to the wellbeing and quality of life of other human beings?
  3. be excellent for Nature, Life and the Earth?

Only if the answer to ALL three of those questions is positive, is the resolution likely to be a “sustainable resolution” – one which contributes to a better quality of daily life for the individual, whilst also contributing to a better daily life now and into the future for Life on Earth.

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