Posted in from the living room, from the reading room, psychology, tagged flow on July 18, 2011| Leave a Comment »
These views suggest that we are not merely receptacles but channels of energy. Life and power is not so much contained in us, it courses through us. Man’s might is not to be measured by the stagnant water of the well, but by the limitless supply from the clouds of heaven…Whether we are to look upon this impulse as cosmic energy, as a life force, or what may be its relation to the Divine immanence in Nature, it is for other investigators to say.
Hadfield (writing in The Psychology of Power)
Posted in from the consulting room, from the reading room, health, personal growth, psychology on June 15, 2011| Leave a Comment »
I recently came across this summary of Victoria Satir‘s approach to health and personal growth….
The Five Freedoms – Using Our Senses—Virginia Satir
Satir keenly observed that many adults learned to deny certain senses from childhood, that is, to deny what they hear, see, taste, smell and touch/feel.
The Five Freedoms are:
The freedom to see and hear what is here, instead of what “should” be, was, or will be.
The freedom to say what you feel and think, instead of what you “should” feel and think.
The freedom to feel what you feel, instead of what you “ought” to feel.
The freedom to ask for what you want, instead of always waiting for permission.
The freedom to take risks on you own behalf, instead of choosing to be only “secure”.
Satir’s Therapeutic Beliefs and Assumptions
Satir’s therapeutic model rested on the following assumptions, that:
The major goal in life is to become own choice makers, agents and architects of our life and relationships
All human beings at heart are beings of love and intelligence who seek to grow, express their creativity, intelligence, and basic goodness; need to be validated, connect, and find own inner treasure.
We are all manifestations of the same life energy and intelligence.
Change is possible. Believe it.
We cannot change past events, only the effects they have on us today.
Appreciating and accepting the past increases our ability to manage present
The most challenging tasks in life are relational. Simultaneously, relational tasks are the only avenue for growth. All challenges in life are relational.
We have choices, disempowering and empowering ones, especially in terms of responding to stress.
All efforts to produce change need to focus on health and possibilities (not pathology).
.People connect on similarities and grow on resolving differences.
Most people choose familiarity over comfort, especially in times of stress.
No task in life is more difficult as the role of parent. Parents do the best they can do given time the resources they “see” available to them at any given time.
Next to our role as parents, no task in life is more challenging. We all have the internal resources we need to access successfully and to grow.
Parents often repeat own familiar patterns, even if dysfunctional.
Posted in from the reading room, health, life, psychology on May 2, 2011| Leave a Comment »
I came across an interesting article in the Japan Times on Saturday. The heading was “Relax…it might mean you live longer”. Most of the article was about the emerging research work from the Samatha project about the health benefits of meditation.
It seems almost every week there’s a new story about the health benefits of meditation, but the work this article focused on was the effects on “telomeres”. Telomeres shorten every time a cell divides, and, ultimately the cell dies, so it’s thought that protecting the telomeres from this effect can reduce, or slow, the aging process. The key enzyme responsible for telomere health is called “telomerase”.
It appears that people participating in meditation retreats have significantly higher amounts of telomerase than other people (in control groups). However, the headline of the article is slightly misleading – meditation is an active process. It’s not a form of “relaxation”.
You might like to know that it’s not only meditation which can improve the health of the telomeres – exercise, stress management and writing journals can all do the same. In fact –
in increased sense of control and purpose in life are more important than the meditation itself. Doing something we love, whether meditating or gardening, may protect us from stress and maybe help us to live longer. “The news from this paper is the profound impact of having the opportunity to live your life in a way that you find meaningful.”
I particularly liked the concluding paragraph of the article –
But researchers warn that in our modern, work-obsessed society we are increasingly living on autopilot, reacting blindly to tweets and emails instead of taking the time to think about what really matters. If we don’t give our minds a break from that treadmill, the physical effects can be scarily real.
Aha! Moving from zombies to heroes, huh?!
Posted in from the consulting room, health, neuroscience, psychology, tagged meditation on April 6, 2011| 2 Comments »
Here’s another study showing how pain can be reduced without using drugs.
In this particular study, the researchers had the subjects do one 20 minute focused attention meditation session daily for 4 days. The subjects rated the painful stimulus applied as “57 percent less unpleasant and 40 percent less intense”.
This is interesting for two reasons. Firstly, it’s another study showing the potential benefit of simple meditation techniques which anyone can learn and integrate into their daily lives. Secondly, as the article points out, it shows how quickly a benefit might be obtained.
If you do suffer from some painful condition, do you practice daily meditation? If not, why not? What’s to lose?
Posted in from the living room, from the reading room, life, personal growth, psychology on April 2, 2011| Leave a Comment »
Ken Wilber proposes in his Integral Theory, that there is a over-arching map which you can see in various theories of psychological development. Essentially, he proposes four levels of development – egocentric, where the child’s issues are all about their own needs, to ethnocentric, where there is an awareness of the family, tribe, or community of others like us. At this level, accepted norms of morality are adopted. These levels are sometimes termed “preconventional”, then “conventional”. The next, “postconventional” level, Wilber identifies as worldcentric, where we become aware of being part of all peoples, or all Nature. He goes beyond that level to propose a fourth, “integral” one.
One of the authors he cites as an example of this framework, is Carol Gillegan, whose “In a Different Voice”, describes a theory of gender difference along this developmental path. Here’s a wee summary (I think this is an interesting take on development)
All children start out with this selfish stage, but as females progress into the next one, they are taught to care, and as they learn to care for others, they develop feelings that to care for yourself is selfish and wrong. At the next level of development they learn that to fail to care for yourself is as wrong as failure to care for others. They learn this because of their focus on relationships – relationships involve two parties and if one party fails to look after herself, the relationship will be damaged.
Gilligan’s theory about males, takes a focus on justice or rights. The little selfish boy develops through learning that all people have rights to life and self-fulfillment which are protected through non-interference. In other words, rights set limits. As they mature they learn that they have to take increasingly more responsibility for care.
I’m not a great fan of such tightly gendered understandings, but there’s certainly food for thought in this theory. Maybe these two approaches are better thought of as right or left brain approaches as McGilchrist describes them…..with a right brain approach suiting a focus on relationships and the left on logic and the individual. We all need both halves of our brain after all, so maybe these “male” and “female” paths are better thought of as “intelligences” (as in multiple intelligences theory) , or “lines” (in the Wilber model).
There’s certainly food for thought in why we have feelings of guilt or selfishness when we take some time to care for our selves. And how we balance that with feelings of guilt or selfishness from too great a level of “non-interference”. We need to be both self-caring and compassionately engaged.
Posted in from the living room, from the reading room, life, neuroscience, personal growth, psychology on March 23, 2011| Leave a Comment »
In Ken Wilber’s integral map of development, he describes an evolution from egocentric, to ethnocentric, to worldcentric. By this he means an initial focus on “me”, to an identification with others like us (“we”), to an identification with all living things.
He demonstrates how this relates to stages of moral development, from preconventional, where a child is self-absorbed, to conventional, where they learn the rules and norms of culture, and identify with their tribe or group, then onto postconventional, where their sense of identity expands out to include all humanity.
Interestingly he suggests there may be another map which lays nicely onto these – body (a focus on my physical body), mind (expanding to shared relationships and values) and spirit (all sentient beings).
Or even, from a neurological basis, from the reptilian brain stem (centred on me), to the mammalian limbic system (centred on we – the seat of attachment), to the neocortex (able to perceive and identify with the world).
Posted in from the living room, from the reading room, from the viewing room, life, neuroscience, perception, psychology on February 27, 2011| 1 Comment »
Once you learn that most of the activity of the brain goes on without either conscious awareness, or with conscious awareness only kicking after the initial response, you begin to doubt that all our choices are conscious ones…..or rational ones. In fact, the brain stem and the limbic system are the key centres for our survival responses, our drives, our avoidances, and our emotional processing. How often do we behave in ways which really can’t be understood from the premise of consciously choosing once presented with the facts? Is that how human beings function? Would that even be the best way for human beings to function? (consciously and rationally, whilst discarding other ways of perceiving, processing our experience and responding). What do you think once you learn that there is an enormous neural network around the hollow organs of the body, the heart, and the gut especially, which we might well use to figure things out….where we might process and produce what we call “gut reactions”, or “heart felt” beliefs?
I’ve stumbled on two very different texts in this area in the last couple of days. Isn’t that weird, actually? It’s that old “coincidence” thing again…..never quite got to a point of really figuring out how those “coincidences” come about, or what they mean.
A few days ago, I read about a report for the WWF called “common cause“. The report, written by Tom Crompton. Essentially it argues that if we look at the research evidence, it would seem that human beings don’t make decisions using rational thought very much. Here’s a paragraph from the Summary –
There is mounting evidence from a range of studies in cognitive science that the dominant ‘Enlightenment model’ of human decision-making is extremely incomplete. According to this model we imagine ourselves, when faced with a decision, to be capable of dispassionately assessing the facts, foreseeing probable outcomes of different responses, and then selecting and pursuing an optimal course of action. As a result, many approaches to campaigning on bigger-than-self problems still adhere to the conviction that ‘if only people really knew’ the true nature or full scale of the problems which we confront, then they would be galvanised into demanding more proportionate action in response. But this understanding of how people reach decisions is very incomplete. There is mounting evidence that facts play only a partial role in shaping people’s judgment. Emotion is often far more important [see Section 1.3]. It is increasingly apparent that our collective decisions are based importantly upon a set of factors that often lie beyond conscious awareness, and which are informed in important part by emotion – in particular, dominant cultural values, which are tied to emotion. It seems that individuals are often predisposed to reject information when accepting it would challenge their identity and values.
That’s got me thinking about the importance of understanding our values (and/or our “virtues”) again.
Then, this morning, I read a post about some interesting TED videos, and the first one was this, by Dan Airley. He makes the case that we suffer from “cognitive illusions” just as much, if not more than, we suffer from “optical illusions”. (It’s about how we make decisions. It’s VERY entertaining, and thought provoking, and it’s just 17 minutes long. Take the time to watch it)
Posted in books, from the consulting room, from the reading room, health, neuroscience, personal growth, psychology, tagged IPNB, mindsight on June 1, 2010| 8 Comments »
I like to read books which change my life. Lots of books do that for me. In fact, the books I enjoy most are those which do just that, the ones which open up new ways of thinking to me, new ways of seeing, expand my understanding, stimulate my creativity, books which, once I’ve read them, my world is not the same.
I’ve read a lot of books like that, and if you browse this blog reading the posts in the category “from the reading room” you’ll find reviews of several of them.
I’ve just read another. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I felt this excited reading a particular book. It’s Dan Siegel’s “The Mindful Therapist” [ISBN 978-0393706451]
Now, I haven’t come to this book cold. I’ve read, first of all, his “Mindsight” [ISBN 978-1851687619] (and if you’re inspired to explore this body of work I recommend you start with that), his “The Mindful Brain” [ISBN 978-0393704709], and “The Developing Mind” [ISBN 978-1572307407], before I got hold of this, his latest book, “The Mindful Therapist”.
I’m also well into his online course which I’m thoroughly enjoying.
So, a lot of the concepts in this “Mindful Therapist” were already familiar to me before I opened it up – the idea of the mind as “an embodied, relational process of regulation of energy and information flow”, the idea of the triangle of wellness – mind, brain and relationships, the understandings from neuroscience of integrated function of differentiated parts, of the key roles of the midfrontal cortex, and of neuroplasticity, and the practices of the wheel of awareness and other meditations
Despite my familiarity with all of that, and more, this particular book has blown me away. I’ve already begun to introduce patients to the idea of health as a flowing, adaptive, coherent, energised, stable river, with the opposite banks of chaos and rigidity which we end up on when we become unwell.
I’ve begun to share with some patients the deceptively simple wheel of awareness meditation. But now, I’ve got a whole new level of insight.
Into this familiar mix, which Dan expands and reinforces throughout “The Mindful Therapist”, he gives exercises in self-discovery, and models of personality and behaviour which I’ve never seen described elsewhere. I’ve said before I’ve got a synthetic brain – always making links, seeing patterns, associations, expanding through increasing connections – well, I’m pretty sure that’s how Dan’s brain works too. He draws on insights from a multiplicity of disciplines and together, (in a “consilient” way), they create a whole which is way greater than its parts.
If you’re a health professional of any kind, I urge you to read this book. You practice, your life, won’t be the same again. You’ll find new depths as well as new horizons.
Posted in books, from the reading room, life, psychology on May 15, 2010| 7 Comments »
Connected, by Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler, (ISBN 978-0-00-734743-8) is a fascinating study of social networks. In the Preface they write
To know who we are, we must understand how we are connected.
This is what Clay Shirky says in Here Comes Everybody, it’s what Johansson says in The Medici Effect, Andy Clark says in Smart World, and, for me, most powerfully what Barabasi says in Linked. So what does this book add?
The clear focus of Connected is social networks – you’ll be familiar with the idea of “six degrees of separation” where it’s been discovered there are an average of only six steps between any two human beings on the planet. Christakis and Fowler take this finding a step further by highlighting and explaining “three degrees of influence”. In social networks, you influence your friend, who influences their friend, who influences their friend (and the influences flow both ways), but after that, the power of the effect tails off or disappears. The power of the effect seems related to two things – how many connections a person has, and how many of those people to whom they are connected are connected to each other (in other words how many of your friends know each other?)
These simple characteristics create very complex webs and patterns of influence and can explain a wide range of events, from the spread of a viral infection in a community, to the collapse of the financial system, to the spread of obesity, a wide range of disorders, and both cultural and political changes.
It’s a bizarre thought to learn that obesity in a community is distributed the same way as an infection. If your friend’s friend becomes obese, you’re more likely to become obese (and vice versa)! Obesity seems to be contagious.
The book is packed full of interesting and mind-boggling examples. A couple that really struck me were the spread of back pain in Germany – before the wall came down East Germany had a very, very low incidence of back pain, and in the West it was one of the highest rates in the world. After the wall came down, the incidence in the East rose to match that in the West. A study of epidemic control showed that you needed to vaccinate 90% of the population to stop the infection, but if, instead you asked a random selection of individuals who their acquaintances were, then calculated which individuals were most connected, and vaccinated only them, you could control the infection by vaccinating only 30% of the population. I could go on…..but read it yourself, it’s truly mind expanding. Really the idea that we are all separate free-thinking individuals is at best a simplistic delusion. We are who we are because of the way we connect.
Posted in from the living room, life, psychology, tagged meditation on November 1, 2009| 2 Comments »
How often do you find yourself going over something upsetting? Something someone said or did which you found hurtful? Hurts have an impact. They make their marks on us. The bigger the hurt, the deeper, more long-lasting the mark.
Is there anything we can do reduce the impact? Or do we have to just stand and accept whatever comes our way, feeling the impacts deeply, and for the rest of our lives?
Whatever builds up our resilience, both reduces the strength of any impact, and increases our ability to bounce back, to stand back up, to find a way to go forward.
One aspect of resilience is equanimity. Balance. Stability. A kind of strength. Over centuries in many traditions and cultures people have practiced meditation to gain this kind of strength. One of the goals of meditation is increased equanimity, or greater resilience. You can’t stop events from happening, but you can have an influence on how you experience those events. My meditation teacher used the following analogy (the photos are mine!)
A mark in rock lasts a long time
A mark in sand disappears more quickly
Imagine what it’s like to make the mark on water
Now imagine what it’s like to make the mark in the air
Regular meditation practice builds resilience. Things still happen, but more and more, what people say, what people do, has less of an impact. You begin to experience less marks in the stone, less in the sand, more in the water, or, ultimately, in the air.
I like that analogy.
Heroes Not Zombies 