Mind-Body Connection

Of course, the mind-body connection has been acknowledged. But it hasn't been persued rigorously as it should be. It doesn't seem to have been taken as seriously as it deserves to be. It's a huge breakthrough, but I guess there's no money in it. Personally I think that rabbit hole goes very, very deep, and if followed would lead to a true medical revolution.

Patient, heal thyself. This is medicine summed up. Doctors help the body be in a more favorable position for it, but they don't do the healing. Even with such a mechanical, physical thing as a broken bone, all they do is line up the pieces for the body to knit back together. Sometimes it's more invasive or intensive: antibiotics to help the immune system play catch-up from a downhill position, or cutting out an appendix that's about to blow. But I think we go into the hospital with the wrong state of mind when we go in and say, "doctor, make me better." We aren't machines and the doctors mechanics; it doesn't work that way.

Maybe the faith healing has the same foundation. If the mind and the body are one, as two sides of the same coin, say, then powerful belief in a divine healing will surge through the physical realm of the body as well, in the same way that stress can bring a body into dis-ease. It's just a move in the opposite direction. The context that surrounds those freaky looking Christian healings that go on in tents across the country doesn't appeal to me personally, so such a faith healing would likely not work on me.

But I do believe in meditation, in fasting, in exercise and healthy diet, things like Tai Chi and yoga, the power of words and thoughts; occasionally I believe in prayer and "good vibes" (I come and go on the issue), and so on. Chiropractic and other alternative medicine like acupuncture and such also seem very legit, as they seem to combine the physical and mental/spiritual sides of the patient, rather than only admitting to the physical. Of course a lot of this stuff is without much or any foundation in fact; even what they say about diet comes and goes, it's more like fashion than science.

So what I'm saying is that maybe this whole edifice of medical science, all the stuff about germ theory and pharmaceuticals and all of it... is one big placebo effect we've been confusing with a mechanical cause-effect. I personally believe that in an otherwise healthy person, stress or dis-ease in the body-mind is the ultimate cause of disease. Germs don't so much cause the problem, but take advantage of it and produce the symptoms we call illness. Maybe the witch-doctors were right all along, though of course I favor a mix of both sides. I could write tons on this and will probably return to the issue.

Health and Healing

My brother in law Mike is studying chiropractic, and he practices on my sister and I sometimes. He's an ace student so I trust his ability. It started when I asked if a disjointed vertebra might be pinching a nerve between my shoulder blades, where I almost always have muscle knots. Sometimes the tension builds, radiating up my neck, causing a headache, and often this is accompanied by nausea and, commonly enough, vomiting.

He found several "locked up" vertebra in the area where the nerves for the gut come through, and he gave me a good crackin'. A few times, actually: poor posture and muscle memory, I suppose, keeps pulling the bones out of place. At least I'm now sure that the problem with these headaches and vomiting is nothing more than a pinched nerve. I had been a bit concerned about it for years, though without insurance, unable to see a doctor to find out. But this week I "watched" the tension build in the usual spot, between my shoulder blades on the right side of the spine, growing and growing; by Friday it was definitely running up my neck, and last night I slept terribly with worse pain than usual, and a blossoming headache which I killed with Ibuprofen (though I take drugs very regretfully). No nausea this time.

Kind of neat to watch the body like that, and I have to thank my bro-in-law for this
newfound awareness. I believe in chiropractic, but in the end I'm not sure if shifting the bones around is the answer, if the muscles just pull them back out of place. Part of me thinks it makes more sense to do the opposite: work on relaxing the muscles, and the bones will follow suit. Kind of a chicken and the egg problem, and with the body, I'm sure it goes both ways, and both are valuable. I do know that after he adjusted me I felt great. He did my neck too (there was a locked joint there too) and I had more range of motion and my head felt like it was floating, not sitting heavy on my neck.

Some dispute chiropractic's efficacy. Mike says they've talked about this in class, about the placebo effect. He said, well, if it's just a placebo, then why the effect? Here you can't help but delve into the mind-body connection, even treading into the realm of faith healing. Now I'm not really into faith healing, it looks like a farce to me, and often is; just a stage act to get monetary donations. But sometimes it's real. People healed at Lourdes, or by faith healers, by this or that. Or hell, people healed by a sugar pill in a double blind experiment. Same thing. If it's just a placebo, why the effect, indeed.

Part of the problem is the word "just." "Just" a placebo effect. It's a disparaging term that has no basis in fact or logic; only in emotion. Wikipedia calls that a "weasle word." That science has so long avoided looking into this, casting it off as "just" a placebo effect is a shame, a crime, really. I say a crime, because if a sugar pill or a saline injection can cure people who think they're getting medicine, then why are we being poisoned with medicine with so many toxic side effects, and paying egregious amounts of money for the pleasure? What ever happened to "first do no harm"?

More to follow...

Swing of the Pendulum

It seems incredibly self evident to me why our country has shifted so much to the right. Beyond the (often credible) conspiracies of banks, business, and government, our population is aging. You look at the countries like Libya and Egypt, they're massively young countries, with the majority under 30 years old. Here in the US, we've got this big bubble of the Baby Boom hitting their old age.

Revolutions and rebellions tend to be more common among the young. Hell, it was this same generation that led during the 60's hippie revolution. Now they're aging, have become conservative, and want security more than they care about ideals. A natural shift, really. Sad for the rest of us, and sad for the state of democracy in general.

And we all know old people vote far more than the young. Plus, kids/young people these days are all hypnotized with their iPhones, iPods, wii games, internet, and the good old TV. We have no time or energy anymore to put towards social rebellion. We guage our ears and get tattoos, which is all pretty bland and safe as far as rebellion goes; even the drugs are largely passe; at least, they don't lead anywhere like one might say they did in the 60s with the psychedelics. Now it's just party drugs, like ecstacy and rave shit.

It's like Tom Petty sang, about rebels without a cause. There's no more idealism.

Desert Religion

 

I've always had this... fantasy, I guess, of going off into the desert, fasting and meditating. Weird fantasy life I live, eh? Still, it appeals to me. To strip down everything. No internet, no books, no news, no music, no food even. Nothing at all to do but focus down all my attention like sunlight through a magnifier, to a sharp point, to get down to what is really there.

I admit a lingering fascination with the "Desert Religion," of going off to the desert to find God; of those Zen monks cloistering themselves away on some remote mountain for decades, of the Irish monks of my own heritage, floating off in rickety little boats, possibly all the way to America, looking for a quiet place to live and pray on the remote rocks of the harsh northern Atlantic.

In much of this, I know my 9 years of Catholic schooling must have had their subliminal effect; there's no such thing as an ex-Catholic, after all. But it seems like just about every "wise man" in history had to go off alone somewhere to figure things out. Do I have aspirations of being some such wise man? You're goddam right! Maybe someday, anyways.

I suppose I would be partially looking for "enlightenment" out there. Mostly, though, I just want to know what I'm like without all the input, information and culture being laid upon me every second. No distraction, nowhere to run to, nothing to hide behind. No excuses. Just a pure experience. A bit like what I wrote about in my Gorilla Suit of the World post.

What would I find?

Surviving peak oil

Thurman told me to look into this documentary, called The Power Of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil. Well, I found a video of it online, you can watch it here.

It's pretty fascinating, a real case study of a society experiencing and dealing with Peak Oil and its issues and problems. Gives me a more hopeful feeling than I've had, which I really needed.

There were some interesting points raised at the end. For one thing, the idea that we have used in 100 years half of the oil the Earth has been producing for hundreds of millions of years. As the man in the film says, it's absurd.

Secondly, they made reference to the way Cuba, like all island nations, have a sort of natural sense of limited resources. And it seems this island consciousness is what started the whole environmental movement, when we had for the first time an image of the whole world, as pictures of Earth from Space came out back in the late 1960s.

But it still hasn't sunk in for most of us on the necessary scale. Earth is an island of habitable, livable environment in a sea of inhospitible space. But we still think in terms of growth, endless growth. Not gonna happen. Especially if this century long spasm has used half of one of the most energy dense, versatile, easily used fuels ever known.

Acceptance Part 2

I feel I must revisit my thoughts about Acceptance, as written about in that post. Mostly I stand by what I said, but I feel I glossed over the most important issue: how can you accept clearly negative things? Didn't really deal with the issue. So I'm going to hash it out here, and see what I can come up with. Your thoughts and ideas, as always, are welcome.

For me, right now the best example is silence. As I wrote in that original post, while reading One Square Inch of Silence a part of me kept feeling annoyed at all the bitching about the noise the author experienced. Like, the Zen side of me saying, hey, the air traffic is part of the landscape you're trying to get a recording of, it's not an intrusion, it just is. The problem is your preconcieved notions of what it should be. But of course, then the environmentalist, asthetic, and Wild Man sides of me come out and I'm right there with him, arguing against human created noise.

So as I sit out on the patio evenings after work, I can accept the endless jet traffic roaring over me; but will I ever really like it, will it ever sound beautiful, and will I ever be able to relax in its context? Perhaps on a deep Zen level, all existence is beautiful... but I kind of doubt this will ever happen.

But now, as I write, an idea occurs to me. I suppose, if I'm really accepting the experience, I also have to accept the thought and feeling within me that the sound is ugly. Acceptance doesn't delete all the old feelings, does it?

So I no longer fight my experience... but the experience is inherently disharmonious. Accepting that the noise is there, but also accepting that I hate it. This must be the motive for action, right? Not asthetics, but this, a more primal urge: the move towards harmony between the inner and outer experience?

Or does this disharmony mean I haven't really accepted the noise? Does working to change a thing equate to non-acceptance of a situation or condition?

Turn From Your Heart

Turn from your heart into the wild rippling water,
away from your warm and wood-paneled loves
into the roll of hills you never knew,
trust your lungs to continue grabbing air,
your aging hands to hold to what you need
as you go beyond these rain spangled cobwebs
of the past; soar into those passing storm clouds
to the stars beyond, crack your mind like a broken bell
and leap from the steeple tower to the freshet's run,
down with the fishes as they lead you to the sea,
where monsters and madness and mystery dwell.
Your spirit is in the foam painting every foreign shore;
your passion threads fingers into every crevice
like the mountain top gusts that make the rocks
sing. Strangely laughing, you are waiting in a silent place
for yourself to come along, a place where
straight though the roads are asked to run,
the only path in sight is the step you're taking now,
an endless bushwhack over the broken ground of the limitless.
Turn your face around and see your moment's trail
fading— the grasses stand up one by one,
the pebbles' upturned bottoms slowly dry.
What wind could ask for more than this trackless world,
these miles of solitude, flagrant and rife
and alive to the riffling pattern? There is shift
and sparkle as the ungraspable waters of life slide by,
and the acres swallow you completely, vast distance
and forest transcending the tiny hamlet of the heart.