Western Medicine vs. Eastern Medicines

I think an adequate generalization would be that Western medicine has certain diseases and conditions at which it excels immensely, but that there are many conditions for which it either struggles to treat/cure, or for which it has found no effective treatment.

Notably, there are many specific diseases and ailments for which western science has developed a cure. Examples range from the outrageous successes against polio and smallpox to the recent H1N1 outbreak. Surgical procedures are also immensely beneficial when such procedures are appropriately indicated. Organ replacements directly save lives. Trauma medicine saves millions of lives, as well. I'm sure there are a host of medical conditions for which western medicine has an excellent track record, something akin to a 90%+ success rate with little to no complications, side effects.

Western medicine has struggled, however, with a host of chronic illnesses. Many of these are diseases which affect the body in a holistic manner, and for which western medicine currently has an inadequate conceptual grasp over. Autoimmune diseases lie in this category. In fact, autoimmune diseases are often a catch-phrase for a certain subset of chronic illness which involve the immune system somehow, but how or why is uncertain.

For many of these chronic illnesses, patients have found solace in various Eastern traditions, ranging from acupuncture to Ayurveda to traditional Chinese medicine. These traditions are often rooted in over a thousand years of experiential medicine. They are much more holistic in nature and are often able to provide more efficacious answers to chronic illnesses. However, due to the inconsistent nature of these teachings and the way their knowledge is passed on, there is a high degree of variability in Eastern medicine prescriptions. A knowledgeable, well-trained practitioner is invaluable here, and can help increase one's chances for an effective treatment.

In essence, they each have their strengths and weaknesses. How does one choose which to use? I would probably use the following rule of thumb, given no financial constraints: Consult a western doctor or two or three, and if they have a strong consensus in diagnosis and treatment, find out the efficacy. If the prescribed treatment is extremely effective: 90-99% effective cure rate, and has minimal or marginal side effects, I would go with the western approach. However, many medical conditions would fail this test. At that point, I would explore complementary and alternative medicinal remedies. Note that this is a very quick and dirty rule of thumb. The actual conditions and diagnosis would greatly influence any decision I made.

Earth Day Fail.

I just wrote the following letter to www.climatecentral.org, a nonprofit billed as trying to bridge scientists and the public to provide clear up-to-date info and help educate ppl and help them make decisions.

Hi,

Yesterday, I attended Earth Fair in San Diego.  It is billed as the largest free earth day event in the world with over 70,000 visitors.  Among the music, food, and entertainment were what seemed like a million booths from corporations, individuals, and non-profits alike trying to sell products, educate people, obtain signatures, publicize, etc.  I searched through the official index beforehand and I searched the whole complex for one booth dedicated to (a) educating the public about the severity of climate change, (b) disseminating the truth of and science behind climate change (there are still a lot of climate denialists out there), or (c) empowering people to use said knowledge to influence public policy.

The closest I found was the Citizens Climate Lobby (www.citizensclimatelobby.org), a group dedicated to grassroots lobbying.  While I applaud their action, as well as the actions of all the groups out there helping people "green" their everyday lives via products, awareness, recycling, reduced emissions, etc., none of it seems adequate.

Am I wrong to think that there should have been a much greater "Climate Change Awareness" presence at such an event?  Am I wrong to think that there should be resources or information that press people to "Join here, Sign up, Sign here, Do this, Act now" to help prevent climate change.  

The lady at the Citizens Climate Lobby booth said that people want to put on blinders and ignore the fact that climate change is an extremely real and imminent danger.  Well, is the answer to stop trying to educate them since they'll ignore you anyways?  It can't be.

I can only come to two conclusions as to the cause of this startling lack.  Either the movement to mitigate climate change has not reached the maturity where they reach out at events like this, or it was tried and found to lack efficacy.  The latter rationale seems thin.  When groups promoting Atheism and Humanism are at the event, and every local watershed has multiple nonprofits trying to raise awareness, then why not raise awareness about climate change.   Especially with the recent spate of public attacks against climate change wouldn't an event like this be ideal for debunking those attacks and educating the public?

I would love your thoughts how or why this happened.

Thanks.

New Directions

So among the myriad reasons why I haven't been blogging is that I feel like this blog is being pulled in too many different directions.

I've been using it as a journal/diary for self-analysis, as a philosophy of mind/cognitive science blog, as a place to talk about self-empowerment, and as a planning area for my days, weeks, years, and life.

I have a ton of posts that are all unpublished simply because I'm no longer sure where I should be publishing them.

What I will be doing over the next 2 weeks:  Separating this blog into 2, possibly 3 distinct sites.  One will be very scientific-oriented, with a heavy emphasis on Cognitive Science, Philosophy of Mind, and Psychology.  One will be very personal, and may even be private, with a heavy emphasis on my own personal growth, life planning, and possibly even daily activities if I have time to blog that much.  The myriad of my posts that don't fall into one of these two categories will either be posted to a third blog, or something else.

What will I do with this blog and its archives?  I'm not sure at this point.  I may eventually resort these posts and categorize, then move them into the correct new blog.  Or I may just archive this whole blog and mothball it.

I apologize to all of my regular readers, all 2 of you, who have missed me for the last three months.  If any of you do read this and want to follow me on my personal blog, please comment or message me, and I will be sure to let you know the subsequent address and allow you to read, even if I make it semi-private.

The cog-sci blog will be public for certain, and will probably be linked to my irl identity.  Eventually, I'd like to link both, and perhaps will, soon.  Time will tell.

Quick Thoughts

I'm taking 5 minutes to write down some thoughts in a very very hectic morning.

Bill Harris is absolutely correct in that link I provided below.

Chaos and Reorganization come together.

My life for the last week has been extremely chaotic, full of joy and sorrow - see Gibran.

I've been struggling with it because I've implemented so many changes that my current framework couldn't deal with.  As Bill says, "[Chaos or stress are] happening not because of something outside of you, but because your threshold for what you can handle is too low to handle your current environment."

His action steps were to remind myself that this is a good thing, and it means I'm about to evolve to the next level, where many of the current problems will disappear.  Let it be okay that this is happening.  Watch with curiosity and don't resist.

I've been resisting.  A LOT.  My old framework/world view has been clinging on tenaciously, and it has brought many lows to me this past week.  I am currently moving through patterns that my old framework created, which is why this morning is so hectic.

However, I relaxed and tried to accept it.  And my mental outlook improved tremendously.  What had seemed like a trapped, fixed situation now seems open and filled with possible solutions.  When I have more time I'll write some of them down.  Suffice it to say that change is coming, both for myself and for this blog, and I need to learn to embrace it rather than fight it.

Now I have to go face the daily struggles that my previous framework created.  It is always hard facing the results of actions you are not proud of, but now I can face it without fear, with maturity, acceptance, and hope and promise in my heart.

Affirmations

Although I may not complete anything to perfection, I completely and utterly accept myself.


I do not fear the possibility of failure, and I embrace the possibility of success.


I love myself, and I thrive on challenges.

The Principle of Chaos and Reorganization

I'm in a state of Chaos.  I've been fighting it.

Must learn to let reorganization happen organically.  Will work on that tomorrow:

http://juicefeastinggreenroom.ning.com/forum/topics/2162169:Topic:3012

Re-evaluating, Rethinking, Redirecting: Goal Setting

It's been awhile since I posted.  I've been busy learning to balance life: sleep, juicing, thesis work, time w/K, shopping, yoga, life practices, learning about juices, facebook, browsing blogs.  Mainly, the struggle has been sleep - I've been trying to harness the energy from juicing and leverage it in a correct way in accordance with sleep to create more time and energy.  Learning how to do so has shortened my time available.

I have also realized that I made a serious error in judgement. David Wolfe, in The Sunfood Diet Success System, writes:

Consider the following ratio: 

Planning to action = 1:5 (one day of planning is worth five days of action)

Prevention to recovery = 1:5 (one day of prevention is worth five days of recovery)

The more you plan, the more effective your plans will become, and the more you can get done in less time.  The more you prevent, the healthier you become, and the less time you need to ever spend on recovery. 

I did one day of planning early on, and then never renewed it.  I never did any days of prevention.  What happened was personal and interpersonal crises struck.  Then I was stuck in recovery mode.  I never renewed my planning, so I got stuck in permanent recovery mode.  It is time now to change that.

I have decided to start mapping and planning out my days. I've filled my calendar completely up until Thursday, including demarcating free/play time slots, sleep, shower, etc.  When I fall behind or miss something, it is a lesson in acceptance and softening.  When I make my slots, I have achieved a goal, no matter how small and can feel grateful to myself for my success.

One of these daily goals is to spend 30 minutes on binaural meditation for the next 14 days.  Another is to spend 60 minutes "sharpening the saw," as Steven Covey puts it.  For me, this means evaluating my goals, reading literature that will help me progress in my goals, and writing down new goals.  One hour of mandatory planning each day.  Tonight I read the chapter on goals from David Wolfe's book, and now I'm writing down my goals here in my blog.

When you take action and actually write down your goals and review them regularly, you dive into a strong current which will carry you to distant places.  Unseen forces will come to your aid.

Daily Goals:

• Attend a yoga class 6 days out of the week
• Spend 1 hr each day Sharpening the Saw
• Spend 30 minutes each day on binaural meditation (until Feb. 14th)
• Juice 4L per day
• Full life practices for 14 out of 14 days.

Quarterly Goals:

• Succeed fantastically at my juice feast
• Finish all three projects of my thesis by March 18th

Yearly Goals:

• Optimize my health and well-being to the best of my ability
• Create and implement a short-term plan for financial stability over the next 1-2 years
• Create a long-term plan for for financial success
• Create a long-term plan to pursue my interest in neuroscience and spirituality
• Evaluate my long-term goals, and develop new long-term goals

To succeed at the Quarterly and Yearly goals I must create an action plan.  Tomorrow night, I will go through Brian Tracy's 12 steps from his book Maximum Achievement (reprinted in David Wolfe's book):

1. Develop an intense desire to achieve your goals.
2. Develop a strong belief in your goals.
3. Write your goals down.
4. Determine how you will benefit from achieving your goals.
5. Analyze your starting point.
6. Set deadlines to achieve your goals.
7. Identify the obstacles that stand in your way.
8. Identify the additional knowledge or information you will require.
9. Identify the people whose cooperation you will require.
10. Make a plan to achieve your goals.
11. Visualize the achievement of your goals.
12. Persist until your goals are achieved.

I will learn to do the following:

Think about your goals continuously.  When your goals are clear, all the laws of the universe conspire in yoru favor to help you.  Whenever you feel things are going badly, think about your goals! Uplift yourself by thinking about, visualizing, and feeling your goals!

          To achieve yoru goals, you must become the type of person who can achieve those goals.

 ...

You can learn everything you need to know to accomplish your goals along the way to their achievement.  The key is to keep taking action.  Action attracts the knowledge you require and makes all things possible.

...

It is the possibility of having a dream come true which makes life most Interesting!  Get excited about your goals. Get excited about waking up in the morning! Become an irresistible force of Nature moving rapidly towards each set goal. 

Final Action Steps, recommended by David Wolfe: 

1. Set a health goal to continuously act upon the information contained within his book.  Record this goal in my journal blog.  For me, this is juice feasting, and then my post-feast health and wellness plan.
2. In my journal blog, write down 100 goals that I want to attain within the next year.  Review them daily.
3. Take my top 5 yearly goals.  For each goal write a sentence fulfilling each one of the 12 steps for goal achievement outlined by Brian Tracy above.
4. Continuously write down additional yearly goals and long-term goals in my blog
5. Check off each goal as I achieve it.

Final goal of the night:

• Implement the above action steps, starting immediately.

I have already started on this process with this post, and will continue it daily.

Mindfulness and Love

Amin gave a beautiful yoga class yesterday on the differences between classical yoga and tantric yoga.

He asserted that classical yoga, like Astanga, was focused on mindfulness.  The focus of the practice is the breathing and keeping the focus of the mind on the breath.  The asanas are a means to keep the body busy so that one may focus   This is akin to mindfulness meditation.  The goal is to cultivate detachment from preconditioning and to learn how to be present in the moment.

In tantric yoga, the focus of the breath is on the difficult areas of the asana.  One focuses the mind's eye on stiffness, tightness, discomfort.  Prana is directed to these areas to deepen the pose.  This builds the habit of understanding that difficulties in life always come with a blessing as well.  The difficult poses are often the ones that build strength where we need it - they shore up weaknesses.  By concentrating and focusing on them, we learn that pain is not to be avoided but to be embraced and accepted.

In one's life, it is not only the people who support that help, but also the people who criticize or challenge.  The latter set of people may have pushed one to try harder, or at the very least provided such an inhospitable environment that one is forced to take drastic action such as changing their life.

Yesterday and again this morning, I realized something in savasana.  I have always valued symmetry and comfort in savasana. I have always found it difficult to relax without a blanket, without an eye pillow, with my arms not in similarly symmetric distances and angles from my body.  And it bothers me if I am slightly off-center and one hand is further off the mat than the other.  These two days I practiced accepting these differences.  The fact that they bother me is a challenge: imperfections are part of life and learning to notice the imperfections but not let them bother me is a practice. I am learning to not see them in a negative light, but to recognize their existence, the feelings they evoke, and then accept them and move on.  It is a practice that can be applied to life.

It is interesting that so many hatha yoga classes mix these two philosophies which are very different.  At once we are told to focus and concentrate on the breath, and again we are told to deepen our poses and concentrate on the difficult areas.  I am unconvinced that a mix like this is more helpful than separate yoga practices.  Mindfulness meditation deepens with practice and habit.  Likewise a true astanga session of 90 minutes with the focus on only the breath brings about a very different sense of being than a typical vinyasa hatha practice.  The mind enters a different state.  Cultivating awareness and acceptance in a full tantric yoga practice rather than shifting back and forth between the two styles most likely deepens one's practice of love, as well.

Beliefs

The following is a story by Thich Nhat Hanh, from his book Being Peace:

A young widower, who loved his five year old son very much, was away on business, and bandits came, burned down his whole village, and took his son away. When the man returned, he saw the ruins and panicked. He took the charred corpse of an infant to be his own child, and he began to pull his hair and beat his chest, crying uncontrollably. He organized a cremation ceremony, collected the ashes and put them into a very beautiful velvet bag. Working, sleeping, eating, he always carried the bag of ashes with him. 

One day his real son escaped from the robbers and found his way home. He arrived at this father's new cottage at midnight , and knocked at the door. You can imagine at that time, the young father was still carrying the bag of ashes, and crying. He asked, "Who is there?" And the child answered, "It's me, Papa. Open the door, it's your son." In his agitated state of mind the father thought that some mischievous boy was making fun of him, and he shouted at the child to go away, and he continued to cry. The boy knocked again and again, but the father refused to let him in. Some time passed, and finally the child left. From that time on, father and son never saw one another. After telling this story, the Buddha said, "Sometime, somewhere you take something to be the truth. If you cling to it so much, when the truth comes in person and knocks at your door, you will not open it." Guarding knowledge is not a good way to understand. Understanding means to throw away your knowledge. You have to be able to transcend your knowledge...understanding is always letting go of our views and knowledge to transcend. This is the most important teaching.

Intimacy Dream

We were in a huge lecture hall - and bidding... bidding on WoW gear.  There was the teacher up front, and he had two exceptional sub-rogue daggers.  He asked for bids.  I knew Christina, who was sitting on my right wanted it, and I bid for her.  She bid herself as well.   It soon became apparent that 8+ people wanted the daggers.  I also realized that many who weren't sub-rogues were bidding.  They random rolled the first dagger and a combat rogue picked it up.

I spoke up.  Since there was no cost to bidding, anyone could bid, so non sub-rogues were bidding.  I asked for a new bid from only sub-rogues.  Two of the same hands went up, including Christina's. Three more new hands went up. I realized then that it might not be an upgrade for those three people, so asked again for sub-rogues for whom the dagger was an upgrade.  All five hands stayed up.  There was momentary confusion.

I knew I continued to be out of place in speaking up, but had to try once more.  I asked for only sub rogues who had bid the first time.  Finally, it worked.  This screened out the non sub-rogues who bid initially, and the later sub-rogues who reacted late.  Only one person raised a hand.  It wasn't Christina.  Everyone in the audience was relieved the bidding had turned out well.  The audience started getting up and parting.

My anger surged and turned on her, asking why she didn't bid.  She didn't want it anymore.

"It was an enormous upgrade."

"No."

"Whatever," I told her, and stood up with her to walk out.  "I may be quitting anyways."

She reacted poorly, and sat back down in a seat. She started crying.

I asked her what happened, and she admitted that she didn't know what to do. She didn't want me to quit. She felt like I would be abandoning her.  I asked her about the other men in her life.  I don't remember her answer, but it seemed like she said she was noncommittal towards them. I held her in close, kissed her cheek and forehead and neck, holding her, shushing her.

The next thing I know we're in bed, both in a partial state of undress.  She sidles up against me, clinging to me, molding her body against me.  It is intimate, but we don't kiss, and only intend to sleep.  It is a very non-sexual intimacy, like roomates seeking each other for comfort, but this comfort was in the touch of flesh to flesh and bodies embracing each other.

Christina is one of a handful of college friends I haven't found in my recent surge to re-ignite old contacts.  She was never that close to me, but we did confide secrets to each other - about relationships and gaming.  It is fairly obvious whom she represents.  I thought, at first, it was S, but no, S would never have refused to bid like that.  It is K who would, and K is the source of all my relationship/intimacy problems recently.

Blogging as an outlet for sleep

I've been going through so much emotional upheaval lately that I've been having problems falling asleep.  Firstly, I stay up way too late due to more pressing relationship priorities.  Secondly, once I do attempt to fall asleep, it doesn't come.

What happens to me when I lie there, unable to sleep.  My mind spins at 100 rpm.  It wanders through all the various thoughts, emotions, goals, failures, successes of the day.

I have a hypothesis that if I get up and write it all out, my mind will be at peace.  So, tonight, if I lay my head on my pillow and fail to sleep, then I will get up and write, then go back to sleep.  Hopefully dreamless bliss will then overtake me.

Torrential downpour

Southern California is deluged.  Tornados, floods, thunderstorms.  As it rains upon the earth, my emotions have chosen to rain upon my soul.  I feel detached, brooding, emotionally wrung out.  So much has coursed through my mind and my heart in the past 24-48 hours, I do not even know where to begin.  And so I will begin with the present.

A liquid shuddering starts in my diaphragm, moves up through the leftside of my chest, running through my heart, up my neck, and out the top of my head.   The emotions lie there... having been expressed, having overwhelmed, and having no closure.  Tears well up in my eyes.  I mourn my brother.  He should not have left 11 years ago.We were destined on this earth to be together - born two years apart - playmates... who should've grown into touchstones for each other as we navigate this Earth.  I cried back then... woke in the middle of the night crying in grief ... bawled in the dewey grass of his grave one year later cursing my abandonment, hating the loss.  I don't want to lose my sister - my best friend.

Deep, shuddering breaths... collecting myself - semblance. thought.  I'm overreacting - I want, no need, to bring her to happiness.  I've experienced such highs this week - and I know the agony of the lows she's in.  That was my goal.  It was slowly planted there throughout the budding of our friendship - friends help each other out.  It was expressed in words scarcely more than a week ago - I would pull her along with me on my journey.  It crystallized two days ago late at night - I would help her heal herself like I healed and help her experience happiness.  Prior to that  night it was simply to help and encourage, now it's to heal.

Since the break of the new year, I've metamorphized.  Twenty days, and I've experienced such bliss - and come to touch true happiness.  I've never been happy before.  Now I am.  In this same span, she's gotten steadily worse.  Each one of my steps forward has been a step backwards for her.  As I advance, she retreats.  We marched in lockstep once upon a time. Now I look back and can barely see her at the end of the horizon, the lifeline between us stretched taut to the point of breaking.  Indeed, it is fraying and everytime I pull, more individual fibers unravel.

Enough metaphors.  The facts.  I came home from a blissful experience last night. Something wondrous, ethereal, gossamer.  She had missed me while I was gone, and wouldn't talk when I got back.  She had wanted to play WoW, but I was away.  And besides, scarcely hours earlier I had decided that I was done enabling the escapism that it represented for her, and would try and help her back on her own two feet directly.  I told her such, but she never wants to talk about such - about her emotions - her situation - where to go - what to do.  I know the feeling - facing any of it feels like a mountain coming down upon you - there is no light at the end of the tunnel, in fact there is no tunnel. the earth is collapsing on top of you and the air is siphoning away.  Yet I pressed her anyways, and she withdrew even more.

Why must I press knowing that she will withdraw?  Perchance a small hope that my words will sink in and she might listen - perhaps I'm desperate and don't know what else I can do.

She said she didn't want to talk about it - that she was going to give up.  She would go give up her life to another and let him tell her what to do.  Just last week, she had confided that it wasn't the life she wanted - it was a life she knew she could grow accustomed to - a life she could settle for, but not something she wanted, and certainly not a life of her own choosing.  I became frantic, desperate - enraged, furious, pleading.

Looking back now, I believe that my brother's death influenced me.  During the evening I had allowed myself to feel grief for him for the first time in years, and I was suddenly confronted with another loss in my life.  No, she wouldn't commit suicide, but I felt like she was committing spiritual suicide. Hence, my overreaction.

She was on the phone with him, and could only type to me.  My emotions raw, eating away at me.  I needed her to understand how I felt - needed to hear the authenticity of her voice, the tenor and tone that would belie the truth beneath her words.  I raged, and she relented.  Now I could hear her voice, and she could rage back at me.  This was her life, her decisions... why am I interfering?  If she choses to deal with her state by escapism, then I shouldn't lecture, I shouldn't preach.

I'm sorry - I know the solace of pushing everything away.  I just don't want the mountain to suffocate you.  I don't want to look up one day and see you gone. That's why I'm trying to pull you up.  Trying to give you air to breathe, trying to find you another route.  But denial and escapism enshrouds you.  If you refuse to see the tunnels I'm trying to carve for you, then you don't have to hope, and don't have to see the rest of the mountain.

We argue.  I am timid. I try and be strong.  I am afraid of losing her. She explains that her decision won't jeopardize my visit in two months.  How can it not?  If she moves with him, it will be after.  I had thought it would be immediate.  No, he's trying to protect her, too.  He wants a safe haven for her like I do.  A place where she can heal and grow.  We are two sides of the same coin, he and I.  At least it seems that way.  But only one side can face up. Where is the difference?  I tell her I don't want a romance.  I have just healed and am learning to walk again and exploring the limits of my healed body.  She is still wounded and bleeding.  I know the sorrows of a codependent relationship - it is not something I will ever allow myself to enter again.  He wants her to live with him, to raise his son with him.  So that's the difference we propose.  Am I disillusioned to think that my offer is better?  I love her and yet deny my love through reason.  Can I really give her the space she needs to grow?  Can she really heal better without the romantic attachment to another to spur that healing?  Am I right to think the romance will warp the healing into enmeshment?

I concede, and we retire for the night.  Awkward and stilted.  She wants to talk to him before he sleeps.  As she talks to him, she offers to play Second Life with me.  Desperate and craving, I agree.  I need to sleep, my whole body is telling me such, but I need her more.

Second Life is something awkward, yet refreshing.  But it is far past my bedtime, and every moment that passes my body is telling me to sleep, and I don't value the time in game as much as I value the time spent talking. Wow.  Therein lies a truth I did not see.  I stayed up late the night before helping my cousin. I loved myself for that, and it empowered me, despite my lack of energy and sleepiness the day after.  Was it that much later than the night before?  No.  And yes, two nights in a row is more difficult, but it was more than that.  My own prejudice taints the activity.  I feel the activity is not as healing.  I should know better.  By my own healing and history, I should know better.  I do find some small solace in the places we visit.  She talks to me by voice again.  My heart sings.  We talk and explore and some small contentment seeps into my heart.  She needs to go for a bit, I tell her I'm going to sleep.

I couldn't sleep.  Agony and anxiety ripped at me.  Clawed their way deep into me.  I resolved to tell her how I felt.  It was unfair that she confided in him before me.  It was unfair that she makes time for him and not for me.  It was unfair that she chose to spend time talking to him and the only time she wanted to spend with me was to escape.  I worried for her.  I felt her drifting away and didn't know what to do, and I needed to stop it.  I ... I didn't know anymore.  I only knew the anguish.

She came back, and fear gripped me again.  She doesn't want to talk about these things.   But I need to tell her how I feel, right?  It's not about her, it's about me.  But it is about her, too.  It's about us.   Talking would drive her away.  Admission makes me vulnerable.  What if she didn't care that I felt hurt?

Hence courage comes first... we talked.  More upheavals, but at least an understanding at the end.We play more; we make tentative plans.  I understand how hard it is for her to keep plans as she is.  I wake this morning.  I let myself sleep late.  1pm meditation. She's put it in the calendar.  My heart glows.  My own anxiety.  How can I do yoga and shop and be back in 2 hours?  I will not abandon her.  I must be back.  What do I sacrifice from myself to do this?

She is still awake?  She did not sleep?  My brow furrows in consternation.  Yet her sleep schedule is fucked.  I know this, and she's awake - she's trying to fix it.  I tell her my time problems, and she gives me wisdom.  Wisdom that I should have known but couldn't access.  The yoga is optional - especially the yoga class.  The 21 day challenge puts a superficial veneer on it that adds expectation and pressure that, although supposedly to encourage, can also promote desperation, pressure, and unreasonable expectation.  I agree and go shopping.

On the way back, I call her.  All those times she dialed me driving to and from work - I need to talk to her more.  She didn't answer.  Was she asleep?  Pulling into the garage, past the doorstep, to my computer.  She is barely awake, but wants to sleep.  Meditation in 20 minutes?  No answer.  I understand, and I love her for it.  My best wishes go out to her, sleeping snug, enraptured away from the troubles of reality.  I leave her a note to sleep through the night if she can.  I hope she will. I dream that she will be up when I am up tomorrow morning, and that we can connect once again on that same wavelength we once shared .... two souls connected and tied together before either one even knew what happened.

Community Darshan

I went to something called a Darshan on Tuesday.  It was an amazing experience.  There was a group of 8 people who each took turns sitting on a shrine of sorts. When you were on the shrine, your job was to engage each person and lock gazes with them for about 60 seconds or so, in turn.  That person was to then write down and remember what they saw in you, expressing it as "I am XXXX." So each person sat there, and spent a minute or so, looking at everyone else... and when you weren't sitting on there, you were watching, watching the person on the shrine locking gazes with someone else, and then with you... and then you experience the gaze, and write down your own thoughts.

The feedback, however, is self-referential.  It is expressed as "I am ...", not "You are ..."  Why? Because our perception of others is inevitably colored by our perception of ourselves... by our moods, feelings, philosophy, insecurity... What we think and judge in another person is different than what a third person would think and judge of that same person.  So in essence, our judgements and what we see in other people is as much or more a reflection of ourselves than of other people. And the exercise illuminates that.  People recite out what they saw and observed at the end, and the self-reflection is glaringly obvious. Yes, multiple people will say similar things about one person who sat on the shrine, but even more so, one person will have observations about many different people that all have a similar feel.

The feedback was not all positive.  You were supposed to write whatever you felt or saw about the person on the shrine, positive or negative.  In truth, the 8 people gathered there were all of a like-mindset - so most of the comments were positive.  Some people had 100% positive comments, and other people had mostly insightful, descriptive comments, but there were a handful of negative comments, and of those, most were less judgmental, and more descriptive/observational.

The practice can be done in a different manner, as well.  One participant said she had participated in a gathering where they spoke the feelings as they felt them, and directly to the other person, not in a self-referential manner.  She described the gathering as very raw and emotional.

People were inspired by me last night, which I find ... very difficult to comprehend and accept.  I have been mired in such an inconsequential self-image for so long that to think that people could meet me and be inspired by what I'm doing - my actions and talk - is incongruous with my world-frame.  I am a participant, and I am learning from others.  There is a shift there wherein I not only participate but also lead, where I not only learn but also teach.

I have had roles in the past where I have done both - I have taught in university classrooms - I have lead a guild.  But this was an interpersonal, social setting - and their words caught me entirely by surprise. I was honored.

My journey has been a very personal one.  It's one I never expected.  This juice feast - I'm on day 12 now - has been tulmultuous and cathartic... It's changed (I haven't written about this yet) into a treatment for my psoriasis into something much more than that.  It's become the beginning of a journey.  But it's a very personal journey, and it's my own.  I've known that with the insight and wisdom and experience I've gained even from just these past two weeks, I can help, advise, and influence others.  I just never expected that the influence would come without effort - that by simply talking to people, I could inspire them.  I am a deeply flawed person, still, and that I could walk into a room and tell them about my life and they would be touched is incongruous.

The twists and turns of life and fate befall me

The past few days have been filled with elation, upheaval, turmoil, love, catharsis, and healing.

Just as the rains have deluged California, so have emotions deluged me.  These last 3 days have been a hurricane, and I have been buffeted about.  Miraculously, I think I have come through alive and well.  The juice feast is an emotional healing as well as a physical one, and old scars have been ripped open to be redressed and to heal correctly.  Suppressed secrets and desires have surfaced to wreak havoc, but exposed to the light of consciousness, they lose their power and wither.  Acceptance helps immensely.  Acceptance and courage.  Courage to tell the truth, no matter your fears, and the courage to face ugliness.

Stay tuned...  I will post more in a little bit.

The difference between laziness and self-acceptance

A reader asked: 

What's the balance between not being to hard on yourself and allowing yourself to be lazy?

That's a fantastic question, and I think the answer lies understanding the difference between your actions in the past vs. your actions in the future. Softening is good for the past. Energy (the opposite of laziness) is good for the future.

I accept that I did not achieve a goal and did not accomplish something I wanted to. That is ok, and I still love myself despite that. When something is in the past, there is no use punishing yourself for it. So accept it, soften, and embrace yourself for everything you did accomplish.

I do not accept that I will not achieve my goals in the future. I will not be lazy. That is, in fact, a poor way of saying it. It is better to say I will be proactive and energetic in achieving what I want.That is the future. Do not accept failure in the future, so feel free to press yourself as hard as you want for things you intend to accomplish and do in your life.

Laziness is a state of being that predicts the future. The fact that I didn't finish the last page of my thesis tonight wasn't laziness. It was fact. It's also fact that I did finish 3 pages before that last page.

Laziness would be "I don't intend to finish that last page the rest of this week because I can be easy on myself." That's an attitude about the future that's counterproductive.

So, once again. Once things are past, and you can't control them, accept mistakes and forgive yourself. Soften. For the future, do not be lazy - be proactive - be energetic - strive to get things done.

Another way to put this is: "Don't dwell on the past and on things you can't control. Think about what you can control and what you will do next."

80/20 Rule and Time Management

From Wikipedia:

The Pareto principle (also known as the 80-20 rule,^[1] the law of the vital few, and the principle of factor sparsity) states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.

One of the things I'm trying to do right now is manage my time.  I find myself deluged with all the obligations of the juice feast concurrent with maintaining two blogs all while trying to finish my degree.  I realized this morning that all of these should fall under the 80/20 rule.  I don't need any of these to be perfect.  I only need them to be @ 80% proficiency.  I have spent so much time on my thesis and my publications that at this point, getting 80% of what remains finished will be enough to push the thesis and the publications out the door.  In my juice feast, I am trying to maximize everything I could possibly do to make the juice feast as optimal as possible while trying to cure my psoriasis.  That's not necessary.  The feast is so incredibly good for me and my body that doing 80% of what I could ideally achieve will be enough to send my psoriasis into remission (maybe not as quickly as 100%, but I can give up a couple weeks).  This blog, understanding myself, and my emotional/spiritual evolution is critical to me.  But the steps I've been taking and the writing I've been doing don't have to be perfect.  They, too can be 80% effective.  

I have concluded that spending 20% effort to achieve all three of these at 80% effectiveness will be optimal and will empower me to achieve these goals at this point in my life.  I can roughly divide my available day into 20% chunks.  In 24 hours, I reserve 8 hours for sleep, getting to sleep, and getting up.  That leaves 16 hours.  From the remaining 16 hours, I reserve 10% for upkeep and maintenance time.  What does that mean?  That is time lost from switching tasks, answering phones, checking calendars, etc.  It happens constantly and has a low level deleterious effect on activity.  This may be overcompensating a bit, but that works.  Out of the remaining 14.4 hours, I reserve 2 hours for playtime - goofing off time.  This leaves ~12.5 hours, or 5 chunks of 2.5 hours each.  These are my productive hours during the day.  2 chunks will be devoted to my thesis and graduation.  2 chunks will be devoted to my health and well-being.  1 chunk will be devoted to this blog, self-empowerment, and cultivating relationships I need in my life.

Thesis and graduation is easy and straightforward - it will be time spent on research, communication, writing to advance towards my degree.  This includes travel time on days I have to travel.  I should devote a total of 35 hours a week towards this.  Health and well-being is also straightforward.  These are the life practices and juice feasting I need in order to heal my body and soul.  This includes blogging time on Psoriasis Juice Feast, juicing itself, life practices, shopping, and research/reading.  The final chunk includes this blog.  It includes time spent on facebook cultivating relationships.  It also includes time spent on self-empowerment and improvement.  I want to make this blog more about self-empowerment.  I will be posting about this shortly (when I have time alotted by this system), but I am finding that one of the things that is dawning upon me is how much control I have over the myriad facets of my life, and how I direct my attention and energy.  This will be one of the topics I shall cover in this blog.

These are all ballpark and flexible times.  But they are goals and guidelines for the week.  Time, of course, must be averaged, so one day I may spend up to 10 hours on health, and only 3-4 hours for the next 3-4 days.  These guidelines will also be flexible.  These figures are simply drawn in pencil and if they don't fit my actual needs, I will adjust them.  

The key insight with this post is that I don't need to perfect anything - I need to look at the big picture and understand what I'm doing with my life - and to spend my time accordingly.

Softening Goals

Understanding and love for myself requires patience in achievement of goals.  Everything in life is cyclical, and achievement no less.  Some days there will be too many things to do and even the smallest, easiest goal can go undone.  This is no reason to be angry, mad, or reproachful of oneself.  Accept what you have done and move on.  Tomorrow is another day and you will achieve everything you want in time.

Creative Dynamo

Holy shit.  I'm not quite sure what happened, but my mind has been a creative dynamo all morning.  I have a million ideas jangling around inside my head atm.  Here's a quick list of them, and then I'll start breaking things down in depth in later blog posts.

(1) 80/20 rule and time management: 1 part blog/self-empowerment, 2 parts thesis, 2 parts healing, after maintenance and upkeep.  Long-term project time-management - chunking blocks of time.

(2) Blogging Self-Empowerment

(3) Self-help for the Scientist

(4) Spirituality for the Atheist

(5) Tell mom about NYE.  Understanding acceptance, fear, doubt, and shame.

(6) Goal: Understanding the connection between self-help and spirituality

(7) Goal: Understanding the link between neuroscience and spirituality, neuroscience and self-help.

(8) Self-improvement: daily baby steps and changes.

(9) Psoriasis, Depression, and Shame.

(10) Goals:  Societal changes:  Self-empowerment needs to be taught in the educational system.  Self-empowerment needs to be part of the welfare system.

(11) Psoriasis:  Understanding the Feast as an evolving Hero's Journey with changing goals.

(12) Psoriasis Healing: the role of topicals, self-empowerment, and positive energy.

(13) Seduction: Understanding the seduction literature as self-empowerment.

How inrtpoamt is sleniplg?

I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer inwaht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? yaeh and I awlyas thought slpeling was ipmorantt.

Yoga Musings: Drishti, Myopia, and Presbyopia

Drishti is where you direct your gaze during yoga poses.  It's underemphasized in yoga teaching.  There are some standard places where you can settle your eyes.  In many forward facing poses, eg. Warrior I & II, you gaze out at the horizon.  In other poses, you gaze out at your hand or fingers.  Still others, you gaze, or at least try to gaze, at your own nose or you roll your eyes up and try to gaze at your third eye (spot between the brows).

Myopia, or earsightedness develops in children, teens, and sometimes adults.  While growing up, I always thought my nearsightedness was genetic.  It isn't.  It's a direct result of muscular action.  Most myopia is, actually.  My advisor always likes to give the anecdote about the airforce here.  When the airforce started recruiting pilots, they had to find extremely intelligent men with perfect eyesight.  Well, most intelligent students go through our school system and end up with myopia.  Why?  Studying and reading books.  The airforce ended up identifying students who were so smart that they never studies.  These were its ideal recruits.  The problem is, once they were recruited, they then had to study to become pilots.  Yep.  This involved a lot of reading.   After pilot training all these genius students had lost their perfect vision.  Finally, someone came up with a solution and gave all these pilots reading glasses.

When we read, our muscles contract around the eye to change our focal plane to the distance of the book.  When this happens for long hours at a time, say reading, writing, or working on the computer, the eyeball slowly gets pulled out of shape.  Our natural, resting focal plane slowly becomes closer.  It was on the horizon.  When we are +1.00 diopters myopic, it's at 1m, +2.00 diopters gives us 0.5m, +3.00 diopters gives us 0.25m, and so forth.  Reading glasses readjust the focal plane so that our resting focal plane is @ 1m or 0.5m, allowing us to focus on something at that distance without having to use our muscles to adjust our focal plane.  Thus, long hours spent don't involve long hours of muscles pulling on the eyeball, slowly bending the eyeball out of shape.  Contemporary optometry, unfortunately, does the exact opposite. When a child becomes myopic, they can no longer focus well on the horizon, so we give them negative diopter lenses so that their focal plane moves back to the horizon.  Then the child sits down and studies, and parents and teachers tell them to wear their glasses.  Well, the glasses make them focus at the horizon, so their muscles have to pull again to make the focal distance closer.  The child gets more near-sighted, the doctor then gives him or her stronger glasses, and the next time the child reads, the muscles have to pull again.  The dance continues and we get people like myself with -8.50 diopters of myopia.

Why am I bringing all this up?  I think daily yoga practice with a strong emphasis on drishti can halt or slow presbyopia and reverse near-sightedness.  Halting myopia is easy.  Hell, just giving a kid reading glasses will halt the development of myopia.  Reversing it is another matter.  There are a few infomercial kits who say they can reverse it.  I purchased one once, it involved a lot of exercises requiring constant switching of close and far focal points.  I believe the idea is that this develops the muscles in the eye which control focusing.  They also had some practices like putting a warm towel on your eyes.  I'm not sure what end that serves, but it perhaps relaxes muscles and possibly the eyeball, allowing the eyeball to revert to its original shape more easily.

An hour long yoga practice with strong emphasis on drishti would involve constant refocusing and movement of the eyes.  This serves the same purpose and should exercise the muscles enough so that presbyopia does not set in.  As for reversing myopia, the same principle that applied in making one myopic may apply.  I'd have to look at some eyeball anatomy to be sure, but there may be a set of muscles antagonistic to the primary flexing muscles which cause myopia.  These may enable one to stretch the eyeball in a manner as to reduce myopia.  To engage these you would have a natural focal distance of say 1m or 5m, and then attempt to focus on the horizon.  That is to say, if you used slightly less optimal contacts or glasses, you wouldn't see the horizon perfectly, and would have a natural focal distance closer than infinity.  By attempting to focus on infinity, you would be reversing the action that caused myopia, and perhaps cause your vision to improve.

PS> One of the more annoying things during a yoga class is to have a teacher who doesn't speak loudly enough.  A student is flowing through the poses, and the vocal prompt of the teacher invites the next movement.  This allows one to focus on the now, the breath, the movement.  When the instructions aren't heard clearly, the yoga student is for a moment, directionless, or even worse, misunderstands the next instruction, and realizes it after already entering the wrong pose.  When directionless, you are distracted and preoccupied with trying to find out the next pose, or puzzling at what the instructor said.  In this manner, at least, entering the wrong pose is slightly better.  There is less distraction and querying, and the easy decision is to just immediately switch poses, albeit at a loss of time and tempo and therefore depth within the next pose.


So I've been doing yoga daily for over a week straight now.