We live in a world of interconnectivity and I don’t just mean the world wide web, and cell phones. I mean that to a greater or lesser degree all things are interconnected. We as people are connected to each other, we has humans are connected to the earth, and even internally our bodies are interconnected with themselves. You might think, okay big deal. We’re interconnected, so what? But it is a big deal because interconnectivity means that what affects one part affects the whole. On a global scale the failure of one countries economy causes a depression in the economy of other countries as well. In a circle of friends when one person suffers everyone feels it. In your body when your hips are out of alignment, it affects more than just your hips, it throws off your back, neck, shoulders, and much more.
If we introduce a new element to a balanced system it throws the system out of balance, now sometimes the system will reach a new balance point, or sometimes the system never balances again. Australia is a good example of this. In 1859 rabbits were introduced into the wild of Australia, where with no real natural predators and hospitable ecosystems, they proliferated rapidly. So much so that they began to destroy the ecosystems they inhabited. The rabbits are suspected of being the most significant known factor in species loss in Australia and are also the cause of serious erosion problems, as they eat the plants that the hold the topsoil in place. It wasn’t until 1950 that a successful method of population control was found, when a disease specific to the rabbit population was purposefully introduced. Successfully reducing the 600 million estimated population down to around 100 million. In some ways we as humans are like the rabbits, we are doing much the same thing to our planet as we speak, but that’s a topic for another day.
Now let’s look at another example, the life of an individual. As a person, we are not defined by any one thing. We are a series of interconnected elements, both in personality and in body. Our body is a series of finely tuned inter connected systems. Without our lungs we would die, but without the heart to pump blood through the lungs and carry oxygen to the brain we would die as well. Without a brain to tell the heart to beat, or the lungs to inflate, there would be no oxygen and again we would die. All three systems are interconnected and dependent on each other. The brain needs the heart and lungs, but the lungs need the brain and heart, and the heart needs the brain and lungs. Without any one part we don’t function as a body. But beyond just simply living, when one part of the body suffers, the rest of the body suffers as well. Stress is a good example of this. Psychological stress is an emotional reaction to outward stimuli, but it can cause physical reactions as well. Stress can cause elevated blood pressure which if it persists long enough can become hypertension and hypertension can lead to serious health problems. But stress also causes a fight or flight response, which is beneficial in some situations but when prolonged, starts to take its toll on the body in other ways. Part of fight or flight is a release of adrenaline to help keep us focused and a tightening of the muscles to prepare us to either defend ourselves or to run. Tensed muscles over prolonged periods can become tight and cramped. Which in turn pulls on the bones and can cause misalignment of the skeletal structure, and both the muscle tension and misalignment can cause a myriad of other problems. One of the most common reactions to muscle tension is headaches. When this muscle tension is caused by stress this particular form of headache is called a stress headache. Stress will also cause knots in the muscles. These are called myofascial trigger points. Basically they are parts of the muscle that never relax as they are supposed to, and simply remain bunched up. This of course causes them to be painful, but that’s not the only problem they cause. Because they are tightly bunched they restrict their own blood supply and will trap toxins in the muscles. So something as relatively small as stress can throw off as highly complex a system as our body. It’s all interconnected.
Okay then how about mental interconnectivity. We as humans are a collection of events and experiences, no one event defines us or makes us who we are. Also it is impossible to analyze a given event or choice or behavior without looking at the other events that caused us to react, chose, or act the way we did. Life is a ball of knotted up string and you can’t expect to just pick at one thread without bringing along more than you expected. When trying to analyze or deal with an issue in your life, you will be affected by your past and often to understand our present feelings we must look at what has come before. If you have an irrational fear of clowns there’s likely something in your past that caused that. Or if you’re afraid of commitment, there’s probably something that caused that as well. Often times this is really about that. The reason you get upset may not be immediately apparent and the obvious answer might not be the right one, because nothing is stand alone. Have you ever listened to a song and reacted emotionally but not known why? It’s probably because the song triggered some memory or thought, and it’s not always about what the song is about. Emotions are complicated things and they are rarely subject to logic, which often makes it difficult to untangle the mess that are our thoughts and emotions.
I know that this post only scratches the surface of each of these topics, but it will have to do for now. So dwell on this, if everything is interconnected, then what you do, and say, and who you are simply being, makes a difference. You chose how you effect the global community by the way you interact and effect the people around you, you chose what state your body will be in by the way you deal with and react to your environment, and you chose who you get to be, by how you react, process and deal with the things that you experience. So the next time something seems disconnected remember that sometimes this is really about that.
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Intuition
Okay I realize its been a while but here's a new post. :)
So I recently had the experience of interviewing potential roommates. This is something I’ve done before but this time it was different. Before I kind of always went with the first person I talked to and that worked out fine. But this time we interviewed over a dozen people in a little over a week. Never have I tried to asses so many people in such a short time and what I found interesting about the experience was how I went about it. I relied heavily upon my intuition. Listening to my intuition or my gut if you want to call it that, isn’t new to me, but seldom have I sat down and analyzed my intuitive reactions the way I did in this process. A person would interview and then after they left my roommate and I would sit down and discuss our impressions. Often times it would result in us trying to define the feel of the person, that intuitive read we got off the person.
This might strike the non intuitive types as a little strange, but my life has taught me to trust my intuition. But then what is intuition? Webster defines it as quick and ready insight, or the power or faculty of attaining to direct knowledge or cognition without evident rational thought and inference. The best explanation I’ve come to is that my intuition is my brain subconsciously piecing bits of information together. This information can be obvious things but often as not its putting together the bits and pieces of information that aren’t readily apparent. You may ask, what I mean by that. I mean that our brains receive more input than we consciously register. Things like vocal inflection, posture, facial expressions.
There are things called micro expressions, they are brief, involuntary expressions shown on the face according to emotions experienced. The mind perceives these, but unless you’re trained to recognize them, you wouldn’t consciously register them. All this kind of information goes into your subconscious and mills about. Big deal you say. It is a big deal, because unlike computers one of the things the brain does best, is to piece together disparate bits of information that would otherwise seem unconnected and that’s the key to intuition. The minds ability to collect, analyze, and collate information until it comes to a conclusion. Then the subconscious presents this conclusion to the conscious mind.
The way this looks in action is I’ll be doing something and all of a sudden I’ll have an idea or a feeling about something, I can’t tell you why I feel that way or what made me think what I think, but as often as not I end up being right. Most of the time it’s not a clear cut fully formed idea as it is more of a feeling or gut reaction, which in turn requires interpretation. Do I not like this situation because something is wrong, or did I just eat something bad last night?
So back to interviewing, we would end up trying to describe the feel of people, using words like clean, or uncomfortable. But once we had a description we would usually try to work backwards and figure out what it was that lead to that particular impression. This person felt awkward, why was that. Well perhaps it was because he was constantly shifting his weight back and forth. Why? Maybe because he was nervous or maybe he just needed to go to the bathroom. But if we take it in the context of his hesitant speech, it’s likely that he was nervous. What does that mean about him as a person? Well it doesn’t necessarily mean much of anything, as interviewing is hard and most everyone is nervous. But after half an hour of talking if he’s still nervous that might mean something. Perhaps the person lacks confidence. Who knows.
What I find interesting is I can often get a read/ impression off someone in five min or less. That impression is not all ways 100% accurate but I’d put it in at least the 80% range. Which brings up another question how is it possible to asses a person in less than 5 min. There is generally not enough speech in a 5 min conversation to get to know a person, and really how many nonverbal ques can you pick up in that time as well. This moves us a little more into the realm of auras, the idea that people have a physical and metaphysical presence. I don’t personally buy completely into the concept of auras but I will accept that there is more going on in this world than can be explained by science. I can tell you from personal experience, it is possible to detect the presence of another person in complete darkness. You can literally feel them, even if they are several feet away. It is also possible to identify someone who you can’t see by their feel, though this usually requires familiarity with the person. Science tells us that we are an electromagnetic system, our bodies are full of energy. So is it outside the realm of possibility that we can sense or feel the energy field of another person, I don’t think it is. And is it possible that this field could tell you something about the person? I don’t see why not. I know from my study of the body and personal experience that as strange as it sounds muscles can hold memories. Tension in the muscles will also affect the rest of the body and not just by throwing other parts of the body out of alignment. Acupuncture works upon the principle of the flow and interconnectedness of energy in the body and the idea that the flow can be manipulated to help healing. That knots or blockages in the flow affect other parts of the body. So if we can feel the electrical field of someone why couldn’t that field tell us about what’s going on in their body. If they are stressed or off balance somehow and if muscles can hold memories than why not be able to pick up on thoughts or feelings through that same field.
I don’t know but it seems at least plausible. So call it auras, call it spiritual sensitivity, or electromagnetic detection, or intuition, call it whatever you want but I’m going to keep trusting my instincts on people and situations, and perhaps the next time you have a nagging feeling in the back of your mind about something, you should stop and think about why that is.
So I recently had the experience of interviewing potential roommates. This is something I’ve done before but this time it was different. Before I kind of always went with the first person I talked to and that worked out fine. But this time we interviewed over a dozen people in a little over a week. Never have I tried to asses so many people in such a short time and what I found interesting about the experience was how I went about it. I relied heavily upon my intuition. Listening to my intuition or my gut if you want to call it that, isn’t new to me, but seldom have I sat down and analyzed my intuitive reactions the way I did in this process. A person would interview and then after they left my roommate and I would sit down and discuss our impressions. Often times it would result in us trying to define the feel of the person, that intuitive read we got off the person.
This might strike the non intuitive types as a little strange, but my life has taught me to trust my intuition. But then what is intuition? Webster defines it as quick and ready insight, or the power or faculty of attaining to direct knowledge or cognition without evident rational thought and inference. The best explanation I’ve come to is that my intuition is my brain subconsciously piecing bits of information together. This information can be obvious things but often as not its putting together the bits and pieces of information that aren’t readily apparent. You may ask, what I mean by that. I mean that our brains receive more input than we consciously register. Things like vocal inflection, posture, facial expressions.
There are things called micro expressions, they are brief, involuntary expressions shown on the face according to emotions experienced. The mind perceives these, but unless you’re trained to recognize them, you wouldn’t consciously register them. All this kind of information goes into your subconscious and mills about. Big deal you say. It is a big deal, because unlike computers one of the things the brain does best, is to piece together disparate bits of information that would otherwise seem unconnected and that’s the key to intuition. The minds ability to collect, analyze, and collate information until it comes to a conclusion. Then the subconscious presents this conclusion to the conscious mind.
The way this looks in action is I’ll be doing something and all of a sudden I’ll have an idea or a feeling about something, I can’t tell you why I feel that way or what made me think what I think, but as often as not I end up being right. Most of the time it’s not a clear cut fully formed idea as it is more of a feeling or gut reaction, which in turn requires interpretation. Do I not like this situation because something is wrong, or did I just eat something bad last night?
So back to interviewing, we would end up trying to describe the feel of people, using words like clean, or uncomfortable. But once we had a description we would usually try to work backwards and figure out what it was that lead to that particular impression. This person felt awkward, why was that. Well perhaps it was because he was constantly shifting his weight back and forth. Why? Maybe because he was nervous or maybe he just needed to go to the bathroom. But if we take it in the context of his hesitant speech, it’s likely that he was nervous. What does that mean about him as a person? Well it doesn’t necessarily mean much of anything, as interviewing is hard and most everyone is nervous. But after half an hour of talking if he’s still nervous that might mean something. Perhaps the person lacks confidence. Who knows.
What I find interesting is I can often get a read/ impression off someone in five min or less. That impression is not all ways 100% accurate but I’d put it in at least the 80% range. Which brings up another question how is it possible to asses a person in less than 5 min. There is generally not enough speech in a 5 min conversation to get to know a person, and really how many nonverbal ques can you pick up in that time as well. This moves us a little more into the realm of auras, the idea that people have a physical and metaphysical presence. I don’t personally buy completely into the concept of auras but I will accept that there is more going on in this world than can be explained by science. I can tell you from personal experience, it is possible to detect the presence of another person in complete darkness. You can literally feel them, even if they are several feet away. It is also possible to identify someone who you can’t see by their feel, though this usually requires familiarity with the person. Science tells us that we are an electromagnetic system, our bodies are full of energy. So is it outside the realm of possibility that we can sense or feel the energy field of another person, I don’t think it is. And is it possible that this field could tell you something about the person? I don’t see why not. I know from my study of the body and personal experience that as strange as it sounds muscles can hold memories. Tension in the muscles will also affect the rest of the body and not just by throwing other parts of the body out of alignment. Acupuncture works upon the principle of the flow and interconnectedness of energy in the body and the idea that the flow can be manipulated to help healing. That knots or blockages in the flow affect other parts of the body. So if we can feel the electrical field of someone why couldn’t that field tell us about what’s going on in their body. If they are stressed or off balance somehow and if muscles can hold memories than why not be able to pick up on thoughts or feelings through that same field.
I don’t know but it seems at least plausible. So call it auras, call it spiritual sensitivity, or electromagnetic detection, or intuition, call it whatever you want but I’m going to keep trusting my instincts on people and situations, and perhaps the next time you have a nagging feeling in the back of your mind about something, you should stop and think about why that is.
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