Today I want to share with you wonderful ideas of Tomas Hanna on the role of mind and mental attitude in shaping our life and well-being. In his recognition of vital importance of psychological and mental processes on health and well-being, Hanna follows in the footsteps of Hans Selye, an Austrian-Canadian endocrinologist who formulated the concepts of stress and researched its effect on human system. While Selye was focusing mostly on endocrine response to stress leaving aside neuromuscular aspects of organism’s stress adaptation, Selye’s outstanding contribution was, among others, in singling out two kinds of stress: the one that is potentially harmful for the body (distress) and its “healthy” counterpart, the one that causes about body’s adaptation and strengthening (eustress). It was Selye who first expressed this empowering insight into nature of stress: “Adopting the right attitude to stress can convert a negative stress into a positive one”. The following excerpt from Thomas’ Hanna’s book further expands Selye’s concepts on importance of mental attitude in cultivating one’s health, well-being and shaping one’s life events. Hanna’s research and reasoning is so complete and so in line with what I inherently believe about the power of mind to manifest material reality, that I will just paste pieces of text here without any interpretation or addition on my own. The text is taken from Chapter 12 of Somatics, titled “Expectation: the role of mental attitude”. To read this chapter and the rest of the book, go get the book on any of the ebook stores, it’s available for immediate download. You can also read parts of the book on Google Books ” Expectation is not only a prediction of the future, it also directly contributes to making it happen. This proactive role which expectation plays is crucial to our well-being. Consider the placebo effect. This curious word is Latin. It means “I shall please,” and it was taken from the liturgy of the Catholic Church, in which the priest said, “I shall please the lord . . . ” Later, it came to be applied more generally to any attempt to flatter or please another person. By the nineteenth century it was being used by physicians to refer to any ineffective substance given as “medicine,” not to cure, but merely to please, the patient. Soon, however, physicians began to notice an odd thing. These substances, which were not supposed to have any effect, actually succeeded if the physician cajoled the patient into believing it would. If the patient expected that the sugar pill would help, it did. This is the placebo effect. F. J. Evans conducted a series of carefully controlled studies in pain reduction, which compared the effects of morphine to the effects of a “worthless” placebo pill. The findings were startling: The placebo was 56 percent as effective as a dose of morphine. l What could cause such a powerful analgesic effect? Only one thing: expectation. Almost the same results were obtained in comparing placebo effects with those of aspirin (54 percent), codeine (56 percent), and Darvon (45 percent). It was extraordinary to learn that the placebo effect was constant. No matter what the analgesic drug, the effectiveness of the placebo was always proportional. But, as the information poured in, physicians learned that the placebo effect was not at all limited to pain reduction; it was found in studies of adrenal gland secretion, angina, asthma, blood cell counts, blood pressure, cancer, the com- mon cold, the cough reflex, diabetes, emesis, fever, gastric secretion and motility, headache, insomnia, multiple sclerosis, oral contraceptives, parkinsonism, pupil dilation and constriction, respiration, rheumatoid arthritis, seasickness, ulcers, vaccines, vasomotor function, and warts. Such a list constitutes a massive confirmation of the somatic viewpoint-that human consciousness is an integral part of the human body’s self-regulation. … Because the placebo is so prevalent in clinical medicine, a science called psychoneuroimmunology has emerged. This promising research area presumes something that not too long ago was deemed impossible: that the immune system is not isolated in its functions, but has a working relation with the central nervous system. In addition, emotions, attitudes, and other conscious states trigger certain neurotransmittors which, in turn, affect the immune system- hence, the young science’s name, psychoneuroimmunology. The working thesis of psychoneuroimmunology is that a state of consciousness, such as an expectation, can cause changes in both the central nervous system and the immune system. This is essentially the somatic viewpoint: that the attitudes and beliefs we have about our bodies and our health vitally affect the ongoing state of our bodies and our health. If we expect our bodies to be resilient and healthy, then they will tend to remain so. On the other hand, ex- pectation may be predicated on the myth of aging; that is, a belief in inevitable structural breakdown and functional loss. In this case, breakdown and loss will eventually occur. The prophecy becomes self-fulfilling: What we expect to happen does happen. If we are at a certain age and feel within our bodies certain discomforts, how we interpret them becomes crucial. If we take them as a sign of serious disease and breakdown expected at this age in life, then we are accepting and giving in to a presumed fatality. To anticipate pathology is, functionally, tantamount to intending it. This unleashes dangerous reactions in the brain and in the immune system, dangerous because apparently the mere feeling of “giving in” to an ailment immobilizes our self-healing capacities. Professor Ian Wickramasekera is a medical research scientist. In his general analysis of the placebo as a conditioned response, he says the following about this aspect of negative expectation: This analysis may be particularly relevant to chronic diseases and functional disorders such as low back pain, diabetes, cardiovascular disorders, musculoskeletal disorders, and cancer, in which the long-term and intermittent reinforcements of the unconditioned disease process, injury, or dysfunction increase the probability of negative conditioned effects that sustain the disorder. In such cases, the chronic intermittent activation of the disease mechanisms by unconditioned physiochemical causes may lead to increasingly strong aversive anticipatory responses that inhibit the motor system even when the unconditioned stimulus is inactive. It is a well-established fact that intermittent reinforcement by unconditioned stimuli will make a maladaptive response maximally resistant to improvement. This statement makes it clear that the myth of aging is not merely a belief about the diseases of aging; it can also be an active cause of these diseases. Thus, by responding to bodily discomforts with intelligent awareness and positive countermeasures, we can directly prevent such a “disease process, injury, or dysfunction” from becoming a permanent condition The word “age” means, quite simply, “a period of existence”. Moreover, even though “age” means simply “a period of existence,” it refers more broadly to that which characterizes a period of existence. It is particularly interesting when it becomes a verb -to age – for then it means “to grow old.” What, we should ask, does it mean “to grow old”? “Old,” in its Latin root, alo, and in its ancient Germanic form, aft, means – quite surprisingly – “to nourish” and “to bring up.” More generally, alo means to strengthen, increase, and advance. It means to become taller and to become deeper. In its root meaning, then, “to age,” and to get older, means “to grow up.” In view of the etymology of “old,” it is fascinating to note that “growing old” has come to mean exactly the opposite of the original meaning of “old”: that is, “old” has come to mean worn out, deteriorated, decayed, dilapidated, and no longer useful. Thus, in plumbing the meaning of the simple but curious word, “age,” we come upon a fundamental ambiguity: “To age” means either to grow, increase, and become both taller and deeper or to decrease, decay, wear out, and become decrepit and discarded. It is most provocative that a word as basic to human life as “aging” can mean either of two opposite possibilities: growth or degeneration. It suggests that what is characteristic to the period of existence of a human’s lifetime is neither programmed nor predictable. It implies that the direction of human life is not fixed but open. If we think of the coming years of our life as a continuing process of advancement and strengthening, it is more than likely we shall experience just that. And it is just as likely that a constant, daily expectation of wearing out and becoming decrepit will be a self-fulfilling prophecy. … We see in this situation an extraordinary truth about human life: Whether we will grow or degenerate during the course of our lives is a question not of known fact but of expected possibility. Time, as the currency of life, is always futurity; it is not yet spent. How we expect it to be spent predetermines the plan for its expenditure. Once we realize that the investment we make in our lives is the same as any other investment, we may adopt a very different attitude about what possibilities we expect for our future years. I do not think it improper to say that what we invest in life determines how much we get out of it. It is a question of whether we think that our lives are at least as important an investment as, for example, real estate or stocks. It is my observation that many humans do not value their personal bodily future as highly as they value the future of their material possessions. The human who knows that his or her being is growing is a human who usually has the strength and endurance to prevail over the defeats and stresses and traumas that occur in each and every life. Such a person knows that the inevitable pains and dysfunctions occurring in the body are not “inevitable signs of degeneration,” but typical adjustments that all bodies go through in regulating and readapting themselves for the future. ” With such thoughts for the day, I wish you to spend it nicely! ...
Changing mood with movement and posture
Today I stumbled upon a TED talk on influence of body activity (movement and posture) on mental states and emotions It’s an interesting talk and compelling topic for me as Tom and I have been exploring this connection between body, mind and breath for quite some time. In the talk, Tal Shafir explains in simple terms some findings of her research: just like the brain uses information of physiological change in the body like lowering glucose levels to elicit feeling of hunger, information about posture, position and angles of joints and contraction of muscles is similarly interpreted by brain to produce neural or endocrine response. Seemingly put, the brain interprets information on the posture or physical activity and responds to it by generating what can be simplistically described as appropriate feeling or emotion. So not only our emotional state affects our posture (like slouched posture characteristic for depression), but the relation can be flipped over: our posture and movement affect our emotional state. This is what I have been teaching for a long time in our yoga classes. For instance, very popular in yoga classes “chest-opening” sequences produce the feeling of lightness and well-being, gently activate parasympathetic nervous system, providing more energy and awareness. Youtube comments under that TED talk included recommendation of some useful book on the topic of achieving desired mental states through body manipulation. The book is titled “The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind and Body in the Healing of Trauma”. So I went to check the book on Amazon, and thus fell into the rabbit hole of book browsing which left me with a few excellent books on my laptop: the above-mentioned book by Bessel van der Kolk, “Somatics” by Thomas Hanna and “Sensorimotor Psychotherapy” by Pat Ogden. While I don’t work with traumatic patients per se, the insights in these sources on connection of our psychological world, brain function and mind is a very interesting sphere to me which I have been exploring in my own practice of yoga and meditation. At the moment I’m devouring Thomas Hanna’s Somatics. Especially interesting and empowering are Somatic approaches to treating chronic pains and physical disabilities through educating people to regain sensory-motor control over their bodies. What Hanna wants us to understand is that human beings are not just mechanical dolls with anatomical structures performing defined functions. We are self-regulating systems, equipped with internal sensory and feedback instruments, and we need to learn to use them to live a healthy life. “The reason that physiology and medicine have failed to perceive the myths behind aging is that they have failed to recognize the fundamental fact that all human beings are self-aware, self-sensing, and self-moving: They are self-responsible somas. The somatic viewpoint recognizes not only that human beings are bodily beings who can become victims of physical and organic forces, but also that they are equally somatic beings who can change themselves. Humans can learn to perceive their internal functions and improve their control of their somatic functions.” So our role as instructors or movement educators is not to “cure” people but teach people to cure themselves by listening to their bodies and understanding what is going on inside. So again, it all starts with self-observation. It was a good useful find for my day which gives even more motivation to go do some yoga poses to see what is going on inside and how my body feels today. Resources: Bessel van del Kolk “The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma” Pat Ogden & Janina “Fisher Sensorimotor Psychotherapy: Interventions for Trauma and Attachment” Thomas Hanna “Somatics: Reawakening The Mind’s Control Of Movement, Flexibility, And Health” Tal Shafir. Ted Talk “How Your Body Affects Your Happiness” ...
The chemistry of happiness: physiological principles of shaping wholesome personality
What you practice is what you develop. To become the way you want to be, just start doing it. We’re talking about this on all our seminars and retreats: our mind is like a muscle; to develop it in a certain direction, you just need to practice this certain direction. Just do it Like we perform exercise to develop our muscle, and the more we practice the stronger it gets, everything that we do in our mind reinforces this quality of the mind that is being practiced, creating mental habits, positive or negative. The more often you feel irritated, the easier it gets for you to get irritated with or without any reason; the more often you feel angry, the more naturally anger appears in your daily reactions, making you “angry person”, or “irritated person”. Because states of mind and emotions, repeated with certain frequency, are not transient and casual, they’re your practice. By having these or that emotions, you make yourself more likely to get them next time. We’re not aware that we’re practicing every moment, and it can be practice of being unhappy, agitated, worried, irritated, anxious, lazy and apathetic, indifferent, rude, short-tempered, depressed, or it can be a practice of being happy, content, satisfied, grateful, joyful, confident, peaceful, etc. When we teach these simple principles to people, some understand the connection, but there are many who think that this mechanism is not real, that it’s just another kind of philosophy or theory. Others defend their current state of unhappiness by explaining that they have hard life situation and a lot of responsibility, and therefore their state of unhappiness is duly justified. Yes and no. Of course, external circumstances influence the way we feel about life and ourselves, but if we really want to make our life better, we need to try not only to change external factors, but to adjust the way we feel as well, not depending on these or that external factors. Because if we allow ourselves to feel unhappy, anxious, victimized, etc., for a long time, we run into danger of creating real, physical, hormonal and neurological mechanisms that support our habits of being miserable. Even when external circumstances have already changed. In this post I want to discuss physiological and chemical mechanisms of creating mental habits and states to demonstrate that principle “what you practice is what you develop” is not a philosophy or theory, it’s a mechanism embedded in our body and mind. There are two systems that regulate all functions and organs in our body: nervous and endocrine. Nervous system regulates all activity by commands delivered by electrochemical signals via body cells called neurons. The delivery of electochemical signal across the body is possible due to the action of neurotransmitters, special chemicals that transmit electric or chemical signals from one neuron to another or from a neuron to a target cell. Thus these neurotransmitters play important role in the way our nervous system works, shaping our everyday life and functions. Another regulatory system of our body is endocrine. It acts in a purely chemical way, through production of hormones – special chemicals that initiate, facilitate or inhibit chemical reactions in the body and regulate physiological and behavioral activities such as digestion, metabolism, respiration, tissue function, sensory perception, sleep, excretion, stress, growth and development, movement, reproduction and mood. In a word, if you think that hormonal, as well as nervous system, regulate “pretty much everything”, you will not be far from truth. Hormones are transported by our circulatory system and their action, compared to nerve signals, takes longer to take effect, but these effects are more prolonged, lasting from few hours to weeks. There are several chemicals that are particularly interesting to us in our discussion of mechanisms of happiness and unhappiness. These are: serotonin, dopamine and endorphins. Interestingly enough, all these chemicals are both neurotransmitters (meaning they carry out the signals within nervous system) and hormones (they also perform long term regulatory function on body organs and systems). Serotonin regulates mood, feeling of anxiety, libido, maniacal states, appetite, social disfunctions, fobias, sleep, memory and learning process, circulatory and endocrine function. It’s very important in regulation of sleep and mood. Secretion of serotonin induces relaxation. Low levels of serotonin may lead to depression, anxiety, low energy, migraine, sleep disorder, maniacal states, feeling of tension and irritation, memory and attention problems, compulsive eating, aggression and anger, decrease of sex drive. High level of serotonin causes calmness, higher pain tolerance, feeling of well-being, bliss and unity with universe. We can increase level of serotonin in three ways: cultivating positive moods, exposure to bright light, and exercise (think yoga, aerobic exercise, running, chi gong, tai chi, dancing, any exercise routine and movement therapies). Another family of substances, endorphins, are sometimes called “hormones of happiness” because they induce the state of happiness, euphoria and contentment, increase tolerance to pain, reduce stress effects and tiredness and increase body’s resistance to internal and external stress-factors. The name of the substance is translated from Latin as “morphine-like substance originating from within of the body”. The level of endorphin is increased by experiencing emotions of love, creativity, bliss, contentment. Endorphins are also produced during long and strenuous exercises to decrease pain, heighten reaction speed and boost body’s stress adaptation (think of high intensity long duration exercises, static yoga practices that require stamina, etc.). Also production of endorphins is triggered by immobilization and cold-temperature stress (think of Vipassana and other long-immobilisation meditation practices, and temperature tempering). Other factors to stimulate endorphin production are pleasant music, new positive impressions, sex, and chocolate. The last hormone-neurotransmitter to be discussed here is dopamine. Dopamine is responsible for good mood. Dopamine performs many important functions that influence memory, control of motor processes and pleasure. It makes us feel alive, motivated and content. The chemical is part of positive encouragement system, creating feeling of contentment and pleasure when we do the things we like, eat delicious food or make love. Such drugs as cocaine, nicotine, opiates, heroin and alcohol, as well as delicious food and sex, increase dopamine level. Therefore researches assume that such behaviors as smoking, drug and alcohol addictions, indiscrimination in sex partners, gambling and overeating are connected to dopamine deficiency. Low levels of dopamine in motor areas of brain causes Parkinson disease, whereas low dopamine in cognitive areas of brain impairs cognitive functions and leads to poor memory and inability to learn, poor concentration, scattered attention in performing tasks and conversations, low energy, absence of motivation, inability to enjoy life, addictions, manias, absence of satisfaction from activities that used to be gratifying. Dopamine production is stimulated by states of positive stress such as being in love, listening to pleasant music, performing physical exercise and having sex. The feeling of enjoyment in itself stimulates production of dopamine, which in turn enhances feeling of enjoyment and happiness. Research shows that meditation increases dopamine levels as well. In studying all this information, we cannot help noticing striking similarities: increase of all three chemicals is attained by developing positive attitude to oneself and to life, cultivating positive mood states, enjoying whatever we do. Also, notice that all three substances are stimulated by physical exercise. So it seems like healthy physical activity plus positive mindset is the way to go in creating a “happy body chemistry”. Add to this plenty of daily sunlight, gratifying sex life, body tempering, outdoors activities, meditation, pleasant music and a little bit of chocolate (if you need it at all provided you do everything else), and your internal “laboratory of happiness” is bound to work abundantly. As all the three chemicals induce the state of well-being, happiness, contentment, pleasure and joy, the moment you start “practicing” contentment and satisfaction to stimulate their production, you will get a gratification of these states lasting in your body and mind more naturally and effortlessly. While it seems that we derive a great deal of satisfaction and pleasure connected with things happening outside of ourselves (for instance, you have got yourself a limousine), these feelings are not created from these outside world events. They are created by specific substances in our body and the external events can only trigger production of this or that substance. Therefore, why even bother trying to shape what happens around us (that very often is hard or impossible to do) if you can directly orchestrate the chemistry in your body by some substance manipulation and get exactly the same results?! Did the drug addicts find an ultimate solution? Happines comes from within… with a liitle chemical help.. .Well, let’s not go too far. With biochemistry in mind, the mechanisms behind drug, tobacco or alcohol addictions seem to be much easier to understand. As it was mentioned before, the effect of most drugs and alcohol on subjective sense of pleasure is explained by heightened levels of dopamine and other neurotransmitters. However the drawbacks of drug addiction are numerous, starting from messing with body mechanisms of natural production of these chemicals and developing drug tolerance leading to psychological, physiological and chemical drug addiction, finishing with negative effects foreign substances have on our body systems and organs. And even though the idea we’re trying to put into practice: creating a faculty of being happy in any situation in life, with or without a limousine; also disregards the influence of the outside circumstances and instead, it focuses on what can be done from the inside out. The difference is: no side effect and no need for drug dealers ;-). The implication of the existence of these chemical processes are extremely straightforward: the more we cultivate feelings of contentment and happiness in everyday life, the more we develop our natural capacity to be happy, without any efforts and conscious involvement. The more we enjoy life and whatever it brings and learn to view any situation as good to us in this or that way, the more life is enjoyable and filled with joy. So, what do you practice today? I used the sources: Young How to increase serotonin in the human brain without drugs Berry, Lerner, Meier & Yang The chemistry of happiness Neurotransmitters, depression and anxiety ...
