Author: david

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Stretching mindlessly and mindfully

Rushing has always been my nature, and choosing startups as a career only intensified my sense of time poverty, whether real or perceived. However, I’m not alone in this. We live near Manly, and every morning the park and beach are teeming with young people who have an abundance of energy to burn. They engage in quick, explosive exercises that can inevitably lead to muscle tightening if they don’t set time aside at the end of a session to stretch properly.

It’s important for them to understand that proper stretching is crucial to prevent muscle tightness – just like me, the alpha types will dismiss it and rush to get to their first meeting.

However, without that final stretching, their exercise routines likely become counterproductive, leading to pain and discomfort – especially when they get older!

Credit: ozsquad.com.au (not an endorsement 😀)

I’ve always stretched but it’s been quick until I spent some time Cherie at Sydney Stretch Therapy a few years ago and her colleague at the time Dave Wardman of Physical Alchemy – they both studied under the cruel tutelage of Kit Laughlan (thats a joke, lovely guy but I just love that phrase from Kill Bill about Pai Mei).

That lineage of exercise was really about the awareness you bring to your exercises and how that awareness will magically increase the efficacy of the exercise – it sounded reasonable – but making space for that discipline is tough.

For decades, I dabbled in yoga as a dilettante. However, since 2016, I fell in love with the intense practice of Ashtanga, under the sometimes-cruel tutelage of Pattabhi Jois’ student’s (first 8 in the famous video) student. Ashtanga is a very active practice that is particularly fitting for alpha types.

As I type this now, I recall doing Ashtanga in 2008 in Mountain View, the home of Google. All the women in the classes exuded an alpha attitude, had alpha bodies, and wore yoga attire that made it feel like an Olympic event. The men in the class, myself included, languished in our sweaty tech t-shirts and basketball shorts with zero hope of competing with these goddesses for the most extreme expression of postures in the Primary Sequence.

Of course, we were all focused mindfully on our own practice and were not distracted by the surrounding aesthetics… Not!

Go hard or go home. Credit: yogavietnam.vn

Over the last year, diving into Tai Chi has been a healing balm for my rushed disposition. The art of slowness has been especially beneficial for me in Tai Chi, allowing for both strengthening and stillness. At the core of Tai Chi is the word “Sung” (or “Song”), which can mean relaxing or softening, but I prefer the term “loosening.”

To me, “loosening” can mean creating spaciousness where there may have previously been compression. Muscles contract or compress when they’re doing work, and loosening involves not expending excessive energy when it’s not needed. For instance, think about how you might hitch your shoulders up in stressful situations or how you might realize you’ve stopped breathing because your belly has tightened. I’ll write more about Song/Sung another time.

By taking this Tai Chi somatic knowledge, I was able to undertake a recent Yin Yoga class in a much deeper way than before. It reminded me of Cherie and Dave and how the art of loosening peels away another layer, revealing why long, slow held stretching postures are so good and so very different to Ashatanga Primary (very Yang).

Bringing a quality of attention and mind (known as “Yi” in Tai Chi) becomes “intention.” With intention, the magic happens when our senses are completely in the present moment. Loosening and deepening also allows us to drop the mental arguments about sensation, rather than jumping to an editorial conclusion and calling it “pain.”

If we bring our distracted monkey-mind to stretching, yoga, or Tai Chi, we are not developing intention (Yi), which is what the modern world is actively trying to dominate and destroy. Instead, we should give these practices more priority in our lives and fully acknowledge that they are developing a key survival skill.

I asked ChatGPT to: “Explain why stretching muscles must be approached slowly and why large muscles should be stretched longer time than smaller muscles”

They are useful, but in particular the “3. Stretch reflex” explains why stretching quickly and mindlessly are a waste of time and potentially harmfull (I have a 10 year Gracilis injury as proof of that). 

Stretching muscles slowly and appropriately adjusting the duration for different muscle sizes is essential for various reasons related to safety, effectiveness, and physiology.

  1. Injury prevention: Rapid or forceful stretching can cause micro-tears in the muscle fibers and surrounding connective tissues. These micro-tears can lead to inflammation, pain, and an increased risk of injury. Slow, gradual stretching allows muscles and connective tissues to adapt to the stretch and reduces the risk of injury.

  2. Muscle elasticity: Muscles contain both elastic and contractile components. The elastic components, such as collagen and elastin, need time to lengthen and adapt to the stretch. Gradually applying the stretch allows these components to lengthen more efficiently, increasing the muscle’s overall flexibility.

  3. Stretch reflex: When a muscle is stretched too quickly or forcefully, it triggers the muscle’s stretch reflex, causing it to contract involuntarily. This reflex protects the muscle from overstretching and potential injury. By stretching slowly, you can avoid triggering the stretch reflex, allowing the muscle to relax and lengthen more effectively.

  4. Improved circulation: Slow stretching promotes better blood circulation to the muscles, which helps deliver essential nutrients and oxygen while also removing waste products. This process can enhance muscle recovery and overall performance.

  5. Relaxation and stress reduction: Slow, controlled stretching can help promote relaxation, both physically and mentally. It encourages mindfulness and a focus on the body’s sensations, which can contribute to stress reduction and a greater sense of well-being.

Regarding the stretching duration for different muscle sizes, large muscles generally require a longer time to stretch compared to smaller muscles because:

  1. Greater mass and thickness: Larger muscles have more mass and thickness, which requires more time to be effectively stretched. The additional time allows the muscle fibers and connective tissues to adapt to the stretch gradually, promoting flexibility and reducing the risk of injury.

  2. Greater workload: Larger muscles typically have a greater workload and are responsible for more significant movements and support. This means they can accumulate more tension and stiffness, requiring a more extended period to stretch and release this tension effectively.

  3. More complex muscle structure: Larger muscles often have more complex structures, with multiple muscle heads or layers. A longer stretching duration helps ensure that all parts of the muscle are adequately stretched, promoting overall flexibility and functional range of motion.

In conclusion, stretching muscles slowly and adjusting the duration based on muscle size is essential for preventing injury, promoting flexibility, improving circulation, and encouraging relaxation. This approach helps to maximize the benefits of stretching while minimizing potential risks.

** Its assumed that tight muscles are not ideal. Another post might explore this.

  1. mindful vs. mindless stretching
  2. stretching techniques
  3. flexibility improvement
  4. injury prevention
  5. mental focus in stretching
  6. wellness and stretching
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Smile!

I read in a book by Steve Maxwell (a pretty well-known exercise and fitness hard-arse) a simple hack to counter workout intensity – smiling.

Next time you see someone grunting or contorting their face (you know the type – jogging or riding a bicycle and looking like they are literally on the brink of death) think of this.

Steve maintains smiling helps reduce stress by stimulating the release of endorphins – being natural painkillers, they can help workout stress (actual and attitudinal) during intense workouts. In addition smiling may also trigger the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS), which is responsible for the body’s rest and digest response. Promoting a higher vagal tone is a whole field of research now – but  wisdom from Yoga, Tai Chi, Qigong prove the knowledge is ancient.

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Xingming

A local tai-chi teacher** has a wonderful statement on their website that is illustrative of embodied practice.

XingMing(性命)

Xing ( mind ) is  psychology and Ming ( body ) is physiology.

Taoism’s way of nurturing life called ” Xing Ming Shuang Xiu ” means look after both ( mind & body ).

In cultivating Xing ( mind ) the emphasis is on training spirit, making spirit detach from the myriad things,  a kindhearted clear mind.

In cultivating Ming ( body ) the emphasis is on cultivating energy, developing life’s potential, enriching life’s energy.

The two mutually act and mutually produce; refining essence to transform into energy; refining energy to transform into spirit; draw the spirit within to achieve stillness.

This delicate balance reminded me of some western unbundling work being undertaken by John Vervaeke and really interesting people in his orbit like Rafe Kelley.

For John, he has spent many years in philosophy and is navigating towards the centre from the intellectual side – many people experiencing John’s work dismiss it as too intellectual – which strikes me as laziness because John has synthesized some of the best spiritual output from humanity (with a western bias). John’s youtube magnum opus (“Awakening from the Meaning Crisis”) is worth investing time on – a mere 50 hours to undertake if the spirit is willing. 😇

Part of the project and community around him are (or were) exploring the Religion that is not a Religion (RTNAR). Which is an attempt to rebuild the valuable elements of organised religion (perhaps agreeing with Peterson’s assertion that they are super-successful memes) without dogmatic baggage. (I wrote a little in the Meaning).

Rafe Kelley approaches the middle-way from the extreme physical end of the spectrum. He was a BIG parkour athlete.

His physical practice is deeply meaningful when approached with a mindful underpinning. His community and method https://www.evolvemoveplay.com/ connects with nature and the healing forces when you are awake enough in the “present moment”.

These two apparent extremes are approaching a centre that is embodied in the meaning of XingMing(性命). As usual the western way is to take the longest way around possible.

Too much mind brings: dogma, blind faith, intellectualism, disconnected from reality, using ideas as a possession for the ego.

Too much body brings: materialism, narcissism, boring conversations, stunted progress.

When you were a kid did you ever play the seesaw game where you would edge toward each other?

Each taking a micro-step to get closer without losing balance and teetering off?

This is why I love balance. As a Libran it makes perfect sense that balance is central to everyday. The Taoist statement above captures the simplicity of this balance. Buddhism uses the term “the middle way”.

** credit: http://www.carolinestaichi.com/news–events
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Breath: a life’s work

When Nadal, Sharipova or Azarenka make those grunts and wails on the tennis court they are doing something that is evolutionarily correct. Believe it or not!

Two things are happening:

  1. Most people who lift weights and probably most people in physical trades know that you exert the most power on the out breath. So these tennis players are channeling the most energy they can and also preparing for the next inward breath to wind them up for the next shot.
  2. Less known is that the use of the voice (grunting or wailing)  is creating a constriction in the throat that slows the out breath down and lengthens the breath overall. If the player just pushed the air out without sound then it’s gone before the stroke has finished.

Some interesting things happen when this constricted out-breath occurs – this is an activation of the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS). The PNS is the “rest and digest” counterbalance to the get-up-and-go “sympathetic” nervous system. The PNS (via the vagus nerve and many other mechanisms) is helping you calm down and recover from stress. So with each tennis stroke and out-breath players are (trained or not) healing themselves.

Everybody knows the simple delicious feeling of a bloody good SIGH. This is the PNS activation in a (mostly) unconscious or therapeutic context.

Unsurprisingly, the slowing and extension of the out-breath is already part of several wisdom traditions – one is Ashtanga.

Ujjayi breath

When I started Ashtanga, I didn’t comprehend what was important about “Breath, Bandhas, Drishti” (together known as Tristana). The breath part involves making an ocean-like sound in the throat through only the nose with the lips sealed.

This ancient tradition understood many things about physiology and its science came from observation and practice – as a westerner, it has to taken some time accept these observational wisdoms.

The physiological effects are summarized as:

  1. breathing through the mouth will stress you (more on this later)
  2. breathing through the mouth means you’ve lost the regulatory control of the yoga practice.
  3. Because the nasal passages are smaller than the throat, therefore breath is extended – slowing the whole cycle down (more on THAT later!)
  4. Breathing through the nose moistens the air, heats or cools it towards the body temperature thus reduces that conflict.

When you add modern science to these assumptions you learn:

  1. breathing through the nose create Nitric Oxide***, this is a vasodilator that aids the absorption of the oxygen in the lungs.
  2. The nasal breath creates turbulence which apparently helps penetrates deeper into the lungs.
  3. A longer breath (not a “bigger” breath or “deeper” breath) enhances oxygen and carbon dioxide transfer.
  4. A longer breath encourages a belly breath (diaphragmatic breathing) which increases the saturation at the bottom of the lungs. This is where the alveoli are most dense (probably due to gravity**) 
  5. diaphragmatic massages the vagus nerve and sends relaxation messages to the body.
  6. a slower out-breath increases Carbon Dioxide in the system.

CO2 is not your enemy

The biggest epiphany in Olssens book (see below) is that CO2 is an essential part of oxygen absorption in the system – the evolutionary machinery depends on it to maximise the transfer via the alveoli. The book refers to many studies where CO2 has myriad positive inflammatory impacts.

CO2 dilates the airways, if this is too low, the smooth muscles will contract and it becomes more difficult for air to pass in an out of the lungs. Therefore MORE breathing is not good – we should be aiming for deep and slow/long. People with respiratory problems like asthma tend to take more breaths and too much volume.

Nitric Oxide (NO) is your friend

As mentioned above Nitric Oxide is a vasodilator – which is to say it opens the blood vessels. When you breath in through your mouth, you are not getting any NO. When you breath in nasally, NO is added to the air and is carried to the lungs, facilitating the transport or O2 and CO2.

The benefits of open blood vessels is manifold and yes gents Nitric Oxide is the same compound that is boosted with drugs like Viagra and Cialis.

Don't follow Win Hoff's breath practice

Wim is cool. Everybody loves Wim. Wim’s practice wants you to get a quick result fast and the extreme saturation of oxygen (at least in the short term) gives you experiences which are transformational. But the problem is that many breathworks (even those that claim to avoid hyperventilation practice e.g Stanislov Grof’s Holotropic breathing) are depleting the body of CO2. This is fine for short experiences but  long term work may be altering your O2::CO2 balance and that leads to PH balance problems in your blood system. NOTE 1: I’m all for cold water practice and I’ve discussed the benefits here, here and here. NOTE 2: Wim’s practice borrows heavily from Tibetan Tummo so it has a deep traditional precedent, so you may want to explore Tummo to see what he has stripped away (like many Western practices do).
Credit: https://probonoaustralia.com.au/

Mouth Breathing as a disease

The picture above shows some very broad noses, the faces are full and well developed. According to books I’ve recently read: “Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art” (James Nestor)  and “Conscious Breathing: Discover The Power of Your Breath” (Anders Olssen), mouth-breathing is a relatively recent western development with faces being long and narrow, teeth crooked and jaw shape deformed.

If that sounds a stretch, I was recently at the orthodontist (crooked teeth) and they said it was cause by mouth breathing as a child – it seems common knowledge in that profession.

BTW: Animals don’t tend to have crooked teeth. (only dogs breath through their mouth to regulate temperature). 

For decades I’ve always got colds and flus starting in the throat and also whenever I did running the throat would become inflamed. This inflammation overtime has led to gastic reflux and GERD-like conditions – its possible that the inflammation from mouth-breathing may have been a contributor. Living in cities with dust and pollution can only compound the negative inflammatory impacts of mouth breathing.

Once again the western environment seems to have created conditions for a disease. We need to detect in ourselves and our children if mouth-breathing is prevalent and commence practices to return to nasal breathing.

The good news is that in the “use it or lose it” way – the body adapts – the more you nasal breath, the more this opens airways.

Deviated Septums

I waited until I was 40 to have an operation on my left nasal passages that had been there since childhood. This meant that most of my life, especially under exertion would result in mouth breathing. Sleeping was also predominantly mouth based breath.

credit: https://www.entcenterutah.com/

Ironically (for my situation) having the left nostril blocked, according to yogic traditions such as pranayama, is also blocking the PNS relaxation. Having clear breath through the left nasal passage is supposed to be very calming.

In Yoga/Ayurvedic technical terms (for those who believe in chakras), the the Ida and Pingala nadi’s commence at the nostrils and wrap around the Sushumna nadi and descend down the spine through the chakras.

Western skeptics will recognise 2 things:

  1. This bears a strong resemblance to the Caduceus in western medicine
  2. That we know that the body’s redundancy system has the right hemisphere relating to the left part of the body (including the nostril).
credit: https://thevisualityblog.wordpress.com/

Nasal Breathing practices

If you have nasal blockages:

  • sleep with Breath-right strips or similar
  • mouth taping (bizarre but incredible good for improving sleep quality, eliminating mouth dryness and snoring)
  • work with alternate nostril pranayama exercises.
  • particularly if you left nostril is often blocked try opening and breathing through your left nostril before sleeping (or trying to get back to sleep).

Generally (for everyone):

  • slow your (over-breathing down). You should be breathing when sitting <10 breaths/minute. During meditation this will drop to 3-8 breaths.
  • Explore HRV Apps with breathing exercises on your phone.
  • Explore getting a device that measures HRV
  • Try exercises that extend the out-breath
  • Question any mindfullness practice that only treats the breath as an attentional object.

Summary

It always seems that the greatest truths are hidden in plain sight. Society cooks up lots of complex treatments, gadgets and explanations – this is the good and bad of a science based society. But it seems that paying attention to what is right-in-front of us there is plenty to observe and learn:

  • How do animals behave?
  • How do children behave?
  • What practices from ancient cultures can be considered as useful and not just superstition or cargo-cult?

If nothing else the attention to how we are breathing is a terrific barometer for where we are “at” in ourselves – I have found that multi-tasking, email switching in my workday is a huge contributor to holding the breath and taking small sips of air rather than rhythmic full belly breaths. 

Other links on breath:

** note that yoga includes several inversion practices that reverse the effects of gravity – also varicose veins are apparently reduced with inversion – certainly any leg/calf exercise in yoga is also helping without the need for compression socks 🙂

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Ashtanga inside

I recently heard someone say that yoga wasn’t effective as a spiritual work – instantly I knew that person had not got inside yoga and was speaking purely from outside opinion.

This morning’s ashtanga1 class is started by the teacher gently bringing people back to the top of the mat and reminding us that the first limb of Ashtanga is Yama – which translates as “restraint” or “reigning in” – perhaps a gentler version of commandments.

Alphas

The teacher reminded us of the first Yama. This is ahimsa (non-violence) which can be in action and in thought – and the purpose of the reminder is to participate in the practice (class)  non-violently towards ourselves.

It’s a beautiful guidance because Ashtanga (primary series) is physically taxing and partially gymnastic – the classes can attract “alpha” types. And alpha types are used to pushing-through, competing with themselves (and likely others). Anyone who’s done a little self-work or shadow-work will recognise competitiveness as a form of win/lose violence and the self-talk is often not complimentary.

This physical material view of yoga is what the west has done to yoga and earns opinions like in the first paragraph above.

Surrender, Joy, Insight, Stillness

Responding to the sequence’s demands has me oscillating around the edges of coping. In one moment, striving; the next, surrender. Here is where the magic happens – feeling the balance that is needed to be moving and still, to be working and relaxing, to let the breath and gaze (drishti) be the soft guide.

I find myself half-way into the class, nearly bursting into tears of helplessness, laughter2 and joy3 – complete acceptance of the process – endorphins surging and stillness enfolding. Yoga is indeed a spiritual work.

The Inside view of Ashtanga is quite simple: Pattabhi Jois said “Do the practice and all is coming”. Those words speak to the simplicity that you need to find if you want to stick with this particular yoga form.

one-two-three-cry-five
Credit: video

Approaching Ashtanga (Jois tradition)

Everything about Ashtanga is setup to break you down in that old school kind of way:

  1. The sequence is the same everyday:
    • Youtube yogini’s compete by entertaining you with special variants – not Ashtanga.
    • The “westerner mind” rails against the dogmatic adherence, believing its own thinking to be sovereign. But in discipline is freedom, (with practice) you eventually know the next posture – it never-ever changes4.
    • With a known sequence, the possibility of “flow” is increased. See Flow below.
  2. There are no blocks or props – this is you and your breath and the mat – simplicity.
  3. The teacher’s occasional reminder to relax the jaw, raise the edges of my mouth expose my striving and prideful nature. Small things like jaw tension or a tight wrist are immediate feedback to “where I am”.
  4. “Soften the breath”, “let the breath guide the movement”, “breath, bhandas, drishti” either from the teacher or from personal experience bring me back. Jois’s contemporary (nemesis?) B.K.S Iyengar’s famous quote “Breath is the king of mind,” is perfect. If we race ahead (pardon the pun) with our head, then synchronization is lost with the breath and the practice is disjointed. [In reality large chunks of my practice, I’m trying to calm everything down with the breath but also the breath adjusts to the physicality. In most classes you don’t hear the ujjayi breath.]
  5. The Bandhas are a protective (structural) element of the practice – with health and energetic benefits.
  6. Breath and drishti support the needs of both the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) and the parasympathetic (PNS) supporting meeting the physical demand whilst calming down at the same time.

It’s not submission unless you are too proud. It’s surrender.

Flow

The Csikszentmihalyi definition of flow perfectly fits into fixed sequence of the Jois tradition – looking at the chart, as you work with the sequence, the skills increase and the challenges unfold along the way.

When criticism of “boring” (see below) is levelled at Ashtanga, they are missing the point.

Above I said “oscillating around the edges” – this looks a lot like this flow diagram, the presence of attention is the push and pull of the mind and being – “In one moment, striving; the next, surrender.”

This can be a sacred place

Your awareness is ignited to purely being in the moment, the perfect “fit” of the task and the doing. I can’t be too emphatic about the importance of this place in my/your day – it might be the place where internal dialog has also surrendered.

A Cognitive explanation

Rafe Kelly runs a movement community and system “Evolve, Move, Play”. They are blending nature parkour and “meaning” – inspired by John Vervaeke. Around the 50:00 mark of this rather intellectual talk (you have been warned) he connects the experience of flow and meaning – Vervake proposes the moment of flow is coherence “up and down the stack”5 of your cognitive machinery6. That “flow” is a “fitedness” of the agent-arena relationship. (Vervaeke’s self/world/doing/experiencing model).

And so, in this moment, happens a perfect non-intellectual experience of Buddhism’s “dependent arising” – that in the “doing” of Ashtanga or surfing or hammering a nail – insights that are not thought-based arise. The connection is more important than the subject-object.

I’m not fully across Vervake’s suggestion but my sense is these experiences are bi-directional, up-and-down, round-and-round interplay (feedforward loop) of insights from mental understanding to embodied deeply rooted “knowing”. Vervaeke relates this to the Plato and Socrate’s Anagoge – which translates as “ascent” – that a meaningful life is anagogical and autopoietic.

I think the suggestion is that “Meditation without movement” and “Movement without meditation” are incomplete meaning-making experiences.

Yoga is great, yoga is not all

  • As implied by “hammering a nail”, or illustrated by this post or this post – the movement does not need to be on the yoga mat. The agent-arena depth can be found in any given moment – right-here-right-now…let more than “knowing” be the experience:
  • Humans in bodies existed a long, long time before “thinking” started
  • Children are alive a long time before language and abstract thinking start to take over.

Ashtanga Vinyasa is but one part (asana) of Patanjali’s Ashtanga  (8-limbed) system. (Ironically there are only 3 asana related: 2.46-2.48 sutras).

In particular asana is preparation for the final 3 limbs: dharana (concentration), dhyana (meditation) and samadhi (absorption).

The lessons of focus, surrender, breath and dominion over the body (be able to physically sit and also self-awareness of physical twitches, scratches etc) are all meaningful preparations. Drishti also prepares the practitioner for Pratyāhāra (withdrawal from the senses).

Where both practitioners and onlookers do Ashtanga injustice is to allow asana to be the totality of their relationship to the word. That’s the west for you!

Criticism

I’ve outlined the merits of the Jois tradition to create meaningful experiences with me (pardon the dualism). A personal critique is that I also need a diversity of exercise and challenges for this mammalian vehicle and promoting diverse “wiring and firing” of our human neural connections (up and down the stack). Slacklining for example.

For more detailed critique this post by a teacher is much deeper. “Ashtanga’s reputation of being dogmatic, inflexible and hard core” is something you hear a lot.

Jois has also been accused of teacher/student sexual misconduct, acknowledged by his grandson – using a position of power to abuse people is repugnant and raises the reasonable question of whether the system is beneficial in growing better humans.

Notes

1. For the purposes of this post “ashtanga” is “ashtanga vinyasa” in the Jois tradition, except where the Patanjali superset is discussed. I’m not pretending to be some yoga guru (far from it!!!). The post is mostly about direct experience and a novel connection to Vervaeke’s comments on embodiment. I’ve written before about ashtanga vinyasa here.

2. It’s hilarious what goes on in the process of letting go, the resistance and release is ecstatic.

3. I’ve been here before and you can never predict when it will arise, but it will make your day.

4. Today’s teacher guided us to a slightly different pose and asked us to “not report him to the ashtanga police” – he was joking but the adherents can be dogmatic.

5. This is the wrong word, because it’s beholden to our mechanistic cultural conditioning, I just don’t have another word for it right now.

6. Vervaeke asserts 4 types of knowing (propositional, procedural, perspectival and participatory). He is also a member of the 4E cognition academic movement (embodied, embedded, enacted, and extended cognition).

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Take Care

Often when we wish someone good-bye – we say “take care”. Like most language habits it’s trotted out unconsciously, just part of the sleep state we spend most of our time in.

But is it worth pondering what “take care” might mean in your day? What would it be like to approach things with care? Not so seriously to crowd-out a care-free demeanor, but…

This morning I finished a yoga session and had allowed it to be more than physical – there was more space induced by the breath, postures and released endorphins. The wind is blowing a gale today – I stepped toward the window to close it.

I’m pretty good at closing windows, done it thousands of times. So my hand grasped the window unconsciously and automatically and started to slide it shut.

Blown by gusts inside the window there were small end branches of a bush (planted outside the window). I could have easily crushed them in closing the window. Luckily* there was enough space in me to see the branches and STOP.

Still, mostly automatic, I reached to carefully moved a branch outside the window. Then everything changed – in the caring touch, I saw the scene for the first time.

I really could see it.

For the first time I watched these branches – they were flashing and sparking with the morning light as the gusts jostled them around. The tints of green, the veins of growth rippling through the leaves and the sturdy and the willowy resilience of the end stems of the branch. And the truth was there of why branches bend in a gusty wind.

It was over in a few seconds, but it was a privilege to have taken enough care with the branches to be gifted that experience in return.

So it seems that “taking care” is a great example of “give and you shall receive”**.

* The yoga had made my own luck.

** I’m not invoking Christianity with this quote, just the naturalistic experience seems to match the words.

Note: I owe:

a) both “take care” and “make your own luck” to Henryk, who I have posted about previously.

b) STOP to my teacher Ron. This is the first part of the “Stop, Breath, Stillness, Balance” practice.

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Living a good life

We all drift… sometimes an hour is lost scrolling (more on that another time). Sometimes for weeks or years.

Pam recently read Julia Baird’s book Phosphorescence*.  One of the key themes that resonated with Pam was “Living deliberately” – it seems a sure antidote to “drift”.

Julia Baird is a political journalist and presenter in Australia and Phosphorescence has been read by several women in my life – it’s apparently a journey worth taking.

When I looked Julia up, she is the daughter of highly regarded state politician Bruce Baird and sister of Mike Baird who became Premier in NSW. Julia, aside from writing, co-hosts a political affairs show on the ABC, so this family are full of public service and lives very deliberately.

Discussing “Living deliberately” (over toast), we brainstormed what that might mean. We came up with:

  • 2 big dimensions: Personal (self) and World (others)
  • Combined with:
    • WHATS (principles of “living deliberately”)
    • HOWS (tools, rhythms and skills)
    • NOURISHMENT (things that bring joy and recharge your resources)

Above is one visualisation. We also thought “Living well” or “Living a good life” might have a little more balance than just the mental fortitude of “living deliberately”. It’s far from perfect but it might be a useful reminder for us and others. 

Drop us a note if you think we’ve missed something or could make it better.

We’ll write a few blog posts on some of the sections – any idea which should be first? 🤷‍♂️

Below is another visualisation of the same content.

* Phosphorescence: On Awe, Wonder & the Things that Sustain You When the World Goes Dark (HarperCollins)

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Then the man (or woman) ain’t bright

One of my teachers was a man called Henryk who had worked in building, carpentry and eventually used to run gangs of council workers in the 70’s and 80’s. In those days it was an open secret that some council jobs were a haven of bludging, side projects, day disappearances – the kind of low level corruption from a more socialist time.

Henryk wasn’t that kind of guy – he was straight as a die – son of German mother and Polish father, clear-eyed, lean, a blend of discipline, temperance and stillness – with a bit of opera thrown in.

I worked with Henryk on a large building project and his work was fast, no bullshit and precise – one morning I was struggling with sawing some timber, splintering the edge as I went. Henryk reached in and drew the saw from my hand and handed me another. Whilst doing so, his lips parted into a wry smile, saying:

“If the tool ain’t right, then the man ain’t bright.”

His quip cut through better than any saw. 

The lesson for me was to pay attention to what I was doing. To be “bright” and be awake to the possibilities of a better way. In each situation: dropping habits or pre-conceptions can mean that there may be a better way to do the work….

“is this the right shade of pencil in a drawing?”, “could a better brush be selected?”. The questions not arising in words but just the feel of “fitted-ness” to the needs of the moment.

Humans are problem solving “machines”** and creators, to be cognitively present and find the right “fit” for a particular job infuses meaning into your day and life.

The opposite of this is “square peg in a round hole”.  If you’ve ever felt like that, it’s an awkward dissonance – a feeling of being “un-fitted” to the situation. This too is super-helpful and constructive because something in us wants to seek the fit and flow – the discomfort is a signal*** for needed change.

Another interesting part of the quip is the double meaning of “bright” – language is so often pregnant with depth – to be “bright” is to be light-filled – that’s another clue to the recipe (or perhaps outcome) of being “in this moment”.

** please forgive the use of such a term. There is no intention to reduce humans to machines, but some part operates below the surface with an intelligence that uses senses and feedback that could be considered a very fine mechanistic process.

Consider simply “picking up a cup”, the fitted-ness of the cup and how my hand wraps around the handle, whilst (mostly) unconscious is a beautiful flow of sense and response. To bring that into my awareness is a rich experience which should be covered in a seperate post!

*** tears, stress, anger are mostly considered inappropriate in social situations, so we don’t value (and often ostracise) these signals.

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An antidote for earworms

Self-talk

Most of us would be embarrassed if others could hear the contents of our internal soundtrack. Our self-talk that usually focuses on self-criticism, comparison and commentary on what we see in the avalanche of images coming at us via Instagram.

Internet cat videos, TV and even reading a good book give us a holiday from ourselves and huge growth of “mindfulness” practices, youtube meditation sessions, podcasts are proof that “the west” is seeking refuge from our default mode.

Earworms

One refuge we love is listening to a favourite sound in our head. Even if that song has lots of redemptive elements (“Don’t worry, be happy” – Joe Dolce, “Happy” –  Pharrel Williams) it can get annoying when it’s clamped onto your brain like a crab claw and just…won’t….let….go.

THIS my friends is the well-known “earworm” (or “stuck song syndrome” – SSS or Involuntary Musical Imagery -IMI). People literally exclaim to their friends “I can’t get it out of my head” which also triggers people to hear Kylie Minogue singing a perfect earworm “Can’t get you out of my head” and so the infection spreads when they sing a piece of the song, the friends fill in the pieces and then it gets stuck in their head.’

I’ve asked people if they have earworms and usually say “no”. But if I check in with them a few days or a week later, they’ve suddenly become aware that songs are a backing track to their day.

Repetition exacerbates the problem – in the past “high rotation” on radio meant that songs got stuck in people’s brains. More recently playing Beat Saber on Oculus is based around very catchy music and now those songs are in my brain as soon as I wake up. As soon as I finish a task that I’ve been focussing on and head to the toilet or the kitchen – the Beat Saber song is riding along inside my brain.

So what is the antidote?

I discovered by accident that “choiceless listening” is the most natural go-to solution. This is a form of mindfulness and part of “Choiceless Awareness” (I was surprised to learn that the term was made common by J. K. Krishnamurti).

Choiceless listening is simply allowing your attention to “let in” the sounds around you – this is not a problem while you are making the bed, brushing your teeth, walking to work. I was surprised that whilst I might often be practicing “mindfulness” while doing these tasks, my focus might be more visual or tactile.

Our society is so visually overstimulated that sound is relegated to a minor part of our daily experience – we take hearing for granted – we latch onto words that people say and extract the symbolic meaning, agendas from them – we treat listening as very transactional.

So being super-simple and letting sound come into my presence is a beautiful experience – and I discovered (obvious in hindsight) that my earworm just stopped dead – temporarily.

Try it! I’d be interested to hear if it works for you – or not!

Isn’t this harmless?

Is there something wrong about songs tootling along? When you start Googling “are earworms…..”, the first suggestion while you type is “are earworms a sign of mental illness”.

This is pretty heavy stuff: the British Journal of General Practice reporting that “up to 98% of the Western population has experienced earworms” and can be “more pronounced or debilitating in patience with OCD”.

I don’t line up my socks, straighten cutlery or obsess over the jaunty angle of a painting but I carry some traits that help earworms hitchhike into my day. At the very minimum, they are consuming mental bandwidth and energy that could be conserved or spent profitably.

Do earworms stifle Creativity?

Abso-bloody-lutely. Simply put this mental bandwidth* is a precious resource. The more we are present – in the moment is our most creative and responsive state. Earworms steal from this and setup a loop that cramps out “presence”.

Two Oscar Wilde quotes make the case well:

“A writer is someone who has taught his mind to misbehave.”

You might think that an earworm is “misbehaving” but it’s really just behaving entirely predictably. I love that Wilde states that “taught” is a very important part of creating. It takes discipline, presence and space. 

“The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates.”

An earworm aims for perfect imitation – we don’t need another copy of that song!

Other antidotes

Some other antidotes can be found here and borrow from the BJGP** article above. But I don’t think they have the same self-awareness as what I suggest earlier.

      1. Chew some gum. Chewing gum could be a good way to get rid of earworms.
      2. Listen to the song. Listening to the song stuck in your head may bring closure and may help extract it.
      3. Listen to another song, chat or listen to talk radio.
      4. Do a puzzle.
      5. Let it go — but don’t try.

* Its quite possibly earworms are an artifact of the Default mode network and that’s another very big story in the discovery of how our western brain functions (or doesn’t).

** The BJGP article references a study that comes close to my proposed antidote. Personally I think that CBT is demanding a less natural and more ritualized way of dealing with earworms, in a sense they are pathologizing it: 

Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is evidence-based and effective for OCD. Patients learn to replace dysfunctional thoughts like ‘These uncontrollable songs indicate I’m going crazy!’ with new, more accepting thoughts.

AND

“Non-judgemental focus and acceptance form the basis for gradually shifting attention to other voluntary thoughts or emotions…..Yet, distraction is the most common self-help method for SSS and is often effective.”

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