Embodied Thinking

The danger of elevating and separating thinking and work lies where we become disembodied. As Ken Robinson warns, when you start treating your body “as a form of transport for your head”. I read and write regularly about building endurance, resilience, and creativity. A base for this is financial security. There is truth in the saying that there isn’t a special entrepreneurial gene, most wildly successful entrepreneurs are just rich kids with safety nets. Safety nets aren’t just financial. Our physical health, community support, and an embodied approach to life is just as, if not more, important than a good idea and starting capital. There are good ideas, and there are good business ideas. Some are both. We destroy some good ideas by trying to filter them through the constraints that make them good business ideas. We also destroy some business ideas by not partnering them with good ideas that provide the qualitative environment for the lives we are trying to build. Even the things that aren’t connected, are connected.

Mental Health and Empowerment

Mental Health is about Endurance and Resilience. Empowerment is about Creativity. Without a strong Mind-Body, we are caught in a spin of Ohrwurms, aches, pains and regret. We stop breathing. Without a strong Mind-Body, we are unable to cope with short-term bumps and batterings (Resilience), and can't hold a little bit back to stay in the game (Endurance). Without Mental Health, it becomes impossible to be Creative. Connections require Creativity. Through 'sensuality, movement, association, sexuality, humour, imagination, numbers, symbolism, colour, order, positivity and exaggeration' we create a web of meaning with our creativity. A web of connections. That starts with looking after ourselves. With looking after each other. It starts with Mental Health and Empowerment.

Mind Body

Independence Day III

My brothers and I like to tease each other about our oddities. I have a big head, the middle brother a big chin, and the older brother can walk under limbo bars. All of us, and my parents, lean towards intensity. Thoughts and emotions tumble around in my Orange on a toothpick. 

Today is my  'Independence Day'. Three years ago, I decided I had enough to move on from being employed. As long as I was frugal, and I spent less than my money made, my engine could be the breadwinner and I could become a homemaker. In a world where everyone who was important to me seemed incredibly busy, I would be 'the guy with time'.

A downside of 'free time' is you become aware of those thoughts and emotions. Work can allow you to put things aside even if they matter to you. Every day the alarm clock goes and you go to work. Thinking time can wait. Feeling can wait. Till you have free time. Then, like in 'A Beautiful Mind', if you search for patterns you will find them everywhere you look. You can end up being trapped in your own personal cabin in the woods of your head.

Nash's cabin in "A Beautiful Mind"

Of my immediate family, the one with the chin has the best ability to get out of the woods and onto the road. He runs regularly, and it definitely lends him an aura of calm. Some problems can't be solved in the head, or in the heart.

I have gradually been working myself up to becoming a runner. But, my chosen form of getting out of my Orange is Yoga. Yoga transforms how I feel, and how I think. When I am practising regularly.

Late last year, I decided to dip my toe back into doing work. We are interdependent rather than independent, and I wanted to help build engines for others. To strengthen our sense of community.

My problem is, I get too binary. On and off. Huge work guilt kicks in, and anything that isn't work feels indulgent. Even exercise. Reading for pleasure. Time with friends. The bottomless pit of work that could be done takes priority. My natural default in these situations is to climb back into my Orange and neglect my toothpick.

I don't find public declarations a particularly effective way of motivating myself. I know the theory is that we will be embarrassed if failing to meet the target we have told people of. I have written posts about learning isiXhosa, eating fruit, and getting back on my bike. All of those are unfulfilled ambitions.

Rather than doing that, what I am more aware of as I try to pull myself out of my head once again by getting my yoga practice back on track - is that everyone is struggling. I know no one who isn't. There will always be challenges to think and feel our way out of. All we can do is be honest about it, and do the best we can.

Part of that is looking after yourself. In the literal sense of making sure your bits are maintained. That part, at least, isn't rocket science. You just have to do it.

In Your Head

I don't believe people are wired for specialisation. Good schools build people. But then we tend to specialise. I have always been more of a head person than a body person, but in my school days that didn't stop me. Each year, I would try out for stuff 'just in case' a new super power had blossomed. 'Yes last year, I was in the 7th team, but I am bigger this year'. Once we hit work, the danger is we pick one thing. We become that guy in the gym who only exercises his biceps. We stop being competent at life, because we are excellent at one tiny aspect. The irony of self-defining as a 'head person' is you can disconnect from the world you are thinking about.

What's in your head?

Let It Be

I was out of action for almost two days on Sunday and Monday with a bug of some sort. My favourite form of medicine is sleep. It tends to get rid of most ailments. I find the bodies ability to fix itself magical. While it does it's thing though, and I tried to sleep, my thoughts tend to go awol. I wasn't knocked out for hours. It was closer to that broken, distracted sleep mixed with dreams that were all over the place.

I feel almost in control of most of my dreams. Like I am directing the story. The problem is the 'almost'. When I am anxious, my dreams will often hit dead ends or caught in a plot twist I do not like at all. They include various relationships - friendships, family, teachers, colleagues, and various other people that I have come across in my life. Normally the anxiety ends up revolving around some sort of misunderstanding. I feel like people just don't understand the truth. If they understood the truth, then everything would be fine. But the dream won't got the way I want it too.

Because I am typically in and out of sleep at these points, I sometimes catch myself. I tell myself I am dreaming. It is not a pleasant dream. Just stop it. But I feel like I am on the cusp of solving some momentous problem that will make everything fall in line. Just letting it be is hard. I dive back in.

After two days of various of these types of fights, I really didn't feel like doing my normal reading trying to understand the various conflicts around the world, and how we chip away at some of the big problems. I do think you need to make space for the mind to switch off. Two ways which, now that I have more time, I find really useful are cleaning and cooking. It is amazing how chores when you are busy, become pleasures when you have space. A lot of things increase in quality when you add space.

Yesterday I made BBC Good Food's Tomato Soup. Not rocket science to follow the recipe. With some music playing and lights on the Christmas Tree, it is much easier to let it be.

I Am

One of the divisions between Western and Eastern thinking seems to be the way we view the mind and body as a separate things. 'I think therefore I am' and so the I is deeply connected to our thought. Vedantic thinking drops the first three words as redundant and leaves it as 'I am'. By 'elevating' our identity to be linked to consciousness and thought, the body becomes, well, an afterthought. Ken Robinson describes many western academics as viewing their bodies as a transportation system for their heads. A way of getting their head from meeting to meeting.

Sara, a family member I have met in person for the first time, is a dance instructor and so has done lots of thinking on the connection between the body and thought. She has given me a reading list to ponder. I have often thought a standard reading list would be a good thing for all of us to do. Share openly the books we think have affected our world view. Of course, most of us are so busy we don't have time to look at other world views, only time to apply our own, but wouldn't it be great if we did. Here are the books Sara has given me...

 

'Six Memos for the Next Millennium', 'Phenomenology of Perception', 'Self Comes To Mind'

'The Tell-Tale Brain', 'The Meaning of the Body', 'Action in Perception'

At some point we stop prioritising our physical well being, because we need to focus on work or 'more important' mental endeavours. I find it interesting that in Yoga, it is often the other way around. You have to exercise first. You have to be able to have control of the body so you can do something as simple as sit comfortably. It is only once you are freed from aches and pains that you are able to focus.

I move therefore I am?

Default Face

No decision, is a decision. It just feels better because no one else has made it for you, and you also have an excuse if things don't work out your way. The vast majority of our decisions are made for us unless we take an active choice to do something. Life will deal us cards. I wrote about this in 'Having Power' and I am a strong believer that people have far more power in liberal democracies than we realise. We need to stop looking to central powers to sort things out and just get on with it for ourselves and for each other. Stop asking for permission for things you are already allowed to do.

One more fun aspect of 'No decision' that was pointed out to me recently was our 'default face'. A friend of mine had been warned not to make her default face a bitch face. Nice. When you are just sitting there and your mind starts to wander, what does your face do? Is there a slight smile or a slight scowl?

In the same way as giving people the benefit of the doubt can lead to happier choices, your default face probably gives some indication of whether you are giving yourself the same leeway. There are some famous studies showing how smiling makes you happier. Simply holding a pencil in your mouth made those looking at cartoons find them funnier. A psychologist friend told me how he once helped train someone to walk. The patient had been 'a walking apology'. By getting him to stand up a little straighter and pushing his shoulders back, his body gave his mind the signal that things were ok.

All things makes sense to me. Whenever I am not in the best of spaces, my first check point is whether or not I am exercising. Exercise tells the body it is required. The body then tells the mind it is required. Your body language, including your default face, shapes who you are.

Great Expectations (by Lianne Wood)

Guest Post: Lianne Wood (nee Wicks)

Lianne is a buddy from university. She has been reading my blog when she gets a gap, and was keen to write a post but had decided to write to me two nights ago to say she didn't have the time. Instead she wrote the post. I am really glad she did. Finding time for the things we want to do is tough. Finding time for those annoying little admin task that we don't want to do is tough. Almost everyone I know is really busy. Time is priceless and is the one thing we all have exactly the same amount of each day. Lianne is a physio. I am a big believer that sorting our bodies out so we give them every chance to function as well as possible is a core foundation of happiness. So I am super chuffed to get her insight. Lianne has always had the positive mindset that she identifies as making such a difference in her patients. Add that to being great with people and it is no surprise that she has found a path that brings her joy.

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Great Expectations

by Lianne Wood

I am a physiotherapist and have been one of those fortunate enough to love what I do. I had the opportunity to run my own private practice in South Africa, and have now been working as an extended scope physiotherapist with a special interest in chronic pain and spinal conditions in the UK. The mainstay of my job in the Spinal Disorders Unit is to assess patients when they are referred to us, assess whether they need further investigations (blood tests, imaging etc.) and then to decide if their diagnosis is an operable one or one that would be best managed by conservative therapy (i.e. physiotherapy etc.).

Every day I meet patients who have terrible spines on imaging and yet are in a minimal or manageable amount of pain. And then I meet those who are in terrible pain and yet have nothing to find on imaging. Of course, there are always those in between, whose symptoms match those on scans, and they are the ones we offer injections to or surgery, and sometimes they still choose to continue with physiotherapy or no intervention as they are mending on their own.

Which brings me to the question, what makes the difference between these essentially two separate groups of patients? It's something we as a health profession have tried with no real success to understand, and it seems to confirm that we are indeed holistic beings, with emotional affect and psychological impact on our being. Now by all means, I do not mean to detract from those that are in severe pain, but it fascinates me how some people have found a way to cope with severe pathology and have apparently minimal impact on their life. Is this a case of them having better support systems in their life so that they can cope with more? Is it a case of them having an inherently greater capacity to cope with more stress/pain than others? Is it simply that due to the pathology being more severe, the body has compensated over time and therefore the impact on the body as a whole is less?

I know there is no one answer to these questions, but something I do see time and time again with my patients, is that often what brings them the most relief is helping them to adjust their expectations. If they know what their diagnosis or prognosis is, very often they are then happy to continue managing their pain, as long as they have the peace of mind that they can understand its natural course. Sometimes this is not so simple, and I end up having to help them to understand the complexities of chronic pain (read more about this here - a colleague's brilliant blog on language and chronic pain) but sometimes it is as simple as being heard and reassured.

Which brings me to the thread of this blog, is our happiness determined by our expectations for ourselves? Early on in my undergraduate studies when I was still wrestling with who I was and who I wanted to become, I was told that the career path I took wasn't important. It was what I did with that career that made the difference to my happiness state. I can honestly say there were many days in my early career when I wished I had studied something else, challenged myself in different ways. However, the more I have embraced my career path, the more it has rewarded me and given me incredible satisfaction, both intellectually and emotionally. I do think that our expectations are key to our happiness, and if these can be managed appropriately and realistically, be it with regards to our health, careers or even love, we are much more likely to be happy with ourselves and our lives.

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In writing a blog about several topics in which I admit to being a complete beginner, I am going to have to rely heavily on the people I am writing for who cumulatively know most of what I am likely to learn already. I would love it if some of you found the time to write a guest post on the subject of happiness or learning. The framework I use for thinking about these things is what I call the '5 + 2 points' which includes proper (1) exercise, (2) breathing, (3) diet, (4) relaxation, (5) positive thinking & meditation, (+1) relationships, (+2) flow. Naturally if you would like to write about something that you think I have missed, I would love to include that too. If you are up to doing something more practical, it would be awesome if you did a 100 hour project and I am happy to do the writing based on our chats if that is how you roll. Email me at trevorjohnblack@gmail.com