What’s The Point Of Yoga?

Posted by David on February 4, 2012

The more I reflect on yoga, the more I begin to wonder what exactly is it trying to achieve?

If you look at the physical postures of Hatha yoga, they appear to be aiming at training someone to become a circus act. What are the health benefits of such extreme flexibility? And, are there any longer-term dangers from practicing hyper joint and muscle extensions over many years?

And, if we take a look at the mental/spiritual side of Raja yoga, is it any better. Are the feats of mental endurance really that healthy? Or are they the an induced form of autism? A kind of spiritual ‘genius’, that is similar to the autistic savants who can perform amazing feats of mathematics. And, if so, of what value is this to your average human?

Whilst, we may well be embodied spirits, do we really need such yoga practices to realise it? Or do we need them to live in a manner that acknowledges that simple truth.

© David R. Durham
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Mental Models

Posted by David on November 3, 2010

On a recent flight from Lima to Cusco, I sat next to an American lady who was visiting Peru to do some charity work.

It turned out she was a Physiotherapist, and when our conversation moved onto Cranio-Sacral therapy, she advised me that in the US it is not considered a ‘proper’ therapy. One reason being that someone carried out an ‘experiment’ whereby two therapists tuned into the cranial rhythm of a subject, and they came up with a different rate for the subject’s rhythm. Hence, logic (?) dictates it must be quackery.

Duh!

The cranial rhythm, is just one of tens, and maybe hundreds on rhythms in our bodies. And like most of them, its just an indicator. If two therapists did come up with a different count of a subject’s cranial rhythm, then isn’t this a cause to explore this observation further. I.e. there is a cranial rhythm, why does it appear differently?

The lady went further and said, since therapeutic outcomes of Cranio-Sacral therapy could not be measured and quantified in a consistent way, it was clearly a dubious activity, and not scientifically proven.

Could it simply be that therapists, such as Cranio-Sacral therapists, work with humans and not with chemical machines.

However, what is more disturbing to me, was the mind-set which first of all sets up childish experiments and then uses them to try and prove the falseness of something. This all sounds a bit like the witch trials of the middle-ages. The medical insurance and drug corporations must be getting desperate.

And, further, applying quantitative testing to a non-quantitative situation, and then pretending that this approach is somehow ‘scientific’, is highly misleading. If you were testing for the effectiveness of a drug on patients suffering from a discrete virus, then quantitative testing is highly appropriate and desirable. But, that is not what therapists, such as Cranio-Sacral therapists, are working with. These therapists are working with people’s life experiences, which are often totally unique to them. Hence it is inherently not a situation where quantitative testing has anything to add.

© David R. Durham

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Pain & Healing

Posted by David on September 11, 2010

There is quite a complex relationship between pain and healing.

Pain is the usual motivator for our seeking healing, hence we normally define successful healing in terms of the removal of pain. Which is why pain killing drugs are so popular, they get rid of the pain, and hence they can become the benchmark for all healing scenarios.

So the acid test for healing becomes: My pain is reducing therefore this healing approach is working – Or – My pain is not reducing, therefore this healing approach is failing me.

Unfortunately, this simple black and white test does not always work out in real life. And, sometimes, all that pain killers are doing are temporarily reducing the pain, or they are acting as a mask and hiding the symptoms.

So what, you might say, if the symptoms are hidden and the pain is reduced or gone, isn’t that a good thing?

Maybe, maybe not.

People can live for years with repressed symptoms. Their drug prescription changes periodically to keep the mask in place. The patient feels better, the doctor looks like a professional doing his job (as we define it) and the drug company get to make more profits. If we ignore the collateral damage of long term drug use, its a true win-win situation you could argue.

But, is this healing?

What if we changed our definition of healing from the removal of pain, to the removal of the causes of symptoms? Would this change our outlook?

Healing may then become an altogether more complex scenario. For in this approach, our guiding compass, the reduction of pain, is not necessarily very helpful. As sometimes, when tackled head-on, symptoms can become worse before they get better. Or sometimes, one symptom will disappear only to be swiftly replaced by a different one.

This presents the patient with quite a dilemma. Do they trust the course they are on is correct, or do they try a different tack?

As you may have guessed, there’s no simple answer to this dilemma. To some extent, you have to trust the practitioner you’re working with, and they will be able to guide you as to how well the process is going, how you are making progress and whether to carry on or not. Jumping from practitioner to practitioner in short succession is probably not the best answer as it only confuses the matter more.

Whilst it is only normal to want to be rid of pain, healing symptoms takes as long as it takes, and your problem (which is often completely unique to you) may well not have a simple short-term solution. If you’ve had migraines on and off for 20 years, is it realistic or helpful to expect them to be ‘cured’ in one or two therapy sessions?

As a broad guideline, when nothing is changing, then look for a different solution. And if your symptoms get dramatically worse, then you may need the support of multiple healing approaches. This is when having the concept of complimentary therapies is a useful one to have, as opposed to the rather limiting idea of alternative therapies.

Having said all of that, and now looking on the bright side, symptoms’ causes do very regularly get healed.

Ironically, it is not usually the practitioner that does the healing, its the body/mind itself which accomplishes this task. The practitioner is simply a facilitator of this magical healing process.

© David R. Durham

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Left Brain

Posted by David on August 26, 2010

Every so often I feature a blog on the topic of diets, since our diet is intimately connected with the health of our body, mind and spirit.

For instance, a few weeks ago I featured the Okinawa Diet, and its health and longevity benefits. And one of my first blogs was on the contrasting benefits between the essential fats Omega-3 and Omega-6.

Well, I recently came across a diet book which shakes the very foundation of what it means to be human, and it offers some astounding insights into our current human condition. As you may have guessed, this diet is not about loosing weight so you can look cute in your bikini.

The book Left In The Dark, tackles the massive impact of diet change on the evolution of our human brains, no less.

A brief synopsis of this fascinating book is as follows:

• Powerful plant chemicals once abundant in ancestral forest diet modified the action of our own sex hormones
• This affected brain development and evolution, increasing brain size, changing its structure and enhancing its function
• These interconnected factors occasionally led to runaway brain expansion (a feedback loop)
• Leave the forest or lose connection with the fruit chemicals and the brain expansion stops
• In place of accelerating expansion a slow degeneration takes place, this affects one side of the brain more than the other
• Paradoxically the most damaged side driven by increasing fear slowly assumes control
• This created a complex neurological condition that has resulted in a number of serious psychological symptoms and left us virtually blind to its existence.

Needless to say, if you are curious about the human condition, this book is a highly recommended read.

Left In The Dark:
by Graham Gynn & Tony Wright

© David R. Durham

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Shanghai Pizza

Posted by David on July 17, 2010

Good news for Pizza lovers in Shanghai. A new Pizza Marzano has opened in Shanghai.

Full flavoured pizza with a light crispy base, plus great service from their staff who speak fluent English (a god-send in Shanghai).

Located in the Shanghai Centre (Portman Ritz Carlton area). This is located on Nanjing Road between the Jing’an Temple and West Nanjing Road metro stations (Line 2).

Pizza Marzano is a part of the Pizza Express group (UK).

Ciao for now.

© David R. Durham

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Omega-3

Posted by David on July 1, 2010

WDDTY reports on research that shows that Omega-3 fish oil supplements can reverse chronic debilitating depression, and that they are as effective as a powerful antidepressant drug.

The benefits of Omega-3 are also featured in the fascinating book Omega Six: The Devil’s Fat, by Robert Brown. See the Books 4 U page for details and my Fat Gets Funky blog from the 6th of October.

WDDTY Report Link.

WDDTY Report: Omega-3

© David R. Durham

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All Change

Posted by David on June 22, 2010

Change is one of those things we sometimes notice and often don’t, and some say that the only constant thing in this universe is change.

One interesting phenomena of enforced and unwanted change, is that it can lead to a kind of stuckness, an artificial state of no change.

For instance, an accident of falling off a bike, or the distress of losing a loved one are usually felt as unpleasant and unwanted. The physical injuries from a fall can lead to the energy of shock being bound up in the body, with no way out. And the loss of a loved one can cause emotional scars which make it difficult for someone to be open to new relationships and to trust again.

This artificial stuckness, in body or mind, is often the target of therapeutic assistance. The therapy is trying to release the bound-up energy from a trauma or get the client to reconsider decisions made whilst under the duress of an enforced change.

In a way, the past is always with us and our body/mind system is a living memory of all that we have experienced. It is the undigested past which causes us problems in our ever unfolding present and trips up our potential futures.

© David R. Durham

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Long Life Diet

Posted by David on June 14, 2010

One of our key learning strategies in the world of NLP, is to copy someone else who’s good at what we want to do. This sounds like blindingly obvious advice, but the obvious is one of those things that we often overlook.

This learning strategy is elegantly expressed in a book called the Okinawa Diet Plan. In a nut-shell, the authors studied a group people who live long and healthy lives, and asked – OK what are they doing? And, is it practical for us to copy them? The answer to both of these questions is yes.

To give you a feel for this excellent book, here’s a quote:

In addition to Ushi’s treasured sweet potato, the Okinawan elder’s diet is filled with all kinds of antioxidant-rich vegetables, grains, flavonoid-rich soy products, fruit, omega-3 rich fish, and minimal meat and dairy products – exactly the type of diet that affords protection against most diseases associated with premature ageing and gives us the best shot at remaining slim, healthy, and attractive for life. (p 124)

Packed with highly practical advice and over 150 recipes, this book comes highly recommended …

The Okinawa Diet Plan:
Get Leaner, Live Longer, and Never Feel Hungry
by B. J. Wilcox, D. C. Wilcox & M. Suzuki

USA Books

UK Books

Canadian Books

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Needs & Wants

Posted by David on June 9, 2010

We all grow up in a culture which tries to define what we need at what we want. And the confusion between these two very similar impulses can haunt us for most of our lives.

If you imagine for a moment being raised in a 12th century medieval European village, then your perceived needs and wants would have been very different than if you had been raised in 21st century California.

As mentioned in my Human Motivations blog of April 17th, psychologists such as Maslow have tried to analyse this phenomenon, and have come up with a mixture of needs and wants, which depend on our perspective.

Whether we like it or not, we are a rich mix of emotional, intellectual, physical, social and spiritual needs and wants.

The gurus and priests have tried to define these for us, with varied success. However, they too are subject to the awareness created by their education, and the historical context of the sources they are referencing.

Clearly, we need to be sensitive to our cultural upbringing, and need to factor that into our equation of how well we’re doing. For instance, my working-class protestant work-ethic background may indignantly demand to know why I didn’t get up until mid-morning today, and spend the rest of the day making me feel bad about it.

To stay sane, we need to understand that there is a difference between what we need (implicitly to survive) and what we want (to satisfy our own ego).

And when we consider these two very similar but different human characteristics, at what level are we making this assessment: i.e. psychological, physical, emotional? And how much of the weight of that assessment do we attach to these different strata? And how much of that assessment process is derived unconsciously from our own early cultural upbringing?

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Cancer & Bacteria

Posted by David on June 2, 2010

Cancer is still a major health risk for many people despite the many important breakthroughs in treatments that have been forthcoming from researchers in recent decades.

Now some researchers are slowly coming around to the extraordinary theory that bacteria are an underlying cause of cancer.

For instance, researchers already know that the H Pylori bug can cause stomach cancer, and they are now beginning to realize that bacteria could be causing many more cancers, too.

Extraordinarily, this was one of the very first theories about cancer – but it was rejected in around 1920 because cancer specialists at the time couldn’t see how bacteria could become a virus.

 The very latest special report from WDDTY (What Doctors Don’t Tell You) reveals that bacteria do change their shape and their characteristics, when they are damaged by pollutants. So, according to the cancer bug theory, smoking wouldn’t directly cause cancer, but it would trigger a change in the bacteria that would set off the disease

If you would like to read this report yourself and explore this theory further, then click on the web-link below.

Click Here For Details =>

WDDTY Special Report: Cancer’s Missing Link

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