Can Tweeting Affect Our Biology?

Recently in the Twitterverse, Deepak Chopra shared this: “How you interpret a Tweet can raise your adrenaline, give you a dopamine hit, or give peace.”

…which got me thinking about the biology of a Tweet.

Science has definitively shown us that our inner landscape is shaped by our outer experience. There’s an entire realm of research devoted to studying how our neural pathways respond and change based on our actions: It’s called neuroplasticity. And countless studies on jugglers, piano players, athletes and meditators have shown neuroplasticity at work.

As we Tweet, post, like, share, and pin, are our brains registering our digital frenzy and shapeshifting accordingly? Preliminary research suggests yes. We also know that our digital life can alter our processing of thoughts. Psychologists have come up with the phrase “popcorn brain” to describe this phenomenon. It’s that rapid-fire succession of thoughts we have when we’re in our digital mode, which for some can make life offline seem unbearably mundane by comparison. In more extreme cases, like Internet addiction, studies have found actual changes on brain scans, though what these changes mean clinically is not yet known.

So how can we, however temporarily, cut the digital cord? New York Times columnist Jenna Wortham found the “charm of a life less connected” at the pool. For others, their unplug-drug-du-jour is running, walking, or even the simple act of pondering.

Unfortunately, pondering is becoming a lost art, crowded out by our inevitably digitized ways. During our spacious moments these days, we’re less apt to gaze off and get lost in our own thoughts. Instead, as we wait for the bus, our dry cleaning, or our doctor… we keep our nose firmly pointed to the digital stone. Some might say this is a new kind of pondering — a collective thinking out loud, rather than a quiet, inward reflection. I’m not so sure.

Social media is undoubtedly a thing of beauty, but how it affects our biology is still a big question. As one Twitter user so eloquently stated in response to Deepak Chopra, “How do we play in social media, without it playing with us?”

Now that’s worth a ponder.

Follow Aditi Nerurkar, MD on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/AditiNerurkar

The Obstacle is The Path

By Leo Babauta http://www.zenhabits.net

Often we’re discouraged because of some tough challenge or obstacle in our way. But a shift in mindset from a Zen proverb can change everything: “The obstacle is the path.”

The obstacle isn’t something standing in our way. It’s the way itself.

That might seem strange, so let’s look at a few examples:

•You are struggling with writing, and procrastinate. Procrastination is the symptom, but it also illuminates the path you should take: you are dreading something about the writing, you are shying away from discomfort, you are afraid of the writing or what will happen when you publish the writing. So work with that dread, the discomfort, and the fear. You’ll be stronger for having done that.
•You are shy and can’t meet people. This can be seen as an obstacle to social happiness, or as a path for something to work with. Many people will avoid this obstacle of shyness, and instead stay home and not socialize. Instead, go towards this shyness, explore it, find out what you’re afraid of, work with that fear. You’ll get better at handling the fear, even let go of it, and it will no longer stand in your way.
•You are stressed out and overwhelmed at work. You can complain about this problem (and it will then continue for the rest of your life), or you can immerse yourself it, let it lead you to self-exploration, and deal with the source of that stress and overwhelm. You’ll learn that you have unrealistic expectations and ideals, learn to let go of them, and the stress will go away. You’ll now have a tool for dealing with stress for the rest of your life.
•People criticize you for doing things different, and don’t understand what you’re doing. You can get mad at them, rage against the unfairness of the world, or avoid them. Or, instead, you could embrace this concern, thank them for caring about you, and engage them in a conversation about what you’re going through, why you decided to do it, and how you could use their support. They might not completely understand, but they also might understand you better, which is great. And you’ll now be better at dealing with this forevermore.
•You are jealous, angry, weak, impatient, grieving. You can deal with any of these issues, if you are willing to go into them, and be OK with experiencing these discomforts.

The examples can go on forever, but the principle becomes clear: when there’s an obstacle, don’t go around it. Don’t run from it. Go into it. Work with it. Explore it. Learn how to be with it and deal with it, and you’ll have a skill for life.

And what’s more: you will no longer be limited by obstacles in your path.

The Philosophy of Our Clothes

Post Written by Zubyre Parvez

A jumper can be made from sheep wool. First, it protects the wearer from the cold, essentially survivalist in meaning, and the most underprivileged in developed countries have clothing. Clothing is to keep warm. We shouldn’t be counting sheep to go to sleep, but need to dream new dreams.

Sometimes we forget about the functional use of a jumper, seeing only it’s style and advertising associations. A D&G jumper, for example, or any other designer labels you care to think of – will heavily be filled with the thought forms of it’s associated advertising, which can appear in magazines and TV and film.

Somehow we see our clothes as conduits of the advertisements. We wear a jumper to align ourselves to the
make believe world of advertising, and it’s perfect models, and with the perfect theme tune to our life. Somehow we feel that we will join that fantasy world, and step inside the advert ourselves. We are not in a movie reel, and we will never see ourselves from a distance as the camera portrays the actors and actresses in the commercials.

Our relationship with our jumper can only be private, a garment is neither a friend or any prettier than us, as it depends upon our bodies for it’s shape to settle onto. Some people live for the associational power and emotion of clothes, that we have given them through film. Monks, supposedly not materialistic, have emotionalised clothing excessively. People pose and parade in suits, to feel a notch above everyone else.

Alot of anguish is felt by youth when they cannot afford clothes they see people around themselves wear. Diamonte cufflinks, maybe the only symbol the manager has of his job status, satisfy. Regardless of the roles we don in society, our true identities are something internal to us, that is not visible.

Instead of blindly following some advertisers extravagent ideal of the jumpers use and context, perhaps we can dream our own dreams about our jumpers, alongside our own lives, and their vistas. In third world countries many jumpers are produced en masse. We can make our own jumper, going to a farmer and his fold of sheep to get the materials ourselves, even, should we wish so. A jumper has therefore the qualities of being natural and wholesome; it is created from sheep’s wool. We leave third world workers to do this side of the business, forgetting the naturalistic element ourselves.

The Timbaland boots with their striking tree logo, have been popular in the US – owing to ther acknowlegement of the natural element that is involved in our clothing and shoes (although
leather and suede from a cow make up the boot, typically). Nonetheless, the mention of nature lends the brand a calm and rootedness, where there is respite fom hype and razzmatazz often found in the fashion catwalks of Paris. There is no reason that we shouldn’t celebrate beautiful clothing, but not without unentangling our long held associations with certain ‘ranks’ of clothes, first, choosing how we feel about how clothes and their meaning for us, bought wholesale or single garment. The meaning we ascribe to the garment is of primary importance, beyond what we are repeatedly told by the designer. Once we own an article of clothing, we should be able to do anything we like with the piece, including viewing it as essentially our own.

Monday’s Coffee Break Poem: The Dancer Goddess

The observer and the dance are one
That particle danced when you observed
And when the curtain was drawn she reposed
That dance that adjusted the bodies of the viewers
Cleared their brows with one flick of the wrist
Opened their hearts with one smile
Cleared the backache of unforgiveness
With a sweeping arm
Pulled out negativity from ear
The dancer was only shaking free of the crowd
Her performance born of a superior observation -
You can tell as she leaps into the air
To be free of your troubles yes
But to share in your joy
She meets you down on the ground
To bring you harmony,
It’s why she danced,
To save your soul,
to remind you of your beauty,
To show you what it means to love,
So happy she is to see you.

Zubyre Parvez

The Tree

Part One

I once read a book called The Seven Daughters of Eve, by Professor Sykes. In his book he posits humankind can be traced through DNA analysis, back to human beings who lived thousands of years ago, but whose bodies were preserved partly in ice, and therefore DNA could be extracted and utilised. He has named them as people, as the books namesake implies, after Adam and Eve.

Family bereavement was an icicle. I was driven to explore Professor Sykes controversial theory – frowned upon somewhat by the scientific community. I was given a little stick to brush the inside of my cheek to extract the DNA. I smiled to discover I was a descendent of Himalaya, on my father’s side, who was in the Asian region some 40,000 years ago. I was sent an ancestral tree of my ancestors. I marvelled at the journey that humankind has made through the passage of time, that procreation allowed us to survive through the generations. It charcoal sketched in my mind a sense of epic time.

In dealing with the aforementioned bereavement, I also planted a tree, as part of the Woodland Trust initiative, to nurture hope and new beginnings. It helps me to think of the tree out there somewhere today, in full bloom, having grown all these years, growing steadily in nature away from the crazy cities. There is an old saying: today’s mighty oak is yesterday’s nut, that held it’s ground.

Links

1. http://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk
2. http://www.oxfordancestors.com/

The Free-Agent Mindset

By Steven Pressfield | Published: May 15, 2013 http://www.stephenpressfield.com

What is the Macro Change that’s going on in the world today? As fish never realize they’re swimming in water, is there something happening all around us that’s so apparent that we can’t see it?

Shaq of Orlando, L.A., Miami, Phoenix, Cleveland, Boston.  We’re all free agents now.

I think there is, and here’s how I’d define it:

We—meaning anybody now living in the globalized/digital/satellite-linked/worldwide-web world—are faced with the challenge and obligation to make a primal shift in consciousness. This shift is as cosmic, I believe, as the transition from illiteracy to literacy in the Gutenberg era, from farm to factory in the days of Wordsworth and Coleridge, and all the post-Industrial Age changeovers since.

I’m not talking about external changes. Those are obvious. What’s perilous and critical and what we all need to become conscious of is the stuff inside. How have we had to change our minds and our ways of thinking about the world and about ourselves?

Shawn has a concept he calls 3PV. Third Party Validation. What he means is the mind-set in which one’s sense of emotional security and self-worth is dependent upon the opinions of others. In other words, we don’t go forward with any action unless we think other people will approve.

Seth Godin talks about this a lot too. Seth decries the internal paralysis that stops people from acting until they have been “picked,” i.e. taken note of by Higher Authority and given permission to go forward.

“Pick” yourself, Seth urges. Give yourself permission to act. Don’t wait for some Third Party to tell you it’s okay or to provide a structure of incentive, punishment, and reward.

There’s a key insight here into the Macro Change we’re all going through.

We’re all having to adopt the Free-Agent mentality.

The Macro Change is a switch from being part of an organization (I hesitate to say “community,” though that’s probably the effective emotional term)—General Motors, Apple, the army, Harvard or State U.—to being Just Ourselves. But it’s not just being part of, it’s thinking like a part of.

Is it necessary to have an actual “job?” A salary? A boss? I’m speaking emotionally, not financially. Is our mental setup such that we are dependent for our inner well-being upon an externally-imposed structure? Are we capable of acting without external motivation or validation or reinforcement?

I was watching a documentary the other night about the old Brooklyn Dodgers. Talk about a vanished era. The players actually lived in Brooklyn. You would run into Gil Hodges or Carl Furillo in the produce section at Gristedes. A ball player in those days signed with a team and expected to play for them his entire career.

Sandy Koufax played his entire career for the Dodgers, in Brooklyn and Los Angeles.

Today you’re a free agent and so am I. Even in long-term jobs, we must think like entrepreneurs. Our 401-Ks are gone with the wind, along with Tower Records, Borders, and the steel industry.

The consciousness expansion and self-empowerment brought about (and required) by the digital revolution and its second- and third-generation follow-ons including globalization of manufacturing and the offshoring of Ozzie-and-Harriet-era jobs has compelled each of us, whether we want to or not, or realize it or not, to become our own one-person General Motors, IBM, U.S. Army, Harvard.

The web these days is chockablock with sites promising to teach “self-empowerment,” “self-motivation,” “self-branding.” Ninety percent of this may be hogwash and Amateur Hour, but the underlying imperative to learn these skills remains drop-dead valid.

In many ways that’s what this blog is all about—and has been from the start, though I myself am only starting to realize it now.

The switch we’re all having to make is from taking our identity and self-worth from being part of a Greater External Identity to being our own Identity.

The concept of Resistance is central to this alteration of consciousness, because the reason we fail to be self-motivating, self-validating, self-reinforcing is that we’re being defeated by our own Resistance.

This is a deep subject, worthy of far more examination than this space can handle in one day.

One closing thought: I suspect that much of the groupiness that upcoming generations display is a necessary and healthy counterpoise to this imperative of self-definition. People need community. Facebook, social networks, running in packs. I hate to say it but nativism, sectarianism, religious extremism, reversion to tribalism (whether in Baluchistan or the U.S. House of Representatives) are all part of the reaction to this Macro Change that the whole world is going through.

These are the prevailing winds.

This is the sea we’re swimming in.

This is the new stuff we have to teach ourselves.

It’s hard. It’s not natural. It’s scary, it’s uncharted, it’s lonely. And the dark side is never far away. (See the Boston Marathon bombings.)

But this is our brave new world.

We are all free agents now.

Short Story: The Violin by Z. Parvez

***
Benny had moved in with an Italian family, after talking to the Landlord who seemed very friendly and animated on the telephone. He took to the offer. The transition went smoothly. He was told, categorically, to keep his boxes and general luggage in order, to maintain the mint condition of the room, which was soley used for the cleaned laundry and the steaming hot iron. Abdul was aggrevied from a breakup with his sweetheart and baby.

He was fifty five by now, with neatly trimmed grey hair, his sideburns short. Concerning the break-up at his age: he believed he would have coped with it much more easily as a young man, the years of commitment undone him. He was prescribed with 20 milligrams of daily anti-depressents by the General Practitioner in the district, whose messy signature on the prescription slip he took to the chemist was dutifully received by the flirtatious woman at the counter.

He found out a few days onward, to his great suprise, that the Landlord had a three year old daughter, her name was Daisy. When Daisy cried he held the door with his arm trying not to cry. This behaviour repeated throughout the month of February. By late March, he had come upon a solution that bloomed from nowhere. He remembered how his mother sent him to violin lessons with Mrs. Fitzgerald every monday afternoon, a failed professional violinist herself, but nonetheless, an excellent teacher in her own right.

His appetite for music was prodigiously revived. Whenever Daisy broke into tears in the lobby area, Benny launched his bow onto the violin with such intense concerntration, addng to his already frowning brow. As Daisy screamed, so the violin screeched. Many months of practice in the household later, Benny became a world class violinist. When Daisy came to the musical awards ceremony and handed him a bouquet of flowers, together with his honourary award, he cried as the applause rained from the aisles above. He took his bow.

***