Life, Interrupted

What if the health of the mind and the health of the body are entwined--so much so that they must be addressed together? This is actually very old thinking--shamans have treated the body and the spirit together for centuries.

When you ask me how I keep getting younger...this is part of it. New York Times, so look fast.

One day in the fall of 1981, eight men in their 70s stepped out of a van in front of a converted monastery in New Hampshire. They shuffled forward, a few of them arthritically stooped, a couple with canes. Then they passed through the door and entered a time warp. Perry Como crooned on a vintage radio. Ed Sullivan welcomed guests on a black-and-white TV. Everything inside — including the books on the shelves and the magazines lying around — were designed to conjure 1959. This was to be the men’s home for five days as they participated in a radical experiment, cooked up by a young psychologist named Ellen Langer.

The subjects were in good health, but aging had left its mark. “This was before 75 was the new 55,” says Langer, who is 67 and the longest-serving professor of psychology at Harvard. Before arriving, the men were assessed on such measures as dexterity, grip strength, flexibility, hearing and vision, memory and cognition — probably the closest things the gerontologists of the time could come to the testable biomarkers of age. Langer predicted the numbers would be quite different after five days, when the subjects emerged from what was to be a fairly intense psychological intervention......
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So -- is it a disease, or is the person unhealthy, and tipping toward a disease? This columnist opens up the subject. I'm currently coming to the opinion that we can walk around asymptomatic to serious things that we've been exposed to...and then something knocks us to our knees, allowing that organism/state change/change of body balance to seize us by the throat. Suddenly we're drowning in deep water.

Some people never find their feet again -- never recover enough to lift their head, look around for purchase, and lay in a plan to get back to the solid ground of the riverbank.

I've had a lot of experience with this (unfortunately) and I can say that the old chestnut of "listening to your body" is a crucial concept we need to teach children from the cradle. For example, are they really hungry? If so, what kind of food do they want? One friend of mine has taught her children that a fast carb is all well and good, but it doesn't satisfy long, and if you depend on it, you'll end up with a headache, cranky, etc. Her kids are learning to say "I didn't eat enough at breakfast. May I have some cheese, please?" They understand that cookies are good, but they need some protein with cookies, or that's where the headache comes from.

There are lots of ways to start talking with your unconscious. I've explored several of them. The one I'm currently using (and I'm delighted with its ability to connect the conscious and unconscious mind) is NLP. Turns out NLP is very useful for small things, and Big Things.

I'm experimenting this week with something that I'd almost lost -- body awareness that is not pain-triggered.

Here comes the New Age-y crap -- brace yourself and read on. I promise that this is worth a moment of your time.

Ask your body what's going on. Ask it what it wants. Ask it what it wants for You, the major portion of the beautiful, faceted gem that makes up your complete being. Use positive words and imagery, always -- your body needs encouragement, too. Remember that your body may not communicate with words, because images were your first language.

What is the positive intention of that pain in your hand? Is it actually warning you that something you're doing is wrong, and will lead to long term injury?

Your unconscious knows about 90% more about you than your conscious mind.

Scary thought, eh?

Maybe it's time to ask its opinion about things?

This fall, several Austin NLP practitioners are going to offer mini-sessions on NLP -- concepts and exercises that you can try out NOW. If it's gonna work for you, you'll know fairly quickly, because your unconscious always chooses the most effective strategy that it knows to handle a problem or situation. This will be a great way to test out the technique for yourself. The 90 minute sessions will be very inexpensive and fun as well. Looks like they will be offered several times a month, in the evenings, this fall.

When I know more about them, or the dates, I will post them here. I should say that it looks like my unconscious has been teaching itself a lot of NLP techniques over the years -- my novels are full of NLP problem-solving on the part of several characters. Without my ever reading a word about NLP. My point being that the basics of this are easy to learn, because you know a lot of the stuff already -- you've just never put it together in the most useful fashion.

An easy way to restructure your learning exists. Greater Austin folk, an inexpensive way to learn some of the techniques approaches! And, everyone else? If you are interested in NLP, but have heard that some people do not use the techniques wisely, shall we say -- I have good people I can ask.