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Managing Stress – Part 1

Usually we think of stress as mental, emotional or physical strain or tension. In this sense we may link stress to how a soldier might feel as he was going into battle; or how we react as our driving test approaches, or as we enter hospital for a surgical operation. Most of us can observe the signs of this sort of stress in such things as clenching our fists, drumming fingers, lighting a cigarette, tensing our jaw, wanting a drink, or feeling depressed. At such times we may even find ourselves susceptible to such illnesses as an asthma attack, indigestion, or back and general body pains.

Some of the clearest examples of what stress is, however, can be seen in looking at the body in stress situations. For instance if we fall into or swim in icy cold water, this places the body in stress. What this means in plain language is that because the body needs to maintain it’s temperature at about 98.4 F, being exposed to cold for too long could be fatal. The condition between easy maintenance of body temperature and death through exposure to low temperature is stress. Therefore, some causes of physical stress could be exposure to extreme heat; taking poison into the system; lack of oxygen; high levels of carbon monoxide (car exhaust fumes) etc, in the air we breath; lack of food; lack of vital nutrients such as iron, protein, etc; insufficient sleep; and so on.

When we fall into cold water our body attempts to deal with the stress through its self-regulating or homeostatic processes. The glandular system will probably secrete adrenalin into the blood stream, causing the heart to speed up. But many other activities try to meet the emergency, even to such small things as the liver releasing more vitamin A to deal with the shock to the immune system.

In general, stress can be thought of as acting upon us in two ways. The first we have already mentioned; that is BODY or PHYSIOLOGICAL STRESS. The second is MENTAL or PSYCHOLOGICAL STRESS. These major headings of BODY and MIND cover many sub-headings though. In the above list of possible body stress situations, such as lack of oxygen and insufficient nutrients, we already have an idea of such sub-headings. So in learning how to meet stress creatively, we could consider, in relation to our body, such subjects as diet, exercise, breathing, hygiene, etc. Under the heading of Mind we could consider such things as relationship, work, social pressure, and education. But it is impossible to make firm differences between Mind and Body. To make this clear let us look at the work of Dr. George Crile, which illustrates both the vital importance of the mind in connection with stress, and also how the body and mind are inseparable.

In 1887 Dr. Crile watched helpless as his friend, William Lyndman, died of shock after amputation of both legs. William had lost little blood, and no vital organs were injured. Crile went on to develop anaesthesia and blood transfusion to counteract death through shock. But some forms of shock appeared to be outside any physical cause. In 1898 Crile was on an army transporter off Cuba and examined a young officer who was delirious with fear due to facing his first battle. He was as deep in shock as if his legs had been crushed by a wagon as William Lyndman’s had. This led Crile to become interested in exophthalmic goitre, an illness that produces a similar type of anxiety condition. Despite the use of anaesthetics, no one had successfully operated on such a goitre condition. Crile discovered why when he attempted such an operation in 1905.

While under anaesthesia the patients heart rate rose to 218 and the body temperature rose to a dangerous level. Despite no physical injury or infection, the patient died that night with a temperature of 109.6 F.

Crile realised from his previous observations that it was stress caused by fear that killed the patient. Therefore he told his next patient, a young woman who needed the goitre operation, that he was going to give her a simple inhalation treatment. When she breathed in the anaesthetic, she therefore thought she was having a `treatment’ not an operation. She was the first person to survive the operation for exopthalmic goitre. Crile called it “stealing the goitre”, and was so impressed by the influence of emotion on the body he constantly stressed the importance of self-control, and taught that calmness is strength.

The word stress has not had these associations for very long. Hans Selye, the great modern researcher into stress, did not at the beginning of his research know English well, and realised later he would have preferred the word strain.

But it was a fortunate mistake because stress has its positive as well as negative polarity. In its positive aspect stress can be thought of not as strain but as stimulus. The `stress’ experienced by our body while we walk briskly or swim causes our circulation to increase and such functions as cell growth in bones and muscles to be stimulated. Also the `stress’ of a challenging situation can focus our concentration and stimulate our problem solving and creative abilities.

Perhaps the most important thing about these two aspects of human stress is that one can learn to transform negative strain into positive stimulus. In fact stress is not an awful side of life we must constantly be on the look out for and avoid. Rather it is a normal and healthy response to everyday life. Just as a car can be pleasurable or dangerous depending upon how we relate to it, so our stress factor can be injurious or stimulating. When handled skilfully, the situation that starts our heart pounding, a sense of foreboding to arise, and our internal critic to start its usual message of failure and inadequacy, can be changed to the excitement and satisfaction of being able to handle our body responses and inner feelings in a way that satisfies us.

The ability to handle stress well is vital to survival as well as conducive to personal satisfaction. As human beings we have tremendous powers of adaptation and survival built into us. As a species we have faced and survived the most horrific of natural catastrophes such as famines, plagues, floods, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. We have even survived the internal threats such as war. But modern warfare, increasing population, the potentially lethal side effects of modern technology, air, water and noise pollution, along with tremendous social change, the push to compete for limited jobs, and the need to find a personal stance suitable to a changing world, needs more than old

methods of survival. We need to learn something new.

NEGATIVE STRESS

Negative stress is a physical and mental state manifest by a syndrome – that is, a set of symptoms or signs. According to Hans Selye’s theory the body’s reaction under stress, which he calls the ‘general adaptation syndrome’, occurs in three major phases: the alarm reaction, the stage of resistance, and the stage of exhaustion. The alarm reaction consists of physiological first response to a stressor. Resistance decreases. In the second stage, when the stressor has continued for some time, there is an adaptation to it. Resistance rises above normal, and the original signs of stress disappear. In the third stage, signs of alarm reaction reappear, but the resistance drops to the point of death.

Stress is not being able to go to sleep….having unaccountable chest pains…not being able to concentrate…..feeling irritated by common events….anxiety in facing unknown and new situations…..feeling a failure…..being fired from your job…….experiencing divorce……..losing your wallet…….being out of work……….having no friend to share a worry with…….your back paining………being angry and not expressing it……..not crying when one of your family dies…….
Pulling Oneself Up By Ones Own Bootstraps

When David Banning stood feeling deeply depressed and looking out of his bedroom window, he could see no way out of the awful conflict he was in. Having left his family and divorced his first wife he had married Sylvia, a woman he greatly loved and respected. But his new wife had not brought happiness. Instead he felt torn between her and the children he had left. Frequently he also found himself at cross-purposes with Sylvia’s own children, feeling a stranger in what was now his own home. His frequent deep depressions had even begun to gnaw away at Sylvia’s usual bubbly good humour too. So when Sylvia arrived back from work and found David standing despondent by the window, her pleasure at returning home turned into a dull anxiety.

David had half turned and saw the change in her face and posture, as if a weight had suddenly fallen on her. Because he had hoped for and planned to create with Sylvia mutual warmth and caring in their marriage, it hurt him to see what was happening to her because of his own pain. On sudden impulse he straightened his posture, and acted as if he felt relaxed and happy by smiling and walking forward, holding Sylvia close to him. He was amazed to see the worry melt from her face; and even more surprised to find that a feeling of brightness gradually took over from the gloom even in himself.

Divorce is one of the major sources of stress in modern life. Being separated from the people one loves, in David’s case his children, is another cause of stress and the difficult feelings and even body conditions accompanying it.

Even though it was David’s decision to leave his first wife, it did not give him immunity to the stress involved. However, when David acted being pleased to see Sylvia, he applied one of the simple methods one can use to wisely manage ones own stress. Learning from the experience he gradually used it to create in his life the sort of feelings and situations he wanted, instead of passively accepting his spontaneous reactions to stress. He realised that many of his feelings were habitual responses to triggers such as seing his children and feeling a failure as a father. When he recognised that these habitual responses were like tape recordings that could play ona and on endlessly, he started to change the habits by responding differently to the triggers.

See Stress Part Two

NOTES

1) WHAT IS STRESS Stress is the non-specific response of the body to any demand made on it.(Selye 1973. Psych and Life page 530)

The body’s natural reaction to a perceived threat. This response – the flight or fight response – is common to all mammals, whether rats, humans or monkeys. “Men are disturbed not by things but the view that they take of them.” Epictetus.

Plato said, “all diseases of the body proceed from the Mind or soul.” It is now believed that 50 to 80% of illness has stress as a contributing factor.

Pavlov’s dogs showed `experimental neurosis’ when made to make difficult decisions. The dogs behaviour changed. They became aggressive, frenzied, etc. Inescapable conflict results in stress. Experimental pig lured a man and attacked. Dogs given an electric shock in one compartment learned to jump to safety. Never stayed in danger zone even without electricity.

Conditioned reflexes are major cause of continuing `stress’. “A person may be reacting to some old injury or situation which no longer exists, and he is usually unconscious of what it is that is causing an increase of heart rate or blood pressure. The result may be chronic hypertension. This may be the explanation of many cardiac deaths.” Although people may not show signs of CR at a conscious level it still shows physiologically. Example of soldier reacting to battle signals. Hypertension affects 30 million Americans. The same number of Americans suffer from sleep-onset insomnia.

“The chances of developing a psychological disorder requiring hospitalisation were 29% greater for those living under the Jet-ways (near major airports). A similar; figure of 31% more `nervous breakdown’ was found among Britishers living near London’s Heathrow Airport.

React at four different/interrelated levels. 1] Emotional such as fear, sadness, anger, frustration. 2] Behavioural forgetting, inability to get along with people 3] physiological high blood pressure, changed glandular products, etc. 4] Cognitive, self image of failure, being disliked, never going anywhere, etc.

Emotional arousal is one of the most frequent causes of stress. Imagine the difference between being woken up slowly, and on being woken by someone shouting “fire – fire!”

It is when we must cope with too many pressures at one time or with continuing pressure over an extended period that stress becomes a serious problem. Continuing job pressures, whether they stem from too much or too little change, can be a chronic source of harmful stress.

In a group of almost 400 subjects, a consistent relationship was found between the number of life change units, according to the scale, and major health changes during the same ten-year period. Of those with moderate crisis scale scores, 37% had had major health change. In addition, those who usually remained well during flu epidemics were more likely to have flu after a major life change. (Rahe & Holmes, 1966) Page 539 Psch. and Life. See criticism of this report on page 540 psych and life.

Lessons in Relaxation Part 4

Mind tools are no longer new in the business world. Twenty years ago Charles Roth was teaching American executives how to increase sales by as much as 150% by imagining themselves in various sales situations. This enabled them to practise and develop ready formed ideas and responses in situations they would otherwise have stumbled in.

During a recent lecture tour of Japan I met Dr. Hitoshi Ishikawa, head of Tokyo university’s Department of Psychosomatic medicine. He explained that the problem of stress, is a main factor of inefficiency in industry, and its effects in commerce were being taken seriously in Japan.

Old concepts which see stress being solely about overworking or facing undue pressure miss the relevance of destressing for modern executives. Stress is not simply muscular tension or a feeling of tightness, it is also involved in how we relate to individuals and groups in competition or co-operative activity; how easily we meet, asses and make use of changes and how clearly we can define realistic goals and achieve them.

Kenneth Blanchard, a leading American management consultant, working with Dr. Spencer Johnson, in a summary of how to be an affective manager says – People who feel good about themselves produce good results. (The one minute Manager – Collins.)

If the factors that inhibit us feeling good about ourselves and which thereby lessen creativity, productivity and good management, are looked at, the need for destressing becomes clear.

For instance recent research into why people take tranquillisers showed that larger amounts of the drugs were used by people in certain types of work. The high usage group were those employees and managers who were called upon to complete a large work quota but had little opportunity to make choices and decisions about their work. People with as much or more work quota, who could control and exercise choice about what they did, used tranquillisers much less. Similar factors, related to amount of choice, were revealed in the research done by an American group into work satisfaction. Their results showed that dissatisfaction arose if a person who had little control over their work felt they had too much or too little to do. Those who could exercise choice were generally more content, and were willing to face more work.

The stress here is caused by lack of choice. To destress the situation fairly straightforward techniques can be used. The first step is to allow as much choice as possible to employees, and to conduct meetings and interviews from the standpoint of offered choice and decision making.

In dealing with ourself, the areas of our ability to choose need to be clarified and consciously used. In areas where there seems to be little choice, a subtle but very effective technique can be used. It consists of sorting out the Want to’s from the Got to’s. Very often we feel as if we have got to be in the work we are. If considered however, there are usually several reasons we want to be in the work, such as the wage earned, support of dependants, job satisfaction. Discovering our area of choice in what we want to do, is a major destressing factor. If little or no want to’s can be discovered1 it is time for the next step.

One of the greatest causes of stress in any human activity is hopelessness. That may not seem to apply to you, but it is basic to any living organism or social group to seek goals, and to find satisfaction in reaching them. Such goals may be the procurement of food, to retain ones house, or sell a product. It is natural to experience stress and arousal in the act of search and procurement. That is pleasant, but we also need the satisfaction of arriving at a goal. If no goal is ever reached the stress Of search and procurement continues to the point of breakdown, hopelessness. hyperactivity or withdrawal. Unfortunately some areas of life and business do not have defined goals or the obvious satisfaction of reaching them. This may bring about undue stress, and a constant sense of striving. To combat this many businesses or individuals set themselves realistic goals and give praise or rewards on their attainment. Even if non attainment occurs the events can be useful for defining information to enhance future efforts, giving a sense of attainment in learning something.

There are effective ways one can personally use these means of destressing in other than objective ways. For instance the nervous system does not make a great differentiation between a real event and an imagined one. We can therefore use the destressing power of goal attainment, by imagining it. Also, the glandular products resulting from stress are negated in their negative effects by carbon dioxide in the bloodstream.

Therefore, before any important interview or meeting, gently slow the breathing. – Make it as slow as you can without having to gasp. This increases the level of carbon dioxide in the blood producing a calmer state of mind. In imagination go through the interview and explore expressing what you wish to communicate. Feel any tension which arises, but repeat the imagined interview until it subsides, and you experience yourself expressing easily.

At times during the day, while travelling, waiting1 or at rest, feel tension in your body then feel it relaxing. Then imagine a situation, such as a holiday, or a quiet room, or some pleasure, which relaxes and rewards you. Allow the pleasant sensations to pervade your whole body. If possible allow yourself to dwell in that pleasure and effortlessness until you spontaneously feel an urge to emerge into action again.

Try destressing yourself. Through it you can get more life out of living”.

Lessons in Relaxation Part 3

How well can you relax? Have you ever put it to the test? Can you sit and allow effort and tension to slip from you until a gentle feeling of pleasure fills you? Does your body become effortlessly still and calm? When relaxed do your mental processes -slow down like your heartbeat, until your mind is almost as clear as a cloudless sky? Is relaxation a doorway for you through which you can release your creative and problem solving abilities?

Tension, whether of our body, emotions or thinking, is rather like someone unable to move from a railway track as a train approaches because they are paralysed by fear. True, that is an extreme case of emotional and physical tension, but it illustrates the point. To the degree we are tense we are incapable of easily moving, adapting, responding, creating and enjoying ourselves in an ever changing, competitive, opportunity filled world.

Relaxation is not just sitting still silently. It is also the ability to dance freely to music allowing the body to abandon itself to the joy of rhythmic movement. A businessman is relaxed who can see an opportunity others are missing, take hold of it and confidently take the risks necessary. And we are relaxed when we can make love yielding deeply to our laughter and tears, and feel at peace afterwards.

Here are some of the ways people use to achieve a deeper relaxation, whether in stillness or everyday activity.

1) Spend a few minutes alone with yourself each day. You need not be physically alone. We can be alone with ourselves even on a crowded bus or train. We do this by decisively putting aside all the plans, worries, thoughts, activities and drives we are daily involved in.

In the beginning it helps to do this systematically. That is, in the same place and time, and using a particular method. The simplest method is to start by tensing the body, then slowly allowing. the tension to drop. Remember to tense the rectum and genitals too. Tense the body several times, each time a little less. As you drop the tension bring your awareness to all the areas of your body to see if the tension is being dropped everywhere. Particularly notice the rectum and genitals, the abdomen and face. During the period you spend in this relaxed condition continue being aware of your whole body, allowing the dropping of tension to deepen. This can actually be done lying down, sitting or standing up.

2) Most textbooks on relaxation only describe the method of muscular relaxation given above. But many people find their mind so active they cannot achieve this even if their body is still. If we ask people how they actually do achieve relaxation, sometimes it is done very differently to lying still. For instance I have seen people’s mood change from cloudy to very bright when doing the two following things.

(a) Put on music with a good rhythm and for ten or fifteen minutes really abandon your body, allowing it to move in time to the music. Decide not to hold back even if you feel clumsy or foolish. Afterwards sit or lie, covered with a blanket to keep warm, and use the method of letting tension drop from the body, or dwelling in the feelings of pleasure in your body.

(b) With or without music, stand with eyes closed and explore the different sounds you can make with your voice. Try a baby crying sound – being angry – types of laughter – animal noises – anything. Do this for ten minutes, then sit or lie and be aware of the pleasurable feelings in the body and dwell on them.

3) Many people say making love deeply relaxes them. On the other hand, an enormous number of people, during or after the act of love, feel tense, restless, irritable, or have pains somewhere in their body. These variations are due to the different ways we habitually and perhaps unconsciously handle our feelings and energy. Much tension, irritability and depression arising from other areas of our life, such as work and relationships, is also due to such unconscious habits.

Like electricity, our emotions and energy can be used for any number of things. Electricity can destroy us, or warm and light our life. So can our emotions. If we have a habit pattern of feeling tense, anxious or destructive of our own endeavour every tile we do or experience something which doesn’t measure up to our highest ideals, our glandular system pours out destructive substances. One of our habitual reactions is literally destroying our health.

To find deeper personal peace and greater health and satisfaction we need to discover those habits and change them. Fortunately it can be done. Because of recent ability to measure patterns or brain activity, we know many Zen Buddhist monks can quickly enter deep inner peace and quietness. Researchers have found the techniques which lead to this personal peace are really very simple. If we take time to learn them we can release mental and emotional tension just as we do with muscular tension.

With muscular tension we must usually become aware of it before we can release it. So with emotional tension. The simple rules are, when we become aware we are emotionally or mentally irritable, agitated, depressed or anxious (a) do not blame it on someone or something else, the boss, parents, your spouse. work, what you ate, the state of the country. The first step is to take responsibility for our own condition.

(b) the next simple step is allowing ourselves to be aware of our condition more fully. Without blaming anyone else, or intellectually explaining it away, give yourself permission to experience and feel your condition more fully. Most of our habit patterns of energy direction are almost unconscious. All we are aware of are the results, our tenseness, anxiety or emotion. But we can work from there. If we are irritable, by allowing our irritability to really be felt and expressed without blaming, the feeling strengthens, then the things behind it emerge. For instance, if we keep moaning at our wife, if instead we stop the blaming and feel the irritability behind the moaning, this will grow stronger then reveal its source. It might be we sense withdrawal of warmth, and when our mother did that when we were young we hit back at her in some way and still have the habit. We do not have to analyse such situations, the underlying reasons emerge spontaneously as self understanding if we allow ourselves to feel the condition deeply enough.

(c) If we can do this with a sympathetic spouse or friend, explaining at each point how we are feeling, what memories or realisations are arising, it helps -enormously.

(d) the whole process is summed up in the traditional Zen technique. Whatever thought or feeling arises, we allow ourselves to experience it without censorship or blaming or believing it is the essential us. The feeling or thought intensifies then fades and our inner quietness returns.

4) It is all very well being relaxed while we sit in a chair practising, but what about while we are at work, or driving, with friends, or making love?

We need to walk before we can run.

Begin by learning to relax and feel your feelings out to the point of peace, in easy situations. Once learnt sufficiently well, then begin to use the relaxation while driving, going for an interview or enjoying a night out. It is very beautiful to learn to make love from the quiet peaceful place of the unstressed condition. The movement, the play, the love, all flow out of the quietness.

Try it sometime!

See Part 4

Lessons in Relaxation Part 2

If the millions of gallons of alcoholic drinks, the countless tonnage of tablet tranquillisers and sedatives, and all tobacco were suddenly removed from our society, the amount of noticeable feelings of stress, anxiety and tension would increase enormously. Like most Western nations, we use the drugs contained in drink, tobacco and medicines to avoid feelings of anxiety. It has been estimated that there are 600,000 regular users of barbiturates – 100,000 of them addicted – and 20,000 alcoholics in this country.

A number of surveys of drinkers nave shown that alcohol is primarily taken to avoid stress. “I drink because it helps me relax”: “I drink sometimes when I’m restless and tense”: “I drink when things get me down”: were replies frequently met by Griffith Edwards during his research in a London suburb.

Nicotine, alcohol, and the barbiturate drugs used in tranquillisers are described as having a downer effect on one’s body and mind. They deaden sensitivity and awareness and thus appear to remove such things as fear of aeroplanes, and anxiety in contact with groups of people. But they do not remove the cause of these tensions, only temporarily subdue our awareness of them. Thus, a middle aged woman who had a horror of spiders, during a test on the effects of alcohol, could only enter a room with a spider in it after she had consumed a quarter of a bottle of vodka. When the alcohol’s effects wore off, so did her courage.

Tension and anxiety are in effect the same thing. The amount of drugs consumed in our society to deal with it shows anxiety as the most common of human difficulties. In a sense it is also a problem few people admit even to themselves. During a recent talk I gave to a group interested in alternative therapies, several people spoke of drinking as soon as they got on an aeroplane. None of them could see any connection between the drinking and anxiety.

So, what is anxiety/tension, and how can we deal with it in ways other than drug- use?

Fear is a natural and healthy part of animal behaviour. Fear stimulated the muscular and glandular systems of our ancestors enabling them to run faster from a danger or fight for survival. As individuals we are only here today because fear and wit enabled them to survive. Tests on animals nave shown that the fear reaction is produced by such things as attack or social pressure i.e. overcrowding in a cage of rats. If the cause is removed the anxiety state quickly goes. But if the stress situation is continued, the animal’s behaviour patterns break down, they become incapable of mating, they injure or neglect their young, and they die prematurely. Even so, at the point of approach to death, removal of the stress can lead to rapid recovery. Sometimes, however, the stress factor causing anxiety is carried about within the animal in two ways. Infant monkeys reared without the breast feeding and physical contact 0£ a mother, when adult, snowed similar signs of breakdown of behaviour as the rats mentioned above. They were incapable of an easy sexual relationship and rearing young. In her book In The Shadow Of Man, Jane Van Lawick Goodall has a picture of a young chimpanzee – Merlin -. whose body never developed properly and who died before maturing. He obviously suffered continued anxiety. Jane says his condition was due to the death of his mother while he was young. So infant shock or stress can lead to internal causes of anxiety.

Another cause I observed some years ago, while camping on a beach with my children and our dog. Having built a fire from driftwood, we put an empty aerosol can on the flames. We stood well away from the fire against a rock until the can exploded. Our dog was so shocked by the noise he ran all the way home – about a mile. Two years later we were on the same beach with the dog. While sunbathing, I stood against the rock mentioned above. Immediately the dog showed signs of fear and began to run home. In this situation, the dog had a conditioned fear reflex connected with my position against the rock.

As human animals, our anxiety can stem from exactly the same source as other mammals. The single difference is the price we pay for the wonder of language. Through it we not only communicate, remember and think more efficiently than other animals, but we can also perpetuate anxiety when its external cause has been removed. Like other animals, stress shows itself in our society as inability to enter into and maintain heterosexual relationships; inability to procreate; neglect of or injury to our young; crime; and war and violence against each other. The amount of homosexuality and lesbianism; the number of non-functional people emotionally incapable of maintaining work or heterosexual relationships; the amount of child abuse, alcoholism and drug addiction, are a reflection of the amount of stress factors in our times.

When we think of anxiety though, we need to remember that there are degrees of it. Because the fear reaction is a natural and healthy function, everybody experiences degrees of anxiety. Unfortunately many of us, have been trained from childhood to hide any signs of fear, as if it were some sign of weakness or failure. Even worse, we may have had it intimated that if we feel anxiety it means there is something wrong with us. We thus get into the awful situation of being afraid of fear.

Fortunately, within the last fifty years, extraordinary changes have occurred in the methods and efficiency with which anxiety is approached. Stress, as an important factor in home, work, and social life, is taken into account in medicine, education and most areas of communal life. Techniques have been defined which enable people to help themselves deal with anxiety. Interestingly, many of these are forms of applied yoga awareness meditation. Taken out of their original settings of ashram or temple, they have been put to use in the most testing of situations – everyday life. Of course, people suffered anxiety as much in the past as we do today, therefore such things as religion and yoga incorporate the methods past cultures found to deal with this ever present human difficulty.

To explain how to use these techniques I will tell the stories of peoples experience with them.

Brian was in his early forties when he began to experience severe anxiety states. This had been triggered by his divorce, living away from his children, and not being able to find work. By using a process of self awareness he could see the direct links between his tension and his situation. Watching not only the onset of the attacks, but also what he thought and what he was doing, enabled him to be clear about what was happening. Each time he walked out of the family house, for instance, he began to think what a failure he was as a parent. Almost immediately he began to experience grinding abdominal pains and a deep emotional despair. His observations led him to realise how he was creating his own misery through his thoughts and feelings of failure. Slowly he learnt to note the onset of his ‘failure’ feelings and change them. He re-appraised them to thoughts of ‘I am not a failure because I made a decision to change my life’. 

To remove as many of the outer causes of stress as possible, Brian moved from the house he had lived in – which in his experience was linked with unemployment and distance from his children – to a house nearer his children, and in an area he was able to gain employment. Some time after this move he needed to collect something he had left at the other house. While driving there he began to experience grinding pain and physical tension. Having learnt to observe what he was experiencing in connection with what he was doing he realised the anxiety was in regard to returning to the house. But why should that bother him? See Stress – What is it?

He had learnt to put into words what feelings existed in his body. Thing this he said, “You’re, taking me back to that place. I was hurt there, and don’t want to go back”. He understood from this that because it was so emotionally painful to be far away from his children and out of work, a part of his nature had a conditioned fear reflex to the house. Like the dog mentioned, his fear reaction wanted to keep as far away from what previously hurt it as possible. He was able to slowly change this by holding in mind that he was only visiting the house and would soon return to be near his children and work.

Like Brian, many people’s anxieties are produced either by a present situation such as divorce, death of partner, loss of work, or by interior thought processes suggesting failure, pointlessness, etc.; or by conditioned reactions to situations, places, people, or times of year.

To relax these areas of stress we need to recognise that most tensions and anxieties are a learned response to cues, or a natural reaction to situations rather than an illness or a sign of weakness. By observing what our tension is linked with, we are enabled to know the cause of our reaction, and change our relationship with it, We also need to remember that thoughts are just as powerful cues to anxiety as real events. So we need to notice what our regular trains of thought are. If they are repeatedly self depreciating, reflecting guilt or undermining of ones abilities, they need to be changed to believable affirmative ones. A 48 year old woman who was a supervisor in a dressmaking business, had begun drinking heavily to deal with her anxiety in having people look at her when she talked to them. Her automatic thoughts were – ‘How can I give orders if they think I’m a nervous wreck – I won’t be able to talk fluently and spontaneously – you have to have a quick answer if you are a supervisor’. She changed these to:- Many nervous people get on well with other people – All I do is blush, this doesn’t mean I’m a nervous wreck – If I slow down and talk hesitantly it doesn’t matter. People seem to like me, and a bit of stammering won’t make much difference. They will accept it as part of me’.

In Their book Self Watching, Ray Hodgson and Peter Miller point out that much recent research has uncovered that what were in the past thought to be human problems or illness, are now seen to be the expression of habits or learned response to cues. Also, these habits, even when in the form of severe compulsions such as ritual washing, or fear of the opposite sex, can usually be changed by simple techniques.

The first step is to see by self observation whether the anxious response is triggered by a past event, or by repeated performance. To satisfyingly meet all the areas of our life is a skill. We are not born with that skill, but we can each learn it, like riding a bike, or driving a car. The negative habits we have learnt can be changed. One of the skills which is enormously transforming in regard to anxiety and other problems is to open a communication with what Dr. Assagioli calls our Sub-Personalities.

In past ages these Sub-Personalities may well have been described as evil or disruptive entities which possess or live inside oneself. Recent research has defined a much more rational and workable insight. Each of us have areas of experience which are not clearly definable, but influence us powerfully. In making memory or experience available to conscious awareness, prior or beneath word or thought formation, lies process which expresses in images, as in dreams. So there is a tendency the unconscious has, because of its dream, or image creating process, to exercise certain important parts of our experience in the form of a person or animal.

Bill explains this in describing one of his own Sub-Personalities. He says, “I have for most of x~ adult life felt uneasy or even frightened of groups of people. I have an active dislike of parties, and generally make very few friends. Because my work brings me into close contact with the public, this fear and dislike is often a trouble to me. As this has led me to avoid advancing in my chosen work – which would need dealing more actively with groups of people, I sought help to find out how I could change. I was gradually taught how to put into words what I felt in my body, until my inner feelings and what I said matched.

“When I had learnt now to do that, something startling and almost amusing happened. It was as if my new ability had created a link between my everyday personality and a part of my nature hiding in the shadows, which I hardly knew. It was akin to meeting another person and learning about them. This person inside me told me, through my ability to express inner feelings, how they had been, as they felt, attacked by two nurses as a child. The nurses had in fact fought with me as a nine year old to give me an anaesthetic for a nose operation. Despite my screams and struggles they held and anaesthetised me. This and other incidents similar to it had led to the formation of a group of experiences with the common theme of how people can do violence to ones feeling and growing identity. In collective form it attained a sort of active but largely unconscious character, which I had not been aware of except as feelings of fear in regard to people. Naturally it distrusted people, especially in groups and when connected with authoritarian bodies such as hospitals.”

Bill learned to communicate with his inner fearful feelings about people, to hear its anger and hurt. He thus integrated into his waking self what had been a split off part of his experience. Listening to it and expressing his conscious views of those childhood experiences helped this integration. Bill called the part ‘Hurt Me’ Part of Bill’s exchange with it is as follows:-

Hurt Me I hate people. The bastards bashed me again and again. Look at how those nurses raped me emotionally. I pleaded and pleaded but they took no notice.

Bill I know that’s difficult to understand and forgive from a child’s point of view, but adults get caught in things like duty and authority. Besides which nurses sometimes need to force people into an operation which will save their life. Without it they would die.

Hurt Me I wouldn’t have died without my nose operation. You can’t tell me they had to abuse me. They could respect other peoples’ fear and feelings.

Bill I agree. They certainly need to learn that.

In this way the hurt melted, and Hurt Me was able to find forgiveness, and a more relaxed relationship with people. And Bill’s story illustrates one of the powerfully helpful ways 0£ gently releasing the tension of inner anxieties.

Such techniques as Self Observation, and Understanding and transforming our inner conditioning have been tried and tested by thousands of people. They are tools which we can use ourselves without the supervision of a doctor or psycho-therapist.

I personally feel that the change in the way we relate to ourselves and the world which use of these methods of awareness bring, is creating the beginnings of dramatic change in the structure of society itself. Just as the development of the rational scientific outlook a few hundred years ago has reshaped our whole world, so the advance of personal awareness into our own motivations create a new society.

The fundamentals of this personal release from stress, and the social change are, firstly, self-awareness. Secondly, out of that awareness, learning to begin a dialogue with life itself within us, and thereby hear its cries and wisdom in its tragic and wondrous involvement with our form.

Lessons Part 3

Lessons in Relaxation Part 1

The Strange World of Relaxation

Today I received a letter from a friend. In it she mentioned a difficulty she faced in the relaxation class she takes. A woman, new to the class, mentioned that during the relaxation she sank into herself in a way which frightened her. In the class held the following week, the woman began to breathe in a very ragged and heavy manner, and her arm was shaking strongly. She seemed to have turned within herself in a manner somewhat frightening to my friend, especially as the woman’s hand was cold and clammy. “What, ” my friend asks, “is wrong with the woman?”

Having seen this happen to people over and over again, I can speak with some experience in answer to that question. And the answer is quite simple -Nothing at all is wrong with the woman.

Relaxation, or any technique which quietens and looses the hold of the conscious mind and will, can be the trigger for such phenomena. And if it occurs to somebody intellectually, emotionally or morally unprepared, it can be a great shock and very frightening. I have seen one woman, in great distress, get up and walk out of a class half way through because, as she put it, “I felt as if I were being swallowed up by something I couldn’t resist. I had to fight my way out of it.”

Sometimes such phenomena are puzzling rather than frightening. Constance Newland, in ‘Myself and I’, tells of her own discoveries during a course in relaxation. Having discovered a tension in her throat, she fought long and hard to release it. Eventually she felt the tension dissolve, and says, “As it did, I heard a most strange ‘clicking’ or ‘ticking’ sound coming out of my neck and throat. This was not an imagined clicking or ticking. It was a real sound, loud enough to disturb the other students in the class who asked me to stop making that noise. But I could not. It was being produced quite independently of my will. After a few minutes, the ticking stopped – again, independently.”

Ticking is certainly an unusual one and I have never come across it myself. But the spontaneous results of relaxation are extremely varied, and they are not limited to a few ‘unusual’ people. Testing quite a large number of people I have not come across anyone who could not be similarly influenced if they let themselves go. Some of the results have been that the person involved suddenly began to cry. This is the most common of results. Others burst out laughing; some begin to sing; a large number start trembling or experience unusual body movements; when very free, the person often dances, or moves into a symbolic drama expressed through body movements. Another common experience is spontaneous and meaningful fantasies, often very vivid. Some people call these visions, which perhaps describes them better, for they seem to come from some more expansive part of self, and act as a means of teaching or realising deeply hidden parts of ourself. in other cases, a song or a part of a poem comes to mind. Here, the words are a means of communicating to our consciousness, a message or assurance from within ourselves. But at the beginning of deep relaxation, many people experience the already mentioned feeling of dropping into a darkness. See Life’s Little Secrets; It is important the 2 wills

I have said that everybody I have met could experience these things, yet very few do. For most people, successful relaxation is a feeling of sinking into peace. a sense of floating, a loss of body sensation, and a stillness of thought. They have a sense of just ‘being’. Nevertheless, it appears from experiments made by numerous researches, that this state is not a sign of deep relaxation in its total sense, but rather a splitting off of one’s awareness from our own inner situation.

In life and sleep we have two powerful actions working in us. The first is our waking experience based on having a body, its limitations, vulnerabilities and a particular gender. Our second is the power that gave us life and continues to express as dreams, in our breathing and heartbeat – our life. This I have given the description as the Life Will.

While we sleep our conscious self is largely or totally unconscious, and while we dream our voluntary muscles are paralysed – therefore another will or motivating force moves our body. So we have a Conscious Will, and what I will call a Life Will. The first one we have experience of as we can move our arm or speak in everyday activities; but the second will takes over when we sleep.

This Life will can move us to speak, to move our body, and in fact do things that we cannot do with our Conscious Will and in fact runs all our important life processes like heart beat, digestion and also dreams.

This Life Will or motivator has been active for millions of years and we see it working all the time in animals. We are partly split in half because we are often opposed to what our Life Will in us wants. So the only way to express what is good for us is in dreams when our conscious will is largely passive or we are restricted by being tied down.

When we truly relax our Life Will can express spontaneously, as in the examples above. See People’s Experience of LifeStream

Let me put it this way: a man who is upset by quarrelling with his wife, and who finds he cannot relate closely to his children and thus is irritated by them, may find an inner quiet by parting from his family. He has found a greater quiet, but only as long as he is away from his wife and children. Another way of finding peace is to face his family in a problem solving attitude, and look for the inner and outer causes for his disquiet. This is much more difficult, but if he is successful his inner peace cannot be shaken by the things he previously disliked – namely, family life. In fact, his family will now become a joy. 

What I am saying is that one form of relaxation is often a means of splitting off from our own fears, dislikes and difficulties. It is useful, for it gives us a few minutes’ peace and perhaps some quietness of soul we can bring back into our confrontation with life. it does not usually solve deep-seated problems though. It may give them a much more positive outlook for a while, because often they believe they have found the ‘peace which passeth understanding’. Unfortunately life circumstances eventually prove that, if they are honest, many of the old frustrations, the old turmoils and inability to relate deeply, are still there under the veneer. The real kingdom of heaven costs a lot more than a few minutes quiet relaxation or meditation daily. In fact it is the pearl of which we have to sell all to acquire.

But getting back to the experience mentioned – what causes them? And why is it many of us never experience them?

Well, taking the last first, it is because what most people call relaxation is actually very active inhibition. What we are in fact doing when we relax our body and mind is to make an agreement with ourselves. We say, usually quite unconsciously – ‘I am willing to let my muscles become fairly limp, and my thoughts become less active.’

It is easy enough to see this is what we arc saying to ourselves because having watched hundreds of people relax, it is noticeable that every time someone begins to cry, more spontaneously, or have unusual mental images, they quickly inhibit such things. Anxiety, fear, misunderstanding, feelings of appearing ridiculous in front of others, all take part in blocking the spontaneous emergence of these. If these inhibiting influences are dropped, then real relaxation begins. For real relaxation is when we let go of ourselves totally, not inhibiting thoughts, emotions, body sensations, body movements, crying, laughing, or even non activity – for many of us are more afraid of goalessness than anything else. Unfortunately, such total relaxation is usually impossible without the help of someone else, as most of our blockages against it, and tensions inhibiting it, are unconscious. We therefore often need someone else with experience to point them out to us, help us release them and face our inner contents.

As for what causes the experiences, it is the same thing which causes us to breath, or move, or be aware – Life and its processes.

Imagine Life as a huge ocean of conscious and blissful energy. This Life energy realises itself as an individual by experiencing the limiting influence of our body and its senses. The body is a restricting, limiting influence which so dims the oceanic awareness of Life that it can be conscious usually, while in the body, only of time and place. We as an individual arise out of this dimming down. And if we like to think of Life having a purpose, then it was to give rise to us that Life died to its heavenly consciousness to be born into the limitations of matter. This does not make our body an evil thing, but shows it as a necessary instrument in giving us self awareness – for without limitation we would be lost in the ocean. But to give us individual life, this great energy flows through us like a torrent. If it flows freely its innate qualities of well being, its deep connection with other living beings, love, inner understanding of why we are here, and natural creativeness, express easily. Love, laughter, creative work and play, inquisitive search for further wisdom, are all expressions of the Life Force. A love of the Life which upholds us is also a spontaneous outflow of healthy existence. Unfortunately a number of factors can disturb or interfere with the flow of Life through us, and this disturbance or block is experienced as illness, a feeling of loneliness or meaningless, depressions, lack of love or creativity, brutality, destructive aggressiveness, and so on.

Dr. Heyer, in his book Organism of the Mind gives an excellent example. A young scientist came to him for psychiatric treatment due to the onset of neurotic behaviour. As soon as the young man lay on the couch, he began loudly to sing a hymn. It was quickly discovered he had strong religious feelings which had been blocked due to his scientific beliefs. The flow of Life through him, which in his case wished to express as thanksgiving and praise, had been denied, causing illness.

One person I watched during such complete relaxation went through what appeared to be movements of giving birth. She afterwards told me she had re-lived a part of her life she had forgotten for years. At that time she had an abortion, and during the relaxation it was as if Life spoke to her and said, “By doing that you hurt me’. But there seemed to be no condemnation in Life’s comment, merely a statement of fact, and the realisation that through the abortion Life had been cut off, unable to fulfil itself. The birth movements were a completion of this activity Life had begun in her those many years ago. One is reminded of Christ’s wonderful words – I come not to condemn, but to redeem.

In my own experience of such relaxation I relived being a child of six, crying for my mother who, I felt, had deserted me in a god forsaken hospital where I had just had my tonsils removed. During this very emotional experience, I also felt Life was telling me things, and showing me how much of my adult loneliness and feelings of being unloved and incapable of warm love, were due to this childhood event.

Education, social influence, our culture, as in the case of the young scientist, often smother our innate outflow of life rather than, as the words imply, “culture it,” “social it,” or educate us about ourselves. And we overlook the fact that Life in us has innate needs, qualities and directions. Like the woman mentioned, our acts may literally wound Life in us because we take no heed of it. And of course, as Life is our very substance, to wound Life is to wound ourselves, causing mental or physical illness or disquiet. But we must not forget that Life is infinite, and so people may have an infinite number of relationships with it. There can be no hard and fast rules how we must relate. Our only real guide is Life itself as it speaks within us. For what is wrong for one may be necessary for another.

Or perhaps life events and misunderstandings have left such scar tissue on our soul. Life can no longer flow easily through and a shadow fails in our life where the Light cannot pass. For most of us, incidents in childhood, at birth, in the womb, or even in past lives, may have given rise to such scar tissue. And depression, or even serious mental illness, is due to the absence of this life-flow.

If some of this seems improbable I assure you I am not theorising, but merely trying to explain, perhaps inadequately, things I have seen when people relax to Life’s influence. Neither must it be thought this is anything new, or belonging to any one therapist. Mesmer was using it over two hundred years ago, and there have been numberless people since, and before, who were acquainted with it. Thousands of people have been experiencing it in Subud, a world wide fraternity, for the past twenty years. Reich and now Janov also used or use it, in a more circumscribed form. And Jung, the great Swiss psychiatrist, long ago in his commentary on the book Secret of The Golden Flower, told how some patients helped him to discover the key to his own inner adventure. The secret is, he says, to do nothing, but to let things happen without interfering. He suggests allowing a fantasy to develop, or to let the hands move spontaneously, and thus allow conscious and unconscious to communicate.

Jung often has a wonderful way of explaining things, and says that many of life’s problems are in fact insoluble. But a number of his patients, in doing nothing, but letting things happen, found they grew beyond the problem. When we look at our everyday life, this has happened throughout. As a baby we could not help but wet ourselves. At that age it was an insoluble problem. But Life, acting in and through us grew us to a new level of experience where the difficulty disappeared. The same thing happens with our dependence upon parents, inability to care for ourselves, adolescent sexuality, and so on. If something happens to injure the growth process of our personality, however, then we may become stuck at that level, being forever tied emotionally to our parents; still bed wetting or still experiencing the homosexual drives of an infant.

Relaxation, in opening us up to life’s action, also bares these past injuries, and we become healed of them. The emotional or internal knots, the injuries or shocks caused to our Life flow, are untied. This frees these areas of us to go on growing. In this way we can grow beyond bed wetting, the homosexuality, the aggressiveness of youth, the loneliness or fear. From such new levels of awareness and capability we can become a new person.

This is also the clue to exactly why physical movements, mental or emotional outburst occur in this process. Life, in expression, is always movement. Work, sex, self expression, eating, digesting, breathing, laughing, defecating, loving or hating, all express as movement. If we love someone, our arms may spontaneously reach out to them and embrace them to us. If we are angry our breathing changes, our fists clench, face changes and perhaps we spontaneously strike Out or kick. Creativity involves skilful and often pleasurable movements of our body. Childbirth is a very active thing. Although we often intellectually plan these things, underneath is a great river of Life flowing out through us into these expressive movements. Love, work and play – song, dance and worship, have been with us much longer than mankind has had a conscious intellect to coldly plan with. In animals this particularly noticeable. When a bird builds a nest, or moves in a mating dance; when otters play, or beavers build their dams or termites their mounds, it is life expressing its wonderful flow of creative, loving movement.

If such movements are blocked in as through shock, pain, social scorn or education, they cause tension. Muscular tension is a blocked movement. When the tension is released, the person begins to move, if they allow it. In this way, and I have watched it happen, people burst into spontaneous song, or begin to dance, as Life itself sings and dances through them. This is really the release of tension; this is relaxation. And perhaps, with this in mind we can understand why abortion sounded the inner self of the woman mentioned. The blocked process had caused tension. When the tension was released, movement fulfilled itself. the same is true of our physical processes. When we eat something poisonous, our body attempts to vomit it out. In blocking this ‘movement’, we block the healing process. So too, in blocking the ‘vomiting’ of spontaneous emotions and movements, we block Life’s attempts to heal our psyche.

Society is just like an individual. At present, as a society, we are beset by many problems, which, as Jung says, are insoluble. Stronger police forces and more rigid laws do not solve theft and lawlessness. In fact the more we try to solve such problems by too rigid an outer discipline such as police rule or martial law – or too rigid an inner discipline, such as enforced morals, the more decay occurs in the very measures used. The police themselves become brutal and criminal -or priesthood becomes corrupt and murderous. History is full of examples.

To solve the problems facing us -problems of population increase, national aggressiveness, pollution, loss of social integration, sexual promiscuity and perversion, drug dependence and general meaninglessness – it seems pointless to approach them with our old fears, our old brutal suggestions of enforced social regulation. Many times before our race has faced such climaxes in development, just as we do in growing from babyhood to youth, youth to adolescence, adolescence to maturity, and maturity as it faces death. We do not solve such dilemmas as how to cope with leaving our mother and going to school by force. We face it by growing. With courage we reach out into the Unknown and with a leap find a new level of existence. So came fire to man, and the wheel-group action, farming, ocean transport and growth into nations instead of tribes.

Now we have to grow from nations into a world – from being ruled into greater self integrity. We must have the courage to face ourselves and cleanse out the fears, angers, greed and insecurity which possess us and lead us into war, political murder, national or individual isolationism, and infantile adaptation to life. In fact, we must let Life, in cleansing and healing us, rise to a new level of expression which will transform our sexual relations – our social creativity -and integrate our past injuries as people or nations, and lead to a fraternity of nations.

Can we do this? It is not a case of whether we can – we must – or be victims of our past, as some men are victims of childhood fears. It will no doubt take a long time. It will be difficult. But, we can do it!

Lessons Part 2

Major gene discovered that causes dry skin and leads to eczema and asthma

Experts, led by the University of Dundee, have discovered the gene which causes genetic skin conditions affecting millions of people.

Experts on genetic skin disorders at the University of Dundee, with collaborators in Dublin, Glasgow, Seattle and Copenhagen, have discovered the gene that causes dry, scaly skin and predisposes individuals to atopic dermatitis (eczema). Some of these individuals also develop a form of asthma that occurs in association with eczema. This work has been published in two consecutive papers in the March and April editions of the top genetics journal, Nature Genetics.

Margaret Cox, Chief Executive of the National Eczema Society, said: “To discover that eczema patients dont have the gene which should protect the skin by keeping water in and keeping foreign organisms out is a real step forward. Above all, it answers the age-old question asked by most eczema sufferers, “why?”.

“Understanding the genetic basis of skin diseases such as eczema means that in the future, healthcare professionals will be armed with more and better information and we can tackle the cause rather than simply treat the symptoms of a previously incurable skin condition.”

Margaret added: “A development of this calibre will bring considerable hope and optimism for eczema patients throughout the world..”

Currently, only symptomatic treatment of ichthyosis vulgaris and eczema is possible, using emollients and ointments to try to prevent the skin drying out or anti-inflammatory drugs to treat the inflamed skin in eczema. Now that the underlying gene defect behind this disorder is known, it will be possible to design new more effective therapies to tackle the root cause of the problem, rather than treating the symptoms. The Dundee group is already working on developing methods to treat and even prevent these diseases.

The gene in question produces a protein called filaggrin which is normally found in large quantities in the outermost layers of the skin. This protein is essential for skin barrier function, helping to form a protective layer at the surface of the skin that keeps water in and keeps foreign organisms out.

Reduction or complete absence of this important protein leads to impaired formation of the skin barrier. As a result, the skin dries out too easily and in addition, the outer layers of the skin are poorly formed and constantly flake off. As well as keeping water in, the skin barrier normally keeps foreign substances out of the skin. In people with filaggrin mutations, foreign substances can easily enter the skin and be seen by the immune system. This explains the development of inflamed skin (eczema). In some people, priming of the immune system through the “leaky” skin appears to lead to asthma when foreign substances later enter the lungs.

The first study, led by geneticists Professor Irwin McLean and Dr Frances Smith in Dundee and their dermatology colleague, Dr Alan Irvine, Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children, Dublin, discovered that about 10% of European people carry a type of genetic mutation that switches off the filaggrin gene and this causes a very common dry, scaly skin condition, known as ichthyosis vulgaris. About 5 million people in the UK alone make only 50% of the normal amount of filaggrin protein and have a milder form of the disorder where the skin is dry and flaky. About 1 in 500 people, or 120,000 people in the UK, have both copies of the gene knocked out by genetic mutations and have no filaggrin protein whatsoever in the skin. These individuals have a severe and persistent form of the disease, often requiring specialist treatment.

A second study showed that many people with ichthyosis vulgaris also have eczema. Further research then showed a link between ichthyosis vulgaris, eczema and asthma. McLean, Smith and Irvine, in collaboration with Drs Colin Palmer and Somnath Mukhopadhyay of the Dundee BREATHE study, and Professor Hans Bisgaard in Copenhagen, showed in four independent experiments that these common mutations in the filaggrin gene are a major predisposing factor in the development of eczema and the form of asthma associated with eczema.

* A significant association between filaggrin mutations and eczema was shown in families affected by ichthyosis vulgaris.
* About two-thirds of Irish children with eczema examined were found to carry one or more filaggrin mutations.
* In a study of Scottish children with asthma, there was a very strong association between filaggrin mutations in those children who had both eczema and asthma.
* In a study of Danish babies whose medical history was followed for the first years of life, there was again a strong association between filaggrin mutations and eczema.
* The Danish study also showed that more than 60% of the children carrying filaggrin mutations get eczema within the first couple of years of life.

About 5 million people in the UK carry one of the filaggrin mutations and consequently, have dry skin and are predisposed to eczema and to a lesser extent, asthma.

Worldwide, about 60 million people are estimated to carry these particular gene defects and more than 1 million are predicted to have the severe form of the disease as a consequence of these mutations alone.

The Dundee group already have evidence for the presence of different filaggrin mutations in other ethnic populations and it seems that reduction or absence of filaggrin in the skin is likely to be a major cause of dry skin and eczema worldwide.

This work was funded by The Wellcome Trust and the skin disease charities DEBRA, PC Project, British Skin Foundation and National Eczema Society. Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (award D13460; C.N.A.P.), Scottish Enterprise Tayside and the Gannochy Trust (C.N.A.P. and S.M.). C.N.A.P. is also supported by the Scottish Executive Genetic Health Initiative.

This news is direct from the University of Dundee’s Website.

This project is being supported in part by the by a shared research award from the National Eczema Society and the British Skin Foundation. To help support our research programme please donate here.

Back Pain and Its Cure

What I am about to explain may not be applicable to your own back problem. But I will describe some simple processess that have transformed my back health in case you too can find the same relief.

For years I suffered paralysing back pain that re-occurred about every four to six weeks. At those times it was very difficult to move around, and getting in and out of a car took a very long time.

Because I had worked for many years in the building industry I thought there was no possibility of cure because my back had been well worn and injured. Carrying heavy sacks of cement, sand and other building materials had, I thought, done permanent injury.

This whole concept changed one day when a friend asked me to help her in her garden. At the time I was experiencing one of my frequent back pain attacks, so I was taking things very carefully and slowly. I thought that if I sat down and rested every few minutes it would be okay.

We had trimmed some of my friend’s hedges and she had to go off somewhere urgently. This left me with the problem of having to pick up the trimmings and put them in sacks. There was quite a lot to pick up. However, as said, I thought I would do it slowly and rest often.

This may sound strange that with back pain I would even consider doing work in a garden. I say this because I know many people suffering pain completely stop any activity and take painkillers. Fortunately this wasn’t my attitude, and because of that I discovered what has now left me free of back pain for many years.

If you want to beat back pain touch your toes says controversial health guru. By PETA BEE – Few of us have been spared the agony of back pain. In the past 12 months alone, over a third of the population has suffered back problems, says the charity BackCare. For some the agony is fleeting, but for many it can last for weeks, months, and even years. Why has back pain become so common? According to leading physiotherapist Sarah Key, our sedentary lifestyle, and the fact that we are taller and heavier than we used to be, are to blame.

So I started picking up the trimmings and putting them in plastic bags. This meant bending down to pick the stuff off the ground, then straightening up and putting the trimmings in the bag. I felt, at the time, because of the amount of trimmings, I would never be able to finish it. But, as I progressed into about the second bag I noticed my back pain was easier. So I gently carried on picking up the trimmings until I had in fact cleared the whole garden – and there were about sixty metres of hedge.

At the end of that work my back was completely healed. I was honestly amazed. I had always believed the body is a system designed to work, but the amount of pain I suffered gave me the sense that there was a real problem there that work would only further injure through what doctors call wear and tear. How wrong I was. My body loved that movement of bending and straightening.

What I gathered from the experience was that in my daily life – and I am quite an active person – I am not bending and straightening my spine often enough. So now, at least twice a week, I stand with my feet about a foot apart, and then touch the floor and straighten fifty times.

That revolutionary change occurred five years ago. Since then I have not had a single return of the painful back problem.

Also, a posture that helps is the yoga child posture. The reason it helps is because it gently lengthens the spine – something we seldom do in everyday life.

Another position that may be more helpful even than the child posture, but a bit more difficult to set up is what I call the cradle position. I intuitively found this position once when I had put a vertebrae out while lifting an oven down stairs. I was barely able to move and crawled about on hands and kness. I went to see an osteopath but she told me that I was in so much pain and tension so she dare not work on me – I still had to pay her fee though!

In trying to find some relief from the pain, I set up large cushions on the floor to support my head and shoulders, and used a low settee to slightly lift my hips and support my legs. What is used isn’t important, the thing aimed for is to use a setting that both enables you to relax, and also gently lengthens the spine in the sort of spinal bend shown in the child posture, but without the legs pulled to the chest.

The second day I used this setup I felt and heard a thump in my body. The vertebrae had gone back into position. The cure was instant. Immediately I was free of pain.

I couldn’t find a good picture to illustrate the position, but if you imagine a mother  supporting her baby with one big hand under it’s head and shoulders, and another under its pelvis, and slightly stretching apart, that is what is aimed for.

In some cases however it is the gentle backward stretch that will help the vertebrae to re-position. This can be done over a pile of pillows, or one of those big exercise balls. I haven’t tried this, but I guess you could use the exercise ball for the cradle position also. In other words lie across it on your tummy.

It is important to remember though that the spine cannot re-adjust itself if there is still pain or tension. There has to be enough relaxation of the muscles to enable the spine to lengthen. So it would be good to experiment with what is suggested until you find what works for you.

The Anger Block

For about twenty years I worked as a therapist using a variety of approaches. One of these was linked with emotional and energy release. During those years I dealt with cases of extreme back pain that were caused, or made worse, by suppressed anger. Literally the people were holding enormous energy in their back. This caused such tension it led to back pain. See Life’s Little Secrets

A simple self help approach that might relieve this is to use a technique that can enable you to express repressed anger in a safe way.

To do this you need something like a toy baseball bat or tennis racquet. You use one of these to hit something like a settee or a pile of pillows – something that can take a real beating without damage.
If you know what you are angry about you can use the bat to express the anger as you whack the target. But many angers are unconscious, so it is helpful to start whacking the target mechanically. Just start hitting the target. Then, as you get into the movement see if you can let some of your back pain express through the movement.

When succesful this gradually hooks any internal anger and the whacking becomes full of feelings and sometimes shouted abuse.

If possible, even if the whacking is mechanical, try to let the pain in your back or elsewhere, or any feelings connected with it be expressed with the whacks. Allow the pain and feelings to flow into the way you are hitting the target.

Remember you are not hurting anyone by doing this. In fact by releasing any repressed anger you are flushing out the energy that is making you ill and can lead to less pleasure in dealing with other people.

This may take several sessions to really get things out of you that may have been held in place for years. Anger is one of those emotions we are often trained since childhood to suppress. Even if you feel you express anger well, it often has depths you might not have allowed release. It is therefore worth trying the technique a few times to see if it hooks stuff you have hidden away.

Also, lower back pain specialists have found that often there is no one solution to back pain, so you need to use a variety of methods, anger release being one of them. Remember that pain is not always due to damage or infection like a toothache. Dr. Andrea Brandt says, “Swallowing one’s anger can cause problems over time. In turn, the anger simply gets buried alive. Over the course of time, the pressure of anger can accumulate and lead to a great eruption of rage and, more commonly, the individual may also suffer physical consequences. Buried anger can cause ulcers, heart disease, hypertension, headaches, back pain, depression, guilt and fatigue.” See People’s Experience of LifeStream.

Yerba Mate

Maté is the national drink of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay. Even in the 16th century, Spanish explorers described the tea as producing exhileration and energy.

Recent research has show the reason for this energy boost is that maté contains caffeine. But users state that unlike the caffeine in coffee, maté does not cause sleepnessness or tension. Perhaps this is becasue it is in a more subtle dose in the maté leaves the tea is made from.

What is definitely known of maté is that like green tea, it contains powerful antioxidants , is one of the greatest of natural aids to weight loss, and is a mood enhancer. This latter because it inhibits molecules in the brain that cause loss of enthusiasm and energy.

So to summaries, maté can –

1. Give more energy and vitality.
2. Increase the burning of fatty tissues in the body and so increase weight loss.
3. Increase mental awareness and lift mood.
4. Reduction of cravings for things like junk food or alcohol.
5. Better health of immune sytem to deal with infections and illness.

Grapefruit Seed Extract

Help with thrush, bowel problems, arthritis, athletes foot, yeast and fungal infections, and many long standing internal or external infections.

Some parts of the text below are Reprinted from BEYOND NUTRITION, issue 1 Winter 1994

Sales of GSE in UK and Europe – Sales of GSE in USA

Fourteen years ago an earnest gardener noticed that when he threw grapefruit seeds onto his compost heap they did not rot. Fortunately, being both a doctor and an Einstein Laureate physicist who specialised in finding natural remedies, he investigated. The result was a remarkable discovery The extract he made from the grapefruit seeds may turn out to be the most potent and benign antimicrobial so far discovered.
Could we have
Discovered the near
perfect antimicrobial?
Use it on your toothpaste to banish aching teeth!

A few drops of Dr. Harich’s grapefruit seed extract, (gse), in a glass of water could put a stop to the flu or a sore throat. It could also help control Candida or gingivitis, and it’s been known to banish athlete’s foot in a single application. It is highly effective against diarrhoea and food poisoning, it could rid you of worms or parasites, it can even stop you going down with cholera or dysentery when travelling abroad. it is very much more potent than tea tree oil. The best news is it is natural, inexpensive and non toxic.

What was so surprising about Dr. Harich’s new discovery was how broad it’s uses turned out to be. Conventional antibiotics only kill bacteria. GSE has been shown to inactivate viruses, yeasts, fungi, parasites and worms, as well as bacteria. What’s in there that makes it work really isn’t known,” Dr.: Leo Gallard has been prescribing GSE to New York patients for over 7 years, told Natural Health Magazine, “There’s just something unique about this particular substance.

Whatever it does, it does it without debilitating side effects and it has the advantage of being very safe”.

Dr. Louis Parish MD, an investigator for the US Department of Health and the FDA, who has treated many people with intestinal problems, including dysentery, believes that GSE, “Gives more symptomatic relief than any other treatment.”

“Conventional antibiotics only kill bacteria. The grapefruit seed extract has been shown to inactivate viruses, yeasts, fungi, parasites and worms as well as bacteria.”

“Studies from a list of prestigious institutes have demonstrated grapefruit seed extract to be effective against over twenty disease-causing bacteria, more than thirty fungi, and a host of single cell parasites”
Allan Sachs DC

Leading American chiropractor Allan Sachs DC took part in clinical research on the new extract when it first became available. He and his colleagues drew up a list of criteria and evaluated GSE for each of them. After evaluating it he reported, “I was astounded to find that it scored high marks for each category. Could we have discovered the near perfect antimicrobial? For instance, studies from a list of prestigious institutes have demonstrated GSE to effective against over 20 disease causing bacteria, more than 30 fungi, and a host of protozoa (single cell parasites).
When suffering an acutely painful attack of arthritis in my left hip I tried taking GSE in desperation more than in hope of help. Within a few hours of the first dose (15 drops in water) the pain left me and has not returned in that degree – Tony Crisp.

I have used GSE on two warts, and after daily usage over a couple of weeks, the warts fell off. I used the GSE neat.

Several of the viruses studied also succumbed to the extract.

Fortunately GSE does not seem to disturb beneficial gut bacteria. One study which tested the effect of GSE on eczema patients (who frequently have fungal and bacterial infections) found that it significantly inhibited Candida albicans and E. Coli, but left the important Bifidobacteria unchanged, and only slightly reduced the Lactobacilli. Their patients’ constipation, flatulence and abdominal discomfort all improved.

A Major
Therapeutic
breakthrough for patients…

Remarkably, this botanical extract seems to tackle at least some viruses. It is too early to say how many, William Shannon. head of the Microbiology-Virology Division at Southern Research Institute found that GSE was effective against herpes simplex and one of the influenza viruses. Interlab, a South American laboratory found that it inactivated the measles virus, and the US Department of Agriculture found that it was effective against four animal viruses, including foot and mouth disease and African swine fever. Other laboratory tests have shown that GSE will kill many of the microbes which commonly infect us, including; streptococci, staphylococci, salmonella, pseudomonas, giardia, lysteria, legionella, helicobacter pylori and capylobacter jejuni.

Chronic candiasis can be successfully treated with GSE according to the many clinics and medical practitioners now prescribing it.

“Dr. Leo Galland, who prescribes grapefruit seed extract for
chronic candidiasis has reported
treatment failure in only two out of 297 cases.
And considers it to be a major therapeutic breakthrough
for patients with chronic parasitic and yeast infections.”

 

Regarding resistant patients Dr. Galland commented, “I have had some immuno-suppressed patients taking the preparation for over a year with no apparent development of side effects or drug resistance (resistance of infective microbes to the extract)” Researchers at the Pasteur Institutes hospital in Nairobi have been using with GSE with HIV patients for over two years and report dramatic results with secondary infections, including parasitic infections and thrush. GSE is so safe that you can use a mild solution on a baby’s bottom for nappy rash.

Normally GSE comes as a concentrate of which you use a few drops at a time dissolved in a glass of water or juice. To stave off a cold you could drink some in a hot drink, repeating, if necessary a few hours later. In areas where diarrhoea is a problem a little can be taken each morning as a preventative. The concentrate is extremely strong and must always be diluted and never used in the eyes. GSE is incredibly versatile. You can gargle with it for sore throats and gum infections. You can even douche with it. Try adding it to your shampoo to control dandruff.

The only side effect that has been noticed is an occasional mild discomfort when yeast or bacteria begin a ‘die off” process. Starting on just a few drops a day and raising it gradually will minimise this. Often taking a probiotic supplement is appropriate as well. For maximum effect they should be taken several hours apart.

 

Natural Disinfectant

Besides it’s multiple uses within the human body, GSE has many more applications. Tests at the University of Georgia, confirmed by labs and clinics around the world, have shown that it is a first class disinfectant. Not only does it kill germs effectively, but unlike most disinfectants, it has virtually no toxicity, making it far safer to use.

Already it is being used by hospitals in America.

At home it can safely be used to wash fruit and salad vegetables, to clean chopping boards, and to sterilise food utensils (or your toothbrush) when needed.

This discovery has shown that GSE has so many uses that the moral may turn out to be:

Don’t leave home without it!

 

Buy the book here.

A doctor from Orlando was travelling in South America when his companion was struck with severe diarrhoea after eating wayside strawberries. Having GSE to hand he gave his friend some immediately and another dose before going to bed. The next day, Dr. Lynn reported that his friend, “Was down to breakfast and eating. No further bowel problems.”

References.

Ionescu, Kiehl, Wichmann-Kunz, Williams, Baum and Levine. Oral Citrus Seed Extract in Atopic Eczema: In vitro and in vivo studies on Intestinal Microflora” Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine Volume 5. No 3, 1990 The Third Opinion, Volume 1 Petaluma CA 94952
Links to GSE Information

* Sales of GSE in UK and Europe – Sales of GSE in USA

* Research study on carcinogens

* Research study on antimicrobial power of GSE

* Diagnose-Me Hints on using GSE

* Debbi Hopkins talking about her family use of GSE

* Thread on use of GSE for fish aquariums

* Treating candida with GSE

 

 

The Slow Breath

Tony Crisp has taught methods of stress release to hundreds of people internationally. He has been recognised as having developed innovative methods of releasing deeply interior tensions. See Biographical Notes

The aim of the ‘slow breath’ method is to breathe naturally-abdominally-but to breathe as slowly as comfort allows. It must be comfortable, however, as the aim is to induce quiet of mind and emotions, and if you are struggling with the method it defeats its own purpose. So there must be no gasping for breath because you are breathing too slowly. Find a rhythm that is slow but not making you out of breath.

Therefore, slowly breathe in counting to see how long this takes. Then exhale to the same count. There is no need to concentrate on anything except the beautiful slowness of the breath. This takes practice, so do not hope to find the great quietness right away.

You need to use this slow breathing for at least 15 to 20 minutes each day, longer if you can manage it. Keep the practice running daily for three months. This insures real physical and mental changes. It also puts in place new habits, meaning that after that period you will find you will be breathing more slowly as a natural rather than induced pattern.

You must realise that you are gradually changing very deeply seated habits that have been with you a lifetime. Taking hold of the breath and controlling it is like taking hold of your nervous system, or body, and gradually altering the way it responds to events and thoughts. It is a bit like taking a wild animal and gently taming it. There should be no force or conflict involved. Gradually you will see that your way of dealing with, or responding to, difficult emotions, fears and stressful events, is changing. You feel more able to meet difficulties, allowing you to grow as a person, and be more creative.

With practice, one should begin to experience a dropping away of tension, disturbed emotions and thoughts. Sometimes it will feel as if something has literally fallen away from you, or as if the bottom of the spine is opening as the tensions there drop away. Eventually you will glimpse something that can only be described as a void or absence of all personal activity. There is a quiet peace and bliss in this, but it will at first only be flashes, secondary glimpses, growing gradually longer. This is achieved when all efforts and desires drop away – never by striving after it. By surrendering to this quietness you will be cleansed by it first – then it acts upon you producing growth of inner awareness.

The result upon your nervous or emotional conflicts is one of gradual calming, cleansing and leading towards peace. While we may find ease from tensions within months, such personality growths should be hoped for only in the sense of years. Like trees, we grow slowly, but there is beauty in it.

One of the greatest of Chinese methods of personal transformation suggests the slow breath as it basic technique. This is explained in the book The Secret of the Golden Flower. The aim is to gradually return one to the pristine awareness you were born with, free of the encumbering cultural traits and beliefs taken on during culturation and education.

Example: My breathing gradually slowed at this point, and I could experience the changes this made. It felt that by slowing the breathing my awareness sank slowly beneath the frantic chopping waves of thought and feelings that are so much a part of our daily life. A level of my own existence beneath the surface was reached. The experience was also a bit like pulling back from awareness of one part of the body, such as a fingertip, and becoming aware of the whole body. I use this analogy to suggest that through the slow breathing we pull back from focused awareness of our individual self, to become more aware of a more inclusive consciousness.

I experienced a huge ocean of love at this deeper level. Whatever we experience of love personally, I could see that it was a tiny part of this ocean expressed in our life. There seemed no need to worry about whether it was one’s own love, whether one was capable of love. This seemed pointless. We are not capable of love. There is no love of or our own. By trying to claim it, the saying I love you, seemed ridiculous and limiting. The love belongs to life, it is not ours personally. Because we don’t own it, there is no need to be possessive. All we need do is to allow it to flow through us. Blocking it creates pain and sickness. And for goodness sake do not put a price on it. Do not sell it! It isn’t yours. If you sell it you will need to repay the source.

Example: This led to me holding my breath for quite long periods and observing what I felt. In other sessions holding the breath had led to feelings of intense quietness or being merged in the one life. This time it was an experience of lifting my awareness beyond everyday thinking. An experience of expanding, of lifting beyond what had been everyday. But with it there was the feeling perhaps like a lighter than air balloon that rises, but after a short time it hits the ceiling or something preventing it rising or expanding further. So I felt as if I had hit a ceiling. I didn’t want to fall back, but hadn’t yet found a way to rise beyond the present ceiling. I want to break through into the next level.

With this experience came the observation that although the breath holding had brought this expanding or rising sense of myself, like so many other things, once the thing was seen clearly, one could achieve the same end by intention without the physically descriptive act of holding the breath. What I mean by this is that at some time one might have shifted from a mood of depression by dancing. One could believe that one could only make such a move by dancing. But in fact once one realises that a mood shift is possible, one can use other tools, or simply see how the shift occurs and use one’s will or intention to do the same thing.

To carry on from this practice see https://dreamhawk.com/body-and-mind/the-arm-circling-meditation/

The 1-4-2 Method of Breathing

With any method of controlling the breathe and holding it, it causes a build up of carbon dioxide. As can be seen in recent video’s of ways of controlling anxiety and panic attacks, a breathing in and out of a paper or plastic bag is suggested. This is because we breathe out carbon dioxide and so taking in what we breath out we build up our intake of it. As carbon dioxide decreases anxiety and panic it is very useful to be able to do this.

But a much better way of doing this with much deeper results is the held breath. As said above, you must realise that you are gradually changing very deeply seated habits that have been with you a lifetime. Taking hold of the breath and controlling it is like taking hold of your nervous system, or body, and gradually altering the way it responds to events and thoughts. It is a bit like taking a wild animal and gently taming it.

The method is called 1-4-2 because you start with an in-breath that you count. So if you started with an in-breath that took a count of 5 you then hold your breath for a count of 20 – that is four times the length of the in-breath. You then breath out slowly for a count of 10 – which is half the count of the held breath. Therefore a 1-4-2 count. So if your in breath took a count of 10, four times that is 40, and half of that is 20.

To really get the results from this you must start at a low count until you are used to it, and there should be no struggle to hold your breath, only lengthening the count as you find it easy. Start with 10 minutes of the technique and work up to 20 minutes. It will really work if you do this for twenty minutes day. You will need to keep it up for three months then you will notice real change.

This is so far the best way of dealing with stress I have used. In meeting people in the media who face a lot of stress they have told me this is a lifesaver for them.

What to do About a Nervous Breakdown

This feature appeared in Here’s Health in the ’70’s. While dated it still has some useful information. The personal information is also dated. See updated information.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Tony Crisp. aged 35, a convert to the healthy way of life from his early teens, is deeply interested in yoga and balanced nutrition. He is a well-known and accomplished author and has written a number of books including Yoga and Relaxation, Yoga and Childbirth, and Do You Dream? He teaches “Yoga and Relaxation” in further education classes in North Devon and has taught at Tyringham Naturopathic Clinic, Buckinghamshire. Together with his wife Brenda, and their four children, he runs a small food reform guest house in North Devon.
Dealing with a Breakdown

Half the battle of dealing with a breakdown is won by understanding what may have caused the situation

It is difficult, especially if you work or live in a large town, to avoid some degree of this stress illness. I have, myself, twice experienced t h e depression and physical exhaustion of this civilised sickness. It creeps up on you gradually, unseen only because you ignore the warning signs. Then, one day, or one week, a sudden crisis may explode into your conscious life, that has been bubbling away under the surface for ages.

Suddenly you cannot face going to work, or meeting people, or leaving the house. All your hopes, plans, activities, achievements, turn sour and appear empty, meaningless and even sickening. Sometimes it occurs that for a trivial reason you explode emotionally. or even become violent.

With others there is a tremendous and almost violent withdrawal into themselves.

Really, the term “nervous breakdown” covers many different symptoms that may have as many different causes. What we really mean is that suddenly we are unable to cope with life. Events, people. emotions, duties, responsibility, ideals, become too much for us, and we feel as if life is a cat, and we are the mouse it is playing with.

As I have already said, most of us at some time suffer nervous breakdown, if only in a minor degree. Excessive tiredness, withdrawal, or great irritability are some of the symptoms. If these symptoms are progressively developing, or you suffer frequent nightmares, unaccountable fears, and feelings of being of no value, and working fruitlessly, it is best to stop for a while and take stock.
Understanding What is Happening

Half the battle of dealing with yourself if you experience a breakdown, is won by understanding what may have caused the situation. Or possibly “cause” is the wrong word, maybe “function” or “mechanism” are better. For even if you know the cause, unless you have an idea of what is going on inside you, physically and mentally, you still might not be able to cope with things.

For instance, R. D. Laing gives the example of Jesse Watkins. Jesse had been a merchant seaman. He had changed his job. He was working seven days a week, and was bitten on the hand by a dog. Subsequently he went to hospital for stitches, where he was given his first local anaesthetic.

All seemed well until Jesse returned home, when he noticed that time seemed to be slowing up, and eventually going backwards. He then began to “babble on”. A doctor was called and he was hospitalised for ten days, in a very confused state. It was a firm conscious resolve on the part of Jesse not to allow himself to stay in this inner confusion, that eventually produced a healing change in his condition.

In my own case, both times I felt utterly exhausted physically. This was accompanied by strong desires to withdraw from all activities, to give up all my plans and work and efforts, family and social, These feelings alarmed me because I thought I was becoming hateful and cynical.

At that time I had taken a job with very regular hours whereas previously, for many years, I had worked until late at night and most weekends. So I would arrive home from work, eat, doze on the settee, rouse myself about ten, and go to bed. I became alarmed that this was the pattern of my life ahead, lacking any interest in life and people. It was only when I began to acknowledge certain things about myself that improvement began.

Recently a friend told me about her breakdown following hepatitis. For many months she could not bring herself to leave her house. She felt threatened and exposed to unseen dangers if she went out. Fear, like a barrier, prevented her from living a normal life. So real was this wall of fear that, if she walked out, the pressure of it seemed to smother her and cause her difficulty in breathing. The real turning point in her recovery came when she changed her diet and found enough strength to make a decision. She told me, “I decided I would walk right through the fear and out the other side.”
Personal Experiences

Here we have three different people’s experiences of a similar illness. As can be seen, it is only similar in its widest sense. Nevertheless, if we examine these cases in more detail, possibly general issues will arise that will be helpful to you if you are in a similar predicament.

Jesse arrived at his breakdown through overwork and several types of shock. The strain of a new job of being bitten-of hospital treatment. It is very likely that the shocks would not have produced such a dramatic illness if the scene had not already been set by overwork.

My own condition was triggered by years of working seven days a week, while that of my friend was due to illness. Some of the causes may therefore be: overwork; shock, such as new situations; loss of some-one dear; accidents or injury; illness or operation; childbirth; and so on.

Sometimes though, these are triggers rather than causes. They release a condition that either already exists through nutritional debits, or psychological predisposition. A man who has a terror of spiders may seem perfectly healthy, psychologically, until a spider appears.

While, from the nutritional standpoint, it has been proved by the use of human volunteers that the absence of just niacin (vitamin B6) in the daily diet over a short period of time can cause major psychological breakdown. In severe cases this ends in complete withdrawal and eventually death. As shock, stress, overwork and illness produce enormous demands on the body’s resources and nutritional intake, vitamin and mineral debits can be either the cause, or contributory

factors in a breakdown. This is especially so in regard to the B vitamins and such minerals as calcium, magnesium, iron and sodium.

The mechanics or function of breakdown now begin to be understandable, but obviously there is still a great deal more to the situation. Some cases will be cured by adequate nutrition alone, while others are due to psychological tangles and, while improved by nutritional treatment, will not be cured by it.
Anxiety Laid Bare

What has often happened in these cases is that fears have been uncovered by illness, shock or stress. It is difficult to explain this except by analogy. If a sea serpent is thrashing about at the bottom of the sea, it in no way endangers the sailors floating above it. If something evaporates the water however, exposing the serpent, there is every chance that boats may be endangered. Similarly, all of us have fears, problems, hates and passions so deep down in us we may know little or nothing about them-unless they are uncovered. Illness, shock and stress, remove the protective layers of our being, exposing our inadequacies. Drugs such as LSD do the same thing, thus the danger for those unprepared to face their own psychological problems. Most people who have lived a full life will realise for themselves that circumstances often reveal previously unknown fears.

If we are trying to help ourselves, a difficulty exists here in judging our own situation. Everybody has unconscious fears. The difficulty lies in judging whether our breakdown is due to more than average inner problems pushing to the surface; or if stress has removed the buffer condition of health, revealing normal fears.

As a very basic guide, if it is the B vitamins you lack, this will usually show as a heavily coated tongue, which may also be creviced and scalloped at the front tip. As the B vitamins and protein play an enormous part m digestion, there is usually poor digestive ability, flatulence, and sometimes acidity. This is a vicious circle unless broken, in that the impaired digestion cannot supply the sick body with the nutrients vitally needed.

Enormous amounts of the B vitamins, especially niacin, with adequate protein such as brewers’ yeast powder, often perform wonders. Sufficient A, C, D and E vitamins should be taken, as indicated by one’s health, along with kelp and bonemeal tablets. Sleeplessness, muscle cramps, hot flushes and depression particularly indicate these. The very fact of our nervous breakdown points to the greater need for us to look to the basics of our physical health.

There is also a great deal more we can learn of practical value about the mental emotional side of the problem. The trouble here is that some helpful instinctive drives are usually mixed up with a lot of negative emotions. In my own experience, it was only gradually that I learnt to sort them out and apply the one and deal with the other.

For instance, the instinctive urge to withdraw and sleep and be quiet is usually well worth following. The fact that the instinct is usually accompanied by the fear of failure, feelings of cynicism, depression and irritability, may make the doctor and us lump them all together as things to be avoided. This is not so. Because the protective layers of our being have been eroded, revealing our tormented emotions, it also puts us much nearer to our helpful instincts, which, like our fears, are usually covered up.

I, personally, feared that if I gave way to my desire for withdrawal it would never end. I feared that it would be a permanent thing, and I would never wish to go out again, or be active in plans for creative projects. I had to learn to disentangle the emotions and fears of failure from the instinct to rest and be still for a while. I had to learn to trust the instinct.
Recuperation

Looking back of course, I can see it was plain common sense, but this does not seem so at the time, and the need for rest is not acknowledged. But these instinctive urges, if followed, gradually lead to health, and the urge to communicate, to get out, then emerges again naturally, quite by itself. Many people attempt to fight the withdrawal urges, and force themselves to be bright and communicative.

I must admit that you have to be careful not to become enmeshed in the emotions that arise with the desire to withdraw, but this is quite different. It is the difference between saying to ourselves, “I want to withdraw because I am a failure, no good, and nobody likes me,” and “I want to withdraw because physically and emotionally I have overdone things and must rest. My feelings of failure and depression are like the physical symptoms of tiredness. These symptoms of body and mind will gradually disappear as things right themselves.”

With one attitude we say “I” am a failure, “I” am depressed, and are enmeshed in our emotions; in the other attitude we are saying “Because of my condition I am experiencing depression and feelings of failure.” A person who has a cold in the head feels fairly certain that in a few days it will disappear. Yet people who suffer sudden depression often feel their whole life has crumbled, whereas it is just as much of a foreign condition as the cold. If you can see it as such, then sometimes one of the best ways of dealing with such fears is to walk right up to them, like my friend did, and out the other side.

Jung, the psychiatrist, also advised some of his patients who felt they were drowning in fear that, if they had the courage, the best way out was to dive down into the very terror they were struggling to avoid.

Exactly what does that mean? To repeat-see the depression or fear not as something you are, but as something you are experiencing, as with a cold. When we have a cold, if we are wise, we know that the healing forces of our body are trying to rid us of the irritation. Therefore we try to help the natural recuperative powers by resting, keeping warm, not eating too much, but making sure we take those things the body needs in its fight against infection, such as vitamins C and A.

Similarly, healing forces are at work during a breakdown, but often we literally fight against them and will not let the sickness come to the surface because we are terrified of it. For instance, a cold may produce in our body’s healing activity a higher temperature, sore throat, and tiredness. Despite this we do not attempt to fight these symptoms by taking icy baths, fighting tiredness by walking miles, etc. These symptoms are only signs of our body throwing off the cold. Yet, during a breakdown, most people fight tooth and nail against the healing activity, when the mind, plugged up from having years of negative, self grasping, ambitious, commercial and selfish emotions and desires crammed into it, attempts to throw them out. Fearing that we are going mad, we are terrified of allowing ourselves to experience these fears, insecurities and passions, attempting to push them all back. This is just as strange as forcing all the mucus back up our nose instead of blowing it, but we do it.

Therefore, to sum up, first make sure the basics of your physical needs are met in regard to diet, rest and exercise. Be ready to listen to the voice of your instincts. This may, for a time, lead to withdrawal. But it may also point out that you have been living out of harmony with your physical and emotional needs, and may require you to change your ways.

Learn to see your emotions as much as possible as something you are experiencing, rather than as yourself. And if you can do this, then let the hateful, tearful, awful feelings come up and out. Be willing to experience them rather than attempt to push them back.

The Fundamental Process

During my 20s I experienced a lot of depression and emotional pain. At times I felt suicidal, but having children and believing that life had some purpose, I never did take the step of attempting to kill myself.

What I did do was to see if there were ways in which I could help myself or heal my condition. I read every possible book I could, not just the orthodox ones but also alternatives and crazy books. Fortunately I have one of those minds, or perhaps it’s my attitude, that doesn’t take what people say for granted. I don’t have a great respect for authority, so although I listen I do not necessarily think they know what they are talking about.

Also I seem to be able to just pull out of the immense amount of stuff that I read, the things that are relevant. Or maybe it is the skill of putting various bits of information together and seeing what they mean. But I didn’t stop at reading. I tried many approaches as well – meditation; relaxation; hours of prayer; diet; exercise; yoga; dream work and psychotherapy.

 

Tony reading every thing he could find about Life

Realisations

Gradually I began to see that throughout the ages, in the different religions and traditional practices of East and West, there was a certain similarity. This was not apparent unless you could see right through to what the fundamental essence of the practices were. For instance one of the books I read was about Anton Mesmer, the father in the West of what has become hypnotism. What Mesmer stumbled upon was that, while experimenting with magnets on patients who had some physical or psychological problem, they began to tremble or experience spontaneous movements and often relived the source of their trauma and arrived at a cure. (The book was Mental Healers).

 

Stefan Zweig

 

When I put this together with the description of the Christian Pentecost or the practice of Seitai in Japan, I saw that fundamentally they were the same. With Mesmer he thought at first it was the magnets producing the release, but later discarded the idea and thought that perhaps it was his own personal magnetism. But when I compare that with what happened at Pentecost, and other similar practices East and West, I saw that fundamentally it was about the person relaxing and allowing what ever was spontaneous to arise.

In fact Carl Jung said outright, “Do nothing but let things happen.”

So the Christian disciples, in their words, surrendered to God. Mesmer’s patients surrendered because they trusted him. In Indonesia the practice of Subud had the same principles. The people came together in a group, surrendered their conscious will, and allowed spontaneous movements, sounds and fantasies to arise. In all of these practices people were gradually transformed and healed.

The Secret

I felt there was a great secret here and tried to see if I could access it myself. But I gradually found a way through dreams, and also using T. S. Elliot’s advice to, “… be still and wait without hope For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love For love would be love of the wrong thing;”

I was never able to be have that wonderful influx of something other than my conscious self taking over and producing healing experiences. But one day it happened. I was with friends with whom I felt completely relaxed, my body started shaking and I lay down and allowed it to happen. In doing so I re-experienced a tonsil operation I had at six years old that had produced a very powerful neck tension and also some psychological fears. After that experience, the neck tension that had troubled me for ages disappeared, along with some emotional difficulties also. From then on I could simply surrender and the process would continue to work. The process as it unfolded led me through some of the most amazing and wonderful experiences I have ever met. Also I was healed of long standing depression and sexual problems. See People Experiences Using It

Over the years I have gradually put together some ideas that I believe explain the fundamentals of how this amazing thing can happen. My search for meaning arose because over a period of time enormous transformation occurred in me through allowing the spontaneous to break through into my waking life. And recently I tried to arrive at a simpler and more compact expression of what I have learned about what lies behind these experiences, and wrote the following.

Fundamental to what I experienced and what was behind Pentecost and the other approaches mentioned, is, I believe, the process of self-regulation. Self-regulation is another term for what in physiology is called homeostasis. This is a name for the processes in our body and mind that all the time keep a balance amid the immense changes we meet physically and psychologically – changes such as temperature, stillness or rapid movement, stress or ease, growth or ageing.

Physical examples of self-regulation (SR) are of vomiting, sneezing or trembling. Vomiting occurs when we have taken something poisonous or irritating into our body. Sneezing when our body is trying to get rid of an irritant or infection. Trembling can occur when we are cold, and is an attempt to bring our temperature up. See Psychological Vomiting

Psychological examples of SR are crying after a shock, reliving a past traumatic event, or a dream in which past fears or traumas are met, as when we experience a nightmare. But it goes on after the difficulties and traumas are healed and begins the process of leading you to a life without emotional pain, mental illness and changes your life to something better.

Overall the process of SR is an attempt to bring us back to balance after our environment, or events, have in some way unbalanced us or interfered with our healthy functioning physically or psychologically. It also underlies the process of growth that takes us from conception through to adulthood and beyond.

Dr. Peter Knapp, Professor of psychiatry at Boston University School of Medicine was asked the question as to why some people come through a crisis such as bereavement or ill health better than others. His reply was, ‘I believe that the ones who stay healthy actively grieve. They allow themselves to feel and express their emotions.’ If you lock feelings away, it seems your body mourns for you by becoming sick. Very often we unconsciously work against these processes in us, whether they manifest physically or psychologically. We are thereby attempting to block the self-regulatory activity that is trying to get rid of dangerous things we have taken into ourselves and to move on to growth and creativity.

The reasons we block the action is the same reason some people repress vomiting or a sneeze. They don’t like the discomfort or even pain. It is also the same as when we pull our hand back from something hot. In other words there is an inbuilt urge to draw away from pain, whether physical or emotional. Discharging old pains, grief or trauma is uncomfortable as it emerges, but an enormous relief and healing when allowed. So one of the things we need to learn in order for the action of SR to take place is to allow the uncomfortable. If we do it is not painful at all as it emerges. All the pain is involved in repressing the poisonous or traumatic emotions and physical tensions.

 

The Secret of Dreams

Dreams are one of the major ways our inner process tries to do this old housework of cleaning up our inner problems or conflicts. But because we resist it the process cannot complete itself even though we are asleep. Think of nightmares for instance. They are the major way the dream tries to present us with things that have really disturbed us, and most people wake trying to distance themselves from such feelings as fast as they can.

SR which as a practice I call LifeStream is not simply about the action behind healing hurts. It is also part of the process of our physical and psychological growth, or the emergence of our potential. Our creative potential cannot unfold while there are still locked in childhood pains or conflicts, or adult traumas that are blocking the process. In fact this natural process lies behind our growth even from the beginning of conception. It has opened us up from that tiny seed, directing and organising our growth. It is a profound influence in our life, and continues to attempt further unfoldment.

But there is a way we can cooperate with it. A way of speeding up our healing and growth. Its first step lies in recognising how the processes of our growth and healing declare themselves – how LifeStream emerges into conscious life and how we block it.

When we consider that the self-regulatory process in regard to perspiring, breathing or vomiting, they are all spontaneous movements or functions from within, one can see that personally we are all the time immersed in processes which we have not willed into action. Learning to work with LifeStream is a way of relating constructively to these spontaneous activities. These self-regulatory activities and your relationship with them are seen very clearly in the dream process.

If you have observed a cat, a dog, or a human being while they sleep, their limbs can often be seen to twitch or move. Perhaps you can see their eyes moving and they may even make sounds. If you could see the images of the dream they are experiencing, then you would see the movements and speech as expressions of the dream. All this happens when their conscious self is relaxed and surrendered in sleep. Perhaps the dog or person are completely unaware of the powerful sounds or movements being made, so that if asked about them on waking, they would have no memory. Some people move to the extent of sleepwalking without later memory. The movements, the strong feelings, the speech, are all done without conscious volition. They are emerging from a level of oneself that we call the unconscious or the dream process. The important thing to recognise here is that you have two levels of will – your conscious will, and what I have names the ‘Life Will’ that moves and acts in dreams. It is this unconscious or Life Will that LifeStream is govern by. See Life Will and Conscious Will

The Way In

From this it can be seen that when LifeStream is working it produces – if not interfered with by conscious volition, fears or decisions – spontaneous movements, emotions, fantasy (dreams), speech and drama. In its action it can be seen to produce a totally real full surround virtual reality that we call a dream. This includes all of the things mentioned above, full emotion, sexual experience, sounds such as other people’s voice, physical movement, and realistic surroundings. Not only is that active in sleep and dreams, but it can occur while awake, and people call it a vision or an hallucination. It is the same process though. Anything that blocks that is blocking LifeStream in some measure. So for most people only a fraction of the power of LifeStream ever manages to function because as individuals and society we are taught to inhibit anything other than our conscious and rational self expression. People are taught to be frightened of hallucinations, visions or voices talking to them as if it were a sickness. Recently I came across the following news item. See Hallucinations and Hallucinogens

A University of Manchester investigation follows a Dutch study that found many healthy members of the population in that nation regularly hear voices in their heads. Although hearing voices has traditionally been viewed as abnormal and a symptom of mental illness, the Dutch findings suggest it’s more widespread than thought, estimating about 4 percent of the population could be affected.

Manchester Researcher Aylish Campbell said: “We know many members of the general population hear voices, but have never felt the need to access mental health services; some experts even claim that more people hear voices and don’t seek psychiatric help than those who do. “In fact, many of those affected describe their voices as being a positive influence in their lives, comforting or inspiring them as they go about their daily business.”

In most social settings we usually restrain everything except what may be acceptable to others, expedient in the situation, or judged as correct. This means that we may not give ourselves the freedom to allow our own creative imagination – our body to discharge tension through movement – experience our intuitive process – and our full range of feeling responses. In this way we gradually diminish ourselves, blocking out much of ourselves that is not of immediate use in everyday affairs. We may in fact diminish our relationship with life itself.

Can you therefore imagine a situation in which while you are still awake, you allow a state of mind and body in which active decisions, judgements and purposive aims are dropped for a while? This is the necessary step you take in approaching the experience of SR. You take on a quiet, accepting attitude, then the sleep/dream process can begin to function even though you are wide awake. SR can work with your cooperation instead of against your inhibitions. The process doesn’t need you to be asleep, only to stop interfering, judging, deciding what you ought or should be doing. If you can stop forever interfering with your process, and for a time at least, listen and allow, then the self-regulatory action, the creative response from full experience and the other functions usually only found in dreams, can emerge into waking consciousness. See Waking Lucid Dreaming

Accessing Lifestream

Therefore to access LifeStream you can explore your dreams while awake, using such as approach as described under Techniques for Exploring your Dreams, or you can give yourself free space and the permission to experience spontaneous movement, feelings and vocalisation. This needs to be done at least twice a week, alone or preferably with one or more partners. To learn to do it see: Arm Circling Meditation.

Your personality is dependent upon the deepest cellular and organic processes of your body. These processes are directed and kept healthy by homeostasis. Usually we hold onto the idea that somehow we are the prime mover, or that life is meaningless and mechanistic. But your body has an integrity that it defends moment by moment against the assaults of temperature change, against bacterial invasion, against the rubbish and poisons we take in from our atmosphere and food and also traumas we experience and the crazy information we take in daily. This integrity and its potential want to unfold. It cannot while we are not working with it. Even when it tries we sometimes feel it as an assault. “I am having strange fantasies; my body is moving spontaneously, I talk in my sleep – am I going mad?”

No, just your being trying to heal and grow. (For fuller description see What Is The Unconscious – Life’s Little Secrets – Opening to Life.)

Stress – What is it? Part 1

Usually we think of stress as mental, emotional or physical strain or tension. In this sense we may link stress to how a soldier might feel as he was going into battle; or how we react as our driving test approaches, or as we enter hospital for a surgical operation. Most of us can observe the signs of this sort of stress in such things as clenching our fists, drumming fingers, lighting a cigarette, tensing our jaw, wanting a drink, or feeling depressed. At such times we may even find ourselves susceptible to such illnesses as an asthma attack, indigestion, or back and general body pains.

Some of the clearest examples of what stress is, however, can be seen in looking at the body in stress situations. For instance if we fall into or swim in icy cold water, this places the body in stress. What this means in plain language is that because the body needs to maintain it’s temperature at about 98.4 F, being exposed to cold for too long could be fatal. The condition between easy maintenance of body temperature and death through exposure to low temperature is stress. Therefore, some causes of physical stress could be exposure to extreme heat; taking poison into the system; lack of oxygen; high levels of carbon monoxide (car exhaust fumes) etc, in the air we breath; lack of food; lack of vital nutrients such as iron, protein, etc; insufficient sleep; and so on.

When we fall into cold water our body attempts to deal with the stress through its self-regulating or homeostatic processes. The glandular system will probably secrete adrenalin into the blood stream, causing the heart to speed up. But many other activities try to meet the emergency, even to such small things as the liver releasing more vitamin A to deal with the shock to the immune system.

In general, stress can be thought of as acting upon us in two ways. The first we have already mentioned; that is BODY or PHYSIOLOGICAL STRESS. The second is MENTAL or PSYCHOLOGICAL STRESS. These major headings of BODY and MIND cover many sub-headings though. In the above list of possible body stress situations, such as lack of oxygen and insufficient nutrients, we already have an idea of such sub-headings. So in learning how to meet stress creatively, we could consider, in relation to our body, such subjects as diet, exercise, breathing, hygiene, etc. Under the heading of Mind we could consider such things as relationship, work, social pressure, and education. But it is impossible to make firm differences between Mind and Body. To make this clear let us look at the work of Dr. George Crile, which illustrates both the vital importance of the mind in connection with stress, and also how the body and mind are inseparable.

In 1887 Dr. Crile watched helpless as his friend, William Lyndman, died of shock after amputation of both legs. William had lost little blood, and no vital organs were injured. Crile went on to develop anaesthesia and blood transfusion to counteract death through shock. But some forms of shock appeared to be outside any physical cause. In 1898 Crile was on an army transporter off Cuba and examined a young officer who was delirious with fear due to facing his first battle. He was as deep in shock as if his legs had been crushed by a wagon as William Lyndman’s had. This led Crile to become interested in exophthalmic goitre, an illness that produces a similar type of anxiety condition. Despite the use of anaesthetics, no one had successfully operated on such a goitre condition. Crile discovered why when he attempted such an operation in 1905.

While under anaesthesia the patients heart rate rose to 218 and the body temperature rose to a dangerous level. Despite no physical injury or infection, the patient died that night with a temperature of 109.6 F. Crile realised from his previous observations that it was fear that killed the patient. Therefore he told his next patient, a young woman who needed the goitre operation, that he was going to give her a simple inhalation treatment. When she breathed in the anaesthetic, she therefore thought she was having a `treatment’ not an operation. She was the first person to survive the operation for exopthalmic goitre. Crile called it “stealing the goitre”, and was so impressed by the influence of emotion on the body he constantly stressed the importance of self-control, and taught that calmness is strength.

The word stress has not had these associations for very long. Hans Selye, the great modern researcher into stress, did not at the beginning of his research know English well, and realised later he would have preferred the word strain.

But it was a fortunate mistake because stress has its positive as well as negative polarity. In its positive aspect stress can be thought of not as strain but as stimulus. The `stress’ experienced by our body while we walk briskly or swim causes our circulation to increase and such functions as cell growth in bones and muscles to be stimulated. Also the `stress’ of a challenging situation can focus our concentration and stimulate our problem solving and creative abilities.

Perhaps the most important thing about these two aspects of human stress is that one can learn to transform negative strain into positive stimulus. In fact stress is not an awful side of life we must constantly be on the look out for and avoid. Rather it is a normal and healthy response to everyday life. Just as a car can be pleasurable or dangerous depending upon how we relate to it, so our stress factor can be injurious or stimulating. When handled skilfully, the situation that starts our heart pounding, a sense of foreboding to arise, and our internal critic to start its usual message of failure and inadequacy, can be changed to the excitement and satisfaction of being able to handle our body responses and inner feelings in a way that satisfies us.

The ability to handle stress well is vital to survival as well as conducive to personal satisfaction. As human beings we have tremendous powers of adaptation and survival built into us. As a species we have faced and survived the most horrific of natural catastrophes such as famines, plagues, floods, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. We have even survived the internal threats such as war. But modern warfare, increasing population, the potentially lethal side effects of modern technology, air, water and noise pollution, along with tremendous social change, the push to compete for limited jobs, and the need to find a personal stance suitable to a changing world, needs more than old

methods of survival. We need to learn something new.

NEGATIVE STRESS

Negative stress is a physical and mental state manifest by a syndrome – that is, a set of symptoms or signs. According to Hans Selye’s theory the body’s reaction under stress, which he calls the ‘general adaptation syndrome’, occurs in three major phases: the alarm reaction, the stage of resistance, and the stage of exhaustion. The alarm reaction consists of physiological first response to a stressor. Resistance decreases. In the second stage, when the stressor has continued for some time, there is an adaptation to it. Resistance rises above normal, and the original signs of stress disappear. In the third stage, signs of alarm reaction reappear, but the resistance drops to the point of death.

Stress is not being able to go to sleep….having unaccountable chest pains…not being able to concentrate…..feeling irritated by common events….anxiety in facing unknown and new situations…..feeling a failure…..being fired from your job…….experiencing divorce……..losing your wallet…….being out of work……….having no friend to share a worry with…….your back paining………being angry and not expressing it……..not crying when one of your family dies…….
Pulling Oneself Up By Ones Own Bootstraps

When David Banning stood feeling deeply depressed and looking out of his bedroom window, he could see no way out of the awful conflict he was in. Having left his family and divorced his first wife he had married Sylvia, a woman he greatly loved and respected. But his new wife had not brought happiness. Instead he felt torn between her and the children he had left. Frequently he also found himself at cross-purposes with Sylvia’s own children, feeling a stranger in what was now his own home. His frequent deep depressions had even begun to gnaw away at Sylvia’s usual bubbly good humour too. So when Sylvia arrived back from work and found David standing despondent by the window, her pleasure at returning home turned into a dull anxiety.

David had half turned and saw the change in her face and posture, as if a weight had suddenly fallen on her. Because he had hoped for and planned to create with Sylvia mutual warmth and caring in their marriage, it hurt him to see what was happening to her because of his own pain. On sudden impulse he straightened his posture, and acted as if he felt relaxed and happy by smiling and walking forward, holding Sylvia close to him. He was amazed to see the worry melt from her face; and even more surprised to find that a feeling of brightness gradually took over from the gloom even in himself.

Divorce is one of the major sources of stress in modern life. Being separated from the people one loves, in David’s case his children, is another cause of stress and the difficult feelings and even body conditions accompanying it.

Even though it was David’s decision to leave his first wife, it did not give him immunity to the stress involved. However, when David acted being pleased to see Sylvia, he applied one of the simple methods one can use to wisely manage ones own stress. Learning from the experience he gradually used it to create in his life the sort of feelings and situations he wanted, instead of passively accepting his spontaneous reactions to stress. He realised that many of his feelings were habitual responses to triggers such as seing his children and feeling a failure as a father. When he recognised that these habitual responses were like tape recordings that could play ona and on endlessly, he started to change the habits by responding differently to the triggers.

See Stress Part Two

NOTES

1) WHAT IS STRESS Stress is the non-specific response of the body to any demand made on it.(Selye 1973. Psych and Life page 530)

The body’s natural reaction to a perceived threat. This response – the flight or fight response – is common to all mammals, whether rats, humans or monkeys. “Men are disturbed not by things but the view that they take of them.” Epictetus.

Plato said, “all diseases of the body proceed from the Mind or soul.” It is now believed that 50 to 80% of illness has stress as a contributing factor.

Pavlov’s dogs showed `experimental neurosis’ when made to make difficult decisions. The dogs behaviour changed. They became aggressive, frenzied, etc. Inescapable conflict results in stress. Experimental pig lured a man and attacked. Dogs given an electric shock in one compartment learned to jump to safety. Never stayed in danger zone even without electricity.

Conditioned reflexes are major cause of continuing `stress’. “A person may be reacting to some old injury or situation which no longer exists, and he is usually unconscious of what it is that is causing an increase of heart rate or blood pressure. The result may be chronic hypertension. This may be the explanation of many cardiac deaths.” Although people may not show signs of CR at a conscious level it still shows physiologically. Example of soldier reacting to battle signals. Hypertension affects 30 million Americans. The same number of Americans suffer from sleep-onset insomnia.

“The chances of developing a psychological disorder requiring hospitalisation were 29% greater for those living under the Jet-ways (near major airports). A similar; figure of 31% more `nervous breakdown’ was found among Britishers living near London’s Heathrow Airport.

React at four different/interrelated levels. 1] Emotional such as fear, sadness, anger, frustration. 2] Behavioural forgetting, inability to get along with people 3] physiological high blood pressure, changed glandular products, etc. 4] Cognitive, self image of failure, being disliked, never going anywhere, etc.

Emotional arousal is one of the most frequent causes of stress. Imagine the difference between being woken up slowly, and on being woken by someone shouting “fire – fire!”

It is when we must cope with too many pressures at one time or with continuing pressure over an extended period that stress becomes a serious problem. Continuing job pressures, whether they stem from too much or too little change, can be a chronic source of harmful stress.

In a group of almost 400 subjects, a consistent relationship was found between the number of life change units, according to the scale, and major health changes during the same ten-year period. Of those with moderate crisis scale scores, 37% had had major health change. In addition, those who usually remained well during flu epidemics were more likely to have flu after a major life change. (Rahe & Holmes, 1966) Page 539 Psch. and Life. See criticism of this report on page 540 psych and life.

Cupuaçu (pronounced cc.pwah.soo) – The Magic of the Amazon Rainforest

Cupuaçu is in the same plant family as chocolate, and has similar antioxidants to the powerful grape seed extract. It has similar health benefits to chocolate without the negative effects of the sugar we usually take in when we eat chocolate.

Not only does Cupuaçu contain those health benefits, but it combines polyphenols similar to those found in medicinal plants such as green tea and grape seeds.

As we age our body produces less of the renwing substances such as ubiquinone, used in every cell, and DHEA (dehydroepiandrosterone), so we need extra help from nutrients and antioxiants such as those found in cupuaçu. We also need help if we are ill, stressed or depressed. People who regularly use cupuaçu and açai together claim they gain many other benefits such as better sleep, greater energy, and such changes as relief from depression.

Dr. Jeffrrey Kelin lists the known benefits as:

1. Increased ability to fight disease and cancer.
2. More youthful and healthier looking skin.
3. Lower cholesterol levels.
4. Increased libido and stamina.
5. A cell protecting antioxidant cocktail.

Açaí – The Amazonian Wonder Berry

In recent years the Amazonian jungle has become recognised as a storehouse of wonderful natural medicines. Dr. Jeffrey Klein tells us that 70% of the 2000 plants found to be active against cancer cells are to be found in the Amazonian Rainforest.

The açaí berry is just such a fruit.

Analysis of the berries has found they contain large amounts of vitamin C, vitamin E, and more antioxidants than other fruits. They are also rich in phytonutrients. These are the colourants in the skin of the berry that are also powerful antioxidants. In fact the açaí berry contains more than five times the amount of antioxidants than Ginkgo biloba, one of the popular brain stimulating herbs known for its antioxidant power.

In case you have forgotten what antioxidants do in your body, they have been described as preventing the oxidising attack on cells in our body, thus preventing or slowing down the ageing process. One description suggested imagining a car engine that was slowly being shot through with microscopic holes. At first there would be no signs of the engine ‘ageing’. But as the amount of holes increased, even though they were microscopic, the engine would slowly run less efficiently till it stopped.

Such damage to cells is known to be one of the beginnings of cancerous growths in the body. So the antioxidant rich açaí gives one an edge on the advance of such a disease.

Jeffery Klein, writing about the açaí berries in this booklet Nature’s Medicine Chest, says that one group of the antioxidants in the berries, the anthocyanins, found in the purple colour of the skin, are being used to prevent conditions such as high cholesterol, macular degeneration, cataracts, glaucoma, and varicose veins.

But there is still another wonder in this berry. It contains not only omega-3, but also omega-6 types of essential fatty acids. These help to lower cholesterol, but are also immensely important for prolonging brain health.

And, one last thing, the drink created from açaí berries acts as an energy booster.

Oh yes – the native people of the Amazon claim it is a natural aphrodisiac.

Yoga On A Greek A Greek Island

Yoga in an idyllic setting led to new discoveries and liberations. . .

It’s six forty-five in the morning. Light is filtering through the wall of the bamboo hut I live in and the sound of goat bells reach across the stillness of dawn. The sun is not yet above the forested hills of Skyros to the East, but another day has begun for me on this Greek island.

The night was so warm I slept naked, despite having no doors or glass in the window of my hut. As I dress 1 can see the Aegean almost mirror smooth in the small bay of Atsitsa. I remember how on the previous morning I had taken a paddleboard out on the sea toward the nearby island. The water had been so clear I could watch the hundreds of fish thirty feet beneath me as if I were flying above them.

Now, as I walk to the washroom I pause to let the powerful stillness of the morning nourish me. The goat bells, the challenging cock-crows, and the occasional human voices from the few Greek houses in Atsitsa only emphasise the silent peace of hills and sea.

At seven thirty I’m ready to walk with the others to the finger of land where we practise our yoga and meditation. On three sides we are surrounded by ocean, and our mats are spread amidst fir trees. As we start with some movements to increase circulation and stretch joints, we are still in the shadow of the hills. But soon the sun tops the trees and the heat of the day begins, penetrating us, and easing away the pain in hips and shoulders a colder climate may have encouraged to develop.

This is the time when, in our stretching and meditation, we can learn to listen to our being. We can learn to hear the voice of our own living process. We hear it not only in our aches, but also in our pleasure; our lethargy, as well as our excitement. Listening to these voices, we can hear the wisdom of our being speak to us.

Nico has learnt from the chronic stiffness in his back that he has so busily cared for other people’s needs that the tension in his back has built up due to his own repressed need for rest and satisfaction.

As we practise our yoga, the cosmic ritual once more unfolds and the sun turns the sea blue again. After we finish the postures there is time for meditation. Keeping awareness centred on our physical sensations of body shape and the sun’s warmth on our skin, we guide consciousness out of a thinking relationship with the sound of the sea, and the smell of resin from the trees, and allow our inner silence to respond. We find our favourite place to sit in our meditation, and let the beauty of the spot speak to us.

Breakfast follows meditation. We help ourselves to the Greek yoghurt, made creamy by the removal of the acid whey. That, and the fresh grapes, peaches and figs of the island, marks the start of the day for those who didn’t join in the yoga, or the alternative class of aerobics.

The Atsitsa Club opened for the first time in July of 1984 Atsitsa has been a mining village. The tree covered surrounding hills show no scars, but the miners left behind the building which was their office, and then a school. Dina and her husband Yannis bought the tumble-down building several years ago and began the slow process of renovation, erecting solar heating, putting in a generator for electricity, and piping water from a distant well. Being so newly finished, the building still looks a little stark. But the many new trees and vines planted around it should soften and mature it in coming years.

Although Yannis is Greek and Dina American, their home is in London. Their involvement with Atsitsa began because they built the therapeutic community of the Skyros Centre in the main village of the island, and Yannis then had the idea of a summer holiday community, devoted to holistic health and an outdoor life. So the participants who book for a fortnight’s holiday can take part in not only yoga and aerobics, but also have the opportunity to learn windsurfing, snorkelling and swimming, or experience Greek dancing, dream workshops, learn to explore their unconscious creativity in Dina’s visualisation group: take part in a play, hear talks on naturopathy, or just join in an after dinner discussion or a sing-along.

During my own stay, the favourite activities were windsurfing, yoga, massage and visualisation. But an aspect many people enjoyed was that we not only played as a community but also shared the kitchen work and cleaning This led occasionally to people cooking their favourite recipes for the group about thirty. This was a challenge because there were only gas rings and an outdoor Greek oven, which is a cross between a bonfire and a pottery kiln. Nevertheless we did manage at least one successful cake and an excellent curry in between Debbie, the cook’s ongoing achievements. After a local Greek woman showed us the traditional style of bread-making, three of us tried our hand. Discounting the fact that the top of the loaves got burnt, and the middle loaf didn’t cook in the centre, they were great.

If you like your yoga on a plush carpet instead of pine needles, and your dinner in a hotel dining room instead of outdoors under a thatch of bamboo, eaten to the sound of crickets and the thump of the generator. Atsitsa is not for you. But it does have a charm which causes some participants to funk out of going home until weeks after they had planned. I noticed that these ‘old timers’ developed a crazy style of yoga all their own I remember seeing Kate sitting on a lonely rock at sunrise staring out to sea. Petra found that taking a fiat paddleboard out into the ocean allowed her to meditate in the midst of a sunset’s mystery. For myself, I discovered a previously hidden need to occasionally spend hours alone in the forest – or stand by the sea to look at the almost violent beauty of the stars on a moon-less night. For others, an evening’s highlight was a drink of retscina at the local taverna; or a visit to the disco at Skyros village to watch the Greek men compete with each, other in their dancing.

For many people, Atsitsa gave them the new experience not only of yoga on the seashore, or windsurfing, and of discovering their inner world in visualisation, but also of living two weeks in close community without television, radio, or easy exterior diversions. Maybe that is why Fiona’s meditation group before the evening meal was an important time for some to centre and be with each other quietly.

At the end, Dina asked each of us what our experience of Atsitsa was; whether we had one memory more important than the others, and what we would carry away.

Being something of a hermit in my everyday life at home, the important thing I learnt is that to live happily in close community it is necessary to have meaningful ways of contact with the others, My lonely star gazing had to be balanced by shared work, discussion, and swimming.

One of my strongest memories is of apparently flying off the edge of the world while snorkelling. From the experience of swimming amidst hundreds of coloured fish above the sea bed twelve feet away. I discovered at the end of Atsitsa Island that unexpectedly the sea floor dropped shear into unseeable depths of blue, Swimming above that precipice was breathtaking -going beyond was a journey into space and shafts of light.

What my inner self has taken from the whole experience is a sense of going beyond boundaries and realising that sport and community are also a path of yoga. This was particularly well illustrated in the wind-surfing. People like Diane arrived, unable at first even to stand upright for long on the board, let alone raise the sail. Gradually, by learning a relationship between her own being, the board, the sea and the wind, she managed to sail a few yards before plunging once more into the warm sea.

Although the bay was there, with the island in the middle of it and the open sea beyond, she couldn’t at first manage even to sail across the bay. There were no prison bars or walls holding her back from the great ocean except her own inability to relate to the forces of nature within her and outside in a creative way. But there came a day when she took the wind in her sail and skimmed with it out beyond the bay to the ocean, around the island and back, In a similar way I can see we are all imprisoned: not able to reach beyond the tips of our fingers, or beyond our mental concepts and emotions. We are trapped in the bay of ourselves until we learn the creative relationship with the life forces we are. Then we can sail with them into the wider awareness beyond our smallness. There is nothing holding us back but ourselves.

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