she just wanted to blend in

active meditation and neurological activity

THE AMYGDALA AND EMOTION
The amygdala enables us to hear "sweet sounds", recall "bitter memories", and determine if something is spiritually significant, sexually enticing, or good to eat. The amygdala makes it possible to experience the spiritually sublime, is concerned with the most basic animal emotions, and allows us to store affective experiences in memory or even to reexperience them when awake or during the course of a dream in the form of visual, auditory, or religious/spiritual imagery. The amygdala also enables an individual to experience emotions such as love and religious rapture, as well as the ecstasy associated with orgasm via enkephalin secretion, and the dread and terror associated with the unknown.....
Mystical states may be voluntarily or involuntarily induced and are dependent upon the differential stimulation and deafferentation (i.e., cutting off the afferent nerve supply -- with afferent nerves being nerves that carry impulses from receptors to the central nervous system) of limbic system nuclei, including the hypothalamus, hippocampus, and amygdala, as well as the right frontal and right temporal lobe. Moreover, it appears that these brain areas differentially contribute to non-mystical religious and emotional experiences as well.

Interestingly, the hypothalamus is concerned with all rudimentary aspects of emotion and controls the hormonal and related aspects of sexual activity (again, including the capacity to experience orgasm and heroin-like highs via enkephalin secretion). By contrast, it is the amygdala, in conjunction with the temporal lobe and hippocampus, that enables a human being to have religious, spiritual, and mystical experiences.

The amygdala, hippocampus, and temporal lobe are richly interconnected and appear to act in concert in regard to mystical experience, including the generation and experience of dream states and complex auditory and visual hallucinations. Moreover, intense activation of the temporal lobe, hippocampus, and amygdala has been reported to give rise to a host of sexual, religious, and spiritual experiences; and CHRONIC HYPERSTIMULATION can induce and individual to become hyper-religious or visualize ghosts, demons, angels, and even God, as well as claim demonic and angelic possession or the sensation of having left the body.


Mapping Our Thoughts....When observing people with particular talents in various areas of mental focus, we discover people who seem to instinctively find a particular spot in the mind that enables them to function at a premium for the particular activity they are doing.

There is a tendency to think that the mind just acts as one total integrated unit when performing various advanced functions. Actually, there are very specific areas of the mind and body which are ‘Energy Control Centers’ that activate a string of neurological and energic activity enabling the body/mind to function at a premium.

Accelerated Learning grew out of a conglomeration of scientific research into different fields. These included neurological and psychological discoveries about how the brain works. This information was picked up on by a variety of individuals involved in teaching and learning with the realisation that they could be utilised to vastly improve the whole process.

From studies in neurology we have learnt that the number of human brain cells (known as neurons) is set from birth. They do not increase. Nor do they regenerate. (Rose, 1985). This may initially lead one to the pessimistic view that therefore intelligence cannot increase. Fortunately this is far too simplistic an equation. First of all proper nutrition and the avoidance during pregnancy of smoking and alcohol will ensure the growth of higher numbers of neurons than would otherwise be the case.

Health Well-being Aesthetics....When years pass by, our brain, like all our other organs, will undergo degeneration processes which will determine cognitive troubles that might decrease our level of alertness, memory and also of thinking.

Together with the ageing process will come unavoidably some problems connected to age, between which also forms of dementia, which might also be facilitated by cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, alcohol abuse, smoking and hypertension.Hypertension is the diseases which has got the highest influence on the developing of
forms.
A high blood pressure might damage the cerebral tissue in the zone under the cortex to which are connected the superior functions.
We might reduce the risk of cardiovascular diseases with an adequate preventive intervention in whichA VERY IMPORTANT ROLE IS BEING PLAYED BY THE COMBINATION OF PHYSICAL EXERCISE WITH MENTAL EXERCISE.As far as concerns mental exercise we must keep in mind that:IF WE STIMULATE CONSTANTLY OUR CEREBRAL FUNCTIONS, YOUR BRAIN WILL BE LESS DAMAGED AND WILL REMAIN MORE EFFICIENT.

....the Transcendental Meditation process. The mechanics of
the TM process are a significant departure from traditional meditation approaches, initiating the most
important breakthroughs in the technology of meditation. Then there is the dramatic growth in research
on the neurological changes that occur in meditations, as well as results produced from meditating,
which signal major breakthroughs in the technology.
Transcendental Meditation, you'll remember, was introduced by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi back in the
late 50's. It gained worldwide popularity when the Beatles, Beach Boys and other celebrities endorsed it
in the 60's. Then in the 70's it took off into mainstream society when research emerged documenting it's
effectiveness for resolving stress. Wall Street executives and suburban soccer Moms were joining the
seekers of the 60's in sitting down twice a day to practice TM.
For the most part, the culture of Generation X in the 80's and 90's seemed to have rejected the
pursuit of enlightenment of the 60's on the one hand, and their parent's new-found concern for stress
reduction programs on the other. Like Ringo and the Oldsmobile ad, meditation became as out of
fashion as your Dad's car in the broad culture. See for yourself: how many people do you come across
who meditate regularly 20 to 30 minutes every morning and evening? It may be something you do in
your life, but how many people do you think at your work, at the gym, or at the mall take the time to
meditate 40 minutes to an hour each day? Even people seriously involved in different personal growth
or new age programs -- do you find that many have a daily, silent meditation practice that they adhere
to? Yet, I'll bet that most would agree that it would be valuable. So why is that?
When people think of closing their eyes and sitting there for 20 minutes. . . well, when you get down
to it, I don't think it's seen as an appealing process. Even at an ashram in India. Could it be that people
sense a churning inside that's not so peaceful, nor enticing? The consensus seems to be that it's difficult
to find peace. Those images of sitting down and focusing on a candle or trying to stop your thoughts
don't seem to inspire people these days. Plus, the pace and demands in our society can make it difficult
to find the time to sit still for meditation. ....Some might be surprised that this state of relaxation was not found in hypnotic "relaxation states."
The studies published on hypnosis found that the suggestion "to relax" did not produce a significantly
different physiological state than ordinary sitting with eyes closed. This finding is important because it
indicates that even though we may "feel" deeply relaxed from a hypnotic suggestion or a meditative
practice, it may be simply a subjective mood that is not reflected in the physiology. It's amazing to think
that our beliefs and subjective experience can be, in fact, so illusory. Much like the "placebo effect" that

Religion And The Brain
In the new field of “neurotheology,” scientists seek the biological basis of spirituality. Is God all in our heads? ...One Sunday morning in March, 19 years ago, as Dr. James Austin waited for a train in London, he glanced away from the tracks toward the river Thames. The neurologist—who was spending a sabbatical year in England—saw nothing out of the ordinary: the grimy Underground station, a few dingy buildings, some pale gray sky. He was thinking, a bit absent-mindedly, about the Zen Buddhist retreat he was headed toward. And then Austin suddenly felt a sense of enlightenment unlike anything he had ever experienced. His sense of individual existence, of separateness from the physical world around him, evaporated like morning mist in a bright dawn. He saw things “as they really are,” he recalls. The sense of “I, me, mine” disappeared. “Time was not present,” he says. “I had a sense of eternity. My old yearnings, loathings, fear of death and insinuations of selfhood vanished. I had been graced by a comprehension of the ultimate nature of things.”

Trager and Somatic Therapy in the U.S.
In spite of the fact that complementary healing approaches in the United States have not been as robustly accepted into mainstream healthcare as they have been in the United Kingdom, bodywork of various kinds continues to be America’s fastest-growing sector of health practitioners and consumers. Trager, Rolfing, Alexander Technique, Feldenkrais, Aston Patterning, Heller Work, and Swedish Massage are but a few of the modalities that have mushroomed rapidly during the last twenty to thirty years.

posted by cynthia korzekwa  # 31.12.01

Silvana's birthday.

A second scientific tributary in the new study of the emotions has been work from evolutionary psychology, suggesting an adaptive role for many states of emotional arousal, including even those that tend to get a negative press from moralists. Basic emotions prime us for flight, or feeding, or mating, while more complex emotions act as essential social signals of hostility or cooperation. Even emotions that we do not much esteem, such as jealousy and fear, perform this kind of function, according to the Darwinians; and what such emotions sometimes lose in discrimination they gain in speed. It may be better to panic and run than to pause to make sure that what startled you really is dangerous.

The Christmas story comes as something of a shock to those whose knowledge of the ancient world derives from the Roman historians. The gospel world is one of shepherds, innkeepers and mangers, of carpenters, fishermen and widows with their mites, of the lives and expectations of the lowly and destitute in a difficult Roman province on the edge of a vast empire. But Roman historians like Tacitus, Suetonius and Pliny were members of the educated, elite, imperial inner ring. Tacitus had been consul and, like Pliny, governor of a Roman province, Suetonius a bureaucrat in the emperor’s court in Rome. History for them is power politics played out at the very centre of things, and the plebs feature in it only when their actions have political implications that the imperial court cannot afford to ignore.

Susie Orbach, historically the author of Fat is a Feminist Issue and more latterly psychobabble coach to the late Princess Diana, offers to solve all our eating problems in a flash. "It isn't magic but it feels as if it is," the blurb promises. Yes, this pamphlet boasts the answer to the problem of the ages. "Transform the way you think about food for ever with Susie Orbach. Free yourself from dieting and denial....

Arthur Miller addresses an important question: What was the connection, if any, between the simultaneous appearance of modern physics and modern art at the beginning of the 20th century? He has chosen to answer it by investigating in parallel biographies the pioneering works of the leaders of the two fields, Albert Einstein and Pablo Picasso. His brilliant book, Einstein, Picasso, offers the best explanation I have seen for the apparently independent discoveries of cubism and relativity as parts of a larger cultural transformation. He sees both as being focused on the nature of space and on the relation between perception and reality.

The great thing about the Damien Hirst/ take-out-the-trash episode—apart from its entertainment value—is that it vividly demonstrates one of the major wrong turns art took in the twentieth century. Damien Hirst didn’t originate that wrong turn. Far from it. He is merely one of the many casualties—or, depending on one’s point of view, beneficiaries—of that detour.

Almost all of the artistic wrong turns with which we are now living had their origins in the early decades of the twentieth century. But what began as an elite indulgence with the appearance of Dada, Surrealism, and figures like Marcel Duchamp became a national pastime in the 1960s. It was then that the wrong turn became a superhighway, when (to alter the metaphor) a rare affliction became epidemic.

The most important culprit in this story is undoubtedly Andy Warhol. It was Warhol—aided and abetted by such figures as Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns— who injected the streak of sinister levity that made Pop Art and its offshoots such a creepy, Janus-faced phenomenon: one face all smiles and Campbell Soup cans, the other a grim underworld of drug abuse, sexual predation, and nihilistic self-absorption. Pop Art enjoyed such enormous success largely because its practitioners managed to hold those opposing elements together in their art: sugar coating around a poison pill. For susceptible souls—and their number was legion—it was an addictive combination.

The home, then, is more than just a place. When you visit somebody and exclaim, "You've made a lovely home", the praise is not for what they have spent but for a more intangible thing: atmosphere. I have visited grand houses created by the over-rated tribe of interior designers (or decorators, as they prefer to be called) and the atmosphere has been zilch. The domus cannot be imposed. You cannot create a home for somebody because home is an organic growth from somebody.

posted by cynthia korzekwa  # 30.12.01