Tag: immune system

Breathing with Intention

In our October Creative Meetup we focused on the theme of “breath” catalyzed, in part, by James Nestor’s book, Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art.  In our discussion, various poems about “breath” were highlighted.  These included Mary Oliver’s poem, I Am Breathing and Rumi’s poem Only Breath where he notes, “first, last, outer, inner, only that breath breathing ”.  The poems and James’ book reinforce the essential nature of breathing for human existence – at every moment that we are alive, we are breathing.

We consciously “hold our breath” for many reasons. It may be to swim under water, to steady ourselves before playing a tennis shot or as part of a mindful breathing exercise.  However, we often hold our breath unconsciously when we experience fear, anxiety, anger or shock.  This was made clear by an exercise we undertook as part of the Creative Meetup.  We were asked to think of a time when we held our breath and explore what happened at the time in terms of bodily sensations and emotions.

What immediately came to mind for me was a car accident that I experienced when I was 12 years old.  I was travelling with my family and my father was driving us home. At one moment, I looked out the side window of my passenger seat to observe a large car approaching on the left (we were in a small car on a main road).  It was as if time stood still as I realised that the oncoming car was going to crash into us and instinctively I held my breath waiting for the impact.  We were hit on my mother’s passenger side and ended up upside down at the foot of a four metre embankment.  I can’t remember when I exhaled but I was aware that my breathing was erratic and I was in shock.

Learning to breathe with intention

James Nestor recounts how he undertook research with free divers in Greece. These divers were able to dive to incredible depths (up to 300 feet) while holding their breath (not assisted by any breathing apparatus).   They could dive to depths that scientists thought were not possible for human beings.  What James learned was that these divers considered breathing a conscious act (not unconscious as most of us breathe in our daily lives).  For the divers, breathing is a mechanism to achieve depth in diving and they intentionally “coax their lungs to work harder” so that they are able “to tap the pulmonary capabilities that the rest of us ignore”.   The divers suggested that anyone who is healthy can achieve what they achieve if they put in the time and energy “to master the art of breathing”.

In talking to a range of divers, James learned that there are multiple ways to breathe and that different ways to breathe “will affect our bodies differently”.   The divers explained that various breathing methods can enhance our brains, lengthen our life span or improve our physical and mental health. Other ways we breathe can have the opposite effects. James discovered that the secret to nourishing our brains and enhancing our health is to breathe with intention.  

James expanded his personal interview research with divers by exploring the published literature on breathing including books on regulating breathing that were 400 years old.  As James points out, many cultures over the centuries have focused on the art of breathing and its benefits, e.g. Buddhists use conscious breathing to reach higher levels of awareness and to achieve longevity.  The scientific literature reinforces the view that how we breathe can affect the systems of the body, e.g. our immune and digestive systems.   Some of the research, for example, showed that “asthma, anxiety and even hypertension, and psoriasis” could be reversed or reduced by changing the way we breathe.

James’ conclusion from all his research is that we can use conscious breathing “to hack into our nervous system and control our immune response and restore health”.  In his book , he sets about providing exercises to enable us to learn to breathe with intention so that we can reach our potential in terms of our mental and physical health.

Reflection

As I listened to the audiobook version of James’ book, Breath, I began to realise that intentional breathing as promoted by him could help me alleviate my MCAS difficulties – which are fundamentally a result of an over-reactive immune system.  Calming my immune system through the breathing exercises contained in each chapter of James’ book could enable me to expand my food options, which at the moment are severely limited because of my food sensitivity responses (such as rash, hives, headaches, and nausea).   

Many mindfulness teachers demonstrate that we can grow in mindfulness through conscious breathing which enables us to become grounded, calm the mind and body, expand our lung capacity and increase our focus and clarity of thinking.

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Image by John Hain from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Illness and the Impact of Our Psychological and Social Environment

Over the past couple of blog posts, I have focused on the manifestation of trauma and adverse childhood experiences in our negative self-thoughts and addictive behaviours.  Drawing on the work of Dr. Gabor Maté in the area of compassionate inquiry, I have also discussed how the compassionate approach to addiction is to look beneath the self-destructive behaviour to the person and pain that lies beneath.   In this post, I want to explore more of Gabor’s ideas about the negative impact of adverse psychological and social environments and how they lead to chronic disease.

Gabor suggests that a fundamental flaw of the traditional medical model is the separation of mind and body and viewing a person in isolation from their psychological and social environment.  This leads to a symptomatic perspective on illness and the use of medications to redress the symptoms.  He suggests that these deficiencies in the approach of traditional medical practice are no more highlighted than in the pursuit of the search for a cure for cancer.  He draws on the work of a holistic wellness expert who illustrates this flawed thinking by arguing that the research of individual cells for the source of cancer is like exploring the combustion engine as the cause of traffic jams.  

Gabor strongly maintains that his years of family medical practice and his role as Coordinator of palliative services (end-of-life care) for a hospital have convinced him that underlying all chronic disease, without exception, is a deficient psychological and social environment of the individual involved.  His assertion is based, in part, on the assumption that a defective social and psychological environment negatively impacts the immune system as well as other bodily systems (such as the respiratory and cardiovascular systems) that are inextricably interconnected.  He asserts in live with Buddhist philosophy that everything is connected to everything else and that “nothing exists on its own”.  He cites the Buddhist concept of life as the “interconnection of co-arising phenomena”.

He argues that in line with this perspective which reflects the reality of human existence, that a leaf and raindrop should be viewed not as isolated occurrences but as resulting from the interplay of soil, compost, sky, sun, rain and atmospheric conditions.  Louie Schwartzberg would add the role too of mycelium (mushrooms and their internet-like connected tentacles beneath the earth).  Gabor maintains that we have to take a “biocycle, social approach” to really address the causes of chronic illness.

The impacts of injurious psychological and social environments

Gabor in his YouTube© talk on “When the Body Says No”, draws on scientific studies to demonstrate the connection between stress and disease.  He maintains that an injurious psychological and social environment has major implications for the development of illness.  He illustrates this interconnection, for example, by discussing the impact of stressed parents on the physical welfare of a child.  Parents themselves can be stressed by their environments (economic and social systems, the presence or threat of war, racism) and/or their own lived experience of trauma or adverse childhood experiences.  The child, in consequence of this psychological/social environment, is stressed and scan suffer from asthma (which itself is treated with stress hormones to open the airways and reduce inflammation, resulting in the adrenal system becoming overcharged).

The parents’ stress is contagious – the child is aware of their own body and the impacts of parental stress on their bodily sensations.  The pain of the parent, mother and/or father, is experienced by the child but the real problem is that this pain “never gets discharged”.  Gabor cites Australian research that demonstrates that our bodies adapt to our psychological and social environment (as well as our physical environment).  He maintains that some of this adaption is helpful in the short term but in the longer term results in adverse bodily manifestations such as elevated blood pressure, heightened stroke risk, unhealthy sugar levels, arteriosclerosis and defective immune system.

Gabor also refers to research that shows that if a woman is both stressed (psychological environment) and isolated (social environment) her chances of a lump in her breast being diagnosed as malignant are increased immensely.  This research reinforces the interplay of illness and the psychological/social environment of an individual.  Other research shows that if one partner of an elderly couple dies, and the other partner is left bereaved and isolated, there are deleterious changes in the surviving partner’s immune, nervous, hormonal and cardiovascular systems, resulting in a “significant risk of dying”.

The development of illness through the suppression of challenging emotions and our own needs

Gabor demonstrates that suppression of challenging emotions such as anger negatively impacts the immune system and other connected bodily systems.  A person may suppress expressions of anger to gain and/or maintain parental affection and affiliation (because their absence is too painful).  The result of suppression of challenging emotions is “suppression of the immune system”. 

Gabor argues that a  key contributor to disease is a personal stance that is forever worrying about other people’s psychological needs while “ignoring your own needs”.  This can manifest as feeling responsible for the feelings of others and avoiding any words or actions that might disappoint them.  Gabor argues then that there are four significant risk factors that contribute to chronic illness and are life-threatening (18 minute mark of his talk):

  1. Ignoring your own emotional needs to cater for the perceived needs of others
  2. Identifying yourself with duty and responsibility in a way that is rigid (at the cost of your own authenticity, thus creating an external locus of control)
  3. Repressing challenging emotions such as anger or resentment
  4. Believing that you are responsible for how other people feel and, in consequence, trying assiduously not to disappoint them (and, as a result, never saying “no” when you should do so for your own health and welfare).

Gabor contends that “attachment” is the “most important dynamic in human life”.  Without it, we cannot survive as infants or adults.  We seek “closeness and proximity” with another so that we “are taken care of”.   He maintains that pathologies arise when our attachment needs are not met. This, in turn, leads to frustration of our other basic need, the need for “authenticity” – which he expresses in terms of our ability to be in touch with, and listen to, our “gut feelings”.  Gabor instances the  “please love me syndrome” of Robin Williams as an underlying cause of his depression and chronic illness,  leading to his death by suicide.

Reflection

We cannot ignore the impact of our psychological and social environment on our physical health.  At the same time, we have to recognise that we are contributing to the creation of a psychological and social environment that could be healing or harmful for others, especially if we are in a caring or managerial role.  Gabor explains his ideas about stress and illness in his book, When The Body Says No: The Cost Of Hidden Stress.  He also provides training and further resources on his website, The Wisdom of Trauma.

As we grow in mindfulness, we can become increasingly self-aware and aware of our impacts on the physical health and psychological welfare of others.  We can be more determined to take compassionate action, to look beneath self-destructive behaviours to find the person desirous of wellness and associated ease.

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Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group, and the resources to support the blog.

How to Release Pain and Reduce Difficult Emotions

Deepak Chopra on discussing how to release pain and difficult emotions stressed the connection between our physical bodies and our emotions and also the interconnectedness of all living things.  He maintained that “there is no mental event that doesn’t have a biological correlate” – that is to say, that our every thought and related emotion finds expression in some form in our body.  He stressed that our brain serves to integrate everything we experience – our thoughts, feelings, emotions, social interactions and the ecosystems that surround us.  Deepak talked too of our entanglement with each other – how we influence each other energetically and emotionally through “limbic resonance”.

In speaking of ways to reduce physical pain in another video presentation, Deepak strongly supported the idea of regular exercise to release endorphins, meditation to take us beyond our limiting perceptions, music to reduce stress and pain and social connection and interactions to provide support.  He maintained that, contrary to popular belief, alcohol and smoking increase pain rather than reduce it.  He also highlighted the powerful role of biofeedback, employed by various health professionals including the Chopra Center for Wellbeing.

A seven-step process for physical healing and emotional release

In his presentation for the You Can Heal Your Life Summit, Deepak offered a seven-step process for physical healing and emotional wellbeing.  The seven steps serve as an integrated approach to individual mindfulness practices that we have previously discussed on this blog. 

You begin by reflecting on an interaction that made you upset or left you having to deal with difficult emotions.  Then you follow the following seven steps:

  1. Accept responsibility: accept what you are feeling as your own, not blaming others for the way you are feeling.  Without accepting responsibility, you cannot gain control over your feelings, nor can you wait for the other person to change so that you can be released from your feelings, because this will not happen.
  2. Feel the feeling in your body: Deepak maintains that any feeling relates to one of the energetic centres of your body, one of the seven Chakras. The location of your pain is an indicator of the Chakra involved and the unfulfilled need finding expression in that Chakra, e.g. pain around the heart region (the Heart Chakra) can signal a need for love and belongingness, while pain in the stomach region (Solar Plexus Chakra) can indicate an unmet need for stability and strength.  To feel the feeling you can close your eyes and focus on the area of your body where you feel pain – and bring your awareness to it without doing anything other than being with the pain wherever it is being felt in your body. 
  3. Name your feeling: Deepak describes this step as “labelling your feelings”.  By naming your feelings accurately, you can learn to tame them.  He calls accurate naming “labelling intelligently” – the more specific you can be about what you are feeling, e.g. resentment, anger, shame, the better you are able to deal with it. 
  4. Write it down – here the aim is to express what happened from three different perspectives – your own, the other person’s perspective and a third person’s perspective  – the independent observer.  Deepak maintains that using this 1st, 2nd and 3rd person approach reduces the emotional energy you have invested in the conflict, improves your immune system, and lightens your emotional load because “you are not weighed down by the emotion”.
  5. Share it with someone: here you share both the process you used and the outcome for you with someone that you trust.  It is important to accurately share the three perspectives that you have developed – avoid excusing your own behaviour and blaming the other person.
  6. Use a ritual release: Deepak suggests that a ritual activity that symbolises “release” reinforces your new state of equilibrium and equanimity.  It can take many forms but needs to be a personal way of expressing release, e.g. using a mantra meditation, scrunching up the paper you have written on or throwing it in the river.
  7. Celebrate the release: again using something that is meaningful to you, e.g. a long forest walk, or mindful walking by the bay – some activity that manifests your joy and the realisation that you are moving on, no longer trapped physically or emotionally.

Reflection

The wisdom of this approach is the recognition throughout of the profound mind-body connection – In releasing our emotions, we can release pain in our bodies. It takes time to develop the self-intimacy and honesty required to defuse these emotions and the related physical pain.  Persistence brings its own rewards in this endeavour as in many other endeavours.  As we grow in mindfulness through mindfulness practices, meditation and reflection, we can achieve a level of consciousness that creates emotional freedom and physical ease.  Deepak maintains that “all healing is consciousness”.  To deepen our level of consciousness, we can make a habit of self-observation, naming our feelings and related unmet needs, and exploring creative ways to respond. 

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Image by Nika Akin from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Connection – a Deeply Felt Need

In these times of physical distancing precipitated by the Coronavirus, we can feel the need for connection more than ever.  We readily recognise the importance of social connection, our connection to other people, for our mental health and wellness, but often overlook our very real connection to nature and the physical world.

Connection in nature

Time-lapse photographer, filmmaker and producer, Louis Schwartzberg, reminds us that every living creature relies on other living creatures for its continued existence.  He illustrates this concept through his recent film, Fantastic Fungi, where he shows how the mycelium network mirrors the internet in its pervasiveness above and under the ground.  Mycelium is the vegetative branchlike structure that fruits to produce mushrooms and other fungi. They are critical to the “terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems” because of their role in decomposing organic material and contributing carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.  They are invisible but cover massive areas. providing nutrients to the fungi and serving as “biological filters” – a term developed by world famous mycologist Paul Stamets who was a significant contributor to Louis’ film.   In a recent TED© talk, Paul described six ways mushrooms can save the world, including treating viruses.

Louis, commenting on his movie, Fantastic Fungi, said that the real surprise for him in making the film about mycelium was the pervasiveness of connection.  He said that in these times of physical distancing (social isolation and social distancing), people are realising that what they want most is connection.   In Louis’s view, the core idea emerging from the film is that “connection is really nature’s instruction”.  

Our connection to nature

In Fungi Day Live, Louis led discussions with co-author, Paul Stamets; Jeremy Narby – anthropologist and author; Francoise Bourzat – author of Consciousness Medicine; and Jason Silva – filmmaker, author and creator of the FLOW SESSIONS podcast.  In discussing his short connection video, Jason explains that films provide a unique connection – enabling people to see the world from someone else’s perspective, to get inside their heads.  He firmly believes that his role as filmmaker is to share his insights, engage in “intersubjective communion with other people” and provide an experience of connection that is “beyond language”.  He cited astrophysicist, Neil de Grasse Tyson, to reinforce his passionate commitment to communicate about connection:

We are all connected. To each other biologically. To the earth chemically. To the rest of the universe atomically.  

Paul Stamets maintains that the Coronavirus is a result of our destruction of the “immune system of the environment” through deforestation, pollution, monoculture and other non-economically and non- ecologically sustainable solutions.   Like the other presenters in Fungi Day Live, he asserts that we have failed to understand and respect nature – our source of inspiration, energy, wellness and breath.  Jeremy, too, maintains that we have become disconnected from nature and live our lives in cement blocks and travel around in “glass-and-metal-bubbles”. 

Reflection

These filmmakers, authors and researchers have spent a lifetime exploring, understanding and sharing about nature and its interconnectedness and our connection to it.  As Florence Williams asserts, we are suffering from “nature-deficit disorder” and separation from the healing benefits of nature.  Johann Hari argues that reconnection with nature and with each other is a means of overcoming depression and childhood trauma.  We can grow mindfulness through nature and experience its many physical and psychological benefits, including calmness and the experience of connection.  Lulu & Mischka provide us with one way to do this through their mantra meditations, including their “stillness in motion” mantra they sing while sailing with the whales.

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Image by Michi-Nordlicht from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

How to Overcome Self-Protection to Create Personal Behavioural Change

Tami Simon, in a recent interview podcast, spoke to Dr. Lisa Lahey about her co-authored book, Immunity to Change: How to Overcome It and Unlock the Potential in Yourself and Your Organization.  Lisa is also a member of the faculty for the Inner MBA, jointly conducted by Sounds True in partnership with New York University, Wisdom 2.0 and LinkedIn.  In the interview, Lisa and Tami explore our self-protection mechanisms, the need for courage to overcome them and the importance of supportive challenge to sustain significant personal change.

Our self-protection mechanisms create an immunity to change

Our self-protection mechanisms are designed to protect our sense of self-worth and overall psychic health – they stop us from doing things that would be harmful to our psychic welfare.  Research and experience demonstrate, however, that that many people in organisations find it difficult to make positive behavioural changes that would make them a better staff member or manager.  For example, staff may not change inappropriate behaviour despite regular corrective feedback and a manager may not be able to delegate effectively despite their belief in the need for delegation.

Lisa maintains that the real barrier to these desirable behavioural changes is not a lack of procedural or technical knowledge but the need to change our “inner landscape” – made up of our beliefs, inner rules, feelings, self-stories and assumptions about our self, others, and our world.  Many behavioural changes in an organisational setting require these “adaptive changes” – becoming aware of the specific, inner landscape barriers to a focal behavioural change and working consciously to remove them.  This perspective advanced by Lisa lines up with our earlier discussion of “absolutes” and their impact on our thoughts, feelings and behaviours.

Lisa likens our inner landscape to our immune system which is a self-protection mechanism designed to protect us against infection.  Our immune system, however, can also work against our physical welfare.  This can happen when it becomes hypersensitive to foods that would otherwise be good for us and creates inflammation in the form of rashes, hives, and other manifestations of food intolerance and allergies.  Another example is when the immune system rejects a liver or heart after a transplant.   Our inner landscape, just like the self-protective mechanism of our immune system, can work against making and sustaining desirable, personal behavioural change (whether within an organisational setting or in daily life with our family).

Making adaptive change through the “immunity change process”

In her Book, Immunity to Change, Lisa provides a detailed four-step process for making adaptive change which she calls “the immunity change process”.  In the podcast interview, she offered a brief description of each step and these are illustrated below:

  1. Have a clear goal in mind – Clarity around your behavioural change goal is critical because it enables a focused exploration of your “inner landscape”.  Lisa gave the example of her gaol to overcome the fear of public speaking.  Here I will focus on the goal of improving delegation as a manager, drawing on my experience working with managers over many years.
  2. Honest exploration of your self-sabotaging behaviours: As a manager, you might work against the achievement of your delegation goal by constant interference/ checking in with the person to whom you have delegated work (the delegatee), expressing a lack of trust in the delegatee’s ability to complete the work successfully, showing increasing signs of nervousness, and/or being unclear in your instructions/requirements when establishing the delegated task.  These behaviours can feed your anxiety cycle and thwart effective delegation to the delegatee and, at the same time, undermine their confidence so that they do not do the delegated job very well (an outcome that reinforces your belief system about the threats to your self-worth involved in delegating).
  3. Honest exploration of your inner self-protective goals:  These inner goals lie beneath your self-sabotaging behaviour and provide the unconscious rationale for behaving in a way that works against the achievement of your goal.  These self-protective goals could include trying to avoid the embarrassment of staff making mistakes, ensuring the security of your own job, maintaining a sense of superior knowledge and skills (“better than”) or avoiding being seen as lazy. 
  4. Identifying and challenging the underlying assumptions that give rise to the self-protective goals: These could include the assumption that if the delegatee becomes really good at their work your job will be at risk, they will see any poor work that you have done in relation to the delegated task,  they might do it the wrong way if you don’t constantly check on them, you will be seen as incompetent if they do the delegated task poorly or you will lose control of the task and the delegatee and reduce your influence.  These assumptions are interrelated and self-reinforcing, reducing your capacity to see possibilities and explore creative options.  Once these underlying assumptions have been surfaced, you can challenge them by exploring alternative assumptions.  Lisa suggests, for example, in relation to delegation, that the process could be seen as adding real value to the organisation and the delegatee by enabling them to be the best they can be.  This not only contributes more fully to the achievement of organisational goals but also builds staff motivation and mental health through providing a sense of agency.  Also, as neuroscientist Tali Sharot explains, you grow your influence by letting go.

Reflection

Our inner landscape acts as both a self-protective mechanism building our self-esteem and a self-sabotaging system that comes into play when we perceive that our self-worth is under threat.  As we grow in mindfulness through reflective processes such as the “immunity change process”, we can become more aware of our self-sabotaging behaviour, our unconscious self-protective goals and the underlying assumptions that hold them in place.  As we challenge our assumptions and associated expectations, we can break free of their hold over us and be open to creative options that we can pursue with courage and persistence.

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Image by Peter Perhac from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.