Written by Lee Schneider, founder of DocuCinema
This month I’m conducting an experiment in not striving. I’m nine days in. It’s going pretty badly. Pushing, grasping, wanting and hoping are kind of like getting up in the morning: I strive, therefore I am. Some sharks are like that – they can’t stop swimming because then they stop breathing. Let me try taking a breath while staying motionless in the water. How’s that feel? Terrible, can I start striving now?
Being meditative and reflective, accepting where you are and preparing to receive abundance are all really easy things to do. You can start by sitting cross-legged on a soft surface and staring into the sun until your eyeballs explode. No, that’s not what’s supposed to happen. But that’s what it feels like for me. I’ve never been good at meditative postures. I like running – did a 10K last weekend. After a couple miles I reach a humming-along-with-the-universe state that feels about right. Afterward I find my decision making clearer, I treat other people better and go easier on myself. I get just as much stuff done but with less effort. Is that what not striving is like? That might be worth striving for.
One path to not striving might be found in one’s relationship to power. As our friend Lotta said in her recent newsletter, “Power comes to us when we stop reaching for it. It’s actually always with us, but it’s our striving that gets in the way.” Striving doesn’t give us power. It can, in fact, take it away. The Soul of Money, by Lynne Twist, works this idea through, bringing in some thoughts on money.
“Each of us experiences a lifelong tug-of-war between our money interests and the calling of our soul. When we’re in the domain of soul, we act with integrity. We are thoughtful and generous, allowing, courageous, and committed. We recognize the value of love and friendship. We admire a small thing well done.”
Things change, she writes, when we enter the domain of money, and then, “It is as if we are suddenly transported to a different playing field where all the rules have changed. In the grip of money, those wonderful qualities of soul seem to be less available. We become smaller. We scramble or race to ‘get what’s ours.’ We often grow selfish, greedy, petty, fearful, or controlling, or sometimes confused, conflicted or guilty.”
Ok, let’s get real. The world is pretty greedy, petty, fearful and confused already, right? Does this mean I have to quit show business and work in a granola factory?
There will always be friends (I’m talking to you, East Coast) who will say “Who cares whether you cash your paycheck with integrity? Take the money and run.” Well, I’m thinking there’s more. I’m thinking Lance Armstrong, who came out of retirement to ride the Tour de France after winning seven times. He has a slim chance of winning eight times but he showed up anyway. “I feel good, I feel strong,” he said, as quoted by the AP. Showing up, feeling good, feeling strong, accepting where he is. There’s something to that.
What if you can do a job that fires you up, and therefore you can do it better, get paid more for it and stop and breathe at the same time? I can give that a go without striving for another 22 days at least.
This week’s Newsweek cover article is a slap at Oprah Winfrey for crazy talk about complementary and integrative medicine. Oprah does cover some fringe stuff that is wacky and sometimes wrong. But I think she’s right to do it. Here’s why.
The history of medicine is smeared with snake oil. It was once believed that drinking oil – not olive oil, but the black stuff that comes out of the ground – had healthy properties. Even today, some swear that drinking apple cider vinegar helps digestion and whacks infections, but it may actually damage tooth enamel and sear the esophagus.
Newsweek slaps Oprah for going out on a slippery snake oil limb, promoting people like Suzanne Somers and her aggressive program of hormone replacement therapy. Somers, 62, takes 60 vitamins and supplements and also gives herself a shot of estrogen directly into her vagina. Newsweek portrays her as laughable, but I agree with Oprah – Somers might be a pioneer. Self-experimenters have often advanced science. 
At the age of 22, Sir Isaac Newton nearly blinded himself by staring at the sun in a mirror because he wanted to study the after-images it left on his retinas. 
Australian physician Barry James Marshall swallowed some foul-smelling bacterial crud to show that Helicobacter pylori caused ulcers. Sir Issac ended up with marks on his eyelids; but Marshall ended up with a 2005 Nobel Prize for linking the bacterial crud, H. pylori, to ulcers. I’m not saying Suzanne Somers is going to surprise us with a treatise on gravity, but she has courage.
“Everyone was against me, but I knew I was right.” — Barry James Marshall
The line between courage and dumbness, however, can be slim. Jenny McCarthy, another frequent Oprah guest, believes that her son Evan contracted autism because he received a measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccination. So far researchers haven’t found a link between vaccinations and autism. We do know, as Newsweek points out, that the vaccinations have saved the lives of thousands of children who otherwise might have died.
Facts like that don’t seem to change McCarthy’s belief. “My science is named Evan, and he’s at home. That’s my science.”
Speaking of belief, look at “The Secret.” Oprah led the charge for it, and it has some good stuff, reminding us that we are all fields of energy in a larger field of energy. But it also stated that all diseases can be cured by the power of thought alone. That’s going too far. Even super-Secret supporter Oprah had to caution a guest on her show who had breast cancer and who was thinking of forgoing surgery against the advice of her doctors. Said Oprah, “I don’t think that you should ignore all of the advantages of medical science, and try to, through your own mind now because you saw a Secret tape, heal yourself.”
Yet Oprah knows people can heal themselves with Qi Gong, meditation, yoga, acupuncture. She’s not afraid to promote this “new” medicine, a medicine that is actually old, embracing the best of East and West.
Newsweek is going backward, contributing to the backlash against new medicine. Oprah is going forward by supporting medical pioneers. While looking into the sun, drinking crud or shooting up in the vagina may not seem so brilliant, breakthroughs come from acts of courage or folly and sometimes both.
Red coffee cup. Book review in New York Times. It bleeds, it leads.
The usual way I write this blog is by scribbling things at random, whatever comes to mind, to get myself into the flow. It might be a funny way to start, but I learned to write in newsrooms and it always worked there, too. Those newsrooms were populated by angry, gesticulating screamers, a few colorful drunks and people with dark circles under their eyes chanting “if it bleeds, it leads.” Concentration was required if anything was going to get written on my shift.
We all have our concentration rituals. My mother, who was a sculptor, would always begin a new project by drinking coffee out of a red mug. After she died, her yoga teacher asked to have that red mug, so we gave it to her. 
To get myself in the flow I turn on the Universe Machine. It’s an electronic practice tool for players of classical Indian music and it sends out a quiet, subtly drifting drone note.
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According to current research, concentration results when we get some neurons in the prefrontal cortex of the brain to oscillate in unison. The oscillations are called gamma waves. Scientists believe you can get them pumping together by looking at flashing pulses of light. Such neural harmonizing is probably what’s happening when people meditate and find that their powers of concentration have increased. They are putting the brain into a state of greater synchrony.
If you want to get into the flow you also have to cut down on distractions, particularly those coming in through your ears – like your iPod or the TV. According to Winifred Gallagher, author of Rapt, a book recently reviewed in the New York Times, it’s hard for the brain to avoid paying attention to sounds, particularly voices. That’s why the vibration of the Universe Machine helps – it simplifies the sonic environment.
To get in the flow you also have to drop any self-consciousness. (“That little yellow ball’s coming at me really fast. With my limited tennis skills, do I really think I can hit it? Hey, I missed it. I am so bummed out and I suck at tennis.”) To win at tennis you somehow have to merge action and awareness and silence your inner critic. That’s been the focus of a sports coach named W. Timothy Gallwey, a meditation practitioner who wrote “The Inner Game of Tennis.” When you mentally hit reset after every point you get in the groove and get on your game.
The state of “flow” itself has been studied by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, author of the seminal book, “Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience.” Time flies when you’re having fun, and time becomes elastic when you are in the creative flow. Completely losing track of time is one of the nine factors, according to Csikszentmihalyi, that are the hallmarks of flow. If you want to find your flow it’s best to try only while undertaking a task that is rewarding all by itself – pleasure in accomplishment helps flow happen.
Getting your groove on is not magic. You just have to set up the right conditions for it to happen: minimize distractions, cultivate a sense of focus (meditation would work) and sometimes you need to use the red coffee cup.
500 Words on Thursday | Written by Lee Schneider
Disclosure: I like doing yoga. I don’t go for the workout. (I have running for that.) I don’t go for the women. (Though I met a woman in yoga whom I have married.) I go to explore the mindscape and the soulscape. That said, I have a request for all yoga teachers: Can you stop telling us to throw away the mind? You might know the type, the teacher who cranks up the volume on their shallow pop music and shouts over it, “You don’t need your brain – just listen to your feelings!” This instruction makes me want to puke, but I would have to use my brain to do that, so I guess it’s not allowed.
I’m thinking about this because I just saw a new documentary called “Enlighten Up!” It’s the story of a skeptic who tries to find out if yoga can change him. I experienced the story very much through the skeptic’s eyes because he wanted tangible proof of how yoga was working. 
I like that, because it speaks to the existential engineer in me. Seeking such proof involves the brain in the process of healing the body and the spirit. That’s good. Here’s why: You might already know that there are two parts of the brain and they work together. The left brain takes care of the sequential, analytical, logical stuff like doing your taxes and complaining about it. The right brain is non-linear, intuitive and big picture. It’s what we use to connect to the soul, interpret people’s facial expressions, dance with abandon and heal ourselves.
“The brain? That’s my second favorite organ.”
-Woody Allen
As Daniel H. Pink writes in A Whole New Mind, the left brain is bossy and tends to bully the right brain. This is why in meditation we’re asked to “quiet the mind.” It’s an oversimplified instruction – you really want to quiet the left brain — it’s analyzing how annoying it is to sit still — and try to listen to the right brain as it tells its subtle story. One great technique for this is to sit and hum loudly. It gets everything vibrating, clears the mind of extra thoughts and if you don’t go insane first or get evicted, you might discover something new.
I was amazed to learn from Daniel Pink’s book that for years scientists believed it was the left brain alone that “made us human” – our logical, analytical selves vaulted us above dumb animals who have never even attempted to write a novel. The mute, mysterious right brain was thought to be a vestige of a more primitive form of human. But as Pink points out, “We need both approaches in order to craft fulfilling lives and build productive, just societies.”
Works for me. Even when I gaze into my own past I see that my father is a lawyer whose default mode is analytical left brain rationality while my mother, who was an artist, was a devotedly holistic right brain person. Genetically, that’s my recipe. Whatever I am pursuing or pursued by these days is orchestrated by biology, biography and those two halves of the brain playing their symphony together.
Written by Lee Schneider, founder of DocuCinema.
Healing is hard to quantify. Does it mean, “My back has stopped hurting by a factor of 45 percent?” Does it mean, “I don’t wake up at night because of those nightmares of being chased by thousands of cats. I only wake up now because I dream of 50 cats?” Does it simply mean, “I feel better?”
Not all healing involves ripping off the band aid and seeing the healing with your own eyes. It can be invisible.
Some have experienced the invisible kind of healing using a technique called Reiki. Reiki involves moving the hands over the patient or lightly touching them. Afterward people have reported feeling balanced energetically or feeling more centered. But how does it work?
“Medicine doesn’t understand how Reiki works.” said Pamela Miles, founding director of the Institute for the Advancement of Complementary Therapies, when I recently interviewed her about Reiki. I’m working on a project about integrative and complementary therapies. As a science-oriented guy I’ve been curious about these therapies because often science can’t explain how they work but they seem to help people a lot. I’ve seen yoga reduce my stress levels. My mother stopped smoking after acupuncture treatments. There’s a mystery here and I want to know more about it.
“When I place hands on someone it’s like feeling an orchestra in my palms – I feel many different notes and qualities of vibration and it keeps changing,” says Miles.
What is science supposed to do with that? What is she transmitting through her hands? Life force energy? Mind energy? It might involve electromagnetic forces. Using a magnetometer to measure electromagnetism, some researchers claim to have seen the energy of Reiki moving from practitioner to patient. (Others say they have no idea what they’re measuring.) But even more interesting is the belief system involved for Reiki to work: you don’t need one. It works anyway, regardless of your belief system or even lack of one.
Scientists, being the take-measure types they are, have taken a shot at trying to understand the success of Reiki. One study suggested that Reiki can speed the healing of skin wounds. Another at Memorial Sloan Kettering Center in New York City looked at how Reiki and meditation might reduce anxiety, fatigue and pain in cancer patients. During the study, the intensity of those symptoms dropped by half. Results like that have encouraged mainstream health care providers to offer Reiki treatments as part of a hospital program. New York’s Memorial Sloan Kettering, Boston’s Dana Farber/Harvard Cancer Institute and Yale-New Haven Hospital are all in.
Nobody knows why, but Reiki seems to help the body engage in self healing. “With Reiki,” Miles says, “patients get a chance to participate actively in their health care and regain a sense of control.” They become partners in their own care, and that, most doctors would say, is a key reason why this form of invisible healing seems to be so effective. I wonder how science will develop the tools to measure something like that. For me, it’s a mystery worth investigating.
Stay curious and see you next Thursday.
