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Planting seeds

I’m currently reading Mindfulness and Psychotherapy (Edited by Germer, Siegel & Fulton), widely considered to be one the best books yet published on the topic. Four chapters in, and I’m enjoying the book thoroughly. I just came across a section on the value of cultivating empathy through Buddhist-inspired practice. I like the image the authors (Susan & William Morgan) use to connect intention, practice, and whatever sought-after quality one is trying to cultivate (in this case, empathy):

Concentrate on your intention to open your heart more fully. Trust that by planting seeds (intention) and attending to them (practice), the harvest (empathy) will follow organically.

I’m thinking about the creative struggles in my life, particularly with writing and music, and how this process of intention-practice-fruition comes into play. Something to ponder and play with…

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Michael Daniels on Transpersonal Psychology

I was combing through and updating all the links on this site earlier today when I stumbled upon this video of Michael Daniels on his Transpersonal Science site. I like Dr. Daniels’ critical approach to transpersonal psychology, a field too often bogged down by fuzzy thinking and/or cultish attachment to particular schools of thought:


“Retrospective and Challenges for Transpersonal Psychology”. Michael Daniels PhD talks on the history, status, criticisms and future of Transpersonal Psychology. Keynote paper delivered at the British Psychological Society Transpersonal Psychology Section 15th Annual Conference, Cober Hill, Scarborough, 17th September 2011.

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Addictionally irrational

Go to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) website right now and you’ll see brains. Pictures, graphics, scans — a colorful display. You’ll also see a photo of Nora Volkow, NIDA’s director, whose “work has been instrumental in demonstrating that drug addiction is a disease of the human brain.” This would be all well and good, if pictures (or any other representation or analysis) of what’s going on in a drug user’s brain actually demonstrated that addiction is a brain disease. But they don’t. How it is that “we have come to believe” this irrational notion, that it has become the accepted truth among both lay people and professional orthodoxy, is simply mind-boggling to me.

As Stanton Peele has pointed out again and again, including today on his Psychology Today blog, the brain disease model of addiction defies both common sense and a reasonable interpretation of scientific research:

The chronic brain disease model doesn’t explain the most fundamental things about addiction, like how the vast majority of people overcome it without treatment, that there are no measurable biological means to determine whether and when people are addicted and when they are not, nor is there any treatment that addresses the supposed dopamine-based nature of addiction. In fact, the best science and therapy both point towards an entirely opposite, real-world way of defining “recovery.”

Meanwhile, as the idea of addiction as a brain disease is imbedded in our culture, we simply get more and more examples of brain diseases as more and more things are understood as addictions, and as we spread the idea further and thinner than any possibly scientific explanation can be spread.

This idea is not an expression of science. It is, instead, a cultural myth, one that the best and the brightest are obligated to endorse to be recognized as mainstream thinkers.

Don’t get me wrong — I’m all for learning as much as possible about the physiological and neurological aspects of addiction, and of all other realms of human experience for that matter. Of course brains (our organism/physiology in general) are absolutely foundational to all that we experience. A baseball bat to the head is all the evidence needed to establish that fact. But how, pray tell, does the plainly evident and obvious fact that all human experience is grounded and reflected in wonderfully complex and interesting ways in the brain and body lead to the notion that so many of our life problems are therefore fundamentally diseases of the brain? Imagine Nora Volkow’s perfect scenario, that after years of research we have finally and perfectly mapped all the changes that happen in the brain over the complete course of drug use and addiction. Imagine that brain scan technology could yield perfect scans and that we understood and interpreted the images perfectly. To my mind that still wouldn’t lend a shred of evidence to the notion that addiction is a brain disease.

A quick thought experiment: You are hooked up to this hypothetical machine (a super scanner) which can perfectly record all changes in your body’s and brain’s physiology, demonstrating with perfect accuracy every deviation from healthy homeostasis. You are put in room. In through the door on the far end walks a tiger. Your body and brain begin to go haywire. Hormones and neurotransmitters are sloshing around and completely transform your state of existence from one of total health and relaxation to one of total stress. The super scanner perfectly records every change and quickly prints out a recipe for a drug that will re-balance your system, with minimal side effects. While your state of stress and imbalance is clearly and dramatically grounded and reflected in your physiology, isn’t it a bit shortsighted to think of your problem solely or even primarily in those terms? If someone were to drop a cage on the tiger, your physiology would quickly and naturally move back to homeostasis without any need for a drug or any other physiological intervention. Your problem was primarily the presence of the tiger, not the changes in your brain that the presence of the tiger inspired. The solution–i.e. the appropriate intervention–to the problem was primarily social and behavioral, not physiological. In fact, the information provided by the super scanner, interesting as it might be, was completely irrelevant in terms of the practical solution to the problem.

Drug use and abuse changes what’s going on in the brain. Yes. Everything we do and everything that happens to us changes what goes on in the brain. Yes. Therefore, deviations from healthy, homeostatic brain and body states are best thought of as diseases of the brain? Not so fast Dr. Volkow. Studying objective brain changes is one of many perspectives that are worthy of consideration, focus, and scrutiny. Taken together with subjective, relational, behavioral, social, and cultural perspectives, we might yet arrive at a truly comprehensive, rational, integral approach to helping those seeking health and well-being.

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Back to school

My wife and I are getting settled here in Las Cruces, NM. She turns 35 today, in fact, and she’s loving her new job as assistant professor. I’ve had some trouble securing gainful employment myself and, aside from a tutoring gig that’s about to come to a close, I’ve been embracing my role as house-spouse and otherwise ruminating on the next steps in my professional and creative life. Next month I will begin (yet again!) life as a part-time graduate student in the Counseling and Guidance program at New Mexico State University. I spent fifteen years or so working as a mental health professional in bachelor’s-level positions (my master’s degree in East-West Psychology is non-clinical), and it’s been a full five years now since my last mental health job. Strangely, I’m not feeling at all nervous about going back to school. At 41, I’ve been around the block a few times, and if anything my confidence level is bordering on mild arrogance. That’s what I need to look out for, I think — the (erroneous) belief that I already know everything that’s worth knowing about counseling and mental health. I’ve become somewhat set in my ways, at least in terms of a general philosophical orientation, and I need to be sure I take in the perspectives of others with an open mind. It will be interesting to see to what degree students will be encouraged to think critically about the field, and likewise how much pressure there might be to accept the status quo as gospel.

I remember how surprised I was to discover how credulous my coworkers seemed to be (at my last job) when it came to accepting information from “the experts” in the field. For instance, I never met a single person who expressed a critical thought about how diagnostic criteria were developed for psychiatric manuals, or who questioned the validity or usefulness of the disease model of addiction. There were awkward moments, many of them, when I knew in my heart of hearts that the information being presented to patients was just plain wrong, or else it was being presented without regard to appropriate context. I’ve often wondered whether or not I’d be able to thrive in a mainstream graduate program, given some of my rather iconoclastic positions about the nature of well-being and mental health. I’m about to find out!

Hopefully, my experience of the program will inspire me to write and reflect more often. Despite my tendency to be an arrogant jackass, deep down I know I have everything to learn. Working face to face with human beings who are suffering tends to humble a would-be know-it-all pretty quickly. This will undoubtedly be a challenging and transformative couple of years as I move through the program toward my (second) master’s degree and at least one counseling license. I’m ready to rock and roll!

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Somatic Transformation

Mark Walsh of Integration Training tipped me off to this wonderfully lucid explanation of somatic transformation by Staci Haines of the Strozzi Institute. Haines describes three components of somatic transformation:

Somatic awareness: What are you noticing in your sensations and what do you feel in your body? Developing this awareness allows us to make contact with a store of information and intelligence that we normally have limited access to.

Somatic practices: We are what we practice. We become what we practice. And we’re always practicing. But is what you’re practicing aligned with who you want to be? Somatic practices train our nervous systems as well as provide opportunities for exploring meaning and developing insight. Our entire psychobiology is explored and developed as a form of intelligence.

Somatic opening: Being able to transform from one embodied shape to another that is more congruent and aligned with the things that you most care about. Shape is meant to imply that which is embodied in someone (i.e. people’s history and lived experience; their emotions and emotional range; their thinking and belief systems; the actions people take and don’t take). Learning and change involve a transformation of one’s entire shape. We can shift from a shape that has less choice, freedom and flexibility to one that’s more aligned with our deepest intentions and possibilities.

Embodiment is what makes the change sustainable, Haines explains, as it is that which is most deeply practiced and embodied in us is that will come forward in our daily lives. Thinking will only take us so far. The process of somatic transformation is one in which we deconstruct old patterns and then reshape our selves and our lives through somatic practices, always mindful of the social contexts which are embodied in each of us.

After listening to this fine discussion of somatic transformation, I just happened to stumble across these amazing videos of 86-year-old Johanna Quaas doing gymnastics at the 2012 Cottbus World Cup this past weekend. “I’ll have what she’s having!”

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The Embodiment of Freedom: (Part 6: Experiences of Bodymind Integrity)

[See parts 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 of the series]

The processes that work to shape people into alignment with societal agendas, that lead to experiences of bodymind dissociation, influence people’s lives only to the extent that human beings are, by nature, functionally malleable. That is to say, human beings, like all forms of life, will continually adapt to the givens of their environmental situation — which for people includes a sociocultural environment. In contrast to the technology of alienation, which takes advantage of this malleability to undermine people’s sensual authority, Johnson (1992) describes another way of integrating techniques, one that encourages people to develop and connect to their unique store of embodied wisdom. Johnson calls this alternative “the technology of authenticity”.

The many technologies of authenticity (including person-centered therapy, experiential focusing, and somatic education) are practical strategies that: (1) facilitate the recovery of an individual’s inherent self-sensing capacities (i.e. one’s sense of embodied authority), and (2) provide an environment where authentic expression of this newly expanded awareness is supported and encouraged. As we will see, the various practices engage this process of personal transformation from different perspectives, perspectives that prove to be complimentary in supporting a multidimensional, unified vision of growth, health and embodiment.

When a physiologist or a behavioral scientist views a human being, he or she sees an organism, a “body” that is subject to the same physical and chemical forces that affect all bodies, be they plants or planets. These objectively studied human bodies are also influenced by social and cultural factors in observable, somewhat predictable ways, and are endowed with particular testable and measurable cognitive capacities. The understandings gained from this objective study of humanity are not to be minimized — they are essential and profound. Yet, a human being can also be viewed from within, and while from an externalized, third-person point of view people are objective bodies, from an internalized, first-person vantage point they are subjective beings, what Thomas Hanna (1988) refers to as “somas.”

Soma, as Hanna explains, is a Greek word that means “living body”. The term is equated with neither the concept of body nor mind, but instead refers to the unbroken experience of ourselves as living, thinking, bodily beings. Whereas mind and body are traditionally conceived as things or distinct entities of some sort, the soma is conceived as a process. From Hanna (1970):

Soma is living; it is expanding and contracting, accommodating and assimilating, drawing in energy and expelling energy. Soma is pulsing, flowing, squeezing and relaxing (…), yearning, hoping, suffering, tensing, paling, cringing, doubting, despairing. (…) Somas are the kind of living, organic being which you are at this moment, in this place where you are.

From the traditional scientific viewpoint, people are observable, manipulable objects. Traditional doctors study people’s bodies; traditional psychologists study people’s minds. From the somatic viewpoint, people are more than just bodies understandable and approachable on a bio-physical level, and minds understandable and approachable on a psycho-social level. We are equally self-sensing, self-moving, self-aware, self-expressing, self-responsible subjects — we are somas. Somas who not only are shaped by their relations with the environment and other people in observable ways, but who also profoundly affect their own state of functioning through subjective beliefs, expectations, and through the power of their own self-awareness.

An inquiry into human experience that recognizes the whole person must engage and utilize both the I-it mode of knowing, characteristic of the traditional medical and psychological approaches, as well as people’s capacity to know and live situations through directly felt embodiment. The scientific method can be used to explore and understand the objective side of the coin. The somatic/experiential perspective — the foundations of which will be laid out in the following sections — is an attempt to get underneath that coin, to stand it on its edge and view it from a balanced, integrated point of view.

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Elliott Dacher on Integral Health

I’m still savoring Elliot Dacher‘s excellent new book, Aware, Awake, Alive. Obviously, I’m interested in the whole notion of Integral Health in general, and Dacher has perhaps done more than anyone to articulate just what an integral vision of health means, distinguishing an integral approach from both conventional medicine and complimentary/alternative (CAM) approaches. Here’s how Dacher puts it in Aware Awake Alive:

The word “integral” means unitary or one. It refers to a far-reaching health and well-being that addresses all of the important aspects of our lives. There are four components of an integral health. They correspond to the four central aspects of our life. The first two are highly personal — our physical and mental well-being. The second two relate to our interaction with others — our interpersonal relationships and our relationship to the larger culture and planetary community. […] A concern for each of these [interconnected] aspects of life is essential if we are to resist and recover from disease, optimize well-being and reach towards our full human potential.

Dacher points out that conventional medical science does indeed acknowledge the fact — supported by both research and common sense — that multiple factors impact our health. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard folks who embrace some vision of holistic health crow on about how modern medicine is completely ignorant of the well-established connections between physical, psychological and cultural aspects of health and illness. One need only talk to the medical professionals in one’s local area to be disabused of this simplistic notion. Certainly in my experience at least, the vast majority of healthcare professionals are quite aware of the complexities involved in maintaining health and treating illness. The problem, as Dacher describes it, is not the lack of information supporting a multidimensional view of health, but rather “that our singular focus on biology keeps us from implementing this knowledge.”

The main point that Dacher stresses again and again in the book, and the main thing that distinguishes an integral approach to health from both conventional and CAM approaches, is that inner development is both the basis for and the driving force toward the attainment of integral health. Most CAM approaches promote alternative remedies, treatments and therapies, which is fine as far as it diversifies and optimizes the toolkit that healthcare practitioners have at their disposal. However, what characterizes a truly integral approach is:

the turn inward and reliance on our inner capacities, rather than on remedies and therapies. The reliance is on ourselves rather than on practitioners. So [the important distinction is] between a variation on biological medicine, which merely increases our medical tool kit, and an authentic vision of integral health that results from inner development.

This vision of an integral health resulting from a focus on inner development is precisely what is described in detail in both Aware, Alive, Awake and in Dacher’s previous book, Integral Health. I highly recommend both of these books. Perhaps some day soon I’ll actually finish reading Aware, Alive, Awake in its entirety so that I can write a proper review!

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Elliot Dacher on the process of entanglement with mental activity

I’m savoring an excellent book right now: Aware, Awake, Alive by Elliot Dacher. Dacher’s previous book, Integral Health, outlines and describes one of the main models of Integral Health that has inspired my work on this site. I will do a proper review of Aware, Awake, Alive once I’ve had time to read and process it all. For now I’d just like to share my enthusiasm for the book, and to post a snippet for discussion.

I’ve read many, many books about mindfulness and meditation practices, but Dacher has a way of framing and explaining things that I find to be particularly lucid and helpful. Here’s how he explains the process of becoming entangled with mental activity:

As soon as we are enmeshed in mental activity we further elaborate it by superimposing upon it old perspectives and stories stored in memory. In this way we turn simple, unadorned, and brief mental movements into complex mental events which are largely imaginary, and more old than new. What was once a momentary neurological blip appears to assume a life of its own.

I like how Dacher uses the term “mental movement” to talk generally about all aspects of automatic mental activity (thoughts, feelings, mental images, and sensory impressions). This concept fits very nicely with the general theory of Somatics that Thomas Hanna has articulated in the context of his work in neuromuscular re-education (I’ve been long interested in how somatics, psychology, and spirituality can be integrated in a single model of personal transformation). Dacher goes on to explain how enmeshment in mental activity continues to hijack our attention and cloud our minds:

Once we elaborate a mental movement we then add feelings and emotions […]. That leads to a proliferation of further mental activity which includes fear, anxiety, anger, desire, aversion, and so on. Then, we act out this personalized and imaginary story in the outer world through our speech and actions. A small mental blip, which would naturally come and go, becomes our life, and the life that is actually happening in the moment is lost.

Dacher offers several perspectives and practices that help us to undermine this habit of mental entanglement, and more generally he articulates a vision of optimal health and human flourishing that, while based in ancient wisdom teachings, is also framed in terms that make perfect sense in the context of modern healthcare. For whatever reason, I find Dacher’s vision to be particularly powerful and compelling as I continue to engage with various integral health practices. I’ll dive into all this in much more detail once I finish the book!

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Dr. Charles T. Tart on defining “Meditation”

Dr. Charles T. Tart is one of the founders of Transpersonal Psychology, and was also one of my professors at the California Institute of Integral Studies. I love the way Dr. Tart writes (and talks) – always careful to avoid jargon and to define his terms plainly and clearly. In this recent blog post Dr. Tart invites us to consider what we mean by the term “meditation”, a term that can mean quite different things in different spiritual traditions. Like Dr. Tart, I have gone on many a “semantic crusade” over the years, especially when it comes to the realm of “spirituality”. You see, I can’t even use that word without putting quotes around it! I strongly prefer the term “transpersonal” (as I’ve mentioned before) when talking about the depths of human consciousness, but unfortunately I usually find myself falling back into the vagueness of “spirituality” in order to find common ground for dialogue. Dr. Tart concedes that perfectly clear definitions of subtle inner experiences may be ultimately elusive, but he also points out that the clearest possible terms can be quite helpful as we experiment with how to direct our inner resources:

The old Zen saying, “The finger pointing at the moon is not the Moon,” is so true! But the finger pointing at the moon may be helpful. If the moon is in the west and we’re looking toward the east, the finger pointing toward the west may get us to turn around, and that certainly increases our chances of seeing the moon. Or we may stare at the finger……

Dr. Tart often uses the term “controlled attention practices” to describe various meditative techniques. If we ever hope to articulate our first-person, phenomenological, inner realities in ways that transcend our cultural and individual idiosyncrasies, we will need to get clear on our terms, and Dr. Tart has done as much as anyone in this regard. Check out the links below for more of Dr. Tart’s perspective on these matters:

That Word “Meditation:” What Does it Mean?
“Mindfulness 101” with Charles Tart

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Alan Watts: Man and Nature [Video]

I love discovering a “new” vintage Alan Watts video on the internet. The Eastern Wisdom and Modern Life series was produced by KQED San Francisco and aired sometime around 1960. Watts is about 45 years old here — truly in the prime of his life and career. Although this video was shot over 50 years ago, I’m struck with how important and relevant Watts’s core insights and recommendations are to the “modern life” of today.

In the following two-part video, Watts talks about the importance of transforming our attitude toward the natural environment, the art of getting out of one’s own way, and the Taoist concept of wu-wei (literally, non-doing or non-striving). He also discusses the art of the “controlled accident” and how a profound trust in one’s own nature can transform our lives. Enjoy!