Science of the SpiritS


Roses

Not just a death, a system failure

hospital bed
© Abbas/Magnum Photos
On the day before my mother died, she gave my father a list of demands. He wrote them on the back of an envelope and showed them to me as he left the intensive care unit. There, in his clear block handwriting, it read:

CREAM

WHISKEY

HEROIN

My mother was not herself. And yet, she was completely herself. When Mom's liver stopped working, her brain, which we had always considered loopy, grew addled. But she was still funny. She hallucinated monkeys on unicycles circling her bed. She learned that Michael Jackson had died, "probably from all that plastic surgery," she said. She remembered Sarah Palin, and thought she was a twit.

Mom died, at 67, in 2009, but lately I've been reflecting on her last days. I'm applying to medical school, and her story keeps coming up in my essays and interviews. Her death spurred me to apply, partly because it gave me courage — nothing in med school could be worse than watching the way my mother died. Her death was so grisly that I vowed to help change the way people die in America.

Mom had a chronic liver condition, an autoimmune disease that had been under control for years but suddenly worsened. After her liver failed, her kidneys followed, then her lungs. After four months in the I.C.U. she was on 24-hour dialysis, with a breathing tube down her throat and a feeding tube up her nose. She hated all the tubes; her hands were tied to the bed so she couldn't pull them out.

She needed a liver transplant, but was too sick to survive one. Then a fungal infection invaded her lungs, dodged the antibiotics and spread through her body. On a Friday afternoon in August, our family met with the doctors. If we left Mom on life support, the fungus would eat her alive, putrefying her innards, turning her fingers black. It would be a cruel death, they said.

It's already been a cruel death, I thought.

People 2

'Understanding' in close relationships doesn't necessarily produce empathetic responses

empathy, comforting others
Researchers studying empathy in relationships find that in the absence of caring, understanding alone doesn't cut it when stressful situations arise

So you had a terrible day at work. Or the bills are piling up and cash is in short supply. Impending visit from the in-laws, perhaps?

When stress sets in, many of us turn to a partner to help us manage by being a sounding board or shoulder to cry on. Your odds of actually feeling better are much improved if they're both those things.

New research by psychologists at UC Santa Barbara reveals that simply understanding your partner's suffering isn't sufficient to be helpful in a stressful situation; you've got to actually care that they're suffering in the first place.

The findings, published in the journal Psychological Science, provide the first evidence that cognitive and affective forms of empathy work together to facilitate responsive behavior.

Oscar

Narcissism epidemic: The societal shift from commitment to the collective to a focus on the individual

narcissism
© Shutterstock
The subject of narcissism has intrigued people for centuries, but social scientists now claim that it has become a modern "epidemic". So what is it, what has led to its increase, and is there anything we can do about it?

In the beginning

The term narcissism originated more than 2,000 years ago, when Ovid wrote the legend of Narcissus. He tells the story of a beautiful Greek hunter who, one day, happens to see his reflection in a pool of water and falls in love with it. He becomes obsessed with its beauty, and is unable to leave his reflected image until he dies. After his death, the flower narcissus grew where he lay.

The concept of narcissism was popularised by the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud through his work on the ego and its relationship to the outside world; this work became the starting point for many others developing theories on narcissism.

So when does it become a problem?

Narcissism lies on a continuum from healthy to pathological. Healthy narcissism is part of normal human functioning. It can represent healthy self-love and confidence that is based on real achievement, the ability to overcome setbacks and derive the support needed from social ties.

But narcissism becomes a problem when the individual becomes preoccupied with the self, needing excessive admiration and approval from others, while showing disregard for other people's sensitivities. If the narcissist does not receive the attention desired, substance abuse and major depressive disorder can develop.

Comment: Are we more narcissistic than ever before? The answer is yes!


Better Earth

6 evidence-based ways drumming heals body, mind and soul; a fundamental form of human expression

drum healing
From slowing the decline in fatal brain disease, to generating a sense of oneness with one another and the universe, drumming's physical and spiritual health benefits may be as old as time itself.

Drumming is as fundamental a form of human expression as speaking, and likely emerged long before humans even developed the capability of using the lips, tongue and vocal organs as instruments of communication.

To understand the transformative power of drumming you really must experience it, which is something I have had the great pleasure of doing now for twenty years. The below video is one of the circles I helped organize in Naples Florida back in 2008, which may give you a taste of how spontaneous and immensely creative a thing it is (I'm the long haired 'hippie' with the gray tank top drumming like a primate in the background).

Book 2

The disease of living too fast: 'Americanitis'

Busy
How a 19th-century nervous condition shaped the way modern Americans think about health and happiness

In the decades after the Civil War, a lot of things were changing in the (re-)United States. The late 19th century and early 20th saw a huge increase in the country's population (nearly 200 percent between 1860 and 1910) mostly due to immigration, and that population was becoming ever more urban as people moved to cities to seek their fortunes—including women, more of whom were getting college educations and jobs outside the home. Cars and planes were introduced to the public; telephones and telegraphs proliferated. Modern society was full of new wonders—or, seen differently, new things to be anxious about.

In his 1871 book Wear and Tear, or Hints for the Overworked, the physician S. Weir Mitchell fretted: "Have we lived too fast?"

Comment: The dis-ease of being busy
What happened to a world in which we can sit with the people we love so much and have slow conversations about the state of our heart and soul, conversations that slowly unfold, conversations with pregnant pauses and silences that we are in no rush to fill?

How did we create a world in which we have more and more and more to do with less time for leisure, less time for reflection, less time for community, less time to just... be?

Somewhere we read
, "The unexamined life is not worth living... for a human." How are we supposed to live, to examine, to be, to become, to be fully human when we are so busy?

This disease of being "busy" (and let's call it what it is, the dis-ease of being busy, when we are never at ease) is spiritually destructive to our health and wellbeing. It saps our ability to be fully present with those we love the most in our families, and keeps us from forming the kind of community that we all so desperately crave.

Since the 1950s, we have had so many new technological innovations that we thought (or were promised) would make our lives easier, faster, simpler. Yet, we have no more "free" or leisurely time today than we did decades ago.



Candle

Clearing trauma from the body with breathwork

breathwork
This is the first time. I'm in a geodesic dome (a partial spherical structure based on a network of great circles) in the backyard of a vintage store in Williamsburg, Brooklyn aptly named Narnia. I close my eyes gently, and follow directions.

Guided by a presence, a voice, that seems omniscient in the moment, I breathe all of the things I dare not speak about into a visceral hurricane at the base of my being.

The echoes of my belly, the hollows and molecules of my sacral space, become flooded with feeling. I feel deeply all of the unsaid words and best-left-lost experiences rising with the flow of inhale, inhale, exhale. Sacral, heart, exhale.

Moving the mass in harmony with breath. A dance between fear and surrender, a simple act taking over all action and leaving me with a simple, tingling, letting go.

Comment: Learn more about the amazing benefits of diaphragmatic breathing exercises.
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Hearts

Antidote to loneliness is not a numbers game but the feeling of closeness

loneliness
I'm somebody who's struggled with feelings of loneliness my whole life. It's a big part of why I decided to become a relationship coach. I wanted to understand why some of my relationships felt more substantial than others. I wanted to understand why sometimes I relished being alone, yet other times being alone evoked feelings of profound sadness.

The question I wanted to answer was this: what makes some relationships feel better than others? It was a mystery I was determined to figure out.

I have always been somebody who constantly alternated between desiring to be alone, which I now know is classic introvert behavior, and desiring to be with others. The thing was, I only wanted to be with others in a very particular way. I didn't want to chit-chat, mingle, or even party. I wanted to feel warmth radiating between me and the other person. I wanted to feel safe and comfortable. I wanted to feel close.

If my relationship with someone didn't have that element of closeness, it tended to make me feel more isolated than just being alone. For this reason, I found most of the advice out there about how to overcome loneliness profoundly unhelpful. "Put yourself out there more!" the experts exclaimed. "Relationships are a numbers game... get enough acquaintances and you'll eventually find good friendships." That sounded reasonable enough. But it felt... exhausting.

I simply didn't buy the idea that the best route out of loneliness is to play a numbers game. Most of us already have people in our lives with whom we feel that spark of connection, we just don't know how to properly fan the flames. We don't know how to move from casually interacting with someone to becoming close.

Comment: The unpleasant feelings of loneliness are subjective; researchers have found loneliness is not about the amount of time one spends with other people or alone. It is related more to quality of relationships, rather than quantity.


Christmas Tree

The special intelligence of plants

plant
"Even atoms possess a certain measure of intelligence." ~ Thomas Edison

"To begin to understand the gorgeous fever that is consciousness, we must try to understand the senses and what they can tell us about the ravishing world we have the privilege to inhabit." ~ Diane Ackerman

Michal Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma, and The Botany of Desire, has pointed out that for the longest time, even mentioning that plants could be intelligent was a quick way to being labeled a 'whacko,' but it turns out plants can learn, communicate, and even feel. They can also see, smell, and remember. This is definitely not news the biotechnology industry wants highlighted.

Do Plants Have 'Brains'?

In an emerging field called plant neurobiology, a bit of a misnomer since plants don't have neurons or brains, we learn that people who play music for their plants or understand that our actions can affect a plant's nutrition, for example, are not 'whackos' at all.

Comment: For more on plant intelligence see:


People 2

New study links wisdom to meditation

meditation
A new study has found an association between meditation and wisdom.

Researchers with the University of Chicago's Department of Psychology have found that meditation, and physical practices such as ballet, might lead to increased wisdom. The study, "The Relationship between Mental and Somatic Practices and Wisdom," was published in PLOS ONE.

The researchers gave 298 participants a survey that asked about their experiences practicing meditation, the Alexander Technique (a method for improving posture, balance, coordination, and movement), the Feldenkrais Method (a form of somatic education that seeks to improve movement and physical function, reduce pain, and increase self-awareness), and classical ballet. The participants also answered psychological exams related to various elements of wisdom, such as empathy and anxiety.

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Light Saber

Acting responsibly is a power that opens possibilities in our lives

responsibility
"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves." — William Shakespeare
We all know someone who chronically avoids responsibility. Things just happen to them — nothing they did contributed to their circumstances. They were late because there was traffic, not because they didn't leave earlier. They didn't drop the ball at work; nobody else stepped up either. Someone "just stopped talking" to them; it has nothing to do with them being a bad friend.

These people have an external locus of control, meaning they don't feel they can influence the environmental factors that affect their lives. It's just simply luck. Their lives are determined by fate.

In reality, our locus of control is somewhere in between internal and external. We can't control everything and it's an exercise in futility to try. But we aren't helpless and our actions actually carry a considerable amount of weight. In fact taking responsibility — keeping our promises, fulfilling our duties, and owning the decisions we make — opens up a wide array of possibilities in our lives. Responsibility is power, so it's a wonder why anyone would avoid it.

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