How To Maintain a Lean Body

We deal with pretty much every aspect of coaching as we have found that it is extremely difficult to separate them into individual parts. This is because the different parts of our lives such as our personal, social and work lives all intermingle and impact on each other and a big topic for us is how to live a healthy life with the right nutrition. There are so many different diets out there and I have a problem with the word diet as it is implies a short period of time, people don't usually stay with a diet for the rest of their lives so we promote changing your lifestyle to your advantage and work long term for your benefit.

The low carb way of eating has had mixed press and a lot of confusion as to what it is all about and I wanted to explain it from my perspective here and hopefully highlight why it can be a great way to eat everyday. It is not for everyone and it may be worth you seeing a nutritionist to get advice about your specific needs. However adapting your lifestyle to include this nutritional plan is a great way to lose excess fat and to maintain the body that you want, IF you are prepared to make the changes necessary for it to work. There are so many delicious and healthy meals that you can make with our guide and then you can adapt and change them to keep variety in your life.One of the main reasons why people get concerned about low carb diet is that they worry whether our bodies can function without adequate amount of carbs (glucose).

The term "adequate" is very subjective and what's considered adequate for some may seem meager to others. If you're used to eating carb dense foods like cereal, bread, pasta, rice, and other grain foods...going a day without any of these foods may seem unthinkable!

Believe it our not, before grains (and the advent of agriculture) were introduced into our evolutionary diet, it's quite likely that we were all "low-carbers!" and that most of our foods came from animal meat, fish and even insects. Carb rich foods like fruits and vegetables, which are seasonal, were probably hard to come by and even if they did, there probably weren't enough food available to keep them nourished for long periods of time.

Although I'm speaking about our hunter and gatherer ancestors which doesn't seem applicable to our modern society, it's a lot more relevant than you might think considering that our bodies internal mechanisms like endocrine (hormones) systems and digestive systems haven't changed much at all since our hunter and gatherer ancestors.

So evolutionary speaking, our bodies (most likely) evolved to handle the kinds of foods available during those times, which were mostly animal meat, high in protein and fats and some sparingly available vegetation which made up for modest amounts of carbohydrates. It's also likely that food was hard to come by and that our ancestors likely went without food for prolonged periods of time. This would indicate that their bodies were probably in a state of ketosis more often then not.

Ketosis is a state where your body uses stored fat instead of glucose for energy. It can happen during periods of famine where lack of food intake results in a drop in blood glucose levels, or if you're on an extremely low carbohydrate diet. Either way, when the glucose level in your body drops below a certain level your body automatically shifts the metabolic pathway to produce ketones from fat which are used to fuel your body.

Ketone is produced as a by-product when fat is converted to energy and is a perfectly good fuel source that your body and brain can utilize.

Keep in mind that your body's functions are based on gene expression. So, if you're used to eating a high carb diet, you've been signaling genes that express metabolic pathways to burn glucose/sugar as your primary fuel source. However, just as easily you can shift your metabolic pathway to burn fat as your primary fuel source by signaling the correct genes through diet.

As you start eating a diet lower in carbs and higher in protein and fat, you start signaling genes to up-regulate your fat metabolism and ketone production while down regulating your sugar metabolism. This can take anywhere from 3 weeks or longer depending on your situation, but once you're "fat adapted" your body and brain starts to function very well on this new energy pathway.

In fact your brain prefers ketones over glucose especially in state of ketosis.

They even did a study where they found that people with mild cognitive impairment improved their memory on a ketogenic diet as supposed to a typical diet high in carbs.(1)

Also, it's important to note that ketogenic diet and low carb diet are not the same. It's often grouped in as the same but, ketosis only occurs when you're carb intake dips below 15 - 20 grams of carbs a day. Most people that are on a low carb diet keep their carb intake between 50 - 100 grams a day, which keeps you out of ketosis, but still shifts your metabolic demands from sugar burning to fat burning, essentially making fat your primary source of energy.

If you follow our Lean Body Program you will learn that 100 grams a day of carbs is what I call the "sweet spot". I find that it's enough to get all the nutrients available from nutrient dense vegetables (even some fruits) while keeping your carb intake low enough to keep you an efficient fat burner as supposed to reverting back to being a sugar burner.

So here are 6 key points to keep in mind when you're on a low carb diet:

(1) Ketosis is a normal shift in your metabolic pathway to burn fat as your primary source of fuel when glucose in your body is low.

(2) Low carb diet is not the same as ketogenic diet.

(3) Your brain does completely fine on a low carb diet, and does quite well on a ketogenic diet as well, since it prefers ketones as fuel in absence of glucose.

(4) If you're switching to a low carb diet, give yourself at least 3 weeks of feeling sluggish while your body adapts to becoming "fat adapted".

(5) My recommendation is to keep your carb intake to about 100 grams a day and keep our carb intake mainly from vegetables.

(6) If you look at our ancestral/anthropological history along with the various studies done on ketosis, it's strongly evident that a low carb diet is not only safe, but has evolutionary significant health benefits...not to mention it's one of the most effective ways to naturally burn body fat!

For more details on our Lean Body program send me an email at:

simon@humancognizance.com

In the meantime stay fit and stay healthy

Simon

Professional Coaching is about Dialogue

Professional Coaching is about Dialogue

“Measurable empty space and intense SILENCE is what truly defines masterful coaching”

Most discussions we all engage in show a lack of poor listening skills. Unlike the consultant or trainer who is paid to have and sell if not impose productive answers, a coach needs to acquire advanced listening skills to professionally accompany individual and collective client dialogue so as to permit the spontaneous emergence of the client's own solutions.

Dialogue does not have any objective other than to share or facilitate the emergence of new shared meaning. Consequently, a dialogue between people permits the progressive emergence of a new meaning of which the content is generally unpredictable.

To be productive, a dialogue must be a process to share meaning without any predefined objective as to the specific content of its production. This free and respectful sharing process permits the spontaneous, sometimes surprising and relatively shared elaboration or emergence of new points of view and original shared meaning, unexpected directions or solutions.

Dialogue with a coach

• When clients engage in the coaching process, the nature of the conversation is relatively different. The client talks while the coach attentively listens, first to give expanding space for client expression and whenever possible, to validate the meaning conveyed by the client.

• The sheer power unleashed in the coaching dialogue will most likely cause the coach and the client to consider several serious questions, such as: What constitutes success in this dialogue? Who, specifically, is my client? How should confidential issues be treated? Which topics fall outside the purview of coaching, and how do those affecting work performance get recognized? In the face of these ethical conundrums, the coach may need to align dialogue in a direction punctuated by validated objectives set by the "client"/HR. The coach must also be brave enough to provide enough space and time for the client to move forward - often by pausing and confronting some taboo topic, hitherto deliberately ignored. The dialogue will always help the client pursue their selected objectives.

• The most robust coaching relies on broadly informed dialogue from others. Quite a lot of work may have to be undertaken in the collection, validation, and analysis of information before coaching of the client can begin. The kind of information that is assimilated might include current facts about the political environment in which the executive is working.

• Impressions held by colleagues, associates, and direct reports can provide vital indications about the executive's personal interaction. Sometimes the only alternative is to begin with an executive's own anecdotal information, but coaching in a vacuum is a dangerous game.

The Corporate bottom line: By incorporating the ethos of the organization within the coaching dialogue, it becomes possible to relate an individual's behavior to purposeful, productive organisational change.

The primary role of a coach consists of leaving more than enough space and time for the client to think, feel, formulate ideas, elaborate or discover a complete expression of his or her concerns. Respectful and attentive listening by coaches provides a receptacle for their clients to gradually elaborate or evolve the meaning they carry and need to unfold.

The meaning contained in the dialogue is developed by the coachee. Invariably this transforms and evolves and can reach a very different result from the ones that were first expected.

Facing attentive and silent coaches, clients give form or formulate meaning through verbalisation

• In this gradual process, client meaning gradually appears and slowly, again and again evolves and remodels itself.

• As long as necessary, the coach should neither answer nor intervene within client dialogue or conversation, but rather keep quiet so as to leave the latter with a large receptacle to unload, model and remodel volunteered personal thoughts, feelings and motivations. This receptacle exists in the form of an attentive welcoming vacuum or silence. Within this receptacle will progressively emerge the essential form and practical content clients wish to give their concerns.

• Only later and if needed, by subtly using other carefully chosen coaching techniques should coaches help their clients move forward another step. These questioning techniques should serve the complementary purpose of providing clients opportunities to explore and confront themselves with questions and growth options.

• Questions are chosen for the sole purpose to help clients reframe themselves to further explore or develop their own meaning or purpose. Through questions and other reformulating and communication techniques, a coach helps clients uncover or discover for themselves what they hold as their deepest beliefs, attitudes, motivations and ambitions.

• To help clients meander on their own personal search for meaning, a coach may also sparingly participate in the elaboration of client dialogue, but never by giving any importance to his or her own personal contributions. These should only be volunteered at the sole service of each client‘s self-defined progress.

The Search and Development Process - The Discovery First Stage

• This S & D function is to facilitate emerging client meaning. Note; there can never be a conscious or unconscious attempt by a coach to influence or direct the dialogue. Any attempt to redirect the dialogue at this early discovery stage would risk transforming the client‘s personal dialogue into a discussion with the coach.

• As the client searches for meaning and resolution they may at times move into realms that are completely outside their coach‘s areas of competency. It doesn't matter though -for as long as the client is reaching their objectives the coach is fulfilling their role.

Client dialogue facilitates the process of re-centering or realignment

• This is how coaching clients gradually develop conscience and awareness and tune into their senses as to where they are really at. They discover deeper aspirations and motivations. As they deploy or unfold the accompanied personal dialogue, they discover and implement a greater capacity to discern, a keener intuition. Little by little as they discover themselves they; develop a greater competency to listen and understand others; are more able to engage in discussion on themselves; create a more comprehensive vision of their own potential and a more powerful motivation to act. In short, through their accompanied dialogue, coaching clients gradually operate their own transformation and deploy their own development.

Summary:

1. Any client transformation will almost naturally carry consequences in all the facets of their personal and professional lives.

2. The real expertise in masterful coaching is the coach‘s professional capacity to accompany the development of the individual through the unfolding process of their own personal dialogue.

3. Being totally present both to the coaching process and to one‘s own senses and intuitions can take years of focused experience and training. Indeed, for many coaching practitioners, developing the deep attentive presence and listening stance of masterful coaching is like learning how to meditate. And, most coaches do not make the journey.

4. Learning attentive presence rests on daily, sustained training. This skill can be developed with the same voluntary approach as when one physically exercises. Developing attentive presence is not learning how to use an occasional technique. It is about changing the way one is built, modifying the equilibrium of the way one is.

"Acquiring attentive presence cannot be improvised. One needs practice and discipline."

How To Kickstart Your Dreams!!

This will make some people angry as hell, but it's time to debunk the myth of 'Time Management' while sharing the real secret of getting things done.

Let's face it, many so called "gurus" tell us to 'manage time better' or to become 'ruthless with time' if we want to achieve their level of success.

What rubbish!

You cannot manage time itself. It continues along happily doing its thing, whatever you do.

I've read countless systems on 'time management' and the majority take so long to implement and keep track of, you get even less done than you did before! If it's impossible to manage time then manage your actions instead.

This is the key to launching new projects, completing existing ones and to at least doubling your current output without having to do any more work.

Self-improvement celebrity, Tony Robbins, said "Action is destiny." He's spot on. If you start managing your actions, the impact on what you get done will amaze you and you'll accomplish your goals and dreams.

*** Your 5 Simple Steps To Action Management ***

1. Write down a master list of actions you need to do which directly lead you towards your goals.

Tip - I suggest having at least 3-6 items on your daily action list. Write this up the day before you use it. Depending on how many of these you complete determines whether you need to add more items to the list or whether you need to break the items down into smaller chunks instead.

2. Set aside between 1 and 5 'Prime Action Hours' every day where you will do nothing except the most important activities. Refer to your master list and immediately cross each item out once it's done.

Tip - During your prime action hours you do NOT: take phone calls, check your email, break for meetings, chat with fellow office workers or friends or read the mail. You need to get current outside distractions to support your new routine. If you work from home get agreement from your family to only interrupt you in an emergency during your prime action hours.

3. Get Yourself a Timer and set it to 50 or 55 minutes. You work without distractions for this long during each prime action hour.

Tip - This gives you more efficiency by making you more accountable for what you do in each prime action hour. It also lets you know when to take an important quick break.

4. Carry a pen and paper or a voice recorder with you during your breaks between any prime action hours.

Tip - During the breaks you'll find new ideas, thoughts and strategies will surface in your mind. The brain often makes new connections as you relax after a very focused session. Make sure you jot them down to record them. You'll find them invaluable. Don't neglect to do this, an unrecorded idea is usually lost forever.

5. Set yourself a weekly target. When you reach it, reward yourself how you like. You don't need to do any more prime action hours for the rest of the week. Revise your weekly income target upwards at least every 90 days.

Tip - Having a weekly target gives your prime action hours a specific goal to achieve. Purpose is the most important ingredient when it comes to action.

For some people it's realistic to do a maximum of five prime action hours each day without impacting too much on the rest of the day. Some people will only manage one prime action hour each day. That's okay. Over a year this will still amount to an enormous difference in you achieving your dreams.

Don't make the mistake of dismissing or forgetting what you just read There's real power in this quick and easy 5 step action management system.

In fact I urge you to start right now. Get out a piece of paper and write down your master list for tomorrow. It doesn't matter if you can only manage one prime action hour to start with. You can increase the number as you create more focus for yourself.

Original article from Cliff @ Street Hypnosis

A Wandering Mind is an Unhappy One

We spend billions of dollars each year looking for happiness, hoping it might be bought, consumed, found, or flown to. Other, more contemplative cultures and traditions assure us that this is a waste of time (not to mention money). ‘Be present’ they urge. Live in the moment, and there you’ll find true contentment.

Sure enough, our most fulfilling experiences are typically those that engage us body and mind, and are unsullied by worry or regret. In these cases, a relationship between focus and happiness is easy to spot. But does this relationship hold in general, even for simple, everyday activities? Is a focused mind a happy mind? Harvard psychologists Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert decided to find out.

In a recent study published in Science, Killingsworth and Gilbert discovered that an unnervingly large fraction of our thoughts - almost half - are not related to what we’re doing. Surprisingly, we tended to be elsewhere even for casual and presumably enjoyable activities, like watching TV or having a conversation. While you might hope all this mental wandering is taking us to happier places, the data say otherwise. Just like the wise traditions teach, we’re happiest when thought and action are aligned, even if they’re only aligned to wash dishes.

The ingredients of simple, everyday happiness are tough to study in the lab, and aren’t easily measured with a standard experimental battery of forced choices, eye-tracking, and questionnaires. Day to day happiness is simply too fleeting. To really study it’s causes, you need to catch people in the act of feeling good or feeling bad in real-world settings.

To do this, the researchers used a somewhat unconventional, but powerful, technique known as experience sampling. The idea behind it is simple. Interrupt people at unpredictable intervals and ask them what they’re doing, and what’s on their minds. If you do this many times a day for many days, you can start to assemble a kind of quantitative existential portrait of someone. Do this for many people, and you can find larger patterns and tendencies in human thought and behavior, allowing you to correlate moments of happiness with particular kinds of thought and action.

To sample our inner lives, the team developed an iPhone app that periodically surveyed people’s thoughts and activities. At random times throughout the day, a participant’s iPhone would chime, and present him with a brief questionnaire that asked how happy he was (on a scale from 1-100), what he was doing, and if he was thinking about what he was doing. If subjects were indeed thinking of something else, they reported whether that something else was pleasant, neutral, or unpleasant. Responses to the questions were standardized, which allowed them to be neatly summarized in a database that tracked the collective moods, actions, and musings of about 5000 total participants (a subset of 2250 people was used in the present study).

In addition to awakening us to just how much our minds wander, the study clearly showed that we’re happiest when thinking about what we’re doing. Although imagining pleasant alternatives was naturally preferable to imagining unpleasant ones, the happiest scenario was to not be imagining at all. A person who is ironing a shirt and thinking about ironing is happier than a person who is ironing and thinking about a sunny getaway.

What about the kinds of activities we do, though? Surely, the hard-partiers and world travelers among us are happier than the quiet ones who stay at home and tuck in early? Not necessarily. According to the data from the Harvard group’s study, the particular way you spend your day doesn’t tell much about how happy you are. Mental presence - the matching of thought to action - is a much better predictor of happiness.

The happy upshot of this study is that it suggests a wonderfully simple prescription for greater happiness: think about what you’re doing. But be warned that like any prescription, following it is very different from just knowing it’s good for you. In addition to the usual difficulties of breaking bad or unhelpful habits, your brain may also be wired to work against your attempts stay present.

Recent fMRI scanning studies show that even when we’re quietly at rest and following instructions to think of nothing in particular, our brains settle into a conspicuous pattern of activity that corresponds to mind-wandering. This signature ‘resting’ activity is coordinated across several widespread brain areas, and is argued by many to be evidence of a brain network that is active by default. Under this view our brains climb out of the default state when we’re bombarded with input, or facing a challenging task, but tend to slide back into it once things quiet down.

Why are our brains so intent on tuning out? One possibility is that they’re calibrated for a target level of arousal. If a task is dull and can basically be done on autopilot, the brain conjures up its own exciting alternatives and sends us off and wandering. This view is somewhat at odds with the Killingsworth and Gilbert’s findings though, since subjects wandered even on ‘engaging’ activities. Another, more speculative possibility is that wandering corresponds to some important mental housekeeping or regulatory process that we’re not conscious of. Perhaps while we check out, disparate bits of memory and experience are stitched together into a coherent narrative – our sense of self.

Of course, it’s also possible that wandering isn’t really ‘for’ anything, but rather just a byproduct of a brain in a world that doesn’t punish the occasional (or even frequent) flight of fancy. Regardless of what prompts our brains to settle into the default mode, its tendency to do so may be the kiss of death for happiness. As the authors of the paper elegantly summarize their work: “a human mind is a wandering mind, and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind.”

On the plus side, a mind can be trained to wander less. With regular and dedicated meditation practice, you can certainly become much more present, mindful, and content. But you’d better be ready to work. The most dramatic benefits only really accrue for individuals, often monks, who have clocked many thousands of hours practicing the necessary skills (it’s not called the default state for nothing).

The next steps in this work will be fascinating to see, and we can certainly expect to see more results from the large data set collected by Killingsworth and Gilbert. It will be interesting to know, for example, how much people vary in their tendency to wander, and whether differences in wandering are associated with psychiatric ailments. If so, we may be able to tailor therapeutic interventions for people prone to certain cognitive styles that put them at risk for depression, anxiety, or other disorders.

In addition to the translational potential of this work, it will also be exciting to understand the brain networks responsible for wandering, and whether there are trigger events that send the mind into the wandering or focused state. Though wandering may be bad for happiness, it is still fascinating to wonder why we do it.

Original article taken from Scientific American – Mind & Brain

ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)

Jason Castro is a postdoctoral fellow in the Center for Neuroscience at the University of Pittsburgh. He studies synaptic processing and plasticity in the auditory system.

We spend billions of dollars each year looking for happiness, hoping it might be bought, consumed, found, or flown to. Other, more contemplative cultures and traditions assure us that this is a waste of time (not to mention money). ‘Be present’ they urge. Live in the moment, and there you’ll find true contentment.

Sure enough, our most fulfilling experiences are typically those that engage us body and mind, and are unsullied by worry or regret. In these cases, a relationship between focus and happiness is easy to spot. But does this relationship hold in general, even for simple, everyday activities? Is a focused mind a happy mind? Harvard psychologists Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert decided to find out.

In a recent study published in Science, Killingsworth and Gilbert discovered that an unnervingly large fraction of our thoughts - almost half - are not related to what we’re doing. Surprisingly, we tended to be elsewhere even for casual and presumably enjoyable activities, like watching TV or having a conversation. While you might hope all this mental wandering is taking us to happier places, the data say otherwise. Just like the wise traditions teach, we’re happiest when thought and action are aligned, even if they’re only aligned to wash dishes.

The ingredients of simple, everyday happiness are tough to study in the lab, and aren’t easily measured with a standard experimental battery of forced choices, eye-tracking, and questionnaires. Day to day happiness is simply too fleeting. To really study it’s causes, you need to catch people in the act of feeling good or feeling bad in real-world settings.

To do this, the researchers used a somewhat unconventional, but powerful, technique known as experience sampling. The idea behind it is simple. Interrupt people at unpredictable intervals and ask them what they’re doing, and what’s on their minds. If you do this many times a day for many days, you can start to assemble a kind of quantitative existential portrait of someone. Do this for many people, and you can find larger patterns and tendencies in human thought and behavior, allowing you to correlate moments of happiness with particular kinds of thought and action.

To sample our inner lives, the team developed an iPhone app that periodically surveyed people’s thoughts and activities. At random times throughout the day, a participant’s iPhone would chime, and present him with a brief questionnaire that asked how happy he was (on a scale from 1-100), what he was doing, and if he was thinking about what he was doing. If subjects were indeed thinking of something else, they reported whether that something else was pleasant, neutral, or unpleasant. Responses to the questions were standardized, which allowed them to be neatly summarized in a database that tracked the collective moods, actions, and musings of about 5000 total participants (a subset of 2250 people was used in the present study).

In addition to awakening us to just how much our minds wander, the study clearly showed that we’re happiest when thinking about what we’re doing. Although imagining pleasant alternatives was naturally preferable to imagining unpleasant ones, the happiest scenario was to not be imagining at all. A person who is ironing a shirt and thinking about ironing is happier than a person who is ironing and thinking about a sunny getaway.

What about the kinds of activities we do, though? Surely, the hard-partiers and world travelers among us are happier than the quiet ones who stay at home and tuck in early? Not necessarily. According to the data from the Harvard group’s study, the particular way you spend your day doesn’t tell much about how happy you are. Mental presence - the matching of thought to action - is a much better predictor of happiness.

The happy upshot of this study is that it suggests a wonderfully simple prescription for greater happiness: think about what you’re doing. But be warned that like any prescription, following it is very different from just knowing it’s good for you. In addition to the usual difficulties of breaking bad or unhelpful habits, your brain may also be wired to work against your attempts stay present.

Recent fMRI scanning studies show that even when we’re quietly at rest and following instructions to think of nothing in particular, our brains settle into a conspicuous pattern of activity that corresponds to mind-wandering. This signature ‘resting’ activity is coordinated across several widespread brain areas, and is argued by many to be evidence of a brain network that is active by default. Under this view our brains climb out of the default state when we’re bombarded with input, or facing a challenging task, but tend to slide back into it once things quiet down.

Why are our brains so intent on tuning out? One possibility is that they’re calibrated for a target level of arousal. If a task is dull and can basically be done on autopilot, the brain conjures up its own exciting alternatives and sends us off and wandering. This view is somewhat at odds with the Killingsworth and Gilbert’s findings though, since subjects wandered even on ‘engaging’ activities. Another, more speculative possibility is that wandering corresponds to some important mental housekeeping or regulatory process that we’re not conscious of. Perhaps while we check out, disparate bits of memory and experience are stitched together into a coherent narrative – our sense of self.

Of course, it’s also possible that wandering isn’t really ‘for’ anything, but rather just a byproduct of a brain in a world that doesn’t punish the occasional (or even frequent) flight of fancy. Regardless of what prompts our brains to settle into the default mode, its tendency to do so may be the kiss of death for happiness. As the authors of the paper elegantly summarize their work: “a human mind is a wandering mind, and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind.”

On the plus side, a mind can be trained to wander less. With regular and dedicated meditation practice, you can certainly become much more present, mindful, and content. But you’d better be ready to work. The most dramatic benefits only really accrue for individuals, often monks, who have clocked many thousands of hours practicing the necessary skills (it’s not called the default state for nothing).

The next steps in this work will be fascinating to see, and we can certainly expect to see more results from the large data set collected by Killingsworth and Gilbert. It will be interesting to know, for example, how much people vary in their tendency to wander, and whether differences in wandering are associated with psychiatric ailments. If so, we may be able to tailor therapeutic interventions for people prone to certain cognitive styles that put them at risk for depression, anxiety, or other disorders.

In addition to the translational potential of this work, it will also be exciting to understand the brain networks responsible for wandering, and whether there are trigger events that send the mind into the wandering or focused state. Though wandering may be bad for happiness, it is still fascinating to wonder why we do it.

Original article taken from Scientific American – Mind & Brain

ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)

Jason Castro is a postdoctoral fellow in the Center for Neuroscience at the University of Pittsburgh. He studies synaptic processing and plasticity in the auditory system.

Chaos & Disorder:Why We Need Them

Suppose someone gave you a choice – a life lived in perfect harmony and order, or an existence marked by chaos and disorder. Which would you pick? For most people, the choice is simple: Go for the harmony. Who in their right mind would choose anything else?

Harmony and order are suggested by the image of someone sitting in quiet meditation, unmoved by the chaos swirling everywhere in today’s hectic world. The benefits of such practices are numerous, including claims of lower perceived stress, anxiety and pain, and heightened immune function.1 An army of experts exists to show the way toward emotional balance and tranquility. A Google search for “happiness workshops” yields nearly three million hits. Harmony is important not just in physical health but in the interpersonal domain as well, suggests eHarmony, one of the most popular Internet dating sites in the world.2

“Coherence” is a term used to describe this idealized, harmonious state. It comes from a Latin word meaning “sticking together.” “Harmony” is derived from a Greek term meaning “joint.” Both coherence and harmony, therefore, imply that elements are stuck or joined together in a unified, smoothly functioning whole.

At the annual conference in June 2010 of the International Society for the Study of Subtle Energy and Energy Medicine (ISSSEEM) in Westminster, Colorado, I heard an inspiring address by physiologist Rollin McCraty on coherence.3 McCraty is the director of research at the Institute of HeartMath in Boulder Creek, California, where he and his colleagues have done splendid work on the virtues of coherence. The HeartMath researchers believe coherence applies to every possible domain, from the invisible, subatomic quantum level to the farthest galaxies and everything in between. As McCraty says, “Coherence implies order, structure, harmony, and alignment within and amongst systems – whether in atoms, organisms, social groups, planets, or galaxies. Thus, every whole has a relationship with and is part of a greater whole, which is part of something greater again.”4

HeartMath has developed effective programs to help people achieve harmony and better health.5 Behind harmony, they maintain, lies coherence. As McCraty puts it, “[H]armonious order signifies a coherent system whose efficient or optimal function is directly related to the ease and flow in life processes. By contrast, an erratic, discordant pattern of activity denotes an incoherent system whose function reflects stress and inefficient utilization of energy in life processes. Interestingly, we have found that positive emotions, such as appreciation and compassion, as opposed to negative emotions, such as anxiety, anger, and fear, are reflected in a heart rhythm pattern that is more coherent.”6

When Order Is Disorder

Coherence, therefore, matters – so much that many individuals now believe that regularity, order, periodicity, and coherence are always required for healthy physical and psychological function and that wherever you see health you can be sure that coherent function underlies it. To discover that this is not always the case can come as a surprise. But, in fact, evidence suggests that coherence – harmony, order, regularity, periodicity – in human function can sometimes be pathological, that chaos can be necessary for health and longevity, and that the loss of chaos is involved in aging.7

Ary L. Goldberger, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, is also director of the Rey Institute for Nonlinear Dynamics in Medicine at Boston’s Deaconess Medical Center and program director of the NIH-sponsored Research Resource for Complex Physiologic Signals. Goldberger helped pioneer the study of chaos in human function. In the early 1980s, as a young cardiologist at the University of California-San Diego, he expected healthy hearts to beat in steady, metronomic patterns. But his data showed that diseased hearts beat this way, while healthy hearts produced unpredictable EKG patterns. “This makes sense when you consider that healthy physiology needs to be nimble and adaptive,” he says. “It’s only sick, aging, or premature systems that get locked into overly rigid patterns.”8After three decades of research, he and his colleagues say, “Chaos in bodily functioning signals health. Periodic [regular, rhythmic, coherent] behavior can foreshadow disease.9 Transitions to strongly periodic dynamics are observed in many pathologies, including Parkinson’s disease (tremor), obstructive sleep apnea, sudden cardiac death, epilepsy, and fetal distress syndromes, to name but a few.”10

In a review of the role of chaos in health, journalist Kathleen McAuliffe states,

[T]he latest findings show that in many instances, the brain functions normally – and even optimally – in a chaotic state . . . Moreover, when we are mentally challenged, the interval between the electrical waves becomes even more variable – or chaotic.

. . . [C]haos may actually be highly beneficial during problem solving . . . [T]he greater the mental challenge, the more chaotic the activity of the subject’s brain . . . The notion that chaos might have a constructive side has also carried over into medicine, where it has prompted fresh insights into the causes of several neurological conditions . . . [M]any so-called “disorders” turned out to be exactly the opposite. The problem was too much order. The complex rhythms of the nervous system had been replaced by a regimented beat or even drowned out altogether . . . Patients with normal motor control had nerves that pulsed in a chaotic fashion . . . “Contrary to intuition,” says [UCLA’s Alan] Garfinkel, “you need desynchronized firing of nerve cells in order to achieve smooth movement.” . . . [A] loss of “healthy variability” in neural activity has been implicated in [depression], too. According to Cindy Ehlers, a neuroscientist at the Scripps Clinic in La Jolla, California, a normal person will undergo erratic and relatively mild fluctuations in mood on an almost daily basis. “But in the depressed patient,” says Ehlers, “there is a loss of some kind of control mechanism, so that over time their behavior starts to look extremely periodic or rhythmic.“11

Recent analysis of human balance and gait reveals the importance of irregularity. The step-to-step (stride interval) fluctuations in human walking rhythm have been thought to be quite regular under healthy conditions, but detailed analysis reveals that subtle but complex fluctuations are present in healthy gait dynamics. As people age, this variation is lost in favor of a non-varying gait rhythm.12, 13

Moreover, the widespread belief that meditation practices always lead to increased coherence in heart rate and breathing is an exaggeration. C. K. Peng , codirector of the Rey Institute, and his colleagues have shown that coherence in these systems may increase or decrease during meditation, depending on the technique that is employed.14

The emerging picture of healthy function involves what Goldberger calls a “clinical paradox: namely, that a wide range of illnesses are associated with markedly periodic (regular) behavior even though the disease states themselves are commonly termed ‘dis-orders.’”15 In other words, in some conditions, it’s the order that is the disorder. All that is healthy is not coherent, and all that is coherent is not healthy.

Aging

As we age, there is often a loss of chaos and disorder not just in physiological processes, as Goldberger and others have shown, but also at the psychosocial level. Aging can become an exercise in locked-in repetition, order, and unremitting boredom, as the elderly individual settles into a mind-numbing, unvarying pattern of existence – “set in his ways.” Everyday experiences such as diet, dress, diversions, the friends one sees, and even one’s beliefs can become rigid, fixed, and unvarying – coherence writ large. Neophobia, the fear of new things, dominates the elder’s existence. These ruts can be deepened by the regimentation that often occurs in eldercare facilities. The aging individual may become increasingly apathetic – the thousand-yard stare that is all too common among the residents of these institutions. The solution is to interrupt the coherence by the gradual and gentle insertion of newness, novelty, and variety into the daily round. Simple measures can often make a major difference, such as the introduction of a pet or music into the elder’s schedule.16

Injecting choice and responsibility can be especially helpful. Consider a famous 1976 study by psychologists Ellen Langer and Judith Rodin. They gave one group of nursing-home residents potted plants to take care of, while offering suggestions on doing more for themselves rather than letting the staff take all the responsibility. A second group, matched with the first for degree of ill health and disability, received the usual nursing-home care, along with assurances that the staff would handle all decisions and responsibilities. After only three weeks, the potted-plant group showed significant improvements in health and the amount of activity engaged in. The results were even more dramatic after eighteen months, at which point the death rate of the potted-plant group was only 50 percent that of the other group.17

Studies suggest that individuals who engage in novel, mentally challenging experiences, such as doing crossword puzzles or learning a new language, preserve their mental faculties as they age to a greater degree than do people who resist such experiences.18, 19, 20 These novelty-loving neophiles are living proof that variety – chaos at the experiential level – can help make life worth living.

The Larger View

These observations are likely to be misunderstood. By making a case for chaos, it may appear that I am extolling dysfunction and illness. Not so. It’s just that the evidence suggests that while order, harmony, and coherence may be more appealing conceptually and aesthetically, they are sometimes unhealthy. This situation need not be mystifying; we see evidence of the value of chaos on every hand. We know that without early challenges to our immune system we’d wind up as “bubble babies,” with immune systems so incompetent we could not survive in a pathogen-packed world. As Thoreau observed, “’Tis healthy to be sick sometimes.”21 And without the disharmonious upsets of adolescence, we would turn out to be such psychologically immature adults we could not function well in a friendship, marriage, family, or society.

A one-sided emphasis on coherence will not serve us well. We need to acknowledge the evidence that healthy function requires the coexistence of the oppositional factors of coherence and chaos. Coherence and chaos are in cahoots with each other, each one neither wholly good nor wholly bad, both important in different situations. Context matters. When we exclusively reify one over the other, we pay a price. Nature is not black or white; she adores ambiguity and paradox – which, G. K. Chesterton said, is “truth standing on her head to get attention.”22

The value of chaos and disorder in human life and the paradoxical unity of opposites have been repeatedly affirmed by an impressive array of individuals from various walks of life – scientists, mathematicians, physicians, nurses, psychologists, philosophers, poets, writers, musicians, artists, theologians, saints, and sinners. They tell us that chaos and disorder are as essential as harmony and coherence in a fulfilled life, and in emerging science as well.

Sir Laurens van der Post wrote in his biography of psychologist Carl G. Jung, “No wonder Jung was later to tell me with a laugh that he could not imagine a fate more awful, a fate worse than death, than a life lived in perfect balance and harmony.”23 And as mathematician Ralph Abraham, of University of California-Santa Cruz, puts it, “We are learning that chaos is essential to the survival of life. Our challenge now is to restore goodness to chaos and disorder . . . In our current paradigm, order is to chaos as good is to evil, and this had been the status quo for the past few millennia. Meanwhile, while culture says disorder is Bad, chaos is obviously the favorite state of nature, where it is truly Good. But this truth has been banished to the collective unconscious for all these centuries. From the shadows of the unconscious it pushes forth into our consciousness and literature in poetry and song, romance and struggle.”24

This excerpt is taken from the editorial “Coherence, Chaos, and the Coincidentia Oppositorum,” which originally appeared in the November–December 2010 issue of Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing. (www.explorejournal.com)

Author of this article is Dr.Larry Dossey MD, distinguished physician, author and advocate for the role of spirituality in healthcare.

Notes

1. Meditation: an introduction. National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. http://nccam.nih.gov/health/meditation/overview.htm. Accessed July 28, 2010.
eHarmony. http://www.eharmony.com/. Accessed July 25, 2010.

2. ISSSEEM. The International Society for the Study of Subtle Energy and Energy Medicine. 20thAnnual Meeting. Westminster, CO; June 25-29, 2010. http://www.issseem.org/. Accessed July 28, 2010.

3. McCraty R, Childre D. Coherence: bridging personal, social, and global health. Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine. 2010; 16(4): 10-24.

4.McCraty R. Enhancing emotional, social, and academic learning with heart rhythm coherence feedback. HeartMath.org. http://www.heartmath.org/templates/ihm/section_includes/press_room/pdf/Bio-Fedback-mag-Biofeedback-in-Education-atricle-pre-pub-copy.pdf. Accessed July 25, 2010.

5. McCraty R, Childre D. Coherence: bridging personal, social, and global health. Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine. 2010; 16(4): 10-24.

6. Goldberger AL, Amaral LAN, Hausdorff JM, Ivanov PCh, Peng C-K, Stanley HE. Fractal dynamics in physiology: alterations with disease and aging. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 2002; 99( Supplement 1): 2466-2472.PNAS.org. http://www.pnas.org/content/99/suppl.1/2466.full. Accessed July 17, 2010.

7. Ary Goldberger. Wyss Institute. http://wyss.harvard.edu/viewpage/122/ary-goldberger. Accessed July 31, 2010.

8. A healthy complexity. Wyss Institute. http://wyss.harvard.edu/viewpage/141/a-healthy-complexity;jsessionid=49B8754AD86CCFFBD8CEECD29628CA73.wyss2. Accessed July 31, 2010.

9. Goldberger AL, Rigney DR, WestBJ. Chaos and fractals in human physiology. Scientific American. 1990; 262(2):42-49.

10. Goldberger AL, Amaral LAN, Hausdorff JM, Ivanov PCh, Peng C-K, Stanley HE. Fractal dynamics in physiology: alterations with disease and aging. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 2002; 99( Supplement 1): 2466-2472. PNAS.org. http://www.pnas.org/content/99/suppl.1/2466.full. Accessed July 17, 2010.

11. McAuliffe K. Get smart: controlling chaos. Omni. 1990; 12(5): 43-48, 86-92.

12. Goldberger AL, Amaral LAN, Hausdorff JM, Ivanov PCh, Peng C-K, Stanley HE. Fractal dynamics in physiology: alterations with disease and aging. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 2002; 99 (Supplement 1): 2466-2472. PNAS.org. http://www.pnas.org/content/99/suppl.1/2466.full. Accessed July 17, 2010.

13. Hausdorff JM, Mitchell SL, Firtion R, Peng CK, Cudkowicz J, Wei Y, Goldberger AL. Altered fractal dynamics of gait: reduced stride-interval correlations with aging and Huntington’s disease. J Appl Physiol. 1997; 82(1): 262-269.

14. Peng CK, Henry IC, Mietus JE, Hausdorff JM, Khalsa G, Benson H, Goldberger AL. Heart rate dynamics during three forms of meditation. Int J Cardiol. 2004; 95(1): 19-27.

15. Goldberger AL. Fractal variability versus pathologic periodicity: complexity loss and stereotypy in disease. Perspect Biol Med. 1997;40: 543-61.

16. Dossey L. The healing power of pets: a look at animal-assisted therapy. Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine. 1997; 3(4):8-16.

17. Langer EJ, Rodin J. The effects of choice and enhanced personal responsibility on the aged: a field experience in an institutional setting. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 1976; 34: 91-98.

18. Dossey L. The Extraordinary Healing Power of Ordinary Things. New York, NY: Harmony; 2006: 46-57, 229-240.

19. Alzheimer’s Disease In-Depth Report. [No author cited — LD] Nytimes.com. http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/disease/alzheimers-disease/print.html. Accessed August4, 2010.

20. Willis SL, Tennstedt SL, Marsiske M, Ball K, Elias J, Koepke KM, Unverazgt FW, Stoddard AM. Long-term effects of cognitive training on everyday functional outcomes in older adults. JAMA. 2006; 296(23):2805-2814.

21. Thoreau HD. Quoted in: Kronenberger L, Auden WH. The Viking Book of Aphorisms. New York, NY: Barnes & Noble Books; 1993: 212.

22. Chesterton GK. Quoted in: The American Chesterton Society. Chesterton.org. http://chesterton.org/qmeister2/doingbadly.htm. Accessed July 17, 2010.

23. Van der Post Sir L. Jung and the Story of Our Time. New York, NY: Random House/Vintage;1977: 76-7.

24. Abraham R. Chaos in myth and science. Ralph-Abraham.org. http://www.ralph-abraham.org/articles/MS%2346.Myth/ms46.pdf

The Power of Emotions

How to Capture a Good Mood

Life is full of occasions when the mood of a group or team changes without realising it, this leads to a corresponding change in performance. This article explains how we can choose which emotions to use and which to fend off.

There are two points to consider:

1. There are plenty of studies showing the relationship between emotions and performance. Emotions vary in intensity and direction ranging from lethargic and unhappy to happy and excited. Studies suggest that positive, pleasant emotions enhance performance whereas unpleasant and negative emotions hinder performance.

The theory that emotions have motivational implications is highly convincing, therefore feeling excited and happy is motivating while feeling unhappy and lethargic is de-motivating leads to the principle that there are times when we might want to be able to capture positive emotions and avoid the negative ones.

2. The second point is that emotions are inherently social and that we are all embedded in social networks that can influence our emotional state. It is rare that we experience an emotion without some influence from someone else. This can be either by direct interaction in a meeting or a conversation or in anticipation of a meeting or conversation with a colleague, manager, partner etc.

We need to understand that some people are positioned in our social network in a way that can influence us more effectively than others, be it positively or negatively.

The question is can we choose how we feel and can the social network affect this?

Does our emotional state prior to and post any interaction depend partly on the people we are connected to? This article answer that the answer is yes., and if emotional states impact on performance as evidence suggests then the members of our social network whether they are friends or colleagues can be crucial for success.

Capturing Emotions in a Social Network

The basic structure of a social network is two people. Pairs consist of colleagues, family, friends, partners etc and the relationship between the pair is equal. Each person can influence and be influenced by the feelings of the other.

A team is a collection of basic networks, for example a manager and their team will have a relationship with most of the people in the team and every individual can contribute to the collective mood of the team.

The collective mood is the common mood state of all individuals involved. Research shows that an individuals emotional state can be influenced by the collective mood of the team. If several individuals report feeling happier this tends to influence the mood in a positive direction with the feel good factor transferring to the rest of the team. This can obviously work in reverse.

The potential implication is that the emotional state of the team can be influenced and improved by enhancing the mood state of one member. Once the majority of the team feel that they are improving performance this will enhance the mood of the team. This therefore provides the potential for a manager/team leader to improve the emotional state of their team by positively encouraging one member of the team.

Key Influencers

Evidence also suggests of a team also have a disproportionate influence on the emotional state of the team. This appears to be evident when team members look to the influential members of the team on what the required emotional response should be. An example is when a new team member looks to their experienced colleagues for an indication of how to respond to the manager when they are in a negative emotional state themselves due to time constraints. If their colleagues look calm and relaxed the new member will look to manage their own emotional state to mirror this positive emotion. If team members are aware that emotions can be transferred they can then use transfer techniques to their advantage and minimize any potential negative effect.

Capturing Emotions

The transfer of emotions is a complex process with a number of factors to consider. An individuals emotional state can only be partly influenced by the emotions of others and researched shows that individuals can develop self management techniques and these can be used in intervention work.

The good news is that anyone can learn to manage their own emotional state and there is growing evidence that techniques such as positive self-talk/positive affirmations and visualization can positively enhance emotional states and performance. Other techniques such as “As If” can provide ways to imagine what it will be like to feel positive and perform at your best.

Summary

Negative emotions spread like a virus infecting team members and de-motivating them. By being aware of the impact of your emotions on others and of the effect of others emotions on you, you can identify triggers and use these techniques to intervene and dissolve the negative effect of unwanted emotions and therefore maintain the positive influence of improved performance.