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My friend Noel Schroeder is making phenomenal strides, thanks to her great intentions, experience and heart. I highly suggest learning from her website and purchasing her DVD. The idea of noticing is getting more and more noticed!

Notice Your Experience: A Guide to Finding Balance DVD is now a TV star. Noel Schroeder and Claudine Ouellette have been on the road promoting the DVD on various Morning News Shows across the US.

To watch how much the news anchors really like to relax, view the video clips below.

See Noel in Columbus, Ohio
http://www.noticeyourexperience.com/2008/03/07/noels-news-in-columbus-ohio/

Noel and Claudine take on Toledo
http://www.noticeyourexperience.com/2008/03/07/holy-toledo/

Relaxing in Indianapolis
http://www.noticeyourexperience.com/2008/03/13/re-engergizing-the-morning-news/

Noel and Claudine in Rochester, NY
http://www.noticeyourexperience.com/2008/03/19/relaxing-in-rochester/

I was asked recently, during a conversation about whether conscious evolution was a movement and what would happen to religions, what about the fundamentalists? I certainly don’t have an answer, and I don’t think my strengths are necessarily in giving answers. The most important part of finding answers is in asking the right questions.  So how do we think about the fundamentalist Muslims the media tells us to worry about?

Following, then, are straight-thoughts: simple content strung together to evoke your own interpretation and answering abilities:

• how are the qualities of thinking we see in fundamentalist Islam similar to that of fundamentalist Christianity, Judaism, Athieism, and Scientism?
• how do we understand the fundamentalists of any culture/religion from the wiser flavors of the same tradition?
• how can we separate the actions of Islamic terrorists from their historical and modern cultures?
• how can we separate the actions of the fighting groups of the middle east from their perceptions of the West? how can we understand their major points? how can we hear their criticisms within an honest appreciation for our own role in their history, and in fact, the entire history of the world?
• how can we be truthful about the US’s role in all this? (a wonderful resource here is Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins)
• how can we understand “cause and effect” to be more than a simple blame game, and appreciate a vastly complex exchange between cultures over a tremendous amount of historical time?
• how can we separate their perceptions of our actions from our perception of their actions? how can we know if any of these perceptions is correct in any sense of the word?

I think that the point is that the Iraqi situation the world is in, not to mention the many other conflicts and crisis around the planet, cannot just be boiled down to “they are crazy.” We are to blame. They are to blame. There is in fact no us nor is there a they. There is only a we. We have found the enemy and it is us. The ONLY way we can really get past our conflicts in the world, and in our personal individual lives, is to have a hard and long look in the mirror and ask two questions: “how have I contributed to getting us here?” and, “what can I do now?“

Autopoiesis, the Pyramid and Man

As written out by Chris Davia (I would love to know if this is true, as I have not confirmed it from my own online research)

There once was a man in the desert and he was building a pyramid. And when the man had nearly finished God came down from heaven and said ‘What are you doing?.’

And the man replied, ‘I’m building a pyramid’.

And God said, ‘No!’.

The man said, ‘I am, I am! There it is! It’s a beautiful pyramid.

And God said, ‘No!’

The man did not understand.

God said, ‘Come, look through my magic window.’

And so the man looked through God’s magic window and he saw a hundred years go by; a thousand years go by, and gradually his pyramid turn to dust.

And God said to the man ‘You haven’t built a pyramid. You have simply started a process that will one day end in a pile of dust.’

So the man went away and wondered how he might satisfy God. He resolved to start all over again, but this time, he would use only the finest materials; - the best wood and the best stone. And so he sent all over the land for the finest of materials from which to build his pyramid.
And when the man had nearly finished God came down from heaven and said, ‘What are you doing?.’

And the man replied, ‘I am building a pyramid’.

And God said, “No!”.

The man said ‘I am - I am! It is a very beautiful pyramid.there it is!’

And God said ‘No!’.

The man did not understand.

And God said ‘Come, Look through my magic window.’

And when the man looked through God’s magic window he saw a thousand years go by - a million years go by, and gradually his pyramid turned to dust.

And God said to the man ‘You haven’t built a pyramid. You have simply started a process that will one day end in a pile of dust.’

And so again the man went away and wondered how he might satisfy God. He thought and he thought and he thought for many years. And then, one day, he realized something that he had never realised before. He realised that the wood from which he had made his pyramid had its own nature. The wood might warp in the wet weather; it might split in the dry weather. He realised that the nature of wood was the nature of wood and the nature of wood had nothing to do with his pyramid.

And the man also realized that the stone from which he had made his pyramid had its own nature. The stone might splinter in the frost and that it might be eroded by the sandstorm. He realised that the nature of stone was the nature of stone and the nature of stone had nothing to do with his pyramid.

And one by one, the man examined each of the materials from which he had built his pyramid and he realised that each had it’s own nature – a nature that had nothing to do with his pyramid.

And he wondered if it were possible to build a pyramid such that each part of the pyramid owed its’ strength and its’ resilience through time as a direct consequence of its’ relationship to the rest of the pyramid. Such a pyramid would exist and persist because it was a pyramid. Such a pyramid would last until the end of time and thus satisfy God.

But, of course, the man had no idea how to build such a pyramid.

Well, many years went by and one day God was looking over his kingdom. And there, in the desert, He noticed a man sitting all alone. The man was sitting quietly, cross-legged in the sand. And God noticed how still and silent and peaceful the man was. And so God came down from heaven and said to the man – ‘What are you doing?’.

And the man replied, ‘I’m building a pyramid.’

The original article is titled: To Stretch or Not to Stretch? The Answer Is Elastic from the New York Times.

Unfortunately, the article does not provide any substantial information. It’s not their fault, however, because the entire industry suffers from label confusion. Without being clear about what one means by a term like stretching, a writer can pretend to say something without actually saying anything. Like I’m doing, so I’ll change directions right now.

The body is smart. Really smart. Injuries happen when there is a breakdown, such as more force than a joint or muscle tissue can handle. We prevent injuries by staying within safe limits, and if we want to push our limits, we need to expand our capabilities. Most people argue whether or not one should “stretch” to expand our joint’s abilities, usually measured by “range of motion” or ROM. These people are missing the point.

If you want to prep a car to move faster or go on a road trip,  you would want to tune it up, wouldn’t you? Not loosen the bolts…

If you wanted to cook a dinner, you’d turn on the stove to the appropriate temperature, not turn it off…

What most people think of as stretching is actually passive stretching, or lengthening a muscle past it’s normal working length and holding. In fact, that’s a good way to relax, calm the nervous system, and simply feel good. There are lots of benefits to this, but preventing injury is not one of them. The body’s intelligence hides this error.

Yes, muscle tissue needs to be supple, flexible, movable, pliable, etc. Yet they need to be strong and they need to be on. Joints should have the range of motion they need as dictated by the needs of the movement. One way you can test this is by asking your muscles to get you to that ROM. In other words, lift your leg straight up with your hip’s strength. All the passive hamstring stretching in the world will only weaken and destabilize your hip joint if the quads/hip flexors and all the other hip stabilizers aren’t properly strengthened. In other words, most people are doing the wrong thing, at the wrong time, and can’t tell because their body is too smart. It’s like a parent who constantly cleans up after his child’s mess. The child never realizes what he’s doing.

A runner doing a one-legged quad stretch with his foot up to his glute is a great example of a stretch that feels good but has nothing to do with the movement they think they’re preparing for. It’s just that the body is smart and covers up their error. What they’re actually doing is weakening and turning off the propriocepters that the knee and hip needs to adequately handle all the forces they’re about to take on.  The runner would be much better served by turning on muscles, activating them through the needed range of motion, getting blood flow through movement. Again…the body is smart and the passive stretch does feel good.

In sort, to paraphrase Timothy Leary, “tune up, drop in.” How you do it is up to you and becomes just about obvious when you think about the movement you want to train, what the muscles are doing in all directions and what they need to do.