Thu 18 Apr 2002 09:24
to sleep in hot- wear wet clothes- and sleep on something like a goretex or nylon bivysack.
the luxury of not having to wear clothes for warmth.

2002-04-18-1749
considering a future as a programmer, programming of some kind.
not really that, but as someone who explores what is happening in the realm of software perhaps in an academic way?
I seem to like spending large amounts of time using a computer explore--
further more, I think I might like working as a programmer- If I felt that I had a better understanding and more control over what I was doing. Learning how to say something in a language. seeing how people use languages to say something.
how people create their own language. I would be interested in researching the development of various languages, and the uses for each.(?)

I would be interested in the changing ways that people interact with and use software.

aside from that, I'm pretty shot in the leg from allergies--pollen

I took a bit of a nap.

I'm enjoying staying at work, where it is quiet, and air-conditioned (relatively pollen free, perhaps) since Hal probably won't be coming in.

I cut my hair very short this am..

So I do have a lot to work with, regarding computers. A lot to learn. It is somewhat unsocial, and I'm wondering where the relative isolation could take me. quite possibly I will be motivated to take dance class again, to get with other people and out of myself.

Only time will tell if I continue with this. In programming, I will need to find a niche of some kind to make money, and to simply have a place.
I'm impressed with Roger Schank's engines of education. I am interested in freeing people, children mostly from poor learning environments, and Schank's web site really drew me in. I'm not sure what I'll be most drawn to doing- a formal compsci degree of some kind, or to work my way into an area that interests me, working with a group that interests me. Either way sounds good to me--if I had to guess right now, I guess the latter.


In some ways, this is a decision to (continue) to spend a lot of time by myself. To avoid roles which involve immediate interaction with other persons. Except those who I wish to spend time with as a friend, or perhaps, lover.

I don't feel it is the wrong decision, because I've made earnest efforts to try the alternative, but I do wonder how I will manage to achieve the kind of joy that seems to come primarily from loving other people. Given that I will be spending a lot of time in a rarified abstract world, constructed by an for people, but not of people. Yet the software the creations produced using them are extensions of people.

now, I should go see Kumar(sp) at city college on wednesday about how I might be able to work on a master's degree in computer science--and other things to read.

the phone keeps ringing, not for me!

and they do not leave a message.

what of all these books I have of/on ken wilber and related thinking?

What is in them is good to be aware of.
Tony Schwartz's book truly is incredible to read. But I'm guessing that after some point I'm going to say I've had enough, turn them in, and focus more on software world and proust?

maybe on doing things with carmen, as well?

another good thing about being at work is that I sit up here, instead of lie down...

I've started eating kale again!

It's 6:30 now, I've about two hours. I'll work more on schwartz's book-- not sure whether I'll just read it and not take more notes or type the whole thing in (I doubt that).

carmen seems open to spending more time with me, but I'm not entirely sure what best to do, except occasionally stopping by to talk. I guess I do have a concept of relationships which progress--in to trouble perhaps- intimate physical kind? but no, also a progress, in terms of increasing depth and variety of how one relates with the other, and what one does with the other?

and those relationships which progress simply by the continued occasional checking in after varying periods of time--maybe that's all there really is.

??


what is most interesting about the schwartz book is that he is writing about potentially life changing practices-- for myself and many others.
Yet I have not found myself drawn to do more than read about them, and simply keep them in mind.

what is also interesting is that not everyone knows about this stuff--back at the counseling center where I volunteered in monterey, they did not mention brain wave work as one of the most successful treatments for alcholism.

it is as if there is this mind/world-changing technology, but it is getting ignored?

p224 Schwartz, what really matters, on peniston's brain wave work.

as a direct function of training, they could no longer physically tolerate alcohol--
        
--I'll get to see my mom and sister on a trip to montreal two tuesdays and two weekends from now-- is that too long? will I want to visit 2241 before then, or will I feel that I have a lot to do here? When Joanna comes back, will she be inclined to spend more time or not? she does/can make a big difference. How will I tolerate the summer here? I know I can do winter.. --
        
It is rare to find any treatment program for alcoholics with a success rate much above 30%.

he interviewed the subjects himself because the results were so unbelievable. lost the desire to dring and had remained abstinent.

80% success rate. with crack and cocaine.

I'm pretty sure I saw a video on this guy in one of my intro psych classes?

why then, is this not everywhere?

p225 abreactive imagery?

I guess it is spreading.

people, everyone knows exercise of various kinds is good for them yet we don't do it as much as we should.
how are such decisions- say, to sit here typing in stead of stretching or meditating more made? since they do not seem to be made for the benefit of organism making them.


p229 on Ornish- who was very depressed, then found meditation, and even while a med student began attempting to demonstrate positive effects of vegetarian diet, meditation, and exercise.

Anything that promotes a sense of isolation leads to chronic stress and, often, to illnesses like heart disease,
Conversely, anything that leads to real intimacy and feelings of connection can be healing.

people who feel isolated and depressed simply are less motivated to take disciplined action to protect their health--whether by eating a lower-fat diet, or by exercising, or by setting aside time for relaxation.

--because we want to die, I suppose...

it's very hard to motivate people to change their diet if they're feeling depressed, and if there isn't any meaning in their live.

schwartz's father, a physician himself, began the ornish program after being told unequivocally that he should have immediate coronary bypass surgery by several leading physicians.

4 years later- still on the diet, and still walking every day- he is in stable health and rarely feels chest pain- He has also lost 30 lbs, and his cholesterol level has dropped more than 40 pts to around 170.


Ornish beleives single most importat factor in "opening" the heart is the degree to which people are able to find a greater sense of meaning, contentment, and connectedness in their lives.

p230
on Irving Dardik
Stress without sufficient recovery may lead to illness, he hypothesized, but so can rest without stress.

I possibly  could be in danger of too little stress--but I seem to know of that risk and when I get there, take a dance class?

p231 - uses heart rate as a window to the overall physiology.

pushing up to high heart rates then recovering gradually to low resting rates.


I heard in the locker room this morning that Lisa Sosson is forty something -- I though 47 (?) hard to believe if true--though I've seen and have the picture of Frank?? at 52? and he looked way better than any 20-yo I've seen --others whose skin is more pretty also. like, mark dierolf monterey county lp chair- 30 something, yet looks 19, because he protects his skin? and perhaps other things. Butch-- perhaps I'll be a decent oldster though I expect my eating issues and (skin radiation) have and will continue to take their toll-- (basically involves eating too much, and then being quite uncomfortable, even having stomach push stuff up that won't fit, especially when going for my evening exercise--today since I've been away from home, not easy to eat to much, so I havent!--an issue of not feeling full--an issue of not getting the other kinds of food that one gets from dancing/ social interaction, that makes one satisfied and content, and not desiring to eat. When I'm reading away without typing, I tend to like to eat, unfortunately--which is why I should be a programmer not a writer of papers or reader of journals/academic work!).

p233
the most effective mind-body interventions may be those that cultivate a balance between behaviors designed to increase stress, or energy expenditure, and those that encourage relaxation, or energy recovery.

Weekly group meetings prompt a greater sense of trust, goodwill, love and hope--all emotions that make it easier to respond flexibly rather than rigidly to everyday challenges and stresses.

Wisdom, by this model, reflects not so much the effort to transcend what is difficult--including pain, conflict, and grief--but instead the capacity to ride these inevitable waves with grace and resilience.

p235--chapter 6-- an incredible chapter-- The Ideal performance state
from tony schwartz's what really matters:
Nothing clutters the soul more than remorse, resentment, recrimination. Negative feelings occupy a fearsome amount of space in the mind, block our perceptions, our prospect, our pleasures. --norman cousins.

I had spent relatively little time considering the role of performance in the search for a complete life.

tennis has been a primary passion in my life for more than 20 years.

p224
He had painstakingly saved his money from odd jobs to buy a box of chocolates as a present for his father's birthday.
When he handed it over, full of pride and excitement, his father gruffly tossed it aside and failed even to say thank you.
grew up in brooklyn.
Jerry Alleyne

p245 When he finally cut back a few hours from twelve-hour teaching days in his mid-sixties, Alleyne began swimming two miles a day and took up the piano. (where does he swim?). Often, he told me, he'd practice for hours at a stretch, so immersed in his playing that he utterly lost track of time.

Needing very little sleep, he spent his nighttime hours methodically making his way through books about psychology, philosophy, science, savoring each word, determined to understand every concept.

He listened in much the same way
children, in particular, lit up in his presence, sensing immediately his genuine interest in what they had to say.

"the key is to make everything importatn. I don't care what it is, if you're not doing it to its fullest, you're partly dead."

I'm not afraid of dying, but I'm not about to let anyone cut into my body.

traditional (western) doctors are a recurring evil theme-- I suppose my new york experiences seem to fit.

p247
At a broader level I came to believe that as valuable as Alleyne's insights were, there was more to a complete life than he acknowledged.

As alleyne saw it, he had made himself utterly self-sufficient by learning to derive pleasure solely from his own resources. He refused to dwell on past pain or deprivation, prefering to focus his enormous energy in the present and to rely entirely on himself rather than on others. He gave generously of himself but said he neither wanted, needed, nor expected anything in return.
For example, he his married and clearly loves his wife. But if the relationship were to end, he often dold me, he would neither feel pain nor look back. Even at the funeral of his mother, whom he deeply loved, he never shed a tear. "I loved her totally when she was here, and so I could let her go when she was gone,"

But acknowledging and engaging the early experience of vulnerability, grief, and unmet desire had helped me begin to recover some part of my heart--a tenderness and a warmth that for years I'd simply been afraid to feel.

p249
I continued to love and admire him, but at another level, we were like trains passing in the night.

In my case, it was when I allowed myself to feel my anger more fully--watching it without acting on it--that I learned more about the feelings that lay beneath it and their origins.

I'd seen the value of turning attention inward to engage the pain and conflict that continued to stand in my way. But the question remained of how to balance that inclination with the approach that Alleyne had so plainly demonstrated best serves external performance: setting aside conflict, doubt, and even conscious thinking, and living more fully in each moment.

--amazing how well he has gotten to know these people and is writing here about an intimate knowledge of them, and his impressions/ even judgements about them. He must have had to spend a huge amount of time with each one -- several months talking nearly every day with dardik, for example (p232).

the story of Jim Loehr is phenomenal, beginning on p249
--I should take some time and stretch more--perhaps in central park after..

a sports psychologist, an athlete, a careful researcher, a genuine seeker
a fit and youthful 47 in 1990.
quieting the mind,
staying focused in the present
letting go of conscious thinking

cultivating a very specific, positive state of mind in competition--george leonard, aikido-- and a matching physical posture.

distinction between the persona that one must consciously adopt to perform effectively in sports, and a more authentic underlying self that retains access to a complete range of thoughts and emotions.

negative thinking devastating consequences, both physiologically and psychologically.

-the met-rx stuff is bad digestively (gaseous!--just how I eat it?), but can help satiate/satisfy--may get another box--the last one--

p250
no one i've every worked with has trouble concentrating when they're having fun.

the best athletes all develop the capacity to be challenged by stress. masters of mind control.
I've tried to demystify that process. you can be trained, Tony.

p251 Doctorate in psychology.
deep misgivings about the effectiveness of traditional psychotherapy (another recurring theme in this book), which focused on the unresolved conflicts of early childhood.

"I just didn't see it working"

I'd watch people go into therapy, get lost in their own conflicts, and come out no better than when they started, and often worse."

I am definitely a bit unnecessarily chubby. I'm not sure I'm going to be focussing on it directly as unfortunate as it is.

p252 after meeting Vigil, Loehr started to dream about developing a systematic approach to training not just the body in sports, but also the mind.

Loehr may have been the first one to try to make his living by working directly with athletes.

for 5 years, he barely scraped by.
in each case he had to agree not to discuss the work publicly.

most believed that seeing any kind of psychologist conveyed a message of weakness and emotional instability.


how he prepared for matches, his diet, his attitude while playing, even the role that his marriage played in his tennis.

He reached #25, his highest ranking ever (from 100).


p253
in the face of great external pressure, top athletes felt both calm and peaceful but also highly energized, positive, and enthusiastic.

Dardik's heart rate monitor.

tbc.

2002-04-18-2219
central park- deserted, but not the parks up here (137thst)

p253 in search of ways to induce this ideal state that players reported, Loehr experimented with a variety of techniques, from biofeedback training, to hooking player up with walkmans playing different kinds of music, to teaching them how to meditate. But most athletes, he found, are impatient for quick, tangible results.

the heart rate monitor.

tiny remote microphones to listen to self-talk.

p254 - any expression of negative emotion pushed heart rates out of normal range, and quickly affected quality of play.
anger, anxiety, nervousness- hr ^
getting discouraged, or giving up "tanking" hr v

emotions such as confidence, enjoyment, and high energy prompted the hr to recover from the stress of hard-fought points much more quickly.

best players:
exhale deeply and rhythmically as they hit the ball
breathing deeply, an aspect of recovery
to release tension, loosen muscles, and fully relax.

Eager

studied hundreds of hours of tapes of top players in matches.
no difference
It finally occurred to Loehr to look at what the players did <i>between</i> points.

how a person prepares and recovers may be as critical to the outcome as what happens during competition itself.

p255
best:
(1)turn away from net, shift racket
(2)matador walk back
"from the age of twelve, I was taught to walk in a way that <i>produced</i> courage. The mental part comes later."

best players respond positively and confidently even after making an error.

any negative reaction depletes energy, increases tension, and compromises recovery.

"a single negative thought is what gets you hit in the face"

a great actor, brings to life whatever emotions the script calls for-- joy, sadness, aliveness, anger, weakness

any time I can get an athlete to produce the right feelings, he's going to perform in the upper range of his potential.

controlling thoughts and emotions--> he gains control of his physiology.

stage II
relaxation
(3) move across baseline--contracting, relaxing muscles, inhaling, exhaling deeply, keeping eyes focused on strings of racket to minimize distraction and maintain control of attention.
first two stages, utter absence of thoughts
stage 3 - short self advice
(4)visualize hitting ball to correct target.

predictable set of rituals,
help players avoid distracting thoughts and reconnect them with a familiar positive frame of mind and a certain habituated set of physical movements.

rest & reprogram

then let go
letting bodies execute automatically.

a delicate balance between disciplined movement and flexibility, willful effort, and letting go, conscious thinking and instinctive action.

toughness p 257 ability to perform toward the upper range of your talkent and skill regardless of the competitive circumstances.

p258
emotions respond much like muscles do-- the ones you stimulate the most become the strongest and most accessible.

converting bad habits of thinking to good habits--and turning good habits into strong beliefs...takes time and lots of targeted energy

move from how you really feel to how you need to feel to be at your best-- changing your underlying physiology. learning how to generate the chemistry of confidence. That's what makes peak performance possible.

Loehr sees these principles in the training of soldiers.

matador walk
deliberately obnoxious drill instructors--highly skilled.


If I could be a drill instructor, that would be the ultimate in 'having no face' -- changing face repeatedly to near opposites.

ability to transform adversity into an enjoyable challenge.

p259
travelling with Ivan Lendl
4th consecutive year as top-ranked tennis player in the world

long hours grooving his strokes, &
fierce physical conditioning regimen.

observing thoughts and emotions the way that meditator might , noting their arising and passing without reacting to them.

mental-focus exercises
to strengthen the sharpness of his awareness and his capacity to be absorbed in one thing at a time.

before matches, sat down and briefly reviewed his goals...'be confident, eager, quick' in order to program his mind more positively.

closed eyes and imageined himself executing his goals on the court--sometimes taking himself through entire games.

between point rituals--
bouncing the ball four times before his first serve, three before his secondvisualized his serving target and where he intended to hit his second shot. e.g.

highly attentive to recovery between matches
p260
napped every afternoon at the same hour.
slept the same hours at night, ate a carefully circumscribed diet.

requested no notice of disquieting events during tournaments

even after a difficult loss--
put it quickly behind him

Loehr- Sabatini
p261 to help her reenergize her game by discovering the sense of fun, excitement and intensity that she'd so obviously lost.

even if she didn't feel strong & enthusiastic, she should act as if she did.

look , act, like you want to feel.

video of her best moments set to her favorite music.
four months after he began working with her, she won the first grand slam title of her career.

p263
Schwartz' grand slam:
Still I dutifully played the confident rol.
with the tape rolling, I made sure to exaggerate my matador walk and to smile often, even as balls went whizzing by me at net. Kept my eyes on racket strings between pts.

I also took my time.
too relaxed
time began to slow down.

p265
You don't have to be a great human being to compete at the highest leves in sports.

most great athletes are marginally well adjusted people with exceptional performer skills.

the real risk for these athletes is that they can so easily lose a connection to what they really feel. They get to the point where if they don't like the emotional state they're in, they use their performance skill to switch to feelings they like better. A lot of them end up with no idea of who they really are."  (!?)

even those who cultivate flow to highly positive and productive ends in one sphere act far more chaotically and destructively in other parts of their lives (Bobby Fisher , Pablo Picasso) --sas csikszentmihalyi


p266 Seligman's learned optimism--
but,
"what they gain they also pay for " (insurance agents)
they sacrifice wisdom for likability and cheerfulness.
Who wants to spend an evening with people who tell you the upside of everything? It makes me very uneasy and arouses a lot of negative emotion in me. When I'm around people like that, I find I just want to get out of there."
-seligman

seligman sees an increasingly complex picture

if you decide you're going to be successful and not depressed and your immune system is going to be perky, optimism is a virtue.
But it may also require blissful ignorance and even denial. It may even be that optimism and a deeper level of wisdom are antagonistic.

flexible optimism..

you can choose to use optimism when you judge that less depression, or more achievement, or better health is the issues..
but we must have the courange to endure pessimism when its perspective is valuable.
optimism with its eyes opened.

Loehr-
I just don't have access to certain emotions. There's something still missing in my life. I've sacrificed evolving into a fully integrated person comfortable with all of my feelings.

p267
if you don't develop and utilize performer skills you probably won't accomplish mutch. You talent and skill will remain largely untapped."

in the end, the truth is the one thing that frees you and gives you comfort-
if you constantly try to defend against it in order to avoid pain, you'll eventualy find yourself walking around with a smile on the outside, and a fanatical sense of emptiness on the inside. It's only when you embrace the truth--including the pain--that the real healing begins."

(?) healing?

next time:
p269
chapter 7 Waking up
Montague Ullman, jeremy taylor and the wisdom of dreams in t schwartz' what really matters.


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