Wednesday, January 11, 2006

All you need is love

I've always been fascinated by the underlying factors which influence behavior in human beings. Primarily, I have used myself as the guennie pig/lab rat. The ability to introspect is a double edged sword that can reap enormous rewards when self knowledge is gained and can reap a great deal of pain when the soul starts to bleed. One experiment that had an enormous impact on me was the power of nurturing.

Until I'd worked with Sean, an emotionally troubled 9 year old, I'd been relatively selfish in my actions and thinking - a consequence of constant introspection (CI). The problem with this (CI), I think now, is that it can lead to a lack of confidence, low self esteem and run away self criticism. Once this siren song has been grooved into the record of one's unconscious, it is easy to become addicted to the neurotransmitters that set the stage for an emotional reality, a mood. When all of this becomes unconscious, then one's interpretation of the events, situations and relationships becomes biased towards recreating the self destructive mood. That is why working with Sean was so important in my life - I broke the pattern.

Thru nurturing another - deeper than I was capable of nurturing myself back then - I opened up my heart, healed a soul wound and gained access to deeper potentials. The child was suffering so much, was so ungrounded and explosive, my only recourse was to find deeper ways to ground myself. This motivated my tai chi practice like nothing else could. I learned that I could use my addictive tendencies could be transformed into discipline. At this day and age, nothing quite sets one apart from the herd when one knows how to nurture one self instead of the norm of self destruction.

My strong discipline of practicing tai chi an hour a day led to the opening of a door I did not think possible for me - circular breathing with the didjeridoo. These two practices stay with me today - over 10 years later - and continue to bring satisfaction, artifacts and knowledge. These are some of the physical rewards of self nurturing, self love. But the most gratifying gift was learning to nurture another.

The reason why nurturing is so powerful is a consequence of the neural distribution in human beings. I came accross this data after my experience with Sean and thus found a way to triangulate, confirm the components, that I feel, led to the profound results.

The startling 35 year old physiological data, that I still marvel at, is that the organ that we call the heart, is 60%-65% neurons. It's directly connected to the cerebral cortex, the limbic system and the immune system. The limbic system is our emotional body. The key thing here is that the heart responds to love, is stimulated by love, by smiling, by laughter. Emotions like hate, shut it down, frowning shuts it down, fear shuts it down. This is why The Beatles sang the song: "All You Need Is Love".