Muscle memory

So I've changed the number code on my cellphone to unlock the keylock about a week ago. I only changed it a bit actually. I know very well the combination of the new code, because it has more meaning for me now than the old one did. Hence the change. But it took me about four days or so to not type in the old code just out of habit. Four days! Although the new code has more meaning! Four days and repeated false entries.

It's not just habit, which to me seems more a head thing. It's also muscle memory. In my head what I type is numbers as well as letters. I couldn't for the life of me tell you the "pure" numbers of the code, because I have no idea what numbers I'm typing for the letters. I know the letters though and my fingers know which keys to hit.

And for two days or so now I type the new code without failure. Interesting this habit and muscle memory thing.

Organ language

Dear reader,

no, organ language isn't something bad or rude. It's the manner of expression of our organs, to show us that something isn't right. The theory goes that, based on which organ gives us trouble, we could also identify more precisely what kind of problem we have.

That doesn't seem that odd at all, although I have only very barely dealt with that subject. Some of it seems, even without deeper knowledge of organ language, almost intuitively finding expression included in our word-language, too.

The next time when you're thinking very hard about something, maybe also think of this entry and don't be too surprised that you've got a headache. Even though I can't tell you, why precisely you've got a headache from thinking a lot, there's still the phrase of “causing quite a headache”. Alternatively things can “cause somebody an upset stomach”.

Especially woman have fun when cooking, to also prepare the food on a plate in a nice way or enjoy it when someone serves them a meal that's set in a pleasing way, because “you eat with your eyes first”!

When once I was in the hospital for a surgery to correct my nose, many of us had tamponades in our nose and we joked some days after the surgery that we were “fed up” with it. Actually that one doesn't translate very well in English, because in German we say something like having a “full nose” literally.

Maybe you've heard of pheromones before, chemicals that are exchanged between two people and make us and the people next to us react to each other in certain ways. All of it is unconscious, but still there's some truth about the saying of “hating someone's guts”. Again, that one is a bad example in English, because in German we say that someone “smells good”, if we like them or doesn't smell good, if we don't like them. But still works in English with the “gut” as an organ in the saying.

Is it so surprising that some people develop asthma, when we've got the saying that something “takes my breath away” or something is “breathtaking”?

Maybe it's worth looking more into this organ language and what it may mean, especially if you've got problems with one or more organs time and again.

Keep a stiff upper-lip!

Until next blog,

sarah

A vent (gut) post

Dear reader,

my blog is called "ventquest", because at the time of starting it, I was interested in ventriloquism, the gut in a broad sense. Not really on a quest as such though. It was more the fact that "quest" seemed close and funny enough to "quist" from "ventriloquist". Anyway, some days back I spent my evening... no, not in front of the telly, but on Youtube. One video followed another until finally I found one with the german title "Help with autism". I expected the "usual" autism being a "defect" in the brain, genetic, starting with healthy normal kids which then between 1 and 3 years getting "strange". Some are lucky and learn to communicate, others are fully dependent on others to care for them and can't speak.

Wrong for this movie. Partly anyways. This film tells the story of Adar Hassan with their sons, who came from somalia to america. Two of her sons are autistic. It started for one of them after he was treated with antibiotics for respiratory problems. She adopted the american ways of eating at first. But she found that when she cooked fresh food like she used to in somalia, her sons autistic expressions were less severe. Many immigrants found similar developments with their children.

But Ellen Bolte's son suddenly became autistic, too. She too lives in america. Her son was treated with antibiotics after an ear infection. Much like Adar Hassan's son, Ellen Bolte's son started with autistic behaviour after that. Ellen Bolte then started being interested in gut bacteria and found out some pretty interesting things. See for yourself:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGH1UD7uIQ4 (about 52 minutes running time) (Sorry for the subtitles, couldn't find any other version)

I wonder if disorders like ADD/ADHD may have similar causes. At least I see the treatment of that with tablets for "quieting" as worrying.

Giulia Enders studied medicine and is rather famous here in germany for her science slam about the gut. Very funny and entertaining. Sadly it's only in german. She also, rather unsurprisingly, published a book about that. That too is only in german. I do have another english clip for you though, which is a bit of a treat for you, because it only exists in english. Dr. Nancy O'Hara talking underlining the connection of the gut and autism in her presentation

Autism & ADHD: Healing From The Inside Out (about 21 minutes)

Until next blog
sarah

Thinner too: with savvy - weight and see

Dear reader,

you wanted to be thin and cancelled your fitness studio membership, because you don't need it anyway. Now some food for thought to add to that.

I read once that hypnosis is the best way and one of the best possibilities to achieve that. I have no idea how much of what I did to be thin was in a sense “hypnosis” or not. Regardless of that I can see certain parallels between hypnosis and successfully being thin. Many people believe that hypnosis makes you lose your will. That's not correct. Apart from the conscious and the unconscious, there's also a third very important instance, which is often called “the critical factor”. It's the connection between the conscious and the unconscious. The unconscious holds beliefs. The critical factor checks incoming new information with the already existing beliefs. If they are identical, they go into the unconscious, if not they're blocked out and stay in the conscious mind only.

Hypnosis only works when the critical factor is levelled down. Only then are phenomenon like an immobile (cataleptic) hand possible. Of course the person can still move their hand. But at that moment the barriers of the critical factor are at least that much down so what the hypnotist is saying, that the hand is impossible to move and cataleptic, is accepted to be true. This is enhanced even further through a chain of autosuggestion (“I notice that I can't move my hand. So it must be true that I can't move it. Therefore I can't move it.”) and the hand is immobilised, although under normal circumstances, the hand would be possible to move fully and without difficulty.

The critical factor is the reason why (New Year's) resolutions are so difficult to do and to keep doing them. The critical factor finds many more confirmations for the old habits and beliefs. So they are kept in the end. So for being thin you have to use tricks like a hypnotist.

The most important of all is:

1. State goals in the positive!

State your goals in the positive towards what you want. Remember: if you state it in the negative with „not“, you'll have the negative still in your head. That's not helpful in the long run. I'm warning you, if you state in the negative, you'll have an elephant in your head and he's so big, he'll crush all the positive intentions.

Our brain works best with pictures. That's why they keep saying in order to remember a string of things, to connect them to a story. I find a whole story to be difficult and complicated. I find it better to work with other methods and build yourself a memory palace. Do you know the film “The Machinist”? In it Christian Bale is a man, who's tormented with problems he repressed, so he almost doesn't eat at all, has massive sleeping problems and looks just the way someone would in that situation. It certainly wasn't healthy for him as an actor to lose that much weight for that role. Here are two picture of it:

It really does not look healthy at all. But it gives your mind very clear images of what you want. Only watch out, please, please, not to go just that far really. It should only be images, with which to work on your own goal. To have such a physique is sick and very damaging for you in the long run! Nevertheless: overdo it with the images, which you use, be it in your head or those you pick to remind you. (The 10^th Doctor in “Doctor Who”, David Tennant, is probably more of a role model for being thin, and very likeable, too. Although at least one of his companions described him as “just a long streak of nothing. You know, alien nothing.” Right she is.)

2. Find pictures (real or in the head), which are exaggerating, to be clear on what you want.

(Once someone wrote to me on the internet and wanted help with hypnosis so I would make her breasts bigger. I told her that when I wanted to be thinner, I was thinking about Christian Bale's role in The Machinist and advised to her to do the same. So she searched for a picture of a woman with breasts too big, printed it out and used that image then. A couple of weeks later she wrote to me and told me that her breasts actually had gotten bigger. I don't know if what she said was correct. It seemed so to me. In the end the most important thing is, that she was happy and she seemed to be to me.)

Sometimes I tricked myself and picked a bit wider cloths to wear, which wouldn't be so tight on my body. That gives a feeling of being thin. At least thinner for those cloths, which with more weight would have been tighter. Skinny jeans on the other hand sometimes are quite comfortable and make your thighs be a bit tighter than wider jeans would when you sit down.

Once again English seems to be even more extreme, once you start playing with words. To "lose weight" is, if you're saying it out loud, very close to "loose wait". (Not tight waiting, ey?) In English I like to ask then: Waiting for what? But even in German I don't think it's a good choice of words for the wish of “losing weight”. Nobody likes to lose something. You have to find the words that fit best for yourself. In the end all I can do is make you aware that different words also have diverse meanings that come with them.

Also don't underestimate the support from outside. If a child is big and should lose weight, it's best to make it a family project. It's not helping the child if the family keeps eating fastfood as the child is supposed to eat healthy food.

Two “tricks” I still use now and then are the following: often we mistake thirst for hunger and eat something. It can often help to instead first drink a good amount. In the evening it can also help, at a certain time of hour, to go and brush your teeth. As you know, after that you shouldn't eat anymore. So I only drink unsweetened tea or water then.

Until next blog,

sarah

Thinner - the easy part: the body

Dear reader,

so now the post some have been waiting for for a long time and for which the last posts have been sort of to prepare for. Some thoughts on how I lost weight a couple of years ago.

Some time around 2002 I wanted to lose weight. At first I thought of going to the fitness center. But then I saw the well well-conditioned men in front of my minds eye and me, the short, untrained girl among all of them? Hardly. But I wasn't happy with my belly. I wanted definitely to have a thinner belly and that was the beginning of all.

1. The absolute and definite thought of change.

Some dream of changing "the world". This big planet as a whole. It's too big a project, I'm telling you. Just as bad as a blank "I want to be thin." So something else is important, too

2. The thought of only changing one definied part.

But more on thoughts and the mind in my next post. The way I see it, that's in fact the even more important and more powerful part of the whole thing.

So I wanted to lose weight without going to the fitness center. I decided on push-ups and something that seems generally to be called crunches. I started with 10 push-ups as you know them. Then do the crunches to relax the arms. That's lying on your back, legs bent, feet on the ground. Now for example lift the left leg a bit so that the left knee and the right ellbow can touch and vice versa. So it's touching crossed knees and ellbows. Just as a variation to the "normal" lifting your head. Do 10 of those each side. (I always did left ellbow right knee, then right ellbow left knee and again left ellbow right knee.) Then to relax the belly I did so called "woman push-ups". That means you're on your knees, feet bent in the air (and crossed at the ankles is the most comfortable, I think). These are easier and even untrained I can do at least 15 of them easily. Then again go on your back and do the "normal" crunches": legs bent, feet on the ground and lift your head and shoulders just up.

For the arms what I did "back then" when we still had birds and bird grit, I once filled up two small plastic bottles with the grit and used them as dumbbells. I don't do that anymore these days. It's easy to do exercises with that when you're just sitting in front of the tv. Apropos of nothing.

About the legs: a really easy exercise can be done sitting, too. Put both feet on the ground. Then lift one. Just a tiny bit and tense up the leg. Imagine you have weights on your ankle, which pull down the leg. Do 10 to 15 of those, just as you please and then switch to the other leg. That's something that can be done again apropos of nothing, like at work or when you're having a coffee with a friend or when you're at the bus stop waiting for the bus to arrive. But it's important to do all the exercises I mentioned here on a regular basis! Going through them once takes no time at all. So doing them once a day or at least every second day should be really easy.


There's always a lot of talk about doing lots of sports and being active. You don't necessarily have to do that as such. I didn't do that, apart from the exercises I mentioned here, which I don't do on a regular basis anymore these days. It starts with little things such as going the stairs instead of taking the escalator or elevator. With that alone you're already more active. Or just stand up and walk around while on the phone. Especially these days where practically all phones (mobile phones anyway) are wireless, that's no problem anymore.

Recently I found juggling for myself again, after I started it for a bit in 2011 and taught myself quite fast to juggle with 2 balls and then stopped doing it until a couple of months ago. My next long term goal would be to juggle 4 balls. Also I found so called contact juggling to do. That's juggling, but not throwing the ball, instead it's always in contact (hence the name) with the body. There are all sorts of quite impressive contact juggling videos on youtube both tutorials and simply to watch and enjoy. Some of them are very meditating and relaxing to watch. As is doing it. ;-)

A lot of people often suggest to go jogging. Jogging isn't my thing. Never interested me really. Althought there's this thing of combining jogging and juggling, which is called "joggling". There's even sort of marathons where you are allowed to drop a ball only so many times and you're running and juggling with others. Find your own sports to do. I am fascinated with juggling. Sitting on the bed or on the sofa it's easy to do apropos of nothing. It's good for coordination, a nice arm exercise and it's proved that activities that involve using both hands also help to (re)connect both of the brain hemispheres better (again). Which is also, by the way, why it helps with depression and increases the creativity! Which is not to say that I want you all to start learning to juggle now. Everybody should find their own activity they enjoy to be active. I for one like juggling at this moment with great fun and it's easy to carry 2 balls in your bag. That's my thing at the moment.

That's it for now. Being thinner the first, the easy part: the body. Next time will be the harder part: the brain and the mind!

Until next blog,
sarah