The lemon

Dear reader,

imagine yourself sitting at a table. In front of you on that table is a lemon. It's fresh, bright yellow. Take the lemon in your hand. Feel its structure. It's pretty smooth, but has those tiny dots on the surface of the skin. Now take a knife and cut the lemon in two halves. You can smell the fragrance and some of the juice gets on your hands. Take one of the halves and cut it again. More of the smell in your nose and more juice on your fingers now. Do you dare taking one piece and licking the juice once or actually biting a bit off the lemon and chewing it?

Well, did you have to swallow when you read the first paragraph? I don't know what happened for you reading the first paragraph. But my mouth was watering as I was thinking about that lemon and writing that paragraph.

The effect comes, because our mind isn't very good distinguishing between thoughts and reality. When the thought is detailed enough, our (bodily) reactions to it, are as real as they would be with the real thing.

Picture your own future positive and in details and your half way there. In my entry Darn mirror neurons! I told you about a similar phenomenon, that the same parts of our brains are active when we watch people do something and don't participate, as if we were joining in.

I don't remember where I read it or heard it. I will add it, if I find it. In any case there was this experiment, where people had their arm in a cast and couldn't move the arm, of course. The people of one group were told not to move their arm. The participants of the other group where shown certain exercises for the arm for when the cast came off. Although the arm was in the cast and therefore immobile, they should still imagine doing the exercises for real. When the time was up, they found that the decrease of muscle mass of the people's arm of the second group was less than for the first. Interesting how much positive thinking helps, isn't it?

All assumptions are really true. The conclusions we make, which includes scientists and self-help gurus, aren't quite correct though.

However since it's pretty late now and I should go to bed a bit earlier sometimes and I like the fact that people follow my blog and read several posts, I will tell you the negative consequences of too positive thinking in the nest post. Yes, there is such a thing as too positive thinking with consequences, which could sometimes be very negative indeed.

Until next blog,

sarah

Darn mirror neurons!

Dear reader,

my mom will die. We went to the doctor on tuesday and got the MRI results and to make a long story short: my mom is bleeding deep in the brain on many places. Since thursday she also has fever. The doctor already told us on tuesday that an infect is about to come. There is no more hope. At least we know what's coming now and there's somewhat of an end in sight to her suffering, the suffering of all of us.

For several weeks now I've had headaches on and off. My dad told me the other day that, he too, has headaches sometimes. I think the places change for me. I don't pay much attention to it. For my dad the headache is where my mom was hit on the head. Responsible for this phenomena is what's called mirror neurons. Mirror neurons are neurons (nerves) in primates' brains, which are activated when we watch others do things. What's so special about them is that the same neurons are active both when we are (passive) watching someone and (active) actually doing something. So for the brain it doesn't matter whether we watch someone or do the activity ourselves. In both cases the same area, the same neurons are active. There's much debate going on about mirror neurons. The way I understand it, they are making us smile when we see others smile. They say when I was little and a certain friend started crying, I cried, too.

Something else is related to this, too, I think: ideomotor movents. I don't know, if this is actually true, but for me the words are made of "idea" and "motoric". The idea, which is the thought of a movement, leads to real movement. They are tiny, sort of micro-movements, but still movements. They're muscle movements then, or muscle tension, something like that and not actual visible movements. You can make "movements you thought of" visible though. Take a piece of string. Anything works. Something thin, long. On one end you put some weight on it. It doesn't have to be very heavy actually, just enough to serve as a pendulum. (Alternatively you can actually use a pendulum, too. I like to take a necklace I have with a stone hanging on it.) The pendulum needs hang in the air like that. Ideally take the string between your thumb and index finger only. You can support the elbow somewhere, but the wrist and upper arm have to be unsupported in any way. The elbow might rest on the arm of a chair and the string hanging next to the chair or use a table or something. Then concentrate on the end of the pendulum that's in the air. For starters just imagine it moving in no particular way at all, just moving. Then start playing with it: side to side, left to right, back and forth, or circle. If you want to and the pendulum is moving nicely, you can take a look at your hand now. The hand is making the movement. The string is only serving to make movement longer and more visible and the weight at the end of it, makes the movement even more visible. Many people may know the pendulum as a tool for witches, to (supposedly) communicate with spirits. In fact however there's nothing but micro-movements we thought of made visible through the pendulum. Some may be outraged or others still skeptical, but the so-called Ouija board, works the same way. (That's a board with the letters of the alphabet and you've got an arrow on which one or more people place their fingers and the arrow moves to the letters creating words as answers to questions asked). Flying tables or other objects are done with another trick, but what's called moving tables or moving glasses is done with ideomotor movements. The Ouija board only works if at least one of the persons involved knows the right answer. Derren Brown in his book "Tricks of the Mind" writes about one time when he was with friends and they wanted to communicate with one of his dead relatives. He knew about ideomotor movements at that time and deliberately didn't want to touch the arrow of the Ouija board. After the group asked for the name of the dead relative, they got a name all right, but it was not the real name of the relative and later one of the group said he had the name in his head. That's why that name came up.

Does that mean the pendulum is nothing but a cheap toy to play with ideomotor movements made visible? No. You can really communicate using a pendulum. Communicate with your unconscious. You can for example use it, if you're unsure making a decision. Either set up a movement for yes and no. (Be careful! Don't use left for yes and right for no. Make it distinct movements such as left and right for yes and circle for no.) Or you wish for any which movement may come up for yes and then ask for another movement for no. And then you can ask all kinds of questions and see what your unconscious thinks about them and shows you through movement. You could work with more than yes and no only, but I wouldn't make it more complicated than necessary. You could use diagonal for "maybe", too, or back and forth for "not sure". Something like that. You can also take a piece of paper and write a word in each corner (for example: yes, no, maybe, not sure) use the middle of the paper as a "starting point" and start swinging. The answers will be defined depending on which of the corners you end up.

The great escapologist Harry Houdini was a real mommy's boy. He was deeply hurt when his mom had died. He would have loved to be able to communicate with her. But he saw through the methods the so-called mediums used to supposedly communicate with the dead and spend much time debunking charlatan. I don't know, if it's possible to talk to the dead or not. What I do know however and wanted to describe here is that things like the pendulum or the Ouija board work entirely without "an invisible hand". And still this effect and the possibilities to really use it, fascinate me.

I once heard that our muscles already do ideomotor movements, before we do the real movements. So our body knows how we want to move next, before we actually do it. What good is our conscious then?

Until next blog,

sarah