Good morning!

Dear reader,

how many different meanings can the seemingly simple statement of "Good morning!" have?

When Bilbo Baggins wishes the wizard Gandalf that in "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey", instead of an expected greeting back, he gets a stream of interpretation possibilities.

"What do you mean? Do you wish me a good morning? Or do you mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not? Or perhaps you mean to say that you feel good on this particular morning? Or are you simply stating that this is a morning to be good on?"

Confusion or surprise can be one way to induce a trance. Even moreso because Bilbo didn't expect those questions. Your fault, Bilbo. Precise wording and language is very important and sometimes defining.

Bilbo, smart as he is, answers to the many questions Gandalf has, with what I would think to be the only possible answer that makes sense, "All of them at once, I suppose."

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

Try Not To Try

Dear reader,

there is one thing that I want to write about as a sort of preparation for the topic that I know, some are waiting to read about already.

Today I want to write about the word "try" or "trying". There is a scene in Star Wars, in which Master Yoda is with young Luke Skywalker. They're in this moorland or whatever you call it. Luke's spaceship has gone under there and Yoda told him to take it out with the help of the force only, through the power of the mind. Luke says he'll try. To which Yoda says the famous words of, "Do or do not. There is no try."

Many people know, how I think about "try". If someone doesn't know and uses the word "try" in my presence, I usually tell Master Yoda says hi. Some don't think this is a bad word. They say, "if you don't know if the thing will work or not, you can well say you're trying." Can you? Either it works or it doesn't. If you try and it works, you made it. If you try and fail, you failed. In both cases this is a clearer position than "trying". I think, Master Yoda is right. Either the thing will work out one way or another: positive or negative. To "try" however is an uncertain position in between those and in fact unnecessary. Say, there's a person, who's uncertain if something will work or not, for whatever reason. Even then this person doesn't need to try. It would be far better, especially because of that uncertainty, to get at it with "I'll do it." If something isn't quite right yet and it will fail because of that, then it will fail anyway. A bit more self-confidence, please! A positive attitude works much to make something to well.

To try something means resistance, that something is difficult. Yes, to dare something new can be difficult. I still stick to it: if you have a positive attitude to go with this thing, you have a better chance of succeeding. And something that is bound to fail, will also fail with the best of positive attitudes. So there is no reason to anticipate failure in any way. Lately I told people of the pink elephant and said to them, "If your thoughts are negative, you'll have the pink elephant in your mind, and you don't want that, do you?" (Tag question, by the way! See my last post.)

I practically deleted "try" of my vocabulary. There would be only one exception, in which I would use that word very consciously and where it would be highly effective. If you want that something doesn't work. I'd especially suggest that in hypnosis. For example if you aim for the arm to be stuck and can't be moved, catalepsy, I might say, "Try in vain to move your arm."

While we're on hypnosis, one more thing about the topic of failure in the context of therapy and generally difficult goals: a therapy means work and relapses. Sometimes it doesn't quite work as the therapist and especially the patient wish. Or good resolutions like being thinner or quitting smoking and similar things seem totally destroyed with the first bigger meal or the first cigarette after some time without one. I personally don't have the qualification to do therapy, so I can't give therapies. But I would urge each therapist to anticipate relapses and talk about that in therapy early on. A paradox? First I write about not using the word "try" and now I suggest explicitly talking about failure or rather relapses in therapy before they happen? Yes! Absolutely! Say, someone is depressed. There can be days on which the person feels bad. This happens to not depressed people, too. If the therapist doesn't talk about the possibility of bad days, the person could feel like a complete failure. It would be better to talk about the bad days explicitly and make them part of the therapy process, "You will feel bad on one or two days." What happens, if the person some day feels bad then? Well, it's okay then. The therapist said, I would feel bad one or two days. No problem. What if the therapy ends and the patient is not depressed anymore and didn't have bad days? Even better! The person can be proud, because s/he is better than even the therapist seemed to have thought, who said there will be one or two bad days. The simple anticipation of bad days gives the whole thing a different, a positive view!

By the way, the irish writer Samuel Beckett said the following about failure, "Try again. Fail again. Fail better."

Until next blog,

sarah

On Should, Should Not and Not

Dear reader,

why is it easier to follow "should not" than "should"? "Should not stay up online late at night." Done. I am online late at night. "Should be in bed early." Not really. "Should eat less sweets." A pack of haribo jellybabies last a couple of days at best. "Should eat more fruits and veggies." I'm allergic to some fruits and my guinea pigs eat more veggies than I do. (Okay, we often divide into three.)

I think, part of the answer to that question is in the choice of words, the phrasing. It's similar to asking you "Do not think of a pink elephant." What are you thinking of? Smart people among you may answer with "A blue elephant." Yes, yes... it's a harmless task and everyone smiles about it. But it's less funny when something might happen. Like a mother telling the child, "Do not knock over the glass." I can guarantee you that the possibility of the child knocking over the glass is quite high.

Some say this happens, because we first have to have a positive image in our head of the thing that should not happen. To know that you shouldn't think of a pink elephant, you first have to have a pink elephant in your head. For the child to know not to knock over the glass, she has to see a glass knocked over. In case of the child this is more unconscious than the pink elephant. But still both is in the head.

In german this is relatively harmless so far. English is more complicated. Because the english "not", "knot" and "nod", if spoken the first two are the same and almost undistinguishable from the "nod". What helps is the over all context. For someone where english is a foreign language, the process of "not", "knot" and "nod" and hearing the right one may possibly be more conscious than for someone with english as a native language. In the "right" situation it may still happen that I hear or read other things in the text.

As a hypnotist you can play with that in a beautiful way. There are things called "tag questions". They're easier and more elegant to use in english, I think. In german they don't come across that beautiful. A statement is said and you tag a question to it at the end. A simple thing, isn't it? (In german they're literally called "refrain questions", but the actual refrain isn't there. It's obvious in english though.) To go back to the "knot" from earlier: "It's easy, is it not?" And how did you react to that just now? With a (unconscious) nod? Wonderful!

There's something else, which is called "yes-set" and can be played with and used to manipulate perfectly. Say I want the person sitting with me to agree to a certain thing or be positive about something. I set it up with a bunch of questions or statements, which I know the answer will be "yes" or the person will agree with it. So the person will be programmed to "yes", positive and nodding and eventually will agree to the thing or the statement I want him or her to agree to. But: if someone asks me a chain of questions and I repeatedly say "yes" all the time, I get suspicious. I don't need to be a hypnotist for that. You can vary all that by asking questions in a negative way and the negative will be confirmed. Example: "Kids should really not play with fire." You agree with that statement by shaking your head or saying "no" to confirm it. Although you say "no" or shake your head for "no", you still agree positively to my statement and I keep you in a positive mind-set.

Until next blog,

sarah

Motivation

Dear reader,

some of you may be able to do what others admire: being awake before the alarm goes off or maybe being awake at a certain time without an alarm clock all together.

All of that has to do with one thing especially: motivation. In the pilot episode of "Elementary" Watson sets the alarm for her to alarm clocks. One right beside her bed, the other one she has by the door plugged to an electrical socket. As she's in the hall way, she realises that honey is dripping through the ceiling. So she goes up to the roof and finds Holmes busy with his bees. He asks her why she hates her job so much. She denies that, but Holmes tells her that, "No one with two alarm clocks loves their job. Two alarm clocks mean it's a chore for you to get up in the morning." He also realised that even after such a short time of knowing Watson, she obviously likes his work.

Unnoticed by Watson Holmes unpluggs the clock at the door and takes the battery out of the other one. Watson is shocked when she wakes up in the morning and notices that she has been sleeping until 10 a. m. Holmes meanwhile is wide awake checking files at the police station.

In episode 10 (The Leviathan) we get to know the Watson family a bit more. At first Holmes says he's busy, but in the end he's even earlier than Watson at the restaurant and does Watson a favour explaining to her family and especially her mother just what it is she's doing and how important her work is. At last the family understands and respects her work.

This goes so far that at the end of this episode Watson's mother comes to Holmes' house to talk to Watson. The mother finds unique words for her daughter. Because although, thanks to Holmes' explanations, she now understands what Watson does, she still doesn't like it and yet:

"I know you think that I don't like your new career. To put it mildly. You're right, I don't like it. But not for the reasons that you think. I'm not happy that you're a sober companion, because it never seems to make you happy." Watson asks her, how she knows what makes her happy. To which the mother replies, "I know because you're my daughter. After you left medicine, after what happened with Liam, I've always thought that this job was something that you picked out of... I don't know, out of a sense of duty. When you came to dinner the other night, when the two of you talked about Sherlock's work, I saw something in you. There was a spark. A sense of excitement. I haven't seen that in you in a long time. You like what he does."

"Yes, okay, I enjoy it", Watson says. "But I'm not a detective, Mom. And I'm almost done working with Sherlock, and then it's on to another client." There and then her mother asks her an important question, "Will the next client make you happy? People find their paths in the strangest of ways."

At this moment Holmes interrupts the two to turn on the tv and show them a certain news report. And you can see the consequences Watson takes from working with Holmes yourself in the following episodes. No idea, how much the talk with her mother plays a role in that. (In the end it's just tv script anyway... ;-)) What the mother has to say however, I think, is important - today more than ever: finding something that gives us a spark, excites us. Then work will not so much be work anymore, but fun and easier to do than work, we do, because we have the feeling of having no other choice but this work. In moments like this we're less dependent on alarm clocks, too. When we have fun and joy and expectantly dream on to another day.

What activities or work ignite the spark within you?

Until next blog,

sarah

My Barnum Effect Test

Dear reader,

well, it's not mine. The experiment is old, of course. The magicians Penn & Teller did their version in their series "Bullshit" (season 7, episode 2: Astrology). Derren Brown shows this experiment as part of an episode of his series "Trick of The Mind" (season 3, episode 1). Which are only two that come to my mind right away, which I've seen myself. Others have done that experiment, too and towards the end of my studies at uni, I did as well.

I talked to the professor of a psychology class. The class was, at least in theory, about doing things and not just teaching and theory. The right course for my experiment, I thought. So I asked the professor if it was okay if I did a little experiment I had thought of doing for a while already. She agreed, so the week before easter holidays, I came in with yellow index cards I told others that over the course of the semester holidays, I had worked on creating a personality test program and would like to test its accuracy with them. I told them to write down: on the left top corner the day of birth, should they know it, also the time. But it wasn't necessary for me to have the time. On the right top corner they were to write a code of any combination of numbers and letters. Just so they knew theirs. In the middle they should write one short sentence that described them. (I should give Penn & Teller credit for that one. In their Bullsh!t episode on astrology, they let a psychology professor do exactly that. Since I couldn't come up with anything else as a basis for information.)

Then the easter holidays came and then the first day after the holidays came and the seminar was later that afternoon. So plenty of times for fellow students to approach me and ask about the test. Well, two came up to me right after the first seminar that day. One saying that she changed courses, but should I have the results, she'd like to know hers. I gave her her index card. The "result" I had stuck on the back of it with a paper-clip. I told her the truth right away that the twist to this wasn't so much the text, nor the test, but how they reacted. Another girl approached me saying she had an appointment at the doctor's. She'd try to change it, but couldn't. I desperately hoped the wouldn't tell the others about my text!

Anyway, I came into the room where the seminar would be held. One girl came to me and asked me about three times, "Are you going to tell us now?" She was really eager.

A short break time during the seminar was my time. I said, "Last time I asked you to fill out index cards for me for a personality test. I've got the results now. Please, pick your card and read it quietly for yourself. Don't share it with others. I want to ask you for quick judgment about how well it fits you." They went and read their card. I asked, "On a scale from 1 to 5, 1 meaning doesn't fit and 5 means it fits, how many think it sucked? 1?" No one. "How many say: a bit? 2?" Still no one. "How many say: so and so? Kind of half half? 3?" Two or three raised their hands. "How many say 4?" I didn't count, a good deal of people. "5?" The rest of them. One half joked, "Mine's like 4.5." That got a laugh. I said, "Of those, who say it's 5, would any of you care to read like the first two or three sentences for us? Just to show how a well done one would have looked like?" One started reading hers. The others started smiling and looking at each other. The reader asked me, if she should go on. I thanked her and said, it was enough and that the reason why the others smiled was, because they had the same text.

"You all have the same text", I said. "And here's another truth: that program I told you about doesn't exist." I could feel the relief that spread in the room. "I didn't even write the text. The text is from the wikipedia entry to 'Barnum effect', which is what happened here: if you have a bunch of information, you pick the things you think fit and make them fit to yourself. Barnum was a circus director, who had that motto of: a little bit for everyone." I went a bit on and then told them about, also that fortune tellers and the like use this technique.

I told them that my mom had told me about an aunt, who had went to a fortune-teller. She told that aunt that she was about to die in a car within the next 1 to 3 months. I said, "She lived longer than 3 months. But can you imagine - and we're right into the topic of this seminar here - the mental stress she would be in, every time she had to go into a car? This could be the one, she'd die in." I said, "So maybe you say: well, that's fortune-telling. I don't believe in that anyway. But you did believe me."

I was about to leave it at that, but one girl raised her hand and asked me something I don't remember anymore. It got us into a quite relaxed, but interested and interesting discussion (probably for 10 to 15 minutes, in any case longer than the teacher intended for that break) about fortune tellers, cold reading and the like. I felt good. It's one thing watching videos of Derren Brown or others doing it or reading about it. It's another to be able to feel that they believe you and knowing you cheated on them. I knew they wouldn't like strangle me or something. But I was quite nervous as to how they would react. I was very pleased how they reacted. Even surprised to find that they actually had questions and were really interested in knowing and discussing more!

Until next blog,

sarah

Abductive, Deductive and Inductive Reasoning

Dear reader,

I can't help myself but making this blog entry today a scientific one.

Before I start I want you to know three things

1) I wasn't very scientific in my last post. I forgot to mention the names of the series I mentioned. The BBC production is called "Sherlock". The american series goes under the title of "Elementary".

2) It may surprise some of you that although Holmes was so analytical and scientific, his creator was quite unscientific and gullible. Doyle believed very much in the existence of fairies. It's also difficult to believe that Harry Houdini and Arthur Conan Doyle have been friends for a while. Because their point of view on spiritism was so contrary however, that friendship didn't last long.

3) The producers of "Sherlock" really took great care in creating that show. Sherlock has his own homepage The Science of Deduction. You can also read Dr. John Watson's Blog, which includes comments by Holmes and others!!! Other characters of the series also have their websites: Molly Hooper's blog and the forum of Connie Prince. The last two however may only be of interest to people, who know the series and the persons.

In a way even Sherlock Holmes' homepage is only for people who know the series or fans. Also the title of the page is sort of wrong. Sherlock Holmes is not using deduction in his investigations. This is a mistake not only from the series, but also wrong in Doyle's books. On imdb.com you can find a note on that mistake.

To be honest, each reasoning: abductive, deductive and inductive - are tricky and separating each of them from the others is not quite easy. The differences are very small.

The differences between inductive and deductive reasoning are relatively simple to explain.

In deductive reasoning you set up a general rule. From that rule you set up another rule, of which you can be certain, too. If or rather because both are true, the conclusion will be certain at the end. This kind of reasoning can be found in mathematics, for example in equations with variables:

if x = 2

and if y = 3,

then 2 x + y = 7

Maths is often very much just theory. So let's put it another way:

If chaos is increased in a system, unless you feed it with energy,

and if my flat is a system,

then I should feed my flat with energy and keep it tidy and clean, unless I want to drown in a chaotic mess.

With inductive reasoning you take one single thing and take it to be true. From that you make a general rule that applies to other similar things. A conclusion is likely, but not certain. There is this thought experiment about a white swan. If we see many white swans, we can conclude that there exist white swans. It would be wrong however to conclude that all swans are white, or that there only exist white swans. In science, which is about gathering information, you can find this way of thinking.

Abductive reasoning is about observing something and looking for a possible explanation that would make the observed probable as an outcome. The theorist Charles Sanders Peirce, the founder of abductive reasoning, explained it this way:

"The surprising fact, C, is observed. But if A were true, C would be a matter of course. Hence, there is reason to suspect that A is true."

Finding a conclusion is taking your best shot and not very satisfying. The conclusion you come up with may or may not be true. In medicine you find this way of thinking. The patient tells about his symptoms and the doctor has to think of an illness that would lead to those symptoms, to treat the patient accordingly. Also in court you'll find abductive reasoning: does the prosecution or the defense the better arguments that fit and explain the given situation?

So indeed Holmes doesn't use deduction, but abduction. He cannot be certain to see all the facts of a crime scene that lead to the crime. So Holmes' conclusion are likely to be incomplete and with that nothing more than taking your best shot.

Arthur Conan Doyle used Dr. Joseph Bell as a model for Holmes, as I mentioned already in my last post. Another doctor was very good in observing and making conclusions: Dr. Milton Erickson. Sidney Rosen describes a story in his book "My Voice Will Go with You: The Teaching Tales of Milton H. Erickson", which is a good example to show how good Erickson was in observing and making conclusions. The story is called "The Right Psychiatrist":

A young, beautiful woman came to Erickson. She was very desperate. She wasn't pleased with either of the psychiatrist she had seen so far. So she was uncertain about Erickson and whether he was able to help her. He wrote down some things about the young woman and then said to her that he was the right psychiatrist. He could prove it by asking a question. But the woman won't like that question. The woman wanted to hear the question anyway. So Erickson asked her, "How long have you been wearing women's cloths?" Erickson had seen the woman pick a lint off her sleeve in a straight, direct move, without a "detour" around the breasts, like a woman would.

There's also a video with Tim Minchin, where he talks about the human logic, which addresses another aspect of logic.

Until next blog,

sarah

Pain control

Dear reader,

it seems fitting to write a blog entry on the topic of pain control when I'm sitting here with a sore throat.

I was born handicapped. I don't like that word much, because I'm independent and "handicapped" for me means a limitation. In the end all people are in one way or another helpless or limited or at least a bit inapt.

Anyway, I was born with my right foot missing. I have a prothesis and with it I can walk and ride a normal bike on a regular basis. Many people don't know I have a prothesis and are surprised when they find out about it. They don't see it. It had happened a couple of times in the past that the bone in the leg has grown faster than the rest of the leg. The bone had to be cut off. I know I have taken pain killers they have given me the first time. The next two times I didn't take them. I don't like being numbed and didn't want to sleep with meds. I didn't want to sleep. I wanted to be pain free! I know that the third and (to date) last time I had deliberately slept through the following one or two days after the operation.

I don't quite remember if it was the first or second time. But I remember that my grandmother had been visiting me in the hospital with my dad and my sister. My mom had been there in the hospital with me anyway. I don't remember what my grandma hat told me. The others had gone out of the room and she told me something. Something that made me forget my pain. As soon as the others came back, the spell was broken. I have no idea what she did exactly or how. I'm also not sure she was conscious of what she did. The important thing was, that it helped.

Pain is a messenger. Normally it wants to tell us, "Take better care of yourself!" or "Change something! The way it is now is not good for you." These are important signals, which shouldn't be ignored like that under any circumstances. This is why I suggest to everybody not to shut down all the pain. That's often not necessary anyway. We all can go on pretty good with a certain amount of pain and ignore that. But please not for long! That would be unhealthy and unreasonable. A messenger wants to be heard and requires that something has to be done, changed. This should be respected under all circumstances!

Hypnosis Salad is an organisation, which gives hypnosis seminars. On youtube there's a video with Michael Watson, where he talks with lots of humor about an effective method of pain control a friend of his used. Here are two of the main points of the video about pain:

• Pain is so uncomfortable, because we think of it as uncontrolable.


• At the given moment pain seems endless.

The method Michael Watson describes is so simple and clever. You take the pain and turn it into a symbol (maybe also a colour) and hold this symbol in your hand. Then you throw it into a bin or flush it down the toilet or whatever. Why is it a clever method? Well, by turning the pain into a symbol, you change the sensory perception. It's a feeling changed into something visual. By placing the symbol in your hand it's away from the original place. (Except it's pain in the hand of course. Although even if that's the case it would be a change from a feeling actually in a part of the body to a symbol you can see and hold in the hand.) What did you do there? Taking control through giving a shape and change of location and change of sensory perception! The endlessness stops when we throw away the symbol.

I personally placed a symbol in my hand only one or two times. What I do is my own variation. Let's assume it's a headache. I imagine a geometrical shape with edges or spikes, which could give me the kind of pain in my head that I have at that moment. Often it's something like a polygon or something thorny. A colour may or may not come with the symbol for everyone. For me the shape often comes with a sort of yellow or green. The colour is there without me thinking about one. I keep the shape in my head and imagine it go change into a ball. A ball has no edges, so they can't cause pain. Because of Erickson the colour purple is special for me and has a calming effect. So the ball turns purple. Often what I do is imagine my whole head in a light purple, transparent ball. Like my head is in a gold fish bowl.

Simply by having to concentrate on something, which you have to see in your head, is distraction by itself and changes the intensity. One advice if you're working with colours, too: pick a colour that's far enough away from the pain colour. For example if your pain colour is blue, purple will be rather close to that colour. One time I told my dad about this method and he suggested to take the complementary colour. I never did that. I keep forgetting about it, because purple is my colour of choice automatically or sometimes blue. Also one needs to know which colour the complementary colour is. (Interestingly enough it fits for me with yellow-green and purple already.)

Like I said, you should keep a little bit of pain. It happens for me that at one point I don't have to concentrate on the purple ball anymore and I just keep doing what I do at that moment. The headache is gone by itself then. So it often is enough to make the pain less, but not delete it all together.

Richard Bandler, one of the founders of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) knows a lot about hypnosis. When asked what he does against a toothache, he said he goes to the dentist. And with a headache? He takes aspirin then. The people are surprised about his reply then. With an expert in hypnosis they seem to expect some sort of hypnosis. The method Michael Watson describes or my variation are possible methods. Richard Bandler's way of dealing with a toothache or headache is important anyway: if there are ways and methods to get rid of the pain in an easy way, we should use them, too.

I mentioned Charlie Chaplin in my blog entry about my room of motivation. But the quote fits here once again, too: "Nothing is permanent in this wicked world - not even our troubles."

Until next blog,

sarah

The Memory Palace

Dear reader,

I'm don't remember exactly in which book I read about this first, the thought of a memory palace. Either it was Stephen King's "Duddits" (probably better nown as the movie "Dreamcatcher") or Thomas Harris' "Hannibal". The memory palace is a way to remember and recollect things that are connected at any time.

Some of you may know this idea of connecting a list of words to a story and by retelling that story also remembering the individual words in their set order. The memory palace works similar. Only that the memory palace, as the name suggests, is a set of rooms, which play a role in this. You start with one room and then expand with other rooms and at the end you have many rooms: a palace.

You start it like this: You take one room you know well. It makes little sense to go to this room now and look for certain aspects in it. If you can't recall them and have them in your head already now, it will probably be difficult to remember the aspects later when you have to and when they're linked to information you want to remember. You use this room to place things in it. Things you want to remember later. It could be a picture of a friend on the door of the fridge, to remind you that you wanted to call him. Cupboards, shelves, tables, chairs can be used to put objects on them to remind you of something.

To create a palace like that is very much connected with the so called loci method. Loci deriving from latin locus a "place" or "location". In a sense the memory palace is the loci method in its most beautiful way.

To see what wikipedia had on the topic of the mind palace, I looked it up there. Thinking back I'd have to rewise my first paragraph here. Many years back I read the Sherlock Holmes books by Arthur Conan Doyle. In the book "A Study In Scarlet" Doyle mentions that Holmes uses his memory palace, to remember certain things.

Three moies are also mentioned on the german wikipedia page (I didn't bother to check the english one, too, but suspect there are listed there as well). In an episode of "Mind Control" Derren Brown shows, how he created a room that helps him count cards and remember in a Black Jack game which card were dealt. In a new, modern BBC version of Sherlock Holmes, the series "Sherlock", in the episode "The Hound of Baskerville", Holmes uses the method to recall associations. Here's the scene for you to watch. In the second episode of the american, modern Holmes version, the series "Elementary" (episode "While You Were Sleeping"), Holmes describes to Watson why he hypnotises himself in support group meetings to take a break. He has what he calls "attic theory": in an attic there is only a finite amount of space. The brain is the same. This space should be consciously used to fill with things and only useful ones. Unuseful things will be thrown out again.

Which may be an explaination why Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes as well as the BBC-Sherlock-Holmes both don't know how the sun, the moon and the earth relate to each other and which revolves around which planet. There's no space for something like that in Holmes' head.

Also Jonsey in "Dreamcatcher"/"Duddits" explains to his friends that for new information, like for example how to use a computer, he had to throw out other old information. Here is Jonsey's explaination for what he calls his memory warehouse.

The german wikipedia page also mentions the series "The Mentalist" in which Patrick Jane also uses the method to help witnesses to recall things. But right now I can't remember a certain episode or scene that would show this. Sherlock Holmes is more familiar for me these days, because I'm currently watching the two series I mentioned.

More on Sherlock Holmes some time later... I'm not sure, if I described the memory palace well enough so that others know what to do and how to use it. For me this is something like describing only with words to someone how to tie a shoe lace. Like you may find, it's way more difficult and takes endlessly longer than showing it and actually doing.

Doing! I don't really use the rooms I created to explicitly remember a list of tasks or a string of numbers or something like that. Strictly speaking I don't use them to remember anything as such. They're places to relax or to be in good company. Sometimes they're rooms and scenes of movies with the persons of that scene in it or I take the position of one of the persons involved. I won't tell you the movies. I think those of you, who are interested in movies will find and have your own movies and scenes.

One room is dark and only a small, square table with a drawer is visible. In the drawer there's a note with 20 words on it, the words Derren Brown listed in his book "Tricks Of The Mind" to explain how one can remember this (one) list of words in a set order forwards and backwards. I have to admit, I only take out a sheet of paper. I don't actually see the 20 words then. I think in those moments to take a break and just focus on this string of words is creating a distance for a while. At least as long as it takes me to recite a list of 20 words forwards and then backwards. I read that book in 2008. I still remember the list forwards and backwards. The only thing I didn't do yet, is remembering the position of the words. Like when someone called out a number, I'd know which word was on that position. It would make for a neat, little magic trick.

In recent time I realised I half consciously, half unconsciously go to a supermarket around the corner from where I live. It's a big shop. Take a walk there to check if I know where to find which things. But it's more for fun and pleasure than to actually checking facts.

Until next blog,

sarah

My Earworm Theory

Dear reader,
I'm very certain that earworms, that's songs we have stuck in our head for some time and don't get rid of easily, do have a meaning. They're not just songs or parts of songs in the head. Usually they're lyrics and not (just) melodies, we have in our head. Pay attention once to the lyrics, you have in your head then. I believe, our unconscious wants to say something to us with those lyrics and wants to make it conscious through this unnerving loop (or worm in our ear).
Honestly I had one song in my head for one and half a year. I was able to listen to other songs and it was okay. But as soon as I didn't hear anything and something was in my head, for one and half a year it was actually only one song. I better don't tell which one it was. It was a very famous one and can fast be the earworm for many other people. But I'm going to tell you some songs I had in my head from time to time recently. They weren't earworms in a real sense for me, because they weren't totally unnerving, but they were still some lines or some words of songs in the head.
As I was in the process of moving to my own flat, every now and then I had "Settle Down" by No Doubt. The lines "Get get get in line, and settle down / Get in line, and settle down" made sense for moving to another place really. "Settle down" as in "calm down", but also as in "finding a place to live". I was finding a place to live, settling down.
Thanks to a friend of mine (you know who you are), I discovered Tim Minchin the other day. I could have "known" him earlier in fact than only a couple of weeks back. Because one or two years back another friend of mine showed me a with Axes of Awesome, a video of a gig they did at which they did their 4 Chord Song. This is a nice, funny mix of many songs, which all have the same 4 chords (or one of them anyway) and all of them are hits. Particularly this video had all interprets and songs listed in the video. Tim Minchin was also among them towards the end. If I had bothered to listen to the less known or actually unknown interprets "back then", I could have known him way earlier. In any case I know him now and spent the past several days now to watch him and listen to every thing I could get. Obviously this is dangerous for me. Some days back I woke up with one of Tim Minchin's songs in my head and it stayed there for the better part of the day. On friday I was at work and drinking chai latte ginger. It didn't surprise me the least that I had Tim Minchin's "Ginger Song" (earlier versions entitled "Taboo", now it's generally known as "Prejudices") in my head for the whole time and it was impossible for me to get it out until I was finished with the chai latte ginger. Thank you very much. This wasn't funny at all, especially since the song isn't about the plant ginger. It took me a bit of time to realise what it was about. It really wasn't funny. Saturday wasn't any much better, except that the song was different. We were all shopping together and even on the way there a melody and then the text of Tim Minchin's "Canvas Bags" started take shape in my head. And yes, we did have canvas bags with us! Which was what I told myself repeatedly, to get the song out of my head.
Friday was simply unnerving and saturday was at least a better song. I still didn't really bother much to get the songs out of my head on both days. Even though both were unnerving. If I want to get rid of a song, it helps to have another fast song in your head. Sometimes I even whisper the lyrics or hum the melody at a low volume, if the earworm is really unnerving and sticky. What helps me is "Halloween Town" from the movie "Nightmare Before Christmas". Often what I do is I start with the la-la-la-bit towards the end of it and from time to time in my head the chorus starts at one point and then some time later both Halloween Town and the earworm are out of my head. This song, especially my starting point, is fast and fast requires a certain amount of concentration. That usually helps against earworms, to find something where you need to concentrate. I think it also helps, to respect and accept the hints from our unconscious and follow them, as much as it's and if possible.
At the beginning of this year I had to go to a sort of seminar. I didn't feel like it and also was very nervous, even though I had been there the day before. So I knew where I had to go and also knew the people there more or less. I woke up with a sailer's song in my head. I don't remember anymore which it was. The text was something along the lines of "don't be afraid, my love, it'll all be well soon". After a while I would have liked to have another song in my head for a change. But still it was somewhat calming me down - and it was right. As I was there soon it was all well. So earworms are not just something unnerving and above all not meaningless.
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

Pride and Prejudice

Dear reader,

I was able to see for myself how our presuppositions affect our way of thinking, if not to say forms our prejudices. Two evenings ago the movie "Blood Diamond" was on tv. I knew it already, but wanted to watch it again and really see some of the actors this time. I didn't know them before or wasn't aware of them as who they were the first time around.

I didn't remember who composed the music for the film, but "suspected" Hans Zimmer. I don't like him. His music often is big, which is fine in and for blockbusters, but the music without the film is often quite exhausting for me to listen to. I don't listen to the few soundtracks of him that I have anymore. Sometimes I listen to a remix version of the title song "Now We Are Free" from the movie "Gladiator". It's the "Now We Are Free (Juba's Mix" from "Gladiator - More Music From the Motion Picture", one of the two cd's out there. I liked to listen to that one earlier. I liked it better than the other one. On it are pieces which Hans Zimmer composed, but never "made it" into to movie. It also has a couple of parts of dialogue from the movie. Even listening to the "better" one of the two cd's, I don't get passed the first 3 tracks. I then skip all of them except the last 2 tracks. And that it's it.

It took me a long time before I watched the Sherlock Holmes movie from 2009 and Inecption, because Hans Zimmer die the score for it. I know, I'm stupid. (The score for the first Sherlock Holmes movie, by the way, is exactly what I expected of Hans Zimmer: much of other movies and much repetition. To be exact "The Third Man" and this is repeated so much that I was bored, if not to say annoyed by it, even watching the movie. A couple of times I still listened to the soundtrack alone and thought it was okay.) The second Sherlock Holmes movie from 2011, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, I didn't watch, because the story didn't interest me much. Maybe I'll watch it some time. Inception and the first Sherlock Holmes movie I really didn't watch out of protest. I had no interest at all in Hans Zimmer.

Back to Blood Diamond. So I had Hans Zimmer in my head and a couple of times when I was aware of the music, I only liked it partly. Sometimes it was pretty good, I had to admit. Overall of course, I could not possibly like it, although some was pretty good. Then the movie was over. And? "Music: James Newton Howard. Ouch. He worked with Hans Zimmer on Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. James Newton Howard gave both movies the emotion of the music, which Hans Zimmer cannot, because he can only do "massive blockbuster and action". James Newton Howard's wonderfully minimalistic soundtrack to "The Village" is my favourite. So he had done the score for Blood Diamond? I'll soon listen to it without the movie.

On saturday I told my mom about the quasi confusion and how I came to like the score just now because of that. She grinned and said, "See. See how our prejudices influence us." All I could do was grin back at her and nod.

The "pride"-part of this blog entry is this: James Newton Howard composed the music for the first two Batman movies together with Hans Zimmer, like I wrote before. He didn't work on the third and last one though and Hans Zimmer did it alone. Why? The other day I accidentally came across a page on the internet which stated that James Newton Howard seemed to have expected to work on Inception with Hans Zimmer, like they did work together on the two Batman movies. Nolan however didn't ask him. I don't know if it was defiance or pride or whatever, but Howard didn't want to work on the last Batman movie then. What an ego. Sad.

Until next blog,

sarah