Stairway to observation: it's elementary

Dear reader,

Tuesday, a couple of weeks ago. I'm visiting a friend of mine at work. As I make my way up from the underground, I step on the first step of the escalator. It's broken. I have to walk up. Darn.

Wednesday that same week. I'm again visiting that friend of mine at work. As I make my way up from the underground, I step on the first step of the escalator. It's still broken. I have to walk up again. Stupid!

 Thursday that same week. I'm again visiting that friend of mine at work. I am finally remembering that maybe the escalator is still broken. I peek around the corner to check if the lights are green. They're red. I walk on it to take the stairs. I finally learned.

Months ago I spend many days watching both the series "Sherlock" and "Elementary". As Sherlock likes to say, "You see, but you don't observe." The first step to see and observe and deduce the way Sherlock Holmes does is to actively engage in seeing things.

 Last week on Thursday. I'm visiting that friend of mine at work. I peek around the corner to check the lights of the escalators. They're red. It's broken again. I wonder what all the old people at my friend's work are doing. The escalators are broken a lot of times at that underground station. As I walk alone to the stairs, I'm thinking about Sherlock Holmes, too. Thank you, Sherlock.

Until next blog,
sarah

Ventriloquists good - non-ventriloquists evil

Dear reader,

granted, there are some strange ventriloquists out there. Edgar Bergen for example in his later years gave Charlie McCarthy his own room. Candice Bergen, the daughter of Edgar Bergen, was certainly frustrated when she was younger and Charlie McCarthy was called to be her big brother. Al Steven writes in his book „Ventriloquism: Art, Craft, Profession“, that Paul Winchell had massive problems with his mother. That went so far that he was admitted to a psychiatric hospital at one point. He ran away from there one night to go to the graveyard to hallucinate both his figures Jerry Mahoney and Knucklehead Smiff at his mother's grave. (Stevens takes that from Paul Winchell's autobiography „Winch“, which I haven't read though. So all I can do is repeat what Stevens wrote.)

Al Stevens also writes, rightly so, I think, that there is surely a certain percentage more or less crazy vents out there. But this percentage of crazy also exists in other professions. The thought that vents are crazy therefore is not more often or less than with other people. The media, especially films, however like to spread the image of this crazy vent or the murderous vent figure. It's similar to that image of hypnotists. Many people fear hypnotists, though for other reasons. The thing with hypnotists though is that people believe the hypnotists totally take away their own free will.

More common than the truly crazy vent you find them in films. Be it portrayed by Jay Johnson as “Chuck Campbell” in “Soap”, for whom Bob is as real as a real human. “Soap” isn't quite normal anyway. The series is about two sisters, Mary Campbell and Jessica Tate and their families. Both families are not normal. A vent truly seeing his figure as just that would not have fit in there. Billy Chrystal for example played another brother of the family and was gay. Today this is hardly a drama at all, but around 1980, when the series was shot, it was quite a big thing. One of my favourite scenes is the one with Chuck, Bob and the fridge.

Chuck and Bob's first meeting with both families is also something worth watching for sure. And the scene with Bob as mindreader shows in a very beautiful way that Chuck is not alone in accepting Bob as an independent person. I just love the look Mary gives her husband Burt.


There's no video of it online, but in “Night Court, the episode “The Next Voice You Hear” (season 4, episode 1) Ronn Lucas plays a vent, who talks all right, but without moving his lips and without a figure. He refuses to talk in his normal voice. A successful act, he says, depends on the personality of the figure and the rapport between he and the ventriloquist. He has honed his skills, but he hasn't yet found the perfect other character. Until he does, he refuses to speak as himself.

He's also in the „L.A. Law“ episode „Dummy Dearest“ (season 3, episode 6). As Kenny Petersen, who was kept in a trunk of a car for a couple of days when he was 3 years old, he doesn't speak himself. But he does have a figure, who speaks for him instead. It's not more patient with him than the rest of the people around Kenny, who think him crazy for walking around with a puppet all the time. Again there are no scenes of that episode on the internet to show you here.

I only mention this film here now, because even with the clichee of the crazy ventriloquist, I still think they're quite witty and not the typical “murderous insane”, like many others.

As a vent you're more than just an actor. You're audience, when the figure is active, and yet at the same time you're actor, because you're playing the figure. That's something other actors don't get to do. Either they're in the role or not. Only vents can be actor and audience at the same time.

I'm very fascinated with Ronn Lucas' role in „L.A. Law“ because of that. It goes a bit further than the „usual“ 2 roles of a vent, because on one hand (no pun intended) he has to play a depressed, intimidated vent and at the same time his figure is totally raging against almost everybody he comes across... including Kenny Petersen himself. One especially touching scene is at the end of that episode as Kenny is crouched with his figure in the corner of a room full of records and the figure is totally hitting on him how it makes no sense anymore to speak for him and that he's a lost case. The scene is even more beautiful (as much as such a scene can be beautiful that is) to watch, if you keep in mind that Ronn Lucas doesn't just have no text, but the very angry figure is speaking and that's without twitching lips on Lucas' part or otherwise showing that he's at the same time speaking for a very emotional figure. Scenes like that seem simple. Someone talks and someone else does not. In fact however they're much more complicated as they seem, similar to a magic trick. The art of ventriloquism is that the text of the figure are there right away. It's not something that's added later on by someone speaking the lines. That's the true art. I miss good ventriloquists. The films today are all animated and the actors just speak the lines. Or you help yourself with letting the actor speak the lines “off camera”, invisible for the camera.

As a ventriloquist you can be creative and you have a unbelievably complex task in being two persons at the same time. Also it gives the ventriloquist the possibility to say things which are impossible to say otherwise (because society doesn't like them) or things you don't dare saying (because you're shy). The figures give you the freedom to come out, really say anything and still be shy and withdrawn themselves. Ventriloquism is the safest way to let oneself go and “let out some steam”. Ventriloquists aren't crazy or evil. Crazy are only the people, who just take it all in all the time and don't let it out. Something like that makes people ill and crazy in the long run, I think.

Until next blog,

sarah

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

Hey, do you mind if I tell you a story?

Dear reader,

in the episode "The Rings of Akhaten" (Season 7, Episode 7) of Doctor Who, the Doctor wants to know more about Clara, whom he has met before in previous episodes and who seems somewhat odd. In this episode now they are on a planet where a girl, Merry Galel, is about to be sacrificed to an angry god. The Doctor doesn't give up on people easily, so he is desperate to find ways to help Merry Galel, too. They prepared her for the sacrifice from when she was very small and that's why she knows all the stories and songs of her people. But when she is about to be sacrificed, the Doctor comes and tells her something, which we all should be hearing more often, especially when we are desperate:

Hey, do you mind if I tell you a story? One you might not have heard. All the elements in your body were forged many many millions of years ago in the heart of a faraway star that exploded and died. That explosion scattered those elements across the desolations of deep space. After so, so many millions of years, these elements came together to form new stars and new planets. And on and on it went. The elements came together and burst apart, forming shoes and ships and sealing wax and cabbages and kings. Until, eventually, they came together to make you. You are unique in the universe. There is only one Merry Galel. And there will never be another. Getting rid of that existence isn't a sacrifice, it's a waste!

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