Vitamin D Is the New Fish Oil

The Vitamin D molecule

If you aren't supplementing with vitamin D, you should be - and a lot more than most people might suggest. I have been taking between 3000 and 4000 iu a day for a few months now, and I have noticed an increase in muscle mass and fat loss without changing anything in my diet. Now the changes aren't huge, like on drugs, but they are noticeable and have resulted in bigger weights and more recovery.

There are lots of other good benefits as well, as this article from T-Muscle reveals.

"D" is for Doping

by Chris Shugart

"D" is for Domination

In 1927 a controversy arose in the athletic world.

The German Swimmers' Association had decided to use a sunlamp on their athletes to boost performance. Some felt this ultraviolet irradiation constituted "athletic unfairness."

In other words, doping.

How could sitting under a sunlamp be construed as doping? Because, according to Dr. Tim Ziegenfuss, this artificial sunlight penetrates the skin and converts cutaneous 7-dehydrocholesterol to previtamin D3, which in turn becomes 1,25 dihydroxy vitamin D in the kidneys.

That in itself might not constitute athletic unfairness, but if you're deficient in Vitamin D (which is pretty damn common), then modern studies have shown that it can indeed be a performance enhancing substance.

The irradiation of athletes has continued since.

Fast forward to May 2009, a headline in the Post Chronicle:

"Vitamin D May Allow American Olympians To Dominate In 2012"

This headline was a reaction to a new paper published by The American College of Sports Medicine on the positive effect of adequate Vitamin D on athletic performance.

Now, although some scientists, including Dr. Tim Ziegenfuss, would not classify Vitamin D as a hormone, its metabolic product (calcitriol) is a secosteroid hormone (a molecule that's very similar to a steroid). In fact, many come right out and classify Vitamin D as a steroid hormone.

But is this really doping?

Most experts agree that it's not.

The majority of athletes — like the majority of people in the general population — are deficient in Vitamin D. Treating this deficiency can help athletes prevent stress fractures as well as maintain a healthy vitality. If this also happens to improve the athlete's reaction time, muscle strength, speed, and endurance, well... that's just a very nice side effect of getting adequate Vitamin D.

So Vitamin D has been making waves in the athletic community since at least 1927, but it's also becoming a hot topic in another field: life extension. Add to this some evidence that it could help with fat loss and strength gains, and you just might have...

The Next Big Vitamin

Dr. Jonny Bowden calls Vitamin D the most underrated "vitamin" on the planet. (Quotation marks because it isn't technically a vitamin at all.)

Dr. Ziegenfuss, a researcher and sports nutritionist to elite athletes, tests himself often to make sure he's getting enough. He even tests his kids for it and supplements them as needed.

Coach Eric Cressey says Vitamin D might just be the next fish oil. He makes sure the athletes under his care get plenty of it. Charles Poliquin does the same.

And finally, medicinal chemist Bill Roberts says that you should "absolutely" be taking Vitamin D.

What about the stuffy and often behind-the-times nutritional organizations and agencies? Well, the FDA has stated that they're likely going to up their Vitamin D recommendations the next time they release new standards.

In October of 2008, the American Academy of Pediatrics doubled the amount of D they recommend for kids (from 200 IU per day to 400 IU per day). And the Department of Family and Consumer Sciences at the University of Wyoming has recommended that sports nutritionists assess levels of Vitamin D in their athletes. If they're getting too little, they contend it will compromise the athlete's ability to train.

From government agencies to in-the-trenches trainers, the trend is clear: Vitamin D is important. And if you think you're getting enough of it from natural foods, fortified foods, and sunlight, then think again, Sunshine.

Vitamin D: Why Should You Care?

Three reasons: Longevity, performance, and lookin' good naked.

Let's break those down:

1) Longevity

You know what really gets in the way of building muscle, losing fat, and benching a ton?

Death.

The New England Journal of Medicine recently warned that the number of diseases associated with vitamin D deficiency is growing. And who's deficient? Most people, the studies seem to be saying, including otherwise nutrition-conscious athletes and gym rats.

In one mind-blowing study (Melamed, et al.) using population data, researchers found that total mortality was 26% higher in those with the lowest 25(OH)D levels compared with the highest. And a meta-analysis of 18 randomized controlled trials found that supplemental vitamin D significantly reduced total mortality. That means quite simply this: vitamin D supplementation prolongs life.

Here's just a handful of examples:

• According to the Vitamin D Council, current research has implicated vitamin D deficiency as a major factor in the pathology of at least 17 varieties of cancer.

• Vitamin D may protect against both Type I and Type II diabetes.

• Low D may contribute to chronic fatigue, depression, and Seasonal Affective Disorder.

• Parkinson's and Alzheimer's sufferers have been found to have lower levels of D.

• Low levels of vitamin D may contribute to "Syndrome X" with associated hypertension, obesity, diabetes, and heart disease.

• Administration of dietary vitamin D has been shown to lower blood pressure and restore insulin sensitivity.

This section could go on endlessly, so let's just say this: If you care about living a good long life, then Vitamin D looks like it could certainly help with that goal.

2) Performance

Studies on Vitamin D, sunlight, and performance go back for decades. Russian studies in the 1930's showed that 100M dash times improved in irradiated athletes vs. non-irradiated athletes undergoing the same training (7.4% improvement vs. 1.4%).

German studies in the 1940's showed that irradiation lead to a 13% improvement in performance on the bike ergometer vs. no improvement in the control group.

In the 1950's researchers saw a "convincing effect" on athletic performance after treating athletes at the Sports College of Cologne. Findings were so convincing that they notified the Olympic Committee.

At one point, even school children were irradiated and given large doses of Vitamin D in 1952 Germany. Treated children showed dramatic increases in overall fitness and cardiovascular performance. UV radiation was also shown to improve reaction times by 17% in a 1956 study.

In the 1960s, a group of American college women were treated with a single dose of ultraviolet irradiation. The results: improvements in strength, speed, and endurance.

Other studies showed "distinct seasonal variation" in the trainability of musculature. Basically, athletes performed better and got stronger in the late summer due to their greater exposure to the sun and subsequent Vitamin D production.

Vitamin D has also been shown to act directly on muscle to increase protein synthesis. Deficient subjects administered Vitamin D showed improvement in muscle protein anabolism and an increase in muscle mass.

Improvements in neuromuscular functioning have also been seen. People with higher levels of Vitamin D generally have better reaction time and balance.

3) Looking Good Naked

If Vitamin D does indeed improve the effects of training and helps to stave off various illnesses, then it's easy to see how this can translate into an improved aesthetic: you're healthier, you feel better, you get more out of your training, and you end up looking better when you make sexy-time. But there could be a more direct effect as well.

Dr. Shalamar Sibley's new research shows that adding Vitamin D to a reduced-calorie diet may lead to better, faster weight loss. Not only did she find that excess body fat came off faster when plenty of D3 was present, but it also came off the abdominal area.

The icing on the cake? The same D-supplemented subjects retained muscle mass while losing the fat.

In other studies, subjects receiving Vitamin D therapy lost weight, lost their sugar cravings, and saw a normalization in blood sugar levels.

The Quick and Dirty of D

Before we get to the TMUSCLE recommendations, let's review some Vitamin D basics and some little known facts:

• There is no RDA for Vitamin D due to "insufficient evidence." But there is an AI or Adequate Intake recommendation:

Ages 19-50: 200 IU
Ages 51-70: 400 IU
Over age 70: 600 IU

That means this is the amount assumed to ensure nutritional adequacy: sufficient to maintain bone health and normal calcium metabolism in healthy people. Suffice it to say, these are bare minimums that new evidence suggests are way too conservative.

• There aren't that many foods in nature containing Vitamin D. The best source is halibut liver oil, followed by cod liver oil, salmon, tuna, and mackerel.

And by the way, farm-raised salmon has been shown to have 25% less Vitamin D than wild salmon. And cod liver oil? Good source of D but also high in Vitamin A, which can be toxic if over-consumed. Do NOT use cod liver oil alone to boost your Vitamin D intake!

Beef liver, cheese, and egg yolks contain a smidge. Foods like milk do contain Vitamin D but only because manufacturers add it in, i.e. fortified milk, fortified cereal etc. Milk was fortified back in the 1930's to combat rickets, and it worked.

Despite all of this, those who wish to maximize the benefits of a higher Vitamin D intake wouldn't be able to get enough through food sources alone. And of course a lot of that "fortified" food is still make-you-fat food, probably avoided by most physique athletes.

• Most people get their D through sunlight. The basic intake guidelines are: 5-30 minutes of sun exposure between 10 AM and 3 PM at least twice a week without sunscreen. But much depends on where you live, the pollution levels, cloud cover, age, the season of the year, your natural cutaneous melanin content, etc.

Another factoid: While it's technically possible to get too much Vitamin D, you can't get too much from the sun, only from over-supplementing.

• What about tanning beds? The "moderate use" of commercial tanning beds that emit 2-6% UVB radiation can help, but of course there's that whole skin cancer thing to consider.

• Sunlight that comes through glass doesn't count. Most UVB radiation doesn't penetrate glass, corner-office boy.

• If using the sun to get your D, remember that cholesterol-containing body oils are critical to the absorption process. Some experts say that because the body needs 30 to 60 minutes to absorb these vitamin-D-containing oils, it's best to delay showering for about an hour after sun exposure. And don't jump right into the pool either as these natural oils can be stripped by chlorine.

How Much Vitamin D?

In researching this article, I looked to find a consensus among the experts. Here's what I've found:

• As a general rule, Dr. Clay Hyght recommends 1,000 IU per day. This represented the low end amongst our experts, but note that it's still way over current government guidelines.

• Canadian researcher and one of the world's foremost experts on Vitamin D, Dr. Reinhold Vieth, says levels should be in the range of 4,000 IU from all sources.

• Dr. Bowden recommended 2,000 IUs per day.

• Dr. Ziegenfuss personally keeps his levels of 25-hydroxy D at 50 to 100 ng/mL. That means he uses around 4000 IU per day. (He lives in Ohio, by the way.) He notes that when he took 1000 to 2000 IU per day his levels rarely hit 40.

• Bill Roberts has noted that 4,000 IU a day can be a substantial help to fat loss.

• The Vitamin D Council says that those who rarely get sunlight need to supplement with 5,000 IU per day. Note that this would take 50 glasses of fortified milk a day or 10-12 standard multivitamins, hence the need for targeted supplementation.

• Dr. Robert P. Heaney of Nebraska's Creighton University estimates that 3,000 IU per day is required to assure that 97% of Americans obtain levels greater than 35 ng/mL.

So the government says 200 to 400 IU for most of us, but even they admit that's low. Those more in-the-know suggest anywhere from 1000 to even 5000 IU per day.

But this may depend on how much sunlight you get and your ethnicity. Some estimate that dark-skinned individuals, brown and black guys if you will, may need double the amount of D that a pasty white guy needs.

TMUSCLE will leave your personal dosage choice up to you and maybe your physician (if he knows a damn). If you really want to dial this in, we suggest getting tested. (See section below.)

General Recommendations

1) When looking for a Vitamin D supplement, choose the D3 form. Gelcaps are probably best. Liquids are favored by some. Since D is fat soluble, take with foods containing a little fat to optimize absorption. Polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fatty acids are best.

2) Get some sun when you can, but don't burn. The occasional use of tanning beds is also fine, particularly in the winter.

3) If in doubt, test. The test you want to ask for is 25 (hydroxy) D. That's 25-hydroxyvitamin D, not 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D.

The Vitamin D Council says you should shoot for blood levels between 50—80 ng/mL. The average American in late winter averages about 15 to 18 ng/ml, which would be considered a serious deficiency. Your doctor can give you this test and some home testing kits are available (around $65 each), although we cannot endorse one at this time.

4) It's wise to ensure adequate calcium intake when increasing your intake of Vitamin D.

Can You OD on D?

Yes. But it's unlikely.

Dr. Vieth suggests that critical toxicity may occur at doses of 20,000 IU daily (for many months), and that the Upper Limit (UL) of safety be set at 10,000 IU, rather than the current 2,000 IU.

So while toxicity issues exist, you probably won't have to worry about it when staying at 5000 IU per day or less according to most forward-thinking researchers and nutrition experts.

Good Dope

As we "go to press" I just received another study about Vitamin D from the Public

Health Agency of Canada (PHAC). It seems that Vitamin D may offer protection against Swine Flu, the H1N1 virus.

In short, if you get plenty of Vitamin D and catch the flu, it's a mild illness. If you're lacking — and most people are, especially in the winter — then you're more likely to develop full-blown symptoms.

The message is loud and clear: It's time to start "doping" with Vitamin D.

References and Further Reading

Melamed ML, Michos ED, Post W, Astor B. 25-Hydroxyvitamin D levels and the risk of mortality in the general population. Arch Intern Med. 2008;168(15):1629—37

Autier P, Gandini S. Vitamin D supplementation and total mortality: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. Arch Intern Med. 2007;167(16):1730—7.

http://www.westonaprice.org/basicnutrition/vitamindmiracle.html

http://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/vitamind.asp

Athletic Performance and Vitamin D , JOHN J. CANNELL, BRUCE W. HOLLIS, MARC B. SORENSON, TIMOTHY N. TAFT, and JOHN J. B. ANDERSON

http://www.vitamindcouncil.org

http://www.nutraingredients.com/Research/Vitamin-D-linked-to-successful-weight-loss-with-dieting

http://www.postchronicle.com/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi?archive=144&num=229302

Tags: fitness, Health, nutrition, Vitamin D, supplements, T-Muscle, Chris Shugart, fat loss, "D" is for Doping, "D" is for Domination

Timothy A. Pychyl - Giving in to feel good: Why self-regulation fails

Interesting post on the ways in which we fail to live in the anxiety that is produced when we attempt to regulate unhealthy cravings. Giving in to the attachment (addiction) is easier than sitting with that anxiety.

This isn't new information - Buddha told us this 2500 years ago. And he also told us how to relinquish our attachments (hint: there are eight steps on this particular path).

Don't Delay

Understanding procrastination and how to achieve our goals.

by Timothy A. Pychyl

Giving in to feel good: Why self-regulation fails

Focusing on regulating mood can lead to self-control failure in other areas.

We give in to feel good. Give in to what? Food, shopping, drinking, smoking, gambling, and, you guessed it, procrastination. The problem is that focusing on regulating our moods and feelings can lead to self-control failure in other areas.

"Giving in to feel good" is the first part of the title of an important paper written by Dianne Tice and Ellen Bratslavsky (complete reference below). Anyone interested in knowing more about issues of the self and self-regulation should search out resources, and there are plenty, written by Dianne Tice or Roy Baumeister, or their students. I have quoted Roy's work before, and I will again given his prolific prominence as a psychologist.

Procrastinators will tell you that the task they're facing (avoiding) is difficult, and it creates bad feelings like anxiety or general emotional distress. Putting off the task at hand is an effective way of regulating this mood. Avoid the task, avoid the bad mood. This is what Tice and Bratslavsky refer to as "giving in to feel good." We give in to the impulse to walk away in order to feel good right now. Learning theorists would even add that we have now reinforced this behavior as the decrease in anxiety is rewarding.

Of course, this short-term strategy has long-term costs. The last-minute efforts that become necessary when we put off the task usually mean a sub-standard job overall (although not always, and this is a classic reward to the procrastinator and very memorable). More importantly, as Tice and Bratslavsky explain, "the final and overall level of negative affect is likely to be even greater than if the person has worked on the task all along" (p. 152). We actually feel worse later!

In fact, earlier research conducted by Tice & Baumeister across two academic terms demonstrated that procrastination caught up to students in the second term. Whereas in the first term, the non-procrastinators were more stressed, by second term the costs of procrastination became obvious for the procrastinators in terms of course performance, stress and illness.

The message of their research is clear. Putting off a task to control immediate mood results in problems later. They demonstrate this across a number of domains as I noted earlier, including eating, drinking, smoking, gambling, shopping and procrastination. When we give primacy to addressing our emotional distress, we usually do so at the cost of self-regulatory failure. They summarize this key idea with,

"People will engage in behaviors that may be self-destructive (gambling, excessive shopping, overeating, smoking, procrastinating) if the behaviors make them feel better in the short term. Thus, emotion regulation may have a special place in the field of self-control, because emotion regulation takes precedence over other self-control behaviors and even undermines other self-control efforts" (p. 154).

The message to each of us should be clear as well. If we focus on our feelings in the short term, we'll undermine ourselves in the long run.

I've been teaching my 3-year-old daughter this. A typical "lesson" goes something like this.

Me: "Sweetie, it's time to pick up your toys before we go."
[Mood now visibly changing.]
L: "I don't feel like it. I don't want to."
Me: "Sweetie, according to Dianne Tice and Ellen Bratslavsky it's not the best strategy to focus on your feelings now, it's . . . sweetie?? Where are you?"

Ok, so it is about delay of gratification, and we do (should) learn this early in life. But, the evidence seems to show that we all can (and do) act like 3-year-olds at times.

In fact, we may spend a lifetime acting like a 3-year-old, and rationalizing it to ourselves the whole time. I don't feel like it. I need to feel better in order to act. First, I need to feel better.

No you don't.

In fact, your feelings will follow your behaviors. Progress on that task will improve your mood.

For example, new research where introverts are instructed to act extraverted shows that the introverts who act extraverted also feel happier (an affective advantage of extraverts). We'll talk about this more in the near future.

For now, the message is, don't give in to feeling good, get going instead - don't delay!

Reference

Tice, D.M., & Bratslavsky, E. (2000). Giving in to feel good: The place of emotion regulation in the context of general self-control. Psychological Inquiry, 11, 149-159.

Tags: Timothy A. Pychyl, Giving in to feel good, Why self-regulation fails, procrastination, psychology today, psychology, addictions, Giving in to feel good, The place of emotion regulation in the context of general self-control, Tice, Bratslavsky

Dr. Deb - Top Ten Films That Feature Mental Illness

Nice list.

Top Ten Films That Feature Mental Illness

I love watching movies. The cinematic experience not only entertains but also informs. Here are my top 10 favorite movies that show mental illness and psychotherapy in a realistic manner.


1. Ordinary People (PTSD, Depression)
My absolute favorite movie of all time because it portrays the human experience of loss so well and it also features psychotherapy in a realistic way. Robert Redford's directorial debut. Mary Tyler Moore, Donald Sutherland, Judd Hirsch and Timothy Hutton wow in their performances.

2. A Beautiful Mind (Schizophrenia)
The true story of Nobel Prize Winner John Nash is told in this award winning film. Russell Crowe and Jennifer Connelly star. Directed by Ron Howard.

3. The Soloist (Schizophrenia)
This is the true story of Nathaniel Anthony Ayers, a former Julliard Student, who falls into the depths of schizophrenia. When reporter, Steve Lopez, befriends him, both of their worlds change. The ethical issues of treatment of mental illness are realistically portrayed. Robert Downey Jr. and Jamie Foxx offer great performances.

4. Canvas (Schizophrenia)
A young boy moves through the his mother's psychotic episode with the help of his father and friends. Joe Pantoliano, Marcia Gay Harden and Devon Gearhart are inspiring to watch.

5. Bird (Substance Abuse/Eating Disorder)
The true story of Charlie "Bird" Parker, Jazz legend, and his struggles with mental illness. Directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Forest Whitaker. Fantastic soundtrack.

6. Rain Man (Autism)
Dustin Hoffman delivers an award winning performance as a man with Autism and Tom Cruise as the brother who doesn't understand him.

7. Fearless (PTSD)
Jeff Bridges is unforgettable in his performance as a survivor of a plane crash as is Rosie Perez in this emotional tale of trauma, loss and recovery.

8. Lars And The Real Girl (Social Anxiety Disorder)
This film knocked me out with its poignant storytelling of a young man living in a rural Minnesota community. Ryan Gosling and Emily Mortimer star.

9. A Lion In Winter (Personality Disorders, Family Dysfunction)Various personality disorders as well as maladaptive defense mechanisms often seen in family dysfunction are presented in vivid language and breathtaking performances. Peter O'Toole, Katherine Hepburn and a young Anthony Hopkins dazzle in this award winning film. It's an oldie, but a goodie - and based on the life of King Henry II.

10. The Night Listener (Factitious Disorder)
Robin Williams and Toni Collette tell this true-based story from the experiences of author Armistead Maupin, and his connection to a mysterious young boy.


There are so many more that I could name, but these are my top favs. Head on over to Psychmovies and Cinematherapy.com for more movie suggestions.

What are your favorites?

Tags: Psychology, films, Dr. Deb, Top Ten Films, Mental Illness, culture

Upaya Dharma Podcasts - Cultivating Calmness, Loving-kindness & Empathy

More podcast goodness from the Upaya Zen Center, featuring Geshe Kelsang Damdul.

Cultivating Calmness, Loving-kindness & Empathy

Speaker: Geshe Kelsang Damdul

The more we allow the mind to be disturbed or occupied by negative emotion, the more we must work to transform the mind into peace. This action is not only for ourselves; in this age of intricate and fast connection, anything we do will be felt in our community and world. If we meet each moment with a calm mind, we send this exact message into the world. Additionally, it is only through a calm mind that our true nature can be seen and that our negative emotions dissolve. Then, a strong sense of self-worth and love will extend into the greater community.

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Cultivating Calmness, Loving-kindness & Empathy [56:38m]: Hide Player | Play in Popup | Download [Play]

Tags: Buddhism, empathy, meditation, Upaya Zen Center, Dharma Podcasts, Cultivating Calmness, Loving-kindness, Empathy, Geshe Kelsang Damdul, negative emotions

Fairy tales have ancient origin

Very cool.

Fairy tales have ancient origin

Popular fairy tales and folk stories are more ancient than was previously thought, according research by biologists.

By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent
Published: 9:00PM BST 05 Sep 2009

They have been told as bedtime stories by generations of parents, but fairy tales such as Little Red Riding Hood may be even older than was previously thought.

A study by anthropologists has explored the origins of folk tales and traced the relationship between varients of the stories recounted by cultures around the world.

The researchers adopted techniques used by biologists to create the taxonomic tree of life, which shows how every species comes from a common ancestor.

Dr Jamie Tehrani, a cultural anthropologist at Durham University, studied 35 versions of Little Red Riding Hood from around the world.

Whilst the European version tells the story of a little girl who is tricked by a wolf masquerading as her grandmother, in the Chinese version a tiger replaces the wolf.

In Iran, where it would be considered odd for a young girl to roam alone, the story features a little boy.

Contrary to the view that the tale originated in France shortly before Charles Perrault produced the first written version in the 17th century, Dr Tehrani found that the varients shared a common ancestor dating back more than 2,600 years.

He said: “Over time these folk tales have been subtly changed and have evolved just like an biological organism. Because many of them were not written down until much later, they have been misremembered or reinvented through hundreds of generations.

“By looking at how these folk tales have spread and changed it tells us something about human psychology and what sort of things we find memorable.

“The oldest tale we found was an Aesopic fable that dated from about the sixth century BC, so the last common ancestor of all these tales certainly predated this. We are looking at a very ancient tale that evolved over time.”

Dr Tehrani, who will present his work on Tuesday at the British Science Festival in Guildford, Surrey, identified 70 variables in plot and characters between different versions of Little Red Riding Hood.

He found that the stories could be grouped into distinct families according to how they evolved over time.

The original ancestor is thought to be similar to another tale, The Wolf and the Kids, in which a wolf pretends to be a nanny goat to gain entry to a house full of young goats.

Stories in Africa are closely related to this original tale, whilst stories from Japan, Korea, China and Burma form a sister group. Tales told in Iran and Nigeria were the closest relations of the modern European version.

Perrault’s French version was retold by the Brothers Grimm in the 19th century. Dr Tehrani said: “We don’t know very much about the processes of transmission of these stories from culture to culture, but it is possible that they may being passed along trade routes or with the movement of people.”

Professor Jack Zipes, a retired professor of German at the University of Minnesota who is an expert on fairy tales and their origins, described the work as “exciting”. He believes folk tales may have helped people to pass on tips for survival to new generations.

He said: “Little Red Riding Hood is about violation or rape, and I suspect that humans were just as violent in 600BC as they are today, so they will have exchanged tales about all types of violent acts.

“I have tried to show that tales relevant to our adaptation to the environment and survival are stored in our brains and we consistently use them for all kinds of reference points.”

Tags: history, parables, story, mythology, Fairy tales have ancient origin, folk tales, Richard Gray, Telegraph UK, Little Red Riding Hood

Ovi Magazine - Dreamscaping: The Dimensions of Dreams

Dream stuff is always fun. Some nice passages on here in the nature of dreams.

Dreamscaping: The Dimensions of Dreams
by David Sparenberg

THE DIMENSIONS OF DREAMS is encyclopedic. I mean this in the best use of the term. The book is thorough, with advantage. Unlike what is typically found in an encyclopedia, this volume maintains ongoing cross references and the author is astute enough to connect the dots throughout the history of many dream work schools and techniques. His process provides the reader with a depth and richness to stimulate the rational mind and imagination alike. The scholarship is backed up with years of experience in public and private practice. Indeed, I would rank Ole Vedfeld’s study as among the best of its kind; certainly a volume of reflective reference to be keep on hand by both professional and lay dream-culture worker.

The book ranges from Tantra through Freud and Jung to contemporary schools and practices developed by the likes of Fritz Perls, James Hillman, Arnold Mindell. Every reader will find their own affinities and mine include the several names now listed. Along these lines, let me invite you into a scant but enticing sampling of passages and pages from THE DIMENSIONS OF DREAMS.

Pgs. 50-51 (Jung, Archetypes & Amplification): “Jung found amplification with cross-cultural symbolic historical material particularly useful with archetypal dreams, in which the dreamer has no personal associations…. The reasons for comparing dream(s) with mythological symbolism from different cultures, is that fundamentally they derive from the same elemental substance: the archetypes” (dynamic forces forming patterns of universal structuring within the human psyche). “Knowledge of the archetypal parallels makes it possible to understand dreams and states of consciousness that are alien and terrifying for the dreamer and so could discourage him (or her) from going further with an inner development…. Archetypal amplifications must always be balanced against the cultural and personal.” For, we might add, the dynamos of the mundus archetypus wear Janus-masks of a near-distant approachability, as they emerge in disguised-revelations out of collective anamnesis, mapped by dreamscapes, articulate in the vocabulary of dreams. This is to say, in full paradoxical motion: these forces are, with patterns established before our arrival, and we are the pattern-makers who know not our sources. Yet each is charged with making of them the centerfold of our person.

Pg.59 (Jung & Alchemy): “When I woke up my first association was that the dragons devouring each other’s tails were Freud and Jung, but they are also an alchemical symbol. The symbolism is cosmic and archetypal. There is a suspension of time and space. There are two couples that together form an autonomy in a symbol of wholeness…. (pg.65) “Many of the alchemists understood that it wasn’t so much a matter of producing actual gold, but rather that the complicated processes which were supposed to refine base matter into noble metal were an expression of a refinement of personality.”

Now a flip back to pg. 59: “Jung was especially concerned with the development of the personality that is possible at a more mature age. He believed in an inborn development plan which observes a universal pattern but which within this framework gives to the individual his (and her) distinguishing character. The realization of this fulfillment plan he termed the individuation process. The individual has within, in embryonic form, a transcendent function that can unite the apparent psychic contradictions, consciousness and the unconscious. This ordering and balancing function can be developed through work with dreams.”

Pg.99 (Hillman): “An independent view of dreams is met with in James Hillman, who… (sees) dreams as an underworld in themselves, with their own objectives…. Contrary to ordinary interpretation procedure, where dream language is translated to the language of consciousness, Hillman proposes that the language of consciousness be translated into dream language… underscoring the experience that dreams contain something different in kind from consciousness, something fundamentally untranslatable into the latter’s language.” (Therein may await a discovery to raise eyebrows and suggestive of the title of a Joan Halifax book, THE FRUITFUL DARKNESS!)

Pgs. 205-206 (Mindell): “The Jungian Arnold Mindell, who for a period of years was himself seriously ill, has developed a method of working with somatic symptoms and dreams. In light of many years’ experience, he asserts that he has never encountered a case where a symptom’s process hasn’t been reflected in a dream. In his view a sickness is often part of a person’s individuation process and ‘the soul is expressing an important message through the sickness.’” … pg 207: “In itself, there is nothing revolutionary about the method. The technique originated with Wilhelm Reich…. What is new in Mindell is that he more perfectly applies the method in connection with dreams. (His) point of departure is the active imagination of Jung. But while Jung worked almost exclusively with mental ideation, visualizations, and inner dialogue, Mindell expands this to include body sensations and movements.”

Pg. 234 (Tantra): “It is fairly certain that meditation increases the number and length of remembered dreams…. Among the many different forms of meditation I will here be concerned with the so-called chakra system of Tantric yoga. This is because meditation according to this system has in recent years become rather widespread in the Western world and because associated with these meditations are symbols and psychic development stages that recur in dreams.”

Here it would appear we have come full circle. Yet, as always, the inevitable admittance arrives with us: Justice can never be done to so immense a volume within the reviewers little space. From hence, the reader must cease to follow and take the lead. Along the way, no doubt at a place where a favorite bookstore opens its doors, waits Ole Vedfelt, doctor of dreams and surveyor of dreamscapes.

Tags: Ovi Magazine, Dreamscaping, The Dimensions of Dreams, Jung, Mindell, Hillman, images, meaning

Shambhala Sun - The Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche on Walking the Unerring Path

Great article excerpt from the current issue of Shambhala Sun.

The Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche on Walking the Unerring Path

If we use them as opportunities to work with our mind, all our mistakes, confusion, and difficulties become an unerring path of awakening.

This is the essence, says the Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, of the Buddha’s wisdom for difficult times. An excerpt from our current issue.

From the point of view of our own journey, the practice of dharma is nothing more than the practice of working with our mind. And particularly in challenging times, we need to remember that the path is a mixed bag. On one hand, there is a process of transformation taking place: in some areas, we are indeed overcoming obstacles and experiencing some level of psychological liberation. In other areas, however, we are still struggling, still engaged in negative, unproductive actions, and therefore experiencing the negative results of that. We are not always perfect and our life includes blunders and burdens of various kinds. One of the greatest yogis of our time, Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso Rinpoche, says, “Erring and erring, we walk the unerring path.”

So, when we realize that we have made some mistakes in this life, or that we are caught up in a fit of emotion or fear, we should not take that to mean that we’re not progressing on the path or being successful in life. We are likely to feel that we’ve failed, but so long as we are working with our mind, applying the dharma in whatever way we can, that is regarded as a success. As long as you make an effort to recognize and work with your emotions, thoughts, and any tendency to commit negative actions, you are doing your work. Whether you fail or succeed in a particular instance, in either case you will actually have been successful. From this perspective, failure is part of what makes up our accomplishments. We usually don’t see this.

Success on the path and in life does not come only with being perfect. You cannot expect that each time a turbulent state of mind arises, the “normal” thing is to immediately realize its true nature. You cannot say it’s not possible at some point, but it is not the “norm” on the path. In the same way, if you expect that each year your income will increase and your business will grow, that your next home will be larger than your last, and that you are building toward a more and more secure and comfortable future, as befits the American Dream, you are mistaking the ideal for what’s normal. That is not only a mistake, it sounds somewhat boring, like a feel-good movie where you know from the beginning exactly what’s going to happen. In actual life, anything can and does happen. That is the truth of impermanence and change, and it is what makes our life such an adventure. Remembering this and taking it to heart allows us to be more pragmatic and courageous at the same time. We need to move away from chasing after an impossible ideal and connect as closely as possible to our life as a personal journey, one that is full of surprises and fresh opportunities to make it meaningful.

We need warrior-like courage to be able to face and accept defeat from time to time, and to transform our suffering and confusion into liberation and awakening. Like champions in boxing or the martial arts, we have to accept some defeats and be willing to learn from them in order to be victorious in the end. Sometimes, when we’re down, it feels like the world sees us as a punching bag, and we are taking hits from all sides. That is when we need to remember that loss, disappointment, sadness, and pain are part of our life, and the lives of everyone. We are no exception. Many others are in worse shape right now, and when we have some sense of guidance, when we have some skill in working with our mind, we are better off than most. Let that thought touch your heart and bring you the resolve to “work out your own liberation,” as the Buddha taught.

You make your own path. It is your journey to take, and how it goes and what it looks like is up to you. Be patient about getting to the fruition, however, and let the result come in its own time. You cannot see a minute-by-minute change in your heart or mind; it takes a little time. On the other hand, don’t think of success as being too far away. Then you might think, “I’ll never reach it, so forget it.”

It is helpful to remember, too, that as much as acute intelligence, insight, or prajna, is critical to our journey, we need to bring our understanding into the world with genuine compassion. It is only through compassion that we can manifest in the world what we know and understand in a way that will benefit others. No matter how sharp your intelligence is, don’t forget to filter it through the heart of compassion before you manifest it in the suffering world. Don’t push your wisdom onto others. It doesn’t work. If you really want to help someone, simply let your compassion blaze.

If you want to get something across to another person, whether it is the wisdom of enlightenment or how to do a job more efficiently, compassion seems to be the gateway to communication. When your heart is lit with compassion and you are beyond self-interest or self-gratification, your message will get through. Your colleague will listen to you. The world will understand you. Your aspiration to benefit others will actually be realized. That’s why compassion is often referred to as “a wish-fulfilling gem”—it can fulfill all your desires. When wisdom and compassion are together, it brings heart to your path and the path to your heart. Therefore, when the road gets rocky and your way uncertain, make your journey personal, not theoretical. Make it genuine, not philosophical. Make it ordinary, not religious. Then you can really embark on the path to enlightenment.

The Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche is a meditation master in the Kagyu and Nyingma schools of Tibetan Buddhism, as well as a visual artist and poet. He is the president of Nalandabodhi, which is a network of meditation centers, and the founder of the Nitartha Institute, a course of Buddhist study for Western students.

Excerpted from our current issue.

For more Wisdom for Difficult Times:

• Visit our special page of Wisdom for Difficult Times
• Complement those teachings with our selection of Practices for Difficult Times
• …and join us Wisdom for Difficult Times: What the Buddhist Teach, a Shambhala Sun “urban retreat” featuring Sylvia Boorstein, Tsoknyi Rinpoche, and Norman Fischer.For information, to register, and read related teachings by all three teachings, click here.

Tags: Buddhism, Shambhala Sun, The Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, Walking the Unerring Path, dharma, wisdom for difficult times, awakening

Henry Giroux - Living in a Culture of Cruelty: Democracy as Spectacle

Interesting article, and seemingly true in many ways. Though I am sure the right will say Giroux hates America. He seems to be documenting the viciousness of ethnocentrism raised to the status of being a virtue. Sad that America has been reduced to this.

Living in a Culture of Cruelty: Democracy as Spectacle

Wednesday 02 September 2009

by: Henry A. Giroux, t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Right-wing commentator Glenn Beck. (Photo: The New York Times)

Under the Bush administration, a seeping, sometimes galloping, authoritarianism began to reach into every vestige of the culture, giving free rein to those anti-democratic forces in which religious, market, military and political fundamentalism thrived, casting an ominous shadow over the fate of United States democracy. During the Bush-Cheney regime, power became an instrument of retribution and punishment was connected to and fueled by a repressive state. A bullying rhetoric of war, a ruthless consolidation of economic forces, and an all-embracing free-market apparatus and media driven pedagogy of fear supported and sustained a distinct culture of cruelty and inequality in the United States. In pointing to a culture of cruelty, I am not employing a form of left moralism that collapses matters of power and politics into the discourse of character. On the contrary, I think the notion of a culture of cruelty is useful in thinking through the convergence of everyday life and politics, of considering material relations of power - the disciplining of the body as an object of control - on the one hand, and the production of cultural meaning, especially the co-optation of popular culture to sanction official violence, on the other. The culture of cruelty is important for thinking through how life and death now converge in ways that fundamentally transform how we understand and imagine politics in the current historical moment - a moment when the most vital of safety nets, health care reform, is being undermined by right-wing ideologues. What is it about a culture of cruelty that provides the conditions for many Americans to believe that government is the enemy of health care reform and health care reform should be turned over to corporate and market-driven interests, further depriving millions of an essential right?

Increasingly, many individuals and groups now find themselves living in a society that measures the worth of human life in terms of cost-benefit analyzes. The central issue of life and politics is no longer about working to get ahead, but struggling simply to survive. And many groups, who are considered marginal because they are poor, unemployed, people of color, elderly or young, have not just been excluded from "the American dream," but have become utterly redundant and disposable, waste products of a society that not longer considers them of any value. How else to explain the zealousness in which social safety nets have been dismantled, the transition from welfare to workfare (offering little job training programs and no child care), and recent acrimony over health care reform's public option? What accounts for the passage of laws that criminalize the behavior of the 1.2 million homeless in the United States, often defining sleeping, sitting, soliciting, lying down or loitering in public places as a criminal offence rather than a behavior in need of compassionate good will and public assistance? Or, for that matter, the expulsions, suspensions, segregation, class discrimination and racism in the public schools as well as the more severe beatings, broken bones and damaged lives endured by young people in the juvenile justice system? Within these politics, largely fueled by market fundamentalism - one that substitutes the power of the social state with the power of the corporate state and only values wealth, money and consumers - there is a ruthless and hidden dimension of cruelty, one in which the powers of life and death are increasingly determined by punishing apparatuses, such as the criminal justice system for poor people of color and/or market forces that increasingly decide who may live and who may die.

The growing dominance of a right-wing media forged in a pedagogy of hate has become a crucial element providing numerous platforms for a culture of cruelty and is fundamental to how we understand the role of education in a range of sites outside of traditional forms of schooling. This educational apparatus and mode of public pedagogy is central to analyzing not just how power is exercised, rewarded and contested in a growing culture of cruelty, but also how particular identities, desires and needs are mobilized in support of an overt racism, hostility towards immigrants and utter disdain, coupled with the threat of mob violence toward any political figure supportive of the social contract and the welfare state. Citizens are increasingly constructed through a language of contempt for all noncommercial public spheres and a chilling indifference to the plight of others that is increasingly expressed in vicious tirades against big government and health care reform. There is a growing element of scorn on the part of the American public for those human beings caught in the web of misfortune, human suffering, dependency and deprivation. As Barbara Ehrenreich observes, "The pattern is to curtail financing for services that might help the poor while ramping up law enforcement: starve school and public transportation budgets, then make truancy illegal. Shut down public housing, then make it a crime to be homeless. Be sure to harass street vendors when there are few other opportunities for employment. The experience of the poor, and especially poor minorities, comes to resemble that of a rat in a cage scrambling to avoid erratically administered electric shocks." [1]

A right-wing spin machine, influenced by haters like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage and Ann Coulter, endlessly spews out a toxic rhetoric in which: all Muslims are defined as jihadists; the homeless are not victims of misfortune but lazy; blacks are not terrorized by a racist criminal justice system, but the main architects of a culture of criminality; the epidemic of obesity has nothing to do with corporations, big agriculture and advertisers selling junk food, but rather the result of "big" government giving people food stamps; the public sphere is largely for white people, which is being threatened by immigrants and people of color, and so it goes. Glenn Beck, the alleged voice of the common man, appearing on the "Fox & Friends" morning show, calls President Obama a "racist" and then accuses him of "having a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture." [2] Nationally syndicated radio host Rush Limbaugh unapologetically states that James Early Ray, the confessed killer of Martin Luther King Jr., should be given a posthumous Medal of Honor, [3] while his counterpart in right-wing hate, talk radio host Michael Savage, states on his show, "You know, when I see a woman walking around with a burqa, I see a Nazi. That's what I see - how do you like that? - a hateful Nazi who would like to cut your throat and kill your children." [4] He also claims that Obama is "surrounded by terrorists" and is "raping America." This is a variation of a crude theme established by Ann Coulter, who refers to Bill Clinton as a "very good rapist." [5] Even worse, Obama is a "neo-Marxist fascist dictator in the making," who plans to "force children into a paramilitary domestic army." [6] And this is just a small sampling of the kind of hate talk that permeates right-wing media. This could be dismissed as loony right-wing political theater if it were not for the low levels of civic literacy displayed by so many Americans who choose to believe and invest in this type of hate talk. [7] On the contrary, while it may be idiocy, it reveals a powerful set of political, economic and educational forces at work in miseducating the American public while at the same time extending the culture of cruelty. One central task of any viable form of politics is to analyze the culture of cruelty and its overt and covert dimensions of violence, often parading as entertainment.

Underlying the culture of cruelty that reached its apogee during the Bush administration, was the legalization of state violence, such that human suffering was now sanctioned by the law, which no longer served as a summons to justice. But if a legal culture emerged that made violence and human suffering socially acceptable, popular culture rendered such violence pleasurable by commodifying, aestheticizing and spectacularizing it. Rather than being unspoken and unseen, violence in American life had become both visible in its pervasiveness and normalized as a central feature of dominant and popular culture. Americans had grown accustomed to luxuriating in a warm bath of cinematic blood, as young people and adults alike were seduced with commercial and military video games such as "Grand Theft Auto" and "America's Army," [8] the television series "24" and its ongoing Bacchanalian fête of torture, the crude violence on display in World Wrestling Entertainment and Ultimate Fighting Championship, and an endless series of vigilante films such as "The Brave One" (2007) and "Death Sentence" (2007), in which the rule of law is suspended by the viscerally satisfying images of men and women seeking revenge as laudable killing machines - a nod to the permanent state of emergency and war in the United States. Symptomatically, there is the mindless glorification and aestheticization of brutal violence in the most celebrated Hollywood films, including many of Quentin Tarantino's films, especially the recent "Death Proof" (2007), "Kill Bill" 1 & 2 (2003, 2004), and "Inglorious Bastards" (2009). With the release of Tarantino's 2009 bloody war film, in fact, the press reported that Dianne Kruger, the co-star of "Inglorious Bastards," claimed that she "loved being tortured by Brad Pitt [though] she was frustrated she didn't get an opportunity to get frisky with her co-star, but admits being beaten by Pitt was a satisfying experience." [9] This is more than the aestheticization of violence, it is the normalization and glorification of torture itself.

If Hollywood has made gratuitous violence the main staple of its endless parade of blockbuster films, television has tapped into the culture of cruelty in a way that was unimaginable before the attack on the US on September 11. Prime-time television before the attacks had "fewer than four acts of torture" per year, but "now there are more than a hundred." [10] Moreover, the people who torture are no longer the villains, but the heroes of prime-time television. The most celebrated is, of course, Jack Bauer, the tragic-ethical hero of the wildly popular Fox TV thriller "24." Not only is torture the main thread of the plot, often presented "with gusto and no moral compunction," [11] but Bauer is portrayed as a patriot, rather than a depraved monster, who tortures in order to protect American lives and national security. Torture, in this scenario, takes society's ultimate betrayal of human dignity and legitimates the pain and fear it produces as normal, all the while making a "moral sadist" a television celebrity. [12] The show has over 15 million viewers, and its glamorization of torture has proven so successful that it appears to have not only numbed the public's reaction to the horrors of torture, but it is so overwhelmingly influential among the US military that the Pentagon sent Brig. Gen. Patrick Finnegan to California to meet with the producers of the show. "He told them that promoting illegal behavior in the series ... was having a damaging effect on young troops." [13] The pornographic glorification of gratuitous, sadistic violence is also on full display in the popular HBO television series "Dexter," which portrays a serial killer as a sympathetic, even lovable, character. Visual spectacles steeped in degradation and violence permeate the culture and can be found in various reality TV shows, professional wrestling and the infamous Jerry Springer Show. These programs all trade in fantasy, glamorized violence and escapism. And they share similar values. As Chris Hedges points out in his analysis of professional wrestling, they all mirror the worse dimensions of an unchecked and unregulated market society in which "winning is all that matters. Morality is irrelevant.... It is all about personal pain, vendettas, hedonism and fantasies of revenge, while inflicting pain on others. It is the cult of victimhood." [14]

The celebration of hyper-violence, moral sadism and torture travels easily from fiction to real life with the emergence in the past few years of a proliferation of "bum fight" videos on the Internet, "shot by young men and boys who are seen beating the homeless or who pay transients a few dollars to fight each other." [15] The culture of cruelty mimics cinematic violence as the agents of abuse both indulge in actual forms of violence and then further celebrate the barbarity by posting it on the web, mimicking the desire for fame and recognition, while voyeuristically consuming their own violent cultural productions. The National Coalition for the Homeless claims that "On YouTube in July 2009, people have posted 85,900 videos with 'bum' in the title [and] 5,690 videos can be found with the title 'bum fight,' representing ... an increase of 1,460 videos since April 2008." [16] Rather than problematize violence, popular culture increasingly normalizes it, often in ways that border on criminal intent. For instance, a recent issue of Maxim, a popular men's magazine, included "a blurb titled 'Hunt the Homeless' [focusing on] a coming 'hobo convention' in Iowa and says 'Kill one for fun. We're 87 percent sure it's legal.'" [17] In this context, violence is not simply being transformed into an utterly distasteful form of adolescent entertainment or spectacularized to attract readers and boost profits, it becomes a powerful pedagogical force in the culture of cruelty by both aligning itself and becoming complicit with the very real surge of violence against the homeless, often committed by young men and teenage boys looking for a thrill. Spurred on by the ever reassuring presence of violence and dehumanization in the wider culture, these young "thrill offenders" now search out the homeless and "punch, kick, shoot or set afire people living on the streets, frequently killing them, simply for the sport of it, their victims all but invisible to society." [19] All of these elements of popular culture speak stylishly and sadistically to new ways in which to maximize the pleasure of violence, giving it its hip (if fascist) edginess.

Needless to say, neither violent video games and television series nor Hollywood films and the Internet (or for that matter popular culture) cause in any direct sense real world violence and suffering, but they do not leave the real world behind either. That is too simplistic. What they do achieve is the execution of a well-funded and highly seductive public pedagogical enterprise that sexualizes and stylizes representations of violence, investing them with an intense pleasure quotient. I don't believe it is an exaggeration to claim that the violence of screen culture entertains and cleanses young people of the burden of ethical considerations when they, for instance, play video games that enabled them to "casually kill the simulated human beings whose world they control." [20] Hollywood films such as the "Saw" series offer up a form of torture porn in which the spectacle of the violence enhances not merely its attraction, but offers young viewers a space where questions of ethics and responsibility are gleefully suspended, enabling them to evade their complicity in a culture of cruelty. No warnings appear on the labels of these violent videos and films, suggesting that the line between catharsis and desensitization may become blurred, making it more difficult for them to raise questions about what it means "to live in a society that produces, markets, and supports such products." [21] But these hyper-violent cultural products also form part of a corrupt pedagogical assemblage that makes it all the more difficult to recognize the hard realities of power and material violence at work through militarism, a winner-take-all economy marked by punishing inequalities and a national security state that exhibits an utter disregard for human suffering. Even the suffering of children, we must note, as when government officials reduce the lives of babies and young children lost in Iraq and Afghanistan to collateral damage. Tragically, the crime here is much more than symbolic.

The ideology of hardness and cruelty runs through American culture like an electric current, sapping the strength of social relations and individual character, moral compassion and collective action, offering up crimes against humanity that become fodder for video games and spectacularized media infotainment, and constructing a culture of cruelty that promotes a "symbiosis of suffering and spectacle." [22] As Chris Hedges argues,

Sadism is as much a part of popular culture as it is of corporate culture. It dominates pornography, runs ... through reality television and trash-talk programs and is at the core of the compliant, corporate collective. Corporatism is about crushing the capacity for moral choice. And it has its logical fruition in Abu Ghraib, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and our lack of compassion for the homeless, our poor, the mentally ill, the unemployed and the sick. [23]

Bailouts are not going to address the ways in which individual desires, values and identities are endlessly produced in the service of a culture of cruelty and inequality. Power is not merely material, it is also symbolic and is distributed through a society in ways we have never seen before. No longer is education about schooling. It now functions through the educational force of the larger culture in the media, Internet, electronic media and through a wide range of technologies and sites endlessly working to undo democratic values, compassion and any viable notion of justice and its accompanying social relations. What this suggests is a redefinition of both literacy and education. We need, as a society, to educate students and others to be literate in multiple ways, to reclaim the high ground of civic courage, and to be able to name, engage and transform those forms of public pedagogy that produce hate and cruelty as part of the discourse of common sense. Otherwise, democracy will lose the supportive institutions, social relations and culture that make it not only possible but even thinkable.

--------

Notes:

[1] Barbara Ehrenreich, "Is It now a Crime to Be Poor?," New York Times (August 9, 2009), p. wk9.

[2] David Bauder, "Fox's Glenn Beck: President Obama is a Racist," Associated Press (July 28, 2009).
Online at: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5imGTdQH8JbOAWo_yKxNHpAMTCq_gD99NO3TG0

[3] Limbaugh cited in Casey Gane-McCalla, "Top 10 Racist Limbaugh Quotes," NewsOne (October 20, 2008).
Online at: http://newsone.com/obama/top-10-racist-limbaugh-quotes/

[4] Savage quoted in Thinkers and Jokers (July 2, 2007).
Online at: http://thinkersandjokers.com/thinker.php?id=2688

[5] Coulter quoted in Don Hazen, "The Tall Blonde Woman in the Short Skirt With the Big Mouth," AlterNet (June 6, 2006).
Online at: http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/37162

[6] These quotes are taken from an excellent article by Eric Boehlert in which he criticizes the soft peddling that many in the press give to right-wing fanatics such as Michael Savage. See Eric Boehlert, "The New Yorker raises a toast to birther nut Michael Savage," Media Matters for America (August 3, 2009).
Online at: http://mediamatters.org/print/columns/200908030038

[7] See Chris Hedges, "America the Illiterate," CommonDreams (November 10, 2008).
Online at: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/11/10-6

Terrence McNally, "How Anti-Intellectualism Is Destroying America," AlterNet (August 15, 2008).
Online at: http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/95109

[8] For an excellent collection on military video games, see Nina B. Huntemann and Matthew Thomas Payne, eds. "Joystick Soldiers: The Politics of Play in Military Video Games" (New York: Routledge, 2010).

[9] Arts and Entertainment, "Torture Will Just Have to Do," The Hamilton Spectator (August 12, 2009), p. Go 3.

[10] Jane Mayer, "Whatever It Takes: The Politics of the Man Behind 24," The New Yorker (February 26, 2007), p. 68.

[11] Alessandra Stanley, "Suicide Bombers Strike, and America Is in Turmoil. Just Another Day in the Life of Jack Bauer," New York Times (January 12, 2007), p. B1.

[12] See Judith Butler, "Frames of War." Also, Slavoj Zizek, "The Depraved Heroes of 24 are the Himmlers of Hollywood," The Guardian (January 10, 2006).
Online at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2006/jan/10/usnews.comment

[13] Faiz Shaker, "US Military: Television Series '24' is Promoting Torture in the Ranks," Think Progress (February 3, 2007).
Online at: http://thinkprogress.org/2007/02/13/torture-on-24/

[14] Chris Hedges, "Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle" (New York: Knopf Canada, 2009). p. 10.

[15] Eric Lichtblau, "Attacks on Homeless Bring Push on Hate Crime Laws," New York Times (August 8, 2009), p. A1.

[16] National Coalition of the Homeless, "Hate, Violence, and Death on Main Street," 2008, (Washington, DC, National Coalition of the Homeless, 2009).
Online at: http://www.nationalhomeless.org/publications/hatecrimes/hate_report_2008.pdf, p. 34.

[17] Ibid., Eric Lichtblau, "Attacks on Homeless Bring Push on Hate Crime Laws."

[18] National Coalition of the Homeless, "Hate, Violence, and Death on Main Street," 2008, (Washington, D. C., National Coalition of the Homeless, 2009).
Online at: http://www.nationalhomeless.org/publications/hatecrimes/hate_report_2008.pdf

[19] Ibid., Eric Lichtblau, "Attacks on Homeless Bring Push on Hate Crime Laws."

[20] Mark Slouka, "Dehumanized: When Math and Science Rule the School," Harper's Magazine (September 5, 2009), p. 40.

[21] Ibid., Mark Slouka, "Dehumanized," p. 40.

[22] Mark Reinhardt and Holly Edwards, "Traffic in Pain," in "Beautiful Suffering: Photography and the Traffic in Pain," ed. Mark Reinhardt, Holly Edwards, and Erina Duganne (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), p.9.

[23] Chris Hedges, "America Is in Need of Moral Bailout," Truthdig (March 23, 2009).
Online at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090323_america_is_in_need_of_a_moral_bailout/

---

Henry A. Giroux holds the Global TV Network chair in English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University in Canada. Related work: Henry A. Giroux, "The Mouse that Roared: Disney and the End of Innocence" (Lanham: Rowman and Lilttlefield, 2001). His most recent books include "Take Back Higher Education" (co-authored with Susan Searls Giroux, 2006), "The University in Chains: Confronting the Military-Industrial-Academic Complex" (2007) and "Against the Terror of Neoliberalism: Politics Beyond the Age of Greed" (2008). His newest book, "Youth in a Suspect Society: Beyond the Politics of Disposability," will be published by Palgrave Mcmillan in 2009.

Tags: Politics, culture, society, Henry Giroux, Living in a Culture of Cruelty, Democracy as Spectacle, Truthout, authoritarianism, cable news, pundits, hate, racism, ethnocentrism

Dan Goleman - How to Cure 'Destructive Emotions'

Hmmm . . . not sure we can cure much of anything, but we can befriend destructive emotions, get to know them, and by doing so disable their ability to control our behavior.

How to Cure 'Destructive Emotions'

Best-selling author Daniel Goleman finds in Buddhism a possible cure-all for anger, depression, and more.

BY: Interview by Rebecca Phillips

Daniel Goleman, author of the best-selling "Emotional Intelligence," attended a meeting of the Mind and Life Institute, a gathering of scientists and Buddhist thinkers, in Dharamsala, India in March 2000. His latest book, "Destructive Emotions: How Can We Overcome Them?" narrates the discussions that took place there between the Dalai Lama, other Buddhist scholars, and western psychologists and neuroscientists. The Buddhists and scientists worked together to review research and determine methods to conquer what they have termed "destructive emotions"--feelings like anger, depression, and fear. In an interview, Goleman explained the institute's findings, especially the effect of meditation on emotional health.

What exactly do you mean by 'destructive emotions'?

Destructive emotions refer to an emotion that leads us to do something that harms ourselves or someone else. The premise [of the meeting] was that there are helpful insights from both the deep spiritual wisdom of Buddhism and from modern findings in science, and that each might inform the other.

What emotions are included?

Almost any emotion can become destructive. Even too much happiness, if it's manic excitement, can lead us to do destructive things. But we're mainly talking about anger, paralyzing fear, and depression. Most of the discussions focused on anger, but we also had presentations on, for example, craving and addiction.

Are there times when some of those emotions can be positive?

Anger, from an evolutionary point of view, serves a purpose. It's helped us survive. Anger is quite appropriate in response to an injustice or a wrong that needs to be righted. But, as the Dalai Lama pointed out, if you're going to be effective in responding to what makes you angry, you need to keep the focus and energy of the anger, but drop the anger itself in order to act more skillfully.

So the point of this research is not necessarily that people won't experience these emotions, but that we'll be able to deal with them better?

Yes. The point is to find ways to help people--and not just Buddhists, but anybody--handle their destructive emotions more effectively.

The first chapter explains that researchers found, through studying a Buddhist monk, Öser, that meditation was a way to control these emotions. But Öser is someone who meditates all the time. How can a lay person benefit from meditation?

The research in the first chapter showed some extraordinary effects from long-term meditation. He is completely unresponsive, for example, when he hears a gun, or a sound like a gunshot. Everybody else startles. But Öser had amazing mastery over his emotional reactivity, and he can generate positive emotion. In fact, his baseline for emotion--his everyday baseline--is in the positive range.

But that doesn't mean this is only for people with time for huge, intensive practice. The other research underway now is looking at beginners. And now that we know what to look for, we're starting to see similar shifts in people who are just in the first two months of meditating. In another study of meditation, they taught it to highly stressed workers at a tech firm. The researchers found that they shifted the brain set-point for emotions from the "distressed zone" to the "good zone." That was after two months of an hour [of meditation] a day.

It has to be daily meditation?

Yes, daily meditation. Daily practice is key.

Other than meditation, are you aware of any other spiritual practices that might help achieve this shift in the brain?

The only one we know so far is mindfulness meditation. That's the only one that's been tested. We don't know what else of the many practices these lamas have done or have studied over the years might account for any of the specific effects we're seeing.

Will people be more skeptical about this method than they would about trying medication?

I think people are open to it. The Dalai Lama is quite smart in saying, 'Look at all this through a scientific lens, and if science validates the method then publish it and share that.'

In a recent book, "Why God Won't Go Away," Andrew Newberg, at the University of Pennsylvania, seemed to imply that his research on meditation proved that people have an impulse to believe in the divine. Did anything about the divine or transcendent come up in your discussion?

The Dalai Lama is immensely practical in his interests. And he really wants to see what there might be that would be of actual use to people to help them suffer less and be more happy.

So it wasn't a theological discussion. It was, however, in some places, theoretical because there is both a Buddhist psychology and a Western psychology. So there were very interesting presentations on the Buddhist version of the mind and how to work with it.

Were there some cases where Buddhism and science couldn't be reconciled?

We had friendly disagreements because the paradigms can be so different. For example, it turned out that in Buddhism there's an emotional state called sukha, which is an ongoing, imperturbable sense of joy that you feel regardless of what happens to you in life. What was remarkable in this dialogue is that there's no parallel in Western psychology and it made us wonder, 'What are we missing? What else are we missing?' He [the Dalai Lama] made another point which was that in Tibetan, and actually in all Asian Buddhist countries, the word for "compassion" means both compassion for yourself as well as other people. Whereas in English it only means for other people, not for yourself. He said, "You're missing a very important word." I thought that was a good insight.

What does this book about emotions have to do with your previous books about emotional intelligence?

It's not directly connected, but the themes of how we can be more aware of our emotion and what we can do that will help us manage our emotions better were touched on deeply in both books.

Have there been important findings about this since the book was finished?

Recently, at Columbia University, Richard Davidson reported new data with another lama, where he found that when he asked him to meditate on compassion, the activity in the part of the brain which is active during happiness--the left pre-frontal cortex, just behind the forehead--increased 800%. He said with an ordinary person, if you asked them to do something like that, the magnitude of change would be only 10-15%. So this is 80 times greater. That's remarkable.

You've been studying meditation since early on in your career. Has the way the world, or how Westerners at least, views meditation changed since when you started? Is there a greater interest among scientists in meditation now?

Absolutely. When I first did research on meditation it was at Harvard in the early 70's, and my professor thought I had gone crazy to be interested in such a thing. It was very fringe. But now it's part of the mainstream. People don't really blink much when you study meditation because it's understood that it's a valid set of methods and that it's a form of mind-training. Now we're interested in how far you can train the mind--what is the upside of human potential?

That's why the studies with the lamas are so fascinating and interesting. We're finding that, for example, on the ability to read other people's emotions from subtle, very quick facial changes, these lamas were getting perfect scores where most people do terribly on it. And it suggests that there's something in their training that enhances empathy and sharpens perception.

Or the fact that we're seeing the highest readings in the positive direction on the brain set-point for emotion as a result of spiritual practice. These are very important findings not just for scientists but for all of us--these methods can be of great benefit for any of us.

Did you discuss what effect Buddhist practice can have on constructive emotions?

Many of the practices are about generating positive emotions like compassion, lovingkindness, a sense of joy in other people's happiness. One of the points that was made was that American psychology should focus more on positive emotions and helping people learn how to reduce their quantity of negative, destructive emotions and experience more positive emotions day-to-day.

That seems to be happening with the positive psychology movement.

Of course, within the last few years we've had that whole movement toward positive psychology. But it turns out there's a very useful set of methods in Buddhism and other spiritual traditions for doing this that have been around for centuries. The Dalai Lama said, 'Look, study our methods and if you find anything that is of use to people, that will alleviate their suffering or make them happier, take it out of the Buddhist context and share it widely.'

How can you reach out to psychiatrists and psychologists about this?

The way to do that is through sound research and publishing in a psychiatry journal.

So you will keep it in the scientific realm. Are the participants in the 2000 meeting continuing this research?

Most of the scientists in the meeting have been inspired to go on and bring this back into their own work. Richard Davidson, for example, at the University of Wisconsin, is regularly bringing advanced practitioners into his lab to study their brains using state-of-the-art brain-imaging methods. Several of the other researchers are doing programs. Paul Ekman at the University of California, San Francisco, is now piloting a program with teachers and nurses to teach them 'mindfulness' as a way of helping them to manage their lives and work better and to have more positive emotions.

Do you think there would be fewer people on anti-depressants if more people meditated?

Yes, I do. That would be a great experiment to try.

Will people be more skeptical about this method than they would about trying medication?

I think people are open to it. The Dalai Lama is quite smart in saying, 'Look at all this through a scientific lens, and if science validates the method then publish it and share that.'

In a recent book, "Why God Won't Go Away," Andrew Newberg, at the University of Pennsylvania, seemed to imply that his research on meditation proved that people have an impulse to believe in the divine. Did anything about the divine or transcendent come up in your discussion?

The Dalai Lama is immensely practical in his interests. And he really wants to see what there might be that would be of actual use to people to help them suffer less and be more happy.

So it wasn't a theological discussion. It was, however, in some places, theoretical because there is both a Buddhist psychology and a Western psychology. So there were very interesting presentations on the Buddhist version of the mind and how to work with it.

Were there some cases where Buddhism and science couldn't be reconciled?

We had friendly disagreements because the paradigms can be so different. For example, it turned out that in Buddhism there's an emotional state called sukha, which is an ongoing, imperturbable sense of joy that you feel regardless of what happens to you in life. What was remarkable in this dialogue is that there's no parallel in Western psychology and it made us wonder, 'What are we missing? What else are we missing?' He [the Dalai Lama] made another point which was that in Tibetan, and actually in all Asian Buddhist countries, the word for "compassion" means both compassion for yourself as well as other people. Whereas in English it only means for other people, not for yourself. He said, "You're missing a very important word." I thought that was a good insight.

What does this book about emotions have to do with your previous books about emotional intelligence?

It's not directly connected, but the themes of how we can be more aware of our emotion and what we can do that will help us manage our emotions better were touched on deeply in both books.

Have there been important findings about this since the book was finished?

Recently, at Columbia University, Richard Davidson reported new data with another lama, where he found that when he asked him to meditate on compassion, the activity in the part of the brain which is active during happiness--the left pre-frontal cortex, just behind the forehead--increased 800%. He said with an ordinary person, if you asked them to do something like that, the magnitude of change would be only 10-15%. So this is 80 times greater. That's remarkable.

You've been studying meditation since early on in your career. Has the way the world, or how Westerners at least, views meditation changed since when you started? Is there a greater interest among scientists in meditation now?

Absolutely. When I first did research on meditation it was at Harvard in the early 70's, and my professor thought I had gone crazy to be interested in such a thing. It was very fringe. But now it's part of the mainstream. People don't really blink much when you study meditation because it's understood that it's a valid set of methods and that it's a form of mind-training. Now we're interested in how far you can train the mind--what is the upside of human potential?

That's why the studies with the lamas are so fascinating and interesting. We're finding that, for example, on the ability to read other people's emotions from subtle, very quick facial changes, these lamas were getting perfect scores where most people do terribly on it. And it suggests that there's something in their training that enhances empathy and sharpens perception.

Or the fact that we're seeing the highest readings in the positive direction on the brain set-point for emotion as a result of spiritual practice. These are very important findings not just for scientists but for all of us--these methods can be of great benefit for any of us.

Tags: Dan Goleman, How to Cure 'Destructive Emotions', Buddhism, emotions, Psychology, meditation, Beliefnet, Dalai Lama, positive psychology

WZEN - Dharma Talk: Ryushin Sensei - No Regrets Life

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Dharma Talk: Ryushin Sensei - No Regrets Life

This talk was recorded live at Zen Mountain Monastery in 2008. This and other talks are available for purchase online at www.dharma.net/monstore

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Tags: WZEN, Dharma Talk, Ryushin Sensei, No Regrets Life, Buddhism, Zen Mountain Monastery