"Say Ommm to keep your genes healthy."
So advises an article that caught my eye in this week's 'New Scientist'.
I am a haphazard practitioner of the meditative arts, finding sitting still a rather difficult thing to do, but I have long since lost my scepticism over the value of it. This article makes me want to dash for the yoga mat. (No, I don't possess one, but two of my daughters did. They now take up space in my shed. I claim squatting rights over them.)
I am so amazed by the implications of this article for health and well-being, that I am going to plagiarise it for the common good.
' "it's not New Age nonsense," says Herbert Benson of the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. He and his colleagues analysed the whole genome of 26 volunteers - none of whom regularly meditates - before teaching them a relaxation routine lasting 10 to 20 minutes. It included reciting words, breathing exercises and emptying the mind.
After eight weeks of performing the routine daily, gene analysis was repeated. Clusters of beneficial genes had become more active and harmful ones less so.
The boosted genes had three main effects: improving cellular energy efficiency, upping insulin production ... And preventing the breakdown of caps on chromosomes that prevent cells wearing out and ageing... .' (PLoSOne,doi.org/mfj)
What I find really interesting, is the possibility of changing my genes. I had thought them to be rather passive little critters, now resting serenely on their laurels having successfully been passed on to the next two generations. Job done, I thought.
But no! There they are, beavering away still working hard on my behalf, making me, at the cellular level, the wonderful creation that I am.... and helping me to continue to be... .
I get it, I really do. Ever wondered why those yogis one admires for there serenity, always appear to be at least one hundred years old? Now you know.
They are actively, if unconsciously, altering their genetic make -up. Stands to reason really. The negative effects of stress on life expectancy have been doing the rounds for years. How heartening to find that a positive outcome from de-stressing can have a similar powerful effect in the other direction.
Fifteen minutes a day of dropping everything and following your breath around your body. Not too difficult is it? And I suspect that any word that stills the mind from it's endless task of accusing you of your past mistakes (or worrying you to death about your future) would do... .
Saturday, 11 May 2013
Friday, 10 May 2013
Geographically Challanged
I am going for a walk. This WILL be a challenge.
I have been a member of Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust for a couple of decades (on and off) and have useful information to hand, like a Reserve to walk in, the name of the nearest pub and a Map Reference.
Five Acre Grove, The Royal Gloucestershire Hussars. SO791043.
Thank God for Google, I mutter, having learned from my Geography O Level (1967) how to ink in a coastline with a mapping pen, but not how to read a map.
Last year was not a good year for walking. It was too wet. I am a fair-weather hiker, I'm ashamed to say. The only Reserves I visited were Buckholt Woods and Swift's Hill. (Black Horse, Cranham, good pie, Woolpack Slad, no room. No room at the inn, just like Christmas.)
An adventure in prospect then. Better get going!
Photo: Swift's Hill, Slad
F
I have been a member of Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust for a couple of decades (on and off) and have useful information to hand, like a Reserve to walk in, the name of the nearest pub and a Map Reference.
Five Acre Grove, The Royal Gloucestershire Hussars. SO791043.
Thank God for Google, I mutter, having learned from my Geography O Level (1967) how to ink in a coastline with a mapping pen, but not how to read a map.
Last year was not a good year for walking. It was too wet. I am a fair-weather hiker, I'm ashamed to say. The only Reserves I visited were Buckholt Woods and Swift's Hill. (Black Horse, Cranham, good pie, Woolpack Slad, no room. No room at the inn, just like Christmas.)
An adventure in prospect then. Better get going!
Photo: Swift's Hill, Slad
Below: Five Acre Grove
FThursday, 9 May 2013
Living In Idleness
The thing is, I love to write. There is something so therapeutic about the gentle 'pudd-pudd' of my fingertips skipping across the virtual keypad in front of me. Today's challenge, writer's block. I'm fed up with God, the poet's run out of inspiration, and my daily round is too mundane to mention. I will mention it though, just for fun:
Accomplished:
Wake Up
Tweet
Check Blog
Write email
Think About Getting Up
Listen to Radio
To Do:
Get Up
Bathe
Art Class
Cook
Eat
Bed.
Writing a List always does it for me. Here I go again:
Aowl and I had great fun the other day trying to get the microphone to type for us.. Its potential for the literary aspirations of a one-year old are pretty staggering I think, but what was typed up made no sense. What does? (Broad smile: Maybe something: Maybe sometimes.)
(A feature of an ipad. You talk to it, and it talks back. It is a Two on the Enneagram. It lives to serve.)
Microphone Man, Let's call him Cyril, when asked to write something for me, was very helpful. ' I don't know what you mean by, 'Write something for me. How about a web search for it?' I admit to being impressed. Technology is so cute. No sense of the ironic, doesn't know when it's leg is being pulled, just cute.
Having time on my hands, I actually took Cyril up on his offer, and a whole new world has opened up for me!
I was taken to a website wherein I can register to write papers for students with deficiencies in the honesty department. Nobody's perfect. The paper I wrote on the ferns growing in Prince of Wales Park in Bingley, in order to escape the local College with a Certification in Education, owed much of it's content to,' The Observer Book of Ferns'. I'm in no position to judge.
Why in heaven's name, did I choose to write a paper on the ferns in The Prince of Wales Park? I don't remember, though I do recall my horror at finding just the one variety when I made my foray into the damper regions of this particular pleasure garden. Though the park was a mere five minutes walk from my digs, I did not, in the end, have to leave my bedroom to complete the assignment.
If the University of Leeds wishes to strip me of my Certificate in Education (Mary Cook, 1972) I invite it to be my guest. I wouldn't return to teaching for a pension. Oh! Wait!
Accomplished:
Wake Up
Tweet
Check Blog
Write email
Think About Getting Up
Listen to Radio
To Do:
Get Up
Bathe
Art Class
Cook
Eat
Bed.
Writing a List always does it for me. Here I go again:
Aowl and I had great fun the other day trying to get the microphone to type for us.. Its potential for the literary aspirations of a one-year old are pretty staggering I think, but what was typed up made no sense. What does? (Broad smile: Maybe something: Maybe sometimes.)
(A feature of an ipad. You talk to it, and it talks back. It is a Two on the Enneagram. It lives to serve.)
Microphone Man, Let's call him Cyril, when asked to write something for me, was very helpful. ' I don't know what you mean by, 'Write something for me. How about a web search for it?' I admit to being impressed. Technology is so cute. No sense of the ironic, doesn't know when it's leg is being pulled, just cute.
Having time on my hands, I actually took Cyril up on his offer, and a whole new world has opened up for me!
I was taken to a website wherein I can register to write papers for students with deficiencies in the honesty department. Nobody's perfect. The paper I wrote on the ferns growing in Prince of Wales Park in Bingley, in order to escape the local College with a Certification in Education, owed much of it's content to,' The Observer Book of Ferns'. I'm in no position to judge.
Why in heaven's name, did I choose to write a paper on the ferns in The Prince of Wales Park? I don't remember, though I do recall my horror at finding just the one variety when I made my foray into the damper regions of this particular pleasure garden. Though the park was a mere five minutes walk from my digs, I did not, in the end, have to leave my bedroom to complete the assignment.
If the University of Leeds wishes to strip me of my Certificate in Education (Mary Cook, 1972) I invite it to be my guest. I wouldn't return to teaching for a pension. Oh! Wait!
Tuesday, 7 May 2013
Fluffy God
I have to come clean. I don't believe in Fluffy-God.
I did. Once or twice, when the sky was cloudless and I didn't know very much. I was about ten, I think. Or thirty.
I have been following up on some of the inspirational people who Tweet at me. And I have come to believe in a Collective Unconsciousness.
I have found lovely mums with big hair and big hearts revelling in the Beatitudes who strive to be pure in heart and deserve to make it.
I have found skinny, bald prophets who have found emptiness through wanting nothing, and I am happy for them.
I describe, you understand, I do not criticise.
It makes me think: thinking does me good.
I started thinking when my friends began dying off. I was younger then, and embarrassingly selfish. How dare they leave me? Fluffy God got a good kicking, let me tell you. And when my family started dying off too - well, I ordered him to pack his bags and leave.
That's when I discovered another embarrassing thing about myself... . I'm not cut out To Be An Atheist. So what now?
I wish I knew. I'll have to think some more about THAT.
One chill day, fifty kilometres from Umtata, I watched a scrawny child fill a plastic bottle with filthy river water to sell by the roadside. I just watched. She haunts me sometimes, this little girl dressed in rags. I ask myself, 'Why didn't I try to do something? There are many things I could have tried to do, but I couldn't move.
I couldn't take it in. That's the truth of it.
This little one, wasn't part of my world, she didn't fit, she couldn't be happening. This is what Collective Unconsciousness does to religious people. Fluffy God doesn't allow this. IT CAN'T BE HAPPENING.
True God, I think, and I think there is one, opens our eyes to the suffering of others, and whispers, 'Go on, TRY...' He doesn't need religious institutions, or religious people. She just IS.
I did. Once or twice, when the sky was cloudless and I didn't know very much. I was about ten, I think. Or thirty.
I have been following up on some of the inspirational people who Tweet at me. And I have come to believe in a Collective Unconsciousness.
I have found lovely mums with big hair and big hearts revelling in the Beatitudes who strive to be pure in heart and deserve to make it.
I have found skinny, bald prophets who have found emptiness through wanting nothing, and I am happy for them.
I describe, you understand, I do not criticise.
It makes me think: thinking does me good.
I started thinking when my friends began dying off. I was younger then, and embarrassingly selfish. How dare they leave me? Fluffy God got a good kicking, let me tell you. And when my family started dying off too - well, I ordered him to pack his bags and leave.
That's when I discovered another embarrassing thing about myself... . I'm not cut out To Be An Atheist. So what now?
I wish I knew. I'll have to think some more about THAT.
One chill day, fifty kilometres from Umtata, I watched a scrawny child fill a plastic bottle with filthy river water to sell by the roadside. I just watched. She haunts me sometimes, this little girl dressed in rags. I ask myself, 'Why didn't I try to do something? There are many things I could have tried to do, but I couldn't move.
I couldn't take it in. That's the truth of it.
This little one, wasn't part of my world, she didn't fit, she couldn't be happening. This is what Collective Unconsciousness does to religious people. Fluffy God doesn't allow this. IT CAN'T BE HAPPENING.
True God, I think, and I think there is one, opens our eyes to the suffering of others, and whispers, 'Go on, TRY...' He doesn't need religious institutions, or religious people. She just IS.
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