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Did you see the "Mind over matter" prog. on Discovery?

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Deepsy
Apr 29, 2003
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Wow just wow

It was a program on how we could use the mind to change things physically. There was something about freedivers too. It started with this kid who had a brain tumor that could not be operated. Well an alternative doctor told him to imagine his brain as a universe, and picture his white blod cells as space ships, and the tumor as an alien. He did this for 6 month and the tumor ended up beeing reduced to a tiny grain of chalk! And he recovered completely.

Next test was involving the training of the pinky finger:confused: well a gruop of persons was set to train they're finger physically, and they of course gained 100% in strenght from the training. The next group was asked to visualize themselves training they're finger, and not do any real training with it. And they gained 35% in strength, with only the power of thinking!!! I just think this is remarkable. I allways belived it was like this. That the power of the mind was that important. But it was still funny to see it beeing said by doctors and scientists.

Happy visualization to you all ;)
 
Well, the mind is a tricky thing. The part of the subconscious which is capable of influencing somatic processes was long ago discovered to be nearly completely inaffected by rationalism. Thus, whatever it considers to be completely true may seem completely subjective and biased to anyone else. Effectively, it takes a self-made belief or an outside-influenced suggestion, and attempts, mostly successfully, to make it a reality. For instance, the benefits one might get from religion are directly proportionate to one's desire to believe. Problem is, positive self-suggestions require conscious application of will and desire of self-understanding (the 'Grit your teeth and break through' approach doesn't work here), while new negative ones are instilled inside us everyday by both ourselves and our environment.

Nowadays, people usually stumble across many problems trying to develop positive self-opinion and self-suggestion, mainly due to the fact modern culture cultivates 'virtues' such as cynicism and extreme pragmaticism - "If you're so smart, show me the money." If one decides to rearrange his preference list and, for example, move the above mentioned money from 'chief purposes' to 'helpful means' in order to make room for an impractical hobby, it would immediately result in an immediate counter-response.

I've managed to develop positive self-suggestion only after I managed to convince myself that this is a scientifically proven method that does work, not a superstition. And yet even then, I still regularly confront my overblown rationalism, especially when it says things such as -

"Come on. You? Diving? Are you kiddin' me? WTH? There are much better and less effort-consuming ways to stay in shape than your exhaustive daily workout. Safety is good and all, but amateurs and professionals alike still die down there. Besides, you don't have what it takes, and you know it. For god's sake, you can't stand jellyfish."

And this is what I consider my prime unconvenience - because half the effort in the sport is mental, and negative self-opinion might impair the progress manyfolds. However, this also is one of the reasons I 'got on board' - to come to terms with myself and be the way I want to be. You may not agree with me, but I personally consider myself on the right track, and this is what truly matters. To quote a bit of anime philosophy, "I didn't come here to die. I came to see if I ever was alive."
 
Yogi's

Just look at the accomplishments of the yogi's.... I guess it's all in the mind...
 
Re: Yogi's

Originally posted by Fred S.
Just look at the accomplishments of the yogi's.... I guess it's all in the mind...


I had the rare priveledge of a sleep deprivation experiment.

I was awake for two consecutive weeks, and when the subconcious invades the concious, in an effort to aleviate the lack of sleep for the concious, the subconcious invents reality in order to take it's place. In a word Halucinations.

Physically, I was fine, though I needed to be medicated in order to allow myself to sleep. It would seem, I had crossed a certain stage where my body would not know it was awake, so hence the inability to reset the sleep/wake mode switch. I had to be medicated for about a week in order to normalize, call it decompression.

I'm wondering what the possibilities are though of regulating the sleep mode through yoga would be? Is this what they are referring to? This control?

The unconcious, I found is far more powerful than the concious which seems to get in the way all too often. I believe the subconcious is the mind.

If I may make a comparison, the concious is the dam and the subconcious is the river being held back from flowing into the ocean. If we could learn to selectively open the dam and harness this power, then we could surpass our wildest expectations in performance, and goals obtained.

It reminds me of Leonardo DaVinci: It is said, he only slept but 15 minutes every 2 hours. Granted, he didn't have distractions that we all have today, and most of us cannot afford to do such a thing, but this if possible would do away with the thought that dreaming is so important. Or was he so good at obtaining rem that he was able to dream MORE than anyone today? We do only dream during the last moments of sleep so..... I find this very interesting.

Any other thoughts that can be springboarded off of this?

-Mark
 
The Zen of freediving?

Well, well, well.

Until this very day, yours truly had never realised that static performance can differ not only by quantity, but by quality as well.

I was definitely sick of ending up opening my eyes, taking a peek at the thrice-damned timer and counting those last seconds. I've decided to make a bet against myself - and that being, not opening my eyes until the end of each and every hold. Including the five minute one.

The key to proper statics, as it appears, is concentrating without concentrating. When left without much sensory input within a body in comfortable position with some sort of factor prohibiting one from getting dozy, such as a need to hold one's breath, the mind tends to drift into itself, randomly unraveling images, ideas and discussions deemed long forgotten, without requiring me to invest any effort to recall and understand them. If I were a computer, I might say my hard drive was being defragmented. And yet, it didn't stop there.

Within this impenetrable world of my own, I was effectively reveling in the feeling of absolute, total freedom from objective reality. For a moment, I realized what was this very burden that I was bearing - the burden of being self, sustaining some sort of public image, glorificating my individuality with more or less pointless achievements. For I was surrounded by unconditional acceptance of myself the way I am, no longer having the need to prove anything to anyone. And I knew the sources of such acceptance were not within myself, but somewhere out there. Perhaps it was but an illusion caused by activating normally underused thought processes, yet some unknown sense told me that there never was anything more real than the feeling of pleasant warmth, freedom of all worries and, most importantly, being loved just for what you are.

And then the five-minute mark passed. For about ten more seconds I was just lying there, blinking my eyes and wondering just "what the heck have I been smoking", before I remembered to take a breath.

---

Allow me to introduce a theory.

There are many that try to define what the freediver Zen is, but usually end up out of words. You may consider my hypothesis as unscientific as it is ugly, but I think that one's subjective reality,which normally constitutes a person's perception of the world, tends to expand spontaneously when pressure applied by the above mentioned outside world, the objective reality, is diminished. This usually occurs at times of relaxation combined with sensory deprivation and previously satisfied physical needs. At neither time, the consciousness is in complete control, not because it cannot regain such control, but rather because it prefers not to. Control is associated with actions and reactions, which are engraved within our instincts as a method of evading or disposing of threats. When the need to fight, run away, or call the lawyer suddenly disappears - if only for a few minutes - the dream that is the subjective reality starts taking place of the objective one.

You might compare the practical way of thought to a crude, yet sturdy tower, while the irrealistic aspect of a person's mind is similar to an infinitely complex and fragile structure of alien beauty, which is only capable of unfolding when someone turns off the gravity. And under such conditions, the capabilities of this seemingly unneeded aspect of human personality increase manyfold - from direct control over certain bodily processes to directly contacting the main residual product of civilization's mental processes - the collective unconscious (CU), which has no physical form and thus no limits. Some call it God; I call it a relay terminal, through which humans are capable to share their emotions and their will to understand each other.

Why is CU a relay point for positive emotional transmission, not negative? Because the connection itself requires readiness to reject the obvious. It can be compared to yoga, which, for instance, can indeed become a show of human capabilities, yet most yogi consider challenging the limits of human body to gain publicity a waste of time. During the very learning of Yogic capabilities and techniques one understands that there is truly no need to be goal-oriented and competitive about it. Yoga is not the goal, but the means to find the back door out of the rat race which many people consider to be their life.

It had been proven that water, despite being seemingly amorphous, posesses a capability to store information. Some actually hypotheticize that the physical appearance of CU is, in effect, the ocean. Perhaps this is why those who make contact with fluid medium in a state of tranquility of mind, which is precisely what defines freedivers, often form a bond that will last for the rest of their lives.

- Levi.
 
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Re: The Zen of freediving?

Originally posted by Levi Athan
Within this impenetrable world of my own, I was effectively reveling in the feeling of absolute, total freedom from objective reality. For a moment, I realized what was this very burden that I was bearing - the burden of being self, sustaining some sort of public image, glorificating my individuality with more or less pointless achievements. For I was surrounded by unconditional acceptance of myself the way I am, no longer having the need to prove anything to anyone. And I knew the sources of such acceptance were not within myself, but somewhere out there. Perhaps it was but an illusion caused by activating normally underused thought processes, yet some unknown sense told me that there never was anything more real than the feeling of pleasant warmth, freedom of all worries and, most importantly, being loved just for what you are.

Bloody interesting post Levi.

I find that drinking a little water before starting enables me to lose myself peeing for about 10 seconds during the static :D

Al
 
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the smell of freediving :))

This brings this topic right down to earth again, haha. The pool you train in must have a nasty smell I guess Alastair....

Anyway, those were interesting thoughts Levi !

Fred S.
 
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