Are you open to receiving more in your life? Supposedly the Universe around us is abundant, all we need do is open ourselves to receive from that abundance. The key is being open. Open to receiving.
Maybe you are walking through a parking lot and see a penny lying on the pavement. It might be old and tarnished but it is a penny. What do you do? Do you snub your nose at this bit of free money? Or do you bend over, pick it up, and thank the universe for bringing abundance your way?
That very thing just happened to me. An old corroded penny, lying on the pavement. At first I passed it by, but then thought to pick it up and acknowledge the universe for bringing me this gift.
Soon as I straightened up, I saw a quarter lying on the ground a little ways away.
It was as if the universe were showing me, open the door to a little bit of abundance, and more abundance will follow.
Is there such a thing as "spiritual disease" that can be passed from one person to another? It would be like Germ Theory that says one person coughing on another is enough to pass a cold or flu or whatever between people. While one could cook up a theory of subtle energy virus's, I've just read an interesting article on The Huffington Post that has a different take on the phrase "spiritual disease." Rather than talk about infections of the subtle energy system, the author speaks of different forms of imbalanced spiritual practice, or imbalanced use of spiritual ideology.
Can spiritual transformation be as quick and easy as popping into a fast food joint for a burger and fries?
Is dressing the part of a spiritual person enough to be spiritual?
What is the real motivation for spiritual exploration?
Does our ego create our spiritual experience?
Does fill-in-the-blank spiritual teacher have a real state of enlightenment?
Does being spiritual make one superior to others?
What about the tendency for groupthink among spiritual seekers?
Can one group of people truly be Chosen By God to be more special than another? Is this the God that loves all creatures equally?
Is there a destination or end-goal in the process of spiritual exploration or enlightenment?
It's worth a look-see and reflect on any way these imbalances are present in ones own life.
When do you practice healing? Only while giving a healing session to a client? What if "healing" is practiced as a way of life? What if "healing" can be practiced even by those who do not have official training as a healer?
In healing training we are taught how to use a body of healing techniques for a client, to help the client with their healing process. One could come away from healing training believing two things: 1) that only trained healers can give healing sessions, 2) that healing is only performed in a healing room during a healing session where the healer is using the techniques they trained to learn.
What if both of those thoughts are false?
I'm taking a trip and while hanging out in the airport some people started congregating near me, one frightened with panicky breathing. It turned out to be a 17 year old young man traveling with his family. The airport police was there, and medics were on the way. The question was, what would be my choice in this situation.
I could have gone somewhere else, essentially running away from this fellow human being who was in need. I could have sat there doing my best to ignore the situation, and go about reading e-mail. I could have used some healing technique on the sly, unasked for, risking some kind of karma crisis. What I did was to pray, calling for divine presence, praying for health.
Holding divine space for a scene like this takes a long time. The person in crisis must allow himself to feel the divine space and shift out of the crisis mode. There may also have been something else such as a food allergy or mental illness that I am not aware of. In any case the scene unfolded over twenty minutes or more. Me, on the side of the scene, breathing deeply, praying for the divine presence, for health, staying centered as much for myself and the others involved in the scene, as it was for the young man. As the medics worked with him, coaching him into deep calming breaths, I noticed how the medics worked not only with the young man, but his family members. For, this scene was not just the kid, but his brother, his sister, his mother, and his father.
As the scene worked its way towards a conclusion it occurred to me, what if we healers lived this way in regular life? Do we hold this sort of divine space only in our healing room? Why not also hold divine space as we go about our lives? While waiting in line at the post office, rather than let the slow service turn you into a raving lunatic, what about holding divine space?
This could be a continual practice throughout the day. Of course nobody expects to be the perfect healer every moment of the day. But the spiritual practice we develop as a healer can be a routine part of every day.
There is a question to ponder about the karmic implications. My understanding at this time is that holding divine space is not the sort of relationship we have with regular clients. In a healing session we get into a relationship with the client a part of which is that the client must explicitly ask for healing.
On the other hand as we go through life and see someone (or ourself) in need of divine assistance, it is not always possible to get them to ask for our healing assistance. Divine space, however, is divine space. The prayer can be as simple as "come holy spirit, bring health!". The arrangement of the relationships in that space is clean, in that your involvement is solely holding the intention of divine holy presence. Divine holy presence is available at all times in every molecule of the universe, meaning that we are simply accentuating something that is already present.
We need money to live in the modern world, to pay for food, rent/mortgage, travel, clothing, entertainment, etc. It is easy for the subconscious to identify the need for money as a core piece of our identity. Rich people are often given higher social ranking, while poor people often are lower in the ranks, and this segregation of people by how much money they have dismisses the individual value of the particular person. Is the rich person truly better quality person than the poor person? The answer is actually quite complex because examples and counter examples are all over the map on these distinctions. But this and other issues can drive the subconscious of an individual to seek money as the source of stability and self worth.
This may turn into seeking to buy brand name whatevers of prominent brand names, because wearing Gucci shoes (for example) makes ones wealth more obvious. But buying the prominent brand names means you spend more to buy your things, than if you simply bought the inexpensive generically branded items. The question is whether that prominently branded item has a real qualitative advantage over the inexpensive generically branded item.
There are a few issues here:
The more money you spend requires you spending more of your life energy earning that money.
Quality, well built, useful items, makes better use of your money than if you seek out the cheapest flimsiest item to save a few dollars.
Feeling good inside yourself about the stuff you own
That is, what's the proper balance about owning stuff that makes sense to you, the time you spend to earn that money, and efficiently using the money you gather with the time you spend earning money.
Are you pondering a life changing decision? To move somewhere, change career, etc? Maybe you have already made your decision but have changed nothing as yet. For example maybe you're still in your soul crushing job "waiting for the right time" to make your move and change things around. Let me ask, if you've made your decision but not acted on that decision, have you really decided?
Once you act on a decision all the effects of that decision come clear. It is when you act that you commit your self and your life to the consequences of your action. By acting on a decision you have committed yourself to that decision. Until you do act on the decision it's always possible to take a different course than the one you supposedly decided upon.
An unfinished decision is like a weight hanging over you. The decision ("do I or don't I") nags in your mind, causing your mind to weigh between different alternatives. Indecision saps at your strength because of this.
A decision you haven't acted upon is also a weight hanging over you. Supposedly your decision has become "when will I do _____" but because you haven't acted upon the decision it's always possible, as we just said, to reverse your decision and take a different route. Hence you now have two decisions hanging over you: "when will I", and "will I actually do it".
Perhaps it's better once you've made a decision to, well, "Just Do It".
There's a lot of crazy things going on right now and it's easy to get lost in the turmoil and worries about which direction our world is going. Below I've pasted in a video expressing some spiritual teachings of the sort I've found useful in dealing with inner and outer turmoil. I'm sharing this hoping to remind a few people to seek ways to feel peace in these turbulent times, and to respond to the turbulent times with the power of centered decision making so that our society overall will make better decisions in these times.
The key meme they're presenting is "Wisdom Guiding Power" but I think they chose a weak way to demonstrate this concept. This concept of "wisdom guiding power" is what makes the difference between destruction and the construction of beauty.
Our society has created many powerful tools but tools don't have wisdom of themselves. You can use a hammer to bash things apart or you can use it to build a beautiful house.
In the video below they talk about a factoid that the Heart has the strongest electromagnetic field in the body. The Heart's electromagnetic field is way more powerful than the brain's. And therefore why do we focus on the brain and not the heart?
That's a great point.. put another way our society focuses on mental decisions, mentality, and the product of mental activity. A lot of wonderful things have been created that way, for sure. But something has been lost in our embrace of rational logic, and that's the emotional self. No matter how rational we become we have emotions and we have hopes, dreams, aspirations, as well as high spiritual potential. There is so much more to us than the mental field, but our society is only valuing output from the mental portion of our selves.
This is a deep split in our society. One way of interpreting the video below is a call to healing that split.
However the argument in the video is flawed. To understand why I want to show three analogies.
Electric motor driven equipment (drills and hand tools, electric vehicles, kitchen appliances, etc): Electric motors use electromagnetic fields to convert electricity to mechanical power. Trust me, there is zero wisdom in an electric motor, instead there's wires and a lot of heavy metal. In operation electric motors have power flowing through them, and the strongest electromagnetic field in, say, a power drill is in its motor. Does the electric field around the motor mean the motor has any wisdom? Nope.
Radio or TV stations: They have a tall tower, and a little building next to the tower. The primary electric field is emanating from the tall tower but the radio station could be transmitting static just as easily as it can beautiful music. Does the electric field emanating from the antenna mean the antenna has any wisdom? Nope.
Biomechanically the heart is an electrical pump: It takes electro-chemical power and converts it into a pumping motion to move blood around the body and keep us alive. Anatomically the heart looks like a pump with massive muscles etc. In the video they discount that interpretation of the heart and say that because it has a strong electromagnetic field the heart has wisdom etc.
I think this claim is flawed and misinterprets the model being looked at.
An electric motor does two things: a) primary purpose: convert electricity into mechanical energy; b) side effect is transmission of an electromagnetic field because that's what happens when you send electricity through a wire.
The motor, nor the radio tower nor the pump have wisdom to make decisions. They are tools used to control power. What sends the instructions for the control of that power? Just sending power into one of those gizmos doesn't mean they'll do anything useful, doesn't mean they won't cause destruction.
What's important is the quality of the instructions sent into the motor or the radio tower or the pump. It's the person pressing the trigger on a power drill that determines whether the drill is used to destroy, or used to construct beauty.
The wisdom to use power constructively will make all the difference to our world.
There's a radioactive plume coming from the failed nuclear reactors in Japan. Some alarm is rising over the effect of the radiation. In part the alarm is due to the decades of fearism about all things nuclear, and partly due to the real danger. It would seem in this case the real danger is much less than the panic some have been feeling. In any case there is some useful information available about surviving some of the effects of radiation releases.
For example there's been a run on "emergency potassium iodide" supplies, but here in the U.S. radioactive iodine is not a danger. As Dr. James Blumenthal, DC explains in the first video below, the danger zone is within a few miles of the reactor.
By the time the radioactive plume reaches the U.S. the radioactive iodine will have dissipated. One reason is the short half-life of radioactive iodine and the other is simple physics, that the plume will be spread out by the wind.
There are other radioactive isotopes in the plume, and those have much longer term effects.
Do not take emergency potassium iodide unless instructed to do so because it is only to be taken if there is a nuclear event within miles - not thousands of miles - from you! However, there are many natural remedies you can take and foods you can eat that will help your body deal with low-level radiation exposure, should it occur. In this video Dr. James Blumenthal, DC shares some of the most important information you need to know regarding low-level radiation and what to do about it, should it come to America from Japan.
3/15/11 Los Angeles Times Story regarding potential for low level radiation exposure to crops and farm animals:
Do not take emergency potassium iodide - it will harm you
There is more to radiation than the radioactive iodine 131
Other radiation isotopes include uranium, plutonium and cesium
Radioactive iodine 131 has a half life of about 8 days
Radioactive iodine 131 is really only an issue for people next to a nuclear event
Uranium, plutonium and cesium have half-lives of about 30 years, so we need to be somewhat concerned about this form of radiation.
Radioactive iodine 131 could possibly affect people in America if they are iodine deficient, then supplementing with 100 to 150 micrograms (not milligrams) of iodine per day may be warranted
The supplement dose is 1/1000 of a dose of emergency iodine
We can get extra iodine by eating seaweed and seafood, or taking a health food store supplement, to increase our background levels of iodine, slowly, and naturally
If you have an autoimmune problem, or any thyroid issues at all, you must contact your doctor before taking any iodine supplement
For the other three radioactive elements, we can take glutathione supplementation and SOD.
The kidneys are at risk from radioactive isotopes, and one way to help them is to take baking soda between meals, a couple times a day.
Naturopathic Doctor Jennifer Fisher gives an overview of how best to protect and nourish the thyroid gland, which is susceptible to radioactive iodine. High does emergency potassium iodide tablets should never be taken unless a nuclear event occurs within miles of someone because such extremely high doses of potassium iodide will cause health problems. Dr. Fisher addresses this topic, and gives an overview of what the thyroid gland is, what it does, ways we can nourish it, and if we want to take supplemental iodine, how to do so.
Main Talking Points:
Do not take emergency potassium iodide - it will harm you
The thyroid gland produces thyroid hormones call T3 and T4
The thyroid gland regulates the body's metabolic rate
The thyroid gland affects every cell in the body
Chemicals and pollution can adversely affect the thyroid gland, as can radiation
The thyroid "soaks up" iodine and iodide like a sponge; unfortunately, it will do so with radioactive iodine as well.
Cancer can be a result of radioactive iodine exposure
Hypothyroidism: low function metabolism
Hyperthyroidism: fast metabolism
Thyroid requires many nutrients to function properly, not just iodine or iodide
Best thing for the thyroid is to stop eating processed foods and to start eating whole, organic foods so that it can get all the nutrients it requires
Seaweed is an excellent food source of iodine and iodide; often eaten in miso soup
Never take emergency potassium iodide unless instructed to do so.
Supplemental iodine and iodide can be found in health food stores; the suggested dose is around 150 to 250 micrograms
If you have any concerns about your thyroid health, or any other health issues, consider a visit to a Naturopathic Doctor.
What do we as a people really want? What kind of technological infrastructure do we really want? Recent disasters, by taking away specific parts of the technological infrastructure running our society, demonstrate their real cost. Is this a cost we really want to pay?
To recap - last Friday a tremendous earthquake struck off the coast of Japan, triggering a Tsunami that wiped out dozens of coastal towns despite the high seawalls. The Tsunami knocked out the backup power supply at the Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, and with no electricity the cooling system at the power plant stopped running, leading to several explosions, fires, the containment buildings blown up, it's likely the inner containment structure has fractured, and the fuel rods are melting. Plumes of radiation are being unleashed out over the ocean and we could very well see radioactive clouds where I live in California. It's going bad to worse to impossibly worse. It's like a replay of last years oil spill disaster, just different details. The oil spill last year took several months to play out, and it demonstrated the icky consequences of our modern lifestyle. It appears this nuclear crisis will also take several months to play out, and it's demonstrating other icky consequences of our modern lifestyle.
Economists have this word: externality
Business leaders try to externalize costs - which is a fancy word for pushing the cost for something onto someone else so that you don't have to pay the cost yourself. An example is the health care costs of people being poisoned by exhaust from cars burning fossil oil based fuels. It's well known that the exhaust contains poisonous chemicals that cause a wide range of diseases, for example gasoline pumps have stickers warning that the pump dispenses material that is a known carcinogen. Do the oil companies pay for the health care costs? No.
That was an interesting detour - I want to discuss a question both disasters bring to mind: What do we as a people want?
When you turn on a light bulb, where does the power come from? Refrigerator? Washing machine? The computer you're reading this on? The car you drive around?
The power companies have given us an externality situation. We get to use electricity or gasoline without having to be aware of the real cost of supplying the power.
Our use of gasoline and diesel forced the oil companies to drill that oil well that blew up last year. Our use of electricity forced the electric power utilities to build the nuclear power plant that's blowing up right now.
What we see with both these disasters is the worst possible disaster scenario of both energy sources.
An offshore oil well blowing up and spewing crude oil for months into an area that supplies a huge percentage of the seafood we enjoy in the United States.
A nuclear plant blowing up and spewing radiation for what we expect will be months. Further Japan has shut down several reactor complexes because of the earthquake, causing rolling blackouts and a general shutdown of industry in Japan, disrupting sales of critical electronics components. There will be a ripple effect in the economy that could drive us into a world-wide recession or depression due to disruption of the supply chain.
One can point to the power suppliers - Maybe BP is stupid and liable because they did a horrid job of running their oil well safely - Maybe TEPCO is stupid and liable because they made bad mistakes for example putting the backup diesel generators in a place that got swamped by the Tsunami - or General Electric is stupid and liable for building a susceptibility nuclear plant design
All that's true, these companies could have made better choices and run their business with better safety in mind.
However that doesn't wash our hands of responsibility. Each of us who buy gasoline or use electricity are responsible for the existence of those companies. Those companies formed themselves in response to our demand for gasoline and electricity.
Another folly is the choice of building critical infrastructure in places we know are liable to have serious damage or other serious consequences. In this case the choice was to install nuclear power plants near a fault but really Japan is on the Ring of Fire and see's earthquakes all the time.
The planet and its processes (earthquakes, hurricanes, tornado's, weather systems, etc) are still much larger than human society has been able to "conquer". This earthquake demonstrates the power of Mother Nature - A fault needed to slip and shimmy a bit, but it destroyed the objects we built along the coast. The planet doesn't really know or care what we built upon it, the planet has geological forces that are playing out.
"We" build stuff, towns and highways and nuclear plants, then the planet yawns and stretches and destroys those things. By having those things taken away from us, it presents an opportunity to take a step back and look from a broader perspective. Are those things we really want anyway? Is the cost of having those things greater than the benefit we get from them? Is there a better place to put those things than a spot that's prone to earthquakes?
Do we really want a life where the consequences of the things we buy is a poisoned landscape with toxic air and water? Do we have to recreate the world the way it has been the last few years?
Maybe our history is asking us to rethink our society and the technological gizmos we use in our society?
What we really need to do is reconnect with who we really are.
Why should everything be the same? Why do we have rows of ticky-tacky houses lined up on the hillside, all the same? Why, despite all the brands of everything in the store, are all the products the same? Nature doesn't grow uniformity. Nature grows stuff based on localized needs and conditions.
Start two plants of the same species, but in different places, and the result will be plants who've adapted themselves to the local condition.
Organic growth patterns don't result in uniformity. They result in automatic adaptation and reuse of whatever is lying around.
A lot of waste in our society is because some things don't fit the supposedly desired uniformity. Say a window pane cracks on its way to the construction site. The construction foreman will reject the window because it's nonuniform and throw it on the trash pile. Wasted stuff.
Suppose a box of cereal is dented just before it's put on the shelf? The store manager might object and put it in a reject pile. Wasted stuff.
Wasted stuff is materials which went through the mining, extraction, shipping, fabrication, shipping process - and then were deemed unsuitable (nonuniform) and to be thrown away.
For most of 2009 I was unemployed (like many people) and (unlike many people) attempting to make a living using this blog. Recently I rejoined the workforce to have a job (and more stable income) and being employed again has given me perspective on the role of working for a living. What I want to write about today is a comment by a co-worker that represents a typical intrusion of the corporate needs into personal life. I've never liked how our corporate masters feel they can require any obeisance including neglect of our personal lives in order that the corporation flourish. Having spent a year working for myself it reinforced for me the wrongness of a corporation demanding intrusions into employees personal time.
Just now I was standing next to a co-worker, he noticed a list of corporate training classes being offered and remarked how it would be more convenient for him if the class were held at night. I think his view is he's too busy during the day taking care of job stuff, and a night time class wouldn't interfere with his job duties. Uh..
The time we have to live this life is limited by the number of breaths between our first squeal at birth and our last gasp at death. In between those two breaths we breath in and out several times a minute, and have a life to live while taking those breaths.
What's the best use of that time? Is it the best use of our time to spend 24/7 at the job or otherwise taking care of job stuff? Or is the best use of that time to lead a life of balance between work, pleasure, home, travel, etc?
Maybe you know some people who conceptualize that the best use of their life is to spend it on the job. Obviously I know at least one person with that idea. Heck, I used to live that way myself. But after some time, and after being laid off a couple times, it became clear for me: the company doesn't care about me. It doesn't matter how they dress up claims that a given corporation will take good care of their employees, the bottom line is that companies drop their employees in a moment if the money in the balance sheet says they have to cut staff.
Why then do employees give any loyalty to the company if the company has no loyalty for them?
To make a few guesses...
Adrenaline: Some people get high on working hard. Corporations are all too happy to find an employee who'll work 24/7, maybe because that person will replace hiring a couple more people.
Fear: Some people fear the unemployed life, don't know how to survive without employment, and need someone to give them something to do.
Normality: The normalthink is that people have a job and the boss can tell you to do anything. There's a lot of laws behind that normalthink.
What I believe is that my time is the period where I can pursue my own interests. The time I give to the corporation is when I have to deny my interests and do what the company says to do. At the times I've let the company intrude their demands into my time I was completely unable to pursue my interests, and that caused a lot of internal pain.
To put a boundary between my company and personal time my employment, now, is on a contract basis. It means there is a strict set of hours I'm on the job, the corporation can't demand I work overtime, and my time is my time. Speaking of which my lunch hour just ended and I have to go back. Cheers.
Normally when people moan about blood-sucking corporations it's not as literal as this story. Cerberus Capital, one of Wall Street’s most notoriously ruthless leveraged-buyout firms made a $1.8 billion profit from buying, and the later selling, the company named Talecris. Talecris engages in buying blood plasma from plasma donors, then producing and selling products from that plasma.
Theoretically buying and selling companies is part of the free market, right? Wall Street financiers should be just as free as anybody else to buy any company they like, make corporate changes to refurbish the company, and then sell the company. It's just like when the car addict down the street continually buys and resells cars, but in the case of financiers buying and selling companies there are peoples lives at stake along with the products and services operated by those companies.
Cerberus Capital paid $82.5 million for Talecris and later sold the company for $1.8 billion. Quite a profit, eh? They must be real smart. Or extremely ruthless. According to the alternet article: "They did it by the most savage, heartless means possible: by paying peanuts to their impoverished human plasma donors, who increasingly come from Mexican border towns to blood-pumping stations set up on the American side, jacking up the price of plasma by restricting supply , and then selling the refined products to the most desperately ill, patients suffering from hemophilia, severe burns, multiple sclerosis, and autoimmune deficiencies."
Cerberus Capital has a long and shady record. For example they bought Chrysler and GMAC, drove both companies into the ground, arranged for tens of billions in government bailout funds, bleah. The corporate management is a who's who of "free market" leaning Republican insiders such as former Treasury Secretary John Snow and former Vice President Dan Quayle.
Sometimes I think the "free market" people simply want less government regulation so they can have more freedom to screw everybody. That's what has happened in this case.
it might be the fumes you’re inhaling while pumping gas that make you angry. Amal Kinawy of Cairo University found that rats exposed to gasoline fumes were more aggressive than those breathing clean air and more likely to show signs of anxiety. What’s more, their brains experienced changes in neurotransmitters in the hypothalamus, hippocampus and cerebellum. Although Kinaway limited her research to rats, she says the findings could apply to humans and be a factor in road rage.
The word 'Sustainable' most often is used to refer to resource utilization such as sustainable farming practices that preserve soil health. However the word itself refers to patterns which sustain life over the long term. Sustainable farming practices sustain an ecosystem over the long term, etc. But what about our day-to-day lives can also be made sustainable as well?
In my day job my coworkers and myself have recently undergone a period of extreme overwork. The product being developed has a huge feature list, there is a lot to accomplish in order to achieve the envisioned goals and there is very little time to reach the goal. This of course meant the team routinely worked overtime often 80 more hours a week.
This sort of scenario happens in businesses around the world all the time. The bosses of the world seem to have worked out ways to motivate employees to work long hours. What inspires me write at this moment is the unhealthy condition this creates in employees and the employers responsibility.
It's widely known that working long hours is unhealthy. A lot depends on the sort of work being performed, as long hours in front of a computer doesn't create the same bodily stress as long hours threshing grain in a field.
The Center for Disease Control publishes Work Schedules: Shift Work and Long Work Hours , an overview of studies regarding long work hours, working at night, and shift work. It refers to greater degree of accidents and other health issues.
The impact of overtime and long work hours on occupational injuries and illnesses: new evidence from the United StatesResults: After adjusting for those factors, working in jobs with overtime schedules was associated with a 61% higher injury hazard rate compared to jobs without overtime. Working at least 12 hours per day was associated with a 37% increased hazard rate and working at least 60 hours per week was associated with a 23% increased hazard rate. A strong dose-response effect was observed, with the injury rate (per 100 accumulated worker-years in a particular schedule) increasing in correspondence to the number of hours per day (or per week) in the workers' customary schedule.
This article in the International Game Developers Association website is especially appropriate: Why Crunch Mode Doesn't Work: 6 LessonsMore than a century of studies show that long-term useful worker output is maximized near a five-day, 40-hour workweek. Productivity drops immediately upon starting overtime and continues to drop until, at approximately eight 60-hour weeks, the total work done is the same as what would have been done in eight 40-hour weeks. In the short term, working over 21 hours continuously is equivalent to being legally drunk. Longer periods of continuous work drastically reduce cognitive function and increase the chance of catastrophic error. In both the short- and long-term, reducing sleep hours as little as one hour nightly can result in a severe decrease in cognitive ability, sometimes without workers perceiving the decrease.
In the game industry the bosses routinely force employees into crunch mode working the employees for long long long hours. But this article shows decades of research into the productivity available from a workforce based on the hours of work per week. Rested healthy employees are able to do more and able to perform more reliably than ones who are worn out and punchy from working long hours. Duh..
Working Long Hours: a Review of the EvidenceThe review of the research literature shows that long hours working, especially when coupled with sleep disruption, causes deterioration of task performance, because it has detrimental effects on such things as rates of error, pace of work and social behaviour....The review of the research literature shows clear grounds for concern about the adverse effect of long hours working and (the frequency of) health and safety incidents. However, most of this research focuses upon specific occupations (eg long distance lorry drivers, the medical professions), which precludes more general conclusions being drawn. ...The review of the research literature shows that there is little robust statistical evidence on the effects of long hours working on employee motivation, absence and turnover. However, self-reporting and organisational case studies suggest that long working hours has a negative effect on motivation, absence and turnover....
Why do employers regularly ask for long work hours? Great question. Perhaps they're all skinflinting scrooges who don't care about the negative effects on their employees. Who knows? Clearly this is a pattern which has existed for centuries if not more.
In the modern societies like the U.S.A. there are laws about work hours. These regulations vary from country to country but obviously there are ways the bosses have of getting around the laws.
One way is that in my profession nobody works on an hourly basis but instead on a salaried basis. Such workers are not subject to hour limits on their work time and can be subject to extra work.
Employers are in a position of leverage over their employees. Obviously the employer is in the position of providing money, and the money is what provides food and shelter. You can easily analyze this with the hierarchy of needs, with the first rung of the hierarchy being food and shelter. Basic survival of the employee, then, is dependent on receiving money from the employer. Hence this puts the employer in the position of providing the employees survival. THAT is a crucial role to play and even subtle threats on that flow of money can appear to the employee to be a threat to survival.
Can an employee effectively choose to keep their work life in healthy balance? This seems like a difficult thing to accomplish. For example some fields of work routinely have long shifts such as in medicine or fire fighters. If every employer in your chosen field of work insists on unhealthy work hours, what can you do?
What is the ideal arrangement of working, workers, employment, employers, and sustainable survival? I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.
Todays news has an article Another reason to get rid of the belly fat: Dementia which discusses recent research showing a connection between 'belly fat' and dementia. The article says the researchers don't understand the mechanism, but they've demonstrated there is a connection.
People with apple-shaped bodies are at greater risk of having too much visceral fat surrounding internal organs deep in the abdominal cavity....Researchers don't yet understand why visceral fat is particularly dangerous, but the fat is metabolically active and doctors think it may release toxins associated with atherosclerosis or plaque build-up in the brain that is apparent in people with Alzheimer's disease...
Recently my Chiropractor suggested I try a multi-level marketed food made from Chocolate that is supposed to have great health benefits. I barely remember having read a couple articles the last couple years talking about newfound benefits of chocolate. It's surprising to hear of chocolate to be healthy, right? Well.. read on..
One key mentioned in the literature for this product is the difference between Cacao and normal Chocolate. Chocolate is produced from a fruit known as Cacao, with Chocolate being highly refined and usually with lots of added sugar and milk. Supposedly using a different process results in a food that's more closely related to pure Cacao and preserves a lot of health benefits. It's important to note this is not an endorsement of normal chocolate bars like Hershey's, because those food products are have lots of highly refined sugar, milk additives, fat content and more.
A critical look at the effects of cocoa on human health is a careful look at the studies written by a nutritionist. ...Given the fact that chocolate is an extremely energy dense food, responsible health-care professionals should be cautious about making such recommendations, try to maintain their objectivity and not give into their confirmation bias; regardless of how much they may ‘adore' chocolate...Although it is clear that consumption of dark chocolate may not raise serum cholesterol levels, raise blood pressure or induce LDL oxidation, whether or not it can favorably affect these biomarkers of cardiovascular disease remains to be seen. The studies that have revealed improvements in these markers have used significantly greater doses of dark chocolate than have those with disappointing outcomes. This would mean that theoretically, to obtain any significant cardioprotective effects from flavonoid-rich dark chocolate, you would need to be consuming at least 100 grams daily, which would result in an additional 530 Calories per day....Consequently, trying to consume large doses of dark chocolate in order to protect ones self against these diseases may be essentially cutting off one's nose to spite one's face, so to speak.... Hmmm... It's not clear whether he's talking about highly processed modern food science Chocolate, or whether he's talking about more natural unprocessed Cacao.
Dark Chocolate Has Health Benefits Not Seen in Other Varieties is an article on webmd.com discussing studies of 'Dark Chocolate' and health benefits. Dark chocolate has higher levels of Cacao content. Even so they too say ...But that's no license to go on a chocolate binge. Eating more dark chocolate can help lower blood pressure -- if you've reached a certain age and have mild high blood pressure, say the researchers. But you have to balance the extra calories by eating less of other things....
It requires a bit of hunting to find a Cacao product, versus a normal Chocolate product. One source is the multi-level-marketed product my Chiropractor recommended, but I generally dislike that kind of product. I always think if it's such a great product then why aren't they selling it in normal stores?
Navitas Naturals offers a range of products based on pure Cacao. Benefits: Antioxidant flavonols, Scavenges free radicals, Boosts pleasure neurotransmitters, Vegan, Kosher, Raw, Organic. Macronutrients: Good Source of Fiber, Protein. Micronutrients: Magnesium, Sulfur, Calcium, Iron, Vitamin C. One of their products is 'Raw Cacao Nibs' which are very compatible with being mixed in coffee beans and ground into coffee.
The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom is a collection of passages from Henri Nouwen's journals, written during a period when his self-esteem evaporated, his energy to work disappeared, and God seemed entirely unreal. This is not a book to be read straight through: each short chapter takes time to digest, because, like the following passage, each of Nouwen's thoughts has the raw complexity of real honesty.
This book is a series of touching essays. Touching not in being a tear jerker, but in how deeply they reach into truth. The books title, A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom, is very right on with the subject of the essays. For example, Open yourself to the First Love discusses the divine love. The 'first love' is that which God is waiting to give you. In general the book points the reader in the direction of the transformative power of the divine.
...One average idea that’s been put into action is more valuable than a dozen brilliant ideas that you’re saving for “some other day” or the “right opportunity”.
...Use action to cure fear - Have you ever noticed that the most difficult part of public speaking is waiting for your turn to speak?
...Start your creative engine mechanically - One of the biggest misconceptions about creative work is that it can only be done when inspiration strikes.
...These distractions will cost you serious time if you don’t bypass them and get down to business immediately.
...Once people see you’re serious about getting things done they’ll want to join in. The people at the top don’t have anyone telling them what to do.
...In the latest study, scientists at the Moores Cancer Centre at the University of California, San Diego, estimate that 250,000 cases of colorectal cancer and 350,000 cases of breast cancer could be prevented worldwide by increasing the intake of vitamin D3.
...The study combined data from surveys of blood levels of vitamin D during winter from 15 countries, along with satellite measurements of sunshine and cloud cover.
...Dr Cedric Garland, the cancer prevention specialist who led the study, said: "This could be best achieved with a combination of diet, supplements and short intervals - ten or 15 minutes a day - in the sun."
14 Foods that Lower Cholesterol is an interesting overview of controlling cholesterol with diet. The typical way to treat high cholesterol is with drugs, right? But what if you could just change your diet a little? The suggestions aren't just to eat less fatty foods, but there have been a range of studies showing foods which act positively to decrease cholesterol levels.
Reviewing the list of recommendations I see some which have their own unwanted effects. For example Whole grains and oats, which is a great idea because high fiber foods help clean the colon (probably reducing colon cancer) and according to the above blog posting, they act to decrease artery wall thickness. However if you have a gluten intolerance or celiac condition, whole grains and oats are a bad idea as they contain gluten and will trigger the gluten allergy.
Are you open to receiving more in your life? Supposedly the Universe around us is abundant, all we need do is open ourselves to receive from that abundance. The key is being open. Open to receiving.
