LIVING HERO

Everybody Wins Through Contact Volunteering

Our society suffers from an urgent need for greater empathy, for citizens with the emotional capacity to “feel with” others and sense what life is like for people in circumstances different from their own. Thought leaders, authors, and futurists Howard Gardner, Riane Eisler, Daniel Pink, and many others, have all placed empathy and ethics on their short lists of requisite qualities for a healthy future.

Personal contact with other human beings in need has proven to quickly and reliably foster such emotional brotherhood. Contact volunteering is a win-win-win proposition. It serves the needy, the volunteer, and the organizations that exist to provide care to the needy.

About half of adult Americans volunteer in some form, but only 8% regularly volunteer for personal contact with the needy. To derive the many benefits we describe below, volunteers must have this personal contact and must do so for four or more hours per month.

Benefits to Individual Health: Loneliness and isolation pose significant human health risks rivaling those of cigarette smoking, obesity, lack of exercise and high blood pressure. One-on-one human contact volunteers overcome these risk factors, and live longer and healthier lives. They enjoy greater self-worth, self-esteem, and pleasure. They suffer less stress, chronic pain, fatigue, drug and alcohol abuse, overeating, anxiety and depression.

Benefits to Societal Health: “Strangers” of different religions, races, ethnicities, educational and financial come in contact with each other on a regular basis, and bridge their differences, forming bonds of care, understanding, and trust. Volunteers bring increased job performance, social skills, and productivity back to their workplaces. When unemployed people volunteer, they suffer less depression and feelings of helplessness, and they find new jobs sooner.

How does volunteering work to bring these benefits? Human beings are biologically hardwired for caring, cooperation, and goodness. When people engage in helping behaviors, they experience well-being, the feeling that things are as they should be. Opening one’s heart and giving to others in need activates the helper’s brain to release pleasure-and-joy hormones: dopamine and endorphins, and these initiate a cascade of physical and emotional changes for the better.

How can we encourage more people to engage in contact volunteering? Leadership, leadership, leadership! Studies have proved that most people need to be asked repeatedly, and convinced by others, to volunteer. Business and governmental leaders can help in this enormously. Here’s how: • Reduce health insurance premiums for those who do contact volunteering • Allow employees to volunteer during work hours • Promote the benefits of contact volunteering through all media outlets • Model the excellent habit of volunteering and talk about it! Public figures, leaders, heros and “stars” step up and lead this win-win-win movement!

© 2009 Jari Chevalier

jari psychology, future, human potential, human development, feminine values, wisdom, mind-body, values, empathy, self-esteem, solidarity, health, reality, human nature, policy, volunteering, volunteering, civic engagement Comments (0) » | (0 ratings)  | Email it

                                    

Interview with Allan Luks

The healing power of doing good! The Living Hero program is honored to present an interview with author, lawyer, non-profit executive and altruistic leader, Allan Luks.

Allan’s steadfast commitment to improving the lives of disadvantaged youth in New York City, and his extraordinary contributions to the success of Big Brothers and Big Sisters of NYC, established the agency as one of the country’s most prominent mentoring organizations. Mr. Luks has received numerous awards, including Crain’s New York Business magazine’s “Public Service Leader of the Year,” and the national Lewis Hine award.

Allan Luks has developed programs to meet the special needs of NYC youth, including those affected by 9/11, teen mothers, youth with disabilities, and youth with siblings and/or parents in prison. He has successfully lobbied the New York State Legislature to pass “The Safe Mentoring Act.” Allan also created the BBBS Center for Training and Professional Development, in partnership with Fordham University’s Graduate School of Social Service, to bring the successful BBBS of NYC model to other city mentoring agencies.

Mr. Luks authored The Healing Power of Doing Good, which outlines the emotional health benefits derived by volunteers. He coined the term helper’s high,” used everywhere now in popular literature on volunteering. Allan continues to serve as a senior adviser to BBBS.

We talked about:

• alcohol and drug abuse and the necessary 12th step in AA • wherein lies Doing Good’s power to heal? • helping and its effects on stress • what is the underlying tension in the human, which needs relaxation? • the real challenge of society: the common good • finding the right kind of helping for you • the basic truth underlying our lives • the best ways to encourage helping • the creative process and getting your work done • the conception of Since I Became a Terrorist Target • what’s next?

Enjoy the show and please add your comments! These interviews are presented in audio format only–sorry no transcripts at this time! You may download the mp3 file, which will play in iTunes, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player and other media players or listen to it right here by double clicking on the purple media player below. (The program is 40 minutes)

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Instructions for Windows Right click on the link that says “Download this episode (right click and save)”. Click on “Save Target as”. The file will start downloading. A window will pop up and the name of the file will be filled in, as well as the file format. Just choose to save it to your desktop in the left bar.Then you will have an mp3 file sitting on your desktop. Right click on that and choose Open with: iTunes (or your chosen player). Or, alternatively, open iTunes and just drag the mp3 into iTunes.

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Interview with Dr. Lauri Grossman

Integrative medicine as a creative force! The Living Hero program is delighted to present an interview with holistic health advocate, homeopathic practitioner, and healer, Dr. Lauri Grossman. Originally trained as a chiropractor, Dr. Grossman is an expert in integrative health care, specializing in homeopathic medicine.

She is a graduate of Cornell University, the New England School of Homeopathy and the prestigious Hahnemann College of Homeopathy in Berkeley, California, and is well-known and respected as a practitioner and educator. She has taught at Sloan Kettering-Memorial Hospital, the Hospital for Special Surgery and Columbia Presbyterian Hospital and at New York Medical College.

Lauri Grossman developed the curriculum in homeopathy and has taught in the holistic departments of the graduate schools at New York University, the College of New Rochelle and the New York Chiropractic College.

She will serve as Chair of the Department of Medicine and Humanistic Studies at the American Medical College of Homeopathy, expected to open in Arizona in 2009.

Her film, Natures, produced with the assistance of the National Geographic Film Archives, highlights the philosophy of homeopathy and its connection with the order found in nature.

Visit her website at homeopathycafe.com for more information.

We talked about:

• Lauri’s life-defining emergency introduction to homeopathy • how homeopathy differs from other natural therapies • how a homeopath takes a case, makes a diagnosis and treats illness • how homeopathy heals • the scientific method and energy medicine • the politics and history of homeopathy in America • homeopathy on the rise • the disorders for which homeopathy is most effective • homeopathy, creativity and sensitivity

Enjoy the show and please add your comments! These interviews are presented in audio format only–sorry no transcripts at this time! You may download the mp3 file, which will play in iTunes, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player and other media players or listen to it right here by double clicking on the purple media player below. (The program is 54 minutes)

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Instructions for Windows Right click on the link that says “Download this episode (right click and save)”. Click on “Save Target as”. The file will start downloading. A window will pop up and the name of the file will be filled in, as well as the file format. Just choose to save it to your desktop in the left bar.Then you will have an mp3 file sitting on your desktop. Right click on that and choose Open with: iTunes (or your chosen player). Or, alternatively, open iTunes and just drag the mp3 into iTunes.

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Interview with Carolyn Raffensperger

The Living Hero Podcast proudly presents an interview with environmental lawyer and public health advocate, Carolyn Raffensperger. Carolyn is executive director of the Science and Environmental Health Network, where she has worked since 1994.

In 1982, Ms. Raffensperger left a career as an archaeologist in the desert Southwest to join the environmental movement. She first worked for the Sierra Club where she addressed an array of environmental issues, including forest management, river protection, pesticide pollutants, and the disposal of radioactive waste. As an environmental lawyer she specializes in the fundamental changes in law and policy necessary for the protection and restoration of public health and the environment.

We talked about:

• faulty assumptions underlying environmental decision making • the precautionary principle–what is it? • a new report on health, aging and the environment • reversing the burden of proof on the safety of industrial chemicals • corporate structure and your inalienable right to a clean and healthy environment • changing laws: rights of future generations and the commonwealth • reform: the biggest obstacles and the greatest opportunities • the essential nature of the arts and how they function in the process of change • genetically altered seeds, the sex of plants, and the farmer-scientist breeding project • “turning the Titanic,” ecological medicine and the economics of aging

Carolyn is co-editor of Precautionary Tools for Reshaping Environmental Policy published by M.I.T. Press (2006) and Protecting Public Health and the Environment: Implementing the Precautionary Principle, published by Island Press (1999). Together, these volumes provide the most comprehensive exploration to date of the history, theory, and implementation of the precautionary principle.

Carolyn Raffensperger is responsible for coining the term “ecological medicine” to encompass the broad notions that both health and healing are entwined with the natural world. She has served on editorial review boards for several environmental and sustainable agriculture journals, and on USEPA and National Research Council committees. Her bimonthly column for the Environmental Law Institute’s journal Environmental Forum appeared from 1999 until 2008.

Our guest has also been featured in Gourmet magazine, the Utne Reader, Yes! Magazine, the Sun, Whole Earth, and Scientific American. Along with leading workshops and lecturing frequently on the Precautionary Principle, Carolyn is at the forefront of developing new models of government, which will depend on precaution and ecological integrity, and guardianship for future generations.

For more information, visit the websites of The Science and Environmental Health Network and of Guardians of the Future .

Enjoy the show and please add your comments! These interviews are presented in audio format only–sorry no transcripts at this time! You may download the mp3 file, which will play in iTunes, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player and other media players or listen to it right here by double clicking on the purple media player below. (The program is 45 minutes)

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Instructions for Windows Right click on the link that says “Download this episode (right click and save)”. Click on “Save Target as”. The file will start downloading. A window will pop up and the name of the file will be filled in, as well as the file format. Just choose to save it to your desktop in the left bar.Then you will have an mp3 file sitting on your desktop. Right click on that and choose Open with: iTunes (or your chosen player). Or, alternatively, open iTunes and just drag the mp3 into iTunes.

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Interview with Riane Eisler

The Living Hero show is honored to present an interview with author, speaker and thought leader, Riane Eisler. She is recognized as one of the most original minds of our time, and has been included among the world’s 20 great thinkers and peacemakers. She is president of the Center for Partnership Studies and is best known for her international bestseller The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future. Riane holds degrees in sociology and law from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and has done pioneering and transformative work in the fields of human rights and relations, history, sociology, economics, psychology, and education. She is the author of over 200 essays and articles and five books.

We talked about:

• The redistribution and redefinition of power • What is the real wealth of nations? • Political ironies and transformation • Playing economics with a full deck • The psychological underpinnings of domination and control • Gender relations and notions of male and female power • Is human nature fundamentally flawed? • Riane’s own path of transformation • The neurochemistry of pain and pleasure • Creativity as a force for leadership and change

Visit Riane Eisler’s websites at www.rianeeisler.com and The Center for Partnership Studies (partnershipway.org)

Enjoy the show and please add your comments! These interviews are presented in audio format only–sorry no transcripts at this time! You may download the mp3 file, which will play in iTunes, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player and other media players or listen to it right here by double clicking on the purple media player below. (The interview is 50 minutes)

Listen at your convenience! Use this link for download, not the one below the player. Download this episode (right click and save)

Instructions for Windows Right click on the link that says “Download this episode (right click and save)”. Click on “Save Target as”. The file will start downloading. A window will pop up and the name of the file will be filled in, as well as the file format. Just choose to save it to your desktop in the left bar.Then you will have an mp3 file sitting on your desktop. Right click on that and choose Open with: iTunes (or your chosen player). Or, alternatively, open iTunes and just drag the mp3 into iTunes.

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Interview with Dr. Marcy Axness

The Living Hero show is very proud to present an interview with Marcy Axness, Ph.D.

Dr. Axness is an early development specialist who writes and speaks internationally on parenting, society, and the needs of children. She is an authority in such wide-ranging fields as neurobiology (brain development), prenatal and developmental psychology, attachment theory, and consciousness research. Marcy’s particular specialization is in very early development–beginning even before conception–and she is one of the world’s few experts in prenatal / neonatal issues in adoption. She is a professor at Santa Barbara Graduate Institute and has a private practice in Los Angeles, counseling parents and prospective parents.

We talked about:

Visit Marcy’s website at http://www.quantumparenting.com

Enjoy the show and please add your comments! These interviews are presented in audio format only–sorry no transcripts at this time!

You may download the mp3 file, which will play in iTunes, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player and other media players or listen to it right here by double clicking on the purple media player below. (The interview is about an hour.)

Listen at your convenience! Use this link for download, not the one below the player. Download this episode (right click and save)

Instructions for Windows Right click on the link that says “Download this episode (right click and save)”. Click on “Save Target as”. The file will start downloading. A window will pop up and the name of the file will be filled in, as well as the file format. Just choose to save it to your desktop in the left bar.Then you will have an mp3 file sitting on your desktop. Right click on that and choose Open with: iTunes (or your chosen player). Or, alternatively, open iTunes and just drag the mp3 into iTunes.

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Interview with Scott Parsons

At an old-fashioned soda-pop style lunch counter in Bowman, North Dakota, I met Scott Parsons. He was eating pie in black, white and pink spandex with a smattering of corporate logos across his chest. After he had learned that his friend’s daughter Mikyla had been diagnosed with Rett syndrome, Scott quit his job as Western VP of Sales with Georgia Pacific to ride his bicycle from San Francisco to Boston to help raise money to fund medical research for Rett Syndrome.

Our conversation covers:

• Scott’s motivations to ride • Information on Rett syndrome and the hope of a cure • Highlights of the great American landscape • Impressions of the American people • The goals for the ride and beyond

Learn more about Scott, his trip, and the cause for which he’s riding at Mikyla-Cure.org

Enjoy the show and please add your comments! These interviews are presented in audio format only–sorry no transcripts at this time! You may download the mp3 file, which will play in iTunes, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player and other media players or listen to it right here by double clicking on the purple media player below. (The interview is about 25 minutes.)

Listen at your convenience! Use this link for download, not the one below the player. Download this episode (right click and save)

Instructions for Windows Right click on the link that says “Download this episode (right click and save)”. Click on “Save Target as”. The file will start downloading. A window will pop up and the name of the file will be filled in, as well as the file format. Just choose to save it to your desktop in the left bar.Then you will have an mp3 file sitting on your desktop. Right click on that and choose Open with: iTunes (or your chosen player). Or, alternatively, open iTunes and just drag the mp3 into iTunes.

Instructions for Mac Control click or right click on the link that says “Download this episode (right click and save)”. Either “Open with iTunes” to listen now or “Download link file as” and save to your desktop. Open with iTunes later or just drag the file into iTunes and play it whenever you like.

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Interview with Morris Berman

With great pleasure the Living Hero program presents an interview with author and cultural historian, Morris Berman, Ph.D.

Our interview includes conversation about: ● What motivated Berman’s writing of the trilogy on human consciousness ● The mind-body split and the creative process ● The decline of America ● The dialectical principle in our lives ● A new monastic individual and the masses ● Progress, consciousness, and power ● What societies of hunter-gatherers and nomads had that we don’t have ● Berman’s sociological perspectives and suggestions ● Problems of “progress” and power ● American social conditions prompting Berman’s move to Mexico

Dr. Berman is the author of a trilogy on the evolution of human consciousness–The Reenchantment of the World (1981), Coming to Our Senses (1989), and Wandering God: A Study in Nomadic Spirituality (2000). In 2000, his Twilight of American Culture was named a “Notable Book” by the New York Times Book Review. During 2003-6 he was Visiting Professor in Sociology at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. and has held endowed chairs at several other American and Canadian universities. Dr. Berman relocated to Mexico in 2006, and in 2008 was appointed Visiting Professor at the Tecnologico de Monterrey, Mexico City. His most recent book is Dark Ages America: The Final Phase of Empire. He maintains an interesting blog with related resources at morrisberman.com where you will also find his complete bio.

Enjoy the show and please add your comments! You may download the mp3 file, which will play in iTunes, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player and other media players or listen to it right here by double clicking on the purple media player below. (The interview is about 57 minutes.)

Listen at your convenience! Use this link for download, not the one below the player. Download this episode (right click and save)

Instructions for Windows Right click on the link that says “Download this episode (right click and save)”. Click on “Save Target as”. The file will start downloading. A window will pop up and the name of the file will be filled in, as well as the file format. Just choose to save it to your desktop in the left bar.Then you will have an mp3 file sitting on your desktop. Right click on that and choose Open with: iTunes (or your chosen player). Or, alternatively, open iTunes and just drag the mp3 into iTunes.

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An Interview with John Green: Imagine Driving an Ecofueler

Living Hero is pleased to present an interview with entrepreneur and inventor, John Green, who is domestically manufacturing an alternative vehicle, The Ecofueler, which runs at high speeds and extremely low emissions on compressed natural gas.

The interview includes conversation about: The Ecofueler’s economic, design and safety features ● The business history of the Ecofueler ● The mind of a perennially successful and indefatigable entrepreneur ● How to make any business work ● The power of positive thinking in ventures ● John’s goals for the Ecofueler ● The Ecofueler’s progressive business model ● Politics of the gasoline economy ●

Enjoy the show and please add your comments! You may download the mp3 file, which will play in iTunes, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player and other media players or listen to it right here by double clicking on the purple media player below. (The interview is about 45 minutes.)

Listen at your convenience! Use this link for download, not the one below the player. Download this episode (right click and save)

Instructions for Windows Right click on the link that says “Download this episode (right click and save)”. Click on “Save Target as”. The file will start downloading. A window will pop up and the name of the file will be filled in, as well as the file format. Just choose to save it to your desktop in the left bar.Then you will have an mp3 file sitting on your desktop. Right click on that and choose Open with: iTunes (or your chosen player). Or, alternatively, open iTunes and just drag the mp3 into iTunes.

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Eco-fueler.net

Eco-fueler.com

Ecofueler.net

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Freedom or Power, What’s Your Will?

In our movement toward wholeness and maturity, perhaps the most fundamental challenge—and our goal—is the acceptance and embrace of our freedom. To live as sovereign individuals, so that our highest authority is our own sense of what is right, and knowing that we hold the wisdom to assess for ourselves the particulars of a situation, means that we fully trust ourselves and are willing to stand alone, if and when necessary.

Since creative people are so often ahead of their time, we must really know, as an experience deep in our bodies, that our assessments of relationships are right; and this deep, inner knowledge gives us the courage to be harbingers of what may one day also be discovered by the masses. Galileo knew he was right; Blake knew; Einstein knew; Walt Whitman . . . the great ones knew.

This type of innate knowledge comes through the experiences of intuition, inspiration, epiphany, and insight. These are spiritual experiences: understanding moves through you energetically, so that you see something and feel the rightness of it at the same time. This spirituality is fresh and personal; it exists apart from any particular theology or ideology.

Sadly, living without a personal spiritual connection to life and the freedom it supports is the grim lot of most people. Lives lacking a genuine, experiential spiritual foundation tend to oscillate between controlling others and being controlled. Without the spiritual ground of experience which is the very will of freedom, the prospect of freedom is just too much for people, and power is the woeful tether by which they aim to feel secure.

Erich Fromm’s Escape from Freedom explores the widespread aversion to freedom and persuades us that sadomasochistic tendencies underpin it. “It is always the inability to stand the aloneness of one’s individual self that leads to the drive to enter into a symbiotic relationship with someone else. It is evident from this why masochistic and sadistic trends are always blended with each other. Although on the surface they seem contradictions, they are essentially rooted in the same basic need. People are not sadistic or masochistic, but there is a constant oscillation between the active and the passive side of the symbiotic complex, so that it is often difficult to determine which side of it is operating at a given moment. In both cases individuality and freedom are lost.”

Later in his book, Fromm relates that these destructive tendencies to escape from freedom result from the thwarting of the individual’s sensuous, emotional, and intellectual expansiveness in childhood. These perversions are the torque our spirits take from the suppression of our exuberance, curiosity, and creative will in childhood and, which can continue all our lives. By continuing to suppress our natural tendencies to explore, move and stretch our bodies, imagine, try things out and invent, we perpetuate our pain and give rise to yet another generation of frustrated human beings stuck on a see-saw of power relations.

Here’s the remedy: reactivation of our creative and expressive pleasures goes straight to the root of perversions of spirit that we witness in our lives and our societies. Encouraging our children and each other to spend more time puttering and tinkering with things out of curiosity, creativity, and imaginative play, fostering our spiritual connection to life through observation, meditation, and the many means that help us to do this, and providing ourselves with the conditions for the experience of intuition, inspiration, epiphany and insight will all feed the hope of a new humanity that has the courage for real freedom.

jari psychology, insight, future, maturity, human potential, human development, culture, wisdom, philosophy, holistic, creativity, feeling, values, vision, freedom, power 5 Comments » | (1 ratings)  | Email it

                                    

Interview with Maria Nemeth: Seeing Life as a Hero’s Journey

It is my distinct pleasure and honor to present a conversation with author, coach, entrepreneur, speaker and process designer Maria Nemeth, Ph.D., MCC.

Maria is a heroic personality whose work actually centers around teaching and encouraging people to become heroes to themselves.

Our interview includes conversation about: ● The transcendent power of an open heart ● The story behind The Energy of Money ● Shifting your relationship with money ● Maria on Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett ● The distinction between physical and metaphysical reality ● The three most powerful words you can utter● Maria’s journey as a breast cancer survivor ●Taking your body to a couples counselor● The peduncle we’re in

Maria is a clinical psychologist with more than twenty-eight years’ experience, a former clinical professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California-Davis School of Medicine, and a former columnist for the Sacramento Business Journal.

She is the founder of the Academy for Coaching Excellence where she trains other coaches in her program Mastering Life’s Energies, a personal and professional development seminar that supports people in shifting their relationship with money from scarcity to abundance. Her widely acclaimed work has recently been brought to the attention of a broader audience through an appearance on the Oprah Show.

Enjoy the show! You may download the mp3 file, which will play in iTunes, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player and other media players or listen to it right here by double clicking on the purple media player below. (The interview is about 45 minutes.)

Listen at your convenience! Use this link for download, not the one below the player. Download this episode (right click and save)

Instructions for Windows Right click on the link that says “Download this episode (right click and save)”. Click on “Save Target as”. The file will start downloading. A window will pop up and the name of the file will be filled in, as well as the file format. Just choose to save it to your desktop in the left bar.Then you will have an mp3 file sitting on your desktop. Right click on that and choose Open with: iTunes (or your chosen player). Or, alternatively, open iTunes and just drag the mp3 into iTunes.

Instructions for Mac Control click or right click on the link that says “Download this episode (right click and save)”. Either “Open with iTunes” to listen now or “Download link file as” and save to your desktop. Open with iTunes later or just drag the file into iTunes and play it whenever you like.

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Chop Sui Generis

Our fingerprints and faces tell us we are each “sui generis,” (one-of-a-kind), although most of us were raised to conform to, and fit into, a social structure, rather than being encouraged to discover and display our distinctive gifts.

I often wonder about and imagine what a world of people brought up to shine as one-of-a-kind, creative expressions of humanity would be like. Each child would be approached with utter curiosity and a reverence for the unforeseen gifts they might bring to the family and society, their sui generis idiosyncracies nurtured by parents, teachers, leaders and the culture at large.

Would that sort of approach help to bring about whole and fulfilled people, people who felt unashamed, welcomed and appreciated as they truly are?

Most kids have jumping-for-joy natures, abounding life energies and strong emotions. Their unusual thoughts and insights, their self-love, love of pleasure, and love of life are considered, at best, adorable in the cute way, rather than the truly worthy-of-adoration way. They are asked, in so many ways, to conform to what’s expected of them, to apply themselves to finding their place (a.s.a.p.!) in the existing models, roles and structures.

How confusing to be asked to thwart one’s natural love of life to better plug into a system that is stressful, unhealthy and inhumane. Young people, whose heart-intelligence and innate compassion are still very much in tact, are one day treated to a movie about how sweet and wonderful penguins are and the next day informed of the destruction of the penguin habitat due to human profligacy.

When children object to such confusion, their sui generis assertion is often attacked or undermined. I recently witnessed a young boy of about seven with his mother in front of a fish counter at Whole Foods. I saw him looking up at her and overheard her say, dismissively, not willing to look back down to meet his eyes, “There are plenty of fish in the sea, Johnny; it’s perfectly fine for us to eat them.”

The point is not the fish here, the point is this boy’s heart and how his mother responded to his heart’s cry. And we wonder how the steep rise of childhood mental health disorders, and all the consequences associated with them, could be happening in such a wonderful place as the suburbs of the United States.

The erroneously attributed Chinese dish named Chop Suey is a bland, overcooked, and unpalatable dish of cheap and canned vegetables and water chestnuts held together with corn starch, invented in America and passed off as Chinese.

America turns its children into Chop Sui and the worry of America’s next generation is supposed to be that the Chinese will take it all away from us, this glorious way of life, this American Dream!

Yesterday, I watched the better part of a video conference dialogue between a large group of 9th graders at Arapahoe High School in Colorado and author Dan Pink (whom I interviewed on Feb 19th–see below). The kids had prepared questions and were given the chance to talk about the future with a bestselling author, speaking with them about the future from his home office, dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt. One of the students asked: what do you think it would take for school to be like this all the time?

In considering Dan Pink’s Six Senses from his book, A Whole New Mind: Design, Story, Symphony, Empathy, Play, and Meaning, I believe Empathy is the most important one to develop. The ability to feel what another is feeling, to meet other people where they live, so to speak–just imagine what a world this would be if empathy were an aptitude highly developed and prized in society at large!

Imagine how that value of tenderness and care would change the nature of the other senses and of the products and services that drive our economy. Just what are we putting ourselves in service to? What games are we playing? How are we making and interpreting meaning? How are we putting it all together? What’s the narrative about? What are we designing, and for what purposes? All our activity would be in service to a healthier way of life, in the presence of pervasive and abiding empathy. And, I would add, that true empathy is what makes it possible for the sui generis nature of each face, each individual living thing, to shine and be held dear.

Here’s the link to view that video conference, set up by educator Karl Fisch.

jari holistic health, consciousness, education, future, human potential, culture, a whole new mind, creativity, stress, parenting, conscience, feeling, mental health, values, empathy 3 Comments » | (3 ratings)  | Email it

                                    

Interview with Daniel Pink: A Whole New Mind at Work

Living Hero is pleased to present an interview with author and futurist Daniel Pink

• The increasing value of right brain skills and capacities • The global forces giving rise to A Whole New Mind • The one cognitive skill common among corporate star performers • Reckoning with unfulfillment • Dan’s own creative process and methods • The Adventures of Johnny Bunko

Enjoy the podcast! You may download the mp3 file, which will play in iTunes, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player and other media players or listen to it right here by double clicking on the purple media player below. (The interview is about 32 minutes.)

Listen at your convenience! Use this link for download, not the one below the player. Download this episode (right click and save)

Instructions for Windows Right click on the blue link that says “Download this episode (right click and save)”. Click on “Save Target as”. The file will start downloading. A window will pop up and the name of the file will be filled in, as well as the file format. Just choose to save it to your desktop in the left bar.Then you will have an mp3 file sitting on your desktop. Right click on that and choose Open with: iTunes (or your chosen player). Or, alternatively, open iTunes and just drag the mp3 into iTunes.

Instructions for Mac Control click or right click on the blue link that says “Download this episode (right click and save)”. Either “Open with iTunes” to listen now or “Download link file as” and save to your desktop. Open with iTunes later or just drag the file into iTunes and play it whenever you like.

Link to Dan Pink’s Feb 2005 Wired magazine article “Revenge of the Right Brain”

Click through to buy his books on Amazon right from this site in the sidebar to the left. Don’t miss them!

Listen Now:

 Standard Podcasts [31:48m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Embeddable Player

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The Challenge Is: Embracing Our Imaginations

“. . . the greatest economic competition in the world going forward is not going to be between countries and countries. And it’s not going to be between companies and companies. The greatest economic competition going forward is going to be between you and your own imagination. Your ability to act on your imagination is going to be so decisive in driving your future and the standard of living in your country. So the school, the state, the country that empowers, nurtures, enables imagination among its students and citizens, that’s who’s going to be the winner.” –Tom Friedman (The World is Flat) from an interview with Daniel Pink (A Whole New Mind)

We are a people longing to see beyond our current dilemmas and dangers to a future that is reasonable and sustainable. But we need more than reason to get to reasonable. We need imagination.

How can we become visionaries and nurture our visions in the reality of community? How can we recognize a vision worth pursuing when one comes along?

The world’s best and brightest leaders, philosophers, artists and inventors have always relied on imagination to envision a better future and to bring it to life through creative expression and invention.

Now it is time for all of us to actively put our imaginative powers to work, to open our minds and to face the imperative of envisioning a future that will truly work for the global community.

This means strengthening and nurturing a healthier balance of thought and feeling, which will bring more wisdom to bear as we imagine, work, create. Getting to this healthier balance in the midst of our high-pressured, busy days is a real challenge and we are all in this together.

Our next podcast (scheduled for late February) will feature futurist Daniel Pink talking with us about how he sees practices such as yoga, art and meditation contributing to the shift he describes in his latest book A Whole New Mind: Why Right Brainers will Rule the Future. He’ll explain how he came to use the creative genre of manga (Japanese for “comics”) for his upcoming business book The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You’ll Ever Need, due to be released on April 1st.

He’ll also speak about the early adopters and also any resistors of the whole new mind he describes and share what’s on the creative horizon for him after The Adventures of Johnny Bunko.

To make the most of the podcast, please enjoy A Whole New Mind prior to listening! Get it right here!

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Integrative HealthCare and Your Conscience

The detrimental effects of cell phone radiation on sleep were reported today in the British paper The Independent. Here’s the ARTICLE

The Integrative HealthCare Symposium took place this past week (1/17-1/19) in Manhattan, which I attended on Friday. Bernie Siegel, MD (Love, Medicine and Miracles) shared the stage with Julie Silver, MD (After Cancer Treatment: Heal Faster, Better, Stronger) to deliver a Keynote entitled Physical and Emotional Healing: How They Intersect in Cancer Recovery.

Dr. Silver, a breast cancer survivor herself, delivered a message of hope for healing through a holistic mind-body approach. She also cautioned us all to be aware that there is long list of herbal remedies and foods that can interfere with the intended dosages and actions of many prescription medications. Her page at Revolution Health

Then, the highly entertaining and humorous Dr. Siegel demonstrated his warm, humanistic and holistic approach to treatment while showing us slides of his patients’ drawings and discussing how the story of their illness was depicted there, often signaling the prognosis, as well.

My notes from Dr. Siegel’s talk: If a hillbilly woman divorces her husband, is he still her brother? We must re-parent each other. Parents, teachers, clergy and doctors are the biggest problems in the world! You don’t treat a diagnosis, you treat an experience. Heal your life and it effects your physiology. Find your rhythm and live it. Keep your minds open—consciousness is not local. The question he asks himself in a quandary: WWLD—What would Lassie do? Self-induced healing: a clear conscience. Parenting is the #1 problem everywhere. Patients do not need information; they need inspiration. We know the future. Find your way of making people happy; give a tissue, not a stethoscope. Life is a series of beginnings. Keep the child in your patients alive. You can’t be afraid when you’re laughing. Nourish yourself and your life. Ask: how may I help you? If you’re cared for by your family, you’ll do much better.

I invite your comments on what I’m about to say: I am so often dismayed and left wondering why we rely on celebrated experts and costly scientific studies to tell us things that we ought to be prepared to readily discern via our own conscience, moral compass and compassion. Where is the common sense of our hearts?

We can all be lay physicians, healing ourselves and others. But this calls for a shift in priorities and values towards lives of greater meaning and deeper caring. This can be our future. Coping effectively with our own fear, anxiety, and stress is the rational first step.

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Metaphors Are for Health

We have a biological and psychological need to sleep and dream; and in our dreams we synthesize life experience through symbolic, metaphorical and associative imagery. If denied this activity for even a few days, we become irritable, imbalanced and upset. Eventually, we will start hallucinating (dreaming while awake), dissociating from reality for awhile.

In our waking lives, as in our dream states, it is a support to our mental and physical well-being to process our experience metaphorically. In our society, however, the preoccupations of thought, the constant influx of music, TV and other media, the noise of our busy lives, prevents the active circuitry of the brain from receiving deeper, more subtle intimations of the self and engaging creatively with them.

Given the opportunity, these intimations and their imagery will surface and become active in the brain. Allowing for such opportunities, and actually encouraging, cultivating and nurturing them, brings joy, enthusiasm, understanding, and a sense of well-being, as well as bearing forth powerful new raw material for innovative, artistic and creative projects.

Lynn White, Jr., in her Frontiers of Knowledge in the Study of Man tells us “We are beginning to see that the distinctive thing about the human species is that we are a symbol-making animal, homo signifex, and that without this function we could never have become sapiens. We have not only the capacity to make symbols; we are under the necessity to create them in order to cope humanly with our experience.”

This post is my prelude to our upcoming Podcast featuring sleep and dream researcher Dr. Robert Stickgold, scheduled for this Wednesday, January 16th.

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Right Brain Capacity Development

As I’ve been reviewing the material for the first two Living Hero shows, I find a common thread that ought to be of interest to artists, scientists, educators, caregivers and business people alike: the capacity of our minds to recognize patterns and harness the advantage of having done so and, most importantly, how to develop this capacity.

Dr. Robert Stickgold, who studies the brain in relation to sleep, memory and dreaming, tells us that in sleep the brain processes the new information received during the day and indexes it in relation to that to which it has already has been exposed, adding to its “maps of probability” and better equipping it to recognize patterns of relationship in the future.

We are urged by Daniel Pink, author of A Whole New Mind: Why Right Brainers Will Rule the Future to develop our capacity to not only see the big picture, but also to perceive the many relationships that can make a whole coherent and satisfying, which he calls “Symphony.”

My interest is in HOW we develop these abilities. I think that one key answer lies in both physical activity and deep relaxation.

My work involves teaching people to use integrative movements, acupressure and self-massage, breathing and stress reduction techniques to foster an ideal state for creative work or performance of any kind. There’s a teacher named William Westney who uses movement in what he calls his “unmaster classes” with musicians. Actors, athletes, and body-oriented performers have always used physical warm-ups to reduce anxiety and do a better job.

I am suggesting that physical warm-ups boost performance for all kinds of work, and evidence of this has not shown up in practice enough in schools and in the workplace—yet!

Mindfulness and meditative practices also help develop your capacity for R-directed thinking and you can stay tuned here for more in-depth coverage and exploration of these subjects!

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CULTIVATE SYNTHESIS!

E.O. Wilson, one of our most brilliant living heroes, preciently wrote in his 1999 bestseller, Consilience, “Thanks to science and technology, access to factual knowledge of all kinds is rising exponentially while dropping in unit cost. It is destined to become global and democratic. Soon it will be available everywhere on television and computer screens. What then? The answer is clear: synthesis. We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely.”

Many other luminaries have echoed this call for synthesis. One of Howard Gardner’s Five Minds for the Future is “Synthesizing Mind,” and Daniel Pink devotes a chapter of his recently released A Whole New Mind to “Symphony,” the ability to draw together details from many different disciplines while holding in mind the big picture and what it takes to achieve harmony, balance, and beauty.

This whole-brain capacity has been the gifted and treasured realm of artists, writers, philosophers, and spiritual leaders all along, but these are realms of activity that our culture has not rewarded financially. Is this going to change now? How will we see this change?

This blog is devoted to providing a forum for the exploration and discussion of these and related topics. I invite your thoughts and wish to know specifically whom you would most like to hear from in an interview or panel discussion and what your most burning questions on these topics are.

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Five Minds for the Future

I have recently read Howard Gardner’s Five Minds for the Future. His role in this book, I think, is as a futurist, steering educators, administrators, parents–all of us–towards evaluating curricula in terms of the Five Minds, so as to meet the pressing global human challenges ahead successfully. Einstin’s adage: “Imagination is more important than knowledge” strikes me as being along the same lines. Similarly, it’s not what you say but how you say it, as in one’s tone of voice and the look on one’s face. Imagination, and the tone & feel & spirit of things are aspects of the right brain and are typically associated with “feminine values.” If you look closely at the Five Minds and what it would actually mean to develop and apply them universally, as paramount in education and society, you are looking at a profound shift in cultural and commercial values. Disciplined, Respectful, and Ethical minds are all more mature and spiritually engaged than what we find in the current competitive paradigm of big business and the “military-industrial complex.” Synthesizing and creative minds are more right brain in nature and are, therefore, considered “feminine” in their values. If you actually get to the heart of what he is saying and listen closely, you hear the voice of an enlightened thinker calling for wisdom. If you are also able to synthesize and extract the essence here, you meet him where he lives, in his deep commitment to human development and the hope of realizing greater human potential through education. I’ll leave you with a quotation from the book (sorry, no page number handy): “As far as I can see, short of peace pills or widespread extirpation of those brain nuclei or genes that support aggressive behaviors, the only possible avenue to progress lies in education, broadly conceived.”

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