Silva Method and the Ultimate Mind

I am not a big fan of Lance Armstrong. I can tell that right now. There were always doubts and questions about his seven victories of the Tour de France, and that bothers me. Did he or didn’t he used drugs to boost his performance? Officials were never able to prove that he did.

Now, Armstrong wants to clear all doubts about him and his drug-free body, and he wants to race again in next year’s Tour de France. That is a very laudable act. No matter what we think of this athlete, Armstrong is a very special individual. As a racing fan myself, I followed the summer events with great enthusiasm even during the worst years of doping among the cyclists.

Lance Armstrong has developed his mind power to the extreme removing all limiting beliefs that assail him before and during his competitions. He has a clear mind, a desire to win deep within himself, a strong and immutable belief in himself, and he expects to win through repeated sessions of visualization.

Armstrong is trained by one of the best coaches around, Chris Carmichael of Carmichael Training Systems. A few years ago, Carmichael put on his website the training regimen of Lance Armstrong. As you can see below on this pyramid, the first and most important step in Lance’s training is his goal setting and visualization techniques. That is the base, the foundation that supports everything else for top performance.

I would not say that if Armstrong can do it, then anybody can, but in whatever we want to accomplish, the base is how we develop our mind because we truly are what we believe. It’s a proven fact. And whether you use the Silva Method or not, the principles are always the same: Desire, Belief, Expectancy. To those, we can also add Love and Faith.

Well, I wish that Lance succeeds and fulfills his desire to win this next Tour. Wouldn’t it be truly out of this world if he did? He’s got his age and his previous cancer to his downside. But he trains like the Six-Million Dollar Man. I’ll be watching you next summer, Lance, you can count on me.

Here’s an article from US News about Lance Armstrong for your thoughts: Lance Armstrong Is Back! How He Knew He Was Ready to Race Again

(Via US News.)

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In 1937 the great neuroscientist Sir Charles Scott Sherrington of the University of Oxford laid out what would become a classic description of the brain at work. He imagined points of light signaling the activity of nerve cells and their connections. During deep sleep, he proposed, only a few remote parts of the brain would twinkle, giving the organ the appearance of a starry night sky. But at awakening, “it is as if the Milky Way entered upon some cosmic dance,” Sherrington reflected. “Swiftly the head-mass becomes an enchanted loom where millions of flashing shuttles weave a dissolving pattern, always a meaningful pattern though never an abiding one; a shifting harmony of subpatterns.”

Although Sherrington probably did not realize it at the time, his poetic metaphor contained an important scientific idea: that of the brain revealing its inner workings optically. Understanding how neurons work together to generate thoughts and behavior remains one of the most difficult open problems in all of biology, largely because scientists generally cannot see whole neural circuits in action. The standard approach of probing one or two neurons with electrodes reveals only tiny fragments of a much bigger puzzle, with too many pieces missing to guess the full picture. But if one could watch neurons communicate, one might be able to deduce how brain circuits are laid out and how they function. This alluring notion has inspired neuroscientists to attempt to realize Sherrington’s vision.

Their efforts have given rise to a nascent field called optogenetics, which combines genetic engineering with optics to study specific cell types. Already investigators have succeeded in visualizing the functions of various groups of neurons. Furthermore, the approach has enabled them to actually control the neurons remotely—simply by toggling a light switch. These achievements raise the prospect that optogenetics might one day lay open the brain’s circuitry to neuroscientists and perhaps even help physicians to treat certain medical disorders.

Entire article here Neural Light Show: Scientist Use Genetics to Map and Control Brain Functions

(Via Scientific American.)

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It used to be dogma that the brain was shut away from the actions of the immune system, shielded from the outside forces of nature. But that’s not how it is at all. In fact, thanks to the scientific detective work of Kevin Tracey, MD, it turns out that the brain talks directly to the immune system, sending commands that control the body’s inflammatory response to infection and autoimmune diseases. Understanding the intimate relationship is leading to a novel way to treat diseases triggered by a dangerous inflammatory response.

Dr. Tracey, director and chief executive of The Feinstein Institute for Medical Research, gave the 2007 Stetten Lecture yesterday, Oct. 24, at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD. His talk — Physiology and Immunology of the Cholinergic Anti-inflammatory Pathway — highlighted the discoveries made in his laboratory and the clinical trials underway to test the theory that stimulation of the vagus nerve could block a rogue inflammatory response and treat a number of diseases, including life-threatening sepsis.

Entire article here Direct Route From Brain To Immune System Discovered By Scientists: “”

(Via Medical News Today.)

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ScienceDaily (Sep. 21, 2008) — More than 7,000 school pupils from across the United Kingdom will be taking part in the trial of a new positive thinking programme led by the University of Bath designed to prevent children developing problems with depression.

Around one in ten children have symptoms which place them at high risk of becoming seriously depressed. If left unmanaged, these symptoms could have a significant impact upon the child’s everyday life and increase the possibility of mental health problems in young adulthood.

The £1.25 million programme, funded by the NHS Health Technology Assessment Programme (HTA), will involve 13-16 year olds from schools in Bath, Bristol, Nottingham, Swindon and Wiltshire.

The programme uses a technique known as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) which has been shown to prevent young people from developing mental health problems by giving them skills which help promote positive thinking, coping and problem solving.

Read the entire artivle here Positive Thinking Trial In UK Aims To Prevent Childhood Depression

(Via ScienceDaily Headlines.)

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ScienceDaily (Sep. 15, 2008) — A mother’s stress may contribute to her young children being overweight in low income households with sufficient food, according to a new Iowa State University study that is published in the September issue of Pediatrics, the professional journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

The study analyzed data collected from 841 children in 425 households in the 1999-2002 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.

Iowa State faculty members Steve Garasky, a professor of human development and family studies; Brenda Lohman, an assistant professor of human development and family studies; and Susan Stewart, an associate professor of sociology, all collaborated on the study. Lead researcher Craig Gundersen, a member of the agricultural and consumer economics faculty at the University of Illinois; and Joey Eisenmann, a member of the kinesiology and pediatrics faculty at Michigan State University, were also previous ISU faculty members on the research team.

The researchers used mothers’ responses to interview questions to determine their mental, physical, financial and family structure levels of stress — producing a cumulative stress index. The child’s weight status was determined by their Body Mass Index (BMI), age and sex. Subjects were also broken into two age groups: three to 10 and 11 to 17 years of age. Household food insecurity status — whether or not there is enough food to sustain healthy, active lifestyles for all household members — was also measured from the mothers’ interview responses.

Read more about stress here Mother’s Stress Linked To Her Child Becoming Overweight

(Via ScienceDaily Headlines.)

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Albert Einstein once quipped, “Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.” The famous scientist might have added that the illusion of reality shifts over time. According to a new Brandeis University study in the September issue of Psychological Science, age influences how we perceive the future. When thinking about the future, some people seem pessimistic, while others’ optimism seems to border on fantasy. Whether a person is naturally a pessimist or an optimist, the study suggests there are other factors at work in determining the way people consider how satisfying their future lives may be.

Brandeis University psychologist Margie Lachman along with Christina Rocke, University of Zurich, Christopher Rosnick, Southern Illinois University, and Carol Ryff, University of Wisconsin, wanted to see if there were differences in actual and perceived ratings of how satisfied Americans were with their lives over a nine-year period. To test this idea, the researchers conducted two surveys, the first in 1995-1996, and the second nine years later, between 2004 and 2006.

In the first survey, participants (between the ages of 24-74) completed a telephone interview and questionnaire. They were asked to rate how currently satisfied they were with their lives, how satisfied they were with their lives 10 years earlier and how satisfied they expected to be 10 years later. In 2004, the participants were asked those same questions.

The experiment enabled the researchers to measure how closely the actual life satisfaction ratings matched the perceived ratings (those from the past or 10 years into the future). With both sets of questionnaires in hand, Lachman and her colleagues were able to compare how subjects felt during the second survey with how they had predicted they would feel at that time.

Read the entire article here Illusion Vs. Reality: Age-Related Differences In Expectations For Future Happiness

(Via Medical News Today.)

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UNITED KINGDOM (Medical News Today) - Arthritis sufferers can alleviate their pain by using mental imagery and hypnotherapy.

This is the finding of Bryan Bennett and colleagues from Bangor University who presented their findings on the11 September 2008, at The British Psychological Society’s Division of Health Psychology Annual Conference held at the University of Bath.

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic, progressive and disabling auto-immune disease affecting 0.8% of the UK adult population. It is an incredibly painful condition and can cause severe disability and ultimately affects a person’s ability to carry out everyday tasks. Even with current medical treatment many people still report high levels of pain. A rising number of chronic sufferers now turn to complementary and alternative medicines to lessen the main symptoms of pain and fatigue.

This study examined the effect of visualisation techniques and hypnotherapy to help reduce the pain and fatigue, which prevents many sufferers from living a full and active life.

Read the entire article here Psychological Therapies Ease Arthritis Pain.

(Via Medical News Today.)

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NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - The results of a new study support an interaction between severe life events, psychological distress, and breast cancer. The findings appear in the online BioMed Central journal BMC Cancer.

“Young women who are exposed to severe life events more than once should be considered as a risk group for breast cancer and treated accordingly,” first author Dr. Ronit Peled said in a telephone interview with Reuters Health.

Peled, from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, Israel, and colleagues studied 255 women younger than 45 years old who had been diagnosed with breast cancer, and compared them with 367 healthy women of a similar age.

The team evaluated interactions between breast cancer and severe life events — such as the loss of a parent, close relative or spouse, or the divorce of parents before age 20 — and mild to moderate life events — e.g., separation from a spouse, loss of a job, an economic crisis, or severe illness in a close relative.

Full article here Stress may increase the risk of breast cancer

(Via Reuters.)

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Brain scientist, Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, dubbed “the Singin’ Scientist”, was interviewed yesterday by Kevin Tibbles on NBC, about her best sellerbook, “My Stroke of Insight”. She suffered a stroke in 1996 and it took eight years for Jill to recover fully the use of the damaged brain.

Last February, Dr. Bolte Taylor was invited on TED to present her story and explain what happens when blood vessels break in the brain creating a stroke. In that video, she also talks about the differences between the right brain and the left brain and how their development or lack thereof affect each human being.

Here is the video from TED, and below it, the video from yesterday’s interview on NBC.

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When Charles Darwin introduced the theory of evolution through natural selection 143 years ago, the scientists of the day argued over it fiercely, but the massing evidence from paleontology, genetics, zoology, molecular biology and other fields gradually established evolution’s truth beyond reasonable doubt. Today that battle has been won everywhere–except in the public imagination.

Embarrassingly, in the 21st century, in the most scientifically advanced nation the world has ever known, creationists can still persuade politicians, judges and ordinary citizens that evolution is a flawed, poorly supported fantasy. They lobby for creationist ideas such as “intelligent design” to be taught as alternatives to evolution in science classrooms. As this article goes to press, the Ohio Board of Education is debating whether to mandate such a change. Some antievolutionists, such as Philip E. Johnson, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley and author of Darwin on Trial, admit that they intend for intelligent-design theory to serve as a “wedge” for reopening science classrooms to discussions of God.

Besieged teachers and others may increasingly find themselves on the spot to defend evolution and refute creationism. The arguments that creationists use are typically specious and based on misunderstandings of (or outright lies about) evolution, but the number and diversity of the objections can put even well-informed people at a disadvantage.

Read more here 15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense

(Via Scientific American.)

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