Pigeon Savant

I returned to Essential Health for another progress check! This is post the holiday and while I was away I couldn’t avoid meat, dairy and sugar. Okay, I could have avoided them, but it wouldn’t have been much fun if I had. I tried to keep the dairy out as much as possible, so no ice-creams etcetera for me.

So while I was away, I put on some weight. Some actual fat! Good fat, apparently, which is a general-all-over-covering rather than all-in-one-place fat. I have also lost muscle, probably because I haven’t been training much and most of the exercise I got while over there was walking/riding around, which is still exercise, but more toning than building muscle.

I seem to have gotten biologically older in the time away, which isn’t so great, diet and pollution perhaps? It was a long time between salads, although the food at “home” always had fresh from the garden vegetables. They were a life saver, literally it seems.

The overall results are good though, because while I was away my normal life was put on hold and it had an effect on my body. It wasn’t as bad as I was expecting and now that I am back home I will be able to resume the good diet and improve my exercise regime. All of which should have a positive effect on my weight, both fat and muscle.

So in four months I am expecting some of those numbers to have changed rather dramatically. By whole numbers, rather than the currently error prone fractions.

Back to Essential Health for another progress check! I decided to change the table a little to show the original and previous visit.

Essentially, I have started to trim down because I am getting used to the new diet and exercise. Now I have to start some serious beefing up. Good thing I’m off to Europe for a month in June, I should get plenty of protein and exercise while I’m over there.

We shall see.

After spending a reasonable amount of time trying to express how I feel about something I was unable to come up with The Right Sentence and while reading the response to the wrong sentence, it occurred to me that:

1. It is difficult to make an I statement about myself, but it is impossible to make one about someone else.
2. We are all at different levels of emotional development in a myriad of locations along the path of life.
3. Adult is the label used, initially by others, to abstract my individuality on to a generally accepted (but largely inspecific) template of where they would like me to be so that they can treat me as if I were.
4. Eventually I accept the label and pretend to be the template.
5. This is not right.

Of all of the challenges I face while continuing to remain alive – having to deal with other people is the hardest and most common point where I come unstuck. Why do you people do those things and what’s wrong with doing it my way?

I admit that it would be better if we all just got along, but who really gets to decide what’s best for all of us? And until they can explain themselves in perfect Ben-language, how do I know that they know what they are asking? If communication is a two way street then not being understood means that I can’t possibly understand.

Where do I go from there?

I want Dana to hug me more, so I needed to figure out a way to get her to do it. Without telling her what she was doing wrong, what needed to be changed or that I wanted to be hugged “right now!”.My solution? I will hug her more. I will hug her the way I want to be hugged. I will do it because I want to hug her, not because I want her to hug me. It suddenly made perfect sense. I can only change myself. Well, I can’t get people to change by forcing them, I can’t expect them to want to change because they want to change when I am forcing them to change because I want them to change. It’s not the same. So, if I want something to change, I need to change it.

So, I’m on the Hug Program.

It’s working great. I get more hugs and we are both happier already. It’s only been 2 days and the difference is great.

I went to a Naturopath today, in an effort to find out 1) if I really have a gluten allergy 2) what vitamins/minerals I might actually be deficient in and 3) what I can do to make my body healthier.

So, off I went to see Jeremy Hill at Essential Health.

Here are the results:

So I’m pretty skinny (low fat), kinda scrawny (low ATM), youngish and well watered. All in all, roughly where I thought I would be. Although having to put on ~4kg of fat was surprise.

I also have a heart beat, 54 bpm, and blood that is 97% oxygenated. Which is really good.

I guess I am not a Vampire after all :(

When are you happiest memories?

The majority of people would say, “When I was a kid!” or “Back in the Old Days, when things were good.” And what is the primary objective of childhood? Growth. What is the harbinger of the end of childhood? Adulthood.

• You’re old enough to know better.
• You’re not a kid any more.
• Congratulations! You graduated top of the class!

In other words, celebrate! The learning period is over! You no longer need to grow! Your knowledge of the world is enough that you will be able to live like the rest of us! Welcome to the ranks of Adulthood – Where you’ll be too busy worrying about dying to think about living.

The last time I remember being fantastically happy was when I was learning a language. It was amazing, nothing was too much trouble. I made changes to my work regime, I changed my spending habits so I could afford to go to class, I fantasised about travelling to the country in which the language was spoken. It was a blast. Until I started telling people about it.

• You’re doing what?
• Why would you want to do that?
• Isn’t it expensive?
• When would you ever need to use it?
• I could never find the time to do that!

You get the idea. I bet you could even add some to the list that you are thinking right now! If you’re an adult, chances are you have Adult Thinking Technology. It’s what you get when you are exposed to masses of adults who already have ATT. It’s the worrying. It’s the Competing with the Jones. It’s the continual focus on the financial difficulties of living as an adult. It’s believing that the world is actually like the TV news – that thieves and brigands are waiting just around the corner with a picture of you in their pocket and it’s only a matter of time before they find you.

It’s how we kill our children. Somewhere along the line something happens in all of us, something sinister. We start to force children to change into adults. Santa-Claus isn’t real. The Tooth Faerie is really your mother. Life is serious, stop fooling around and pay attention in school. You don’t want to be like uncle Jeff do you? And the clincher, – If I had the opportunities you have I could have done so much more with my life. (This last one is just so damn evil in so many ways it defies logic that a loving parent would even contemplate saying it at all) What is happening is that the adults need to convince the children that the growing period is coming to an end. That resistance is futile. That there is no better way.

The reason adults do it is because they themselves don’t want to know that they have given up. The idea that life plateaus in adulthood is comforting. It’s nice to know that you can take it easy. That your situation is not your fault. Those people who keep succeeding; they’re just trouble makers, they never grew up like we did, they are only able to do it because they had rich parents, went to the right schools or were just lucky in life. What a load of tripe! Life is hard because adults make it so. They create situations for themselves that very neatly fit into their perception of reality. More importantly they do it without realising it, without wanting to know they are doing it, and consequently they congregate. Little groups are formed, they grow and before you know it, you have an entire community ready and willing to accept and convert new arrivals. Can anyone say: Caste System, Socio-economic grouping,  Target Audience.

It works for the successful ones too. There are all kinds of ways to work within your own limits, just think of your best friend. But whatever you do, don’t think about yourself.

Those of us with ATT have just shut off.

It’s ok, they might join us later, then again… they might not.

The purpose of life is growth.

Without growth there is no life, there is only existence.

My true purpose in life is to continue to grow, to continue to improve, to realise that where I am now can easily be changed by accepting it, understanding it, learning from it and then moving past it – growing in another direction using the knowledge gained from this experience.

There must be evaluation, acceptance, understanding and learning for growth and happiness to exist.

Happiness is growth.

Growth is happiness.

I read an article about the physical effects of stress on the human body and it seems reasonably believable. I have long held the belief that my Asthma is largely in my head and when I forget to “have” Asthma it seems to go away. That is, until someone reminds me, be it a verbal or mental cue.

For instance, when I cross the threshold of my mother’s house I used to always get some kind of breathing problems. I used to think that it was because of the way she keeps house but on reflection there are times when I haven’t touched anything – not picked up a cat, not wiped my eyes after moving a chair, nothing – and still, like clockwork, my lungs fill with gunk and I need a little puff on the reliever.

The idea of my mind being tied to my brain being tied to my body is not a new one. I’m not sure how, exactly, they became separated but it seems to me that common sense rarely makes an appearance when groups don’t talk to each other. Perhaps it made early discoveries easier in the beginnings of understanding how we work, either way I had a topic to discuss.

So in the case of my Asthma there is some history that bears relevance:

• I have had Asthma since I was born
• As a child I remember having the occasional hospitalisation due to Asthma attacks, which became less frequent as I grew older
• I have preventative medicine which I take at such low doses the doctor who proscribed it was of two minds as to whether it was needed or not
• I carry the reliever in my car and have one in the bathroom

But when I think back on the times that I remember having difficulty breathing, they seem to coincide with the onset of anxiety. The above mentioned facts can also be explained through brain washing. Over time the continual repetition that, “I have Asthma” and am therefore restricted in my abilities becomes it’s own self-fulfilling prophesy.

I mean, I remember one time I was playing a game of basketball and the period when I usually required the Ventolin pump was rapidly approaching and I went to mum to get it (on the side lines) and she wouldn”t give it me (I later found out that a bunch of other mothers had coaxed her to not give it me). I remember the look I gave her and then gruginly continued to play the game. I swapped positions with a team mate to let him take the bounce at the start of the second half and he managed to push it my way. Well, I went after the ball with gusto and it just happened that the bounce was in the direction of the other team’s goal, so, without thinking of anything else, I chased the ball up.

I suddenly realised, with shock, that I was level with the backboard (it was the adult height, not the kids one) and my eyes were level with the ring. I was so high up that the ring was flat! I let go of the ball (I think it went in, actually) and prepared to land. When I looked up from the landing my whole team was gob-smacked, so was the other team and so was the crowd. I couldn’t believe it!

It was definitely a freak incident. Something that was a one off, but what if it wasn’t. What if I could do that all the time and that all I had to do was not believe the it’s okay to fail, so why don’t you mentality. This is the kind of thinking that is holding me back from doing what I want. Amazing!

So, if this holds true for jumping after balls, breathing with clear lungs and remembering appointments, then there is really nothing in the way of breathing clearly. There is no reason why I need to accept the way I am other than to validate the way that I have been previously which then just supports how I think I should act. The chicken or the egg problem.

I have evolved my own neurosis and manifested it into being because I don’t believe I can act any other way. That’s simply astounding.

It leads back to the idea that the brain is connected to the body and therefore both areas will and can affect each other. If I think I am sick in the right way I will become sick. Which has happened on more than one occasion. There have been times when I have work, work, worked up to a point where I could rest and I had a big rest and WHAM! I got sick. If I expected to forget details, those details would be forgotten. There isn’t a big enough requirement to remember them because it’s something I do.

I wonder what else I have in here (jumbles through his brain) that operates like that. HA! Touch typing. I am doing it now, but not so well. Earlier, when I was on a roll I wasn”t making anywhere near as many mistakes, but now it’s about every third word. Because I can’t touch type is a phrase that I have mentioned many times to myself and others, yet there are times when I can and only when I suddenly realise what I am doing do I start with the glances at the keys, the typing mistakes etc. [I'm doing it now!]