Welcome

First, can I just say… I am so grateful my life! When I look back at my writings from 10 years ago, they are a far cry from the blissful gratitude I exude in my writings today.  I often wonder what has made the biggest difference in my life and while it’s hard to say, I believe the following – never giving up, learning to love & be loved, learning to trust in something bigger, and plain old practice, practice, practice all contribute significantly in creating a truly magical, inspired life.

Speaking of ‘Today’, I woke up realizing that in the last 24 hrs, I experienced nothing but one manifested dream after another. From being immersed in a training program for two amazing organizations making enormous differences for the world up in Boulder, CO, to being invited to perform some fire dancing at a venue in Denver, to then waking up this morning to a sweet, loving fiancé followed by engaging in a heart-opening, thought-provoking coaching session with a client… I had to take a few minutes to just stop, smile, and be grateful for a life that keeps evolving into more and more sweet, flowing goodness.

The next few minutes delivered a sudden surge of inspiration to write and to share with my readers what I shared with my client this morning.

This client was sharing with me how frustrated she was at herself for not being a ‘morning person’.  Specifically, she shared how she has been trying so hard to establish a routine that would have her waking up by a certain time every morning. We took a few minutes to explore various layers of her interpretation of her experience.

We explored and explored until this question came up,  “Have you ever visualized or imagined exactly what it would look, feel, and be like to wake up early and as joyfully as possible?”

Her answer was No.

In that moment, I remembered another conversation during a random meeting at an airport. A friendly, intelligent professor of Sociology began sharing with me how he has been struggling to gain weight for over 20 years. I asked him the simple question, “Have you ever imagined yourself being 20 lbs heavier? Have you ever seen yourself that way in your mind’s eye?”

His answer was No.

In both cases, it got me wondering, how many people are struggling to create something new in their lives and have never stopped to really imagine and feel what it would be like to experience this dream.

This past weekend I attended a training program for an amazing organization, Magis Group LLC, and in our training, they emphasized Simulation as one of several crucial skills to develop in many situations ranging from peak performance to conflict/event resolution.

How is simulation different from visualization? It’s actually very similar except in simulation, you aim to engage as many of your senses as you can (i.e., smell, touch, vision) to create a strong emotional connection to the experience.

One of the most compelling pieces presented by Magis Group to support the power of simulation was offered in data published by The Cleveland Clinic Foundation (Ranganathan, et al., 2004). In this study, scientists separated 30 young, healthy volunteers into experimental groups to test the effect of pure mental training on muscle strength. They had one group perform ‘non-physical’ mental contractions of the little finger abductor while another group performed physical training of maximal finger abductions. Compared to controls, they found that (after 12 weeks) while the physical training group demonstrated a 53% increase in the finger abductor strength, the non-physical mental training group demonstrated a 35%  increase in their finger muscle strength.

Let’s say that again. They found it is possible to increase muscle strength by 35% with mental training (e.g. simulation) alone.

The best examples of utilizing simulation for peak performance really come from the athletic world and sports psychology (Corbin, 1972; Feltz & Landers, 1983). Ask any professional or extreme sport athlete if they simulate, and I’d be surprised if any of them said no.

It all really makes sense. How can we really expect to accomplish anything with ease if we have yet to imagine it first?

Whether it’s our physical appearance, quitting smoking, getting a new job, a new yoga pose, a fulfilling romantic relationship, writing a book, generating financial abundance, or being cured of a dis-ease, is there any goal in your life that would not be served by some simulation?

Come to think of it, meeting my fiance quite literally happened 3 days after a coach had me simulate (in writing) exactly what I wanted and dreamed of in a loving, romantic relationship.

Now, I will be the first to admit I have no sound scientific data to support the implied hypothesis that my simulation resulted in the manifestation of a partner who was everything and beyond what I simulated…. but I also have no evidence to support the contrary. So my invitation to you is to let your imagination run wild and invite your biggest dreams to unfold in your life. You can literally lay down the neural pathways for whatever you want by simulating… and never giving up!

Namaste

Jinju

Corbin, C. B. (1972). Mental practice. In W. P. Morgan (Ed.), Ergogenic aids and muscular performance (pp. 93–118). New York: Academic Press. Corbin, C. B. (1972). Mental practice. In W. P. Morgan (Ed.), Ergogenic aids and muscular performance (pp. 93–118). New York: Academic Press.

Feltz, D. L., & Landers, D. M. (1983). The effects of mental practice on motor skill learning and performance: A meta-analysis. Journal of Sports Psychology, 5, 25–27.

Ranganathan, V.K., Siemionow, V., Liu J.Z., Sahgal, V and Yue, G.H. (2004). From mental power to muscle power – gaining strength by using the mind. Neuropsychologia 42: 944-956.

I had been waiting for this documentary to come out for months. When I saw the
trailer, I had the sense it was something we have all been yearning for. I get so tired of seeing all the same heart and soul dissolving flicks come out every year from Hollywood. I got so tired of it a few years ago, I took it upon myself to start a documentary film project that was about something different, that would bring pieces together from many different disciplines that would speak to what I believe is most needed in our world today – Love, Connection… doing less and being more… dissolving judgments and being curious about our differences and celebrating them! At times I have felt too naive and tender to live in this world, like maybe I’m the one who just doesn’t get it. When I was a teenager, it made me so sad & angry – I’ll never forget wanting to take my own life at the age of 16 – not because I felt sorry for myself, but because I saw so many souls dissolving around me, ticking through their days like machines, rarely taking a moment to smile or say hi to a stranger… So many people racing to get so much done… but why?

Asking the question Why was probably the most important question I ever asked and my sadness was my friend that kept me striving to make a difference.

22 Ways 2 Love You became a project and a tool to create a space for people to pause… to reflect on life… specifically on love, as this is truly the foundation of life.

This past weekend, I went with my fiance to see this documentary and it floored both of us! About a third of the way through the movie, with tears of celebration running down my cheeks, I couldn’t believe I was watching one my greatest dreams come true!!! To create a film that speaks to the most fundamental aspects of our humanity and sparks the kind of awareness that is needed to really create a global shift… so many have tried… but Tom Shadyac really pulls it off! And he’s actually the perfect person to bring something like this to the masses. I used to think it would be someone like Gandhi or the Dalai Lama… but no… we have to meet people where they are at before we can go anywhere different.

I applaud this man for the courage & determination it took to create something like this. I am deeply and forever grateful for this man and all the forces that were involved for making one of my biggest dreams come true. I also thank him for leaving us with the message about what’s right in the world. Life is so precious and beautiful… we are more miraculous than we could ever imagine!

Click the link below to see the Trailer!

I Am The Documentary

Namaste
Pearl

I was just doing some research for the 22 Ways 2 Love You film project and came across this inspiring article published last year in Science News. The Helen Fisher group is the only one I know of getting public attention for the brain imaging studies conducted on romantic love. What a great journey & great training ground to explore and essentially study Love on every level from my own personal experiences to my coaching clients’ experience to what people share on the street in random interviews, to what scientists have to share from their findings.

Enjoy! And stay tuned for more postings…

Source: Science News/ Home / News / December 6th, 2008; Vol.174 #12 / News item

Still crazy (in love) after all these years
A brain imaging study reveals that some people are as giddy as teenagers in love, even after two decades of marriage
By Laura Sanders

December 6th, 2008; Vol.174 #12 (p. 17)

WASHINGTON — New research on brain activity confirms that people can be madly in love with each other long after the honeymoon is over.

Researchers led by Bianca Acevedo at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York wanted to know if romantic love — or at least the brain activity it triggers — could last in a long-term relationship. To everyone’s relief, the answer is yes. The group presented its results November 16 at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience.

The new data suggest that people who have been madly in love for an average of 21 years maintain activation in a brain region associated with early-stage love. “We now have physiological evidence that romantic love can last,” says coauthor Helen Fisher, a biological anthropologist from Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J.

Most couples who have been together for many years experience a change from a frenetic, obsessive love to something more subdued and comfortable, says study coauthor Lucy Brown of Albert Einstein College of Medicine. But the researchers noticed a small group of outliers who had been with the same person many years and claimed to be as much in love as they were during the exciting early days of their relationship.

Since that earlier study in 2005 using functional MRI brain imaging, the researchers knew that a certain part of the brain called the ventral tegmental area was activated when people who had been in love for relatively short times — an average of seven months — saw pictures of their sweethearts. Perhaps not coincidentally, the ventral tegmental area is also activated by the rush of cocaine, and is the region that controls production of the natural stimulant dopamine. The researchers concluded that this area was associated with the intense, burning stages of early love. It was unclear whether this region would still be active after 20 years of being in a relationship.

Long-term lovers who had been married for an average of 21 years viewed a picture of their partner while the scientists monitored the subjects’ brain activity using fMRI. People who claimed to be madly in love for 20 years and people who had been in love only for months showed similar activation in the ventral tegmental area of the brain.

At the same time, key differences between the early- and late-stage lovers emerged that suggest potential benefits to staying together for 20 years. People in long-term relationships who were madly in love showed higher levels of activity in a part of the brain associated with calmness and pain suppression, whereas people in love for shorter periods of time had higher activity in a region of the brain associated with obsession and anxiety. “The difference is that in long term love, the obsession the mania, the anxiety has been replaced with calm,” Fisher said in a news conference.

“There is an evolutionary advantage to being paired,” says researcher J. Thomas Curtis, who studies pair-bonding in prairie voles, small animals that are well-known for forming life-long monogamous pairs. Much of the research on voles, including Curtis’ work at Oklahoma State University in Tulsa, Okla., supports these new findings on long-term pairing in humans, he says. In fact, when researchers get rid of the ventral tegmental area of a vole brain, the same region activated in human couples who are in love, the animal no longer forms pair bonds.

To understand the complicated subject of human love, the scientists plan to conduct more brain imaging studies. The next step will be to periodically monitor the brains of newlyweds as the couples slowly enter long-term relationships. The researchers hope to understand how brain activity may correlate with life events, like the birth of a child or relationship troubles, Acevedo says.

According to the results of several studies, remote prayer or mental intention certainly can and does have a physical effect on physiological systems.

One laboratory (Bengston and Krinsley, 2000) has published findings in the Journal of Scientific Exploration demonstrating the curing of cancer in mice by such methods. In a controlled experiment, these scientists employed a noncontact form of “laying on of hands” in an attempt to cure mice of transplanted mammary adenocarcinoma. There were three groups such that one had a group of healers place their hands just above the mice with healing intention and no contact. The other two groups were control groups (one in the same room and one in a separate room from the experimental group) that were treated exactly the same except they were not given mental intention with hands.  Following three replications, 87.9 percent (29 out of 33 mice) were cured of the cancer in the experimental group compared to 69.2 percent (18 out of 26 mice) being cured on site. None of the control mice off site were cured. Furthermore, when the scientists re-introduced tumor cells to the treated, cured mice, the cells were rejected, suggesting a long-term physiological effect.

Scientific reports of this type of mental phenomena date back to the 1960s. A study published in the Journal of Parapsychology shows these effects can occur from a distance on fungus cultures in a laboratory (Barry, 1968). In this study, ten subjects were told to use conscious intent to suppress the growth of fungus. Each subject concentrated on the cultures for fifteen minutes from a distance of approximately 1.5 yards. The cultures were then incubated for several more hours. An impressive 151 out of a total of 194 culture dishes demonstrated retarded growth.

More recently, remote prayer has been shown to have significant beneficial effect on hospital patients. Harris et al. (1999) published significant results in the Archives of Internal Medicine for a double-blind experiment involving 990 consecutive patients admitted to a coronary care unit (CCU). Patients were randomized to either receive or not receive remote, intercessory prayer. The team of outside intercessors prayed for patients in the prayer group daily for four weeks. Patients were made aware that they were being prayed for, and the intercessors never met the patients and were given only the patients’ first names. The medical course from hospital admission to discharge was summarized in a CCU course score derived from blinded, retrospective chart review. The results showed that the prayed-for group had about a 10 percent advantage compared to the usual-care group and this difference proved to be significant (P = .04).

What does all this mean? Perhaps it means nothing at all. Or maybe, it means we could benefit greatly from re-conceptualizing what is possible and practical in placing health and well-being into our own hands. If nothing else, let it be a reminder that there is still an enormous amount to learn about our minds and there is so much potential in the power of our thoughts. In line with these findings, the former editor of Nature, Sir John Maddox, stated, “The catalogue of our ignorance must…include the understanding of the human brain…. What consciousness consists of…is…a puzzle. Despite the marvelous success of neuroscience in the past century…, we seem as far away from understanding…as we were a century ago….The most important discoveries of the next 50 years are likely to be ones of which we cannot now even conceive” (Maddox, 1999).

Barry J. 1968. General and comparative study of the psychokinetic effect on a fungus culture. Journal of Parapsychology. 32: 237-43.

Bengston WF, Krinsley D. The effect of the “laying on of hands” on transplanted breast cancer in mice. Journal of Scientific Exploration. 2000;14(3):353-364.

Harris W, Gowda M, Kolb JW, Strychacz CP, Vacek JL, Jones PG, Forker A, O’Keefe JH, McCallister BD. 1999. A randomized, controlled trial of the effects of remote, intercessory prayer on outcomes in patients admitted to the coronary care unit. Archives of Internal Medicine. 159(19):2273-2278.

Maddox J. 1999. The unexpected science to come. Scientific American. 281(6):62-67.