Sunday, September 19, 2010
Enshrined
Like most of us who live in Chicago’s real architectural gift to the world—the three flat apartment, I have the requisite wooden back porch.
These extensions of our four-walled world serve various purposes—recycling bin, smokers club, storage closet, barbecue kitchen, and retreat center.
For me, a refugee from small town America who grew up with a real backyard that bordered the open land of farms, rivers and woods, my porch is, especially in summer, my corner of wilderness.
My wooden oasis is no more than 6 feet wide, maybe 13 feet long, and, being the top floor, 12 feet tall. Not much. And though I can hear Lake Michigan roaring in the winter between the digital bells of the doors closing from the Morse El Stop, it has a view of my neighbors (so close I can lean over and steal salmon from their grill) and of course the beauty of a Chicago alley.
When I first moved in a few years ago after traveling for 2 years, I had an idea I’d put some plants out there, but then they spent the better part of a year gutting the apartments all around me, condoizing and driving me literally out of my mind and apartment.
Last year, in a rage and in a spirit of rebellion, I found by the end of the summer I had covered nearly the entire floor save for a little square in the middle to sit and maybe spread out my yoga mat. I had pots, flower boxes found in the alley, milk cartons, bowls, and my special creation, Mexican glass candles emptied of wax, all filled with whatever I could drag back from Jewels or get from my parents yard.
This year, I decided to porchscape a bit. I added more flower boxes, covering the rails, added more pots, and in a another stroke of genius looked up and realized I had a whole space above my head which was empty. Determined to maintain the “organic” nature of my plot, I found wicker baskets of all sizes at the Good Will, filled them with plants, drilled hooks, and suddenly those wave petunias had some space to wave.
I found an ugly big candelabra from a thrift store. Collected beach stones from Lake Michigan. Put down cheap bamboo mats. Mounted my Mexican candles (some sprouting plants, some flickering with flames).
Something happened when I set the candelabra down among my plants and beach stones. It was dark. I’d spent all afternoon and evening out there, planting, hanging, arranging, painting, collecting odd things scattered around my apartment in a kind of playful frenzy. I lit a candle and stuck a stick of incense in a geranium pot.
I’d made a shrine, a little grotto out of a back porch.
We can make anything sacred. All we have to do is name it and use our imagination to see into its source.
Sitting out there surrounded by the green and color and flickering candlelit, it felt strangely as if what was before me was not something I’d created but something I had recovered, something that had always been there.
Yoga, Brain Plasticity and Creativity
By cultivating perception we are cultivating our creativity. Creativity comes from seeing or feeling or recognizing patterns—sometimes very simple patterns, sometimes very complex or abstract patterns—in both the world around us and in our selves. All life is composed of patterns, structures, or forms, as Plato and Greek philosophy understood over two thousand years ago. All the branches and practices of the many schools of yoga are disciplines that understand that the human brain needs to be observed and studied in order for it to be healthy and to work at it's most efficient level. Yoga never disconnected the brain from the rest of the body as Western thought did for so many centuries. Consequently Hatha yoga is a discipline that cultivates the health of the body precisely through both self-study and training of all aspects of human intelligence: physical/kinesthetic, emotional/energetic, mental and cognitive, intellectual/creative, and spiritual. All forms of intelligence work in harmony in the mature yogi. But the life long study or practice begins in the physical body and progresses from the outside in. Breath is a key component in this process of self-education and awareness as the breath helps us literally feel the presence of the quality of energy that comes with focused, concentrated awareness of our mind and our body working together. Our organs of perception are highly evolved parts of our physical body, affecting and regulating our survival in the world. Understanding how they work and using them efficiently and effectively is critical to our survival and our health.
Our creativity comes from our use of our body and understanding how our organs of perception work and feed us—stimulate and orient us. The clearer we see the world, the better we are able to live in harmony with it. Responding to life requires an attuned, sensitive and integrated mind and body. This is obvious but it takes work and discipline. This discipline can come in a variety of practices, skills, activities, and pleasures, as we all know. The key is deepening and exploring these skills over a long period of time.
Every act of perception is essentially an act of creativity as our body/mind records and interprets the patterns around and inside us. How we interpret these patterns—how clearly we see them outside of our prejudices, needs, and selfishness—is our creativity at work. Our lives are in themselves creative responses to the body and the world we live in.
If we study the history of art or literature, one can see that these traditions are rooted in the creative expression of people participating in sacred rituals and devotional acts of every culture in every corner of the earth. It seems that the most profound work of artists in the modern era, be they musicians, painters, dancers, or writers, are all works that not only reveal innovative ways to see or perceive the world, but also are in some way investigations into the very nature of how creativity works. Their art often can be seen as devotional altars to their exploration of how perception and creativity feed one another.
Neuroscience is discovering every day that the more conscious we are of how our body and mind function, the better equipped we are to find ways to maintain body and mind health. Oliver Sacks, a preeminent scientist and writer, describes the fascinating adaptive strategies of four people in his essay "The Mind's Eye." He speaks of "deep perception" or how blinded people use practical applications of their imagination to negotiate their everyday lives without the use of "normal" eyesight. In one case study in his essay, an engineer tells of how he felt completely confident on top of his house in the middle of the night patching his roof to the terror of his sighted neighbors. Scientists are discovering that damaged brains heal themselves in divergent ways, using what neuroscientist call brain plasticity or the brain's inherent ability to adapt and evolve. This ability to adapt and heal is our creativity at work. Brain plasticity, according to neuroscientists, occurs both at the unconscious and conscious levels. But it most certainly comes from our ability to apply our imaginations. Once our creativity begins to atrophy our brain, too, loses its natural ability to make new neurons and rewire itself. In other words, we can shape the way our brains are wired. Or, as so many philosophers have told us from the Chinese to the African to the European: We are what we think. Or let me add: we are what we feel and what we create.
Friday, September 3, 2010
Walking and the Brain
"Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. Every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it . . . if one keeps on walking, everything will be all right." Soren Kierkegaard
Despite the many anxieties and crises of our time, we are also living in era of revolutionary developments in the fields of science, particularly in the study of the human brain. Every month we are learning more about how the brain functions, and consequently, beliefs about learning, memory, the imagination, emotion, and a whole host of other brain functions now must be re-evaluated. We now know, for example, that the brain evolves and changes as we age, countering long held beliefs that past a certain age in childhood the largely remained unchanged. We do in fact lose brain cells or neurons as we age but the brain’s ability to make new pathways or synaptic connections between neurons is virtually limitless. No, you can teach an old dog new tricks. Environment, experience, exercise, attitude, social engagement, and intellectual challenges are profoundly important for the on-going development of the bran and it’s health.
Recently, several studies have caught my attention that relate to walking and spending time in nature. Last week, in fact, a major study done at the University of Illinois by Kramer and Moss who study the role of how exercise affects the brain, they found that regular walking (forty minutes 3 days a week) dramatically affected brain connectivity and thus enhancing cognition. This was true as well with older adults, a helpful sign for people suffering from memory loss, dementia and Alzheimer's. 
Another study at the University of Michigan looked at how where we walk affects brain function and concentration. In the study, one group of graduate students walked in urban an area—along busy commercial streets with traffic and little natural buffering, and another group walked along paths in more natural environments of parks with trees, grass, lakes, etc. Afterward the two groups were given basic cognitive tests, recalling lists, etc. And the difference in cognitive function was clear: those who walked in natural environments were much better in their scores. A similar study at Michigan also tested three groups for the role of nature on brain function. In this study, one group was wired as they watched a video screen of a natural environment, another group simply looked at a wall, and a third actually sat in the same natural area viewed on the screen of the first group. The result? The levels of brain activity i.e. the stimulation of various parts of the brain was most pronounced in the group sitting outside viewing the natural environment. But most interesting to me was that the levels of those looking at a wall and at the video image of nature was virtually the same.
Walking in nature seems so benign. But walking is actually much more of a complex physiological activity than we think; it involves multiple areas of the brain, which is why it is so beneficial. In nature, we must also negotiate pathways and environments that are unpredictable and highly stimulating. Motor function and perception are profoundly linked and being aware of this relationship enhances not only the pleasure but also the long-term health of our brain. Our brain is pattern maker and a pattern decoder. Every day we create new patterns by what we do, think, feel, and experience. And one pattern to weave into our lives is very simple: walking.