Thursday, May 6, 2021

 Thursday, May 6, 2021           

            I learned something new today through an exercise Yvette had us do in yoga. Sitting in a chair, we pressed our backs into the back of the chair. After we finished, Scott said he finally learned how to do the exercise correctly. He thought you were supposed to hook the chair back under the scapula. No, you're supposed to dig the chair back into the scapula and create a stretch in the upper back alone. I commented about not being able to get the chair back under my scapula anyway. However, I realized later that thinking about it the way Scott described it changed how I did the exercise. As I straighten my back now, I think of creating that small backbend only in the upper part of my back. What a difference!

    You may not be aware of it, but in body mechanics circles, the question of foot position when walking is hotly debated. Should the feet be turned out or in parallel? Gokhale says turned out; Bowman says parallel. I haven't heard Aston on the topic. I see people with their feet turned out, walking on the insides of their feet; the knees bowed inward. That can't be good. I see similar problems when people walk with their feet in parallel. It strikes me there is no simple answer. I think we have to start rotating the leg out from the hip, putting our weight on the foot's outer edge, then rotating the forward leg to bring the behind leg forward for the next step. As we bring the second leg forward, the weight on the hindfoot shifts from the back edge to the first metatarsal. Completing the motion, we move forward by pushing off with our toes. The forward thrust will come from contact with the first metatarsal in a well-formed foot. In the case of my foot with my Morton's toe with a foreshortened first metatarsal, I have to make sure I push through to the tip of my first toe. I almost have to skip over having contact between the first metatarsal and the ground.  

            While meditating, I remembered the disappointment of a woman I barely knew. It hit me as hard as any disappointment I might have experienced. If anything, I'm better equipped to deal with my disappointments than someone else's. No, I do not consider this a sign of great virtue. That feeling I got reminded me of the bad feelings I frequently feel. I often get these reactions when watching movies. No, I do not consider this a positive characteristic. I can't see how my feeling pain helps the other person. If I did, I'd go for it.  

            Well, let me take that back- a little bit. Maybe I can say the pain informs me of the other person's disappointment. If it's just a short buzz, that's not bad. But when it overwhelms me and leaves me feeling bad for more than a day, that's not good. It does no one any good. The pain incapacitates me, leaving me unable to help the people I sympathize with.  

            I've added something new to my exercise regime- the 4-second workout. The way it's described, it is a series of 4-second high-intensity workouts amounting to one minute. That is 4 x 15= 60, with rest intervals of 45 seconds between each burst. Also, it's supposed to be done on a stationary bike, a Power Cycle. Well, that would be altogether too much for me. Taking Daniela's advice to heart, I modified this program to suit myself. Daniela said doing five seconds of something is better than doing nothing. So, I have incorporated thirty seconds of air-punching as I walk. I stop for a moment and act like a four-year-old throwing a temper tantrum to the count of thirty. Then I continue my walk for forty-five steps and throw another temper tantrum. Whatever else it does, it makes me feel better. To get the full effect, I have to stand still. My whole body moves because of my violent arm motions. Accompanying leg motions of similar intensity are out. My bad leg wouldn't tolerate that. Despite the limits of what I am doing, I feel the difference in my waist and mood. I think I am 'shaking' the bad spirits.   I should use my standing vibrating platform more. It would probably do something similar.

            I had an appointment with G. He will be leaving for the mainland for the summer. I saw him in person at his house on the lanai in the open air. I wanted a chance to observe him writing to learn how to advise him on improving his handwriting. He forms his letters inconsistently, shapes and sizes. When I first watched him, he used good body mechanics when writing. He didn't bend his wrist but moved his arm from his shoulder. He also initiated the letter strokes correctly. When forming print letters, children with handwriting problems will often start at the baseline and push the pencil up. (Most of the cursive letters do begin at the baseline.)  G showed neither problem.

            I did some work showing him how to write his name using proper sizing, differentiating the size of letters like a, c, and e from b, d, and f.  Then I asked him to just write the letters of the alphabet. He did okay until he hit the letter j. He wrote that backward. I could see that he was overly concerned that he would write something incorrectly. Well, that made it all much harder than it had to be.

            I could feel his shame. It would be nice to help him overcome his problem with letter flipping, but that problem should just be a nuisance, not a showstopper.   I gave him my lecture on the function of shame and had him use his homunculus to inform his unconscious mind that his life was not in danger if he miswrote some letters.   That release was done after I helped him establish that his conscious mind knew without a doubt that his life was not in danger. He felt the relaxation and commented, "That's genius." I hope he will use it to help him overcome his crippling self-recrimination.

            I had K at noon. Well, that wasn't a fun session. His brother was playing a video game in the other room. I had to yell over the noise, and K focused on me despite the racket. We were able to get the brother to lower the volume somewhat. I thought it was one brother. I tried to call him to ask him to turn down the volume. That brother didn't answer his phone. When I learned it was a different brother, I called the mom, who wasn't at home. She called the brother who was there, and that ended the noise. Ah! K says he is not seeing a difference in his attention. Who knows! He was able to do some work with me despite the racket we both had to deal with. I was also able to co-write a story with him. It was about when he got a fishhook caught in his hip. OW! It didn't take much to get the information out of him.

            I mentioned to the mom that he often speaks using poor grammar. It wasn't a grammar from the Hawaiian pigeon. It was some problem he had. His mom agreed with me there was a problem. As he told the story, I could hear one mistake he made that his mom might have been concerned about. He added -ed to words when it wasn't appropriate, like comed, writted, etc. I called mom immediately and told her that that pattern is entirely normal for his age group. It is called overregularization. Around second grade, children become aware of rules. When they know a rule, they apply it – if it's appropriate or not. I'm sure many of you must be familiar with this behavior. You have a second grader in your house telling you what the rules in your own home are; these are the rules you taught them. Beware what you tell them. It will come back and bite you.

            I had J at two-thirty. I don't do much these days. I feel I babysit, but not in a bad way. I'm there to back him up. I did have a role today. He needed help defining terms having to do with earthquakes. He did the work faster than I could on his math assignment.

            I.'s mother canceled for today. She had a get-together with the girls in her Hulu group. I am looking forward to doing more co-writing with her. This is an amazing process. It has always helped students become more articulate both in both oral and written verbal expression. I's big problem was that she felt she couldn't write. It should be an easy fix.

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Musings. 

            Some argue that shame is a by-product of a society gone wrong. I believe that any feelings we have serve a purpose. If one didn't serve a positive purpose, it would have been eliminated from the genetic makeup. I believe shame is genetically programmed. We can't eliminate shame any more than we can eliminate 'exercise,' known as movement. If either shame or movement is eliminated from our lives, we can't fully function. 

            I must say that there are people born without, or at least with a limited capacity for shame. There are also people born without or a limited capacity for pain. The latter people run the risk of premature death. Pain warns that the body is in danger; shame also warns us that we are in danger. At least, that is what it was designed to do.

            What kind of danger does shame warn us of? It warns us that we have violated someone's social sensibility. Why would shame be functional? Why not just ignore someone's disapproval? Well, let's consider when shame was useful for survival.

            When we lived in small hunter-gatherer groups, conformity was vital. The group lived on the edge of survival. Tolerance for diversity is a luxury of abundance. When survival becomes an issue, the weak or maladaptive, who present a burden to the group, must go. Sad but true. 

            Does shame serve a positive function in our contemporary lives? Yes. This feeling keeps us alert to the feelings of others. Let's call it empathy's early warning signal. The problem with shame, as with pain, is when it gets out of hand, particularly when it becomes chronic. Then it serves no positive purpose. 

            The goal is not to get rid of shame but to use it to serve us. Getting rid of it is not an option. Learning to use it in positive ways is. We need to teach ourselves and each other when and how to turn down the alarm so it doesn't dominate us.  

            As with all warning signals, our nervous system provides us with pain, shame, and fear. We have to learn to determine what this alarm signal is responding to and when that information is valuable versus irrelevant.   I equate it to my dog, Elsa, barking at every passing whatever. I assure her that the FedEx man is not a source of danger. 

            I've written about the benefit of Elsa's alarm system. The other day, a loud noise sounded like it came from the inside of the house. Elsa didn't bark. That left me reasonably sure that all was well. A container had been knocked to the ground. Earthquake? Rat? Just not a human out to steal or do me harm. Thank you, Elsa.  

            Likewise, I thank shame for being on the palate of my emotions. It lets me know that something may be amiss. The concern is not a physical danger as it was in the hunter-gatherer period. The concern need not be about possible rejection. The concern can be just information that something we did made another human being uncomfortable. How we respond will vary depending upon the circumstances. Will we feel we should adjust our behavior? Will we feel we should avoid circumstances where others are uncomfortable with us? Should we make an effort to determine if our perception was accurate and find a way to reconcile possible differences? The narrow path between our needs and those of others. In our day and age, at least for now, this is a moral question, not one of survival.