Red and Green
06/06/2018 10:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
izmeinaIt's nearly 3 months now since Petunia died. It seems more like 3 years.
I knew I had lost my partner in crime. No one to share cuttings and seeds with anymore. No one to gossip with and bitch about the miserable nut job that is Vernon Dursley.
I expected to miss her greatly and to feel sad and miserable more often than not but what I never expected was to lose the old serpent brain. Lately it's all grey fog and mist where the glowing green cells used to be. Izzie has become so easily distracted and it is so hard to concentrate on anything lately. So the secret weapon for fighting Dementors - stuff like the online course "Introduction to Mathematical Thinking" - these sorts of things no longer seem to work
Been resorting to reading books on brain training and hypnosis in a desperate attempt to divert the Dementors and restore a smile on the serpent dial as I had noticed that nearly any profound change came about after being in a trance state. Being on a train or sitting by the beach listening to the waves are especially magical ways for getting into such magical states
I did come across some interesting insights in all this recent reading.
A woman called Janni Goss gave a lecture recently about the incredible power of laughter to increase not just the quality of life but the quantity too. A real proper belly laugh is excellent exercise, gets the lungs full of oxygen and produces a great fix of happy hormones.
Borrowed her book from the library where the talk was held and came across a very interesting concept
She talks of being in the state of hypervigilance where one feels constantly under threat and on edge, irritable, unable to relax etc etc and this is just your mind and body in constant stress mode
After a year of being in that state back in 2001 both before and after reading the Potter books, I call it Constant Vigilance
She refers to it as Red Brain - as in the danger sign beeping constantly
Then she compares that to the relaxed, calm and comfortable state where you can think clearly, things are effortless and life is wonderful. "An exhilarating sense of infinite opportunity"
I call it the Green Lights and the Germans call it "Die Grune Welle" - the wonderful run of luck you have when all the traffic lights turn green for you and when parking places just magically appear when you need them etc etc
So it is no surprise that she calls this the Green Brain and devotes a great deal of time to explaining how to enable such states.
I have seen other comparisons between these two states before knowing these very useful new names for them
The most perfect example illustrating the true nature of the vast difference between them is from Anthony De Mello
Imagine all of you are hypnotized to believe there is a tiger in this room.
In your fear you will try to escape it, to fight it,
to protect yourselves from it, to placate it.
But once the spell is broken there is nothing to be done.
And you are all radically changed:
So understanding breaks the spell,
the broken spell brings change,
change leads to inaction,
inaction is power:
You can do anything on earth,
for it is no longer you who do it.
I had been there and done that and the difference between the states of frantic fear and awakened joy are amazing. But the paper tiger returned with a vengeance and this time I cannot seem to shake it off.
It is possible for lightening to strike twice in the same place. After all, if you have done something before, it should be much easier to do it a second time
But for now I find myself still stuck in the Arena trying to find the chink in the armor with the link to the real world outside where there are no tigers and no more need for constant vigilance
Now and then there is a tantalizing glimpse but never quite sufficient to cross over from here to there.
I knew I had lost my partner in crime. No one to share cuttings and seeds with anymore. No one to gossip with and bitch about the miserable nut job that is Vernon Dursley.
I expected to miss her greatly and to feel sad and miserable more often than not but what I never expected was to lose the old serpent brain. Lately it's all grey fog and mist where the glowing green cells used to be. Izzie has become so easily distracted and it is so hard to concentrate on anything lately. So the secret weapon for fighting Dementors - stuff like the online course "Introduction to Mathematical Thinking" - these sorts of things no longer seem to work
Been resorting to reading books on brain training and hypnosis in a desperate attempt to divert the Dementors and restore a smile on the serpent dial as I had noticed that nearly any profound change came about after being in a trance state. Being on a train or sitting by the beach listening to the waves are especially magical ways for getting into such magical states
I did come across some interesting insights in all this recent reading.
A woman called Janni Goss gave a lecture recently about the incredible power of laughter to increase not just the quality of life but the quantity too. A real proper belly laugh is excellent exercise, gets the lungs full of oxygen and produces a great fix of happy hormones.
Borrowed her book from the library where the talk was held and came across a very interesting concept
She talks of being in the state of hypervigilance where one feels constantly under threat and on edge, irritable, unable to relax etc etc and this is just your mind and body in constant stress mode
After a year of being in that state back in 2001 both before and after reading the Potter books, I call it Constant Vigilance
She refers to it as Red Brain - as in the danger sign beeping constantly
Then she compares that to the relaxed, calm and comfortable state where you can think clearly, things are effortless and life is wonderful. "An exhilarating sense of infinite opportunity"
I call it the Green Lights and the Germans call it "Die Grune Welle" - the wonderful run of luck you have when all the traffic lights turn green for you and when parking places just magically appear when you need them etc etc
So it is no surprise that she calls this the Green Brain and devotes a great deal of time to explaining how to enable such states.
I have seen other comparisons between these two states before knowing these very useful new names for them
The most perfect example illustrating the true nature of the vast difference between them is from Anthony De Mello
Imagine all of you are hypnotized to believe there is a tiger in this room.
In your fear you will try to escape it, to fight it,
to protect yourselves from it, to placate it.
But once the spell is broken there is nothing to be done.
And you are all radically changed:
So understanding breaks the spell,
the broken spell brings change,
change leads to inaction,
inaction is power:
You can do anything on earth,
for it is no longer you who do it.
I had been there and done that and the difference between the states of frantic fear and awakened joy are amazing. But the paper tiger returned with a vengeance and this time I cannot seem to shake it off.
It is possible for lightening to strike twice in the same place. After all, if you have done something before, it should be much easier to do it a second time
But for now I find myself still stuck in the Arena trying to find the chink in the armor with the link to the real world outside where there are no tigers and no more need for constant vigilance
Now and then there is a tantalizing glimpse but never quite sufficient to cross over from here to there.
no subject
Date: 2018-06-07 12:04 pm (UTC)Let us know if the laughter therapy works for you... hope you'll find your Green Lights again!
*HUGS*
*slinks back to the basement, hitting my head against the rocks trying to strike a spark*
50 Shades of Grey
Date: 2018-06-07 03:26 pm (UTC)Give me Grey Brain any day to ghastly scratchy exhausting red
It reminds me of the psychiatrist Dorothy Rowe and one of her mindgames. She would ask a patient to imagine that they were on a sailing ship that was about to sink. There was a lifeboat that could take them to one of two islands. The first was full of hostile natives who would constantly seek opportunities to cause harm and the other island was inhabited by people who were neither hostile nor friendly but who would completely and totally ignore the new arrival in their midst
Surprisingly - or maybe not - given what we know of human nature, hardly anyone but the most autistic of introverts would choose the second island.
About the tigers to fight, it seems that many eastern martial arts, karate and archery included, devote much time on learning to be in the meditative green state - less joy and more equanimity I guess where there is just a sense of calm and no ego.
Yesss. I loved the idea and image of the red alert brain vs the green calm brain and the assorted details of the shit that prolonged and unresolved stress has on the body but most of the other stuff was very fluffy bunny and happy clappy
In fact there was so much vibe of this being one of those countless self published health and happiness self help books which it probably is. The layout, the font and everything had that vibe.
Amazing to see so many suckers forking over their $25. Instant gratification. Cheapskate Izzie believes in try before you buy and what I have seen having borrowed the book from the library - it was definitely overpriced. $5 would be more justified. No one was prepared to wait for the library copy. People just want everything yesterday these days. Even the oldies!
This serpent likes a bit of snark with her laughter. Stuff like satire, parodies and political cartoons.
But so many folks do overlook the powerful role that laughter, social connection and having fun can have on health and stress levels since they are too busy suffering at the gym, counting carbs and drinking skinny soy milk decaf lattes.
Here's to the Cat finding some bright shiny new spark plugs.
no subject
Date: 2018-06-09 12:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-06-10 01:30 pm (UTC)It's nearly 3 months now and I still cannot believe that I will not see her again. I cannot bear to watch Gardening Australia ever since because I always associate that program so much with her.
Funny. Only about a month ago when passing Bayswater station on the train, got to thinking about the old Nano north days when you were ML and wondering how you were getting on with your chooks and kids in Albany
I suppose you guessed why I vanished. On 4th April last year, Dead Journal put up their new terms of service. I had no intention of signing up to be Putin's bitch. That job is already taken. This mob had been acting in bad faith for so long that I had no intention of just clicking and selling my soul. So of course they made it almost impossible to even read any posts while logged in. They are all faded to grey with a giant T and C pop up in the middle which logs you out if you don't tick it
So of course there's no problem reading friends pages if you are not logged in but all the juicy stuff is not available.
I used to cross post from Dreamwidth to Livejournal and I think it also works in reverse but of course all that stopped working when I refused to sign the new T&C 'agreement'
It was that same day that Petunia first got admitted to hospital and was in and out like a yo yo over the last year with cancer. So she never got her wish of being the crazy old chook lady in the big house on the corner.
Instead it's miserable Grinch Vernon Dursley who survives and who is never happy unless there is a chainsaw in one hand and a bottle of Roundup in the other
Any time he visits the Lair he snarks about how dark it is saying that is all because there are TOO MANY TREES!
He's already nuked oodles of Petunia's frangipanis and is now eyeing up the mango tree on the east side of the house because it is 'blocking out the light'!!!!
He also insists on putting precious leaves in the general rubbish bin! Long ago given up explaining to him what a waste of good nutrients that is let alone how the mango tree could not possibly be depriving him of any more than 40 minutes of light in the morning because most of the light comes in through the north
I told him to bring me the peach tree that he wants gone 'because it is messing up my neat lawn' but insist that he needs to wait until it all the leaves have gone and it's dormant
But need I say more. What kind of brutish bore hates having fruit trees around the place?
This Trumpish git even puts bleach in the bird bath so that it looks clean and tidy!
Officially Petunia from cancer but I suspect the real cause was being nuked by years of living with a walking talking hissing steaming toxic pot of polonium tea.