If you’ve noticed that there haven’t been any posts to this blog lately, there are a few reasons for that. First, there were the holidays. Then I really didn’t feel inspired to say anything, and I’m averse to writing just to fill up space. Third, and the most significant factor, was that both my computers, the at home laptop and the travel netbook were infected by Trojans within a week of each other. I was leaving for a work trip the day after the laptop became infected, so I didn’t have time to get it fixed until a couple of days ago; and the netbook became infected with a different version of the same type of malware while I was away. This left me with two computers that I was reluctant to use for anything but the most basic functions and certainly nothing involving passwords.

So-called fake alert Trojans are rogue software that hijack your system. The malware involved in my case introduced itself as a security system and informed me, the user of the system, of all kinds of dangers and problems, promising to fix them (for a price). Warning after warning popped up and prevented me from accessing anything real or worthwhile on the computer.

Fortunately, I didn’t fall for the fake and the only thing it cost me was bringing the computers into a shop to have them professionally cleaned.

Naturally, given my nature and way of perceiving things, I found the whole situation a great metaphor for life and the challenges of having a body.  We have a built-in physical alert system (i.e. brain and nervous system) that is designed to warn us of any threats. But our system becomes compromised by “fake security alerts” that warn of us apparent dangers when there are none in reality. Myriad thoughts pop up – literally hijacking our minds and energy – repeatedly warning us that something bad might happen.

We are nagged by conscious thoughts that may start out with a question such as, “What if?” We project failure, ruin, disaster and calamity. We worry about our future, getting older, being sick; we worry about our children, our parents, our jobs, money, etc. And, it is not only the conscious thoughts that get us. Subconscious patterns of fear and dread lurk (like malicious software running in the background, beneath the visible programs), expressing themselves in dreams or disorders. Habitualized tensions tighten our bodies, rendering them inflexible and uncomfortable.

How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened.  ~Thomas Jefferson

We need to clean our systems of rogue programs—of physical/mental/emotional/spiritual viruses and malware—of Trojans that present themselves in the guise of some sort of protective gift, pretending to keep us from hurt, when in reality, there is no danger present and they are only keeping us from a thriving life. Sometimes we can root out the problems of anxiety, of unwarranted worries and concerns, ourselves, through retraining our thinking, through prayer, contemplation, meditation, or a physical exercise program, such as yoga or qigong. Sometimes we need outside help in the form of spiritual or psychological counselors, self-help books, support programs or teachers. Brain Gym or MNRI are great tools to get to the “rootkit” (the programs that run below the visible mental/emotional programs—those things that live deep in the background—in the cells and tissues. Whatever it takes, it is of the utmost importance to identify conscious, subconscious and unconscious (physiological reflexes and reactions) that inhibit our growth and development. Once identified, they need to be removed from the system and replaced with a security system that truly works, one that attends to real and present dangers or problems and effectively and efficiently handles them to keep our system running at its best.

 That the birds of worry and care fly over your head, this you cannot change, but that they build nests in your hair, this you can prevent.  ~Chinese Proverb

Just think of the things you could do with the time and energy currently consumed by chasing false messages. Imagine what your life could be if the fears and tensions, the patterns of inhibition, were released and you were free to experience life fully. Who would you be?!!

 There are more things, Lucilius, that frighten us than injure us, and we suffer more in imagination than in reality.  ~Seneca

 Fears are educated into us, and can, if we wish, be educated out. ~ Karl Augustus Menninger

Just one of the things that I love about the work I do, is that it re-educates the nervous system so that the “lies” (inaccuracies) of the body/mind are diminished or deleted entirely, and the great truths (original purpose of protective mechanisms) are retrieved and restored, to the extent possible, for any given body/mind system, freeing people to live fuller, more successful and happier lives.

Now for a little fun with phonics, as if there wasn’t already enough.

How do you spell fish?  > Answer: ghoti  (gh as in enough; o as in women; and ti as in nation).

Passing a bit of time early this Christmas morning, I was watching a squirrel in the backyard and felt inspired to poetry. Three words into the poem, my teaching experience jumped up and hijacked the poem [see poem below] because I had already encountered three spellings for the same phoneme. The poem gave way to intentionally finding the inconsistencies in English phonetics.

Because of the inconsistencies, and because, by many, phonics is considered meaningless, rote learning, there is often debate in teaching circles whether phonics should be taught at all; and, if so, why, when and how.

WHY > What is wrong with rote learning? Who hasn’t benefited from memorizing the times tables? And, despite the phonemic inconsistencies of the English language, there is a significant correlation between reading and phonemic awareness. Children who have targeted, clear instruction in phonic decoding are far more likely to read better than their untrained counterparts.

“In the largest, most comprehensive evidenced-based review ever conducted of research on how children learn reading, a Congressionally mandated independent panel has concluded that the most effective way to teach children to read is through instruction that includes a combination of methods. The panel determined that effective reading instruction includes teaching children to break apart and manipulate the sounds in words (phonemic awareness), teaching them that these sounds are represented by letters of the alphabet which can then be blended together to form words (phonics), having them practice what they’ve learned by reading aloud with guidance and feedback (guided oral reading), and applying reading comprehension strategies to guide and improve reading comprehension.”  [Source: nichd.nih.gov]

Strong evidence of the effectiveness of two programs emphasizing phonemic awareness was also reported in An Educator’s Guide to Schoolwide Reform, 1999

WHEN > Research indicates that phonics should be systematically taught to the beginning reader and continued for the next two or three years.

HOW > Phonics is taught by using a planned sequence that starts with the most common consonant sounds and adding short letter sounds, most commonly beginning with short a–as in at, mat, pat, sat, cat. Gradually, more vowel sounds, including long vowels (silent e), and vowel blends are added, as are consonant blends. Children learn to decode and then encode new words based on consonant sounds (rhyming). Later, context clues help children using their phonics skills to read unfamiliar words.

IMPORTANT > In my opinion, phonics is best taught after, and in conjunction with, a whole language approach, so that children have the basis of a rich vocabulary, adequate auditory training to hear letter and word sounds accurately, and a love and appreciation for language and story. This gives the learning of reading a deeper meaning, and a sense of joy in discovery. I would liken this to knowing music before learning individual notes. Imagine having to study notes without knowing that they make music. How boring would that be?

And now for my phonemically inconsistent poem:

Frisky squirrel scamper

On roof, through tree

And newly fallen leaf

Be seen a thief, of sudden lurch

And raucous shriek,

Who steals away the arbor space

That they, thy neighbor birds

Would have, who, hasty, flee their

Wooded perch, to take to sky

To search,

To light upon another birch.

So what’s all the fuss about touch (the tactile system)? According to Hemholtz (the famed 19th century German physician, physicist and philosopher, famous for his many contributions):

“….everything occurs on the skin.”

In Psyche, Volume 16, number 1, (Alberto Gallace, Department of Psychology, University of Milan-Bicocca and Charles Spence, Department of Experimental Psychology, Crossmodal Research Laboratory Oxford University)  Touch and the Body, the introduction says :

 “Traditionally, studies of the awareness of sensory information in humans have focused on visual awareness  ….This is rather surprising when one considers that touch, the first sense to develop in the womb in humans, might be the matrix upon which the awareness of ourselves as individuals, separated from the external world, starts to form.”

Gallace and Spence state that an estimated 18% of our body mass is composed of skin and its tactile receptors. Their schema illustrates tactile’s complicated role in human perception and movement:

From the earliest moments of conception, touch plays preeminent role. In the first few days, the embryonic cells that eventually become a full body divide into three layers:

1. endoderm (inside layer) which develops eventually into the internal organs

2 mesoderm (middle layer) that forms muscles and bones

3. ectoderm (distal layer) becoming the skin and nervous system. The nervous system and skin come from the same layer  and develop together before birth and into the first year of life.

Research has indicated that touch plays a crucial role in infant development and the formation of healthy social relationships. Tactile stimulation impacts nerve transmission, infant weight gain (especially in premies), response and performance, healthy immune response and sensory-motor integration.

The MNRI Tactile Integration program (which I teach as a member of the MNRI faculty )”… uses neuro-tactile techniques to stimulate different receptors in the skin, working to appropriately engage and integrate the tactile sensory system within the complete mind/body system. When the tactile system is integrated, the brain stem relaxes defensive reflexes and opens the entire system to an experience of safety in which emotion and behavioral regulation improves and healthy motor, communication, and cognitive development can proceed.”

I have been to two Body Worlds exhibits and one lesser-quality Chinese knockoff.  If Body Worlds comes anywhere near to me in the future, I will go again. Some of my more squeamish friends have not been as enthusiastic as I am. Body Worlds displays some 200 or more real human (and occasionally animal) bodies that have been preserved by plastination for the purpose of teaching anatomy, physiology and health. According to Body World’s Educator’s Guide, “Plastination is a process that replaces the natural fluids in the body with a type of flexible plastic. The use of plastics for preservation means that the specimens are odourless and completely dry. Plastination allows the bodies to be fixed into life-like poses, illustrating how our bodies are structured and how they function when performing everyday activities.” The bodies are posed to accentuate various anatomical features. All are skinless.

The one pose that has stayed in my mind in vivid detail is the one of a man carrying his own skin  (on page 9 of the link). [WARNING: Images of Body Worlds are graphic and may offend some people.] It would be a terrible pun (but that has never stopped me) to say that particular exhibit really got under my skin.

We could not live without our largest organ, the skin. Look down at the skin on your arms and hands. Count for 60 seconds. Did you see the shedding of approximately 30 to 40 thousand skin cells?

Like the other organs of the body, the skin is composed of tissues of various thicknesses and the tissues are composed of different kinds of cells. The visible layer of the skin–the epidermis–serves as a barrier without which our vulnerable  inner tissues would be  exposed to endless dangers. Because the outer skin layer takes a constant beating it is always being replaced. New skin is continually made in the bottom layer of the epidermis to replace the top layer. Additionally, the epidermis has pores to release toxins, shafts that contain hairs, and holds melanin creating the skin pigmentation necessary to shield against UV light produced by the sun. Between the first layer (epidermis) and third layer (hypodermis) that insulates us with its collagen and fatty deposits lies the very important and active middle area (dermis).  It is the dermis where the blood vessels, lymph channels, the sensory receptors and nerve fibers are located. The cells of the epidermis receive their nourishment and waste disposal services from the underlying dermis. Tiny blood vessels (capillaries) carry nutrients to the skin. Any bacteria that has succeeded in passing through the epidermis must be captured and handled by the dermis.

Within the dermis tactile (somatosensory) receptors include:

• Free Nerve Endings that lie at the uppermost level of the dermis (occasionally reaching ever-so-slightly into the epidermis) and convey pain and temperature.
  
• Merkel cells, located on the fingertips at the junction of the dermis and the epidermis, having texture sensitivity and responding to slow vibrations and steady pressure.  (Though their function is still not well understood, they are thought to have a neurosensory and  multifunctional capacity in that they communicate with neurons).
  
• Ruffini’s corpuscle, a heat-gain sensitive tactile receptor present in large numbers in the dermis of the hairy regions; reacting especially to firm continuous pressure and high vibration.
• Bulb of Krause, a heat-loss sensitive tactile receptor.
• Meissner’s corpuscle, a tactile receptor located primarily at the level of the superficial dermis (just below the epidermis) of the hands, feet, lips and genital organs, sensitive to light touching and slow vibrations such as fluttering and stroking.
• Vater-Pacinian corpuscle, a deep pressure and high vibration sensitive receptor located deep in the dermis and even the hypodermis (and other visceral organs).

Uploaded to YouTube.com by photoprotection on Jun 8, 2010

The Sami people of Scandinavia have 300 words for snow, while English has only a fraction of those. The “sense of touch” describes the entire tactile system, one of the five ordinary senses, complex systems often  inadequately described by single words:  sight, sound, smell, taste and touch.

Imagine….an entire system referred to simply as “touch”. Yet, it’s a very varied sensory world that is encompassed by that simple word  “touch” .    

I often work with people who are hypersensitive to touch and/or have difficulty identifying the different kinds and qualities of touch.  Many children I have known have confused light touch with pressure and pressure with light touch, experiencing light touch as painful and deep pressure as tickling. One autistic boy I know screamed “pain” before any physical touch occurred.

A wealth of information about the world comes to us through our sense of touch, and when we can’t rely on that information because it is inaccurate or incomplete, it is quite understandable that there would be confusion and anxiety.

Skin serves as a protective barrier between our internal systems and the world around us. The tactile system or touch system sends sensory information such as heat, cold, pain, pressure and movement from receptors in the skin (as well as tissues, muscles and bones) to the central nervous system The sense of touch lets us know that our feet are touching the ground when we stand and walk, and along with the adjunct somatosensory system, we don’t have to look at where we are stepping or at what we are touching. We would be quite anxious if we didn’t have this kind of information, or couldn’t rely on its accuracy.

The tactile system is a ‘first alert” system. The sense for light touch is the most primitive aspect of the tactile system for its ability to ‘sound the alarm’ to danger that something or someone is touching us. Without pain, heat or cold receptors we wouldn’t sense when we were cut,  being burned or freezing.

With too much or inaccurate tactile information, it would be very difficult to pay attention to anything else. What would you be able to do if it felt that you were always itchy? or felt that your skin had been rubbed raw? How could you write or draw if you couldn’t tell how you were holding a pencil or a brush or how it was resting on the paper?

The same embryonic tissues that become our nervous system become our skin. All of the tactile receptors are actually modified dendrites. The skin, our largest organ, has millions of tactile receptors. There are four main types of tactile receptors: mechanoreceptors, thermoreceptors, pain receptors, and proprioceptors. There are rapidly adapting receptors (e.g. light touch, pain) and slowly adapting receptors (e.g. pressure). The brain receives superficial sensations, such as those for pain, temperature and simple touch, and deep sensations for  sensing such things as position, movement and vibration.

Without our ‘simple’ sense of touch, we wouldn’t know how to move, how much pressure to use, whether we are on the earth or not, if we are in certain kinds of immediate danger, and would lose out on some of the most pleasurable experiences possible.

Look at the word “mistake’ — it is a “miss take”.  There are 33 definitions for  “take” in the American Heritage Dictionary online (not counting the sub-categories within those 33, another 6 definitions for the intransitive form of the verb, 8 plus sub-definitions for the noun; and a slew of verbal phrases such as: take in, take part, etc). The one that I have in mind is a popularly used slang form–as in, “Hey, I got it on the first take!” In this sense, it means attempt, try or, simply, do.

So to look at mistake from an educational point of view, it means that when I did something, I missed the mark. I need to do it again, and maybe again, for an indefinite number of “takes” until I’ve achieved mastery of it.

A mistake is often looked at negatively in our culture and in the way we use the word in our language. People are often so afraid to make a mistake that they are frozen into inaction. Or, if a mistake is made, they give up on a particular path, person, endeavor. Sometimes a person is so shamed by making a mistake that he or she feels diminished and the result is lowered self-esteem.

Historically, however, the normal natural human tendency to make mistakes has been recognized as part of a process. For instance, we have ‘rookies’ in baseball, and a minor league before one makes it to the majors. In craftsmanship their are apprentices, journeymen and masters. Mistakes are why pencils are made with erasers and there are delete buttons on the computer keyboard.

Making mistakes is an integral part of any human’s development.

For each mistake we make new information is added, experience is gained, and the next ‘take’ whether optimal or not is built on knowledge and understanding built by the “mistake”. When something is approached from this perspective, there cannot be too many “takes”.

Sometimes the child gets up, sometimes with our help and — BOOM! — the child falls down. Sometimes the infant cries; but most often it’s simply a look of surprise, and occasionally even delight. Sometimes the child will laugh.
I’m assuming that the infant does not represent this experience to himself as “failure” or “mistake”. It is simply an experience. The child stands again. Falls again. Stands again. Falls again. Over and over, until there are sufficient “miss-takes” that standing up  is achieved. In its delight and with the passage of just of few moments, the child may once again succumb to the effects of gravity, all the while developing the necessary vestibular and proprioceptive awarenesses to maintain uprightness.  After uprightness has been achieved and adequately maintained, the infant begins to step, and the whole falling down, getting up, doing it again process starts over.

It’s called LEARNING.

As a teacher, I have always encouraged my students to not only be willing to make mistakes but to also celebrate them.

Nobody, but nobody, would want their young child smoking, nor have them smoke at any age for that matter. But do parents know that chair or couch time is also truly dangerous? Think of the hours children spend sitting in front of the TV and computer.

As I sit here and type this, I can’t help but wonder if I could somehow do this standing up; especially after reading the research of Marc T. Hamilton, a physiologist at Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, LA. “Sitting is the new smoking,” he says, as quoted in a March 11, 2011 AARP Bulletin:  “These days we sit more than we sleep — an average of 10 hours a day — and it’s a serious health hazard.”

According to an April 14, 2011 article in the NY Times, Marc Hamilton says:

“Exercise is not a perfect antidote for sitting….” 

When you are sitting muscles’ electrical activity diminishes — “the muscles go as silent as those of a dead horse,” Hamilton says, “Your calorie-burning rate immediately plunges to about one per minute, a third of what it would be if you got up and walked.” According to the article,”… insulin effectiveness drops within a single day, and the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes rises. So does the risk of being obese. The enzymes responsible for breaking down lipids and triglycerides — for “vacuuming up fat out of the bloodstream,” as Hamilton puts it — plunge, which in turn causes the levels of good (HDL) cholesterol to fall.”

 The Times article also features Dr. James Levine, a Mayo Clinic researcher in the burgeoning field of inactivity studies, who wants us to develop environments that encourage people to move. An example of such an environment is a chairless first-grade classroom crawl, jump and otherwise move through math and reading lessons. Dr. Levine authored the article, “Health-Chair Reform, Your Chair: Comfortable but Deadly“.

We know that movement affects health. There is an epidemic of Type II diabetes among children in this country; not to mention too many kids taking drugs because of so-called “learning difficulties’. Movement also affects the health of the brain and, consequently, learning.

One of the reasons I pursued my M.S. in Health and Wellness Promotion was because I was convinced that what we did in the classroom affected our lifelong habits and overall health. As a Waldorf teacher, I am pleased that — although we had chairs in our classroom — movement was a MAJOR part of the day and of every lesson.

Paul and Gail Dennison, the founders of Brain Gym® have been studying with Katy Bowman, and inspired by her work, they have encouraged their faculty to attend to the importance of increasing movement and decreasing chair time.

When you are done reading this, PLEASE get up and MOVE!!

Came across this piece on SpongeBob and had to post it. I have to admit that I agree with Nickelodeon (the network that airs “SpongeBob SquarePants”) that the study is at best inadequate. That said, I also have to admit my bias as a trained and experienced Waldorf (Steiner) eduactor that I would expect the results in the study. Also, I am disappointed that it said nothing about the results for the kids who used the time to color, engaging in a meaningful, imaginative exercise that involved eye/hand coordination in three dimensions.

I’d love to hear reader’s comments and have a discussion on this.

“Acupuncture: a clinical review.(Review Article).” Southern Medical Journal. Southern Medical Association, March 1, 2005 | Sierpina, Victor S.; Frenkel, Moshe A.

(It is possible to read some of the article here. A subscription is required to read the entire article).

Abstract: This article summarizes the research base, probable mechanism of actions, and clinical applications of acupuncture. It offers the clinician a deeper understanding of appropriate conditions for which acupuncture may be useful, outlines how to integrate acupuncture into a clinical practice, and describes referral and training issues.