Thoughts for the Day: 24 July 2021

 

Stalking the wild Wim Hof

What Doesn't Kill Us

Scott Carney and Wim Hof

Nature gave us the ability to heal ourselves. Conscious breathing and  environmental  conditioning are two tools that everyone can use to control their immune system, better their moods, and increase their energy. I believe that anyone can tap into these unconscious processes and eventually control their autonomic nervous system.

The Caretakers of the Cosmos

Gary Lachman

 Without goals (2 words), without some purposeful anticipation, we live, Frankl said, only a 'provisional existence', a kind of marking time which is really a death in life.

The Consolations of Philosophy

Alain De Botton

[B]ecause an increase in the wealth of societies seems not to guarantee an increase in happiness, Epicurus would have suggested that the needs which expensive goods cater to cannot be those on which our happiness depends.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Robert M. Pirsig

The truth knocks on the door and you say, “Go away, I’m looking for the truth,” and so it goes away.

Eichmann in Jerusalem

Hannah Arendt 

Banality is the adopted disguise of a very powerful will to abolish conscience.

The Inevitability of Tragedy

Barry Gewen

A civilization, in contrast to a culture, was the product of its greatest minds, whether Western or Eastern. One of Strauss’s favorite quotations was from Aquinas: “The least knowledge one can have of the highest things is more desirable than the most certain knowledge one has of the lowest things.”

The Idea of Nature

R. G. Collingwood

All this shows what from a general knowledge of pre-Socratic physics we should expect: that Greek thinkers in general take it for granted that mind belongs essentially to body and lives with it in the closest union, and that when they are confronted with reasons for thinking this union partial, occasional, or precarious, they are puzzled to know how this can be.

An Essay on Metaphysics

R. G. Collingwood

These activities were thus not activities of the ‘mind’, if that word refers to the self-critical activities called thinking. But neither were they activities of the ‘body’. To use a Greek word (for the Greeks had already made important contributions to this science of feeling) they were activities of the ‘psyche’, and no better word could have been devised for the study of them than psychology.

The Life of the Mind

Hannah Arendt 

In the work of no other philosopher has the concept of appearance, and hence of semblance (of Erscheinung and Schein), played so decisive and central a role as in Kant.

Civilization

Niall Ferguson

In reality, democracy was the capstone of an edifice that had as its foundation the rule of law – to be precise, the sanctity of individual freedom and the security of private property rights, ensured by representative, constitutional government.

The Wedge: Evolution, Consciousness, Stress & the Key to Human Resilience by Scott Carney

 

Published in 2020

I read The Wedge as a sequel to Carney's earlier book What Doesn't Kill Us, which reported about his dive into the Wim Hof Method. The Wim Hof Method involves a combination of cold exposure and intense breathing and breath-holds that seem to allow the nearly impossible in terms of control over autonomic functions in the body. What Doesn't Kill Us was intriguing, to say the least, as Carney had begun his inquiry with the idea of debunking the wild-eyed Dutchman. But by the end of his time with Wim Hof, Carney concluded that Wim Hof was on to something, and Carney was all in. And when I say "all in,' this includes a climactic climb of Mt. Kilimanjaro in near-record time while dressed only minimally--and even in the heart of Africa, it gets mighty cold there. This experience triggered Carney to look more deeply into what happens with the Wim Hof method and how it might be duplicated in some measure by other techniques. And thus, The Wedge.

Carney lays out his hypothesis upfront in clear, simple (but not too simple) prose: 

So what is the Wedge, exactly? The most comfortable way to think about the Wedge is that it is a choice to separate stimulus from response. . . . The Wedge is the measure of control that we all have to insert choice into the space between sensation of the outside world and the physiological responses that it triggers. . . [I]nevery situation a human might get themselves into, there’s always a tension between the challenge (stress) and the built-in automatic reactions. The Wedge intercedes and introduces a measure of control in things that otherwise feel uncontrollable.

Carney then compares this "wedge" space with our normal ego as it functions: 

The tricky thing about understanding the Wedge, and what makes it so incredibly difficult to explain, is that you—or rather, your ego—is not always the thing in charge. Remember, there is no self. All the parts of an individual and environment work together to generate an illusion of a self. Ego is just a perspective on the reality that we’re part of a superorganism.

Carney continues with some greater in-depth thoughts about how the wedge may work, and he notes three different pathways by which the wedge might operate: at the point of stress (from the environment), at the point of (bodily) sensation, and in our "mindset" or "orientation;" that is, "your mental attitude, expectations, emotions and disposition at the time that you receive sensation from your nervous system." From this deployment of a mindset, one can in some sense pre-load one's responses to stresses and sensations to allow a wedge to form. Carney also makes an important point about emotions, writing that

Emotions create a symbolic link between what’s happening in the world and what occurs inside of our bodies. And because evolution is a rather slow process, it would be hubristic to think that the sensory and emotional tools that Homo sapiens have access to appeared fully formed when the first member of our species started walking the Earth between 200,000 and 300,000 years ago.

Indeed, Carney argues 

Inserting a wedge requires learning the language that your body uses to communicate information about the environment. Its syntax and grammar aren’t made of words; they’re sensation, emotion, and keen observation of the links between your mind and the external world. 

Before I conclude this summary tour of Carney's thoughts and theories about the Wedge before he jumps into a series of concrete instances of its manifestations, I must note his discussion of fear, that most potent and often vexing emotion.

How we resolve the tension between risk and reward defines who we are. And fear is a guidepost for how we use the Wedge. It is as much an involuntary response to a prediction of the future as it is a sensation that immobilizes our biology and stops us from taking action. Mastering fear doesn’t mean ignoring danger, but rather finding a reason that makes danger worth it—separating the stimulus from the response.

Andrew Huberman, a Stanford neuroscientist, uses video from divers who investigate great white sharks to elicit fear in test subjects in his lab. (It would work for me.) Carney quotes and summarizes comments from Huberman about fear:

Fear would have meant he [the diver] was out of control. No choices. So maybe he wasn’t exactly afraid in the moment. It was something else. Huberman decides to paraphrase the great horror writer Stephen King: Fear has a lot to do with time frames. Before the event, a person experiences the dread of anticipation; during the event, there’s terror when they’re helpless in the moment; and after it’s over, a person remembers the experience as horror.

Carney continues:

Fear is an excellent inflection point to demonstrate the physiology of the Wedge. It’s powerful, visceral, has a strong influence on our behavior, and yet also preserves our ability to make choices about our actions. We experience fear on both a biological and psychological level. It triggers the fight-or-flight response just as reliably as the cold does, issues a burst of adrenaline, secretes sweat, dilates pupils and ramps up the heart rate. However, with fear, our bodily reactions are based on sights, sounds and our own idiosyncratic assessment of how things are changing around us in a bad way. It starts in the mind, not the body. And this is why I hope that his research into fear can help me dissect every other emotional and environmental interface that contributes to the Wedge. 

I spend a good deal of space quoting Carney on fear because it seems to me that in our world--and certainly its always been so in the human world--fear drives much of our behavior. Indeed, even though we no longer face man-eating beasts or the like, we suffer less tangible but more chronic fears that lead to more subtle reactions, such as "anxiety." Perhaps we do live in "The Age of Anxiety" as suggested by the W.H. Auden poem and the Scott Stossel non-fiction book. My own conclusion is that fear is an excellent and necessary warning system but a terribly unreliable guidance system. But because it's such a primal emotion, it's not easily corraled by the thinking brain. If Carney's book proves to have any value--and I certainly believe that it does--it's because his theme of dealing successfully with fear is the crux of the Wedge.

Lest I give you the wrong impression, Carney's book isn't simply an extended essay conjecturing about how the world and our bodies work. The other part of the book is a series of personal experiences and reporting on ideas and techniques about how we can deal with our world, especially fear-creating or uncomfortable experiences, in a manner that improves our resilience. One of the activities that Carney experiences and reports upon is playing catch with a heavy kettlebell. (A kettlebell is an iron ball with a handle attached that allows the user to swing it and thereby create a ballistic motion. It's an increasingly popular form of exercise imported from Russia, and, I must add, an excellent addition to any home gym.) Playing catch with a heavy object that will wreak havoc if it lands on the wrong place (such as your foot) requires an intensity of mind that must move beyond fear to successfully negotiate such a high-stakes game of catch. Carney also explores a variety of breathing techniques in addition to the standard Wim Hof method that he's been working with now for several years. He explores "the potato diet" and the use of saunas (in Lithuania, no less), flotation tank experiences, and two drugs: MDHD (Ecstacy) and ayahuasca. In undertaking the latter to experiences, Carney expresses the most hesitation. As he notes with all of his other wedge experiences and experiments, he could bail at any time, such as simply halting a breathing technique or quitting a game of kettlebell catch. But during a drug trip, Carney knew he couldn't simply stop and get off at any time that he wanted. He was therefore prudent. With the MDHD (Ecstasy), he took the drug along with his wife and under the guidance of two experienced therapists. They used the occasion as an opportunity for couples therapy. Carney also went to Peru to try ayahuasca, and again Carney expresses and practices what seems a reasonable degree of prudence in dealing with a substance in a land and culture far from his own.

I found the two experiences with the two different drugs the least informative, but I don't say that to denigrate those experiences or to criticize Carney. From what he says and my understanding of those types of experiences in general, I believe that they are the most complex to predict and describe. Most of the other experiences that he undertakes to explore and expand his wedge hypothesis are simpler and easy to "do at home," and he provides self-practice advice in a section on the end about "Techniques" for the (non-drug) practices.

At one point in thinking about writing this review, I was going to describe the book as having two parts: one part, which is represented by the several quotes at the beginning of this review, center on the wedge hypothesis and its grounding in science, and the other part about Carney's experiences and observations. But I realized that the book is too integrated to describe it this way. Carney's self-experimentation, observations, reporting, conjectures, and hypotheses are distributed throughout the book and make it an integrated whole. This scheme makes the book a delight to read and ponder. I believe that Carney is on to something here (and "it" has been "here" for all of human history), and he's bringing what has been largely lost (especially in modernity) back into focus. Thus, it's a book that is at once enlightening and entertaining, and well worth the read.

Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor

In order to survive, we all need to eat, sleep, exercise, breathe, and maintain friendly relations. Books about exercise abound, and sleep itself has become a popular topic for authors with advice to give. And eating--oh, my goodness!--what a mess! Author after author after author tells us what we should and shouldn't eat, no two authors seeming ever to agree. And will they ever agree? Between human ignorance and fallibility and the profit motive, the idea of any consensus about the human diet seems a distant Shangri-La that exists in legend but that eludes us in practice. And, given the variety of human diets from the beginning of our species, this may not prove so surprising. Humans have existed on a variety of diets to fit the climate in which they live. About diet, about the only definitive conclusion that we can reach about diet is that our current Standard American Diet (SAD) is crap and it's killing us slowly.

At least we don't have to go to the store (yet) and buy whatever air we choose to breathe, thus avoiding the incentives that food producers have to persuade us by deception that their products are healthy and wholesome. And while the quality of the air that we breathe also affects us in subtle, long-term ways, let's set that aside for now as the topic of many other worthy books. Author James Nestor has chosen to focus on just this one topic in his book: how we breathe. Nestor examines how we breathe and how it makes a difference in our health and quality of life. And what makes reading this book an entertaining as well as an educational experience is the fact that humans have been experimenting and cultivating breathing techniques for thousands of years and have gained immense practical knowledge that we are now confirming and better understanding through scientific research. For instance, pranayama, the yoga of breathing, goes back thousands of years, and so do Taoist breathing techniques from China. Different as the cuisines of China and India are, for instance, when one looks at their interest in the breath and breathing techniques, we see distinct similarities (some no doubt indigenous to each culture and shared through cross-cultural exchange). But we in the West, especially in the modern, industrial West, have forgotten much of the lore about breath that developed on this side of the world and--at least until recently--we've ignored much of what we could have learned from traditional Chinese and Indian culture if we'd have had the good sense to do so (and a few did have such good sense, such as the explorer Alexandra David-Neel and Harvard physician Dr. Herbert Benson, to name just two who pop to mind).

But although we in the contemporary world have been dismissive and ignorant about the proper mechanics and potential benefits of breathing, we can make up for lost time quickly with this book. Nestor has combined in-depth scientific research and first-hand reporting about those teaching and exploring breath, and he conjoins his reporting with recounting his experiences about practicing a wide variety of breathing techniques. In an act of journalistic heroism perhaps second only to Morgan Spurlock's one month of eating only at McDonald's (for his documentary Supersize Me!), Nestor and a Sweedish student of breath (or "pulmonaut," as Nestor dubs those who experiment with breath), Anders Olsson, had their nostrils sealed by a physician for ten days, allowing them to breathe only through their mouths. Like Spurlock's experience, the toll on their health and well-being was dramatic and frightening. But also, like Spurlock, the return to normalcy (nose-breathing in Nestor's and Olsson's case) allowed a quick and marked return to health and well-being. All by just breathing through their noses!

Nestor reports on a variety of breathing techniques, such as those of Wim Hof and Buteyko, all of which provide different benefits.  Nestor also attends in detail to the science and to me, the most interesting science in the book (and all of it is interesting), is the change in human anatomy in the last three hundred years--since the advent of industrialism and significant changes in the human diet. During this time, it seems primarily because of softer foods (processing), the size and position of our jaws, facial bones, and nasal passages have shrunk. We didn't use it--our chewing capacity--and we lost bone and breathing capacity because of it. Humans around the globe almost all had straight teeth and enough room in their jaw for all their teeth (wisdom teeth included!). We don't. Also, the loss of bone density in our face, volume in our nasal cavity, and narrowing in our throats have led to snoring and sleep apnea that did occur much less in the past. Sometimes Mother Nature evolves very slowly, but sometimes she seems positively Lamarckian in her speed to drop that which we don't use the way originally intended (metaphorically speaking, of course).

This book is chock-full of information, experiences, and advice, and of value to any potential reader. I highly recommend it. But until you read it, let me leave you with Nestor's list of do's and don'ts about breathing. So simple and yet so important!

• Shut Your Mouth!
• Breathe Through Your Nose!
• Exhale!
• Chew!
• Breathe More, On Occasion!
• Hold Your Breath!

[N.B. I added the exclamation marks for emphasis and to convey a sense of the imperative of following these simple guidelines.]

By the way, the book includes valuable instructions about a wide variety of breathing techniques that Nestor has sampled and recommends as well as thorough notes and links to sites that provide video demonstrations and instructions.