GUESS WHAT? I figured out that the element AIR should be added to feng shui! Since traditional feng shui’s five elements excludes AIR I have never considered it. But finally I figured out why AIR should be considered an element of design. contact www.feng-shui-institute-of-america.com to sign up for our free conference call Thursday 8 PM EST Jan. 26th

Let's clean up the Indian River!

Yesterday, I tried to fly.  No, I didn’t have a Superman cape attached to my shoulders, just the ubiquitous bifocals for some one my age, great to both read and see far, but not good when flying down a new sidewalk.  Not seeing the ground, I stepped off 5 cement steps and landed, unbelievably as it may seem from my knees down.  Discovered lying on my back, the whispers all around me were “Don’t move her”  I might have looked dazed but was completely alert…only frantically worried that I would not be able to do all the things I needed to do for my “Light It Up for the River” fund raising party for WWW. TEAMORCA.ORG. I expected or hoped for 100 guests, so a whole lot of cooking had to be going on.

So with a broken little toe, swollen ankle and bruises sliding up and down both legs from my knees to my ankles, I am sending out a request to all my friends…MAKE ME FEEL BETTER, GO TO www. TEAMORCA.ORG and become a member or go to the store and buy a bioluminescence Coloring Book.  In a nutshell, MacArthur Genius award winning scientist, Dr. Edie Widder who leads the team is making a pollution map of the world’s waters with her famous, unparalleled invention “Kilroy” which identified the pollution and points to where it is coming from so that we can go to that source and eliminate it.

This is the perspective that I think has been left out of this holiday, the sharing and giving. Especially at this time when our governing bodies are arguing about who will share in the burden to keep this country going, it is suffice to say that it is all ours to share and share in equally. The old adage “It is better to give that to receive” comes to mind and Thanksgiving to me should be all about giving not getting.

Biologically, systems are rarely destroyed they are altered or added onto.  Living things started out as no more than life-sustaining apparatuses, (only surviving, and getting their gene pool into the next generation).  This is the work of our brain stem. It’s job is to allow us to breathe, digest and eliminate, and circulate life sustaining fluids without thinking. ( and I am personally glad of it) 

After mere survival, other systems were layered over, not replacing old ones at least the old ones that were most efficient to the species, but as additions.  Now we are getting to why humans are stupid part.  Okay so here comes the neo-cortex, and ah ha, humans can think.  I wasn’t there but I can imagine when this evolution up the biological chain happened, it didn’t replace the brain stem or the limbic systems, just added on another layer.  The first neo-cortex were probably crude, a mere shadow of possibilities to the ones we have today.  Over time and growth of areas in this thinking structure, humans had the potential to think really well.  But they also had the possibility to use older forms and think really wretchedly.  I guess stupidity relates to those who use the least amount of their brain power when coming to conclusions or using the information at hand as the only information there is.  Stupidity starts at home and that home is in our head.

When we were infants, we believed only in what existed at that moment.  That’s why we cried so voraciously when the bottle or breast wasn’t in our sensorial experience.  Like the infant who cries when the Teddy Bear is taken away, thinking that they will never see that bear again, until repetition or the realization that the bear is simply placed out of their view.  And that’s the beginning of magical thinking.  We have developed an appetite for believing that just because we don’t see, feel it or experience it, it doesn’t mean that it’s not there.

However, even an infant will cease believing in something existing if, over time, it does not appear.  How come adults often tenaciously adhere to that which has never been demonstrated?

What do you think?

Slime find the best way why can't you?

In October 4^th issue of the New York Times, an article touted the brilliance of slime.  It seems that slime when traversing a location in search of food will discover the most efficient way to travel.

Researcher, Andrew Adamatzky, favorite hobby is challenging slime to build a highway system.  Last year he and his colleagues placed a slime on a map of Spain and Portugal with pieces of food on the largest cities.  “The slime grew a network ….that was nearly identical to the actual highway system on the Iberian Peninsula.”  So, who needs to think things through?

Actually, in much of my work about person/ place, I have come to understand that the systems we set up for ourselves can be like the slime, perfectly suited to a situation or unlike the slime, who obviously can’t sabotage itself, systems that sabotage our best interest.  The difference lies in our ability to analyse, yup the neo-cortex at work

Yes, I know that we are far more complex and that complexity obviously has its benefits.  We don’t spend a lifetime slinking around looking for food.  We can think, analyze, and ponder much of the time to our benefits, but some of the time to our detriment.

My suggestion is to do a slime walk through you home and see where paths lead.  Are your networks taking you to those areas that contribute to productivity, intimacy, and self-promotion?   Or, do you have a bee-line to the boob tube and the refrigerator?  It might be interesting to discover your preferred routes!

That’s why I want to discuss the concept involved in this 2011 Nobel Prize.  In a laymen’s nutshell, the discoveries have provided novel insights into the activation and regulation of our immune system.  This science looks at our innate or first line of defense in our immune system and the adaptive immune system which has a memory and can recognize, remember and launch a more robust response in alleviating a condition.

How can we apply this to behavior?  Joseph Campbell might call the innate immune system an innate release mechanism which he so elegantly describes in his work.  We are born into a species that responds to certain things universally, like our reactions to dangers they don’t need to be taught.  What are adaptive behaviors can be compared to is Gandhi’s response to violence as opposed to George W. Bush.  Gandhi turns the other cheek and Bush invents a story to support aggressive behaviors.  Both Gandhi and Bush are exhibiting adaptive behaviors.

So how can we adapt behaviors that can specifically either circumvent innate responses or target responses to be in alignment with our highest and best interest?  I think the answer is iteration.  The more we support, reward and identify, the more likely it is to overcome inappropriate responses. 

My friend Dr. Maria De Francisci, in her theory of socially supported systems to alter, amend and alleviate mental conditions, shows that when the support system is large enough and covers a social model that envelops family, community systems and medical supports, the patient’s adaptive responses are more likely to kick in.  This is a model of iteration.

Thus, finding the broadest possible external supports. such as in our homes, can support adaptive desires.  The play Harvey,  by Mary Chase, is about a six foot imaginary rabbit  and is a case in point.  Elwood P. Dowd, the character who imagines Harvey,  is a  an alcoholic who invents Harvey to mitigate some of his pain. This figment of Elwood’s imagination has an affect that makes him happy and is the catalyst for mending family wounds.  Harvey is an adaptive response.

Now, I don’t suggest we should all go around inventing rabbits, but I am suggesting that we all go around inventing ourselves and surrounding ourselves with supports that will pave the way for dreams to become reality.

What is desired must be paved correctly to the brain.

During the eight day training blitz, my feng shui institute used to have to indoctrinate neophytes into the world of scientific feng shui, I used to say on about day three to my dazzled students.  “Everything you heard me say is stored in your brain; all you have to do is access the road to that piece of information.”

Their faces would like up as if I were handing them the Holy Grail, but I knew that the roads to finding that scrap of information needed another ingrediate, which some would find and others not.

Unless the brain has a built-in bulldozer, the way to ensure a path is constructed, is repetition.  Sort of like a footpath across the lawn to the front door of my golf’s clubhouse.  While there was a concrete path, its location was designed to look good, not to provide the best and shortest way to traverse from the parking lot to the front door.  And so, like we do in a variety of areas in our lives, the golfers trod over the grass, creating, over time, matted down grass that signaled the best pathway to the front door.

To access what you hear, see and learn you need to attach it to a vehicle that is likely to be used frequently.  My mother used to tell me that if I repeated a word three times then that word would be mine.  What she failed to tell me was that the word would have to be bundled with words that are used in similar ways.  So portal would have to be tossed on the path of entry, threshold, or door.  As a stand alone word portal would most likely vanish from a memory.

Thus, in my work of understanding how place informs behavior, I realize that symbols, icons, and proximities must be attached appropriately.  Now I know why I am skeptical about “treasure mapping”.  Creating a picture of what is wanted to initiate the reality is only step #1.  Aligning that picture with sympathetic, accessible proximities is necessary before the intention can be slid on the pathway that takes you to the place that allows you to accomplish this. 

A rather simplistic example would be for a person who wants to write a cookbook to place their computer in the kitchen or a if one wants to lose weight to place the scale in front of the refrigerator.  The computer would be surrounded by those things that are known so that the act of transcribing them would be facilitated and the scale would be a red traffic signal. 

 Thus, nothing is ever lost so long as that “thing” is aligned with relevancy.  Motivation and memory need relevancy as a sidekick to foster action or change.

 In the largest sense, home is the universe, but this is far too wide for us to connect with in a personal way.  Probably the grandest scale of connection is our country, that place from which emanates our bedrock biases, our notion of genuine.  Our culture gives us parameters from which we interact with others, and defines for us the rules of engagement with the world in general.  In fact, so endemic are these guidelines that we sometimes forget that they are acquired not fixed. 

What does our heartland promote us to celebrate?  For many of us, descendants of immigrants we rejoice in opportunity.  Options include many aspects of life including being able to learn, being able to distinguish ourselves, being able to befriend without the barriers of social standing, and contained as a core within all of these is being able to chose.   Yes, choice is the gift of America, one we should never disallow.

When I hear revolts about a Mosque, limitations on education, or withholding medical care, I worry that what we hold to be self-evident in our system is being eroded.  Being united as a country fosters being in agreement with our hearts.  What heart would deny choice for oneself, one’s family and countrymen?  On this our anniversary of having our core values challenged, let us recommit to the heart of our nation’s founders ideals.