Category: consciousness

Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) all over again?

The terribly worrying bee crisis.

Yesterday, I wrote about the growing awareness of a major crisis affecting bees in a number of countries.  Coincidentally, when researching the various articles for that post, into my email ‘inbox’ came the latest essay from George Monbiot published both in the UK Guardian newspaper and on his own blog.  The title was DDT 2.0.  I emailed Mr. Monbiot requesting permission to republish his essay in full on Learning from Dogs and promptly received his approval to so do.

But for those who for whatever reason, don’t recall clearly the history of DDT, here’s some background.

Wikipedia’s entry opens, thus:

DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) is an organochlorineinsecticide which is a colorless, crystalline solid, tasteless and almost odorless chemical compound. Technical DDT has been formulated in almost every conceivable form including solutions in xylene or petroleum distillates, emulsifiable concentrates, water-wettable powders, granules, aerosols, smoke candles, and charges for vaporisers and lotions.[2]

First synthesized in 1874, DDT’s insecticidal properties were not discovered until 1939, and it was used with great success in the second half of World War II to control malaria and typhus among civilians and troops. The Swiss chemist Paul Hermann Müller was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1948 “for his discovery of the high efficiency of DDT as a contact poison against several arthropods.”[3] After the war, DDT was made available for use as an agricultural insecticide, and soon its production and use skyrocketed.[4]

Then goes on to mention Rachel Carson (1907 – 1964) and her mind-boggling expose of DDT in the famous book Silent Spring.

The legacy of Rachel Carson.
The legacy of Rachel Carson.

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) website explains:

The Story of Silent Spring

How a courageous woman took on the chemical industry and raised important questions about humankind’s impact on nature.

Although their role will probably always be less celebrated than wars, marches, riots or stormy political campaigns, it is books that have at times most powerfully influenced social change in American life. Thomas Paine’s Common Sense galvanized radical sentiment in the early days of the American revolution; Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe roused Northern antipathy to slavery in the decade leading up to the Civil War; and Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, which in 1962 exposed the hazards of the pesticide DDT, eloquently questioned humanity’s faith in technological progress and helped set the stage for the environmental movement.

Carson, a renowned nature author and a former marine biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, was uniquely equipped to create so startling and inflammatory a book. A native of rural Pennsylvania, she had grown up with an enthusiasm for nature matched only by her love of writing and poetry. The educational brochures she wrote for the Fish and Wildlife Service, as well as her published books and magazine articles, were characterized by meticulous research and a poetic evocation of her subject.

You can read the rest of that NRDC article here.

So with all that in mind, here’s the essay from George Monbiot.

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DDT 2.0

August 13, 2013

We’re just beginning to understand the wider impacts of neonicotinoids.

By George Monbiot, published on the Guardian’s website, 5th August 2013

It’s the new DDT: a class of poisons licensed for widespread use before they had been properly tested, which are now ripping the natural world apart. And it’s another demonstration of the old truth that those who do not learn from history are destined to repeat it.

It is only now, when neonicotinoids are already the world’s most widely deployed insecticides, that we are beginning to understand how extensive their impacts are. Just as the manufacturers did for DDT, the corporations which make these toxins claimed that they were harmless to species other than the pests they targeted. Just as they did for DDT, they have threatened people who have raised concerns, published misleading claims and done all they can to bamboozle the public. And, as if to ensure that the story sticks to the old script, some governments have collaborated in this effort. Among the most culpable is the government of the United Kingdom.

As Professor Dave Goulson shows in his review of the impacts of these pesticides, we still know almost nothing about how most lifeforms are affected. But as the evidence has begun to accumulate, scientists have started discovering impacts across a vast range of wildlife.

Most people who read this newspaper will be aware by now of the evidence fingering neonicotinoids as a major cause of the decline of bees and other pollinators. These pesticides can be applied to the seeds of crops, and they remain in the plant as it grows, killing the insects which eat it. The quantities required to destroy insect life are astonishingly small: by volume these poisons are 10,000 times as powerful as DDT. When honeybees are exposed to just 5 nanogrammes of neonicotinoids, half of them will die. As bees, hoverflies, butterflies, moths, beetles and other pollinators feed from the flowers of treated crops, they are, it seems, able to absorb enough of the pesticide to compromise their survival.

But only a tiny proportion of the neonicotinoids that farmers use enter the pollen or nectar of the flower. Studies conducted so far suggest that only between 1.6 and 20% of the pesticide used for dressing seeds is actually absorbed by the crop: a far lower rate even than when toxins are sprayed onto leaves. Some of the residue blows off as dust, which is likely to wreak havoc among the populations of many species of insects in hedgerows and surrounding habitats. But the great majority – Goulson says “typically more than 90%” – of the pesticide applied to the seeds enters the soil.

In other words, the reality is a world apart from the impression created by the manufacturers, which keep describing the dressing of seeds with pesticides as “precise” and “targeted”.

Neonicotinoids are highly persistent chemicals, lasting (according to the few studies published so far) for up to 19 years in the soil. Because they are persistent, they are likely to accumulate: with every year of application the soil will become more toxic.

What these pesticides do once they are in the soil, no one knows, as sufficient research has not been conducted. But – deadly to all insects and possibly other species at tiny concentrations – they are likely to wipe out a high proportion of the soil fauna. Does this include earthworms? Or the birds and mammals that eat earthworms? Or for that matter, the birds and mammals that eat insects or treated seeds? We don’t yet know enough to say.

This is the story you’ll keep hearing about these pesticides: we have gone into it blind. Our governments have approved their use without the faintest idea of what the consequences are likely to be.

You might have had the impression that neonicotinoids have been banned by the European Union. They have not. The use of a few of these pesticides has been suspended for two years, but only for certain purposes. Listening to the legislators, you could be forgiven for believing that the only animals which might be affected are honeybees, and the only way in which they can be killed is through the flowers of plants whose seeds were dressed.

But neonicotinoids are also sprayed onto the leaves of a wide variety of crop plants. They are also spread over pastures and parks in granules, in order to kill insects that live in the soil and eat the roots of the grass. These applications, and many others, remain legal in the European Union, even though we don’t know how severe the wider impacts are. We do, however, know enough to conclude that they are likely to be  bad.

Of course, not all the neonicotinoids entering the soil stay there indefinitely. You’ll be relieved to hear that some of them are washed out, whereupon … ah yes, they end up in groundwater or in the rivers. What happens there? Who knows? Neonicotinoids are not even listed among the substances that must be monitored under the EU’s water framework directive, so we have no clear picture of what their concentrations are in the water that we and many other species use.

But a study conducted in the Netherlands shows that some of the water leaving horticultural areas is so heavily contaminated with these pesticides that it could be used to treat lice. The same study shows that even at much lower concentrations – no greater than the limits set by the European Union – the neonicotinoids entering river systems wipe out half the invertebrate species you would expect to find in the water. That’s another way of saying erasing much of the foodweb.

I was prompted to write this article by the horrible news from the River Kennet in southern England: a highly protected ecosystem that is listed among the few dozen true chalk streams on earth. Last month someone – farmer or householder, no one yet knows – flushed another kind of pesticide, chlorpyrifos, down their sink. The amount was equivalent – in pure form – to two teaspoonsful. It passed through Marlborough sewage works and wiped out most of the invertebrates in fifteen miles of the river.

The news hit me like a bereavement. The best job I ever had was working, during a summer vacation from university, as temporary waterkeeper on the section of the Kennet owned by the Sutton estate. The incumbent had died suddenly. It was a difficult job and, for the most part, I made a mess of it. But I came to know and love that stretch of river, and to marvel at the astonishing profusion of life the clear water contained. Up to my chest in it for much of the day, I immersed myself in the ecology, and spent far more time than I should have done watching watervoles and kingfishers; giant chub fanning their fins in the shade of the trees; great spotted trout so loyal to their posts that they had brushed white the gravel of the river bed beneath their tails; native crayfish; dragonflies; mayflies; caddis larvae; freshwater shrimps and all the other teeming creatures of the benthos.

In the evenings, wanting company and fascinated in equal measure by the protest and the remarkable people it attracted, I would stop at the peace camp outside the gates of the Greenham Common nuclear base. I’ve told the strange story that unfolded during my visits in another post.

Campaigners seeking to protect the river have described how, after the contamination,the river stank from the carcases of the decaying insects and shrimps. Without insects and shrimps to feed on, the fish, birds and amphibians that use the river are likely to fade away and die.

After absorbing this news, I remembered the Dutch study, and it struck me that neonicotinoid pesticides are likely, in many places, to be reducing the life of the rivers they enter to a similar extent: not once, but for as long as they are deployed on the surrounding land.

Richard Benyon, the minister supposed to be in charge of protecting wildlife and biodiversity, who happens to own the fishing rights on part of the River Kennet, and to represent a constituency through which it passes, expressed his “anger” about the chlorpyrifos poisoning. Should he not also be expressing his anger at the routine poisoning of rivers by neonicotinoids?

Were he to do so, he would find himself in serious trouble with his boss. Just as they are systematically poisoning our ecosystems, neonicotinoids have also poisoned the policies (admittedly pretty toxic already) of the department supposed to be regulating them. In April, Damian Carrington, writing in the Observer, exposed a letter sent by the ministerin charge of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), Owen Paterson, to Syngenta, which manufactures some of these pesticides. Paterson promised the company that his efforts to prevent its products from being banned “will continue and intensify in the coming days”.

And sure enough, the UK refused to support the temporary bans proposed by the commission both in April and last month, despite the massive petitions and the 80,000 emails on the subject that Paterson received. When Paterson and Deathra were faced with a choice between the survival of natural world and the profits of the pesticides companies, there was not much doubt about how they would jump. Fortunately they failed.

Their attempt to justify their votes led to one of the most disgraceful episodes in the sorry record of this government. The government’s new chief scientist, Sir Mark Walport, championed a “study” Deathra had commissioned, which purported to show that neonicotinoids do not kill bees. It was not published in a peer-reviewed journal, nor could it be, as as any self-respecting scientist, let alone the government’s chief scientist, should have been able to see in a moment that it was complete junk. Among many other problems, the controls were hopelessly contaminated with the pesticide whose impacts the trial was supposed to be testing. The “study” was later ripped apart by the European Food Safety Authority.

But Walport did still worse, making wildly misleading statements about the science, and using scare tactics and emotional blackmail to try to prevent the pesticides from being banned, on behalf of his new masters.

It is hard to emphasise sufficiently the importance of this moment or the dangers it contains: the total failure of the government’s primary source of scientific advice, right at the beginning of his tenure. The chief scientist is not meant to be a toadying boot-licker, but someone who stands up for the facts and the principles of science against political pressure. Walport disgraced his post, betrayed the scientific community and sold the natural world down the river, apparently to please his employers.

Last week, as if to remind us of the extent of the capture of this government by the corporations it is supposed to be regulating, the scientist who led the worthless trials that Walport and Paterson cited as their excuse left the government to take up a new post at … Syngenta. It seems to me that she was, in effect, working for them already.

So here we have a department staggering around like a drunkard with a loaded machine gun, assuring us that it’sh perfectly shafe. The people who should be defending the natural world have conspired with the manufacturers of broad-spectrum biocides to permit levels of destruction at which we can only guess. In doing so they appear to be engineering another silent spring.

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Frankly, there are more and more occasions when I think that if homo sapiens becomes virtually extinct there will be no queries as to why it happened.  Then again, a much more positive muse would be to see the ever-increasing madness going on in today’s world as the crumbling death throws of a materialistic and consumptionist era that is past its time.

How normal is it to be normal!

But first off this is not going to be a normal couple of weeks!

My daughter, Maija, son-in-law, Marius, and grandson, Morten, aged two, are staying with us over the next couple of weeks, arriving tomorrow.

So being able to offer a daily fresh post on Learning from Dogs will be a challenge.  As indeed, it should be: Family should always be the top priority.

However, rather than leaving you with blank pages, I shall be regurgitating some earlier posts, starting tomorrow.  In wandering through rather a large number of posts (1,775 as of today!), I was reminded that at the start one of my fellow authors was Jon Lavin.  He wrote a number of posts before deciding that his ‘day job’ was too demanding of him and something had to go.  It wasn’t just writing for Learning from Dogs that Jon had to let go, even his own website, The People Workshop, is a tad out-of-date!

But even so, there’s an article on Jon’s website that I wanted to share with you and, with Jon’s permission, here it is.

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Normal!

10 AUGUST 2011 BY 

Constant.
Constant.

Normal – it’s not a particularly challenging word; or is it?

The fact is that for most people their ‘normal’ business day is far from being effective.

What I do, indeed my passion, is to work with people and allow them to see the huge benefits that come from bringing ‘mindfulness’ into their everyday working environments. What do we mean by mindfulness?

Generally, anything that brings us into a state of mind where we are making decisions, interacting with people, communicating in the here and now, not away somewhere where we are controlled by what happened in the past and our fears of what might happen in the future.

Bringing change into business requires many qualities and if ever there was a time for displaying the qualities of integrity and compassion, it is now.

I believe we are on the cusp of an enormous change that will affect us all – it already is, we’re just hoping that it will go away and we’ll be able to carry on as before after this unpleasant recession is over. It’s more likely we are living through a core change in society.

I’ve realised that I can no longer rely on ‘out there’ for support, instead, it has to come from within.

By knowing myself and having a different relationship with myself, I encourage a balance in my life and recognise what ‘resources’ I need. Being out in the fresh air, in the woods and fields ‘resources’ me.

So when I work with my troubled clients who may be reeling from the latest batch of redundancies, I am able to be in a state of calm rather than the anxiety which is such a familiar friend.

Have you ever noticed how people are attracted to calm people when insecurity and uncertainty are around? From calmness and balance, options in the here and now present themselves to us. We are aware that we are connected together and working together in an atmosphere of integrity and trust to do the best for all.

My clients use me when they are dealing with circumstances that demand the very best from their employees, and when those employees demand the very best from my client company.

I would be interested to hear your comments!

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Do please offer your thoughts to Jon’s essay; I will pass them back to him without delay.

What Jon underlines is the power of relaxation, of taking time off at regular intervals during the day, the dangers of overload; as I recently highlighted in this recent post.

Thus proving, once again, that old adage – less is more!

Wildlife Photo Tips

A response to the many who enjoy the regular Sunday photo parade.

Jean and I have recently joined the National Wildlife Federation partly because there are times when it really does seem ‘wild’!  Anyway, I was trawling the NWF website the other day and came across this very helpful advice: 7 Wildlife Photo Tips to Never Forget. In view of the popularity of Sunday’s regular Picture Parade on Learning from Dogs, it seemed appropriate to dip into that section for today’s post. [Note: you will have to go to the website to read the full article as it would be wrong to republish the entire item without permission.]

7 Wildlife Photo Tips to Never Forget

This guest post by Jim Goldstein is sponsored by BorrowLenses.com.

I’ve always felt great wildlife photography mapped well to the Chinese proverb “the journey is the reward.” While I obviously enjoy seeing the end result of my wildlife photography outings I get a great deal of satisfaction in the crafting of those images. My best images often rise to the top because of one of the following maxims:

1. Backgrounds are Equally Important as Your Subject

2. Embrace Serendipity When Photo Editing

3. Challenge Viewers with Anthropomorphism

4. Employ Non-Standard Compositions

5. Capture Your Subjects at Their Eye Level

6. Factor in Form and Pose

7. Utilize Negative Space

I am going to republish just one of these tips to give you an idea, because the advice is stunning, in my humble opinion.

2. Embrace Serendipity When Photo Editing

Arctic Hare. Canon 1D Mark II, Canon 500mm f/2.8 + 1.4x teleconverter, 1/640 sec, f/7.1, ISO 400
Arctic Hare. Canon 1D Mark II, Canon 500mm f/2.8 + 1.4x teleconverter, 1/640 sec, f/7.1, ISO 400

When behind the camera, focus carefully on your subject. But when photo editing look for unique and subtle differences that might enhance or transform the story within your image. Case in point: this example image of a mosquito biting the nose of an Arctic Hare. My attention was on obtaining a razor sharp image and composing carefully, but when photo editing I found a couple frames that captured the biting mosquito that had been invisible to me at the time I took the photo.

Arctic Hare Being Bitten By Mosquito on the Nose
Arctic Hare Being Bitten By Mosquito on the Nose

Jim Goldstein is a San Francisco-based professional photographer and author who has been in numerous publications, including Outdoor Photographer, Digital Photo Pro, Popular Photography and has self-published a PDF eBook Photographing the 4th Dimension – Time covering numerous slow shutter techniques. Follow Jim Goldstein on Google+ | Twitter | Facebook | 500px

Do take a few moments and go across to the website and read the full set of tips.  If you have any interest in photographing nature and wildlife this is unmissable good advice.  Want to know more about the National Wildlife Federation?  More information here.

Just about Arizona water.

A more intimate look at the water of Arizona.

Yesterday, I published a recent Tomgram essay by William deBuys: Goodbye to All That (Water).  The essence of what William was presenting was that, “The crucial question for Phoenix, for the Colorado, and for the greater part of the American West is this: How long will the water hold out?”

Also in yesterday’s Learning from Dogs post, I closed with the statement, “If readers will forgive me, I will continue the theme tomorrow with a rather more personal perspective.”

I have decided to delay the ‘personal’ aspect to today’s post until the very end.  So back to Arizona’s water.

As an indication that this is not a new problem, I recently came across an article that was published  in The Arizona Republic by  Shaun McKinnon in August 2009.  It was called Unabated use of groundwater threatens Arizona’s future. Here’s how that article opened:

Thirty years after Arizona tried to stop cities and towns from using up their groundwater, the state still can’t shake its thirst for one of its most finite resources.

The steady drain on underground reserves grows out of two realities: Canals and pipelines don’t reach far enough to deliver surface water to everyone, and laws don’t reach far enough to stop people from drilling.

If the groundwater addiction continues unabated and under-regulated, the effects will be broad and potentially disastrous: Scarcer supplies could push rates higher and create uncertainty about water availability, discouraging new business and slowing economic growth. If wells start to run dry and aquifers collapse, the landscape could be dotted with fissures and sinkholes.

Lawmakers adopted some of the nation’s most progressive water-protection laws to avert such crises, but the laws excluded rural areas and allowed changes that let cities and subdivisions resume well-drilling, further depleting exhaustible aquifers.

Meanwhile, the renewable resource intended to replace groundwater – surface water fed by the annual runoff of mountain snow – can’t meet the demand of urban areas too far from the delivery canals.

The result is holes in the state’s water bucket that are spreading as fast as the holes in the ground.

Then good friend, Dan Gomez sent me this link: Arizona’s Water: Uses and Sources. I would like to cover some of the information contained on that website.

Arizona’s Water: Uses and Sources

One acre-foot of water.
One acre-foot of water.

A land’s carrying capacity has always been determined by its access to usable water. Humans use water primarily for irrigation, industry, drinking water, and sanitation. Millions of non-human species depend on water for life itself. Only 1% of the earth’s water is freshwater, to be shared among more than 7 billion people and all freshwater aquatic ecosystems in the world. It is perhaps the most precious resource on the planet.

Large volumes of water are most commonly measured in acre-feet. One acre-foot is the amount of water required to cover one acre of area to the depth of one foot: 325,851 gallons. Approximately one acre-foot serves the needs of a family of five for one year. Arizona is one of the driest states in the U.S., and one of the fastest-growing. Arizona’s current population is over 6 million (2010 Census) and is projected to grow to as many as 9.5 million people by 2025. Encompassing four deserts, Arizona receives a statewide average of only 12.5 inches of rain per year. Our climate presents intense challenges in balancing our water needs between ourselves, our neighbors, and our riparian ecosystems. Water has defined our past and will determine our future.

“Water has defined our past and will determine our future”!

Let me skip a couple of paragraphs and continue, thus:

Water Budget: Usage and recharge

How much water do we ​use?

Based on Arizona Department of Water Resources (ADWR) data from 2001–2005, Arizona uses approximately 6.96 million acre-feet of water annually. A 2008 estimate by the University of Arizona Water Resources Research Center places that value as high as 8 million acre-feet. Collaborative estimates place the actual water used in Arizona at between 7.25 million and 7.75 million acre-feet annually. That’s about 2.4–2.5 trillion gallons a year.

 How do we use water?

Water in Arizona is used for cultural purposes (for and by people) and for in-stream uses, such as for the support of fish and riparian ecosystems.

Arizona's cultural use of water. Values based on Arizona Department of Water Resources.
Arizona’s cultural use of water. Values based on Arizona Department of Water Resources.
Approximately 69% of the available water supply in Arizona is used for agriculture.
Approximately 69% of the available water supply in Arizona is used for agriculture.

Again, skipping forward.

Values based on Arizona Department of Water Resources ABC’s of Water.
Values based on Arizona Department of Water Resources ABC’s of Water.

Water Sources

Arizona gets water from three major sources: surface water (which includes Colorado River water and water from other major rivers and streams), groundwater, and effluent or reclaimed water.

Groundwater

About 43% of the state’s water use comes from groundwater sources. Groundwater is found beneath the earth’s surface in natural reservoirs called aquifers. In most cases the aquifers that store water have been in place for millions of years. Throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, groundwater has been pumped out more rapidly than it has been replenished, creating a condition called overdraft. Though a large amount of water remains stored in Arizona’s aquifers, its availability is limited by location, depth and quality. By continuing to overdraft the state’s groundwater supplies, we challenge our ability to ensure a secure water supply for the future. In recognition of this threat, Arizona implemented the Groundwater Management Code in 1980. The Groundwater Code promotes water conservation and long-range planning of our water resources.

Colorado River Water

A separate category of surface water in Arizona is the water supplied through the Colorado River. The federal government constructed a system of reservoirs on the river to harness its supplies for use in several states. Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, and Mexico share the river’s resources. Rights to use Colorado River water are quantified by a string of legal authorities known as the “Law of the River.” Based on this body of law, Arizona has the right to use 2.8 million acre-feet annually of Colorado River water. Mohave, La Paz, and Yuma county water users rely on Colorado River as their principal water supply. When fully utilized, the Central Arizona Project (CAP) will deliver an annual average of 1.5 million acre-feet of Colorado River water to Maricopa, Pinal and Pima Counties.

Other Surface Water

Surface water from lakes, rivers, and streams is Arizona’s major renewable water resource. However, because of our desert climate, the amount of surface water available can vary dramatically from year to year, season to season, and place to place. In order to make the best use of the surface water when and where it is needed, storage reservoirs and delivery systems have been constructed throughout the state. Most notable are the major reservoir storage systems located on the Salt, Verde, Gila and Agua Fria rivers. Almost all of the natural surface water in Arizona has been developed.

Effluent

Reclaimed water, or effluent, is the one increasing water source in our state. As our population and water use grows, more treated wastewater will be available. Reclaimed water is treated to a quality that can be used for purposes such as agriculture, golf courses, parks, industrial cooling, or maintenance of wildlife areas.

Information made available by the Arizona Department of Water Resources and the University of Arizona Water Resources Research Center.

Since it is impossible to measure the exact values of water used across a state, some variance of values must be tolerated.

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So take the message from yesterday’s post and then from above: “Throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, groundwater has been pumped out more rapidly than it has been replenished, creating a condition called overdraft. Though a large amount of water remains stored in Arizona’s aquifers, its availability is limited by location, depth and quality. By continuing to overdraft the state’s groundwater supplies, we challenge our ability to ensure a secure water supply for the future.“, and remember that 2 + 2 = 4!  I.e. the power of logic.

Now to close with that personal perspective.

When Jean and I were living in Payson, Arizona, we were close to town but not so close as to be on Payson City’s water supply.  Thus we had a well on our land.  If I recall, the depth of the drilled well was about 250 feet and the water level was about 80 feet below ground surface.  We had been told from the house survey that the ‘normal’ water level was about 35 feet down.  While we were there the water level slowly, but steadily, continued to drop.

We were both very happy in Payson; indeed it is where Jean and I were married.

However, one night, I would guess last June, 2012, I had this weird dream that I had gone to the bathroom during the night, turned on the cold-water tap and nothing had flowed out.  Bizarre dream, wouldn’t you say!  But even more bizarre was that the image of no water was in my mind when I awoke in the morning, and I couldn’t shrug off a distinct feeling of disquiet.  That all lead to us coming up to Oregon, finding this wonderful property with an all-year creek, Bummer Creek, running through our land, and moving in on October 25th, 2012.

Funny old world at times!

Pharaoh enjoying Bummer Creek.
Pharaoh enjoying Bummer Creek.

Feelings, as in the animal variety!

It really is absurd to think that animals don’t have feelings!

Surely, a smiling Sweeny?
Surely, a smiling Sweeny?

Many thousands of animal owners will intuitively know that animals have feelings.  Not only expressed through their behaviour but also through many other subtle signs including facial expressions.  But what about the science behind this?

Back towards the end of May, there was an item on the BBC News website that was headlined: Ape tantrums: Chimps and bonobos emotional about choice. It caught my eye.

Ape tantrums: Chimps and bonobos emotional about choice

Like many humans, chimpanzees and bonobos react quite emotionally when they take risks that fail to pay off.

This is according to researchers from Duke University in the US, who developed decision-making games that the apes played to earn edible treats.

Some animals that lost the game – receiving a bland piece of cucumber rather than a preferred piece of banana – reacted with what looked like the ape equivalent of a tantrum.

The findings are published in Plos One.

It was then only a matter of a couple of ‘mouse clicks‘ to go to that Plos One publication of the findings.

Chimpanzees and Bonobos Exhibit Emotional Responses to Decision Outcomes

Abstract

The interface between cognition, emotion, and motivation is thought to be of central importance in understanding complex cognitive functions such as decision-making and executive control in humans. Although nonhuman apes have complex repertoires of emotional expression, little is known about the role of affective processes in ape decision-making. To illuminate the evolutionary origins of human-like patterns of choice, we investigated decision-making in humans’ closest phylogenetic relatives, chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and bonobos (Pan paniscus). In two studies, we examined these species’ temporal and risk preferences, and assessed whether apes show emotional and motivational responses in decision-making contexts. We find that (1) chimpanzees are more patient and more risk-prone than are bonobos, (2) both species exhibit affective and motivational responses following the outcomes of their decisions, and (3) some emotional and motivational responses map onto species-level and individual-differences in decision-making. These results indicate that apes do exhibit emotional responses to decision-making, like humans. We explore the hypothesis that affective and motivational biases may underlie the psychological mechanisms supporting value-based preferences in these species.

 

Wonderfully, just a short time later I found on Psychology Today an article about the emotions felt by dogs.  It was written by Stanley Coren, Ph.D., F.R.S.C., who is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Psychology at the University of British Columbia.  (As an aside, a quick search revealed that Prof. Coren was mentioned in a blog post back in October, 2011 in this place: The power of joy.)

So imagine my pleasure and delight at receiving written permission from the Professor to republish his article in full.  So without further ado, here it is.

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Which Emotions Do Dogs Actually Experience?

Dogs have the same emotions as a human 2 year-old child.

Published on March 14, 2013 by Stanley Coren, Ph.D., F.R.S.C. in Canine Corner

Since most of us routinely read emotions in our dogs (wagging tail means happy, cringing means afraid and so forth) it may be difficult to believe that the existence of real emotions in dogs was, and in some places still is, a point of scientific controversy. In the distant past it was presumed that dogs had very rich mental lives with feelings much like those of humans. However with the rise of science things began to change. We learned enough about the principles of physics and mechanics, so that we could build complex machines, and began to notice that living things (both people and animals) were also based upon by systems governed by mechanical rules and chemical processes. In the face of such discoveries, religions stepped in to suggest that there must be more to human beings than simply mechanical and chemical events. Church scholars insisted that people have souls, and the evidence they gave for this was the fact that humans have consciousness and feelings. Animals might have the same mechanical systems, but they did not have a divine spark, and therefore they do not have the ability to experience true feelings.

Since most research at the time was church sponsored it is not surprising that prominent scholars, such as the French philosopher and scientist René Descartes adopted this viewpoint. In a highly influential set of analyses, Descartes suggested that animals like dogs were simply some kind of machine. He would thus describe my Beagle, Darby, as simply being a dog-shaped chassis, filled with the biological equivalent of gears and pulleys. Although this machine doesn’t have consciousness and emotions it can still be programmed to do certain things.

In recent times science has progressed a long way beyond Descartes and we now understand that dogs have all of the same brain structures that produce emotions in humans. Dogs also have the same hormones and undergo the same chemical changes that humans do during emotional states. Dogs even have the hormone oxytocin, which, in humans, is involved with feeling love and affection for others. With the same neurology and chemistry that people have, it seems reasonable to suggest that dogs also have emotions that are similar to ours. However it is important to not go overboard and immediately assume that the emotional ranges of dogs and humans are the same.

To understand what dogs feel we must turn to research which was done to explore the emotions of humans. Not all people have the full range of all possible emotions. In fact at some points in your life you did not have the full complement of emotions that you feel and express today. Research shows that infants and very young children have a more limited range of emotions, but over time the child’s emotions begin to differentiate and they come to be able to experience different and more complex emotional states.

This data is important to our understanding of the emotional lives of dogs because researchers have come to believe that the mind of a dog is roughly equivalent to that of a human who is two to two-and-a-half years old. This conclusion holds for most mental abilities — including emotions. Thus we can look to the human research to see what we might expect of our dogs. Like a young child, dogs will clearly have emotions, but many fewer kinds of emotions than we find in adults.

I’ve illustrated this in the accompanying illustration. At birth a human infant only has an emotion that we might call excitement. This indicates how aroused he is, ranging from very calm up to a state of frenzy. Within the first weeks of life the excitement state comes to take on a positive or a negative flavor, so we can now detect the general emotions of contentment and distress. In the next couple of months disgust, fear, and anger, become detectable in the infant. Joy often does not appear until the infant is nearly six months of age and it is followed by the emergence of shyness or suspicion. True affection (the sort that it makes sense to use the label “love” for) does not fully emerge until nine or ten months of age.

dogemotions

The complex social emotions, those which have elements that must be learned, don’t appear until late. Shame and pride take more than three years to appear, while guilt appears around six months after these. A child must be nearly four years of age before it feels contempt.

This developmental sequence is the golden key to understanding the emotions of dogs. Dogs go through their developmental stages much more quickly than humans do, and have all of the emotional range that they will ever achieve by the time they are four to six months of age (depending on the rate of maturing in their breed). However, we know that the assortment of emotions available to the dog will not exceed that which is available to a human who is two to two-and-a-half years old. This means that a dog will have all of the basic emotions: joy, fear, anger, disgust and even love. However based on current research it seems likely that your dog will not have those more complex emotions like guilt, pride and shame.

Now many people might argue that they have seen evidence which indicates that their dog is capable of experiencing guilt. The usual situation is where you come home and your dog starts slinking around and showing discomfort, and you then find that he or she has left a smelly brown deposit on your kitchen floor. It is natural to conclude that the dog was acting in a way that shows that it is feeling  guilty about its transgression. However this is not guilt, but simply the more basic emotion of fear. The dog has learned that when you appear and his droppings are visible on the floor, bad things happen to him. What you see is his fear of punishment—he will never feel guilt.

So what does this mean for those of us who live with, and interact with dogs? The good news is that you can feel free to dress your dog in that silly costume for a party. He will not feel shame, regardless how ridiculous he looks. He will also not feel pride at winning a prize at a dog show or an obedience competition. However your dog can still feel love for you, and contentment when you are around, and aren’t these the emotions we truly value?

Stanley Coren is the author of many books including: Born to Bark; Do Dogs Dream? The Modern Dog; Why Do Dogs Have Wet Noses? The Pawprints of History; How Dogs Think; How To Speak Dog; Why We Love the Dogs We Do; What Do Dogs Know? The Intelligence of Dogs; Why Does My Dog Act That Way? Understanding Dogs for Dummies; Sleep Thieves; The Left-hander Syndrome

Copyright SC Psychological Enterprises Ltd. May not be reprinted or reposted without permission

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NB: Do make a bookmark of Canine Corner.

So going to return to that BBC News item.  I broke off after that reference to the findings being published in Plos One.  This is how the BBC item continued:

The researchers worked with 23 chimps and 15 bonobos in two ape sanctuaries in the Republic of Congo.

“The animals were all [rescued] orphans of the bushmeat trade,” explained lead researcher Alexandra Rosati, now at Yale University.

“They’re sort of in semi-captivity, but it’s possible to play games with them.

“It’s as close as we can come to wild animals without actually being in the wild.”

Dr Rosati, who studies problem-solving in apes in order to examine the origins of human behaviour, designed two games.

In the first, the animals could choose between receiving a relatively small food reward immediately, or receiving a larger reward but having to wait for it.

The second game involved choosing between a “safe” and a “risky” option. The safe option was six peanuts hidden under a bowl. But a second bowl concealed either a slice of cucumber or a highly favoured portion of banana.

Many of the apes – both bonobos and chimps – became emotional when they had to wait or took a gamble that did not pay off.

The researchers recorded some very tantrum-like responses: vocalisations including “pout moans” and “screams”, as well as anxious scratching and banging on the bars of the enclosure.

“Some of the reactions look similar to a kid [shouting] ‘no, I wanted it!’,” said Dr Rosati.

Emotional decisions

The results, Dr Rosati explained, suggest that the emotional component of decision-making – feelings of frustration and regret that are so fundamental to our own decisions – are intrinsic to ape society and are not uniquely human.

Emotions may have shaped the way great apes, including chimpanzees and bonobos, live.
Emotions may have shaped the way great apes, including chimpanzees and bonobos, live.

The researchers also found differences in the way the two species responded to the games; chimps were more willing to take risks, and also more patient than bonobos.

This could suggest that the apes’ capacity for emotion may have helped shape the way they live.

“These differences might be reflected in differences in how the apes choose to forage in the wild,” said Dr Rosati.

“This might be why chimpanzees are more likely to engage in risky strategies like hunting, in that you could spend all day pursuing a monkey, but end up with nothing.

Overall, she said that the results suggested that decision-making in apes involved moods and motivations similar to our own.

OK, better let the dogs outside now – I’m on the receiving end of that look!

The habit of doing nothing!

Last word for a while on the power of meditation.

This is not a single topic blog. But the last few days have brought such a wealth of marvellous stuff that I couldn’t resist this final, for the time being, post on the benefits of slowing down, of taking a break – meditation, in other words.

First, and I wish I could remember from whence it came, I found this essay by Bertrand Russell In Praise of Idleness It’s a wonderful piece of writing from one of the great masters of the art.  Take this extract from just the first paragraph, (and the photo insertion is from me!):

Bertrand Russell (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970)
Bertrand Russell (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970)

I think that there is far too much work done in the world, that immense harm is caused by the belief that work is virtuous, and that what needs to be preached in modern industrial countries is quite different from what always has been preached. Everyone knows the story of the traveler in Naples who saw twelve beggars lying in the sun (it was before the days of Mussolini), and offered a lira to the laziest of them. Eleven of them jumped up to claim it, so he gave it to the twelfth. This traveler was on the right lines. But in countries which do not enjoy Mediterranean sunshine idleness is more difficult, and a great public propaganda will be required to inaugurate it. I hope that, after reading the following pages, the leaders of the YMCA will start a campaign to induce good young men to do nothing. If so, I shall not have lived in vain.

Then from out of the Transition Network stables came this interview by Rob Hopkins with Sophy Banks on the Power of Not Doing Stuff.  Just going to pick out a couple of exchanges that really struck me.

Sophy, I’m sure you get asked the question lots of times, but how would you describe Inner Transition ? What’s Inner Transition for you?

I gave a talk about Inner Transition in Canada just recently, and someone said “what I want from the talk is, what’s the most succinct story? What’s the E=mc² of Inner Transition?” The way that I’m talking about that at the moment is to say the absolute core of Inner Transition is that in our groups, within ourselves, in our relationships, in what we’re doing in our communities, how can we be creating a culture that supports us to be in a state of feeling resourced, feeling empowered, feeling seen and appreciated? With the understanding that when we have those kind of external conditions, we find ourselves in a state where we’re the most open to new ideas, the most open to connection, the most able to build relationships with people who are different from us.

That’s the core of it, to understand that internally we can be in different inner states, we can be in a state where we feel stressed and closed and driven or whatever, or we can be in a state where we’re open and creative and learning and available. That’s one way of framing Inner Transition, how do we keep recreating that?

Part of it, I think, is when we’re all in that state of being open and creative and connected with each other and with ourselves, we make the best decisions. We’re able to take the longest and the widest view, we’re able to see the consequences of what we do, so there’s also something which has really been resonating for me. That’s not only the process we need for Transition, that’s the end-state we want to get to. Part of what’s not working in our culture is that lots of the people with a lot of power who are making really key decisions are in a state of constant stress and pressure and having to make very narrow decisions, decisions based on very narrow viewpoints.

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One of the expressions you’ve been using increasingly over the last couple of years is “healthy human culture” and this idea that that’s ultimately the aim of Transition, to enable that and to create that. What does that mean? Can you define “healthy human culture”?

This is where my enquiry took me. I got really interested in seeing polarities and dualities – people have been doing that for centuries – about our culture and calling it dualistic. I came across Riane Eisler’s work. She talks about basically two kinds of human culture. One is based on partnership and one is based on domination. I got really interested in that and the question what if that’s true? It’s a big proposition.

If that’s true, what’s underneath that and what is it about what goes on inside us that we’re constructed, the way we’ve evolved, that causes that to be so, that there are these two stable states? I feel like I’ve been looking at lots of different territories, I’m really interested in trauma and how that affects us in the creation of the unconscious that comes through trauma.

This whole thing about how we create unintended consequences. The idea that anybody could have sat down and designed the consequences that we’re living with is inconceivable. However dysfunctional people were and however much they’re interested in wealth or power or anything, I just don’t believe that anybody intended it to be like this. How do we get this as a by-product of something that’s natural and…just who we are, who we’ve evolved to be.

So for me, the question around “healthy human culture” is one of the inner. What’s the inner state of a culture that creates partnership, learns to live within its resources, that’s oriented towards joyful, pleasurable existence, that has a belief about ourselves as humans that we’re trustworthy and generous and want good things for the future, good things for our children. What I see very very strongly: in a lot of the depth work that I’ve done, what I see is when you peel away a lot of the damage, what you find is a profound and I could say universal. In my experience (I haven’t worked with the psychopaths and the most damaged people) but that sense that if we’re healed and whole what we want is to love each other and do good in the world.

Then there’s another state we could be in, which comes back to your first question, where we feel under-resourced, disempowered, under attack. There’s not enough and I’m taught that other people are selfish, violent and greedy so I need to fight for what I can get. In order to have status I’ve got to have stuff, I’ve got to prove myself. With that goes a whole lot of very difficult feelings.

I’m very interested in that idea, that in unhealthy culture we have a whole lot of unmanageable feelings centred around shame and not being good enough that we then disown – I can’t deal with that in myself, I’ll put it on to you, I’ll find somebody else to have that experience and then I’ll watch it in them and feel OK about myself. It’s really interesting to look at cultures of domination and colonialism and capitalism and power-over as being driven by the need to not feel stuff myself, but grab enough power so that I can do it to somebody else.

The whole driver for those things is a psychological state of splitting and projection. When I bring that back to me and what culture I create in my relationships and my groups, you see it out in those big systems in the world but it’s also a very precise way of understanding and discerning what culture do I make in this room with these people, around splitting and projection or unity.

That’s quite a big answer! The short answer is “healthy human culture” is that one where we reel resourced, empowered, connected, appreciated and safe. Those seem to be the 5 things. If we have those, we are in that state of openness and availability and connection and learning and receptivity and then taking good action instead of action that creates a problem somewhere else in the system.

It really is a fascinating and thought-provoking interview.  Go and read it in full, or better still, find somewhere to sit and relax, close your eyes and listen to it.

Moving on.

There was an article in Nature about the Brain: Neuroscience: Idle minds – Neuroscientists are trying to work out why the brain does so much when it seems to be doing nothing at all.

For volunteers, a brain-scanning experiment can be pretty demanding. Researchers generally ask participants to do something — solve mathematics problems, search a scene for faces or think about their favoured political leaders — while their brains are being imaged.

But over the past few years, some researchers have been adding a bit of down time to their study protocols. While subjects are still lying in the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanners, the researchers ask them to try to empty their minds. The aim is to find out what happens when the brain simply idles. And the answer is: quite a lot.

Again, a very important read so do go across and read it in full.  Because, you will come to this:

Zen and the art of network maintenance

Raichle favours the idea that activity in the resting state helps the brain to stay organized. The connections between neurons are continually shifting as people age and learn, but humans maintain a sense of self throughout the upheaval. Spontaneous activity might play a part in maintaining that continuity. “Connections between neurons turn over in minutes, hours, days and weeks,” says Raichle. “The structure of the brain will be different tomorrow but we will still remember who we are.”

Or perhaps the activity is part of the reshaping process, tweaking connections while we idle. Several teams have reported changes in resting connectivity after language and memory tasks and motor learning. Chris Miall, a behavioural brain scientist at the University of Birmingham, UK, and his colleagues have shown that spontaneous activity at rest can be perturbed by what has just happened. The team scanned volunteers at rest, and then asked them to learn a task involving using a joystick to track a moving target. When the participants were scanned at rest again, the team could see the effects of motor learning in the resting networks. That study, and subsequent work along the same lines, suggests that “the brain is not only thinking about supper coming up, but it’s also processing the recent past and converting some of that into long-term memories”, says Miall. The network changes are specific to the tasks performed.

So, hopefully, anyone who has read this post and who would like to slow down, to practise the art of doing nothing, will be eager to learn how. Well, keep reading!

Yesterday, I referred to Leo Babauta’s website.  Thanks to Leo’s wonderful ‘uncopyright‘ offer, I am free to republish his ‘How To Meditate‘ guide.

How to Do It Daily

There are lots and lots of ways to meditate. But our concern is not to find a perfect form of meditation — it’s to form the daily habit of meditation. And so our method will be as simple as possible.

1. Commit to just 2 minutes a day. Start simply if you want the habit to stick. You can do it for 5 minutes if you feel good about it, but all you’re committing to is 2 minutes each day.

2. Pick a time and trigger. Not an exact time of day, but a general time, like morning when you wake up, or during your lunch hour. The trigger should be something you already do regularly, like drink your first cup of coffee, brush your teeth, have lunch, or arrive home from work.

3. Find a quiet spot. Sometimes early morning is best, before others in your house might be awake and making lots of noise. Others might find a spot in a park or on the beach or some other soothing setting. It really doesn’t matter where — as long as you can sit without being bothered for a few minutes. A few people walking by your park bench is fine.

4. Sit comfortably. Don’t fuss too much about how you sit, what you wear, what you sit on, etc. I personally like to sit on a pillow on the floor, with my back leaning against a wall, because I’m very inflexible. Others who can sit cross-legged comfortably might do that instead. Still others can sit on a chair or couch if sitting on the floor is uncomfortable. Zen practitioners often use a zafu, a round cushion filled with kapok or buckwheat. Don’t go out and buy one if you don’t already have one. Any cushion or pillow will do, and some people can sit on a bare floor comfortably.

5. Start with just 2 minutes. This is really important. Most people will think they can meditate for 15-30 minutes, and they can. But this is not a test of how strong you are at staying in meditation — we are trying to form a longer-lasting habit. And to do that, we want to start with just a two minutes. You’ll find it much easier to start this way, and forming a habit with a small start like this is a method much more likely to succeed. You can expand to 5-7 minutes if you can do it for 7 straight days, then 10 minutes if you can do it for 14 straight days, then 15 minutes if you can stick to it for 21 straight days, and 20 if you can do a full month.

6. Focus on your breath. As you breathe in, follow your breath in through your nostrils, then into your throat, then into your lungs and belly. Sit straight, keep your eyes open but looking at the ground and with a soft focus. If you want to close your eyes, that’s fine. As you breathe out, follow your breath out back into the world. If it helps, count … one breath in, two breath out, three breath in, four breath out … when you get to 10, start over. If you lose track, start over. If you find your mind wandering (and you will), just pay attention to your mind wandering, then bring it gently back to your breath. Repeat this process for the few minutes you meditate. You won’t be very good at it at first, most likely, but you’ll get better with practice.

And that’s it. It’s a very simple practice, but you want to do it for 2 minutes, every day, after the same trigger each day. Do this for a month and you’ll have a daily meditation habit.

Now to the close.

Beautifully rendered thanks to Terry Hershey.  For on his website there is this:

When I pause, I put myself in a new or different environment.
When I pause, I create spaces–or sanctuaries–in which renewal can be born.
When I pause, I allow my soul to savor, relish, value, honor, welcome, see, celebrate, wonder, and to experience grace.

Enough said!

Overload and rescue!

Starting to look like a bit of a theme!

Over the last few weeks there have been a number of posts touching on the role of meditation and the huge potential benefits of taking a little time out each day.  For those new to Learning from Dogs or to this particular thread, here are links to previous posts.

On the 19th June, there was a post called Maybe home is found in our quietness. In that post there were three references to the power of meditation, that is in a curative sense.  Here’s a small extract from that post:

A few weeks ago when meeting our local doctor for the first time since we moved to Oregon, I had grumbled about bouts of terrible short-term memory recall and more or less had shrugged my shoulders in resignation that there was nothing one could do: it was just part of getting older, I guessed!

“On the contrary”, responded Dr. Hurd, continuing, “There’s growing evidence that our information-crowded lives: cell phones; email; constant TV; constant news, is pumping too much for our brains to manage.”

Dr. Hurd continued, “Think about it! Our brains have to process every single sensory stimulus. The research is suggesting that our brains are being over-loaded and then the brain just dumps the excess data. If that is the case, and the evidence is pointing in that direction, then try thirty minutes of meditation each day; give your brain a chance to rest.”

Just hang on to what Dr. Hurd said, “There’s growing evidence that our information-crowded lives: cell phones; email; constant TV; constant news, is pumping too much for our brains to manage.”

The second post was on the 25th June,  Unlocking the inner parts of our brain.  It included this:

The second was a recent science programme on the BBC under the Horizon series. The programme was called,The Truth About Personality.

…….

Within the programme came the astounding fact that even ten minutes a day meditation can help the brain achieve a more balanced personality (balance in terms of not being overly negative in one’s thoughts).

You will not have failed to note, “even ten minutes a day meditation can help the brain achieve a more balanced personality“.

So let me move on!

Not sure how I came across the website Natural health news but on July 03, 2013, Zach Miller wrote a piece under the title of Information Fatigue Syndrome (IFS): What it is and how it affects you.  I’m hoping it’s OK to republished Zach Miller’s article.  Because it so perfectly supports those referred posts.

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Information Fatigue Syndrome (IFS): What it is and how it affects you

Wednesday, July 03, 2013 by: Zach C. Miller

(NaturalNews) These days, we’re living in an increasingly connected, electronic world. Every day we use the internet, computers, cell phones, Blackberries, and Bluetooth devices. We read newspapers, watch TV and listen to internet radio (and even read ads on billboards as we drive down the freeway). While all our media and technology is convenient and useful (we’re always just an internet search away from the answer to any question that pops into our heads, especially if our cellular phone has mobile internet), being connected so much results in something called “Information Overload”, a term coined by futurist Alvin Toffler back in 1970. The term refers to our inability to absorb and process all the information we’re exposed to, and this information is literally everywhere these days.

The problem defined

Information Overload, or “Information Fatigue Syndrome (IFS),” occurs when we over-expose ourselves to media, technology and information. Our brains have trouble keeping up with everything that we are feeding them, and the distorted-spin EMF energy fields we’re being exposed to don’t help the case (generated by cell phones and wi-fi). We end up having headaches and being exhausted and end up making mistakes and wrong decisions. The main point is, when exposed to too much information and technology, we tend to shut down.

Causes

Information Overload is now commonplace around the world, at work, at home and during leisure time. Some of the causes include:

– Widespread and easy access to the Internet

– Social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter

– Cheap and accessible use of cell phones, texting, and mobile internet

– Online and offline news, media, and advertising: TV, newspapers, magazines, and billboards

Simple solutions

The only upside to these problems is that they have a relatively simple solution; take a day off occasionally from being connected to any media and the internet, and set limits on your internet in terms of hours per day. These restrictions may sound scary for us web-addicted techno-humans, but it’s absolutely imperative if we want to regain control of our energy levels, mental health, and life in general in an increasingly information-infused modern era.

Take a full day off from all media and electronic devices (including cell phones; this may be nearly impossible for some), and go out into nature and pursue outdoor interests. If you feel better, which you likely will, take a day off occasionally whenever you need one. If you’d rather a set schedule, take one day per week and set it aside as a internet-free day. If this is too often, make it bi-monthly. Pick a schedule that fits in with work or school. A key point being that even good things need to be used in moderation, including useful techo-goodies as the internet, Facebook, and Twitter updates.

Sources for this article include:

http://www.wnd.com

http://www.infogineering.net/understanding-information-overload.htm

http://psychcentral.com

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_field

About the author:
Zach C. Miller was raised from an early age to believe in the power and value of healthy-conscious living. He later found in himself a talent for writing, and it only made sense to put two & two together! He has written and published articles about health & wellness and other topics on ehow.com and here on NaturalNews. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Applied Science.

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The problem, I’m sure, is that the vast majority of readers of this post will give a sage nod because they intuitively  agree and …… do nothing about it!  Trust me, I’m just as guilty.  My short-term memory is really crap and it feeds my worry that this may be early stage dementia. (My sister’s recent death from dementia doesn’t help!)

So even though my doctor spoke about the benefits of meditation, even though there have been other articles recently posted on this blog, even though I would, supposedly, do anything to arrest or reverse my memory problems, guess what; I’m pathetic!  Kept up taking 30 minutes away from everything for a week and then the good intentions crumbled.

If this verbal slap across my wrists is resonating out there, dear reader, then that’s good.  Because, I am going to try harder!  From today!

So how to close this! Obviously with more advice about meditating! None better than from Leo Babauta over on Zen Habits.  It’s called How to Meditate Daily.  Starts thus:

The habit of meditation is one of the most powerful things I’ve ever learned.

Amazingly, it’s also one of the most simple habits to do — you can do it anywhere, any time, and it will always have immediate benefits.

How many habits can you say that about?

While many people think of meditation as something you might do with a teacher, in a Zen Center, it can be as simple as paying attention to your breath while sitting in your car or on the train, or while sitting at the coffee shop or in your office, or while walking or showering.

It can take just one or two minutes if you’re busy. There’s no excuse for not doing it, when you simplify the meditation habit.

So, go on, take a couple of minutes to read the rest of the article!

And then realise there’s yet another wonderful lesson we learn from dogs – chilling out!

Cleo and Sweeny - just chilling out!
Sweeny and Cleo – just chilling out!

The magic of clouds.

In appreciation of clouds.

Live with your head in the clouds.
Live with your head in the clouds.

In the wake of yesterday’s post about the power of meditation, this recent TED Talk seemed a perfect way to end the week.

Published on Jul 16, 2013

You don’t need to plan an exotic trip to find creative inspiration. Just look up, says Gavin Pretor-Pinney, founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society. As he shares charming photos of nature’s finest aerial architecture, Pretor-Pinney calls for us all to take a step off the digital treadmill, lie back and admire the beauty in the sky above.

Want to learn a little more about the different types of cloud?  Then go here.  Want to learn more about the Cloud Appreciation Society?  More details here.

And who knows, you may even see your dog in those clouds!

One is never far from a dog!
One is never far from a dog!

Unlocking the inner parts of our brain.

The healing power of meditation and self-reflection.

Yesterday, I wrote about two seemingly disconnected events that appeared to resonate together.  One of those was a comment left by reader Patrice Ayme.

But that harmony didn’t stop with those two events.  Here’s how it continued to flow.

Patrice has a recently published post called Consciousness I.  To be honest, some of the concepts have been a bit of a struggle for me to understand.  However, at one point in that essay, Patrice wrote:

Meditation is a most precious, most human state of consciousness. Whereas sentience is shared with many animals on this planet, obviously, not so with the capacity for meditation. meditation allows to shut down most (over-) used neuronal circuitry, and engage more strategically important parts of the brain.

Action without meditation is as slavedom without wisdom.

That really struck a chord with me because, once again, the power of meditation has been brought into focus.  Regular readers of Learning from Dogs may recall that just six days ago, I wrote a piece called Maybe home is found in our quietness.  There were three references to meditation in that post that I will take the liberty of repeating today.

The first was:

A few weeks ago when meeting our local doctor for the first time since we moved to Oregon, I had grumbled about bouts of terrible short-term memory recall and more or less had shrugged my shoulders in resignation that there was nothing one could do: it was just part of getting older, I guessed!

“On the contrary”, responded Dr. Hurd, continuing, “There’s growing evidence that our information-crowded lives: cell phones; email; constant TV; constant news, is pumping too much for our brains to manage.”

Dr. Hurd continued, “Think about it!  Our brains have to process every single sensory stimulus.  The research is suggesting that our brains are being over-loaded and then the brain just dumps the excess data.  If that is the case, and the evidence is pointing in that direction, then try thirty minutes of meditation each day; give your brain a chance to rest.”

Then later on in that post came:

The second was a recent science programme on the BBC under the Horizon series.  The programme was called,The Truth About Personality.

…….

Within the programme came the astounding fact that even ten minutes a day meditation can help the brain achieve a more balanced personality (balance in terms of not being overly negative in one’s thoughts).

The last one was in a short talk by writer Pico Iyer  meditating on the meaning of home, the joy of traveling and the serenity of standing still.

Now come forward just three days to last Tuesday evening. Jean and I sat down and more or less randomly wondered if there was something of interest to watch on the website Top Documentary Films.  Just by chance, we came across a film by filmmaker Isabelle Raynauld with the title of Mystical Brain.

Here’s a tiny snippet from the film:

Filmmaker Isabelle Raynauld offers up scientific research that suggests that mystical ecstasy is a transformative experience.

It could contribute to people’s psychic and physical health, treat depression and speed up the healing process when combined with conventional medicine.

This documentary reveals the exploratory work of a team from the University of Montreal who seek to understand the states of grace experienced by mystics and those who meditate. In French with English subtitles.

However, as interesting as this snippet is, the power of the film is in the area of spirituality and the way that meditation can open up the brain to an incredible range of mystical experiences, as well as the impressive health benefits of slowing the mind.  Maybe, just maybe, the power of religious and spiritual experience is being understood, with some very surprising results.

So please watch the whole documentary on-line. The website of the Mind & Life Institute will also be of interest.

To underscore why the film should be watched, there is much about the nature of the theta rhythms in the brain.  The relevance of these?  Simply that when the brain is generating these regular slow oscillations the human condition is one of great peace.

Dhalia showing us humans how easy it is to meditate!
Dhalia showing us humans how easy it is to meditate!

Call it prayer, meditation, relaxation, building internal energy or life force, compassion, love, patience, generosity or forgiveness; what does it matter.  It’s what it is doing to you that matters!

So when you bury your face in the warm fur of your beautiful dog and both you and your dog appear to be transported to some beautiful, magical place you have entered that indestructible sense of well-being.

Actually, let me make one small correction. Both you and your dog have entered that indestructible sense of well-being.

Only one way to finish today’s post: “I think, therefore I am!” René Descartes.

A very simple notion.

Our beautiful planet.

As is the way of things, two completely disconnected events rang out yesterday, as if in harmony.

The first was this stunning picture released by NASA.

A distant view of home!
A distant view of home!

The full description may be read here, but I have taken the liberty of republishing this extract:

Earth, which is 898 million miles (1.44 billion kilometers) away in this image, appears as a blue dot at center right; the moon can be seen as a fainter protrusion off its right side. An arrow indicates their location in the annotated version. The other bright dots nearby are stars.

Now it doesn’t take too much imagination to put that minute speck of light, our Planet Earth, into its scale of meaning and importance vis-a-vis the universe.  You get my message, I’m sure.

The second event was a comment left by long-term reader and supporter of Learning from Dogs, Patrice Ayme.  The comment was on yesterday’s post, The meaning of wildness, and I quote:

Excellent article. Clearly primary temperate rain forest, nearly gone everywhere except in the American North west, has to be reintroduced.

Sheep ought not to be removed by man, but be removed by wolf, bear, felids. Cows would feel whole, having to fight off lions. And man’s sense of what nature means, vital to insure our survival, would blossom in this hour of need, when we have arisen as the planet’s gods. gods of evil, or gods of wisdom? That is the most important question.

“gods of evil, or gods of wisdom?”

To everybody I say this.  (And I am most certainly not excluding me.) When you next look at yourself in the mirror will you make a decision?  Will you be a god of evil or a god of wisdom?