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Could the Government Shut-Down Lead to Brain Damage?

Image Credit: Jasper Johns, Three Flags, 1958, encaustic on canvas, Whitney Museum of American Art

Better Brains Dispatch from Dr. G and Sarah Kornfeld...10.04.2013

Is it possible that with all of the stress of politics, status power plays, late hours, poor sleep, free-floating anxiety, blaming others for their own actions, and finally, having no quiet time at all, that our government is damaging its and our collective brain and nervous system?

We at The George Greenstein Institute (GGI) have some tips we’d like to give to our US government officials to see if we can help slow down long-term memory loss, curb anxiety, stave off heart disease and reboot national trust circuits for effective governance.  There may be no better time than now: Our government seems wanting of some brain knowledge on how to get "unstuck" or it might have a neural shutdown of its own.

 Here is a no-brainer approach to getting "unstuck" – so easy, it might speed up the process of resolution and getting our country back to work:

1.     Stop, reappraise and admit you need to take a nice slow breath. Maybe you've read Congressman Tim Ryan's little primer A Mindful Nation. Or perhaps you caught theHuffington Review post review of highly successful CEO’s and leaders (Bill Ford of Ford Motors, former president Bill Clinton and even Rupert Murdoch) who have learned to stop, breathe and cool their jets! Yes Meditation is good business, good for health and good for governance. Still not convinced? Of course you need evidence-based medicine, which our own National Institute of Health is only too glad to supply once its website gets turned back on.

2.     Take a walk! Leave the building and walk briskly for twenty minutes a day, one hundred and fifty minutes a week. That's right, each member of the Congress and our President needs to get out and get their hearts pumping blood to their brains. As our scientific and medical communities push out robust neurobiological research, we can now say with utter confidence, your daily jaunt will increase the needed levels of hormones to reduce toxic stress, improve synaptic bonding for memory consolidation and open the cognitive floodgates to problem–solving.  Yet with all of the Filibustering, posturing and finger pointing, we bet you are starting to forget why you even made the decision to shut down. 

3.     Put down the Scotch on the Rocks and give your staff members a hug. No, really. Put the drink down and get a better rush. Do this “hug thing” five times a day till you solve the problem in your own party before entering into the trust circle with President Obama and other members of Congress. To boost your confidence, consider research conducted by Dr. Paul Zak, esteemed neuroeconomist who has studied the science of trust, bonding and hugs for over a decade.  Zak, an expert on the writings of Adam Smith, shows us that oxytocin, the "moral molecule," runs freely in trust building, hug-generating nations that govern economic systems throughout the world.  No surprise, the USA is not included on the trust list and so our elected leaders should probably follow Zak's advice: hug more.

  That's right, Breath, Walk, Hug. It's that simple, that critical, ladies and gentlemen of the House and Senate. Yes, we want, and need you to take control of your central nervous systems, because, quite frankly, it takes a healthy mind, brain and body to recover from this shut down shock to your system... and ours.  *******

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Rituals of Outside: Freeing ourselves from Self-Enslavement

Image Credit: Sam Apple  http://www.samapple.com/sam_index2.html

Dispatch for Spacious Minds from Dr. G.

[The following blog is not written to promote religious precepts but rather to highlight the secularization of Jewish and Buddhist ritual of "mindfulness" for the health and freedom to BE. -- ed.]

It doesn't take an ear to the ground to hear the rumble of marching armies filled with mindfulness and wisdom teachers rising up to share a practice that has touched the depths of their hearts and changed their lives for the better.  Why the uprising?  Why now? 

Some blame the daunting economic stress of our time, pushing people to their brink and forcing contemplative teachers out of their caves and living rooms and into the light of social transmission. Others say we are at the dawning of the Mahayana era - a time of the "Great Vehicle" when a simple method of checking into your "inside mind" is being shared not just by monks and rabbis but by ordinary folk and civic leaders across USA city, state and Federal lines. 

The most noted mindfulness advocate found on the "Hill" is Ohio Congressman Tim Ryan. The book A MINDFUL NATION is a slim, bold account by Ryan, a rising political leader whose own life has been transformed by taking up the contemplative "insight" practice transmitted from school rooms to board rooms to military training grounds.  Ryan, along with readers and followers of Bodies in Space, Twitter and Facebook is well aware that neuroscientists have logged in umpteen hours to discover the discreet features of mindfulness and related contemplative practices, like Zen and T.M., that impact both children and adults.  A growing number of studies bear up distinctions between focused attention and non judgemental awareness, the biomarkers of correlated stress reduction or growth in neurological real estate.  How refreshing for a civil servant to bring the art and science to  the Hill!

Image Credit: Congressman Tim Ryan, CBS news

Yet, here it is spring, the time of renewed energy, with Judeo-Christian and Persian ritual holidays like Passover, Easter and Nowruz to remind us, if not of the 365 different ways to decorate or burnish a celebratory egg, then the time we spend with family to stop, breath and share a moment of our humanity with each other.  As someone raised in a Jewish family and who later studied Buddhism with one of the foremost Buddhist scholars in the world (Maseo Abe), I've become increasingly sensitive to the question of enslavement, especially the enslavement of our mind at the cost of personal, social and political freedoms.

So what does Passover have to do with mindfulness, A Mindful Nation?  Why speak of comparative religious ritual when John Kabat Zinn, a leading public health author and mindfulness researcher went out of his way to secularize mindfulness for medical purposes? Dig a little deeper pass the language of Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction -- Kabat Zinn's brand of mindfulness practice -- and back into the Buddhist traditions out of which it grew.  You'll find richly articulated, comparative values for waking up to the choice to be "free," addressed in Jewish and Buddhist commentaries like.  So saturated is the language of liberation within Buddhist mindfulness contemplation, one can't help but make a comparison to the political ideas defining the Jewish Passover, matzah madness notwithstanding.

But don't let the religious references dissuade you from considering the existential and neurological point: Being "mind awake," as we in the knowledge transfer business are apt to say, is a practice that cuts across gender, class, cultures, traditions and governments.  It is a practice engendered by flow experts, artists, dancers, rock climbers and surgeons -- all those named in Czikzentmihalyi's early writings on the actions that take us "beyond boredom."  Mindfulness -- for all ages -- is "brain smart" not just because it engages us in the "present moment" with a profound correlated effect on our neurological default networks.  It is brain smart and mind awake because it is one clear cut method shown to interrupt nervous system habits wrapped in personal narratives of enslavement, be it addiction, depression or attachment to ideas, organizations or governmental policies that no longer serve our right to be politically, culturally and intellectually free.  (I'll leave the philosophic and scientific debate over whether we "have a mind" to another blog.)

Turning to the poet, I say, let 'hope spring eternal' so that every person, every student and parent, every scientist and artist, every member of  government, corporate and Military orgs learn to wake up to the  transience and stillness of inside / outside mind and "take refuge" in the basic freedom to take a breath, change a brain and just "be."

To learn more about the congressman who is bringing "mindfulness" to the "Hill" and enabling a healthy policy discussion to help our Military leaders and VETS click here:  http://mindfulnation.org/

To learn more about the public health and neuroscience focused on mindfulness research go to http://www.mindfulexperience.org/mindfo.php

To discover the mindful and ecological aspects of Passover liberation, go to http://www.tikkun.org/nextgen/why-retell-the-passover-narrative

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Outside is Bad: Unthinking The CROOD perspective

Image Credit: The CROODS, art direction by Paul Duncan and Dominique Louise

Dispatch on BETTER BRAINS by Adria Williams, mommy blogger for Bodiesinspace.com

There’s so much talk about kids getting outside today. The “experts” have answered my question over and over.  But I took no true look at the issue until The Croods and Katarina!

Have you seen "The CROODS"? A must see family movie for this spring! Reflecting back on Father Crood's insistence "Outside is BAD!,"  I am  reminded that outside takes time away from my all-too-busy life. And frankly, my family had become like "The CROODS".

And Katarina?  Well that's the name my daughter has named for her self. She prefers this name to her birth name, and for this story we’ll settle with Katarina!

______________________

When I was a kid you had to drag me in the house. The streetlights were our queue that time outside was over and it was time to sync back into life INSIDE, a space filled with parents! I can still here the voices,

"Did you do your chores?"

"Did you clean your room?"

"Did you feed the fish?" (I never got that dog!)

Did you, Did you, Did you and then with dinner time, the litany of commands followed:

"Wash your hands"

"Chew with your mouth closed."

The list went on. But at least in my house, "Did you have fun outside?" was never the question despite the fact I ALWAYS had fun outside! Based on the flowing rivers of stories I had to share, it was clear I had fun going outside.  Not going outside was a punishment and torture!         

The Balance Between Outside & Fun-OUTSIDE!

Simply put, INSIDE had become more interesting for tech savvy kids these days.  They have video games, TV and a room full of STUFF!  (Yes parents, we are responsible for buying that stuff!)  At the onset of this DECADE OF STUFF, I too found myself trapped inside.  Being the mom who refuses to have cable, who chooses to watch shows on HULU or Netflix and who feels utterly free and creative when it comes to making up stories and fun for the kids, I was determined to get to the bottom of this anxiety around OUTSIDE!

My solution?   “Outside vs. Inside Experiences 4 Parents & Kids”

First I told my children the TV, the video games and the Internet are not going to cry, be mad or miss you when you go outside.  In fact – they don’t grow, they can’t run and they surely won’t throw a temper tantrum. Slightly apprehensive to bend and LET GO, they agreed that STUFF wasn’t as important as experiences they could create outside. (OK, I admit it, Katarina's 'inside addiction' was hard to break.)

Next I told them "Mom" would go outside with them and teach them how to have fun OUTSIDE. I talked to them about how going outside helps them escape “The Parents" and all of their "Did You's."  Here’s the catch: Today Mommy wasn’t’ going to be a parent she’s going to be an explorer, a pirate, a playmate or a movie-maker.

Inventio!Brains Play OUTSIDE!  William, Sean & Amaya aka Katarina The games we play:  Beware outside can get so fun you won’t want to go inside and be a grown up!

o   I Spy:  This is was the first of our outside games. You simply go out side and see what you can spy your senses. What do you see, smell & hear? You can play this game anywhere. Try doing it at different times of the day. (Remember our ancient brains and memory are trained to distinguish between sunset and sunrise.)  Your children's responses will make you smile and spending time together is accomplished on several fronts!

o   Bike and Park:  We have some great bike trails near our house. We bike to a local park and spend time playing games like I Spy.  Bring snacks and water! Or make it a picnic lunch day.

o   Movie Makers:  this takes technology outside and allows them to create their own videos… Pick a topic together or decide on a theme. What’s on my block? The Trees in my neighborhood? People We Meet Improvise on a script and film on site.  You’ll be surprised at the unimagined shots you’ll capture on film. You can choose to edit or plan to watch the footage after dinner! It’s a blast to BE THE SHOW! We’ll post our first movie next month.

Lastly, dear parents, be sure to create incentives! That may sound like a bribe to some but consider the growing number of conferences on games and gamification, with ample data revealing why our children choose inside vs outside games. It's a simple formula:  INCENTIVE  + (doable) CHALLENGE = REWARD.  

Incentives that promise (and follow through on)  reward provide motivation.  Incentives can be any thing -- from making healthy, yummy cupcakes when you come back to an hour of TV or the chance to play a video game with Mom. So Parents, get inside your children's world. Learn from them.  Let them inspire you.  After all, going outside is more than just for our kids.  It is for you too. This is a true Mommy/Daddy break time. Outside is good.

Discover what gaming experts and neuroscientists can tell us why gaming incentives work, go tohttp://www.ted.com/talk/tom_chatfield_7_ways_games_reward_the_brain.html

  ___________________________

Adria Williams, mother of three, is our new "mommy blogger" bringing years of her rethinking and practicing child-raising from a positive psychology and more recently, from an inventio!brain point view.  Adria grew up in a family swarming with professional educators.

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Outside?  The scientist who save sea turtles reveals a BlueMind truth:

Our dear compadre and BEATLES fan, Dr Wallace J Nichols share his BlueMind views on the connection between emotional and biodiversity.

To learn about the upcoming BLUE MIND 3 conference on Block Island, click here.

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Digital Frescoes and Social Change

    Dispatch for Bodies in Space Explore by Sarah Kornfeld.

[Editor's Note:  The following piece was written in 2010 -- a personal reflection by the noted arts and tech blogger Sarah Kornfeld, a child of the theater for whom drama and big space is home.

I asked Kornfeld if I could repost her piece just in time for our celebration of "outside."  Surely at a time when arts and technology are manipulated to delight us on screens large and small, the transformation of wall space should seems de rigeur to us living in the digital age.  But Kornfeld invites us to consider what going "outside" can mean when we're facing a wall transformed by the algorithmic play of light.]

_____________________________

I have always had a fascination with walls, and believe that walls can change the world.

Here, I was about four. This was one of my dad’s theaters.  I think it was backstage. But, I didn’t care: it was a wall that held a story, and that was what I loved – that was the family business – telling stories to strangers.

I have not fallen out of love with walls. In particular, I love walls in public spaces where people project images, blast music, make dances or create a social commotion.

And, even though I work with digital technology, I still love a wall that stands outside of computers — but, I seriously love things made in computers that get projected out to ravish, and cling, and create a new way of looking at a wall. Either way, I love walls. I think this started with the theater.

Or, perhaps it started with my first mentor: Elise Bernhardt.

In the early 1980′s, Elise founded Dancing in The Streets. She had the chutzpah to put dances on the Brooklyn Bridge. Then, convinced Grand Central Station to let dancers take over the entire joint. Stephen Koplowitz had dancers in the windows, and Savion Glover tapped in the lower terminals. Merce Cunningham’s dancers dominated the huge central area of Grand Central and people were forced to walk around them to get to their trains. Her desire to do work in public spaces – besides the fact it is fun – is grounded in the belief that community is created by engaging in public art. It was also her aim to shine a light on areas in need of revitalization, and public art could act as that focal point. She had a great deal of vision, and did formative work: Grand Central engaged in a huge effort to bring the building back to it’s original, glorious form to some degree because of the hot light on the space the dances provided.

But, all this big activity, big social change through big public work is based in practical, hard, hard work.

Here’s what I learned from Elise, and it’s good advice if you want to take over a public space and put art in it, or have a really big dinner party:

- Pick the most exciting space you can find and decide, with total conviction, that it’s right.

- Envision the most exciting things possible in it.

- Admit that you can’t envision the most exciting things in it alone - find the most talented people to come up with more ideas.

- Ask people for money (or, fill in here, “Ask for pot luck”).

- Ask LOTS of people for money.  And, then ask again. And, tell that the idea of dancers in windows, and people flying from walls, and digital images taking over buildings is GOOD for everyone. That people in public spaces looking at things together is what the history of culture is all about. That this work revitalizes community and puts attention on needed public space (which she proved from Redhook to Grand Central). And, then look them straight in they eye and say, “Plus, it’ll be gorgeous”.

- Then, make sure there is good food.

That’s pretty much it. Oh, and fall deeply in love with the knowledge that the walls of a public space can seem totally changed when people  remember having seen art in it: also, neighborhood, building and communities can redefine their own space when art has shed a new vision onto/into it.

A few years ago, I told Elise I missed big spaces with big things happening in them. She told me to call Zaccho Dance Theatre, and Joanna Haigood, and become their friend (That’s Elise in a nutshell really, just call for gods sake, it’ll be gorgeous!) (www.zaccho.org) Zaccho is based in San Francisco and takes a blank space and flies off of it. Literally.

The picture above is of Zaccho doing a full digital projection on HUGE abandoned silos. The piece included Zaccho and the people that lived in a neighborhood where the closing of a plant had closed down the local economy.  All the participants tried to imagine a time when there were fields – and not machines. Amazing way to look at history. Though, let’s put this into perspective -  see those little dots on the silos? Those are dancers on harnesses who are flying/dancing within, up and down and around those silos.  Well, this work meets my need for a Sistine chapel that moves. A small request…but why not.

And, why not??

Now that digital technology can do so much as a projected medium, why not have Sistine chapel environments up the ying yang? Obscura Digital here in San Francisco does this  http://www.obscuradigital.com/ But, let’s be clear – OD is not an arts organization, not even a production company – they are a culture unto themselves who make really humongous projection based immersive events for huge companies. Oh, and sometimes a band. And, yes, huge domes for people to experience the sea. But, generally, they make products to mess with your head. They messed with the head of Carnegie Hall:

The images wrapped the building. They moved. They were playing along with the music – talking and changing shapes. And, that was only a small example of what could be done with this level of digital imagery to a wall.

There are artists, and technologists who are specifically focused on how to use digital technology as a form of paint (or movement/spacial changer/”head-messer-upper”) itself. And, these are the people who I am watching carefully – because art has often shifted into high gear – into a voice for a new era – when it is seen as a huge image, in a huge place (or in a small place with hug impact) but, always in a public place.

Last year there was a lovely homage to walls when 77 Million Paintings was projected live on the Sydney Opera House.

Brian Eno made these images and they run on an algorithm that makes it impossible for the same collection of images to ever been seen in your lifetime – each picture is seen once, and then regenerates (or gestates) for a very long time.

And, that is interesting – and wistful.

But, to me, the fact that he had those images shift and change, and exploded on those massive sails on a public meeting place, and that those images created a new memory precisely because they reframed (changed) that space (quite publicly) is quite touching – and wonderfully demanding.

What is the demand? That “we are here”, and that art and people together in a public space is a part of history. This demand to look at art in very large public space is a part of redefining our space in time. It is a catalyst for asking ourselves why we are here – how we are here – and seeding the ideas for change, should that result from engagement with something so huge, so much larger than yourself that you see your world differently.

Like I said, I’m just a sucker for blank spaces on walls.

And, I love to find them filled with something, someone, someplace we can remember: together.

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Bangladesh You Broke Me

Image Credit: browngirlssurf.com

Bodies in Space Explores Dispatch by Farhana Huq, guest blogger

[Editor's Note:  In celebration of our April 2013 brain health theme "outside" our colleague, the inimitable surf and life coach Farhana Huq shares her recent deep think on the impact of sharing the art of surfing with young girls throughout the AsiaPacific region.  The impact, here, is both on the girls and their neurosomatic discovery of surfing oceans and cultural norms and on the blogger who reveals a singular truth about the intrinsic joy that comes from introducing the art of surfing to girls living throughout the AsiaPacific region.  

Where in the World is Farhana? It has been 3 months since coming back from the Surfing Possibility trip. I had meant to send out some type of picture perfect ending message from that trip, but I didn't because I had a severe case of writer's block.  In truth, I had no idea how to share with you the meta-story to my trip – my most cherished gold and black pearl necklace that went missing out of my bag, the struggle we felt watching the surfer girls embody freedom in the water, only to become objects of male control once on land, the lies that were told to us, the name calling, the upper respiratory illness, the food poisoning.  Yes, for all the great blogs I wrote about our adventures, I couldn’t help but feel a bit broken down from Bangladesh upon my return. I landed at SFO and rolled myself into my friend’s car after 6 hours of food poisoning where I became one with Emirates' toilet.  It felt like a journey that required much physical and mental recuperation.    As I was recovering from my food poisoning–come-illness (which took a good month to contain), I wracked my mind about ways to lighten the story of the heavy reality of the girls’ lives.  It was a reality that revealed itself to us in various ways.  I also tried to reconcile our “possibility” narrative that framed this awesome trip against some of these realities. In fact, I spent most of January trying to make sense of it all.  What impact did we make from taking this trip?  What was true about the interviews we captured?  Who really showed up because they were truly a surfer?  Who of the girls showed up because the "boss" knew it would be good PR for business? In this web of confusion that was also a reality of our trip, I couldn’t help but feel a little duped.    I began to reflect back on the hours of conversations we had with our translator and with my Co-Producer, Cara Jones of Storytellers For Good.  We discussed for hours the economic situation of the girls, and the sheer vulnerability they faced with no strong nuclear families.  At one point in our journey, we were all ready to launch a full-blown surf retreat in order to employ the girls so they could have a sustainable wage.  That idea lasted a few days until I thought to myself “How am I going to do that?”  We barely raised money for my ticket to come here and I was in the middle of launching my coaching practice.  Cara was in the middle of making a full-length documentary and also ran a business full-time.   When would we have time to invest in a third venture?

Hazera holds this blue marble as part of a global movement in service to expressing gratitude for our planet and for our ocean. This was a cornerstone in building a vision for her business.

I was delighted when Hazera, our faithful translator, sat down with us one day, passion and zeal oozing from her 5’0 petite Bengali body.  She began to reveal her vision for how this could all work.  “I want to take this on,” she told us.  We were thrilled because she is such a capable, smart, entrepreneur and better yet, she was born and raised in Cox's Bazar.  By “this”, she meant the eco-surfing camp and reality tour idea we had been playing with.  It was as if we got to witness that ah-ha moment of the social entrepreneur – the one that seizes them into a fit of inspiration so strong that propels them forward into obsessively living their life purpose.    And I thought to myself, how could I NOT be a part of this?  My role now?  To be her coach, of course! ;)  And I too started to see a way forward and how this collaboration of sorts would work.  I’d coach this social entrepreneur pro-bono for 6 months and she’d drive forward her idea so together impact could be made. We began our sessions in late December in Cox's Bazar and continued via Skype from there.   When I returned from my trip, I noticed something interesting in one of the Facebook albums of the Bangladeshi surfer dudes.  It was a picture of Nasima on a surf trip in her surfing catsuit (the one her husband had thrown a fit over).  Given the struggle I witnessed while I was there between her husband and the suit, I was pretty stunned to see this pic and wondered what had changed.

Behold! The catsuit prevails!!! Hmmm...What has changed???

The next thing I know, I receive an e-mail from Hazera informing me that Nasima, the 15-year old aspiring pro surfer girl, was divorcing her husband.  As if that wasn’t enough news, after 3 coaching calls, I woke up to find this link www.coconutclubbangladesh.wordpress.com posted on my Facebook page from Hazera – a fully developed Wordpress website, with the vision for this surf camp retreat strategically woven into Hazera’s social business named ‘The Coconut Club’.  I teared up upon seeing it.  At that moment, I had a shower of insight too.  This was the work of the new social entrepreneur – to actually be in the field, collaborating, inspiring, coaching, and exploring possibilities and not behind a desk running database queries  and asking people for money – to really be IN IT.  Brown Girl Surf seemed like such a crazy, indulgent idea when I first started it.  And now I was beginning to see the exploration leading to something I never imagined possible. Nasima’s divorce has since been finalized.  The last I heard she was getting papers ready so she could get a passport. In a recent Skype coaching call with Hazera, she went on and on about her idea to start a surf shop, and her vision of traveling to the west to talk about her project and to share the gem of Cox Bazar with the world.  She more recently rented office space so she could start English classes for the surfer girls ,who ironically were some of the most brave and risk taking females we met on our trip – most apparent when they were in the water. Hazera’s plans to access their bravery, freedom and risk taking perspective in the water and bring this to their learnings on the land is the critical insight of this venture.  She has very fittingly names this venture ‘The Surfing Girls Education Project.’  (I am attaching the executive summary, just in case some of you are interested).  And how cool that shortly after launching, she attended a weekend long event in a think tank with Nobel Laureate Dr. Muhammed Yunus where she discussed her plans for her social venture:

Hazera shares the social business idea with Dr. Yunus

And so, that’s how it all panned out….Barely a month had passed since leaving Cox's Bazar when I started to get reports of these changes.  I thought I’d be telling you all about the sad ending and the hopelessness of the situation of girls actually being free and empowered to live in their possibility.  Instead, it took an unexpected turn (as all good stories sometimes do), and I’m able to leave you, my dear readers, with a story that is truly about the possibility that results from human connection.

  Brown Girl Surf has certainly taught me innumerable lessons from this trip.  Mainly, you never really know what is going to happen, and so you just have to start and feel your way forward sometimes (this is true I think in early stage entrepreneurship in general).  How fortunate were we to have met Hazera and how fortunate we had an empowerment through surfing agenda which Hazera knew how to work with right away.  She is galvanizing the girls and the surf community behind this vision, at a time in Bangladeshi history where all the beach front land has been leased out for 99 years to Bangladeshi companies, most of them illegally, for so called "development."    Her role in empowering the surfer girls of Bangladesh means so much in this era of globalization.

Hazera (right) meeting with Nasima (left) at the beach.

This is not only a story of surfing possibility, but of the possibility for change to be made at the ground level, by the leaders and people of the community, faced with the imminent tsunami of global capitalism hungrily eyeing this peaceful beachside town.  If anything, the seeds have been planted and a link has been made for some of the surfer girls and boys of Bangladesh to have a stake in the economic development of their country via tourism.  Perhaps there’s a new vision here for a surf tourism industry that’s unlike Bali, Indonesia or Sayulita, Mexico, where it is carefully crafted, owned and led by its locals, including its women.    And if Nasima ends up living her dream, and doing what she wants to do, helping to shed some light onto her story is so worth it.  All it takes is one person to set off the spark to inspire others of what’s possible.  In fact, her story is so important that our dear friend and talented film maker, Heather Kessinger, has been on a mission to create a full length documentary of Nasima’s story for the past year and a half (her team is about halfway through production).  The name of the documentary is ‘The Most Fearless, an Unexpected Surf Story’.   Brown Girl Surf will be partnering with Heather to ensure that all of these stories get out into the world and can seed a tangible impact for some of the world’s most vulnerable girls.   For those of you who are local, please mark your calendar for May 9th in San Francisco (venue to be announced)– we’ll be debuting our Surfing Possibility Profiles: Stories of India and Bangladesh’s Surfer Girls.  I’d love to see you all there for some fun mingling, inspiring stories, drinking, chips and dip!   I am not sure where I’ll be off to next. But hope to see you soon, in some far off land!  Oh, and I almost forgot!  Guess who just took their first surf lesson?

None other than Hazera! (She may be the first known Bangladeshi woman over the age of 18 to surf!)

Happy Spring!  Hope you have a healthy supply of Zyrtec close at hand.

  Farhana Huq is the Founder of Brown Girl Surf. 

www.browngirlsurf.com    She is the daughter of pre-partition parents born in Pakistan and Bangladesh and as the blogger herself notes, "is a product of the partition (no pun intended)."

  Farhana is also a Co-Active Coach®, Consultant & Speaker.

www.farhanahuq.com.

      Show your support and purchase a Brown Girl Surf T-shirt or bag!  

[bodiesinspace-blog]

Futurists Are Hot!

Dispatch by Sarah Kornfeld: Sights of Art and Technology, Media and Life.  Repost from April 14, 2010.

[Editor's Note:  Without a personal historian whispering in our ears, we often fail to see the repeated patterns and connections in our own thinking about "kernal ideas" -- you know the deep germinating kind that show up like a good character actor ready with her lines for rehearsal of a new play.

Yet for writer / blogger and inventor Sarah Kornfeld, futurism, Ben Franklin and invention persist as kernal memes that feed her co-founding (with yours truly) the site and system Inventio!Brains!]

In the author's own words....

So, I always thought that this guy was a Futurist. Ben Franklin seemed to scope out the future needs of the nation, while also being a deep historian of the past. He wasn’t very hot – but need he be?  No, he was a guy who could look backwards and forwards and generally, we could agree, implement long-term thinking to a nation.

Now, my buddy Jake Dunagan, a futurist, has expressed to me that he thinks we should throw out the constitution because the long term thinking of the past does not meet the needs of today. Scrap it, he says, start over. I gasped with the thought of the anarchy of that idea and then he just smiled in a wily way, and said, “Yeah, that would really shake things up.”  Wasn’t that the perspective of Franklin back then? Shake it up? Think for the future, and then, change the present?

Long term thinking.

This is what futurists do – they think long. And, I didn’t know anything about them. But, in 2006 I was introduced to Stuart Candy (http://futuryst.blogspot.com/) who was a fellow at the Long Now. And, later he introduced me to Jerry Paffendorf.  And, then I was introduced to Jake Dunagan (http://www.iftf.org/node/3402 ) And, now, we are developing a project for the Academy of Sciences, and I sometimes need to try to boss Jake and Stuart about – ok, I try to push gently. But, I don’t recommend this for the faint of heart (it’s my job, and after 15 years of practice I have the stomach for it) because futurists are, by the by, Bad Asses, and don’t like being told what to do: they are hard-wired to question…well, everything. But, more about bad assed-ness later.

In 2006 when I returned from PopTech! (www.poptech.org) I wanted to know if there were futurists under the age of 59.  I am not being snarky here – I have respect for the agents of change that are many Futurists – yet there was something about the idea of long-term thinking that interested me as it related to a younger generation.  I noticed that the futurists I met were very much in the moment – quiet, listening, asking questions about how things have worked in the past – and then imagining multiple worlds for the future. I wanted to know if young people were embodying this wisdom.

So, I have met the young ones, most under the age 35 years old. And, they are as rowdy, opinionated, fierce, and silly as the Founding Futurists must have been – it’s like hanging out with a punk circus filled with PhD’s and a van ready to leave for Burning Man.

Oh, and did I mention they are simply beautiful. Now, I will take a good deal of crap for talking about their beauty – but I think this is key – they are lively, contemporary and they are perfectly comfortable with being in the public eye, and spreading their vision as a rock band tours the planet.

But, let me define what beauty is to me: that rare combination of comfort in one’s body, and the expression of that comfort/energy/passion through feelings/words.

Please see my point below:

Jane McGonigal

Jerry Paffendorf

Stuart Candy

Jake Dunagan

These are only a few of the faces of futurists – these are just the folks I know or am near living in the Bay Area. And, they tell me that there are women around the world who are moving thought around (Jane McGonigal is most known for her insights into world-changing through gaming), and people working within the neighborhoods quietly making change (Jerry is now living in Detroit and leading a movement to convert abandoned homes and warehouses into places for film/design and futures work http://7billionfriends.tumblr.com/).

This generation of futurists I know are like highly connected community organizers with a drive to change the way people see. They want people to see the consequences of actions as a way to push for social change. It’s an inverted form of civil disobedience – it’s civic dissonance.  These brave souls want to turn your head inside out to force you into a place to resist present terrible decisions for the earth – those that are creating negative, globally destructive, future consequences.

Long term thinking = long term change = long term global beauty (beauty: health, joy, freedom of thought, embodied living and connectedness)

Concepts of beauty have changed throughout time. And, we are a culture obsessed with the physical beauty of our bodies. Though, perhaps beauty is now more critical – for me beauty is the integration of the mind with intention: and I am watching these younger people, (who defy the cliché of a tweeting/snarky/ADD Gen Y – whatever that is) these Futurists, they think in paragraphs and in 3D: and, they have every intention to change the world.

And, to me, this is gorgeous. This is beauty. This is Hot.

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Artist of the Month: Paul Zika

Image Credit: Paul Zika, TERMES 5,  2011, acrylic on wood, 129 x 98 x 5cm

"In deep sleep man continues to be influenced by his environment but loses his world; he is a body occupying space." --  Yi-Fu Tuan

Neuroscientists use the language of "pattern recognition" to reference how we sense the world as something more than a smudge on reality, more than a bundle of mere stuff.  Patterns, as ordinary and scientific  language goes, reference the connections of lines, shapes, and points in space.  It's the "pattern that connects" reminds cybernetics pioneer Gregory Bateson.  And so with the emergence of pattern, of order, of rhythmic repetition that we come upon connections of points in space.

Artists and designers have long been avid observers and exponents of rich pattern recognizing moments moving between realism and abstraction with so much mannerist gusto as to force 19th and 20th century art historians to riff on the difference between decoration and ornamentation -- the intellectual and political consequences of which now seem quaint and dowdy in the face of globalized pop culture.

Stepping aside culture wars, journeyman Paul Zika as been one of the more active pattern recognizers in the Australian art scene, exploring with eloquence and curiosity, ancient and contemporary patterns that reveal much in the way of memory and spatial pattern recognition.

In the artist's own words...

In the mid eighties I introduced pattern and ornament into... relief constructions; on one hand, to stress the ‘flatness’ of the surface, but also to counter modernist notions of artifice. Rather than conforming to an idea that ornament was superficial embellishment, it became the subject and content. The viewer was left to contemplate the space within the pattern, sucked in and seduced by elaborate complexity.

  Image Credit:  Paul Zika, 'Terme 4' 2011, acrylic on wood, 132 x 113 x 5cm

  Image Credit:  Terme 6' 2011, acrylic on wood, 113 x 175 x 5cm

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Brain Bright! ... What is the source of prosperity?

What is the moral molecule?

What is source of love and prosperity?

What does the neuroscience of oxytocin teach us about trust in human and animals?

Tune into the interview with Dr. Paul Zak, a.k.a. "Doctor Love", neuroeconomics pioneer, CGU professor and author of The Moral Molecule.  

Find out why we should be hugging our children and rethinking altruism from the standpoint of hormones and neurotransmitters!

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It's Peek a Boo Time! FMRI Fly thru Baby Brains!

Image Credit: Wayne State University website

Better Brains dispatch by Dr. G

Wow Wow Wowee!  It's Peek a Boo time and I don't mean to reference Herr Freud.

No, in this case it takes neurotech, not psychoanalysis, to reveal early stages of an unborn babies brain!

A first ever FMRI film, produced by Moriah Thomason from Wayne State University, "flies-through" the brains of 25 fetuses in the third trimester.  The yet to be born tweens were 24-38 weeks old.

As quoted in New Scientist,

'By comparing the scans at slightly different stages of development, Thomason was able to pinpoint when different parts of the brain wire up. "The connection strength increases with fetal age," writes Thomason.'

Why does this matter?  Revealing the inner mysteries of the human brain -- in all stages of development -- is the Promethean quest of our decade.  Whether capturing fetus brains in real time or mapping the cellular connections by way re-engineering the human brain through painstaking cellular slicing -- the proof is in the pudding!  It takes curiosity, moxie and our passionate funding for teams of art, sci and tech specialists to make the seemingly impossible, possible. 

And what is that possible?  Imagine in 5, 10, 15 years from now, from where you are sitting, you're able to see a team of researchers and diagnosticians perform early detection of autism spectrum, schizophrenia, or attention allocation issues and upend neurological growth patterns -- all of this realized because today we dared to support research in neuroscience, neurotech and data visualization.   Or before you know it, Sony or Cannon will make a take-home camera enabling us to fly into our baby's brains and prevent a WWIII temper tantrum.

Remember science fiction leads to science.  It's only a matter of time.

Until then, join us as we raise awareness of arts and brain science research and send a message to the White House: Let's support arts, tech and neuroscience learning now!

To rally with us go here http://igg.me/at/inventio/x/2311158

To read more on the FMRI study click http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23199

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"Brain Power" ... a film directed by Tiffany Shlain.

Thanks to Let It Ripple.org, we are able share this video to honor the lost lives of all children in 2012... and to dedicate it to all youth whose brains will grow strong in 2013.

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How often do you use spatial intelligence?

How often do you encourage others to use theirs?

Dr. G. speaks on why spatial intelligence matters for the brain age at the 2012 Mind and Its Potential Conference, Sydney Australia

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Artist of the Month: Taft Green

  Image Credit: Taft Green, A Knot that Is the Name, 2012 (Installation section)

Dispatch for Bodies in Space Explores by Dr. G.

"Art is about feelings."  This common misperception about visual art and design has diminished, if not parodied, how we look at and talk about the wealth of objects, images, installations, films, dances, and then some made by creative culture workers through out the globe.  This is not to say, there haven't been scores of print-makers or painters focused on emotion -- think about German Expressionist works by Kathe Kollwitz or Max Beckmann.  Certainly the vast genre  of film is replete with stories of dazzling and wretched humanity that tug at our stomachs, hearts and minds.

Still the "feeling claim" is typically shrouded in a universalizing logic of primal expression, the sort of Freudian catharsis thesis made popular in the early 20th century.   Here in 2013, we should know better.

By that I mean we should not expect artists nor designers to carry the psychological burden of representing raw human expression.  To do is to miss the point offered up by current neuroaesthetic research regarding the deeper story of sensory perception and spatial memory at work during purposeful visual engagement.  Sad to say, it's even easier to bypass the myriad ways artists and designers now tackle complex currents of intellectual ideas given the distance many maintain from the culture at large.

In the spirit of opening up the lens of perception, especially where aesthetic musing takes up the question of spatial perception, we spotlight the research conducted by Taft Green.  Known and celebrated by the Los Angeles arts community for his complex sculptural riffs on the calculus and algorithm of spatial forms, and as a colleague with whom I've shared discussions on mapping perception, I'm excited to share this current body of work that asks us to pause, take a breath and consider just how does our brain construct the space of a rectangle or a square?

Image Credits: Taft Green, A Knot that Is the Name, 2012 (Installation)

In the artist's own words.....

Language as form; form as sculpture.                                                        12/22/12

            Images are flat. We build worlds with images through our own associations. Strangely enough, those images that are most common are the most powerful.

Take, for instance, the common structure of perspective within an image of a desert. A road in the foreground, leading to a horizons division, marks the lines of perspective. Illusionistic perspective parallels the way the eye encodes space, giving it a common point of view and presents a familiar identification of spatial depth. Text turns the image into a place of meaning through pointing to what common association can identify. Can the above image of a road meeting a horizon be turned over? With the association adjusted, flexibility in thought is realized. Can the tendency of fixed patterns be thwarted? There is scientific evidence that to look without preconceptions, to pay attention without expectations, or to think without a goal oriented concept in mind, allows for a more immersive and insightful experience. That is to ask; “How am I interacting with the given circumstance? What can be introduced?” rather than “What do I identify with?”

When beliefs are tested or no longer match the current conditions, this is not only how awareness emerges, this is when awareness can change what is done in the present. The present is a limit for sure, images might be a reaction to this limit, but the present is also where reinvention continues. To look at various languages (text, photography, sculpture, etc.) as an initial reduction, is to be aware not only of communication, but also the implications of another's standpoint.   The more we consider alternate experience or an outside to the immediate concerns, the larger ones awareness expands.  Referential outsides are in distinction and related to how much any one language is implicated in routine and standardization.

Image Credits: Taft Green, A Knot that Is the Name, 2012 (Installation)

Working with sculpture as an outside to image making, both images and form are usually implied in rendering a composition. The creative mental image as inside forms of association or orientation. A chain of active mental assertions (as potential actions within the sculpture) develops around formal concerns, which most times are rendered out of text-based language. A problem (an image) can be converted into a question (in verbal language) and then answered (through association) and communicated (by form). This illustrates the potential attributes that sculpture can consolidate. Saito Yoshishige spoke more aptly in his comment to the Mono-Ha Artists, “The operation of phenomena, rather than their appearance, is the subject of Art.”

Words constantly condition images, as well as actions. An image or form is a feedback loop where the here and now is amended to another place, time or scale. Activating desired perceptions does not always mean going to what is known; Freedom is found in the common limits that unify our experience, and knowing we can revert back to them when phenomena is too disorienting or immersive.

                                                                                        -- Taft Green

Taft Green's work is currently on view at the Los Angeles Museum of Art in Eagle Rock (Los Angeles ).  To learn more, click here

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Invention or Innovation?

I’m in love with Reggie Watts, or how he’s the answer to our “Innovation Addiction”

Dispatch for Bodies in Space Explores by Sarah Kornfeld

[Repost, August 14, 2012 from whatsarahsees.com]

I admit it. I am in love with the art of Reggie Watts.

It’s not just the hair. Or, that when he was just coming up on the scene I sat on his knee at the wonderful conference, Pop!Tech (2006) and we talked about Quantum Physics (Seriously. Now I know he may have been making it all up! Yet, he was a sweetie and not a cad, and just lovely…see, my love had not subsided).

Yet, here’s why I love Reggie NOW in the full bloom of his success: the joke is on us.

Not only has he proven himself to be a profound wit, mocking rap genius, and character on The Electric Company (hello, admit it – you would LOVE to have a cartoon made about YOU simply doing the A B C’s!) but he’s making fun of the everything he’s able to do: Innovate.

The video I have here is a performance he gave at Pop!Tech (sigh, not from 2006 when I met him and he became part of a pack of buddies in Maine – like Brain Camp where you’re best friends for life for a short time…without bug juice).  It starts with him in a full British accent – in fact, with a spot on Richard Dawkins accent (the famed evolutionary biologist we also met back then, who was like the guest camp counselor brought from town to give a lecture on  having no summer sex – certainly NOT while thinking about God!) – where Reggie does the most brilliant, biting overuse of the word “Innovation”.

I must admit, it’s sad how I have come to push back hard against the word. I feel I have no idea what innovation means anymore. It seems to be code for:

1. Being really smart

2. Making something before someone else

3. Taking some kind of calculated risk, with some kind of calculated return

Innovation. It used to be so exciting. It used to be about the action, the doing, the making of the unknown. Now, it’s an objectified thing, something everyone in the worlds of “innovation” are told to win: like a beauty contest – “Miss Design” or “Miss Thought Leader” or “Miss-Diagnosed, But good thing you designed a way out of that problem”.  Innovation has become cold, and that’s very sad indeed – because in fact it’s a very hot act indeed.

I urge you to watch this video – it will be the best 1/2 hour you can spend because it breaks into three critical, brilliant, daring and dangerous sections:

1. Reggie rips the overuse of the word Innovation and Design

2. Reggie then INNOVATES onstage – he makes everything up on the fly – yet you can see he has an intention, a vision as well as a process to ride his riff – but bring the audience with him all the way to the end

3. He shows humility and humour in his last moments on stage – a Chaplin-esque commentary on how we talk and talk and talk … and in the end we are simply people trying to make some place for ourselves in the world.

It’s my impression that we, those of us in the industry of technology, social media, education and global sharing are addicted to our “innovation” search – instead of digging into what makes us want to innovate – or invent.

We have lost touch with the kid in us (not inner child, I mean that naughty, fun, playful kid with a water balloon) who dared us to try and fail, and had NO NEED to be famous. I’d love to see us return to play, to release ourselves from ANY need to be branded “risk takers” and to simply be passionate “creators”  -  like when we were kids.

Perhaps that’s what Reggie’s trying to remind us?

Again, I love Reggie.  I am his number one fan and wish there was some Futures Tiger Beat or People I could read and sigh at his hair. One day, I hope that he plays Carnegie Hall in the great tradition of Judy Garland meets PDQ Bach: he is an artist of our time, and ironically a true design thinker of the highest category.

[bodiesinspace-blog]

inventio!brains -- countdown!

Image credit: Ramon Santiago Cajal, Cellular branching, cat cerebellum, 1899

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BIS Brainiac Tips 4 Mall Shopping and Party Hopping!

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Eureka! GGI Garnishes 2 Grants!

Image Credit: Eureka 7

Dispatch from Dr. G....

GGI is the proud recipient of two grants: We are excited to receive a 2012-2013 Pink House Foundation grant to bring "The Art and Neuroscience of Happiness" forum to the University of Arizona, Tucson.  Teaming up with GGI Fellow, Dr. Sheena Brown, we'll be screening Project Happiness -- a fab film produced by our comadre the luminous Randy Taran.

We're equally thrilled to collaborate with GGI neuropsychology advisor Dr. Veronique Bohbot, the primary investigator on our collaborative 2012-2013 Molson Grant! The Molson grant enables us to offer our beta tested applied neuroscience expertise and develop "spatial memory and brain awareness training" for Canadian schools.

Both grants enable us to team up with GGI Brain Trust members and their respective universities to deliver the best in "knowledge transfer" of neuroscience and neuropsychology in educational and clinical spheres.

Thanks to all of you who keep us on our toes to deliver the best in translational neuroscience for learners, leaders and all those noble spirits who touch their lives with good deeds.