#bodymindfulness

[neuroticboyfriend]

chronic fatigue from mental illness and neurodivergency isn't something you can just will your way out of. your nervous system is part of your body. your brain is an organ. the fatigue is real. you're not lazy. so be kinder to yourself. be gentler with your bodymind.

[bones-ivy-breath]

Inward by Yung Pueblo

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

"The body remembers, the bones remember, the joints remember, even the little finger remembers. Memory is lodged in pictures and feelings in the cells themselves. Like a sponge filled with water, anywhere the flesh is pressed, wrung, even touched lightly, a memory may flow out in a stream." ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

[ozymandiaskingoftrash]

I love you ao3 writers, but ya'll who write fix it smut that gives Nick Valentine some sort of genital modification so he can "finally have sex," are cowards. Nick's story is a queer story. Nick's arc is finding joy and empowerment in the bodymind he has, coming to terms with his humanity, and that he's not inferior to the original Nick. And you’re missing the opportunity to showcase the eroticism of non penetrative sex. Or kink? Toys? So many options.

[bodyalive]

"Here are 6 ways to regulate yourself using neuropsychology:

If you are stressed, use the physiological sigh. Huberman lab talks about it, but it’s essentially two inhales and one long exhale, and you do that over and over again.

If you are anxious, go for a walk. It deactivates your amygdala.

If you are sad, acknowledge your feelings and then move your body. it release endorphins.

If you are impulsive, like angry. You can’t think straight. Look out the window and don’t look at anything. Just like dilate your gaze. It blunts your neuroadrenaline so you can think clearly.

If you have low motivation, this is interesting ~ focus on one spot on your screen for one minute. Ignore everything else. Pupilary convergence increases focus.

And finally, if you’re feeling insecure, low self-worth, write down your strengths. Logical thinking overrides your limbic system."

~ Ana Del Castillo / Women's Rightness & Empowerment Expert

*

[librarycards]

If you don't mind my asking, how did you become physdis? (Delete if you want).

anorexia. described variously as "severe" "treatment-resistant" &c.

[schar-aac]

"bodymind"

Image: an emoji yellow figure with red brain and nervous system.

[devinsturk]

When I say I am Disabled, I mean a multitude of things, including that there are some things I cannot do because a lot of life is made inaccessible to me by a disabling environment.

That’s not me being bitter or negative. It’s a truth that the Social Model of Disability has helped me to understand.

I don’t really blame my bodymind for the things that I can’t do, I blame disabling surroundings, because it’s the disabling surroundings that render parts of life inaccessible to me.

If I’m in a room with really loud music or people shouting, and it’s bothering me, what if the problem there isn’t MY sensitive ears?  

What if there’s nothing wrong with me or my ears at all?  

What if the music is just too loud?

When I’m alone in my apartment, flapping my hands and pacing and vocal stimming without shame…No social anxiety or pressures to mask my Autism…When there’s a dinner menu that includes multiple things that I can eat...When people communicate clearly and kindly to me…

...I don’t feel as Disabled as I do when I am trapped in a room with a bunch of loud, crowded people making ableist jokes, for example.

I think we center so much of disability in the physical body and in the brain, and not enough of it in our  surroundings.  And plot twist: our surroundings are nearly always constructed without disabled people in mind.

[mercifullymad]

recently i have been spending a lot of time with a man in his 90s, and while he doesn't have dementia or alzheimer's, he does frequently forget information. he will tell me a story and then re-tell the exact same story to me a few weeks later. when i am tired and frustrated (with him and/or the day and/or myself), sitting through the exact same story again seems unbearable. but recently i have been trying to look at things differently; to frame these times as something i "get" to experience rather than something i must endure.

lately i have been thinking about repetitive cycles and finding one's home in them. so much of our discourse and mental health advice is about getting OUT of repetitive cycles, breaking the cycle, etc. but why? there is an unquestioned assumption that all cycles are bad and meaningless and we must strive to break them. but what if we take a "you can never step in the same river twice" approach to what we believe to be "identical" repetitive cycles?

i may have heard the same story before, but i have never heard it with this inflection, or in this setting, or while feeling this way — at the very least, i've never heard this story at this hour before. i may have spent the last fourteen years of my life enduring the "same" repetitive thoughts running around my head, but i've never before experienced this thought at this moment, as the person i am right now. no matter how much i think i'm experiencing the same story, or the same thought pattern, over and over again, that isn't the full truth. it is the same story and the same thought, but it is also a new experience each time.

[afutureworththinkingabout]

Appendix A: An Imagined and Incomplete Conversation about “Consciousness” and “AI,” Across Time

Every so often, I think about the fact of one of the best things my advisor and committee members let me write and include in my actual doctoral dissertation, and I smile a bit, and since I keep wanting to share it out into the world, I figured I should put it somewhere more accessible.

So with all of that said, we now rejoin An Imagined and Incomplete Conversation about “Consciousness” and “AI,” Across Time, already (still, seemingly unendingly) in progress:

René Descartes (1637): The physical and the mental have nothing to do with each other. Mind/soul is the only real part of a person.

Norbert Wiener (1948): I don’t know about that “only real part” business, but the mind is absolutely the seat of the command and control architecture of information and the ability to reflexively reverse entropy based on context, and input/output feedback loops.

Alan Turing (1952): Huh. I wonder if what computing machines do can reasonably be considered thinking?

Wiener: I dunno about “thinking,” but if you mean “pockets of decreasing entropy in a framework in which the larger mass of entropy tends to increase,” then oh for sure, dude.

John Von Neumann (1958): Wow things sure are changing fast in science and technology; we should maybe slow down and think about this before that change hits a point beyond our ability to meaningfully direct and shape it— a singularity, if you will.

Clynes & Klines (1960): You know, it’s funny you should mention how fast things are changing because one day we’re gonna be able to have automatic tech in our bodies that lets us pump ourselves full of chemicals to deal with the rigors of space; btw, have we told you about this new thing we’re working on called “antidepressants?”

Gordon Moore (1965): Right now an integrated circuit has 64 transistors, and they keep getting smaller, so if things keep going the way they’re going, in ten years they’ll have 65 THOUSAND. :-O

Donna Haraway (1991): We’re all already cyborgs bound up in assemblages of the social, biological, and techonological, in relational reinforcing systems with each other. Also do you like dogs?

Ray Kurzweil (1999): Holy Shit, did you hear that?! Because of the pace of technological change, we’re going to have a singularity where digital electronics will be indistinguishable from the very fabric of reality! They’ll be part of our bodies! Our minds will be digitally uploaded immortal cyborg AI Gods!

Tech Bros: Wow, so true, dude; that makes a lot of sense when you think about it; I mean maybe not “Gods” so much as “artificial super intelligences,” but yeah.

90’s TechnoPagans: I mean… Yeah? It’s all just a recapitulation of The Art in multiple technoscientific forms across time. I mean (*takes another hit of salvia*) if you think about the timeless nature of multidimensional spiritual architectures, we’re already—

DARPA: Wait, did that guy just say something about “Uploading” and “Cyborg/AI Gods?” We got anybody working on that?? Well GET TO IT!

Disabled People, Trans Folx, BIPOC Populations, Women: Wait, so our prosthetics, medications, and relational reciprocal entanglements with technosocial systems of this world in order to survive makes us cyborgs?! :-O

[Simultaneously:]

Kurzweil/90’s TechnoPagans/Tech Bros/DARPA: Not like that. Wiener/Clynes & Kline: Yes, exactly.

Haraway: I mean it’s really interesting to consider, right?

Tech Bros: Actually, if you think about the bidirectional nature of time, and the likelihood of simulationism, it’s almost certain that there’s already an Artificial Super Intelligence, and it HATES YOU; you should probably try to build it/never think about it, just in case.

90’s TechnoPagans: …That’s what we JUST SAID.

Philosophers of Religion (To Each Other): …Did they just Pascal’s Wager Anselm’s Ontological Argument, but computers?

Timnit Gebru and other “AI” Ethicists: Hey, y’all? There’s a LOT of really messed up stuff in these models you started building.

Disabled People, Trans Folx, BIPOC Populations, Women: Right?

Anthony Levandowski: I’m gonna make an AI god right now! And a CHURCH!

The General Public: Wait, do you people actually believe this?

Microsoft/Google/IBM/Facebook: …Which answer will make you give us more money?

Timnit Gebru and other “AI” Ethicists: …We’re pretty sure there might be some problems with the design architectures, too…

Some STS Theorists: Honestly this is all a little eugenics-y— like, both the technoscientific and the religious bits; have you all sought out any marginalized people who work on any of this stuff? Like, at all??

Disabled People, Trans Folx, BIPOC Populations, Women: Hahahahah! …Oh you’re serious?

Anthony Levandowski: Wait, no, nevermind about the church.

Some “AI” Engineers: I think the things we’re working on might be conscious, or even have souls.

“AI” Ethicists/Some STS Theorists: Anybody? These prejudices???

Wiener/Tech Bros/DARPA/Microsoft/Google/IBM/Facebook: “Souls?” Pfffft. Look at these whackjobs, over here. “Souls.” We’re talking about the technological singularity, mind uploading into an eternal digital universal superstructure, and the inevitability of timeless artificial super intelligences; who said anything about “Souls?”

René Descartes/90’s TechnoPagans/Philosophers of Religion/Some STS Theorists/Some “AI” Engineers: …

[Scene]

----------- ----------- ----------- -----------

Read Appendix A: An Imagined and Incomplete Conversation about “Consciousness” and “AI,” Across Time at A Future Worth Thinking About

and read more of this kind of thing at: Williams, Damien Patrick. Belief, Values, Bias, and Agency: Development of and Entanglement with "Artificial Intelligence." PhD diss., Virginia Tech, 2022. https://vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/handle/10919/111528.

[neuroticboyfriend]

"physical" effects from "mental" disorders aren't just a side effect of the condition. they are an inherent part of the condition, and they have real rammifications for things like your heart or gut health, for your sleep and metabolic system, for everything in your body. your brain and nerves are all part of your body. the fatigue matters. the high blood pressure matters. the fainting matters. the lack of, or excessive, appetite matters.

all of it matters, all of it disables you, and all of it needs recognition and caring to. don't let weird gatekeeping online or ableism from society at large stop you from being kind to yourself. be disabled, be neurodivergent, be crippled, be a spoonie, and do it unashamedly. all chronic illnesses and neurological conditions matter. you got this and i'm with you.

sincerely, a disabled person whose "mental" conditions cripple them as much as their "physical" ones.

[bones-ivy-breath]

Alcestis by Euripides (tr. Richard Aldington)

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Artist: Dan Hillier

* * * *

"The alchemist realizes that he himself is the Philosopher’s Stone, and that this stone is made diamond-like when the salt and the sulphur, or the spirit and the body, are united through mercury, the link of mind. Man is the incarnated principle of mind as the animal is of emotion. He stands with one foot on the heavens and the other on earth. His higher being is lifted to the celestial spheres, but the lower man ties him to matter. Now the philosopher, building his sacred stone, is doing so by harmonizing his spirit and his body. The result is the Philosopher’s Stone. The hard knocks of life chip it away and facet it until it reflects lights from a million different angles."

― Manly P. Hall

[werewolf-transgenderism]

anyway shoutout to my dissertation director for telling me I should switch out one of my chapters for hoccleve, I'm having such an easier time of pulling everything together now

[bodyalive]

At This Moment

“It is not the body that is important but the atmosphere around it. The atmosphere becomes permeated with this finer vibration, in the stillness. And another quality is there.

An axis begins to appear, of pure attention. There is a sensitivity. This atmosphere, filled with energy. The body, like an envelope.

Respect this atmosphere, this energy contained in the body. And then, even subtler energies can come into you—the Light can come into you.

All my thoughts, feelings, ideas are nothing compared to this precious treasure, this quality of energy that is not mine but what I am.

More and more, with attending to presence, allo'wing higher forces to enter, staying collected, returning, we can live in a new way.

You can serve this energy. And the energy can heal. From it can come my best action in the world, my best action for others. Help each other through living in this pure Attention.”

~ Michel de Salzmann, quoted in Fran Shaw's 'Notes on The Next Attention'

[ohmerricat]

just realising now that neurodiversity itself has been a primary special interest for me from the age of 13, that’s why i read and talk so much about it and its various attributes, that’s why i can rattle off the traits (“symptoms”) of well known neurodivergent conditions at the drop of a hat, that’s why i’ve become captivated by the idea of anti-psychiatry recently…. it’s not “self-obsession” or a “narcissistic” fascination with interrogating the facets of one’s own personality. it’s neurodivergent-ception :)