John K
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I like this. Religion without spirituality is like a body without a soul - a zombie. It isn’t quite as bad the other way but spirituality without religion can be like a soul that has no body - a ghost.
Merkabah
- Thread starter Skarekrow
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John K
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Some thoughts
I think it can help with these emotionally charged topics to look for parallels, which can give some objectivity. The article talked about the behaviour of germs and naturally we think immediately of the little swine that cause us serious harm. But it isn’t in the interests of a germ family to damage their host and they will die out fairly quickly if they do. Many of the ones that are successful are those that have a symbiotic relationship with their host - gut bacteria for example. We need them as much as they need us and we have evolved together. It’s a wonderful win win partnership of give and take. We don’t think about these much unless they stop working and then we know about it all right. The most remarkable example of this I think is the way the eukaryotes evolved. This seems to be a partnership of the highest order without which there would be no multi-celled creatures at all.
These are wonderful parallels of the point in the article.
Skarekrow
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Some thoughts
I think it can help with these emotionally charged topics to look for parallels, which can give some objectivity. The article talked about the behaviour of germs and naturally we think immediately of the little swine that cause us serious harm. But it isn’t in the interests of a germ family to damage their host and they will die out fairly quickly if they do. Many of the ones that are successful are those that have a symbiotic relationship with their host - gut bacteria for example. We need them as much as they need us and we have evolved together. It’s a wonderful win win partnership of give and take. We don’t think about these much unless they stop working and then we know about it all right. The most remarkable example of this I think is the way the eukaryotes evolved. This seems to be a partnership of the highest order without which there would be no multi-celled creatures at all.
These are wonderful parallels of the point in the article.
Great post John!
I think perhaps they should have specified what type of "bacteria" so their point isn't lost then!
Parasitic critters would have been a better analogy probably?
Yes, it's really amazing when you think of it -
And there is definitely a link between gut health and depression/inflammation/etc./lol.
It's pretty fantastic learning to also view yourself as connected to everything and really spending time to meditate on it, to see how the cells are their own creature, down and down to the atomic level where we definitely are connected to everything!
I love doing that meditation, haha.
(taking my perspective down and then back up into the universe and then back down and then back up to each extreme)
It's amazing that trees and plants have done similar things, like constructing the xylem as it's circulatory system - at what level was there enough intelligence to say, hey, let's create tubes to carry the water up to the top and we'll pump it by opening and closing tiny apertures on the leaves.
Contrary, if it's some kind of universal pre-programed way that all life forms then where and what is the code, where did that come from, and where is the direction coming from exactly?
Fun to tumble in ones' mind!
Hope you are doing well John!
Much love!
Skarekrow
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So awesome!!
I love this stuff.
1. Nearly all colors have a physical wavelength associated with it, but the color Magenta doesn't. Rather, your brain is simply processing the color as "not green."
2. When you find yourself sleeping in a new environment for the first time, the brain processes danger and remains half-awake in order to be more aware.
3. According to researchers at UCLA, humans have been observed to have their first bout with anxiety or depression right after stomach illnesses. Utilizing brain scans, they found that patients who ate probiotics had their brains directly affected by the bacteria. All of their research suggests that stomach microbial health has a much greater effect on your brain than once thought.
4. A man by the name of Bruce Bridgeman spent nearly his entire life, 67 years, without the ability of depth perception, called stereoblindness. However, after being forced to purchase 3D glasses to watch the movie Hugo in theaters, his brain clicked and he was able to experience 3D vision.
5. A man in the UK had chronic hiccups for 2.5 years of his life and was told that it was likely caused by heartburn. After a Japanese TV show picked up the strange phenomena and paid for medical testing, a brain tumor was discovered. Once the man had the tumor removed, his chronic hiccups went away for good.
6. Blacking out from drinking is actually caused by the effect of alcohol on the hippocampus, the part of your brain responsible for memory. You're not physically forgetting anything, rather your brain becomes incapable of storing and recording new memories.
7. We cry when we are very happy because our hypothalamus in our brain can't distinguish the difference between strong happiness and strong sadness.
8. We get chills when we listen to music as a result of our brain releasing dopamine. When a song "moves" you, the anticipation from a peak moment in the song triggers this release.
9. Solitary confinement can actually cause extreme neurological damage to human brains. So much so that it can be seen on EEG scans and the brains of solitary prisoners have the same indicators as people who have had traumatic injuries.
10. While we sleep, our spinal fluid flows through the brain on the outside of the brain's blood vessels. This removes brain cell waste, specific buildups of amyloid-beta protein. This only occurs during sleep and a buildup of the proteins that get cleaned has been linked to greater risks of Alzheimer's.
11. A scientist by the name of Theodor Erismann created goggles that completely flip his vision. At first, he struggled with the flipped perception, but within just 5 days, his brain adapted to the change and he saw everything as normal. This type of adaptation is also well demonstrated by YouTuber "Smarter Every Day" who forgot how to ride a bike and relearned flipped his bike steering around, causing him to forget how to ride a bike and relearn in a reverse manner.
12. Alzheimer's disease is caused by a resistance to insulin in the brain, causing many to refer to it as type 3 diabetes.
13. The world's fastest supercomputer requires 24 million Watts of power to operate, but our brains only require 20 Watts and operate about 100,000 times faster.
14. Exercise slows our brains' cognitive decline and increased physical activity over the norm can slow our brain's aging by 10 years.
15. Human brains receive 20% of the total oxygen from our bodies even though they only represent 2% of our bodies' weight.
16. Certain languages do not have terms for Left, Right, Front, Back, and rather use the terms North, South, East, West. People raised in these languages have been found to always know what direction they are oriented, resulting in a type of compass brain.
17. 73% of your brain is just water, which means that if you get dehydrated by more than 2%, you can suffer from a loss in attention, cognitive skills, and memory.
18. Babies' brains grow rapidly. A 2-year-old baby will have an 80% fully grown brain. This rapid development is why paying close attention to your child's development in the early years is so impactful to their ability as an adult.
19. Information transfer in our brain occurs at a rate equivalent to 260 miles per hour.
20. Yawning is actually a reaction that sends more oxygen to your brain. Reptiles, birds, and mammals all yawn and it's controlled by neurotransmitters in the brain.
21. The cerebellum is the part of the brain responsible for posture, walking, and movement coordination. It is located in the back of the brain and weighs 150 grams.
22. The human brain is split into two sides, with each interacting with the opposite side of the body. While this interaction is known, the reason for it is still not understood.
23. Within your brain, there are 150,000 miles of blood vessels that carry blood and oxygen to various parts of the organ.
24. You can actually improve your memory if you choose to eat seafood regularly. The fatty acids in these foods improve the memory storing parts of your brain.
25. The human brain continues to develop until your late 40s. It is the only organ in the body that develops for this long of a time – and it sees more changes than any other organ as well.
26. Every second, there are 100,000 chemical reactions happening in the human brain.
27. Babies lose about half of their neurons before they are born. Referred to as pruning, this eliminates any brain neurons that don't receive sufficient input from other areas of the brain.
28. Studies have found that when mothers speak to their babies, the children learned, on average, 300 more words by the age of 2.
29. EEGs or electroencephalograms is a non-invasive imaging technique that is used to record small changes of electrical activity in the brain. Utilizing surface electrodes on the scalp, scientists can study many aspects of the brain utilizing this technique. Tiny fluctuations in the EEG signals indicate whether a person is asleep, aroused, or somewhere in-between.
30. Researchers from Baylor University have discovered that children who are deprived of touch, play, and interaction with others have 20-30% smaller brains than what is normal for their age. Child abuse can thus inhibit brain development in a child and negatively affect their lifetime brain development.
31. The brain cannot experience pain. This allows neurosurgeons to probe areas within the brain while patients are awake. They can then get real-time feedback from each patient, allowing them to pinpoint particular regions, like for speech or movement.
32. The reaction of our pupils constricting when they are exposed to bright light is called the pupillary light reflex. This reflex is used by doctors to determine whether the reflex pathway to the brain has been disrupted. If one or both of your eyes fail to produce this reflex, then doctors can work to pinpoint the exact location of the disconnect.
33. 5% of the population of the world has epilepsy. However, it's estimated that 1 in 10 people will have a seizure within their lifetime.
34. Scratching an itch is actually a strange biological response from a medical perspective. It seems to hinder the healing process rather than help it. Researchers believe that we itch because it stimulates the release of endorphins and natural opiates that block pain. Because scratching thus damages the skin, it causes a fresh rush of endorphins to help the pain.
35. Every time that you remember something, you, in turn, strengthen that memory in your brain. Whenever the neural pathways of a memory are exercised, your brain makes new connections. The older and more times a memory has been remembered, the stronger that memory is.
36. During sleep, your body produces a hormone that prevents you from getting up and acting out your dreams. Five minutes after a dream, your body has already forgotten half of it and ten minutes later it is 90% gone from your memory.
37. Our brains can compute 10 to the 13th and 10 to the 16th operations per second. That is equivalent to 1 million times the people on earth. In theory, brains are capable of solving problems faster than any computer in the world, perhaps better than any computer that will ever exist.
38. Good nutrition is incredibly important to brain health. Dieting can force the brain to start eating itself and malnourished fetuses or infants can suffer from cognitive and behavioral deficits. Babies need proper nourishment because their brains use up to 50% of their total glucose supply, another reason why they may need so much sleep.
39. Humans experience 70,000 thoughts each day.
40. Our sense of smell is the only sense that is directly linked to our limbic system. This part of the brain specializes in physical, emotional, and psychological responses. This all means that good smells can change our moods drastically in a snap.
41. A group of researchers studied London Taxi drivers and found that they had a larger hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible for memory. This suggests that the more you are forced to memorize, the larger this part of your brain grows.
42. Making music may actually have a quantifiable effect on our brain. When you hook up guitar players to electrodes, researchers discovered that brainwaves of musicians synchronize when they play duets.
43. The average weight of brains for men is 2.9 pounds and for women 2.6 pounds. However, that doesn't correlate to higher intelligence. For example, Einstein's brain weighed 2.7 pounds.
44. The brain is the only object in the world that can contemplate itself.
45. Chronic exposer to stress actually overloads your brain with hormones that are only intended for short-term emergency functions. In turn, that means that long-term exposure can kill brain cells.
46. Of people ages 1 to 44, traumatic brain injury is the leading cause of disability and death. Most commonly involved are falls, motor vehicle crashes, and assaults.
47. The average size of the human brain has decreased by 9 cubic inches over a period of the last 5000 years. Scientists aren't exactly sure why.
48. Déjà vu hasn't been fully explained. Scientists think that it's actually a neurological glitch caused by something being registered in memory before conscious thought.
49. What seems like random light when you hit your head, is actually just jolts to brain cells responsible for vision. These visual "hallucinations" are just simple responses.
.
I love this stuff.
49 Interesting Facts and Stories About the Human Brain
Humans experience 70,000 thoughts each day.
Humans experience 70,000 thoughts each day.
Our brains allow us to process the world, understand everything around us, learn new things,
and paradoxically, we're still very unaware of how much of our own brains function.
However, modern neuroscience and cognitive sciences have made great strides in
understanding the effect our brains have on our everyday functions.
With that, comes a wealth of knowledge and a variety of facts that you probably don't know about the brain.
___________________________________________________________________________
and paradoxically, we're still very unaware of how much of our own brains function.
However, modern neuroscience and cognitive sciences have made great strides in
understanding the effect our brains have on our everyday functions.
With that, comes a wealth of knowledge and a variety of facts that you probably don't know about the brain.
___________________________________________________________________________
Here are 49 interesting facts and stories about the human brain that are sure to blow your mind
1. Nearly all colors have a physical wavelength associated with it, but the color Magenta doesn't. Rather, your brain is simply processing the color as "not green."
2. When you find yourself sleeping in a new environment for the first time, the brain processes danger and remains half-awake in order to be more aware.
3. According to researchers at UCLA, humans have been observed to have their first bout with anxiety or depression right after stomach illnesses. Utilizing brain scans, they found that patients who ate probiotics had their brains directly affected by the bacteria. All of their research suggests that stomach microbial health has a much greater effect on your brain than once thought.
4. A man by the name of Bruce Bridgeman spent nearly his entire life, 67 years, without the ability of depth perception, called stereoblindness. However, after being forced to purchase 3D glasses to watch the movie Hugo in theaters, his brain clicked and he was able to experience 3D vision.
5. A man in the UK had chronic hiccups for 2.5 years of his life and was told that it was likely caused by heartburn. After a Japanese TV show picked up the strange phenomena and paid for medical testing, a brain tumor was discovered. Once the man had the tumor removed, his chronic hiccups went away for good.
6. Blacking out from drinking is actually caused by the effect of alcohol on the hippocampus, the part of your brain responsible for memory. You're not physically forgetting anything, rather your brain becomes incapable of storing and recording new memories.
7. We cry when we are very happy because our hypothalamus in our brain can't distinguish the difference between strong happiness and strong sadness.
8. We get chills when we listen to music as a result of our brain releasing dopamine. When a song "moves" you, the anticipation from a peak moment in the song triggers this release.
9. Solitary confinement can actually cause extreme neurological damage to human brains. So much so that it can be seen on EEG scans and the brains of solitary prisoners have the same indicators as people who have had traumatic injuries.
10. While we sleep, our spinal fluid flows through the brain on the outside of the brain's blood vessels. This removes brain cell waste, specific buildups of amyloid-beta protein. This only occurs during sleep and a buildup of the proteins that get cleaned has been linked to greater risks of Alzheimer's.
11. A scientist by the name of Theodor Erismann created goggles that completely flip his vision. At first, he struggled with the flipped perception, but within just 5 days, his brain adapted to the change and he saw everything as normal. This type of adaptation is also well demonstrated by YouTuber "Smarter Every Day" who forgot how to ride a bike and relearned flipped his bike steering around, causing him to forget how to ride a bike and relearn in a reverse manner.
12. Alzheimer's disease is caused by a resistance to insulin in the brain, causing many to refer to it as type 3 diabetes.
13. The world's fastest supercomputer requires 24 million Watts of power to operate, but our brains only require 20 Watts and operate about 100,000 times faster.
14. Exercise slows our brains' cognitive decline and increased physical activity over the norm can slow our brain's aging by 10 years.
15. Human brains receive 20% of the total oxygen from our bodies even though they only represent 2% of our bodies' weight.
16. Certain languages do not have terms for Left, Right, Front, Back, and rather use the terms North, South, East, West. People raised in these languages have been found to always know what direction they are oriented, resulting in a type of compass brain.
17. 73% of your brain is just water, which means that if you get dehydrated by more than 2%, you can suffer from a loss in attention, cognitive skills, and memory.
18. Babies' brains grow rapidly. A 2-year-old baby will have an 80% fully grown brain. This rapid development is why paying close attention to your child's development in the early years is so impactful to their ability as an adult.
19. Information transfer in our brain occurs at a rate equivalent to 260 miles per hour.
20. Yawning is actually a reaction that sends more oxygen to your brain. Reptiles, birds, and mammals all yawn and it's controlled by neurotransmitters in the brain.
21. The cerebellum is the part of the brain responsible for posture, walking, and movement coordination. It is located in the back of the brain and weighs 150 grams.
22. The human brain is split into two sides, with each interacting with the opposite side of the body. While this interaction is known, the reason for it is still not understood.
23. Within your brain, there are 150,000 miles of blood vessels that carry blood and oxygen to various parts of the organ.
24. You can actually improve your memory if you choose to eat seafood regularly. The fatty acids in these foods improve the memory storing parts of your brain.
25. The human brain continues to develop until your late 40s. It is the only organ in the body that develops for this long of a time – and it sees more changes than any other organ as well.
26. Every second, there are 100,000 chemical reactions happening in the human brain.
27. Babies lose about half of their neurons before they are born. Referred to as pruning, this eliminates any brain neurons that don't receive sufficient input from other areas of the brain.
28. Studies have found that when mothers speak to their babies, the children learned, on average, 300 more words by the age of 2.
29. EEGs or electroencephalograms is a non-invasive imaging technique that is used to record small changes of electrical activity in the brain. Utilizing surface electrodes on the scalp, scientists can study many aspects of the brain utilizing this technique. Tiny fluctuations in the EEG signals indicate whether a person is asleep, aroused, or somewhere in-between.
30. Researchers from Baylor University have discovered that children who are deprived of touch, play, and interaction with others have 20-30% smaller brains than what is normal for their age. Child abuse can thus inhibit brain development in a child and negatively affect their lifetime brain development.
31. The brain cannot experience pain. This allows neurosurgeons to probe areas within the brain while patients are awake. They can then get real-time feedback from each patient, allowing them to pinpoint particular regions, like for speech or movement.
32. The reaction of our pupils constricting when they are exposed to bright light is called the pupillary light reflex. This reflex is used by doctors to determine whether the reflex pathway to the brain has been disrupted. If one or both of your eyes fail to produce this reflex, then doctors can work to pinpoint the exact location of the disconnect.
33. 5% of the population of the world has epilepsy. However, it's estimated that 1 in 10 people will have a seizure within their lifetime.
34. Scratching an itch is actually a strange biological response from a medical perspective. It seems to hinder the healing process rather than help it. Researchers believe that we itch because it stimulates the release of endorphins and natural opiates that block pain. Because scratching thus damages the skin, it causes a fresh rush of endorphins to help the pain.
35. Every time that you remember something, you, in turn, strengthen that memory in your brain. Whenever the neural pathways of a memory are exercised, your brain makes new connections. The older and more times a memory has been remembered, the stronger that memory is.
36. During sleep, your body produces a hormone that prevents you from getting up and acting out your dreams. Five minutes after a dream, your body has already forgotten half of it and ten minutes later it is 90% gone from your memory.
37. Our brains can compute 10 to the 13th and 10 to the 16th operations per second. That is equivalent to 1 million times the people on earth. In theory, brains are capable of solving problems faster than any computer in the world, perhaps better than any computer that will ever exist.
38. Good nutrition is incredibly important to brain health. Dieting can force the brain to start eating itself and malnourished fetuses or infants can suffer from cognitive and behavioral deficits. Babies need proper nourishment because their brains use up to 50% of their total glucose supply, another reason why they may need so much sleep.
39. Humans experience 70,000 thoughts each day.
40. Our sense of smell is the only sense that is directly linked to our limbic system. This part of the brain specializes in physical, emotional, and psychological responses. This all means that good smells can change our moods drastically in a snap.
41. A group of researchers studied London Taxi drivers and found that they had a larger hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible for memory. This suggests that the more you are forced to memorize, the larger this part of your brain grows.
42. Making music may actually have a quantifiable effect on our brain. When you hook up guitar players to electrodes, researchers discovered that brainwaves of musicians synchronize when they play duets.
43. The average weight of brains for men is 2.9 pounds and for women 2.6 pounds. However, that doesn't correlate to higher intelligence. For example, Einstein's brain weighed 2.7 pounds.
44. The brain is the only object in the world that can contemplate itself.
45. Chronic exposer to stress actually overloads your brain with hormones that are only intended for short-term emergency functions. In turn, that means that long-term exposure can kill brain cells.
46. Of people ages 1 to 44, traumatic brain injury is the leading cause of disability and death. Most commonly involved are falls, motor vehicle crashes, and assaults.
47. The average size of the human brain has decreased by 9 cubic inches over a period of the last 5000 years. Scientists aren't exactly sure why.
48. Déjà vu hasn't been fully explained. Scientists think that it's actually a neurological glitch caused by something being registered in memory before conscious thought.
49. What seems like random light when you hit your head, is actually just jolts to brain cells responsible for vision. These visual "hallucinations" are just simple responses.
.
John K
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It's a great and thought provoking article you posted - and it generalises to a major evolutionary principle as far as I can see, whether of an organism or of social relationships. Many thanks for all the fascinating things you find and spotlight here Skare.Great post John!
I think perhaps they should have specified what type of "bacteria" so their point isn't lost then!
Parasitic critters would have been a better analogy probably?
Yes, it's really amazing when you think of it -
And there is definitely a link between gut health and depression/inflammation/etc./lol.
It's pretty fantastic learning to also view yourself as connected to everything and really spending time to meditate on it, to see how the cells are their own creature, down and down to the atomic level where we definitely are connected to everything!
I love doing that meditation, haha.
(taking my perspective down and then back up into the universe and then back down and then back up to each extreme)
It's amazing that trees and plants have done similar things, like constructing the xylem as it's circulatory system - at what level was there enough intelligence to say, hey, let's create tubes to carry the water up to the top and we'll pump it by opening and closing tiny apertures on the leaves.
Contrary, if it's some kind of universal pre-programed way that all life forms then where and what is the code, where did that come from, and where is the direction coming from exactly?
Fun to tumble in ones' mind!
Hope you are doing well John!
Much love!
We're doing OK at the moment. Apart from falling asleep in front of the telly just now .... a prerogative of age
. I hope you are keeping OK and fighting off the health demons - I keep sending good vibes in your direction.Much love my friend
Skarekrow
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Thanks John!!It's a great and thought provoking article you posted - and it generalises to a major evolutionary principle as far as I can see, whether of an organism or of social relationships. Many thanks for all the fascinating things you find and spotlight here Skare.
We're doing OK at the moment. Apart from falling asleep in front of the telly just now .... a prerogative of age
Much love my friend
Last edited:
yes!
Skarekrow
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Gotta run for now, but I wanted to post up the invite to the next lecture I'm giving on plant medicines and entheogenic substances.
It's supposed to be a webinar this time so that will be interesting and hopefully will not have any technical issues.
PM me if anyone is interested, it will probably be at the end of March beginning of April, no date and time are set quite yet.
Learning to Suffer Less: Changing our perceptions of chronic pain.
Chronic pain is a difficult and oftentimes frustrating issue to deal with.
Those fighting chronic pain also know it can cause secondary issues on top of the already unbearable pain.
Depression, anxiety, loss of sleep, lethargy, as well as financial strain and a medical system that doesn’t seem to quite know how to properly treat the millions of people suffering.
These are just some of the additional hardships one must learn to live with and in some sense, overcome.
Acceptance of pain may seem counterintuitive, but it is one part of the larger puzzle as we begin to learn how to suffer less.
There are many things we can do to turn down the volume on our pain.
Many people though are mentally and physically exhausted, making real and lasting changes in their perception of pain and attitude toward it, seem almost impossible.
Psychedelics, or entheogenic substances have shown very significant and lasting relief for nearly all the secondary symptoms of chronic pain as well as remarkable positive changes in our perception of pain and hopefully our attitude toward suffering.
Please join us for a presentation and talk as well as a Q&A portion.
It is possible to suffer less, even during moments of greater pain.
It's supposed to be a webinar this time so that will be interesting and hopefully will not have any technical issues.
PM me if anyone is interested, it will probably be at the end of March beginning of April, no date and time are set quite yet.
Learning to Suffer Less: Changing our perceptions of chronic pain.
Chronic pain is a difficult and oftentimes frustrating issue to deal with.
Those fighting chronic pain also know it can cause secondary issues on top of the already unbearable pain.
Depression, anxiety, loss of sleep, lethargy, as well as financial strain and a medical system that doesn’t seem to quite know how to properly treat the millions of people suffering.
These are just some of the additional hardships one must learn to live with and in some sense, overcome.
Acceptance of pain may seem counterintuitive, but it is one part of the larger puzzle as we begin to learn how to suffer less.
There are many things we can do to turn down the volume on our pain.
Many people though are mentally and physically exhausted, making real and lasting changes in their perception of pain and attitude toward it, seem almost impossible.
Psychedelics, or entheogenic substances have shown very significant and lasting relief for nearly all the secondary symptoms of chronic pain as well as remarkable positive changes in our perception of pain and hopefully our attitude toward suffering.
Please join us for a presentation and talk as well as a Q&A portion.
It is possible to suffer less, even during moments of greater pain.
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Current mood...
This is excellent!!!
I keep seeing visions of a big bonfire as I sort things from my room to leave either by giving the stuff away or burning it. I have a deep desire to see things burrrrnnnnnnnn......
Heh...
Skarekrow
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Nice!
I love the image of the two smoke snakes spiraling, like a caduceus.
Yes!!! I welcome all things Reptilian! Let the Dragon(s) free!
Skarekrow
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@Sensiko
(This is exactly how I felt often during surgery - there was a constant present state of mind, knowing what to do next and next and next without having to think about it, a flow state)
Enjoy everyone!
By Eurasia Review
What goes on in the minds of virtuosos when they play pieces of music they know incredibly well? When the music virtually “plays itself”?
“It’s a romantic cliché when artists say things like Beethoven is playing through them, that the art took full control, or that they’re just a medium for the spirit of the art. But it’s an interesting cliché,” says Simon Høffding.
Høffding is a philosopher at the RITMO Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Rhythm, Time and Motion, and is researching what happens to consciousness and the sense of presence when musicians are completely absorbed in their music.
Out-of-body experience
“In one in a thousand concerts, or in one in a thousand rehearsal hours, certain musicians experience some very intense moments. For some reason, a change in consciousness appears to take place during these moments of musical absorption.”
What this change looks like is different from person to person, and from time to time. A key denominator is that the feeling of the “self” itself changes.
“The musicians say that it is as though they become one with the world, or one with the instrument or music. Some say they become unsure whether they themselves can play, and that it was as if someone else was playing.”
In this case, Høffding believes that the distinction between the subject – the self, and the object – the instrument, dissolves.
“It also bears witness of tremendous confidence that the body can do what it is supposed to do, after many thousands of hours of rehearsal.”
He also describes an opposite experience, where musicians experience a sharpened sense of presence.
“These are cases of ecstasy, which many characterise as a positive bodily experience. It is described as sharp and crystallised. The musicians can see many details, or see themselves from a distance, as if they are sitting in the audience and not on stage. It’s a quasi-out-of-body experience.”
Høffding thinks this is interesting, because it alters common perceptions of how consciousness works.
“Where we usually see changes in the feeling of the self is in those who suffer from some form of mental illness. It will be interesting to take a closer look at possible resemblances between these experiences. No illness is involved here. Instead, it’s a matter of a lot of control, which you let go of.”
Experts don’t have to think
Simon Høffding links these special experiences to two big questions within philosophy: What is a self and what is expertise?
“Within many cultural or philosophical directions, including Buddhism, the ideal for the human self is to lose the self. However, the phenomenological tradition from France and Germany embraces the forceful idea that the self is fundamental to our existence, and that one cannot lose it. If you lose the self, you are, according to this direction, unconscious,” explains Høffding.
“It breaks with the ideas in phenomenology when musicians report seeing themselves from the outside.”
So what’s really going on? Høffding refers to expertise research in psychology and philosophy and the American philosopher Hubert Dreyfus to get closer to the answer. According to Dreyfus, real expertise is characterised by knowing something so well that you don’t have to think.
“According to Dreyfus, the body then takes over. However, if you are conscious about how you do something, your performance will suffer,” says Høffding.
Intelligence is more than rationality
According to Høffding and Dreyfus, it is important to understand intelligence as something more than being rational and reflective.
“Intelligence is also bodily, cultural and oriented towards the outside world. And it doesn’t work by thinking about yourself and what you do all the time, but is more intuitive and spontaneous,” says Høffding.
An example of areas where this knowledge is important is in the development of artificial intelligence.
“If you want to build a good robot, you can run into problems if it is to act strictly rationally. Because people don’t behave like that. When we talk, we not only use words, but also send each other many implied communicative signals. It says more about human intelligence than thinking about classical rationality.”
This is the essence of the direction in which Høffding is conducting his research.
“The phenomenology can be used to give nuanced descriptions of the world as we experience it, rather than as we measure it or weigh it. To understand the life of consciousness, we need to have a science that can give us reliable results about more than objects.”
Studied The Danish String Quartet
Unlike how philosophers usually do research, Simon Høffding sought out musicians to study them through observations and in-depth interviews. For ten years, Høffding has followed the world-class Danish String Quartet on tour, delving in for explanations of what happens when musicians play.
He believes that highly professional musicians provide the most interesting scenario for looking at this issue.
“Less experienced musicians usually have not had equally strong experiences, because they are more bound by the need to play technically correct.”
As a member of the audience, you may not understand when a musician experiences losing himself, or when they are extremely present.
“Some may look very absorbed, but they might be thinking of something very trivial. When you’re sitting in the audience you can’t usually sense when a musician sits and thinks about what to eat for dinner or how the children are doing,” says Høffding.
It is important to be able to let go
Simon Høffding believes the research on musical absorption says something about what it is to be human.
“It is a human quality to surrender to something. The human part consists of hard work to become proficient at something, but also to be able to let go and surrender to the fact that things have great aesthetic or perhaps also moral value,” he says.
“If we think we can control everything, we’ll miss some of the finest things.”
About phenomenology
A philosophical tradition, after the German philosopher Edmund Husserl. Concerns qualitative aspects of our experience, emphasises structures such as perception, thought, memory, emotions, corporal consciousness, social and linguistic agency
(This is exactly how I felt often during surgery - there was a constant present state of mind, knowing what to do next and next and next without having to think about it, a flow state)
Enjoy everyone!
The Most Accomplished Musicians Can Play Without Thinking
By Eurasia Review
What goes on in the minds of virtuosos when they play pieces of music they know incredibly well? When the music virtually “plays itself”?
“It’s a romantic cliché when artists say things like Beethoven is playing through them, that the art took full control, or that they’re just a medium for the spirit of the art. But it’s an interesting cliché,” says Simon Høffding.
Høffding is a philosopher at the RITMO Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Rhythm, Time and Motion, and is researching what happens to consciousness and the sense of presence when musicians are completely absorbed in their music.
Out-of-body experience
“In one in a thousand concerts, or in one in a thousand rehearsal hours, certain musicians experience some very intense moments. For some reason, a change in consciousness appears to take place during these moments of musical absorption.”
What this change looks like is different from person to person, and from time to time. A key denominator is that the feeling of the “self” itself changes.
“The musicians say that it is as though they become one with the world, or one with the instrument or music. Some say they become unsure whether they themselves can play, and that it was as if someone else was playing.”
In this case, Høffding believes that the distinction between the subject – the self, and the object – the instrument, dissolves.
“It also bears witness of tremendous confidence that the body can do what it is supposed to do, after many thousands of hours of rehearsal.”
He also describes an opposite experience, where musicians experience a sharpened sense of presence.
“These are cases of ecstasy, which many characterise as a positive bodily experience. It is described as sharp and crystallised. The musicians can see many details, or see themselves from a distance, as if they are sitting in the audience and not on stage. It’s a quasi-out-of-body experience.”
Høffding thinks this is interesting, because it alters common perceptions of how consciousness works.
“Where we usually see changes in the feeling of the self is in those who suffer from some form of mental illness. It will be interesting to take a closer look at possible resemblances between these experiences. No illness is involved here. Instead, it’s a matter of a lot of control, which you let go of.”
Experts don’t have to think
Simon Høffding links these special experiences to two big questions within philosophy: What is a self and what is expertise?
“Within many cultural or philosophical directions, including Buddhism, the ideal for the human self is to lose the self. However, the phenomenological tradition from France and Germany embraces the forceful idea that the self is fundamental to our existence, and that one cannot lose it. If you lose the self, you are, according to this direction, unconscious,” explains Høffding.
“It breaks with the ideas in phenomenology when musicians report seeing themselves from the outside.”
So what’s really going on? Høffding refers to expertise research in psychology and philosophy and the American philosopher Hubert Dreyfus to get closer to the answer. According to Dreyfus, real expertise is characterised by knowing something so well that you don’t have to think.
“According to Dreyfus, the body then takes over. However, if you are conscious about how you do something, your performance will suffer,” says Høffding.
Intelligence is more than rationality
According to Høffding and Dreyfus, it is important to understand intelligence as something more than being rational and reflective.
“Intelligence is also bodily, cultural and oriented towards the outside world. And it doesn’t work by thinking about yourself and what you do all the time, but is more intuitive and spontaneous,” says Høffding.
An example of areas where this knowledge is important is in the development of artificial intelligence.
“If you want to build a good robot, you can run into problems if it is to act strictly rationally. Because people don’t behave like that. When we talk, we not only use words, but also send each other many implied communicative signals. It says more about human intelligence than thinking about classical rationality.”
This is the essence of the direction in which Høffding is conducting his research.
“The phenomenology can be used to give nuanced descriptions of the world as we experience it, rather than as we measure it or weigh it. To understand the life of consciousness, we need to have a science that can give us reliable results about more than objects.”
Studied The Danish String Quartet
Unlike how philosophers usually do research, Simon Høffding sought out musicians to study them through observations and in-depth interviews. For ten years, Høffding has followed the world-class Danish String Quartet on tour, delving in for explanations of what happens when musicians play.
He believes that highly professional musicians provide the most interesting scenario for looking at this issue.
“Less experienced musicians usually have not had equally strong experiences, because they are more bound by the need to play technically correct.”
As a member of the audience, you may not understand when a musician experiences losing himself, or when they are extremely present.
“Some may look very absorbed, but they might be thinking of something very trivial. When you’re sitting in the audience you can’t usually sense when a musician sits and thinks about what to eat for dinner or how the children are doing,” says Høffding.
It is important to be able to let go
Simon Høffding believes the research on musical absorption says something about what it is to be human.
“It is a human quality to surrender to something. The human part consists of hard work to become proficient at something, but also to be able to let go and surrender to the fact that things have great aesthetic or perhaps also moral value,” he says.
“If we think we can control everything, we’ll miss some of the finest things.”
About phenomenology
A philosophical tradition, after the German philosopher Edmund Husserl. Concerns qualitative aspects of our experience, emphasises structures such as perception, thought, memory, emotions, corporal consciousness, social and linguistic agency