noun : an accumulation of loose stones or rocky debris lying on a slope or at the base of a hill or cliff.
WWII Workout Week concludes with some exercises you can do to improve your posture. While posture is an oft neglected part of physical training programs, it provides a myriad of benefits and can boost both your physiological functions and your confidence.
~ Brett McKay from, WWII Workout Week: Posture Training
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Circa 1946, from the Army field manual FM 21-20. ‘ten-HUT!
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When I left, the search for my replacement took a long time. Much longer than I’d have preferred, and to an eventually unsatisfactory conclusion for everyone involved, I believe. I contented myself with the knowledge that my skill set was sufficiently wide in breadth and complex in nature that I was hard to replace. I used this to buoy my ego. ALthough I had sympathy for the people I was leaving, and the one I left in my stead, it felt good to be needed and wanted, and I was proud that I could fill that role like no one else we’d found.
Such is the folly of the unwise, I’m afraid.
~ Matt Simmons from, «http://www.standalone-sysadmin.com/blog/2013/02/and-when-you-gaze-long-into-an-infrastructure-the-infrastructure-will-gaze-back-into-you/»
Note to self: Hang out with Matt more and listen to what he has to say.
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http://www.quietrev.com/manifesto/
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The Quiet Revolution: Have you ever read the book Quiet by Susan Cain? Here’s . . . well, her next project? a companion project? you decide.
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In each of the situations above, I had sorted myself into a category, or felt like I had been sorted…and then panicked when I didn’t fit or wanted to get out. It turns out, I was the one doing the sorting, not my family or friends. It was pressure I had been putting on myself: I struggled with losing my identity that I THOUGHT I needed to have, that I thought others had of me.
~ Steve Kamb from, Ditch The Sorting Hat. Choose Your Own Adventure!
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Art du Déplacement, (a French phrase meaning ‘art of movement’,) is a method of improving oneself through challenge. The founders say that to practice the art means to work toward: Being mentally and physically strong; being useful; being a positive contribution to your community; being better than you were yesterday.
But what about competition, flips, stunts, jumping roof gaps and gymnastics tumbling? …are those things part of it? Certainly, some people do those things as part of their practice. Competition can make you physically stronger. Jumping roof gaps can make you mentally tougher. So these things can be part of your practice, but your practice does not have to be these things.
For me, swallowing my pride and starting over in physical fitness with a group of people about half my age… That was a challenge. For me, pull-ups are a challenge. But that’s the whole point. It’s is about me improving me, and you improving you.
But I didn’t know that when I first tried Parkour, (before I understood the Art du Déplacement roots of what I was learning,) in the spring of 2012. I had met Adam McClellan during a martial arts demonstration and he talked me into coming out to play with the growing Lehigh Valley Parkour community. I am continuously delighted to be the big, old, slow, lumbering gorilla in a community of enthusiastic, supportive and happy people. After two years of serious training, at the age of 42, I passed the ADAPT Level 1 certification through Parkour Generations. Art du Déplacement, Parkour, and this unique community, have changed my life.
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In college, I briefly practiced Taekwondo, and I spent 5 years practicing, and informally teaching, modern fencing. (Epée!) But I didn’t begin martial arts training in earnest until 1998, at age 26, when I began practicing Aikido under the direction of Sensei Michael Wirth. I practiced non-stop, reaching shodan (1st-degree black belt) in 2003 and godan (5th-degree) in 2013.
Sensei Wirth’s Aikido is an unaffiliated, no-nonsense, art; It is built on the bedrock principles of a soft and flowing Aikido, while honestly seeking to be physically functional and practical. On the mat, his Aikido is soft and flowing; It can vary very quickly from a light touch to vigorous atemi. In more recent years, I’ve repeated catch-phrases such as “No this. No that. No delay.” and “Relax beyond any indication of every injury you’ve ever received.” to convey the idea that you can be your most powerful only when you relax and eliminate all the unnecessary thinking and movements.
In the beginning, I had no clue how unique the Aikido group was that I’d stumbled into. It wasn’t until ten years or so into my journey that I realized the incredible luck of my timing: I started training just young enough to survive the tail-end of what I call Sensei Wirth’s “Does this work?” epoch, and was just old enough to thoroughly appreciate the subsequent, “Yes, it works. What can we do with it?” epoch. Those who experienced the former epoch nod knowingly with a serious expression. Those who experience the later epoch have the luxury of following the now more direct path that Sensei Wirth has arrived upon. The later epoch is certainly better, but the few of us who experienced both are indeed, very lucky.
Along the way, as I’ve wandered (physically and mentally), I’ve taken the opportunities to experience a wide range of Aikido styles, groups and teachers. I’ve gone to fundamentally different Aikido groups’ seminars just to honestly try the “when in Rome…” thing. I also made an honest effort of a couple years in Tai Chi. I expanded my practice by reading from a wide range of topics directly, and indirectly, related to Aikido including philosophy, physiology and spirituality. In fact, I would go so far as to say that I did my best to deconstruct and reassemble everything I’ve learned.
On the other hand, I make no claim to the quality of my reassembled puzzle since some pieces are missing, several are chewed on, and many which don’t fit remain to the side. All things considered? I’m delighted to still feel I am a beginner.
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Then I asked myself the big question: If I have too much insulin (and I was guessing I did – it wasn’t something you measured in those days unless you were in a scientific lab), how do I get it down? There were only two conclusions. Don’t eat. Or don’t eat carbohydrates. The latter seemed to make a lot more sense over the long run.
~ Michael Eades from, «http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/cardiovascular-disease/four-patients-who-changed-my-life/»
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To this student, and to everyone else who feels this way, I’d say this: your plate is too full. You have too much going on.
The only answer, unless you want your health to decline (and that’s not good for anyone), is to start saying No.
~ Leo Babuta from, When Your Plate is Too Full
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I really hope everyone else finds this totally obvious.
…because I didn’t, and I wasted a lot of my life “should’ing” on myself. I should do this. I should do that. I should be working. I should take time off. blah blah blah. I started saying “No” to little things first… really silly dumb stuff that I did all the time. Like check my email FIRST thing after opening my eyes. Saved myself, maybe, 5 seconds every day right there. Maybe instead now I glance out the window first. Then I moved on to bigger and bigger things; Do I really want to try to start this professional meetup group? Do I really want to continue studying tai chi? Do I want to keep writing in my journal? (Yes, but I can change my expectations for what gets into the journal from, “a good long journal entry for each day,” to “just write a couple of thoughts — literally, two. If more flows, great.”
I’m not trying to soap-box preach, I’m trying to say: Hear! Hear! Go read what Leo has to say.
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Meat eating made us human. The anthropological evidence strongly supports the idea that the addition of increasingly larger amounts of meat in the diet of our predecessors was essential in the evolution of the large human brain. Our large brains came at the metabolic expense of our guts, which shrank as our brains grew.
~ Michael Eades from, «http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/low-carb-library/are-we-meat-eaters-or-vegetarians-part-ii/»
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I’ve been slowly making steady progress on a number of healthy goals. One of them is good ‘ol weight loss.
It is important that I avoid going crazy with snack food. But sometimes I simply get hungry between meals. And most importantly, because I’ve been doing intermittent fasting, it is very important that I have something ready to eat at Noon in cases where a full meal isn’t easy to get. So if I’m driving, or out doing something with friends or family, and Noon rolls around… what are you going to do? I don’t want to be a stick-in-the-mud and demand we stop what we’re doing to have lunch promptly at Noon.
GORP is simply Good Old Raisins and Peanuts. But I particularly like mixing in raw almonds to get the micronutrients, and fat — fat is GOOD for you! Peanuts are not a true nut by the way. So this recipe is just roughly equal part mixture of raisins, peanuts and almonds. (Note, dry roasted unsalted peanuts, raw unsalted almonds.)
I mix this up in bulk, and measure it out in 1/3 cup servings in small snack size plastic bags. You get about 45 servings out of this batch. The serving size is deliberate: It is about 240 calories; about 22g fat, 19g carbs and 11g protein. So I know I can have one of these with ZERO guilt. They are small enough to fit/carry anywhere, and small enough in calories to have little effect on whatever dieting you may be doing. On the other hand, they are large enough in calories and nutrition that I can easily go a couple hours before getting hungry again for a meal.
There are two things to notice.
The nutrition info I’ve given comes NOT from the “serving size” info on the containers. Instead, I extrapolated to get the nutritional data for the entire container and then divided by the number of 1/3-cup servings I make out of the entire mix.
240 calories is a surprisingly small handful of this stuff. Every time I eat one of these, I think, “I’m hungrier than this size… but ok I’ll start with this.” Then, an hour later I’m like, “I fell for it again… 240 calories was enough.”
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Instead of berating yourself when you’re not motivated to exercise, or getting mad at yourself when you struggle with eating unhealthy food, take a step back and look at it from a different angle:
“How can you build the habit of success and put your focus there, instead of chasing the motivation to make it happen?
It’s easy to become ensnared – to chase motivation and fail – or rationalize inaction and never try. Every single one of us has fallen into this trap. I’d love to hear about your experience with this, and how you plan to (or already have) overcome it.
~ Steve Kamb from, Is Motivation Useless?
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In a vague sort of way, I found this idea in my own training. As usual, Steve Kamb brings clarity to the party. This idea of incremental actions, of habits, and little processes that make success a foregone conclusion is at the core of my Parkour training.
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… demand doesn’t pick up quickly as prices drop. We are dealing with a world that has a huge amount of debt. China in particular has been on a debt binge that cannot continue at the same pace. A reduction in China’s debt, or even slower growth in its debt, reduces growth in the demand for oil, and thus its price. The same situation holds for other countries that are now saturated with debt, and trying to come closer to balancing their budgets.
~ Gail Tverberg from, Oil Price Slide – No Good Way Out
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I have now discussed this a few times, and a common objection raised is that she is over-complicating a simple case of supply-and-demand. To which I say: What part of our enormous, intertwined, legacy, critical to everything from food to medicine to transportation to energy production, global dependency on petroleum is simple?
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The anthropological record of early man clearly shows health took a nosedive when populations made the switch from hunting and gathering to agriculture. It takes a physical anthropologist about two seconds to look at a skeleton unearthed from an archeological site to tell if the owner of that skeleton was a hunter-gatherer or an agriculturist.
~ Michael Eades from, «http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/low-carb-diets/nutrition-and-health-in-agriculturalists-and-hunter-gatherers/»
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When you combine the science of recognizing deception with the art of looking, listening, you exempt yourself from collaborating in a lie. You start up that path of being just a little bit more explicit, because you signal to everyone around you, you say, “Hey, my world, our world, it’s going to be an honest one. My world is going to be one where truth is strengthened and falsehood is recognized and marginalized.” And when you do that, the ground around you starts to shift just a little bit.
~ Pamela Meyer from, The Language of Lying: Animated Primer on How to Detect Deception
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I have seen this happen more times than the number of yaks I’ve shaved. At nearly every job I’ve had, I’ve walked this fine line. I’ve had performance reviews where I’ve been called pushy, aggressive, assertive, abrasive, or bitchy simply for speaking up in a similar manner to that of my male colleagues, and on the other side of things, I’ve been interrupted and spoken over more times than I can count. I’ve worked at places where I was the only one being interrupted (backstory: I’ve been the only woman in a lot of engineering departments), which has bothered me. But I’ve also worked at places where everyone interrupts each other all the time. For a while, I thought that was better. “At least I’m not being spoken over because I’m the only woman; the guys get interrupted too,” I thought to myself. But everyone interrupting everyone else really isn’t that much better.
~ Katherine Daniels from, «http://beero.ps/2015/01/13/on-interrupting-interrupt-culture/»
For, let’s say, the first half of my life, I was always the one doing the interrupting. As I’ve begun to listen, I now realize how much everyone interrupts everyone else. When I’m relaxed and on my game, I try to have a meta-listening happening so I can tell when to stop talking to keep the conversation working. As best I can manage, when I’m interrupted, I simply stop talking.
But sometimes, just for fun, I like to toss this in quietly while the interrupter is still speaking…
Oh! I’m sorry, did the middle of my sentence interrupt the beginning of yours?
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Following “via negativa” may seem like a defensive and risk-averse way to live. But by focusing on what you don’t do, you actually put yourself in a position to be more aggressive with life. The man who has never been arrested, doesn’t have debt, and doesn’t have the drama that comes with bad relationships has more opportunities presented to him and more money, energy, and willpower to capitalize on those opportunities when they appear; the man who has gone though life making stupid mistakes, doesn’t. In other words, you’ll never get a chance to work on the “shalls” if your life’s been wrecked by ignoring the “shall nots.”
~ Brett McKay from, Via Negativa: Adding to Your Life By Subtracting
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Well, you have to keep in mind that what we learn as kids is really hard to deprogram as an adult. And what we learned as kids is that we males are each owed, and will eventually be awarded, a beautiful woman.
We were told this by every movie, TV show, novel, comic book, video game and song we encountered.
~ David Wong from, 5 Ways Modern Men Are Trained to Hate Women: Update
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I know that many female readers will not want to gain extra muscle. They shouldn’t worry, however, because in the absence of exogenous anabolic steroids women won’t become ‘muscle bound’ or non-feminine appearing. What generally happens is that the muscle replaces fat within the muscle. We’ve all seen marbling in beef, which is fat within the muscle tissue. With the extra protein, new muscle replaces this fat, and the muscle may even become a little smaller in females while at the same time becoming more dense and stronger.
~ Michael Eades from, «http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/weight-loss/dietary-protein-increases-lean-mass/»
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The agent of our immunological misery is the disappearance of something we co-evolved with in a mutually beneficial relationships: microbes and parasites that have lived inside our bodies for millennia.
This new hypothesis is brilliantly summarized in a recent book by Moises Velasquez-Manoff: An Epidemic of Absence: A New Way of Understanding Allergies and Autoimmune Disease.
~ Todd Becker from, What causes allergies and autoimmune disease?
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