On Being a Hero

Occasionally, I try out the idea that when you see something you hate in others, what is really going on is that you are feeling how much you hate that atribute in yourself.  And when you see something wonderful in someone else you are really admiring that aspect or feature in yourself.

I really admire generosity and compassion in others.  And I see it quite a bit in others.  The other day as I was driving my passenger asked me to stop to give a bag of food to a roadside beggar.  I've driven past hundreds of needy people, but have never stopped.  And I've walked by hundreds of panhandlers and almost never have given anything.  Where some give 5% of their earnings to charity, I've never given that much, and as I get older and richer I give less and less.  And, no, I'm not generous in other venues, not with my time or energy.  I rarely remember my relatives birthdays or aniversaries.  I can give other examples.

I wanted to be quite clear about this because otherwise I might give you the wrong impression.  I want to be sure the reader understands that although I have a bit of credibility having done a heroic act, I am certainly not a hero.  And not actually a very generous or compassionate person.  I want to establish my credibility on doing a heroic act without claiming to be a hero, or even a particularly nice person.   

Here in the US there are many people who's kidneys do not function.  To live, they undergo dialysis several times a week and have many difficulties.  The difficulties are such that some prefer to die.  It's very hard on people.   Many of these people can be cured of their kidney failure by receiving a transplant.  Mostly, kidneys are harvested from a deceased donors.  Some receive transplants from relative.   As it turns out, if you (and yes, I do mean you) are otherwise healthy, you can donate one of your kidneys to a friend or relative with little risk to your health.  But that still leaves many people living for years on dialysis, and dying from renal failure when they could have been saved.  Donating a kidney actually saves a life.

My local kidney transplant service has done hundreds of kidney transplants.  Family members helping a relative who has renal failure, friends helping friends.  The interesting thing is, and it is not well advertised, is that you don't have to know someone in need to donate a kidney.  This type of donation is called non-directed donation, or anonymous donation.  It is not very common.  I was the eleventh person to do this at my local transplant service.

I bring all this up for two reasons.  First, to tell you to consider doing the same thing.  The second is to say that someone referred to those of us who have donated a kidney anonymously as a "hero".     That really floored me.  Sure, it is a heroic gesture - to perhaps put yourself at some risk for someone else.  But few things will get me more angry than someone trying to call me a "hero".

"Heros" only exist in them minds of boys who read comic books.  And I say this having met a man who was medic and who's mind has been shattered by his experiences in Vietnam.  I work daily with veterans and my respect for them has no bounds.  And yet there is not a hero among them.

There are simply only two kinds of people, those who step up and do the right thing in whatever the present moment is sending to them, and those who shy away from doing the right thing.  Mostly, thank god, the present moment has never been too challenging for me.  Really, I've only done a few very heroic things.  The first time was when I went skydiving, and sitting on the edge of an open door high above ground I jumped out.    It was the right thing to do, and distinctly difficult.  The next was about an hour before the kidney donation.   The nursing staff had me undress completely, put on a hospital gown and then lie down in a heated bed.  They explained that removing a kidney from a body that was nice and warm goes better than if the donor is cold.  On the one hand it was nice, as I get anxious I also get cold, so it was nice to be in warm bed.  But it was then that I was struck with the frailty of my puny, quite tentative existence.  I was really afraid.  But I did it.  Donating my left kidney was the best thing I've ever done.

It was a heroic act, but I am not a hero.  What we are doing right now - in the present moment - defines us as either a hero or simply your average Joe.  

Yesterday I also did something a bit heroic.  I jumped off a 25 foot cliff into the White Salmon River in Washington state.  I was on a white water rafting trip, and half way we had to portage our boat around an impassable waterfall.  As the trail got close to the base of the fall, we were given an option.  We could either leap 25 feet off a cliff into the pool were the rafts were waiting for us, or we could continue to hike down the trail to the rafts.  The right thing for me to do was jump.  

Are you wondering how this is even remotely heroic?  You have to understand that I am a middle age, white federal employee who has a very predictable and very low stress life.  I'm a Zen student who is quite content spending long hours facing a wall and breathing.  For excitement I might try curry fries instead of the usual straight ones.  I wear white tall cotton socks with my sandals if the weather is nice.  There is nothing at all appealing about falling 25 feet.  I hate the anxiety, I loath fear, I don't like being in cold water, I have acrophobia.  I do not need the excitement.  It was unfortunate, really quite unfortunate, that the choice to jump off the cliff was the right choice.  There was never any doubt.  I don't know why.

There were about 15 people ahead of me.  As I made my way very slowly I felt waves of fear.  I've had many emotions in my life, and I suppose some emotions are complex, and if explored more genuine emotions might underlie them, or coexist with them.  But if I were to spend the rest of my life on a couch exploring this feeling of fear I doubt I would find much else.  The fear was  pure, distressingly distinct.

But I am a student of the Alexander Technique.  As a trainee to become a teacher I am really committed to practicing the technique as much as possible.  So in the midst of the fear I stopped.  Stopped with all the concerns about the future, stopped with the end-gaining.  Then I directed, rather course and firm directions: "Let my neck be free to let my head for forward and away, let my torso lengthen and widen..."  By the time I got to that point all the fear was gone.  Completely gone and all I felt was an intention and a sensation of uprightness, and calm.  Not an altered state, but exactly how I feel while standing on line to get on the bus to go to work in the morning.  Just calm, nothing special.

I wish it was that easy.  In the next moment the guide starts talking again, commenting that the person who just jumped did not tuck her arms when she hit the water.  He then told us that someone earlier in the day had dislocated her shoulder because she failed to follow these instructions.  The next thing I knew the fear was back, a really horrible sensation.  I would shuffle a few steps closer to the edge - engulfed in fear, before, again, remembering to inhibit and direct.  And again, the fear promptly left me in peace.  And again, the instructor, reminding us to really jump because if we just stepped off the cliff we would hit a shelf just under the water.  Again fear, and again, the AT inhibition and direction, again peace.  But once again the instructor.  It turns out there is a shelf on the far side also, which, if one over-jumps, one will surely meet.   He instructed the remaining few that when we got to the cliffs edge we should first look down, look to the center of the river, and jump to that point.  He said the area of fixation is the area of your impact.   The fear was back in force.  I told myself when I get to the jump off point, I would stop, inhibit and direct, tuck my arms in, fix my gaze in the center of the river and carefully jump.

When it was my turn, I got to the edge and just fucking jumped.  No looking, no tucking, no nothing, just get this fucking thing over with! 

So these are my credentials - feel free to judge my street cred.  But based on this, I offer my readers advice of how to be heroic in whatever life, whatever the present moment, offers to you.

And why should the Zen student care?  Because Zen is largely about being in the world and healing it's ills.  It is about bringing compassion and enlightenment to everyone everywhere.  It is not about being selfish - not about being your average Joe.  It is about being heroic.  A socially engaged Buddhist is heroic.  It may mean guiding civilians across a battlefield to safety, it might mean licking stamps on a letter, it might mean smiling to a stranger.  I don't think anyone can say what is right for you.

Hopefully, nothing ever difficult will ever face any of you.  Hopefully you will always be able to do the right thing without any discomfort, any pain, any fear.  But perhaps there might be selfish concerns that present challenges.

I believe that I would be quite foolish to think that there is Joe here, and that this Joe has a body and an emotion that I label fear.  Joe, fear and tight contracted body are one thing.  There is no difference.  The tight contracted body starts with the primary control.  Inhibiting and directing of the primary control brings conscious control to any situation and helps us act based on our fundamental intention as opposed to self concerns.

Buddhist saints might only need their meditation experience to insure they are heroic in all social engagement  But for the rest of us we should consider classes in the Alexander technique.

Practicing the Alexander Technique will make you heroic.  Good for you!

 

Primary Control

I've suggested in past posts that the "primary control" is pivitol in learning how to physically sit zazen and how to bring Zen practice into everyday life.  Alexander also thought the primary control is one of the key features in his Technique.  But it's also true that it is not well defined.
I've read a very good article on the subject by Gerald Foley, one of my many betters, entitled Untangling the Primary Control.  Frank Pierce Jones also wrote about the primary control.
Alexander used the term quite a bit, but never definitively defined it.  He seemed to use term 'primary control' as either a physiological condition or as an instument that can be controled.

As a physiological condition, the primary contol is a condition that exists.  It is a state of the head-neck during activity.

As a instument that can be controlled, or employed, the primary control is the use of the area of the head/neck region.  Once this instrument is employed correctly one can expect an improvement in the function of the rest of the musculature.  It is primary because it is of central importance in improving the global use of the self.

The distinction may seem like a fine line, but it is important because Alexander claimed that Rudolph Magnus proved the existance of the primary control.  Magnus published over 300 papers and was nominated for a Nobel Prize just prior to his death at age 53.   His studies included posture as a reflex activity.  His team used animals who had their cortex disconected from the brainstem - the decerebrate animal.  The cortex is the thinking part of the brain.

The brainstem is important for several reasons.  Ten of the 12 crainial nerves emerge from the brainstem.  One of which controls the sternocleidomastoid and trapezius muscles via the accessory nerve (CN XI).   One of the main functions of the brainstem is to conduct the impulses from the cortex.  It also controls the posture, balance and adjustments to poise.  All activities it controls are reflexive.

Magnus and his team adhered to a clear distinction between habit and reflexes.  Habit is always acquired behavior and arrises from conscious action.  They initially were voluntary actions from the moror cortex.   In contrast, reflex behaviour is inherent and innately given, withdrawn from all voluntary actions.  This is evocative of Kants a proiri knowledge.   Reflex activity takes place in response to stimuli even if the cortex is removed.  

Magnus studied the brain stem.  He kept decerebrate animals alive and found that they were able to do quite a lot of reflexive activities that govern movement, posture, and balance.

So on the face it appears that Alexander was wrong when he claimed that the work of Magnus supported his work.  Alexander felt that he could influence with his cognition the primary control to improve basic use but Magnus seemed to prove that the reflexes he discovered have no input from the higher centers.  Some of the confusion is that the brain stem just happens to be in the base of the skull in close physical proximity to Alexanders 'primary control'.  Some of the confusion might be based on Alexanders agressive coaptation of any scientific evidence that would give him better footing in medical establishment.  Also, perhaps Alexander was confused because he was not a scientist.  This might be controversial, but scientist first and formost study science.  They stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before them.    In my very limited study I have not found that Alexander studied science at all.

I think that Alexander was wrong that Magnus work supported him, but if we broaden our discussion we can see that the AT does have firm scientific support in claiming that the primary control or brain stem function can be influenced by the cortex.

I've read that Magnus found two categories of reflexes: the 'attitudinal reflexes' and the 'righting reflexes'.   The attitudinal reflexes receive input from the inner ear (labyrinths that gives us a sense of balance via CNVIII)  and the muscles and joints in the neck which are rich in sensory receptors.  In these reflexes, the head first drawn to a fixed position and then the tonus is distributed to the truck and limbs.  The posture of the head/neck is imposed on the rest of the body.  Apparently it is a very enduring reflex.  These reflexes come into play when one stands or sits down, or when a cat jumps.  In the startle reflex the first muscles to be tensed are the neck muscles enervated by the accessory nerve (CN XI).

The second group of reflexes are the righting reflex which takes over when an animal is ready to return to a normal posture.  Again, normal tonus if restored under the influence of the head/neck.  For example, time lapse photos of a cat held upside down and then dropped show the first changes are in the head/neck.

Magnus found that in both categories involving he brainstem, the head/neck relationship is the instigator and the rest of the body follows.  I've never read anything about Magnus that did not summarize his work as the "head leads and the body follows".

Another important point to bring up is that not all animal brains have the same ratio of cortex to brainstem, and the influence that animals might have over their reflexes vary.  For example, a lizard or frog has little if any ability to learn to change their behavior.  All their behavior is reflexive to stimuli,  genetically hard wired.  Cats and dogs have some ability, they can be trained and learn to inhibit some reflexive activity.  Monkeys more so.  But humans are very plastic in their ability to change.  In our evolutionary setting, such plasticity served us well, as evident by our seeming domination over all things.  But it seems to be a basic tenant of the AT that the modern world has put unique stresses on us  for which we are not well prepared - such as sitting at the computer all day in a constant low level of stress and worry.  Our beautiful righting reflex is not up to the task of bring us back to a fully lifted stature after spending hours hunched over a computer.   Our habits have overwritten our instinct.

This does not make Magnus wrong.  Magnus was quite right that the righting reflex are subcortical and inaccessible to direct conscious control.  But they can be covered up, obscured and debauched by poor use for which evolution has not adequately prepared us.  This is understood in medicine.  Consider the patellar reflex.  When your GP heads towards your knee cap with her rubber mallet you naturally tense up.  "I hate it when she smacks my knee with that thing!"  and you tense your thigh.  She knows that a patient who actively tenses the thigh will interfere with the proper demonstration of the reflex and lead to a falsely subdued response.   She tells you to grip your hand together and pull your arms apart.  You do as you're instructed while wondering "Why is she having me doing this?"  You forget to keep you thigh tense and Smack! goes the hammer and up goes your leg - a normal patellar reflex.  By distracting you your GP was, temporarily, working a decerebrate patient.

Is our original righting reflex destroyed by our "training"?  It does not make sense that we would be wired to actually lose it.  Yes, cover it up and obscure it by years of poor use, but I believe it is a fundamental tenant of the AT that it is not lost.  But most of us believe it is lost.  We go to yoga classes, spend years studying dance and gymnastics to try to relearn the grace and poise of our youth.  My conception of the AT is a "good news" model.  You have not lost anything: Praise be!  Just stop doing all that bad stuff you learned by mistake!

But how?  How do we interrupt the learned patterns to allow our default reflexes to again express themselves?  We must interrupt right at the first manifestation of misuse. If indeed the "head leads and the body follows" then we must interrupt at the head/neck area.  And with what should we interrupt it?  The same tool we used to set it wrong in the first place.  There is already tremendous input into the brainstem from the cortex.

In practical terms: First, stop.  You've got to stop the debauched program. Just stop.  Next use that big cortex of yours.  Tell the sternocleidomastoid, the trapezius and the numerous muscles in the neck and back to not pull down.  It's a bit tricky to do this - an AT teacher can help.  Now keep doing this and off you go!

I've heard it said that some AT students, durring their first lesson, as they are guided out of a chair, exclaim: "I didn't do that!  Yes, obviously I got out of the chair, but I didn't do it!"  It's a fascinating statement.  The student has used a debauched program thousands of time over her lifetime to get out of a chair.  And now, for the first time since childhood, has not interfered with the primordial brainstem reflex.  The feeling (sensory feedback) of standing up is so different from the accustomed feeling that the only conclusion possible is that she didn't do it.  Moreover, that sense of self resides mostly in the cortex.  And the cortex in this case, was actively not getting out of the chair.  So maybe she, in fact, did not get out of the chair.  Who did?  

I have been trying to place the AT directions in the center of my life for a bit over a year.  Stopping and directing as much as I possibly can all my waking hours.  I find it changing a bit from the course thoughts directed to my primary control.  It is sometimes just feeling like an intention that underlies all my activities.  And it does not feel like I'm alone, every being on the earth plays with gravity and a lot of us think up! quite a bit.