Reactivity and Sensitivity

Recently, we seem to be more bombarded than ever with visual images of the pain and suffering that is going on around the planet, both human and animal. I had a circular yesterday through the post asking for donations to help mistreated donkeys in the third world, made all the more evocative by visual memories of recent TV ads for the same charity.

On the one hand, you can only say what a good thing that someone is doing something about animal cruelty, wherever it is, but it also occurred to me that in our modern world, there is an unfortunate side effect to the sheer volume of exposure we now have, from ads, to daily newspapers, TV, radio, the net and so on ......

It's a very natural thing to respond and help, when we meet suffering. And as an example, living in the country one simply does not ignore a suffering animal, no more than one would walk past a person in distress.

Yet, when over exposed to information of suffering, and knowing one can't respond to ALL of it, does it begin to shut us down? To cause us to anesthetize ourselves away from the empathetic feeling, because the feeling is too much, and does not lead to alleviating actions?

To boldly go where others have gone before!!

Last night, I read about a fascinating experiment where a control group of non Japanese speakers was given three short passage in Japanese to memorise.



One was a traditional Japanese rhyme learned in Japan over centuries.Another was a newly composed verse.And a third was a random selection of non sequential words.

All looked and sounded fairly similar to non Japanese speakers.

The participants by far found it easiest to learn and memorise the traditional verse.

Now, why might that be? Does a set of words carry with it history, does the fact of other brains having learned the same words for centuries establish a pattern that makes it easier for others to learn it?

Is there some unconscious, unseen communication between brains ? Is there a hidden 'syntax' that is common to all languages, that sits behind the words in individual languages



Whatever the explanation, it's fascinating and yet another of those un-explained connections which don't quite fit in with a purely material view of the world!

"You can't step into the same river twice"

" You cannot step into the same river twice, for fresh waters are forever flowing in" Heraclites


I've been revisiting a great book by Deepak Chopra recently...Perfect Health. A real inspiration in healthy thinking.

One of the analogies he used really caught me...we tend to think of our body as a "frozen sculpture" yet he likens it more to a moving river.

Here are some interesting body cell cycles.

Adipose tissue ( fat cells) fill up with fat and empty out constantly..so all of it is exchanged in about three weeks. ( Great aid for weight watchers to know the fat they feel won't be there so soon!!!) We get a new stomach lining every five days. Skin is renewed every five weeks. Our skeleton is entirely renewed every three months.

Every year about 98% of the total number of atoms in the body are replaced, something confirmed by radioisotope studies at the Oak Ridge laboratories in California.

That got me thinking how important it is to give ourselves the freedom to change and improve.....and somehow isn't it encouraging to know our body is in this constant flow of change itself, and that we can work in partnership with it ?

Bee Decline, Cell Phones and Electro-magnetism

Last year, bee population in the UK went down by 17%, and in the US by 30%. Worrying figures indeed.

The reasons for the decline are still unclear....pesticides, parasite mites called varroa and climate change are often cited as major factors.

However there is interesting new research being done at Punjab university in Northern India, which believes that cell phones could also be in part to blame for the decline in bees. They fitted cell phones to the hives and powered them up for two fifteen minute periods each day. Within three months, the bees stopped producing honey, egg production by the queen halved and the size of the hive reduced dramatically.

Another study by Andrew Goldsworthy at UK's Imperial College, London is studying the biological effects of electro-magnetic fields, and also believes it's possible that cell phones may be affecting bees.

There is a pigment in bees ( and other animals) called cryptochrome, which is used for navigation. It is used to sense the earth's magnetic field and thus helps bees find their way back to the hive. The signal from cell phones disturbs the cryptochrome molecules, thus causing bees to get lost and not find their way back to the hive. Indeed Goldsworthy has suggested to UK communications regulators OFCOM that they change the phone frequencies to one which would not have this affect.

At the same time, experts on bees such as the scientific director of the International Bee Research Centre at Sussex University comments that although they appreciate that bees are sensitive to electro magnetism, they are unsure whether bees use the earth's electro magnetic fields in navigation...so even, the bee experts are unsure in this area.


It seems to me that there is an urgent need to understand more about the electro magnetic fields of the planet and how flora, fauna and human life interacts with it.

After all, if this is indeed an important factor in the decline of bees, our major pollinators, then there is no time to lose! Life is indeed an inter-related living eco sytem in which every part affects every other And we are living in a time when our understanding of the significance of being part of this living organism, is expanding all the time.

Yet when it comes to the possibility of losing our bees, it highlights our urgent need to expand our understanding in these areas.