Do you do you have a section for one liners in your brains here?  That's interesting. I it's a good question This is Friday December 7th 2018 we're getting near the end of 2018. It's Pearl Harbor Day, whatever that means And this is an inside juries brain call where Ken Homer is going to Share with us some of his practices around the body around somatic techniques When bringing humans together to discuss things that might be difficult that might you know Require them to be present that might store in the body And we will we will dive in in different ways But but Ken if you just wanted to open up the conversation and we'll see where it goes Thanks, Jerry. Well, good morning, everybody. Thank you for joining us. Excuse me Jerry and I were just talking a couple minutes before the call started. I said, you know Since this is a call about the body, I'm recognizing that I'm having some anxiety in my body It shows up sort of stomach flutters and a little bit of tension and I actually associate that with a good thing because when I'm Gonna be on in front of people if I find I don't have that going on then I get really worried But a little bit of a little bit of tension is good. A lot is paralyzing. Unfortunately. I don't have that going on So I'm not paralyzed. I'm happy to be here I'm gonna just switch my screen here So I can read some notes that I was taking for myself When I talk about somatic intelligence, it's one of many different kinds of intelligences that I like to work with I Was trained as an integral coach and we look at several different streams of intelligence and my focus in groups is mostly on How do we bring out collective intelligence?  So one of the things that I've been working with for a long time is is somatic intelligence and by that I mean the body as a sentient intelligence I associate somatic intelligence with awareness of breath with being able to ground ourselves center ourselves Sense in and intuit what's going on in the field proprioception knowing where we are in space and time and this new fancy word That's catching a lot of people's attention presencing. How do we create a presence? When we're looking at people and I'll bite you all right now whether you can be seen or not. Oh, hi Dave Good to see you. Um, I worked for a little while with a Kuna teacher, which is Hawaiian shamanism. I need to say Sparkly your eyes, you know, and I love that cuz just like if you if you sparkly your eyes It brings a different level of awareness to your being so if you will refine yourself in a group and Things are getting kind of low Just ask me what we sparkly your eyes and you can feel the entire energy of the room shift And get distracted by Jerry's notes here, so a couple of questions. I want to ask you is I've noticed that in a lot of organizational settings people tend to use their bodies mostly to carry their heads around And very often their heads are out in front of their bodies. They lose a vertical dimension They're out like this and they they tend to be So much in their heads that they're very easily pushed over or someone comes along and disagrees with them They're not very grounded. So how often do you find yourself checking in with your body? I sit in my chair on my laptop a lot and I have to set a timer and make myself get up and move and stretch It's really Important that I say sitting is the new smoking. So I move around I stretch I stare out the window I I work for the horizon allow my eyes to just focus on trees and unfocused on the screen these are things that I just need as a basic level of self-care and I Often find in organizational settings that people Self-care of the body is like the last thing on the list. It's it's almost never mentioned. So I've got a few practices will go through today But I just want to tell people right now that one of the best things you can do is put on some music and dance And if you're in a group of people my experience at weddings and varmits fuzz and settings is that if you play Motown people will dance Every age every generation you put on Motown people get up and shake You know, I think dancing is one of the oldest Forms of communication and recreation, you know, my Twitter by us says exploring how language which includes gesture speech and symbol can create a Self-loan self-nursing world dancing with people is fun It brings lots of oxygen to our body and it creates a kind of a limbic resonance in the group Have you all heard of the term limbic resonance? Comes from a book called the general theory of love if you saw the first Jurassic Park The authors in the book make this case that you know, these scientists were Examining the baby tyrannosaurus and there comes back and she's really pissed off and they say well That's actually not the way things go in the reptile world because reptiles lack a limbic system And they actually eat their young so the chances of the mother tyrannosaurus being upset by that are pretty low If it was a mammal that had limbic system then you find, you know, that that there's definitely that protective nature That kicks in limbic resonance One of the best examples I can give is most people have had the experience of walking into a room and Knowing instantly that the room is safe when I instantly the thing is unsafe like oh my goodness something's been going on here They don't know what it is, but man, I need to be really careful Well, wow, what a one welcoming environment. This feels really good. Oh that person looks like they'd be interested to talk to you over there in my my assertion is that that is a kind of intelligence that Is sort of the gestalt of all of our senses? There's no real Pause to analyze and you know use our cognitive intelligence here. It's instantaneous knowing Anybody ever been driving up a really narrow windy wooded country road and suddenly just get this one I'd better slow down and the next thing you know, there's somebody coming around the corner in the middle of the road This happens to me a lot. I think we all have this ability to extend our our capacity for sensing far beyond our bodies and I don't know too much of Science out there that's investigating this But I've my anecdotal experience and my own experiences that a lot of people have this this happened to them They're they can sense when this is gonna happen So I guess you look at Rupert Sheldrake's morphic fields and dogs that know when their owners are coming home to get more more background on that You know, I realize I've been on several of these calls with Jerry and one of the things that always is It's somewhat troubling to me with regard to creating the presence is that I see people who They may or may not speak And there's never the chance or there's really been the chance to just hear from folks of who's here So in order to invite our bodies in I'd like to open up the before for just a couple minutes and ask people to Say your name or you're calling from and how you're feeling in your body right now And if there's something in particular to get out of this call and just take maybe one minute each try not Too much longer than that so it doesn't go on, but I just left the folks are here So my name is Ken. I'm feeling much better in my body right now, and I want to get I Want to get feedback on how useful this stuff is and I wanted to know who's here I love being on Jerry's call.  I Can I can jump in just just because right? I'm Jerry Mikulski. I'm Really really feeling happy because I see a lot of people I love on this call and a few new faces This is a topic that has a lot of juice and energy for me And I know that that those of you here care a lot about it And I would like to sort of contribute to the shared knowledge around these topics and and Collect up some things that I didn't know about and sort of curate them into my little Forest mulch fungus. I'm starting to think of myself as a farmer ant Where I'm feeding the fungus and then we all can like feed off the fungus itself So this may be a bad thing because you may start seeing me with like antennae and little little fuzzy legs, but But I'm gonna go with that who else would like I already see you that Richard Gil I'm fearful for where this is gonna go. But still So I'm gill. I'm in Berkeley. I'm walking in a beautiful morning I love to walk and find that the more that I walk the better everything is in my life I'm a lapsed partial artist and appreciate and kind of miss the physicality and I've been learning that my mind is not in my head but in my body and trying to cultivate that in myself and my interactions with other seemingly bodies out there that I deal with And I'm gonna go on you because I'm outside where it's noisy I'll jump in. I'm sitting in a car in some kind of warehouse district in Mount Vernon, Washington well, my husband talks to a guy about a shed and I'm mostly in Seattle and and I'm super interested in this because When I'm working with a group in a room when things start literally moving and Shifting and sometimes rapidly sometimes slowly People's behavior people's thinking changes and for me, it's all part of you know, this kind of multi We're multi-sensory beings. And so why don't we use those things like? The obvious pass I'm dead with soul. I'm hanging out in Oakland, California so bright sunny morning and The AT&T guy here is installing fiber, so I'm I'm distracted Ooh, I'm gonna get fiber out of the deal. So how exciting exactly I can go next. I'm sorry I don't have a camera. I'm Isabelle. I'm in Portugal right now. I'm just on the coast Kind of south of Porto. I'm here to spend a long weekend with my parents That's that's why we just got to the hotel so we were driving and I snuck away to go into a Conference room. So that's what I'm doing right now. If you can imagine that I'm just standing around looking over it I joined pretty much just heard about this yesterday. My CEO sent me a link to this Conversation on the email and and I said I was very much interested. So he got me on it I've worked a lot with groups the working learning and development and mostly in leadership development and Something that you said just earlier I'm Jerry no Ken. Sorry Reminded me of something I heard I was at the mindful leadership at so much a couple weeks ago in Washington and one of the the people who were facilitating a mindful movement Use an expression that was we walk around like like heads on a stick You just muted yourself as a bill. Oh Sorry, we walk around like we walk around like heads on a stick is the last thing Yeah, yeah pretty much and I thought that was a really good It was a really good image and it's really like I keep thinking back on that that was weeks ago And I keep thinking back on it as something um You know to kind of remind myself we are not we don't use our bodies as sources of data and sources of information Or I mean, I don't so Yeah, very much interested in this. So thanks for having me I'm gonna go mute again. Thank you for joining. I really appreciate it And that our connection to isabel is through elliott noss at two cows So that's lovely Thanks, thanks for joining the call. We are just doing a quick check and kin asked Each of us to say who we are and just how we're just one word about how we're feeling But we can go to a couple of the people and come back to you in a sec anybody else My name is gene bellenshire I'm on a sandbar on the east coast of north Carolina um Usually in a little town called kill double hills, which also is a good discussion starter usually um The topic is is interesting because as I think about it I seldom ever stop to ask myself how I feel About me. I'm usually Engaged up to about here doing stuff and not thinking about How I feel I would expect that if I stopped to ask myself. I usually feel pressed for time but it's it's pressed for time of my own making so That's I'm checked in Awesome. Thanks, gene. Uh, let's go ahead Cheers, thanks my first time here today and uh, welcome. I've come through mark linton I'm in hackney in in london early evening here I I sometimes just just go for walks As someone else said earlier. I just feel like just can't do anymore on a computer and I really like what you just said can When I when I'm looking for my glasses or my keys And I can't find them and then I will just put my hands out and I know where everything is But but I you know, I just sense where stuff is but um looking for it. I can spend half an hour looking for my glasses Um, great to be here. I'm complete. Thanks. I'm good. Thanks very much lads Judy if you want to jump in And you're muted Judy can you hear? Hello? Hello? Walk in back to you in the booth and uh, we'll connect up with Judy. Okay Judy if you if you pick up on this just wave and we'll we'll bring you in um Okay, so I thought uh One of the first things to do is I I'm all about tools. I do group facilitation work and um, Although I do a lot of reading. I'm not strictly a researcher I like to take the information I get and try and figure out practical ways to apply it for folks So one of the most important um tools in my in my toolkit is a body scam And I learned this a few years ago. I took a course from a woman named Suzanne Zeman Who teaches something called listening to bodies how to do coaching long distance and um It's really interesting because when you're if any of you ever done coaching and done it on the phone You don't have access to the visual cues of people But you can tune your body I like a tuning fork To pick up what's going on in terms of tone and voice the way they're breathing Speed of what they're talking about and really get a lot of information about their state And in order to do that you have to first have a calm body. So We did five body scans every day and uh I did that for six weeks and that really was a great practice and I recommend if you take this on You won't get much out of it just do it once But if you take this on as a practice for four or six weeks and really do it three to five times per day You'll have a much better sense of your body and Once you've done it for a few weeks You can actually go really quickly through your body and and pick up what's going on in a way that um right now It's going to take a little longer So if you're comfortable I'll ask you to close your eyes if you're not comfortable with your eyes closed on camera You can stop your video or whatever you like Um and just follow my voice now you can do this Seated standing or lying down and what I recommend if you're taking on as a practice is Do the lying down at night when you're about to sleep because you may just fall asleep Do the uh The standing in the morning when you first get up and do the seated sometime during the day when you're at desk Just to check in and see how you're doing. So we'll all do this seated So first just feel your feet flat on the floor and take a breath and connect with your breathing Wherever you find it you may want to yawn or make a sound as you exhale I do chi gong and in my my tradition all of our breathing is inhaling and exhaling through the nose So I tend to do that, but you do whatever makes you comfortable and If at any time as we're going through the scan you discover there's a part of your body that has some Information that makes you want to move feel free to move. This is not a hold still. This is definitely an exploration So bring your awareness to the top of your head And feel your hair Can you feel what it's like to have hair attached to your scalp or maybe you don't have hair?  Is it furrowed? Is it relaxed? Pay particular attention to the way you organize the fine muscles around your eyes We often hold a lot of tension in our eyes So just Allow yourself to sense what's going on there and now Lower your wrist down into your cheeks and your jaw Is there tension here? Is it relaxed? And you may keep colors or sounds or temperatures as you're doing this scan.  Are they burdened? Are they loose? Are they open? Telling yourself sensing now into your chest Your upper back What's going on here? What's it like to move from your head down to your chest and feel this This body cavity with with you know lungs and Different organs in it your heart The muscles of your back Moving now towards below the rib cage Feeling the viscera stomach your liver What's happening here?  Maybe wiggle your toes a little So your feet on the earth Your connection to the world This whole world that everyone who's ever lived has walked and crawled upon Goes back to it's only bringing your awareness back up from the earth back through the legs On the way up notice your hands. Maybe they're in your lap or the arms of your chair Are they open? Are they quenched? Are they loose? Tight? The forearms and wrists elbows biceps and triceps back up to your shoulders and now just Take a gentle breath in Smile at your body Give it a little thanks for all the wonderful things it does for you carries you around where you need to go Brings you so much pleasure and joy You just feel good that you're in a body We're gonna all get that chance for As long as some of us have had When you're ready and open your eyes and come back So, you know as a facilitator, I always have to say how was that for you? Well, when I once I've uploaded my mind to the cloud and my Atoms are dead. I'm gonna miss the body scan be like all right. The circuit's all performing.  But in the meantime, this is really nice. Thank you. All right. I need to bake it in as a practice It's and and you're right. This is a really excellent way to get yourself to sleep It's very similar to my dad's advice when I was a kid Of you know putting yourself to sleep by by starting with your toes and working your way back up you know through your body which Didn't always work Now the progressive relaxation is it's very similar. I try not to intentionally not to say relax this relax that but just become aware notice Did anybody notice any particular holding or tension? Did you get information like wow? That's interesting. My liver is blue or you know, this black feeling in my stomach or this red feeling in my lungs, whatever anyone I I got no color. Sorry, it's is about um I know no colors, but I did It's funny because I noticed I I was not stressed. I did not think I was stressed and just doing that body scan I I was like, oh actually hang on. There's a lot of stress right now in my chest I don't even know why but it was just one of those kind of caught me by surprise And and it's just such a nice practice. Thank you so much I just love the body scan so much and I neglect it because it feels like something that you want to dedicate some time to So I never I it's not one of my go-to's But it's it's so lovely. Thank you so much. Oh my pleasure. Les was about to jump in go ahead. Let's You are muted Yes, thank you Tension in my neck Um, but we're all I noticed most of all that my breathing is what was quite shallow But two three occasions. I I really took a deep breath So something was happening Telling me something and I need to sort of Spend more time with that. So I will do that and thank you very much for the exercise At the start of the exercise, I noticed that I was trying I left my video on and I noticed that I was trying to avoid rbf Does everybody know what rbf is?   All right, relax. Let go let go And actually having the video there during that part reinforce the letting go part rather than Thank you It's really always interesting to hear from people what they become aware of As I said, most people tend to not be very aware of their body, you know And although I do body scans regularly and I've been practicing Pre-regressive of qigong for 14 years I constantly have to be myself back to my body because I get up in my head. I get into my thoughts, you know and I get out there ahead of myself and Coming back to the body sometimes can be startling like I didn't realize I'm actually really hungry I've been sitting here working for four or five hours and I haven't eaten anything Man, I'm I'm thirsty. I haven't I haven't had enough water So it's a way of constantly or reminding ourselves to check in with ourselves And when we do that we find out where we are in the world. It's another form of proprioception Michael, thank you for joining us. Um, we just went through a body scan and uh, I did ask people earlier if they just wanted to say who they were whether or from and and how they're feeling in the moment So if you'd like to tell us that, um, please do so I'm michael linson from west coast canada vancouver island my principal activities are community currencies and alexander technique, which you may know of as a somatic discipline my current present issue is intense Thoracic outlet syndrome leading to an inability to type for more than two minutes at a time So I get plenty of reminders of body these days. It's quite an entertaining experience And rather humiliating for somebody with my pretensions. So C'est la vie We can talk about we can talk about humiliation as a strong emotion a little later on. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah A little humiliation can be good though. It's it brings humility as you know, which is different from shame. I think It's it's a constant deluge that's a little Thank you, michael. Judy, you'd never chance for you to check in. Did you want to say hello? No, I'm sorry This is really good to be doing today because somehow my other computer, which is sort of my backup, but I use it a lot doubled its System memory Spirits me in some fashion. So I was online for a couple hours with apple support trying to find the air So this is a lovely break and they agreed it was a good time to just let the system flew away for a while Let's see where we end up So for those of you that I haven't met before I'm in minnesota. I met jerry about 20 years ago when he had a consulting gig in dc and Really happy that this yeet hand on steroids is going gal. That's great. Yeah Thanks for being there and thanks ken for bringing back this topic that was so interesting in one of our earlier discussions My pleasure. Thank you. Okay, so um I want to shift the focus from It's strictly to body to emotions and feelings for a little bit because they're you know, we experience our emotions in our bodies and In preparation for this call I you know went to google doctor google and typed in difference between emotions and feelings and got some interesting information So I don't know that I agree fully with this but I thought it was a quite an interesting proposition And jerry's gonna put a link up. Um, I sent him a link for this, but there's um On this page they talk about Feelings as being something experienced as a result of outside stimuli reacting with our senses Or someone's it might be our senses or someone else's sensibilities or attitude or perception That's feeling and emotion they claim is a state of consciousness Where internal sensations are experienced which can be reduced by thoughts memories external stimuli and may result in a physical state change feelings Ken what about moves? We'll talk about moves in a minute. Okay I won't leave those out Uh They claim that feelings need to be triggered by an external source or emotions can be either internal external so Yeah, I I'm I'm not entirely satisfied with it, but it does give us at least a couple of distinctions to work with Um, and I'm not always clear that it's that important to distinguish between feelings and emotions Um, if I can out jerry for a minute, uh, a couple of calls ago Um He admitted that when in another lifetime when he was not quite the evolved person that he is now Um, I think it was a girlfriend at the time asked in what he was feeling and he looked at inside and went Uh gray fog, you know like uh, no A lot of men, you know in our culture were not acculturated to express much in a way of feelings You know, we have pissed off and we have happy and we have um, maybe fearful and um I don't know that we have a lot else.  So, um, I did say send jerry a link to a page that lists feeling words so for men who are feeling That their vocabulary for expression of emotions is stifled. I recommend you take a look at this this list This expression into feelings and emotions led me to, you know, how many emotions are there? Now paul eckman who's the famous guy who does the micro expressions, you know So there are six emotions and then there's some new research that came out of the university of glasgo It says actually there's only four that anger and disgust and and um fear and surprise Are the same emotion in the beginning in the micro expressions and then depending upon culture and and social context they turn into either One second Anger and surprise anger and disgust so in some context anger turns into disgust And in some context surprise turns into fear. So again, I'm not entirely sure I agree with that But these are folks who've applied, you know, lots of of fancy techniques that arrive at this But it still leaves us with this sense of we've got some basic emotions that show up and for those of you are familiar with the mit center for collective intelligence around What cultivates or or sets the conditions for collective intelligence in a group Social perceptiveness is the very first thing And if we're not aware of our impact on other people If you can't read their emotions and recognize when we say something that upsets them where they find Offensive or even disgusting We can sort of tank the whole group and likewise when we are aware that we're We're saying things that people are are resonating with that can help to bring stuff out Okay, was that gill that asked about moods? Was that you gill? Yeah, so um When I was looking a while ago I discovered there's not a lot written in the psychological literature about moods Distinguished from feelings, but there is in the coaching literature and in philosophy for nato foras and My god, what's his name with the passions? Robert Solomon Talk about this so In my coaching training 20 years ago. I was taught that I was taught that moods are Emotions are weather as mood is to climb it so you can have a climate as looks so your mood is one of Pretty sunny ambitious, you know Like you're filled with wonder and ambition and curiosity And you can have a really bad date and have something comes up that really upsets you But mostly you're you're going along and you're in a good mood You're in you're in an open receptive frame of mind. You're Happy to be in the world things in the world looks good to you And then you can have something happen that that brings about you know some fear or anger Conversely, you might be in a mood where the world looks very grim, you know Right now. There's a lot of folks in the we're looking at climate change and saying only have 12 years left You know do something here and great urgency and and the mood of that is very grim and there may be Moments where you go. Oh, but this is going on and that's going on and it lifts you up But pretty much the overall sense is wow, this is very tough and In from a coaching perspective, we say that moods are a predisposition to action So if we're in a mood of anger or a mood of resentment That closes off certain ways of thinking and acting and behaving with people And likewise if we're in a mood of acceptance and openness and wonder and ambition That opens up different possibilities and there's different ways of working with that In groups if anyone's familiar with John Gottman and his Research on couples he made a name for himself. I think in the early 80s when he could look at a newly married couple and in half an hour evaluate and say This couple's going to be together for a long time. This couple's not has to do with their what they call bids for connection when One would turn to the other and and say something in hopes of being met and amplified Met in a good way if their ratio was four or five to one Of positive to negative that was indicative of the marriage that was going to last Likewise, Barbara Fredrickson has done some research I think she's out of she works with Martin Seligman Looking at companies that are successful and they go in and You know, okay, I knew majority all this in his brain so she's gone into organizations where people are thriving and Where they're suffering and really failing and recorded their meetings and then analyzed the positive to negative ratio And it got a little controversial She brought this mathematician in but in the Posada and he said you have to have a 3.14 Type three, you know ratio to one which got some mathematicians really interested and they said no, that's bullshit But I think the the premise of if you've got a high ratio of four or five to one Of positive to negative you're gonna have a company where people feel Valued where they feel this is a great place to work and they'll bring forth their best At the high end of the scale if you go above nine or ten to one people start to feel like they're in In fairyland, you know, like I don't they lose their trust like they They need some level of negative feedback of things coming back saying no, this is this is not right So there is a range and I go with gotman, you know If you want to have a high functioning team a high functioning organization You want to be aiming for the four or five to one positive to negative ratios and that Will help to create a mood in the organization where people feel okay. I'm valued When I speak up my ideas are listened to they may not be acted on but at least I've taken it seriously and This is a huge context for organizational change as I'm sure Anyone who's done work in that in that context will agree Anyone want to jump in here or something Well, I know in in corporate life the the teachings were three to five The one In terms of relational content being positive if you wanted to be able to have constructive input for relationship change more organizational structure function change It seemed to me and my husband was a psychiatrist and I think it's validated there as well There has to be a relationship for the intake to be taken And if there isn't a relationship that's built out of something that causes you to want to sit there and take it Um intellectually if not physically you turn away So I would concur There's a whole bunch of things that that these topics bring bring up for me So I'm being a little quiet while taking over the screen and showing stuff in the background because I'd love to hear where this takes everybody else And and we're kind of heading in a direction that I want to go in for a future inside Jerry's brains calls as well so One thing for anybody on the call to think about is A formulation for a future call like like is there a question we can take and and craft another call? Who else could be In the conversation. So let me let me go quiet again. I can amplify This a little bit. Let me just have to open a document Let's go ahead I have a need to identify Who's in the cafe and ask them to mute somebody's dishes sounding in the background and I muted isabelle's Mike from this side thinking it might that isabelle might have been standing in the cafe But that didn't help them the dish noise. So someone We're still hearing dishes from the background of somebody's audio and Ken was it wasn't yours It might have been mine. I went to open a document also everything that wonky. So I stopped and came back It's been a consistent noise through the whole call. Oh, okay. Yeah But I didn't hear less his need or him say I have a need and then Sorry, his need was for wherever the dishes are being rattled in the background To be mute to be muted because there's been kind of this somebody putting away dishes sound through Through the whole call and I can't figure out where it's coming from either. Oh, that is me My wife is in the dining room eating that so you like what you're hearing. She's okay. Yeah, so She's she's like, sorry Thanks Hey, we're all getting hungry I'm just drooling a little bit here. Yeah, it's leftover lockers from last night. They're really good Happy Hanukkah Okay, so I don't have this woman's name off the top of my head and it appears when I tried to open that word doc That it screws up my internet. So there's a woman at the University of California, San Diego. He's done some research on Uh, the way people respond when you give them good news Everybody's pretty familiar with if you you know, somebody's you bad news You want to have some empathy, but it turns out that empathy is really important in relationships for good news as well So she has a four Quadrant is any of these people. Let's see Naomi Noresky's no no No She might be actually try you see us is Santa Barbara rather than San Diego You have that I do indeed Laura Coleman Annabelle Ford Deborah Lieberman It might be you know, I don't think it's definitely No, I will I will get it to you in time for you to put the notes up after this call Yep, I do have it. I just can't access it in a moment. Cool So she talks about active and passive constructive and destructive So the way this works you put a little you know thing together of above the line is active above the line is passive and then the to the left is is Constructive to the right is destructive If someone says to you if let's say your wife says to you, you know, well, I'm really stressed at work You know and things have been tough and then she comes home says I got a promotion An active constructive response would be wow, that is fantastic. You so deserve this. What do you want to do to celebrate? Let's go out.  And then the the worst one in her in her model is actually the passive destructive Which is well, let me tell you about my date where you don't even acknowledge that And I've taken her her little quadrant thing and added for myself What the body language and the tone of voice is and where your eyes go So, you know, when you go, oh, that's great. You know, you have this big smile and you're reaching out You've been touching them or When you're when you're it's it's it's active Passive constructive is that's that's nice, you know and so this Bringing in of the body and really recognizing Is it one of um, sorry can That's all right. This is a pretty reference article, but I imagine it's one of these people down here I think that is her Collins or Feeney I'm seeing Kate conlon. Um, Katie conlon But that's yeah, that's this is definitely what you're talking about Yeah, no, no, Katie conlon. Sorry Katie conlon is the author of this poorly referenced blog post Okay, these are the references deciding so is the name of the person the researcher you're looking for among these references Well, that's that's weird maybe Collins Because she's going through all the passive destructive response the passive constructive, etc So it's all it's all there. Sorry for the digression. I'm just trying to find the reference We will get it later after the call. No worries. Thank you Now every time every time I activate spotlight on my back it it backs up my my audio So I will get it to you after this call. No worries So as I say, you know, my job as a facilitator is to take Abstract stuff and try to put it into something that's really practical So I will put tape on the floor And label these quadrants and then I'll have people come up with different scenarios and role play and they Everybody gets chance to move through each one of the quadrants So we all get the sense of what it's like to really experience giving me active or passive feedback and the constructive destructive And when I've done that people have really spoken up and said this is really incredible. I I recognize that I often and in Uh passive constructive, I try to be constructive, but I'm more passive than I thought And this brings me to the concept of a mindfulness spell Um As it applies to the body. So Tick not Han is a fairly well known buddhist teacher and in the He runs a retreat center in plum village, which is in the south of france And in the late 70s early 80s They're getting so many requests from people to come that they needed a phone system because they were all you know They were the network phone system at the time and he was very resistant at shelly gable Shelly gable, that's the name okay, um so His staff was saying, you know, we really need a phone system. He was resistant and finally he said, okay I tell you what we'll put the phone system in on the following condition Whenever the phone rings anyone anywhere who hears it We'll stop And smile And then proceed with what they're gonna do. So they'll stop and smile pick up the phone They'll stop and smile go back to washing dishes, whatever so I love this concept of the mindfulness spell because I've applied it to myself in terms of language and body posture So there are certain phrases that I find myself using sometimes where I'm like, uh-oh That's a mindfulness spell for me when I'm talking about climate change or ecological problems. I say we must We have to and I recognize there's that I make the fist and I get really into this My whole body gets engaged and I go. Oh, that's an energy of kind of being preachy It really turns people off and so when I become aware that I'm like Play back off. There's plenty. You know, this is my perspective. There's lots of ways to handle this and It becomes a way to just sort of tone myself down and and step out of that urgency energy, which Kind of can take over really in a in a hurry And it might be time to actually move into to doing an exercise around what happens when we get caught up in something like that So I'll just pause for a minute if there's any questions that we move on I think I I think part of what you were just talking about is really relevant to the current sort of digital detox movement You know, we're too much screen time. We're too attached to our devices We look at our devices 3 000 times a day kids are being overwhelmed, etc, etc So one way is positive associations, right? If if the device can actually be a trigger towards some kind of mindful thought Or a smile as you just said that's really interesting. There's a whole bunch of that. That's a whole interesting path on its own No, thanks. There's a piece of um When you the sort of positive affirmation There was an anecdote that a facilitator told about a parent interacting with a rambunctious teen, you know and the teen came in all wound up and Pretty much every opportunity or pause in the dialogue the parent just sort of said And they kept going and at the end the teen said this is a really great talk And so it was just a gentle form of acknowledgement And I find I have to restrain myself because my curiosity Causes me to want to ask a question That would draw something out, but that's probably counterproductive to the flow of the other person And so I've been More effective since noticing that Yeah, yeah, well if you if you look at auto-sharmers theory, you he has something very interesting in there where he talks about Uh levels of I I refer to them as levels of listening. I'm not sure if he does but I think he does we listen the first one. He calls downloading which is basically listening for agreement. Okay. Good. You agree with me I don't have to think we've just moved right along And I also say the shallow breathing because you know nothing There's no ego involved. It's it's not a problem if we if we're getting along the next level is um Uh, I call it disconfirming someone says no, I disagree. I see things differently If we're not more anchored in our bodies, we can get really wound up around that and um, so it requires a deeper level of breath next a little down from that is empathic listening where you're not listening for Um content you're listening for what's it like to be this person? You know, what are they afraid of? What are they drawn towards? What are they passionate about? What motivates them? Um, how does it feel to be in their presence? How am I literally impressed? Where do I feel them touching my my body and like, oh, I really like that I draw into that or oh, I'm very repulsed by that. It's it's a much more visceral level of listening and the last one um Presenting I refer to as in liveening, right, which is What is bringing this conversation alive? I've I spent 10 years working with Anita Brown and David Isaacs of the world cafe We talked about you know the future being born in the present moment through conversations So what in the conversation is attempting to be born and brought to life? And the easiest way I can describe that is sometimes you're talking to somebody and and a topic comes up And you get you know goose bumps like wow that that's really alive or you go Oh, no, and that's also real life because it directs our attention it captures it moves our bodies in a way where we go Yes, I want to move toward or away from this. That's something that's that's living that's that's coming forward So how can we attend to that in a way that that will bring it forward? Positively for us. Yes, too. I have a question because it's leading me along a path of Mindfulness and being in the moment which by definition is usually non judging. It's just this is it's not saying it's good or bad And some of what you're suggesting is at the boundary of but I'm judging So maybe a topic for future discussion because we could easily spend a lot of time on it Is I don't know some boundary between observing and judging or observing and critical thinking or I'm not quite sure what the right phrase is But the sort of mindfulness without a vector of effect Versus attention With a vector in mind I'm not saying this very well, but I think that was very well put Yeah, I think that'd be a great future call Um So let me let me shift the energy here a little bit I'm gonna stand up for this and for those of you who are comfortable standing on but you to do so um Let's look at what happens in our bodies when when strong emotions arise so um The first thing I want to say is take care of yourself Um, if I ask you to do something that you get it into it a fit that's not right for you Don't do it that you are in control here I'm not going to ask you to do anything that that is inherently dangerous But I don't know what your background is you may have um, you may have something some unresolved trauma I don't want to trigger anybody. So please take care of yourself. You're in control Um, we'll start with um, the present thinks something really good So again, I'll ask you if you're if you're comfortable to close your eyes and and focus and and bring to mind somebody Who you really love somebody who makes you smile someone who when you think of them your heart just opens might be a beloved Elder mentor might be your your spouse your lover your partner might be a child Dear friend and just let them Dwell in your mind's eye for a minute and feel what it's like to Recall them and to presence them for yourself And kind of do that body scan up just sweep your awareness through your body. Where do you sense? What's happening in your body as you smile with this person and remember the good times of them? I love you feel What happens to your breathing? What happens to your posture? Again feel free to move That's as needed and now if you can think of One of the best moments you can you've ever had with this person and what it was like Maybe you were laughing hysterically and couldn't stop It was just a real tender moment what lights up in your nervous system When you bring this memory to mind what happens to your eyes to your mouth What happens in your chest and now breathe in all that goodness on them and breathe out gratitude And Then them your love and gave them the big smile And thank them for being here and let them go and come back So did anybody notice any shifts in their physiology as they went through that process? Yeah, that's sort of a softening of everything and then At different points where I connected with the the old emotions just a flushing of of energy through Um Maybe a flash of of lighter energy or something like that, but yeah many many different Many different kinds of reaction just from a very simple exercise. So anybody else Like I was standing and I noticed that my shoulders were much further back And my chest was out and my heart was beating So I did react in a physical sense Thank you Nancy I see your your chat. Did you want to say anything more about that? Maybe you can't talk at the moment It certainly seems to work for me Just the association of the idea of presenting either a history or a future And it's grounds I find myself more in the bones more in the breathing Um Yeah, it's um Just a brief interruption. Sorry It's kind of amazing how little time we make in western modern society to pay attention to any of these cues To dwell with any of these feelings to sort of do any of this this kind of work And it it it ain't hard. It's it's just not in our habits. It's not in our training. It's not in our consciousness so much So thank you for this You're welcome. This comes back to something that We were on the call a few weeks ago and you were talking about affective priming of how just, you know Asking people to read a story and one group was told that you know one thing about the story The other group was told something else and you get totally different interpretations Very important for doing effective working groups To people into a place where they feel that they have access to resources, you know And one of the best ways I know to get access to resources is to pause and remember someone you really love Because it just leaves you feeling good and you're like, okay, I have strength to move through this now, right? So We're going to do the same process a little bit the same basic process with a couple of nuances to it now around Something that's challenging and before we do that. I want to show you a cleansing breath This is a modification of something I do in qigong I'm going to do it very gently. So it's it's quite easy to do But it's a rather forceful breath and it's going to look like this. I'm going to take my mic out for a second You all still hear me Okay, so I'll back up a little bit here turn up to triple with the foot spool So I'm going to raise my arms up like this when they get to the top going to make fists And I'm going to force them down with a breath. So it's like this This is a great way to move energy quickly out of the body when we get Caught up in something that that really catches our attention and takes us out of ourselves and puts us into a treasured state According to jill bolt detailer if we're in a full-blown amygdala hijack Our executive function goes offline for somewhere between 90 seconds and two minutes during which time we have no access to All the things that make us rational and and and um good people to be around Ways to discharge energy Jean, did you have a question? Okay, no, you did just seem to so you went mute for a moment Yeah, can your voice uh cut out for 10 seconds there? Oh, okay Um, so I was I was saying that it's very let me put the headset back in How's that is this better? Okay So it's it's really important when we start to look at how to work with strong emotions that we have a way to get Discharge them from our body because once the chemical cocktail of hormone starts going once for the adrenaline on the cortisol starts flowing We can lose access to our executive function. We no longer can plant We no longer can can consider more than one perspective. We just zero in on our feelings and we get literally taken over um, so it's it's uh The best way I know to to um change that is to breathe Jill bolt detail in her book my stroke of insight says an amygdala hijack takes us our executive function offline for 90 seconds to two minutes And she says there's nothing we can do I think Sematic interventions that can that can short circuit that and make get the flow out a lot faster Um, one of those is a cleansing breath. So I offer that as as a starting point here So what I'm going to ask you to do now is um, bring to mind something that really Makes you angry something that just gets your blood boiling, you know, maybe it's the current political situation. Maybe it's you know Maybe you have someone in your life that you've had a really difficult interaction with and you feel really unresolved about it Maybe it's the injustice in the world You know something that that is significant for you that when you encounter it Makes it really difficult to be present And maybe we can put some Stuff in the chat with us so we we can all have benefit of of collective intelligence here If you're having trouble thinking of something maybe someone else's will will stir you No jerry's jerry's you're good.   I'm like but everything is fine on this except for this one thing He said it will take me an hour to take this machine apart The part's gonna cost two dollars. They'll put me an hour to put it back together It's gonna cost you 75 dollars in labor. You can buy a calculator for 30 bucks. Buy and do one. I'm like that just Brandy, maybe so, you know, maybe I'm Maybe I'm I'm silly, but these are the kinds of things that they get me I just put a I just put a link in it Do you miss your rotary phone? I don't I just put a link in the chat to something called hyper objects, which is basically An idea from timothy morton that these are problems that are too big to understand so climate change globalization You know plastics in the world as a as a as a large-scale phenomenon And I think they're they're overwhelming and they they create both a sense of helplessness Like will my little pathetic actions as one individual make a difference and also a sense of overwhelm In the sense of oh my god, we're never going to fix this, you know the endocrine disruptors in the water supply What have you and these are all pervasive large-scale problems some of which over time we've we've actually dealt with culturally, right? I mean putting Putting seatbelts in cars and then later lots of other safety devices happen Because car accidents were a problem and people and car makers kind of went along with the program to make cars safer It was a virtue Even even as corporations are not going along with a lot of other aspects of these kinds of hyper objects so so one one thread that to me is really interesting here is kind of the the dull roar of systemic institutional Scale problems that feel overwhelming that all of us are are all too aware of And that this is creating this this background sense of dread and fear and shared whatever And helplessness that we need to deal with Thank you, Jerry Yeah, and I see Nancy wrote trump in there I'm thinking what's going on in north carolina with the voter fraud and what's happening in wisconsin where the Republicans legislature is stripping the incoming democratic governor of powers I mean the political scenes got plenty of stuff to really fry my ass And so I hopefully at this point we all have something that that we can now latch on to right so once again I'll ask you if you would to close your eyes go inside connect your breathing And we're going to work on a scale of one to ten. So take your chosen Objective anger and take it from the background and turn it up to about a three And notice what happens in your body Is there tightness Sense of constriction or heat do your knees lock? Do you make fists? Do you clench your butt? Does your jaw get tight your shoulders? And if you're willing Double that take it from a three to a six and really start to feel Yeah Notice how you breathe when you went from a three to a six Notice what happens to your musculature Feel your face. What happens to your face? Remember to keep breathing and once again if you're comfortable Push it up to a nine. I want to really Presence this thing a strong strong way Pay attention to what's happening do a quick body scan notice where the tightness is or the restriction or attention and then take it back down to a six take a breath Notice that you can take it from six to nine and back down And now take it back to a three and now let it go and shake out your arms and legs And do a couple cleansing breaths Stretch about some feedback on that So jean go ahead this one can Why is it that you allow things that you have no influence over? To have such a control over you I'm I'm gonna Take that conversation offline with you if you like jean, I want to talk about it right now because we're in the middle of this process Okay Judy I noticed that as I worked up the scale my breathing got more rapid and more shallow And tension in my shoulders I noticed that I'm really good at making the exterior stay looking calm But it goes to my stomach and my lips tingle But I can keep them asked baby. I can keep them asked Thank you I was feeling just tightness around my heart just um focused breath kind of like Cartoon of angry bull in in some early hana-barbera comics, you know sort of like like a snort feeling and then Construction here and it's it's kind of surprising how quickly you can take yourself in and out of a place like that I just have this overwhelming urge to reach out and throttle somebody Nice, but it has to be constrained Mm-hmm. And so it's it's action unavailable Well, I also noticed that that I have an internal suppressor That starts regulating before I get up very far That's a breathing response and some other things. I have no idea how that came to be But trying to consciously create it Um, there was internal resistance Interesting I noticed something interesting was when you gave us um And judy reminded me of that because she used the word resistance when when we were instructed to To lower the to tone it down I kind of felt like I didn't want to I wanted to engage with being enraged and being angry And I was kind of just a reluctance to get let go which was weird Yeah, that was interesting Very fascinating. Mm-hmm It's interesting to me partly And this is not so much reporting on the exercise as as meta on what we're doing But the earlier conversation about feelings emotions moods um, I find a really important thing as I get a hold of Is to just report on what's happening Like like just assess the feelings don't turn them into emotions Just assess the events, you know, whatever it is whether I'm in a meeting and somebody said something really stupid or Trump has just done something idiotic That that looks looks criminal or whatever it might be But also A lot of things arrive in shiny wrap And it's a celebrity saying it it's somebody who's become a business icon or a cultural icon And then if you if you can strip away the veneer And the coating and the christmas wrap or whatever it is and just take the thing as thing Your opinion about the thing often changes dramatically And your vocabulary for responding amplifies like crazy Because you're not you're not triggered into either Complete acceptance of what this person said because there's such a celebrity like Richard Branson I was at a conference once where he spoke And everybody was busy idolizing Richard Branson.  Well, I kind of know how that happened But but but the ability to drop the veneer to peel back The coating I think is the skill And it's a skill that some of us can internalize over time and get a little bit better at It's a skill that a lot of us are completely unaware of And we're being manipulated through, you know, shiny wrappers, etc, etc So sorry to just not be reporting directly, but it took me to that that part of this conversation It's great. I love what you're saying I think it's very true, Jerry It points to where I want to go with this actually, which is I I want to do one more. I want to do the same process with something that makes you afraid Or work with fear So we can get the contrast from your fear and anger in the body because you might find that they're Significantly different in some important ways. So I'll invite you first though. Les, did you want to say something or Dave? Okay So same process if you will first think of something that really scares you For me, it's the fear of being buried alive has always been one of those things. It just gives me the willies There's this uh, there's a cave in in the hills and in the Goldchunk you understand you have to to crawl through a very tight spot and do basically 180 degree turn and I People get in there and they get stuck and I'm like, oh my god That just I just the thought of that just gives me the willies. So I'll leave you to come up with your own but think of something that really brings up a physical response like And then when you're ready, we'll do the same thing of First connect with your breathing and feel your feet on the ground so you know you're grounded and you can handle this You have resources And then when you're ready Think to mind your fear For the background and turn it up to about a three Sweep your awareness through your body from head to toe And it's in length and this thing is buzzing out of three How is it different from when it's not present? And now if it feels okay, go ahead and double that bring it to a six now. It's really present Where in your body do you feel it most? Does it have a specific location? Does it move? Is it hot or cold?  Do you want to run? Are you frozen?  And now just for a minute. Let's take it up to a nine really embody this thing down to a six Notice you can go from a nine to a six And then take it down to a three Notice what it's like between nine six and three Notice you can take it from nine to a six to three And let it go check out your arms breathe The shaking of limbs is very important. There's a whole set of exercises called trauma releasing exercise you can google that they've done studies on people who've been in bar, you know the situations of the buildings being bombed and The kids tend to shake they let their fear actually shake in their body And afterwards they're not traumatized and the adults who are going around trying to say it's okay They don't allow themselves to shake and they end up traumatized So the trauma releasing exercises actually get to the point where you are Shaking your body where where it's kind of an animal instinct And it literally shakes the trauma out of you and lets you process it in a much healthier way And i'm not at all surprised that jerry's got those listed in his brain already so so it's it's um One place that i that i'd like to take the conversation In the future on future calls is april is busy reading vessel vander kulk The body holds Sorry here we go the body keeps the score And there's several other people who are sort of on this about psychological trauma and how our bodies hold trauma And what that means and how to deal with it and there's you know, lots of different ways of dealing with this but Um Super super interesting things That are in line with where you're taking us on this exercise at this point. So we'll we'll come back to this Okay, so if anyone's to report on what that is like What do you notice in terms of difference between anger and fear? I noticed that I was At even level three to four I was like poised to move There was a Sort of a foot nervousness, but it was almost like I moved up on The front of my foot and I was getting ready to move Sounds like your flight response was highly activated there. Yeah And then as it went higher then I started shifting into fighting It was kind of weird interesting Michael um The aggression the fighting was an outward and had a forwarding in it the The fear one was more protective and pulling down and then Down into the pelvis, you know, it was the the edge of the trembling. Yeah Thank you I've been a little distracted. So I haven't you know, I apologize for that but but also realize I had I have a hard time I think Creating the fear inside myself or the anger and it's not I think I recognize that I have that I'll be you know, I'll have these flashes of anger, you know that come from reading news or whatever But when it came to like provoking it for myself, I I didn't really know how to do it I'm gonna ponder that some more It's a contrived situation where we're you know, it's much different We're all in the same room because then we actually have a whole field right there And when you're you know sitting on the end of the computer and you get stuff going on the guy Installing fiber and stuff. It's it's not to worry at all He's all excited because he's gonna get like a gigabit in a second. It's just like I I'd be I'd be unable to host the call What would be angry about yeah, right? All world problems go away I found it harder to find and and latch to the fear Rather than the anger. It was much more difficult but then But then it was subtle but where where fear for me was sort of breathing heart constriction here The anger was back of head And and lower in the body more towards stomach and I could feel things happening there But not up here And so it felt like a different kind of response I wasn't having a gotta get out of the room sort of thing But then I didn't pick a going to be buried alive or you know dying of fire or be stabbed by snakes or anything Like that kind of scenario Snakes with knives, huh? That's that's very scary Oh, we we didn't have sharks with lasers. So we only have Seabass with flashlights is the best we could do anyone else for me on the fear it was um A dynamic sensation across my chest. I was was being being amplified and a clenching of jaw and um Eyeballs really just sort of pulsating. So um physical sensation Yeah, I just add that there's in time sense Anger was speed up. I want it now gimme Whereas the fear was stop the world. I want to go away You know, so I don't want time moving Versus I do So thank you Anyone else gene I Sorry, I felt something quite similar to a Judy was explaining just the urge to move and Like even move my arms. It was very interesting Thank you. Thanks as well. I only get angry because I don't understand Michael You're muted Michael, but should we have like live subtitles?  So what the hell So I'm aware of the time I want to do one last thing and then we can sort of debrief this a little bit And that's to to end on a um, uh, one more tool, which is this comes out of martial arts practice Jerry Enlarging your center so I have Had the good fortune to meet with wendy pomer who's a sixth degree Uh black belt in a keto and I have seen her Attacked by six men at once big guys, you know and um And she just moves in a way where these guys just go flying and She will tell you that this is not her this she she's able to do this because she enlarges her center So she's able to sense the the the movement towards her long before it actually reaches her and move from a place of expanded Awareness and she's got an interesting book called It's like keto is a clear sentient practice. I think Um, so the book I know of is leadership embodiment. Uh, there's the practice freedom. I keto principles as a spiritual guide. How about that? It's all right, but it was right about it. It was a keto Oh, the other one, sorry The intuitive body As a clear sentient practice. Yes um So I this was 20 plus years ago when I was involved in the integral transfer of practice community I got to to be part of this and so in order to enlarge your center I'm going to ask you one more time if you would you can do the seed understanding One more time close your eyes and this time As you connect with your breath allow your attention to Come to your belly right below your navel in what we call the horror or the dantian. So energy center And then just let your awareness drop through your legs into your feet through the floor down into the earth like you're growing roots And just deeply connecting to the earth and feeling the earth supports you And as you breathe out just see energy spiraling down into the earth And now as you breathe in feel energy spiraling up through the earth up through your feet and your legs and coming into your belly And feel this little pulse of energy between you and the earth It's two-way communication grounding clarifying strengthening Presencing and now on your next inhale Feel energy moving up from the earth up through your belly up your back and out the top of your head Right as if there was a string lifting you up and going on out through the roof into the sky and then when you inhale again Pull that energy down from the sky until you have a pulse going between your belly and the sky Two-way full of energy And now connect the two Through your belly so you have energy going all the way down to the earth And coming back up through you and all the way up into the sky And down from the sky through you and back into the earth This is that vertical dimension of eternity Stretch out long and off far enough And you go all the way down to a micro micro scale of the quantum form and all the way up to the to the universal scale filled with galaxies I'll bring your attention to the area around your heart And open up your back And send energy out from your back and feel behind you all the people Who loved and cared for you when you were little Maybe they're not here anymore, but they're still here in your heart. They still love you And they're still looking out for you and wishing you well Feel all that All the people behind them who love them cared for them and the people behind them Until you can feel a connection With all the people who've loved each other All the way back to the dawn of humanity their love their care their choices led to your being here today And that too is present with you And breathe that into your heart and now open up your sides and breathe out through your sides And feel a connection to all the people Who are in your life now who love you who care for you For your friends and your family and your support And know that they're with you and they're wishing you well And they want to see you thrive and they want to see you Forish And they're so grateful for your presence in their life I feel all the people standing besides them beside them Or offering them the same all the people beside them Or beside them Beside them until you're connected to this great web of humanity This evolving and merging consciousness It has a chance to become Aware of itself And Incredibly intelligent and breathe that into your heart and now open up the front of your body And breathe into the future Think of all those babies waiting to be born Who are waiting for you to pick them up And love them And guide them and care for them and grow them All those friends you haven't met yet who are going to be incredible important people in your life All the children who'll be born to all the children who'll be born to all the children who'll be born to all the children Waiting for their chance to be here to take on a body and walk on this earth where we get to stand today And breathe that into your heart And now you're connected to the six dimensions All of this energy from earth and heaven from past to future From present and community from individual to the world You stand at the center of that web and breathe in gratitude and breathe out love And when you find yourself stressed and you find yourself Harried and annoyed and anxious and afraid Just stand and do this simple meditation And you find that you have access to way more resources than you thought And when you're ready smile Look at the light from the spell Open your eyes and come back to you Talking object in the middle as they say This is a good feeling to go into the rest of the day with I appreciate it. Absolutely. Thank you I probably should have saved that for just a few more minutes after I'd spoken I just want to say the reason I do these exercises around taking a fear or anger from a three to a six to a nine is that If we do this regularly with body scans so you can become aware of the early warning signs of When we might be in at a risk of Suddenly being pushed over the edge and becoming unreasonable in our conversations. So I know for me, there's certain things that that show up of oh I'm getting a warning that I need to shift my posture or my breathing or change the conversation or You know speak up and say hey, this is becoming hard for me And ask for permission to change something Which is a much more. I think sensible and intelligent way to handle difficulties Then waiting until I've blown up So I hope that these practices and tools have been useful for you today and that As Jerry said you've got something to go and go forth into the day with that makes you feel good And I really appreciate everybody's time and attention. I know you're all Wonderful busy people and it's an honor for me to be here with you. Thank you for your your being here today Kim, thank you. Thank you so much. Go ahead as well I was just saying that was so lovely. Thank you so much. I was really appreciated that. Thank you Well Same here For those of you who are new to the call if you want to receive updates for when our next calls are If you go to inside jerry's brain.com, you'll find a link that says Hear about future calls click there and it'll get you on a on a google group mailing list where We do a little bit of conversing and where I post what what our next calls are If you as you have ideas of where this conversation could go suggest those on the list It'd be great to to go that way And I will send Yes, um the so i'm going to upload this call to youtube Once it's uploaded i'll send a note to the inside jerry's brain list that includes the link to the youtube Video and a copy of the chat. So that will come to uh to everybody afterward And uh isabel and les i'll i'll remember i'll i'll i'll try really hard to remember to copy you on that Because may or may not be on the inside jerry's brain list by then et cetera, but but thank you any any closing thoughts from anybody Great session Yeah, thanks ken. That was really really interesting stuff. I also thought it was delightful though uh, um Having a little bit of difficulty connecting Do you mean in the electronic sense or in the No, no That thing Yeah, in the emotional sense. I think in the great ineffable sense Yeah, thank you gene I I I just need to say how much I really appreciate both of you ken. That was Very special and I really appreciate it. Thank you Thank you all I'm in bank kubernetes actually next week for a meeting Um, and so there won't be a lot of uh inside your brains jerry's brain calls next week But then as we run into the holidays, uh, kind of as many as we as we can have or want to have so such as topics converse, um And there we go. Thank you for being here ken. Thank you for your guidance. This is really lovely. It was my pleasure. Thank you all Bye everybody. Whatever you're celebrating Thank you again. Thank you. Thank you Bye. Bye everyone


Any time you hear the word wild, you can bet it's referring to something uncontrollable and unrestrained. Wild things. Wild animal. Wild phase. Wildfires are no exception. Ask any firefighter. Summertime is wildfire season in the North American West. You may think of barbecues, beaches, and bare feet, but blazes are more and more likely to be in the mix too. In recent summers, hot and dry conditions have converged to produce large wildfires in Canada, Alaska, California, and elsewhere. You'd have to be an ostrich not to have noticed. And the question that is on many people's minds is, is climate change to blame? Most climatologists say that we're asking the wrong question. Instead, we should ask, given a drought, how was the drying enhanced by human-induced climate change? Were the impacts greater because of it? Fire behavior expert Janice Cohen from the National Center for Atmospheric Research acknowledges it's complicated, perhaps even more than most of us realize. The necessary ingredients for a wildfire are oxygen, heat, and fuel. And sadly, the necessary spark for wildfires often comes from us, intentional or not. Now consider the terrain, weather, and fuels that make up the fire environment. With these elements, scientists can explain a fire's behavior from start to finish. Climate change's influence is a tougher nut to crack. But as astronomer Sir Martin Rees wisely said, the absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence. Here's what we know for certain. A direct connection between climate change and a specific wildfire event has yet to be proven. But sit tight, attribution research may crack the nut. And science researchers in this emerging field are on the case.