is to connect your upper body with your lower body and this is the main mistake that people make by having the S curve of the spine and what it does is disconnect your body so for example I'm going to do an S curve on purpose my spine is like my belly sticking out and he pushes on my hind see I'll automatically go back there's no resistance but now I stick my back out I drop my hip and make this into a C and now he pushes on it what happened it's different you're more rooted it's rooted see what happens when you curve your back is now that energy transfer goes straight through your spine and then into your hips and into the legs, into the knees, into the ground when you break that connection by curving your spine now all the energy just goes in your spine it doesn't go to your legs it pushes that energy goes to the spine and then I go so that's the number one mistake that you can make in Tai Chi so when you practice your Tai Chi make sure that you always check put my hand behind my back it's straight you don't want to be like this so even when you do your moves think about that think that the spine is going to be straight one exercise you can do is to do very slow squats against the wall I want to first put my back against the wall and then see if there's any space behind my back see if I slip my hand behind my back if there's a space that I can slip my hand behind then there's too much space so I need to get rid of that space I want all my spine to be touching the wall once I get that, then I can go up and down just go halfway and go back up sliding my spine up and down now after I do that and I'm good at it then I can go all the way down all the way down keeping my spine straight and touching the wall all the way and go as slow like this so that's going to be very hard on your lower back but it strengthens your lower back it strengthens your leg so that's one key in Tai Chi of creating connectedness so stay tuned I'm going to show you the bonus mistake that people make so the bonus mistake that you can make in Tai Chi is doing it too fast I know everybody says this you want to do Tai Chi slow but many people don't understand why you do Tai Chi so slow well today we talked about three mistakes number one, relaxation number two, using your dan tian to lead your hands and number three, having a proper spine alignment what do all those things mean all those things mean connectedness of your whole body integration of your whole body if your hand moves, your whole body moves if your feet move your whole body moves everything's connected and the reason we do Tai Chi so slow is that we're training that connectedness and it's impossible to train it doing it fast that's why we do it slow if we can do it fast and still get connectedness then everybody would do Tai Chi fast but the reason we do it slow is because doing it slow is probably the only way you can train that connectedness in your body by combining all the techniques that we learned relaxation, leading with the dan tian and later on how to use your breath to relax and connect your body too and your mind so there's many aspects of learning how to connect your whole body and mind as an integrated machine, integrated unit in order to function totally and holistically okay so when it comes in you sink your chest so you press here like I'm pretty solid here because you're pushing it down to my head expand my chest and then you go there's actually sink your chest and expand your chest so now there's another not going mechanism that that blends so there's blending and it's sinking more so when you're sinking it sinks down to the rock your chin is tucked, your chest is in and then you push hard as well it's not going anywhere you can expand a bit and you know you're on balance just explaining so you contract easily when we balance so hard you can try and you feel like, oh I can push the guy you feel like you can push me you think you got me don't use this just relax when you push on here I'm totally relaxed I'm just using my whole structure in my body so this is actually touching my body so you feel like you got me, right? there's more room alright just relax this whole thing suck in there so it feels like, oh yeah I got you now but you feel like now it's on your back leg right now you just expand yeah, okay alright I'm already so new so Glenn put that into your pushing I'm already sucked in ideally I want to but then you need to make sure the elbow cut the elbow so if I go like this push it up there but you try to elbow me like this you do that elbow me at least I can control the elbow right then if you feel yourself moving this way you're you're going to change it to here alright cut the elbow is this sucking in is this sucking in just sucking in and then expand step here and I bump into you like that, right? step through deeper my feet haven't touched the ground yet and I've already made contact so now all the momentum is going through you instead of going to the ground you try that I'll stand here and you just try it so you gotta step really deep so I step with this foot or this one like that so that works too but that's not the technique so I'm here you want to take my place here's my center so my foot basically has to be here oh yeah let's see how deep you have to go but then don't need for be straight boom, it's almost straight I'm trying to drop my height down I feel like that when I get here my shoulder is here don't use your shoulder one technique is to use your shoulder that's for a more combata because you can use your shoulder bone but for training you're just going to bump into your chest like that so relax your shoulder don't do this yeah, like that don't stick it out like this I'm trying to pull it back so just relax I'm David Wong and in this video I'm going to show you the three mistakes in Tai Chi that are very common that people make so one of the main advantages of learning Tai Chi is for health for your joints, for your bones for breathing, for relaxation and meditation but also you learn a concept called rooting or sinking I'm going to demonstrate it how much do you weigh? 220 pounds look at his muscles his arms, holy cow he's as big as my leg I'm only about 150 pounds look at my skinny arms and I'm able to resist and pushing me and I'm fairly relaxed without using a lot of strength I can resist this push and how hard were you pushing there? and I'm just standing there not using too much strength so the key is don't fight strength don't fight force with force so in Tai Chi you'll teach you how to use structure the structure of your skeletal structure of your bones, of your joints, of your alignment and also of your mind of what the intention is in order to resist force using just structure so one of the key things that you need to have structure is three mistakes that people make that destroy structure in Tai Chi and very few people that actually practice Tai Chi actually know and actually experience and know how to do this so stay tuned and I'm going to show you those to you mistake number three is not being relaxed so a lot of people are confused about relaxation and about being placid there's two different things for example and that's placid, right? there's nothing there nothing, it's placid but be relaxed in a concept called Song in Chinese it's being loose but still have structure so you're pushing harder, harder, harder I'm relaxed I'm still relaxed you see how I'm relaxed my arm is and I'm still able to resist them okay so that's the difference between being Song which means loose and placid but in English we use the word relaxation which is very easy to misinterpret so number one key when you practice your Tai Chi for example, practice your Tai Chi your hands are always relaxed there's only a tense state and a relaxed state now when we go to the gym most people practice being tense use your muscles tense up to get more power which is okay, it works but if you practice being tense on time then if you're fighting against someone bigger than you you're at a disadvantage because his force will be stronger than your force so rather than use force I use Song for relaxation so when you practice your Tai Chi make sure that your hands are not open like this because that's too much tension because your hands are not closed like this because that's too much tension your hands should always be in the middle when it's relaxed, it's completely relaxed imagine holding an egg in your hand when you're open, just open them slightly just stretch them out a little bit when you're relaxed, relaxed when you're open, just open a little you always want to feel the energy ball in the palms of your hands so it's very subtle for example when I do this, I'm combining two things first of all, my hands are lifting up at the same time my hands are going from relaxed to slightly open and then back to relaxed slightly open it's a very minor detail but what that does is it teaches you even though you're using tension see my hands are slightly open I'm still in a relaxed state so I never go from I never go up to 100% I go up to maybe 60 to 70% tension never go above that because once you go above that then you start to use force you stay below let's say 60% tension then you're not using force you're using relaxation and the key to Tai Chi is to train yourself so that you can still use relaxation at 60%, 50%, 40%, 30% then eventually using no tension at all to be able to resist someone with force so that's what takes the training many many hours of repetition and training doing the push hands that we just showed you in the demonstration doing that for a lot then you can learn how to use relaxation mistake number two in Tai Chi is to not use your Dan Tian or not use your core center of gravity to direct the movements so there's a very simple movement called followed hands so I'm using my core to direct my body the same I'm using just one hand see how my core is moving in a circle to direct my arm so the core or the Dan Tian leads the arms Sun Dai Sao that's what I say in Chinese the body leads the hand so that's number two mistake here's how it looks like when you make the mistake see the difference my hand is leading my core so there's very little power or connection when I'm moving my hand I'm just moving my hand I'm not even leading it with the core now do it correctly so how you can practice is actually put your finger or put your hand and fingers touch your belly button and then feel it move before your hand moves but now you get the difference you can tell let's see I'm just using my hand just my hand pain wise how much is that one to ten about four now I'm using my hit I mean using my Dan Tian how much pain more pain is there seven and I didn't use more power I just used my waist I can get it up to ten so that's the key of generating power is to use your Dan Tian so let me show you demonstration in the 24 move Tai Chi form of how to use the Dan Tian to guide your hands so let me show you the wrong way of doing this I'm trying very hard to do it the wrong way because I practice so much the proper way but what I'm doing is I'm leading with my hands and then I move my body so a very basic fundamental in early Tai Chi if you're a beginner is to learn how to move your hips now when you get advanced Tai Chi you actually do the opposite you learn to move your hands before your hips it's contradictory isn't it but I'll show you how to do that in the next lesson or in a later lesson and it goes with the concept that Bruce Lee taught which is to move your hands before your feet just like in fencing move your hands before your feet the reason is because when somebody attacks you I don't have time to move my hip first and do a big Tai Chi move if somebody attacks me I have to move my hand first so what's the difference see before you learn Tai Chi and once you learn Tai Chi they move their hands first but there's no power and then they practice Tai Chi and then they'll learn how to use the hips to get power and now they'll get back to the beginning they use their hands first but now it comes with power how does that happen so let me show you again let's see his attacking I don't have time to move my hips and do a big Tai Chi move like in a lot of demonstrations I only have time to just move my hand up but there's power there how does that happen I just move my hand I move my hand and then my body I didn't move my hip first just me moving my hips first too slow right I have to go one, two you already hit me but now I want to do it so that I move my hand first how does that work maybe in a later lesson I can show you how to do that mistake number one that you can make in Tai Chi is to not sink your tailbone which means not to open your back now I'm going to show Will for example because I'm wearing a jacket you can't see so you see if you take your shirt and tighten it up your spine has a curve here so most people have that curve naturally but in Tai Chi you actually don't want that curve in Tai Chi you want to get rid of that curve so you want to sink down the tailbone so that you can feel that this is flatter and ideally it's actually a C it's a couple so what you need to do is sink your tailbone down even more suck in your gut push out like this so now I can feel it's lower back straightening up but still not enough, you want it to stick out push out over here, push push push that's better so now you can feel that it's more like a C where I started about before see how it's like an S so you don't want that and you can see a lot of people doing Tai Chi with a back like this it's actually very bad for your back so it makes you disconnected it disconnects your upper body with your lower body the key to having a strong core and Dan Qian is to connect your upper body with your lower body and this is the main mistake that people make by having the S curve of the spine and what it does is disconnects your body so for example I'm going to do an S curve on purpose my spine is like my belly sticking out I'm trying to and he pushes on my hand see? I'll automatically go back, there's no resistance but now I stick my back out I drop my hip and make this into a C and now he pushes on it what happened? it's different you're more rooted see what happens when you curve your back is now that energy transfer through your spine and then into your hips into the knees and into the ground when you break that connection by curving your spine now all the energy just goes in your spine it doesn't go to your legs so that's why he pushes that energy goes into the spine and then I go so that's the number one mistake that you can make in Tai Chi so when you practice your Tai Chi make sure that you always check put my hand back behind my back and see if it's straight is it a C? so even when you do your moves think about that think that the spine is going to be straight one exercise you can do is to do very slow squats against the wall I want to first put my back against the wall and then see if there's any space behind my back see if I slip my hand behind my back if there's a space that I can slip my hand behind then there's too much space so I need to get rid of that space I want all my spine to be touching the wall once I get that then I can go up and down just go halfway and go back up sliding my spine up and down the wall now after I do that and I'm good at it then I can go all the way down all the way down keeping my spine straight and touching the wall all the way and do it slow like this so that's going to be very hard on your lower back but it strengthens your lower back it strengthens your leg so that's one key in Tai Chi of creating connectedness so stay tuned I'm going to show you the bonus mistake that people make so the bonus mistake that you can make in Tai Chi is doing it too fast I know everybody says this you want to do Tai Chi slow but many people don't understand why you do Tai Chi so slow number one, relaxation number two, using your Dan Tian to lead your hands and number three, having a proper spine alignment what do all those things mean all those things mean connectedness of your whole body integration of your whole body if your hand moves your whole body moves if your feet move your whole body moves everything's connected and the reason we do Tai Chi so slow is that we're training that connectedness and it's impossible to train it doing it fast that's why we do it slow if we can do it fast and still get connectedness then everybody would do Tai Chi fast but the reason we do it slow is because Tai Chi doing it slow is probably the only way you can train that connectedness in your body by combining all the techniques that we learned relaxation leading with the Dan Tian and later on how to use your breath to relax and connect your body too and your mind so there's many aspects of learning how to connect your whole body and mind as an integrated machine integrated unit in order to function totally and holistically another technique is when it comes in you sink your chest so you press here like I'm pretty solid here because you're pushing down to my neck you expand my chest and then you go there's actually sink your chest and expand your chest so now there's another not going mechanism that blends so there's blending it's sinking more so when you're sinking it sinks down to the bottom your chin is tucked your chest is in and then you push hard as well it's not going anywhere just expand pull the shoulders pull the shoulders so you contract easily when we balance because when you can try you feel like oh I can push the guy you feel like you can push me but you've got me, right? don't use this don't use this just relax when you push down here I'm totally relaxed I'm just using my whole structure in my body so this is actually touching my body so you feel like you've got me but it actually does more there's more room just relax this whole thing suck in everything so it feels like oh yeah I got you now but you feel like now it's on your back leg yeah okay I'm already so new right? I'm already sucked in ideally I want to make sure it's elbow but then you need to make sure the elbow cut the elbow so if I go like this push it up but you try to elbow me a little bit you do that at least I can control the elbow okay right? then if you feel yourself moving this way you're right there you can just change it to here okay so you need to cut the elbow suck again just suck in and then expand step here and I bump into you like that right? step too deeper my feet haven't touched the ground yet and they've already made contact so now all the momentum is going through you instead of going to the ground okay I'll stand here and you just try so you gotta step really deep so I step with this foot or this one like that so that works too but that's not the technique so step deeper you want to take my place so here's my center so my foot basically has to be here oh yeah let's see how deep you have to go that's better but then don't knee forward you straight? boom, it's almost straight one straight step I'm trying to drop my height down because I feel like when I get here my shoulder's here don't use your shoulder one technique is to use your shoulder that's for a more combata because you can use your shoulder bone but for training you're just going to bump into the chest like that so relax your shoulder don't do this like that don't stick it out like this I'm trying to pull it back so just relax you're not stepping deep enough so I feel like when I step in so you don't want to step then go you have to hit before I land okay so before my foot even touches the ground I'm already there I feel that a lot more than you but you step first so you want to aim for behind the edge the thing is to make a frame make this round sink your chest so this is like one big one big cup one big cup is gone because you stick out any part of the cup then it's just going to go in it won't affect the whole thing so you make this round so there's two ways you can sink down or you can rise up that's rising up so you can go rising up or you can sink down and down you got it same idea so now you just extend this and now you're bringing your whole body into it don't push I'm going to show you the three mistakes in Tai Chi that are very common that people make so one of the main advantages of learning Tai Chi is for health for your joints, for your bones for breathing, for relaxation but also, you learn a concept called rooting or sinking so as you can see in the demonstration we'll hear how much do you weigh 220 pounds 220 pounds, look at his muscles look at his arms, holy cow as big as my leg I'm only about 150 pounds look at my skinny arms and I'm able to resist him pushing me and I'm fairly relaxed without using a lot of strength and how hard were you pushing there? 100% putting all the strength in there and I'm just standing there not using too much strength so the key is don't fight strength don't fight force with force so in Tai Chi you'll teach you how to use structure the structure of your skeletal structure of your bones, of your joints, of your alignment and also of your mind of what the intention is in order to resist force so one of the key things that you need to have structure well there's three mistakes that people make that destroy structure in Tai Chi and very few people that actually practice Tai Chi actually know and actually experience and know how to do this so stay tuned and I'm going to show you those to you mistake number three is not being relaxed so a lot of people are confused about relaxation and about being placid there's two different things if I'm being placid he pushes and that's placid, right? there's nothing there but be relaxed in a concept called shong or shong in Chinese it's being loose but relaxed but still have structure so he's pushing he's pushing harder, harder, harder I'm relaxing, my hands are relaxing he's pushing harder, harder I'm still relaxed my arm is I'm still able to resist them so that's the difference between being shong which means loose and placid but in English we use the word relaxation which is very easy to misinterpret so number one key when you practice your Tai Chi for example, practice your Tai Chi your hands are always relaxed there's only a tense state when we go to the gym most people practice being tense use your muscles tense up to get more power which is okay, it works but if you practice being tense all the time practice being tense then if you're fighting against someone bigger than you you're at a disadvantage because his force will be stronger than your force so rather than use force I use Song I use relaxation so when you practice your Tai Chi make sure that your hands are not open like this because that's too much tension because your hands are not closed like this because that's too much tension your hands should always be in the middle when it's relaxed, it's completely relaxed imagine holding an egg in your hand when you're open, just open them slightly just stretch them out a little bit when you're relaxed, relaxed when you're open, just open a little you always want to feel an energy ball in the palms of your hands so it's very subtle for example when I do this I'm combining two things, first of all my hands are lifting up at the same time, my hands are going from relaxed to slightly open and then back to relaxed slightly open it's a very minor detail but what that does is it teaches you even though you're using tension see my hands are slightly open that I'm still in a relaxed state so I never go from I never go up to 100% I go up to maybe 60 to 70% tension never go above that because once you go above that, then you start to use force if you stay below let's say 60% tension then you're not using force, you're using relaxation and the key to Tai Chi is to train yourself so that you can still use relaxation at 60% 50% 30% eventually using no tension at all to be able to resist someone with force so that's what takes the training that's what takes the many many hours repetition and training doing the push hands that we just showed you in the demonstration doing that for a lot, then you can learn how to use relaxation mistake number two in Tai Chi is to not use your Dan Tian or not use your core center of gravity to direct the movements so there's a very simple movement called bowed hands so I'm using my core to direct my body this time I'm using just one hand see how my core is moving in a circle to direct my arm so the core or the Dan Tian leads the arms Sun Dai Sao, that's what I say in Chinese the body leads the hand so that's number two mistake here's how it looks like when you make a mistake see the difference? my hand is leading my core so there's very little power or connection when I'm moving my hand I'm just moving my hand I'm not even leading it with the core now here's what you're doing correctly so how you can practice is actually put your finger or put your hand and fingers touch your belly button feel it move before your hand moves so now you get the difference and the difference you can tell, let's see I'm just using my hand like this just my hand pain wise how much is that 1 to 10 about 4 now I'm using my hit using my Dan Tian how much pain more pain is there 7 and I didn't use more power I just used my waist and if I use more I can get it up to 10 so that's the key of generating power is to use your Dan Tian so let me show you a demonstration in the 24 move Tai Chi form of how to use the Dan Tian to guide your hand so let me show you the wrong way of doing this I'm trying very hard to doing the wrong way because I practice so much the proper way is I'm leading with my hands and then I move my body so a very basic fundamental in early Tai Chi if you're a beginner is to learn how to move your hips now when you get advanced Tai Chi you actually do the opposite you learn to move your hands before your hips it's contradictory isn't it but I'll show you how to do that in the next lesson or in a later lesson and it goes with the concept that Bruce Lee taught which is to move your hands before your feet just like in fencing you want to move your hands before your feet the reason is because when somebody attacks you I don't have time to move my hip first and do a big Tai Chi move right if somebody attacks me I have to move my hand first so what's the difference before you learn Tai Chi they move their hands first but there's no power Tai Chi and then they'll learn how to use the hips to get power but they practiced enough Tai Chi and now they'll get back to the beginning they use their hands first but now it comes with power how does that happen so let me show you again I don't have time to move my hips and do a big Tai Chi move like in a lot of demonstrations I only have time to just move my hand up but there's power there how does that happen right I just move my hand and then my body I move my hand and then my body I didn't move my hip first just me moving my hips first too slow I have to go one, two you already hit me but now I want to do it so that I move my hand first so how does that work maybe in a later lesson I can show you how to do that mistake number one that you can make in Tai Chi is to not sink your tailbone which means not to open your back now I'm going to show Will for example because I'm wearing a jacket you can't see so you see


I honestly can't believe the Apostle Peter came back from this. If you remember, Jesus prophesied that after the rooster crowed on three occasions, Peter would deny Jesus. After all that came true, Jesus was crucified, but what happened to Peter? He went right back to doing what he was doing before he met Jesus, but then Jesus appeared to him. He did the same miracle that he first did when he met Peter. And little later on, he asked him three questions. Now, there's so much more to this text, but let's get to Jesus' question. Simon Peter, do you love me? Peter said yes each time, and Jesus replied slightly differently each time. Feed my lambs, tend my sheep, feed my sheep. Think about it, Peter had just denied three times that he even knew Jesus. But now Jesus was entrusting him to feed his sheep. The truth is that Jesus extended grace to Peter. He didn't want him to wallow in his failure, but rather let his love for God overflow into action for his kingdom. Friend, don't just wallow in your sin in self-pity. Repent, and an aspect of that repentance is letting your love for God lead you to action for his kingdom.


Those two eyes, you would think, belong to different people. They belong to the same man. And not only have we got different colors, radically different constitutional types, we've got different structures as well. When we know more about structure, I'll be able to point that out to you. When I asked about the history of this man, I said, what do you know about your childhood? What do you know about your parents, actually? He said, I never knew my parents. I was found on a doorstep aged two days. And I've lived my entire life in care, in some kind of institution, including recently. He was 53 at the time I saw him. And I said, what was your diagnosis? You don't get to stay in care as an adult without having a mental health problem, basically. So he said, borderline personality disorder. If you know anything about that, that is more than one person living in the same skin, OK? So heterochromaerodum is a really interesting phenomenon in erodology. We will be talking more about it. I wanted to show you this since the question had come up. Borderline personality disorder is quite a serious psychopathology. It is that case where people literally have more than one persona. And I don't know how many of you are familiar with the concept of the chimera, C-H-I-M-E-R-A. This is the situation where the theory is that there are two embryos that become fertilized in the womb. One doesn't come to full term. One doesn't develop and is absorbed by the other. And in rare cases, there's one actual criminal case in America that I was brought to my attention as a result of giving this lecture in Dublin at one point, actually, where the person, the criminal, the person who done the murder had two different sets of DNA and nearly got away with it until someone noticed that he had different colored eyes and that there might be a chimera in operation where they actually went and tested the DNA from another sample and found that he had two distinct sets of DNA. And that enabled them to capture him. So this is quite an extraordinary thing. I'm not saying that every case of heterochromia eridum is the same. There are potentially other causes as well. Let's see what's coming up on the chats here. So, yeah, you'll get some information on that. Does that mean that people with heterochromia might be prone to... I'm sorry, Davila, can you clarify MH? I'm not quite sure what that's meant by that. Mental health, yeah. Ah, right, okay, it's a very interesting question. I could be really naughty here and ask, put your hands up if you think you don't have a mental health problem. I think everybody has a mental health problem in the same way that everybody has digestive problems, if they're honest about it. And quite rightly, because we are not set beings. We have things that we're concerned about, possibly. I know what you mean by mental health problem, but we're not in a serious diagnosed condition, of course. Now, I say that simply because I want to put it on a spectrum and not make it a thing.  Most of us oscillate between maybe crossing that very fine dividing line at several points in our lives. People with... I'm going to give you another case history, which we'll be looking at. Somebody came to me and she had a mental health problem, not a serious one. She was anxious. She just started to feel very anxious. So she was suffering from anxiety, okay? So it's not exactly a psychopathology, but it's a problem and it was a problem for her. When I looked in her eyes, she had what's called a sectoral heterochromia, which is just a wedge, a radial wedge in one eye that was a different color. And we'll see a lot of pictures of these as we go. I've got several cases of this kind to discover. And actually, some of you may have this too because it's not that unusual. And in talking to her, the sectoral part, that sector of a different color revealed what her problem was. And as soon as I mentioned it, she knew that that was true. And at that point, I said, I can certainly give you herbs for anxiety and I will do that. But what you really need to do is go and work on that problem. And she did and it was fine. So it was a mental health problem, transient, temporary, she fixed it. But it was very evident from her eyes. Now, the eyes will not change. The eyes still reveal what they revealed. And when we go to that, I will visit that case and I'll tell you in more detail about what that case was about because it's absolutely fascinating. So with a heterochromia, a heterochromia iridum, any strong difference between color between one eye and the other can indicate problems of a psychological or psychosocial nature. But they don't have to be major disturbances. If you enjoyed this video, please give it a like and subscribe below so you don't miss any future content. To learn more about CNM or its courses, head to www.naturopathy-uk.com.


Why do more people in Scotland not take part in sport? The Scottish Parliament's Health and Sport Committee is looking into this issue and wants to hear the views of people about the barriers to participating. I think it depends on the people, the person or cell, what's their, how their state of body is, how their mind works, if they're in a mindset to want to do it, if they're disabled, they've got people to help push them. Maybe other things you do, busy lives, I mean people have to work longer hours nowadays and you know, trying to fit things in, whereas at one time you're eight hours and then you could maybe do this and that, but now it goes on to 10, 12 and you know, things like that. No, I think you can't force a person to do it. If the council, if the Parliament want to get people into it, maybe they should make it a bit cheaper to go in. I think more people should go out there and just experience being in a gym and exercising and just being healthy. The committee's looking at sport and sporting participation, we're looking at the barriers to people taking part in sport, people like me who don't do enough sport and we want to look at all of these issues, particularly following the Commonwealth Games when we wanted to leave a sporting legacy in Scotland, but we also need the public to tell us what's going on in the community, tell us what's going on in their backyard and tell us about their experience, so are they having any problems participating in sporting activity, so please come forward and tell us what's happening in your area. You can find out how to give your views through our online survey on our webpage and join the debate on social media.


What's up guys my name is Michael and welcome to my YouTube channel today. We're gonna do another lead code challenge Self-dividing numbers a self-dividing number is a number that is divisible by every digit It contains for example 128 is a self-dividing number because 128 mod 1 is equal to 0 128 mod 2 is equal to 0 128 mod 8 is equal to 0 So it is divisible by every number it contains every digit it contains Also a self-dividing number is not allowed to contain the zero digit zero Given a upper and lower bound output every single possible self-dividing number including the bounds as possible This is pretty basic you guys try to do this on yourself on your own and Come back to me when I when you're done Okay, try to do this on your own if you can't figure it out in one or two hours then come back to this video but essentially the algorithm is is that You're gonna go through every number between left and right Inclusive, okay, and you're gonna check if it's a self-dividing number That is it's divisible by every of its digits Okay, and if it is then we add it to the array. We're returning and then When we go through from left to right once we're done with the right one, we just return the array That's essentially the algorithm. Yeah That's how you would do it come back when you implemented that and then We'll see you if your solution is like my solution. So yeah Okay, so first whoa Hold up guys hold up my bad Hold up Okay, so first, how do we do this? Well first you need to create an array that you got a return that has all the Self-dividing numbers so this is gonna do it's I'll call it to return for now, but yeah, then what do we got to do? We got well we got to go through every single value from left If it's less than we're including right, so it's that's why it's left and equal to go through every value between left and right and then if is self-dividing Passing if whatever value we're checking it's self-dividing. We're gonna add it to return dot pushback I Then after that we're gonna return To return okay, so then that's essentially the algorithm now. We need to create a method called Is self-dividing? We're gonna pass in a value of I so how do we check if it's self-dividing? Well a self-dividing number is a number that's divisible by every single to every digit in contains so first we need to Essentially Let me think how do I say this? do-do-do-do-do-do We have to go through We have to get every single digit And then mod it Get every single digit mod it and if it equal if it doesn't equal to zero Then we return false Okay, and we're gonna do that for every single digit. So how do we do that? We're gonna do while While I is greater than zero Okay We're gonna do I is okay. Okay. How about instead of using I I'll use an actual number So let's change I do like numb so that I don't like the variable I so my eyes greater than zero We're gonna take number and we're going to divide number by 10 So if you divide by 10 So let's say 128 you divide by 10 then you get one two 28 28 to yeah, so that gets you If you were to divide a number by 10 You get this one two that's the remaining Okay, and now what we want is we want the remainder Want to mod by 10 to get the last digit so that we to get eight and then two they want So I'm gonna take all a number called remainder It's gonna equal to numb mod 10 Okay, so this is gonna get the remainder now What we need to do is we need to check if the original digit is Able to mod by The remainder and if it's equal to zero then we continue if it's not equal to zero then we return false Okay, so in order to do this we need to create another variable We're gonna call this original and this is going to equal to whatever value we passed in the original number before we went through this while loop Okay, so let me call this original. All right now. We're gonna check if original Mod Remainder is not equal to zero Okay, then that means we return false we also have to check or The remainder is equal to zero because if the remainder is equal to zero is not allowed to contain the digit zero So we got to return false. All right. This is good. Basically going to go through every single digit in this Ray if for every number and then it checks if it divides it mods it equal to zero, okay It doesn't go to zero returns false After this loop is finished That means it must have None of that means none of them have returned It had not returned false. We're gonna return true. Okay, none of them all of them had been able to divide by Mod by zero mod by remain. So they were all Divisible by each digit. Yeah, this is should work if it doesn't work then I Don't know There's must have been a compiler or something happened. It's basically how you would do it. Let's see what happens Runtime error. What is the difference? divisible division by zero Okay, so you can't do this we got to do this first. It's equal to zero in return There's the effects of It's called Shortcutting I think something called short cutting where it checks the left side first then checks the right side. Okay, so this is working Now we submit and it got accepted. So that's basically how you would do this. Yeah, I don't think there's any other way Let's see solution. Oh, yeah, okay, so there's only brute force They don't have anything else That's basically how you do it right com subscribe. I hope your solution looked something like mine I'll check you guys later. Peace


blue nine which activates the first volume of the raft and blow the raft out. That is one, our main, and about five seconds later, you haven't seen anything at all, okay? So there's been the timing sequence that's been able to work, you haven't seen anything. Then at that time you go ahead and pull your debrief, okay?  You can go ahead and pull it, and it'll fire, fire, fire, and it's below 14,000, so the barrel will find it, and it probably will go ahead and do it. Anyhow, that's one hot tip for the day. Another thing is, you're just in your own judgment. If there's high seas, you're going to want to probably say, forget about bailing with this, because there's going to be water pouring in. You'll probably want to get closed up as close as you can. A tip for closing this thing up, you're going to be in big boots and bulky gear, so you're going to fill this a whole lot more than I'm filling it right now. But the best way to get a good seal on this is to take your boot, stick it up here on the velcro, pull one velcro side over, and run your foot up it. Now I can't demonstrate it real well, because I'm not filling this up as much as you would. And at the end, you can be a little cocoon in here if water is real bad, but you can still be bailing with your little bailing pump sticking out the top of this. If you can get this thing dry, you can stay fairly comfortable in it. For long periods, hours and hours. They said just a little bit of water was enough to keep it cold and make things real good. Well, they're still wearing precious stuff. I mean, they're wearing the same suits you guys were wearing. Water-efficient? Yes, water-efficient. We also have, there, in your pocket, you put them over your own gloves. We want you to try it out today, try it both ways, okay? The gloves, they said, helped tremendously. Lose your hands, and things really start going downhill from there. This is an 8, not a 7. You normally take a 7 in this type of boot. It's all concealer now, don't you think? All right, guys, get out of the way.  That's buddy. They be dry. We've got to take the hardware out. Okay. Hello, fellas.


Hello, thank you for joining me. I'm out for a walk in the countryside just on the edge of Chalfonson, Peter Chalfonson, Peter is a large village in Buckinghamshire and flowing right through the middle of Chalfonson, Peter just here Is the River Misfal? So we're gonna cross this Delightfully rural bridge over the river and this is a chalk stream It runs for about 17 miles from Great Missenden Right in the heart of the Chilterns down to Denham where it joins the River Cone It's a chalk stream, so it does sometimes dry up and indeed it has dried up in Chalfonson, Peter In the past, but it's it's flowing at the moment now today's video isn't to focus on the main Course of the River Misfal. I'm gonna do that in the future I'm gonna walk the whole river from Great Missenden all the way to Denham We're gonna do that in the future. What I'm gonna do today is Show you three of the River Misfal's tributaries all of which are in Chalfonson, Peter And when I last looked all had watering because they are even more prone to drying up So let's go and find them. So come across the river. This is Mill Meadow So we're right on the edge of Chalfonson, Peter. You can see residential area there fields that way and Looking that way is the village centre. So what I'm gonna do now, I'm gonna cross Mill Meadow and Just over there is one of the River Misfal's tributaries sources. So let's go and have a look So we've just come across Mill Meadow. We're now gonna go Down this path here to find the springs that form the first of the three tributaries We're gonna look at in today's video. So it's just up here So out of the three we're gonna look at. This is the Second longest or second shortest. It's not even a quarter of a mile long So give you an idea the final one we can look at is gonna be really short But the one we're gonna look at next is well about half a mile long. So, you know a bit longer So as we come Up here, we're getting closer and closer to Chalfonson, Peter Village centre. So as we come under this lovely beach tree here We come to some allotments and just on the other side the allotments is church, which will probably see a bit later on in the video, so Just show you where we are. The allotments and the village centre is there now Here if we go into this Overgrown sort of area We find the first of the spring you can see it's a bit just a bit of water Not a huge amount of movement. I can't actually see where it's coming up It is a summer's day and it's a hot summer's day But probably should have worn wellies really for doing this So I'm not gonna go any further, but you can see there's water And it just trickles off down there and just on the other side of the tree It widens out a bit. So what we're gonna do obviously I can't go the course of the river So I'm gonna take you back up on to the public footpath and footpath goes through the allotments and that's where there is a bridge over This tribute tree the only bridge over this tribute tree Of course you can cross it further up where it's culverted, which we'll get to in a minute I doubt many people actually realize they are crossing it where it's culverted. So as the footpath takes us into the allotments And The church is just behind there. So we'll we'll see that in a minute The bridge Over the culvert. It's just over there. So the culvert runs basically the edge of the allotments on the other side The culvert is the football ground here The two alleyways that go up into the residential area. So as we walk right through the middle now of the allotments I will show you the bridge and then we can walk along Beside the culvert. I'm sorry along beside the river To where it is culverted and I'm going to show you where it actually joins the main rhythm is born So yeah, that we shall come to that in a minute So here is the bridge. I was telling you about so you can see the river comes from that direction Goes underneath. It's really flowing nicely there. It's a bit overgrown. We're now going to follow the the river along here and I'll show you where it disappears underground so It is a little bit overgrown. That's probably because it's been dried up for the best part of I'd say 15 years I've not seen water in this probably since well at least since I was a Child, I don't even remember seeing water Sort of in my teenage years. So it's a bit kind of clogged up here But you know, the water is pushing on and making its way through There is an active group of volunteers who have been restoring the main course of the rhythm is born so I said it does dry up fairly frequently and These dry up for longer periods of time So it is my plan to do the whole rhythm is born But what I didn't want to do we'll start at the other end film it over a few days And when I get here, there's an outside chance. This might have dried up. So I thought it's Important that We sort of do this as like a pilot video for the main series I'll show you the culverts and they're flowing nicely there and then We will go and do the whole course of the rhythm is born at some point in the future So to come this is even quite deep and five well is on I might just be able to stand in it It's quite nice and open at this end and then when we get to here this is where The culvert is I wonder if I can Just step down here So here it disappears Under the culvert now. I'm not sure is Is it like a Straight line culvert or is there a kink in it because if it's sort of gone there It's gonna go under the garages. There's some fairly modern flats here. There was a building here Called Elwood house and it was built in the same style as these flats and it was demolished maybe in about 2004 maybe and there was also it had like an identical sister in Chalvon St. Jarls that was almost well Almost identical. It was slightly different, but they've both been demolished. They built this set of flats to somewhere That culvert must literally be running under us right now. And that's what I was saying I'm not sure how many people are actually aware, you know They're aware they cross it at the bridge, but somewhere under the car park is The culvert so what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna take you to the end of where The culvert was or culvert is So this is the main village car park for Chalvon St. Peter Got the parish church just over there as I said, we would come close to it and now we have what I'll do I'll do a video on Chalvon St. Peter in the future So where we look at more buildings and landmarks, etc So that I just want to concentrate on the mizborn's tributaries So we come to here the main tributary runs along here over there is the Greyhound pub now Here is the main course of the river mizborn if you look just down there That is the other end of the culvert. So that's where The first tributary joins the main river mizborn. So what I'm going to do now I'm going to walk to the source of the next tributary. So, um, see you there So I have walked about half a mile away from Chalvon St. Peter village centre and I've come to the next tributary Now it comes it's a private garden there, but it comes under a little brick culvert just from under the fence. So It obviously must start in their garden and then it opens up here and There we go, and it flows off about 100 yards down there. Now you may be able to hear there is Busy main road just there. That is the A413 which, you know, runs from North Bucks right down to the Denham roundabout Now the old A413 is over there on the other side of those woodlands So what I'm going to do is I'm going to walk along here. I won't do it on camera all the way because as you can see it is a little bit overgrown It's a bit of an odd place to be to be making a video effectively just, you know, walking along the roadside But anyway, I'm going to go to the culvert and I shall show you that now So there we are. That is the culvert which takes this tributary of the river Misborne under the new A413. So Started about 100 yards that way It's flown Along here and it goes as I said underneath the A413. So what I'm going to do now is I'm going to Go and cross it and we shall appear or I shall appear on the other side of the culvert Here we are then this is the same culvert We were at just a moment ago. So it takes this tributary under the A413 now As I said a lot of the time this used to be dried up and I used to come down here as a child Now this cycle way wasn't here. So this was just all in bushes So if you walk from Chalfaunt Park, which we'll get to in a minute There's a road just the other side But I used to come in here and I discovered that there was a culvert here But I never knew where it went. I didn't realize it went under the A413 And it'd always been my plan when it was dried up one day to crawl through And See where it went to but anyway, I never had to do that because as you can see we've just done it on foot so Here the course of this tributary is quite wide now again I don't know if it has a name but if anyone does know You know if you would like to comment and tell me Please do but there is something Rather interesting. I'll be able to tell you in a minute because I talked about how It can dry up So we actually have to leave the course here as we come into Chalfaunt Park It's a former stately home. It's also a business park I'll do a video more focusing on Chalfaunt Park in the future So I'm just going to walk up the road a little way and we shall find the river again So here we are a bit further up the course now just Look how I've grown that is that it's not great and that's probably One of the problems it has when it dries up with it starting to flow again It is just so overgrown now. Like I said, it had been dried up for at least 15 years so It almost kind of got abandoned. I'm wondering if people ever realized it would flow again but you know flow it has and it's got water in and It would look, you know, this was all cleared nicely because here we have the amazing Chalfaunt Park house Like I said, I will do a different video on it. This isn't going to be a history video This really is focusing on these On the tributaries of the River Mizpon, but it would just look so much nicer You look at that scene of the house Turned to here if this wasn't quite as overgrown. Okay, it's not quite so bad here but you know it could do with Just being you know cleared out and So you can see where loads of leaves here have bunched up and they've sort of pushed forward and Created a little waterfall, but the river is is very clear um I wouldn't like to try and drink it but It is a chalk stream and water from chalk stream You know is very pure and can be drank and would have been drank by people So you see the house the house. I'm not going to get too much into it But it was designed by John Nash Quite a famous architect the period. He designed many houses or many of the smaller buildings on the Attingham Park estate in Shropshire Attingham Park is National Trust We'll have to go there at some point, but yeah, we'll do a video more focusing on the house at some point in the future. So as we come along by This tributary of the River Mizpon Just over there That's the old cricket pavilion. It's it's currently abandoned Well, I last came okay. There's some horses in that field. So I'm not quite sure Really what's going on there, but It just the river gets quite overgrown again. I just saw what looked like a duck nesting um Or is it nesting you just see if the camera's picking it out. There is a duck. I don't want to disturb it So I won't go any closer, but just here something weird happens I talked about how they dry up Well It kind of is drying up. It's like the water Disappears we get to here and um There is literally no Water, so this is how I'm used to it looking being an empty river bed. Look I can stand in it And you know it is It's dry so It's a bit bizarre that 25 yards of that way It's flowing like a river here You know, look it is as dry as a bone, but weirdly where it um Further up it starts flowing again. So quite how that works This is where you know, if someone wants to help me here Can tell me is there another spring up here because what and what happens to that water it must sort of just soak into the ground and then Reappear so I'm gonna now follow the dried up river bed But I should get to a point where I show you where we have water again So believe it or not that the water would flow through all these bushes and it is still Very much dried up. We come to a point now where the road crosses the dried up river bed So you can see here's the bridge. So the water should be flowing under there into um Into there, so It's um, it's really strange to how it can be that there's water back there And there isn't here, but I have seen this on the main course of the river mizborn I've known it flowing Amisham, but be dried up in Chalfers at Peter. Interestingly I've never seen it dried up beyond Chalford Park because We'll look focus on it more when we do the main course of river mizborn But behind the Chalford Park house the river's been dug out into a lake and there's a spring At the upstream end of the lake and it's always always flowed since past there there is um I know the top section is known as the winter born section because it is it does naturally dry up in summer because the way chalk streams work It's like a sponge. So when there's water Um, or the water comes out the chalk like a sponge So the head of the river moves backwards and forwards, but it kind of so traditionally it should Dry up in the winter. I mean sorry dry up in the summer and flow in the winter But I've known summers where you know, it flows throughout the whole summer By the way, I'm just taking you on to this footpath. If you go up that footpath there, you'll go across the main road Up to George Cross We're going to get down here because I want to get back to that tributary. So yeah the head Of the river does move up and down the valley, but it never seems to dry up beyond here except for this tributary does Come and go Now it's just along the other side of the field now. I was out for a walk the other day It's kind of what gave me the idea for this so Along there's a drive along there. That's also a public footpath and that was when I noticed that there was water here But there wasn't further back there But there was at the top and that made me think let's make a video before the whole lot Drives up. I don't know if it's ever flown right the way through since it started flowing Earlier on in the year. I'm not I'm not entirely sure on that one But as we get to here the river is Just down there now This field is is a bit sort of muddy and boggy um Now have a look at this We're back to the same tributary as I said, this is the longest one and it's clearly Got water in it now Yes, there is this Drain coming off the main road, which no doubt is helping but there is water flowing from up there So, you know, there must be Another spring, but it just seems strange how where we first saw it there was so much water there How all that water can disappear now? This is a private driveway, but is a public footpath and it goes for a ford and um, there's a bridge for us to walk over So, um, what happens now? It goes into a private garden So I can't really show you anymore, but I'll point out when we get to the main course of the river Which is about 100 yards up there. I'll show you where it joins the main river misbord So we've now joined the main course of the river misborn the tributary we've been following it joins Just about there where my finger is so it's on private property So I can't take you to show you the confidence, but that's where it joins This is the main course of the misborn There's public footpaths one way Back through childhood park there's public footpath up there now. I don't want to spoil the surprise too much I'm only going to show you from here, but you can see there's a waterfall in the lake We will look at that more closely when we do the main Series where we walk the whole of the river misborn. That's Chalford Park Lake. So I'm going to um Let you see that in the future. So do look out for that video But now there's one more very short tributary at the other end of the lake that we need to go and find So now back at the other end of Chalford Park I've just come down this little path here to show you the third and final spring I'm going to show you today. It starts just here that you can literally see The water coming out the ground Now it just literally goes along there and around the corner. It's probably one of The shortest springs I've ever seen and it must be the shortest spring on the Misborn So follow this path around here. I shall show you Where it actually joins the main Misborn now a moment ago when I was down at the other end of lake I could see the waterfall through the trees. I'm going to save that for the main series But I'm now going to show you the other end of the lake because that's where it joins So it runs just over there through the trees over there are the offices I mentioned earlier. This is the main course Of the river Misborn and what it does it actually Goes down a bit of a waterfall Into the lake itself. So you can see the river is just flowing along along there And then there's a bit of a little cascade here So when I said I've never seen the river dry up beyond here I've come here and this section of the river will be dried up But the spring I think there might be one more spring down there I seem to remember seeing water coming out down there But the other tributary perhaps it was easier said than done to show you where it joins Let's see if we can find it through here Well oh yeah here we are So it's again all in the bushes but it is just there through those roaded endrooms And there is the lake on the main course of the river Misborn So it has been dug out to be a lake We'll go and do the Chalford Park of the gardens in the future And we'll look at more into the history But today's video was purely on the tributaries of the river Misborn But I'm going to actually finish by showing you a waterfall on the main river Misborn So this is a taste of what we've got to come when we do the main series We'll come across other country estates like this that the river Misborn flows through And we will follow it from source to confluence with the river Colm So I hope you enjoyed this video, thank you very much for watching Please do feel free to like, subscribe, comment, tell your friends, tell your neighbours Tell everyone you think might be interested in River Misborn and my videos And watch out for the main series, it's coming in the future So from Chalford Park and River Misborn, goodbye


A bomb threat forced the evacuation and early dismissal of students at Cast League-Bena High School today. Superintendent Rochelle Johnson tells Lakeland News students from the middle school and high school were evacuated around 10 a.m. after school officials learned of the threat. Students were taken to the district's area learning center and were released for the day at 11 30 a.m. Johnson says the school was cleared by law enforcement around 2 p.m. and classes are scheduled to resume tomorrow morning. This is the second bomb threat at the school in the past two months. The school was also evacuated following a bomb threat on December 2nd of 2016. Leech Lake Tribal police officers are not commenting on the incident, but Johnson says the investigation into the threat is ongoing. If you've enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax deductible contribution to Lakeland Public Television.


like somebody should break the silence and then I realized it's actually me. So this is a session. I've been wanting to do it for a really long time and I didn't know exactly what exactly I needed to say or how I should say it and so I just kind of went for it and I feel like there's a lot to cover and I actually am a little bit nervous today not because of the public speaking part but because this is a really vulnerable topic it's vulnerable to exist as a neurodivergent person and it's vulnerable to talk about it but I also feel really special, I feel really honored because this is a community that is so powerfully amazing that I feel really safe to stand in front of you recorded and talk about this topic so thank you, thank you for being part of that amazing community a little bit about me I have ADHD I am a super passionate person I'm passionate about so many different things I'm passionate about having things to be passionate about if I don't have something to be passionate about I get restless like I need to learn something One of my favorite podcasts is called Radio Lab Does anybody know this? Yeah, it's amazing, they're all over the map and they talk about all kinds of interesting things like the episode where they talk about how you can strap a 9 volt battery to your brain and it can impact the way that you learn and actually change your brain's ability to absorb information amazing, also if you do it don't tell anybody that you learned about it from here I haven't done it, I'm tempted to I love taking apart electronics and doing, strapping them together and doing different things with them this is a photo of me with an EEG sensor strapped to my head that I hacked from a children's toy and then I connected it to an RGB LED so the EEG sensor picks up your alpha, beta, gamma, deltas highs and lows and from that it'll elicit, using the API it'll elicit the attention and meditation values and from that I use that data to control the color of the RGB LED and this is the kind of stuff that I do in my free time and also I don't get to talk about it very much so thank you again I am nervous right now, not extremely nervous but my professional experience I actually worked with kids for about a decade before I did a career change and moved into the Drupal world I didn't know that I was neurodivergent at the time but I really liked working with autistic kids primarily I also traveled a bit I taught in China for a couple of years before coming back and working with kids more I've done a lot of public speaking in China and then in my early career worked in agencies for quite a long time I worked as a contractor just solo before my current job so right now I'm technically a scrum master although it's kind of a hybrid scrum master process improvement project manager you have to be really organized to be a good project manager I am not really organized so I try but mostly I just try to automate everything possible and I don't know how project managers do it little content learning about this session I can only speak for myself I am only an expert in my own experiences and so I am really sorry if I use language today that makes you feel like I'm misrepresenting you or anybody you care about I might not get it right I'm gonna try but I warmly invite you to reach out to me and let me know either at the end if I manage to leave time for questions or reach out in a DM or however it feels comfortable because I want to do better and your feedback is really precious to me so if I get something wrong please tell me if you feel comfortable doing so I am only an expert in my own experience and I want you to know that I see you all as experts in your own experiences too neurodivergent what does neurodivergent mean so we as human beings put labels on things we love putting labels on things many of us actually hate having labels put on us but we need those categories those categories are how we got here that's how we survived it's part of our biological imperative our need to be accepted to connect with the people who are safe for us it's how we survived it's how we can tell it's not okay and not okay and so there's this really interesting study where they were examining rats and they had the smart rats and then they had these other rats that were the not-so-smart rats and of course they put the rats through all these different tests and the smart rats did really really well and the not-so-smart rats of course they didn't perform quite as well and here's the thing about this study is that the rats were actually all the same the only difference was that the smart rats had a label on it that said smart that's it so yeah my brain is different I am neurodivergent that's a label that I exist in this world with so I've only had this label since 2021 part of the reason that I decided the thing that really changed my mind and inspired me to do this session is I was actually co-working with a friend of mine who works for a growing global team and his company is very DE and I focused and one day he said hey there is going to be one of the leading industry professionals coming out to my company to put on the session remotely and do you want to hang out in the room so that you can hear what this person has to say about inclusivity about neuro-inclusivity in the workplace and I was so excited with an opportunity and I just remember standing in the kitchen with my friend looking at me sympathetically because the language that this industry professional was using was so inaccurate and so absolute as if the way that she was speaking described every single neurodivergent person but not me and it felt really bad because I worked so hard to try and fit in and to be seen as just another human being and the language that she was using was so othering and no wonder so few of us feel comfortable talking about our diagnosis I mean it doesn't for me it doesn't even feel like a diagnosis it's not a disability for me I'm really proud of the way that my brain works but that's not how a lot of industry professionals talk about it and it doesn't feel great and so I really wanted to share the session today in part because I want to hold the microphone and I want to control a little piece of the narrative because it's my story not hers so what is actually different about a neurodivergent brain is a really great article I've linked it in the resource slide deck which I will share with everyone at the end but embraceautism.com is a fantastic resource I love the way that they share information and they explain it as certain brain regions show high interconnectivity in autistics and comparatively reduced connectivity in neurotypicals while other brain regions show lower connectivity so basically we just took all the skill points and put it all in one side of the skill tree and then neglected some other areas pretty much I think and then ADHD brains have low levels of a neurotransmitter called norepinephrine wasn't sure if I was going to be able to get that one which is linked closely with dopamine I talk about dopamine all the time it's actually I think about dopamine in my work and working with people in doing process improvement in how I can set my team up for success and how I can motivate the people around me because as it turns out I have a relationship with dopamine that is just a little bit more dramatic than a lot of other people but we all need dopamine we all use dopamine we all have dopamine in our brains a little bit of this session is also about anxiety which is not technically part of the neurodiverse neurodivergent umbrella but it's a really really common side effect and it's a really common experience for people regardless of how their brains work and so anxiety is part of it too and I think it's really important to talk about just as much as everything else this is a really great quote from a fantastic psychologist who helps high performers go big without burning out she also has ADHD and I love this in part because it's so long and that resonates with me I am rather verbose at times but I also want to talk about how we see ADHD as a superpower where we talk about how ADHD is a superpower and it does, it feels like a superpower I can do so many things other people tell me that I can't do and then that actually just motivates me more I can do a lot of really great things not in spite of my disability but because of it but the thing that we don't talk about a lot of the time when we have this oh, ADHD is a superpower when you think about superheroes in comic books they all, maybe not all but a lot of them really struggle with interpersonal challenges and that's true for me too I guess it's probably true for a lot of people especially neurodiverse anyways where do you keep your ketchup? does anybody keep their ketchup in the pantry? this is a really important question when it comes to talking about neuro-inclusivity and the importance of diversity and the reason for this is because if you keep your ketchup in the refrigerator and everybody else keeps their ketchup in the refrigerator and you run out of ketchup where are you going to look for something to replace that ketchup in the refrigerator? if you don't keep your ketchup in the refrigerator and there are a few people here who do not it's particularly common in British people and African Americans from the south is what the article that I read said some people don't keep their ketchup in the refrigerator and so when they run out of ketchup where do they look for a ketchup replacement? probably not in the refrigerator and so this is a really interesting question when we're thinking about diversity because every I'm about to use absolute language again many tech companies value innovation and if you have a whole bunch of people who all think in the same way sitting at the table trying to innovate might not work as well but here's the thing about the ketchup question where if you Google it you can read all kinds of articles about it they don't always talk about the importance not only of having people who keep their ketchup in different places the thing that they don't talk about as much is that you have to also make sure that people feel safe talking about the fact that they don't keep their ketchup in the refrigerator I love this quote you think about this quote through the lens of the ketchup question we talked about how an autistic brain has just a different map of interconnectivity every non-autistic brain is roughly like every non-autistic brain but no autistic brain is like any other autistic brain so what does it mean to be neurodivergent I mean I think I've said this but I can't speak for everyone we're all so different that it's really hard to say that's what neurodivergent looks like we're all over the map but I can tell you I feel really poorly supported by the medical system I had an ADHD specialist who told me that he couldn't help me because I am too chaotic yeah thanks, I know I can tell you that it can be a struggle some days I can tell you that it's amazing other days we are superheros sometimes but a lot of the other time we have to pay the price when it comes to social interactions trying to mask, trying to fit in trying to seem like we would be a good job candidate what else does it mean to be neurodivergent has anybody seen Ghostbusters? yeah, it's a good movie, right? do you know who wrote Ghostbusters? Dan Ackroyd did you know that Dan Ackroyd is neurodivergent? did you know that Will Smith Billy Eilish, Courtney Love Steve Goldberg, Steve Jobs, Michael J. Fox Ryan Reynolds may also be a neurodivergent what does it mean to be neurodivergent? I want to talk about this thing that we do in tech where we have these people and they're fantastic technical brains and they know everything about Drupal and they're just wizards and then we promote them into people leadership positions and walk away thanks just because you're a good technical leader doesn't mean that you're going to be automatically an amazing people leader and that's hard but I do want to tell you that to be a good leader you actually don't have to know all of the things about how to lead people you actually you just need to ask questions and you need to listen this myth that if you don't have all the answers then you are a weak leader true jumping into some of the guts of this session there's five strategies here there's five sort of core concepts and I'm not here to tell you how to execute every single one of them perfectly because you just have to ask questions and figure it out for yourselves and your teams and what's going to work for your particular situation there is no magic answer when it comes to neuroinclusivity when it comes to inclusivity at all but I want you to take these things and think about them and think about how they're being done at your workplace and what's working and what isn't hiring and retention is a big one and I think a lot of us feel like it's sort of outside of our control you know it's like a thing that HR handles and then we just sort of take it from there and we have a candidate lined up but it's important and we do have some role in hiring and retention if you are a person who gets to meet a candidate this is a really cool thing that I have been very very lucky to experience and I actually see many of the people who I've experienced this with in this room right now so just awesome but when you take a bunch of people who have strong high emotional intelligent people high EI and you put them in the room and you have them talk about a candidate they tend to encourage each other to empathize with that candidate and they naturally will brainstorm ways to help lift that candidate up and make sure that the things that seem like maybe they're not very good at are genuinely true and it's not just because they were a little bit nervous or maybe not very good at verbally communicating on the spot about their experiences or whatever else it is that you might want to write a candidate off about put a bunch of strong EI people in a room and have them have a conversation they will naturally start talking about how we can do better and then there's retention this is hard as a person with ADHD I think I interview really well but getting the job is just part of it once I'm actually at a company there's a whole plethora of other things that come into play that make me want to be there or not want to be there and there's something that I've learned at the company that I'm currently at and I didn't realize how important this was for my ADHD brain but now that I've experienced it I feel the impact and as a scrum master I actually get to facilitate this with my entire team which is really, really cool and that is goals my brain loves goals I love objectives I love ticking the box it's dopamine but we all need goals and so there's this really cool thing that happens when you have a high level goal and you break it out and then each team has their own sort of subsection of that goal and the entire team all of a sudden is really aligned and really motivated and they're able to support each other in ways that feel really great and when they don't have that alignment and when those KPIs those goals just come out of nowhere sometimes the KPIs, the goals are actually in conflict and this happens in agencies a lot because your project managers want to make sure that you have a client and your developers might actually be told as much of your time as possible to any project regardless, like figure it out find a way to build it to a project because the high up people they want to bring down the amount of overhead so what happens is you have developers who are like I'm just going to build this to this project and then you have a project manager who's like we can't charge the client for that and nobody wins and it feels terrible but if you can make sure that your goals are things that people can truly align on then they're going to be able to support each other and not only does that feel great for my ADHD brain because we're working towards something but it's going to be beneficial for everybody I wasn't sure how to talk about this one but it's important I think it's also going to be a little bit sensitive so be authentic there are a growing number of studies that show that having diverse thinkers not just neurodivergent but all manner of diversity is good for business but if you say that you want to hire a diverse team and then you are not willing to show up and follow through to support that diversity it's probably not going to be that good for business and so this is something that I'm not really sure how to talk about it exactly but I think it's really important to tell people what you're actually wanting to do because if you tell me that you want a diverse workplace and then you hire me and then it becomes a problem that I have ADHD not my behavior but my diagnosis it's not going to feel great I'm probably going to leave probably not going to be great for morale and so I don't know it's pride month this whole rainbow washing thing just be authentic for this one feedback this is important because there are so many different opportunities where we have to give each other feedback whether it's quarterly feedback or is it code review or is it just that somebody maybe wasn't supporting you in the way that you need them to support you in a meeting or on your team and you need to just be able to communicate to them what's happening for you and how that's working and what you need but we don't talk about how to talk to each other we don't talk to each other about how to ask for help we don't talk to each other we don't explain to somebody that something's not working for them enter stress stage left doesn't help just gets worse and now you're under stress and you still don't have the skills or the support to sit down and talk to people on your team about why it's not working for you feedback is so important and there are so many different ways to talk about feedback and there are so many different formats and structures and contexts but it's kind of been covered a lot by people who are way better at explaining it than I am last year at bad camp I had the pleasure of attending a session by Cori Neslund who is speaking actually also right now at the same time I was going to give her a shout out and tell everybody to go to her session too because she's amazing but in my resource deck I have linked to her session presentation about feedback from bad camp last year and one of the things that she talks about is how you can have different formats of feedback how you can actually elicit feedback on your own terms how feedback can be a thing that you get to use for your own career growth and not just a thing that happens to you quarterly the other thing I want to say about feedback is that it can feel really bad I see a lot of heads nodding it can feel really bad for anybody feedback that isn't really actionable or is confusing or just doesn't work with the way that we like to receive feedback can be very frustrating but for me as a person with ADHD and I'm very fortunate to know what is happening for me now and now that I understand what's happening I feel more empowered and it doesn't affect me in the same way but once upon a time feedback was the primary trigger for rejection sensitive dysphoria rejection sensitive dysphoria and this is hard to talk about a little bit because it feels not a dramatic person but I got some frustrating feedback that wasn't very actionable once and I literally thought about packing up my laptop and my dog and just walking away from my whole life like no more mortgage no more car I just wanted to leave and it felt like that is a good solution because the experience that I was having was so big I didn't know what to do with it I didn't understand what was happening and nobody could see what was happening because on the outside I'm smiling and nodding and on the inside I'm on fire there's an amazing YouTuber named Jessica and she has a YouTube channel called how to ADHD she's an amazing team of researchers who research these things fact check it make sure that the content of her videos is really really solid she also talks to supportive industry professionals I will link to her channel in the resource stack but she has a video on YouTube that explains rejection sensitive dysphoria and she also provides a handful of tools for how to manage it her videos are a treasure trove of resources and if you are somebody who is experiencing symptoms of ADHD whether or not you have a diagnosis or if you know somebody who's been checking out her YouTube series one thing that I do want to say about feedback is that sandwiches are for eating not for giving feedback you can use the sandwich model but please please make sure that the thing that you need to say to the other person isn't lost in the bread because as a person with ADHD I am constantly trying to figure out what I'm asking properly today how am I doing I don't know I need you to tell me you're doing great awesome okay I don't need to worry about this I can go back to my work but if you tell me you're doing really really great but you talk too much but also we really love the things that you have to say I'm not going to understand I need you to just remind me make sure that you give other people opportunities to speak as well thank you okay I know what to do with that there are lots of different formats for giving feedback as well I highly recommend doing a bit of reading talking to your teams about how they like to receive feedback it's also a really great resource called the culture map talked about the culture map at my workplace where we talked about do you prefer a direct feedback or indirect feedback do you need a lot of context or not it turns out that my ADHD brain needs things that fit on the culture map scale in the same way that somebody who comes from a different culture might it just turns out it's just different reasons why I prefer certain type of feedback I'll link to it in the resource deck I want you to sit with this one when you're providing feedback if you're in a leadership position if you have an employee or a direct report somebody who you're responsible for who is hired because they're capable because they're inspired because they're good at their jobs and they're not succeeding think about what it is that they don't have what is it that they need to succeed don't hold people accountable hold people capable when you sit down to talk to that person think about the labels the impact that labels and our biases can have in the way that we communicate with people and tell yourself this person is capable and it's my job to figure out what it is that they need to thrive hold people capable this one's big I could do a whole series of sessions just about communication and all of the different ways in which we communicate but I think what I would like to talk about is media richness many of us have experience or currently work in remote settings and we don't have opportunities to talk to people face to face quite as much and we probably also have somebody who's responsible for the budget going normal meetings fewer meetings, too many meetings more work, less talking but we're human beings and we need to talk and if we are going to innovate we also need to connect you can't just drop a bunch of people in a room who don't know each other and tell them to come up with some amazing ideas they don't trust each other they don't know each other they're not going to be vulnerable and share potentially not great ideas right so media richness is this I love very much it's the idea that more complex topics need more complex forms of media in order to be able to communicate them properly this happens a lot in tech when you are in a remote setting where you are doing back and forth and back and forth and back and forth on a ticket or in Slack you don't have the full attention of the other person and really instead of spending hours going back and forth you jump on a huddle and sort it in 10 minutes but then you also might have the pressure of somebody high up going no more meetings, no more meetings you need to let us choose nobody wants to sit in meetings all day it's exhausting okay maybe some people want to sit in meetings all day but very few people who I have heard vocalizing about their feelings about meetings told me oh gosh I really just wish we had more meetings today that would be great it's not common so when we tell you hey I really need a one to one every week or hey I really need a huddle to talk about this ticket it's probably not because we don't want to do our work and we are just looking for an excuse so media richness think about this one talk about this one with your teams are we using the right format to communicate these ideas are we having a meeting where we're talking about things that could be an email or a memo or are we trying to communicate really complex ideas through text innovation does not synthesize from KPIs and unicorn sweat you need to let people be people teams that have an opportunity to bond and connect also handle stress better and I don't know about you but my job can get stressful sometimes hopefully it's not all the time but it can get stressful and I've been very very lucky to work with teams who I have a really really great connection with who we have had time we made the time to build our team and when things got stressful we showed up for each other but it can be really hard to do that and to find opportunities to show up for each other when you have somebody leaning over your shoulder going normal meetings change management this one's fun I love this one I work for a company that before I joined there was no Scrum Master it was a brand new role and there were also a lot of org chart changes and so when I joined I realized there are a lot of things that I need to fix a lot of things that I need to change and if you know anything about well all humans struggle with change if you know anything about autism it changes really hard but why why does it have to be that hard is there a way that I can make it easier would it be better if I just ripped the band-aid off and tried to change everything all at once or would it be better if we worked through the changes together gradually and so I thought about this a lot and I did a lot of research and I learned about change management and it's fascinating and actually not that complicated at the end of the day so if you have a team and you're struggling with change I highly recommend do some research on change management agile process improvement how to iterate through things these are really great resources and I have had so much fun I also have an amazing team so it's not just me I have fantastic people who make change management fun with me but here's what I did I chose people from each of the four scrum teams and I didn't choose the people who are the most vocal for a reason and I also made sure that there was no management in this group and the reason for that is because I already know what management thinks I talk to management just about every day and this is a group of people where when something isn't good they tell me they let me know I don't need those voices in my process improvement group I need the voices who I don't have an opportunity to hear and I need to make sure that I create a safe space for them to speak and so part of change management is communicating those changes if you know that something is coming makes it a lot easier if you know that something is coming and you know that if you speak up you will be heard makes change a lot easier it's not so bad anymore all of a sudden change is not this thing that happens to us where our workflows and our schedules get disrupted without any warning and so part of the reason that I put together this change management group is that not only is their job to advise me on how their teams are doing and what their teams need but they also facilitate communication back to their teams I'm just one person who is super detail oriented I need help I need help remembering which teams need to be told what thing at what time there's a lot of moving parts of my job and so these are ambassadors of change for me and they support me by communicating in both directions we've changed a lot of things we've introduced story points and sprint planning and we've changed the way we communicate about release workflows we've changed our workflows quite a bit and nobody's complained because we take the time to talk about it and make sure that everything is really intuitive make sure that everybody knows what's happening we test things out and I ask people hey are we going to be able to do this is this sustainable, is this disruptive how can we improve what can we do differently not necessarily better we don't have to know if it's better or not until we try it let's try it see what happens set yourself up for success as a person with ADHD I know that I'm not perfect I know that I miss details I know that I forget things but I also know that if I have all of the information that I need to do a task in one place it's going to be a lot easier for me to do that task in the morning when I wake up I have everything that I need to get through the morning in a basket I have my coffee I have my meds in that basket, coffee grinder all I have to do is wake up open the cupboard door pull the basket down and everything I need is right there so I use the same concept in process improvement all of the core meetings that I need to get through the week are on dashboards in JIRA I don't know if there's a non-JIRA equivalent for the tools that you use but as much as possible if you can get all the information that you need to execute a task in one place it's going to be easier to execute that task and this is something that I learned as a sort of coping mechanism understanding that as soon as I turn around I'm not going to use browsers or go to a different room I'm going to forget what I was doing but as it turns out what's easy for me is actually easy for everybody else so I have a dashboard for my sprint planning meetings and I have a different dashboard for the sprint planning meetings when I need to talk about things with management and then I have another dashboard for each of the teams and all of these dashboards mirror each other but they're slightly different for each of those purposes and now all I have to do is show up to the meeting and open the dashboard and everyone's like wow you're so organized no one actually has said that to me but I feel organized if you need somebody to do something set them up for success put all the information in one place make it easy for them this is not it's not a marathon one of my team members said this to me it's not a marathon it's a relay race that's what he said it's not a marathon it's a relay race we have to work together to succeed I love this one I love pushing back if you've worked with me there's a few people nodding in this room if you've worked with me you know that I will fearlessly push back but when you think about it the only other option is to push forward so when I push back I'm doing it because it's not realistic it's not a realistic expectation for my team it's not sustainable the thing that you're asking for it's not going to be easy and so this happens a lot where if I have stakeholders or people who are interested there's somebody who needs something done at a certain time and I turn around and ask the team and they're like oh no I don't think so I turn around and I say okay let's figure out what we can do and how we can make this sustainable let's figure out what is achievable because the only other option is for me to turn around to the team and go we'll figure it out we're going to have to meet this deadline and then guess what happens to the codebase it's not great guess what happens to morale it drops guess what happens to retention think about where you're pushing and think about the pressures that you're applying and think is there another way to accomplish this thing every once in a while we do need to rally and meet a deadline but try not to apply that pressure unless we really need to the last thing I want to talk about is the culture at our companies the culture at my company if you google it and you look for how to foster a culture of learning you're going to find a lot of articles that are written by C level people with other C level people as the audience I think that's a little bit strange because they're not in the room learning with us so why are all of the articles out there about C level people we're the ones who are in there being a part of this culture but it's interesting because I really firmly believe that we can we can drive culture change as individuals it only takes one person to change the dynamic of a group it takes one person to speak up and say hey let's be a little more patient with this person it takes one person to message somebody and say hey that meeting was a bit crunchy how are you feeling okay one person to say you seem a little I know your workload is really heavy right now can I help you you can drive change just a couple more slides here almost done let people define growth for themselves there is a saying that you may have heard finish what you start do you know that one finish what you start to you I don't finish what I start I have 12 project ideas a day but the thing is that a lot of the time for me I'm not actually intending to finish the project I'm just curious about the guts of the project why did I strap an EEG sensor to my brain and start playing with LEDs it wasn't because I had any specific goal I just wanted to play with LEDs it's a sensor thing that I just hacked out of a children's toy and so I have a lot of what other people see is half finish projects and they look at me and they're like oh what a disaster you never finish what you start I'm like are you kidding me I am learning so much and if I took the time to stop and see every single project all the way through I probably wouldn't have half as much time to socialize or sleep or pet my dog it's not about finishing what I start it's about learning for me that's what growth looks like for me that's my story it's my experience and we do this in the workplace too we have knowledge sharing sessions we want you to share your knowledge you're a subject matter expert so jump on a call and put on a session and speak to people because it's good for you but that's not necessarily what we want to do we don't want to develop our public speaking skills we want to read a book and pet a cat and that has to be okay so find other ways to support the people around you and let them define growth for themselves support them in their learning goals don't tell them what they need to do to get better, ask and the very very last thing that I'm going to say today is to embrace imposter syndrome I talk about imposter syndrome quite a bit in my work and in my life and a lot of the time when I am the one who speaks up and says hey I'm like super anxious right now I've experienced multiple times where there is a sigh of relief around me like oh my god me too so glad you said that we all experience imposter syndrome imposter syndrome is your brain going oh my god this is a lot there's a lot of things around you that you don't know that's a good thing because if you already know everything that there is to know what are you doing you're not challenging yourself you're not putting yourself in a position where you have more growth so if you're not experiencing imposter syndrome maybe that's a great thing I don't know what that feels like but if you are experiencing imposter syndrome maybe just look at it and see it and recognize that that means that you're growing that means you're pushing yourself that means that you have more to learn and that's a good thing embrace it own it, recognize it but don't let it slow you down that's it for me thank you I'm so grateful that it is only 9.49 I thought I was going to talk way too long does anybody have any questions yes so this slide deck here oh the slide deck so every time I start talking about resources like how to ADHD the youtuber other people who I talk to get really excited because they're like oh my god there's this other resource you should also do look at this I made the slide deck with my resources editable so if you have an amazing youtuber or a fantastic book and you'd like to share please feel free to DM me, Slack me I'm all over the diversity inclusion channel in the Slack community group if you search at failaren I'm the only one so you can find me online I'm on LinkedIn, I'm on Twitter I'm on Slack you'll find me and I'll send you the link to this slide deck to share but the question was what is the name of that youtuber and the answer is how to ADHD any other questions thank you so much one more one more yes if the techs have done their jobs and supported this session it is recorded absolutely totally yeah fantastic yeah totally any other questions ok let's go get some more coffee thanks everyone