Deep Physiological Quotes

During deep NREM sleep specifically, the brain communicates a calming signal to the fight-or-flight sympathetic branch of the body’s nervous system, and does so for long durations of the night. As a result, deep sleep prevents an escalation of this physiological stress that is synonymous with increased blood pressure, heart attack, heart failure, and stroke.

All the deep-diving studies show that women are superior for submerged operations. They're physically smaller and consume less nutrients and air, they have better social skills and tolerate close quarters better, and they are physiologically tougher and have better endurance.

.......Love is physiologically a legal battle that lovers fight until death.

In a world of seven billion people, where every inch of land has been mapped, much of it developed, and too much of it destroyed, the sea remains the final unseen, untouched, and undiscovered wilderness, the planet’s last great frontier. There are no mobile phones down there, no e-mails, no tweeting, no twerking, no car keys to lose, no terrorist threats, no birthdays to forget, no penalties for late credit card payments, and no dog shit to step in before a job interview. All the stress, noise, and distractions of life are left at the surface. The ocean is the last truly quiet place on Earth.

Abominations. He did not say the last word aloud, but she felt something like pain echo through him, pity. “You sound like you know a lot about this kind of thing?” “You could say I have first hand experience.” Valdagerion was looking up at the tanks a dark twisted pain in his eyes. The expression made her heart pound with alarm. The alien was wounded, the kind of deep physiological wounds that could make a person very dangerous.

Physiological tendencies are buried deep in our cultural unconscious.

Physiologically, everything ugly weakens and saddens man. It reminds him of decay, danger, impotence; it actually deprives him of strength ... Whenever man is depressed at all, he senses the proximity of something 'ugly.' His feeling of power, his will to power, his courage, his pride - all fall with the ugly and rise with the beautiful ... The ugly is understood as a sign and symptom of degeneration: whatever reminds us in the least of degeneration causes in us the judgement of 'ugly.' Every suggestion of exhaustion, of heaviness, of age, of weariness; every kind of lack of freedom, such as cramps, such as paralysis; and above all, the smell, the color, the form of dissolution, of decomposition - even in the ultimate attenuation into a symbol - all evoke the same reaction, the value judgement 'ugly.' A hatred is aroused ... the decline of his type. Here he hates out of the deepest instinct of the species ... it is the deepest hatred there is. It is because of this that art is deep.

Man is often lost in a technological, physiological, astrological lack of logical existence that can best be described as a whole lot of nothing lightly dashed with an obvious hint of Scotch,” Hal says.

Humor gives me physical and psychological energy; as I have become more open and alive, my laugh has changed. I laugh really loud now, from deep in the belly, and that’s a good thing. Physiologically that gives you an internal massage of your organs.

Physiological stress, then, is the link between personality traits and disease. Certain traits — otherwise known as coping styles — magnify the risk for illness by increasing the likelihood of chronic stress. Common to them all is a diminished capacity for emotional communication. Emotional experiences are translated into potentially damaging biological events when human beings are prevented from learning how to express their feelings effectively. That learning occurs — or fails to occur — during childhood. The way people grow up shapes their relationship with their own bodies and psyches. The emotional contexts of childhood interact with inborn temperament to give rise to personality traits. Much of what we call personality is not a fixed set of traits, only coping mechanisms a person acquired in childhood. There is an important distinction between an inherent characteristic, rooted in an individual without regard to his environment, and a response to the environment, a pattern of behaviours developed to ensure survival. What we see as indelible traits may be no more than habitual defensive techniques, unconsciously adopted. People often identify with these habituated patterns, believing them to be an indispensable part of the self. They may even harbour self-loathing for certain traits — for example, when a person describes herself as “a control freak.” In reality, there is no innate human inclination to be controlling. What there is in a “controlling” personality is deep anxiety. The infant and child who perceives that his needs are unmet may develop an obsessive coping style, anxious about each detail. When such a person fears that he is unable to control events, he experiences great stress. Unconsciously he believes that only by controlling every aspect of his life and environment will he be able to ensure the satisfaction of his needs. As he grows older, others will resent him and he will come to dislike himself for what was originally a desperate response to emotional deprivation. The drive to control is not an innate trait but a coping style. Emotional repression is also a coping style rather than a personality trait set in stone. Not one of the many adults interviewed for this book could answer in the affirmative when asked the following: When, as a child, you felt sad, upset or angry, was there anyone you could talk to — even when he or she was the one who had triggered your negative emotions? In a quarter century of clinical practice, including a decade of palliative work, I have never heard anyone with cancer or with any chronic illness or condition say yes to that question. Many children are conditioned in this manner not because of any intended harm or abuse, but because the parents themselves are too threatened by the anxiety, anger or sadness they sense in their child — or are simply too busy or too harassed themselves to pay attention. “My mother or father needed me to be happy” is the simple formula that trained many a child — later a stressed and depressed or physically ill adult — into lifelong patterns of repression.

Water temperatures in this range do, in fact, cause physiological changes—one of which is known as the cold-shock response, a “series of reflexes that begin immediately upon sudden cooling of the skin following cold-water immersion.” During this reflexive response, “blood pressure, heart rate, and the workload of the heart all increase, making the heart more susceptible to life-threatening rhythms and heart attack. Simultaneously,” an online text explained, “gasping begins, followed by rapid and deep breathing. These reflexes can quickly lead to accidental inhalation of water and drowning. This rapid and seemingly uncontrollable over-breathing creates a sensation of suffocation and contributes to feelings of panic. It can also create dizziness, confusion, disorientation, and a decreased level of consciousness.

So it was that the Red Tower put into production its new, more terrible and perplexing, line of unique novelty items. Among the objects and constructions now manufactured were several of an almost innocent nature. These included tiny, delicate cameos that were heavier than their size would suggest, far heavier, and lockets whose shiny outer surface flipped open to reveal a black reverberant abyss inside, a deep blackness roaring with echoes. Along the same lines was a series of lifelike replicas of internal organs and physiological structures, many of them evidencing an advanced stages of disease and all of them displeasingly warm and soft to the touch. There was a fake disembodied hand on which fingernails would grow several inches overnight and insistently grew back should one attempt to clip them. Numerous natural objects, mostly bulbous gourds, were designed to produce a long, deafening scream whenever they were picked up or otherwise disturbed in their vegetable stillness. Less scrutable were such things as hardened globs of lava into whose rough, igneous forms were sent a pair of rheumy eyes that perpetually shifted their gaze from side to side like a relentless pendulum. And there was also a humble piece of cement, a fragment broken away from any street or sidewalk, that left a most intractable stain, greasy and green, on whatever surface it was placed. But such fairly simple items were eventually followed, and ultimately replaced, by more articulated objects and constructions. One example of this complex type of novelty item was an ornate music box that, when opened, emitted a brief gurgling or sucking sound in emulation of a dying individual's death rattle. Another product manufactured in great quantity at the Red Tower was a pocket watch in a gold casing which opened to reveal a curious timepiece whose numerals were represented by tiny quivering insects while the circling 'hands' were reptilian tongues, slender and pink. But these examples hardly begin to hint at the range of goods that came from the factory during its novelty phase of production. I should at least mention the exotic carpets woven with intricate abstract patterns that, when focused upon for a certain length of time, composed themselves into fleeting phantasmagoric scenes of a kind which might pass through a fever-stricken or even permanently damaged brain.

Despite the intervening six decades of scientific inquiry since Selye’s groundbreaking work, the physiological impact of the emotions is still far from fully appreciated. The medical approach to health and illness continues to suppose that body and mind are separable from each other and from the milieu in which they exist. Compounding that mistake is a definition of stress that is narrow and simplistic. Medical thinking usually sees stress as highly disturbing but isolated events such as, for example, sudden unemployment, a marriage breakup or the death of a loved one. These major events are potent sources of stress for many, but there are chronic daily stresses in people’s lives that are more insidious and more harmful in their long-term biological consequences. Internally generated stresses take their toll without in any way seeming out of the ordinary. For those habituated to high levels of internal stress since early childhood, it is the absence of stress that creates unease, evoking boredom and a sense of meaninglessness. People may become addicted to their own stress hormones, adrenaline and cortisol, Hans Selye observed. To such persons stress feels desirable, while the absence of it feels like something to be avoided. When people describe themselves as being stressed, they usually mean the nervous agitation they experience under excessive demands — most commonly in the areas of work, family, relationships, finances or health. But sensations of nervous tension do not define stress — nor, strictly speaking, are they always perceived when people are stressed. Stress, as we will define it, is not a matter of subjective feeling. It is a measurable set of objective physiological events in the body, involving the brain, the hormonal apparatus, the immune system and many other organs. Both animals and people can experience stress with no awareness of its presence. “Stress is not simply nervous tension,” Selye pointed out. “Stress reactions do occur in lower animals, and even in plants, that have no nervous systems…. Indeed, stress can be produced under deep anaesthesia in patients who are unconscious, and even in cell cultures grown outside the body.” Similarly, stress effects can be highly active in persons who are fully awake, but who are in the grip of unconscious emotions or cut off from their body responses. The physiology of stress may be triggered without observable effects on behaviour and without subjective awareness, as has been shown in animal experiments and in human studies.

What is knowledge? it is primarily and essentially idea. What is idea? A very complicated physiological process in the brain of an animal, the result of which is the consciousness of a picture there. Clearly the relation between such a picture and something entirely different from the animal in whose brain it exists can only be a very indirect one. This is perhaps the simplest and most comprehensible way of disclosing the deep gulf between the ideal and the real. This belongs to the things of which, like the motion of the earth, we are not directly conscious; therefore the ancients did not observe it, just as they did not observe the motion of the earth. Once pointed out, on the other hand, first by Descartes, it has ever since given philosophers no rest. But after Kant had at last proved in the most thorough manner the complete diversity of the ideal and the real, it was an attempt, as bold as it was absurd, yet perfectly correctly calculated with reference to the philosophical public in Germany, and consequently crowned with brilliant results, to try to assert the absolute identity of the two by dogmatic utterances, on the strength of a pretended intellectual intuition. In truth, on the contrary, a subjective and an objective existence, a being for self and a being for others, a consciousness of one's own self, and a consciousness of other things, is given us directly, and the two are given in such a fundamentally different manner that no other difference can compare with this. About himself every one knows directly, about all others only very indirectly. This is the fact and the problem.

Within a few months Mitch Bush, head veterinarian at the National Zoo, and David Wildt, a young reproductive physiologist working as a postdoctoral fellow in my laboratory at the National Cancer Institute, were on a plane bound for South Africa. Bush is a towering, bearded, giant of a man with a strong interest and acumen in exotic animal veterinary medicine, particularly the rapidly improving field of anesthetic pharmacology. Wildt is a slight and modest Midwestern farm boy, schooled in the reproductive physiology of barnyard animals. His boyish charm and polite shy demeanor mask a piercing curiosity and deep knowledge of all things reproductive. Bush and Wildt's expedition to the DeWildt cheetah breeding center outside Pretoria would ultimately change the way the conservation community viewed cheetahs forever.

Emotions, at their most basic level, involve the release of neurochemicals in the brain, in response to some stimulus. You see the person you have a crush on across the room, your brain releases a bunch of chemicals, and that triggers a cascade of physiological changes—your heart beats faster, your hormones shift, and your stomach flutters. You take a deep breath and sigh. Your facial expression changes; maybe you blush; even the timbre of your voice becomes warmer. Your thoughts shift to memories of the crush and fantasies about the future, and you suddenly feel an urge to cross the room and say hi. Just about every system in your body responds to the chemical and electrical cascade activated by the sight of the person. That’s emotion. It’s automatic and instantaneous. It happens everywhere, and it affects everything. And it’s happening all the time—we feel many different emotions simultaneously, even in response to one stimulus.

It refers to a variety of physiological reflexes in the brain, lungs, and heart, among other organs, that are triggered the second we put our faces in water. The deeper we dive, the more pronounced the reflexes become, eventually spurring a physical transformation that protects our organs from imploding under the immense underwater pressure and turns us into efficient deep-sea-diving animals. Freedivers can anticipate these switches and exploit them to dive deeper and longer.

Scientists discovered that 82% of subjects tested for COVID-19 in a study had a Vitamin D deficiency. That makes sense. Exposure to sunlight creates Vitamin D in the human body. Sars-CoV-2 is closely related to the bat virus RaTG13 and other viruses in bats, and they live in deep, dark caves and usually only emerge at night. The lack of Vitamin D made those subjects physiologically similar to the natural host (it's alleged COVID mutated in some unknown vector into a more virulent form) and created ideal conditions for zoonosis to occur.

So it was that the Red Tower put into production its terrible and perplexing line of unique novelty items. Among the objects and constructions now manufactured were several of an almost innocent nature. These included tiny, delicate cameos that were heavier than their size would suggest, far heavier, and lockets whose shiny outer surface flipped open to reveal a black reverberant abyss inside, a deep blackness roaring with echoes. Along the same lines was a series of lifelike replicas of internal organs and physiological structures, many of them evidencing an advanced stage of disease and all of them displeasingly warm and soft to the touch. There was a fake disembodied hand on which fingernails would grow several inches overnight, every night like clockwork. Numerous natural objects, mostly bulbous gourds, were designed to produce a long deafening scream whenever they were picked up or otherwise disturbed in their vegetable stillness. Less scrutable were such things as hardened globs of lava into whose rough igneous forms were set a pair of rheumy eyes that perpetually shifted their gaze from side to side like a relentless pendulum. And there was also a humble piece of cement, a fragment broken away from any street or sidewalk, that left a most intractable stain, greasy and green, on whatever surface it was placed. But such fairly simple items were eventually followed, and ultimately replaced, by more articulated objects and constructions. One example of this complex type of novelty item was an ornate music box that, when opened, emitted a brief gurgling or sucking sound in emulation of a dying individual's death rattle. Another product manufactured in great quantity at the Red Tower was a pocket watch in gold casing which opened to reveal a curious timepiece whose numerals were represented by tiny quivering insects while the circling "hands" were reptilian tongues, slender and pink. But these examples hardly begin to hint at the range of goods that came from the factory during its novelty phase of production. I should at least mention the exotic carpets woven with intricate abstract patterns that, when focused upon for a certain length of time, composed themselves into fleeting phantasmagoric scenes of the kind which might pass through a fever-stricken or even permanently damaged brain.

That was one of the things Mark had told her, that as far as neuroscience was concerned, free will couldn’t be real. That our brains only invented explanations, justifications for what our body was already getting ready to do. That consciousness was a fabulous illusion. We were inferring our own state of mind the same way we inferred the minds of others: thinking someone is mad when they frown, sad when they cry. We feel the physiological sensation of anger and we think, I’m mad because Tony stole my banana! But we’re just making stuff up, fairy tales to explain the deep dark woods of being alive.

Wrestling is not fake," Jinx used to say. It is merely predetermined. But in a way, wasn't everything? Margo wondered. That was one of the things Mark had told her. That as far as neuroscience was concerned, free will couldn't be real. That our brains only invented explanations, justifications for what our body was already getting ready to do. That consciousness was a fabulous illusion. We were inferring our own state of mind the same way we inferred the minds of others. Thinking someone is mad when they frown, sad when they cry. We feel the physiological sensation of anger and we think "I'm mad because Tony stole my banana." But we're just making stuff up. Fairytales to explain the deep, dark woods of being alive.

Nothing is beautiful, except man alone: all aesthetics rests upon this naïveté, which is its first truth. Let us immediately add the second: nothing is ugly except the degenerating man — and with this the realm of aesthetic judgment is circumscribed. Physiologically, everything ugly weakens and saddens man. It reminds him of decay, danger, impotence; it actually deprives him of strength. One can measure the effect of the ugly with a dynamometer. Wherever man is depressed at all, he senses the proximity of something "ugly." His feeling of power, his will to power, his courage, his pride — all fall with the ugly and rise with the beautiful. In both cases we draw an inference: the premises for it are piled up in the greatest abundance in instinct. The ugly is understood as a sign and symptom of degeneration: whatever reminds us in the least of degeneration causes in us the judgment of "ugly." Every suggestion of exhaustion, of heaviness, of age, of weariness; every kind of lack of freedom, such as cramps, such as paralysis; and above all, the smell, the color, the form of dissolution, of decomposition — even in the ultimate attenuation into a symbol — all evoke the same reaction, the value judgment, "ugly." A hatred is aroused — but whom does man hate then? There is no doubt: the decline of his type. Here he hates out of the deepest instinct of the species; in this hatred there is a shudder, caution, depth, farsightedness — it is the deepest hatred there is. It is because of this that art is deep.

Knowing how you want to use music is extremely important, as is understanding the potential psychological and physiological effects that are inherent in the music. Slow pulsed New Age music is excellent, of course, for relaxation but it’s not ideal for dancing. Yet, if dancing (and the extraordinary energy release found by dancing) is desired, slow New Age music is not ideal. What is your purpose for using a specific piece of music? Is it for meditation, guided imagery, dance, deep recollection, or for emotional release? Realizing that every type of music has the ability to resonate with us on many different levels, it is possible that any type of music can have positive results. We should be open-minded about all music and the possible transformative and therapeutic results that can occur from it.

The bathroom was last, and Valerie was very aware that Anders was standing a foot away, waiting patiently. She would have liked to ask him to leave, but she was a grown-up, he was a grown-up and old enough to know about the physiology of the female body, so she took a deep breath, knelt to open the cupboard under the sink and pulled out tampons and pads. Her period should come in the next week or so and she didn’t know how long she’d have to stay at Leigh’s house. Valerie set the feminine items on the counter, and then moved to the other end of the cupboard to gather some makeup and moisturizer from a drawer there. When she turned back with the new items, Anders was calmly packing her feminine hygiene products away in the duffel with her clothes. “Thank you,” she murmured self-consciously as she dumped the new items in.

The educator must be as one inspired by a deep worship of life, and must, through this reverence, respect, while he observes with human interest, the development of the child life. Now, child life is not an abstraction; it is the life of individual children. There exists only one real biological manifestation: the living individual; and toward single individuals, one by one observed, education must direct itself. By education must be understood the active help given to the normal expansion of the life of the child. The child is a body which grows, and a soul which de- develops,–these two forms, physiological and psychic, have one eternal font, life itself. We must neither mar nor stifle the mysterious powers which lie within these two forms of growth, but we must await from them the manifestations which we know will succeed one another.

It is significant that Gnostic philosophy found its continuation in alchemy.29 “Mater Alchimia” is one of the mothers of modern science, and modern science has given us an unparalleled knowledge of the “dark” side of matter. It has also penetrated into the secrets of physiology and evolution, and made the very roots of life itself an object of investigation. In this way the human mind has sunk deep into the sublunary world of matter, thus repeating the Gnostic myth of the Nous, who, beholding his reflection in the depths below, plunged down and was swallowed in the embrace of Physis. The climax of this development was marked in the eighteenth century by the French Revolution, in the nineteenth century by scientific materialism, and in the twentieth century by political and social “realism,” which has turned the wheel of history back a full two thousand years and seen the recrudescence of the despotism, the lack of individual rights, the cruelty, indignity, and slavery of the pre-Christian world, whose “labour problem” was solved by the “ergastulum” (convict-camp). The “transvaluation of all values” is being enacted before our eyes.

From another corner of neuroscience, we’re learning about a neurotransmitter called dopamine. Though there are more than fifty neurotransmitters (that we know of), scientists studying substance problems have given dopamine much of their attention. The brain’s reward system and pleasure centers—the areas most impacted by substance use and compulsive behaviors—have a high concentration of dopamine. Some brains have more of it than others, and some people have a capacity to enjoy a range of experiences more than others, owing to a combination of genetics and environment. The thing about dopamine is that it makes us feel really good. We tend to want more of it. It is naturally generated through ordinary, pleasurable activities like eating and sex, and it is the brain’s way of rewarding us—or nature’s way of rewarding the brain—for activities necessary to our survival, individually or as a species. It is the “mechanism by which ‘instinct’ is manifest.” Our brains arrange for dopamine levels to rise in anticipation and spike during a pleasurable activity to make sure we do it again. It helps focus our attention on all the cues that contributed to our exposure to whatever felt good (these eventually become triggers to use, as we explain later). Drugs and alcohol (and certain behaviors) turn on a gushing fire hose of dopamine in the brain, and we feel good, even euphoric. Dopamine produced by these artificial means, however, throws our pleasure and reward systems out of whack immediately. Flooding the brain repeatedly with dopamine has long-term effects and creates what’s known as tolerance—when we lose our ability to produce or absorb our own dopamine and need more and more of it artificially just to feel okay. Specifically, the brain compensates for the flood of dopamine by decreasing its own production of it or by desensitizing itself to the neurotransmitter by reducing the number of dopamine receptors, or both. The brain is just trying to keep a balance. The problem with the brain’s reduction in natural dopamine production is that when you take the substance or behavior out of the picture, there’s not enough dopamine in the brain to make you feel good. Without enough dopamine, there is no interest or pleasure. Then not only does the brain lose the pleasure associated with using, it might not be able to enjoy a sunset or a back rub, either. A lowered level of dopamine, combined with people’s longing for the rush of dopamine they got from using substances, contributes to “craving” states. Cravings are a physiological process associated with the brain’s struggle to regain its normal dopamine balance, and they can influence a decision to keep using a substance even when a person is experiencing negative consequences that matter to him and a strong desire to change. Depending on the length of time and quantities a person has been using, these craving states can be quite uncomfortable and compelling. The dopamine system can and does recover, starting as soon as we stop flooding it. But it takes time, and in the time between shutting off the artificial supply of dopamine and the brain’s rebuilding its natural resources, people tend to feel worse (before they feel better). On a deep, instinctual level, their brains are telling them that by stopping using, something is missing; something is wrong. This is a huge factor in relapse, despite good intentions and effort to change. Knowing this can help you and your loved one make it across this gap in brain reward systems.

It is clear, then, that the desire for certainty shapes our spaces of possibility, our perceptions, and our lives both personally and professionally. Usually, this need saves us. But it also sabotages us. This produces an ongoing tension between what we might think of as our conscious selves and our automatic selves. To overcome our inborn reflex that pushes us to seek certainty (sometimes at any cost), we must lead with our conscious selves and tell ourselves a new story, one that with insistent practice will change our future past and even our physiological responses. We must create internal and external ecologies that… celebrate doubt! This means the biggest obstacle to deviation and seeing differently isn’t actually our environment as such, or our” intelligence, or even—ironically—the challenge of reaching the mythical “aha” moment. Rather, it is the nature of human perception itself, and in particular the perceived need for knowing. Yet the deep paradox is that the mechanisms of perception are also the process by which we can unlock powerful new perceptions and ways to deviate. Which means that mechanism of generating a perception is the blocker… and the process of creating perception is the enabler of creativity

Becoming familiar with this pain is part of your growth. Even though you may not actually like the feelings of inner disturbance, you must be able to sit quietly inside and face them if you want to see where they come from. Once you can face your disturbances, you will realize that there is a layer of pain seated deep in the core of your heart. This pain is so uncomfortable, so challenging, and so destructive to the individual self, that your entire life is spent avoiding it. Your entire personality is built upon ways of being, thinking, acting, and believing that were developed to avoid this pain. Since avoiding the pain prohibits you from exploring the part of your being that is beyond that layer, real growth takes place when you finally decide to deal with the pain. Because the pain is at the core of the heart, it radiates out and affects everything you do. But this pain is not the physical pain that you receive as messages from your body. Physical pain is only there when something is physiologically wrong. Inner pain is always there, underneath, hidden by the layers of our thoughts and emotions. We feel it most when our hearts go into turmoil, like when the world does not meet our expectations. This is an inner, psychological pain.

The other important aspect of the “interoceptive inference” view is that the purpose of perceiving the body from within has little to do with figuring out what’s there. My brain couldn’t care less that my internal organs are objects with particular locations within my body. The only thing that’s important about my internal physiology is that it works, that it keeps me alive. The brain cares primarily about control and regulation of the body’s internal state. So perceptual predictions for the body’s interior are of a very different kind: they’re instrumental, they’re control-oriented, they’re not epistemic, they’re not to do with “finding out.” For me, this is suggestive of why our experiences of being a body have this nonobject-based phenomenological character, compared to our experiences of the outside world. More speculatively, there is the idea that all forms of perception, conscious and unconscious, derive from this fundamental imperative for physiological regulation. If we understand that the original (evolutionary) purpose of predictive perception was to control and regulate the internal state of the body, and that all the other kinds of perceptual prediction are built on that evolutionary imperative, then ultimately the way we perceive the outside world is predicated on these mechanisms that have their primary objective in the regulation of an internal bodily state. This idea is really important for me, because it gets away from pretheoretical associations of consciousness and perception with cognition, with language, and maybe also with social interaction—all “higher order” properties of cognition. Instead, it grounds consciousness and perception much more strongly in the basic mechanisms of life. It might not just be that life provides a nice analogy with consciousness in terms of hard problems and mysteries, but that there are actually deep obligate connections between mechanisms of life and the way we perceive, consciously and unconsciously, ourselves and the world.

We could call Christianity, in particular, a huge treasure house of the most elegant forms of consolation — there are so many pleasant, soothing, narcotizing things piled up in it, and for this purpose it takes so many of the most dangerous and most audacious chances. It shows such sophistication, such southern refinement, especially when it guesses what kind of emotional stimulant can overcome, at least for a while, the deep depression, leaden exhaustion, and black sorrow of the physiologically impaired. For, generally speaking, with all great religions, the main issue concerns the fight against a certain endemic exhaustion and heaviness. We can from the outset assume as probable that from time to time, in particular places on the earth, a feeling of physiological inhibition must necessarily become master over wide masses of people, but, because of a lack of knowledge about physiology, it does not enter people’s consciousness as something physiological, so they look for and attempt to find its “cause” and remedy only in psychology and morality (—this, in fact, is my most general formula for whatever is commonly called a “religion”). Such a feeling of inhibition can have a varied ancestry; for instance, it can be the result of cross-breeding between different races (or between classes — for classes also always express differences in origin and race: European “Weltschmerz” [pain at the state of the world] and nineteenth-century “pessimism” are essentially the consequence of an irrational, sudden mixing of the classes), or it can be caused by incorrect emigration — a race caught in a climate for which its powers of adaptation are not sufficient (the case of the Indians in India); or by the influence of the age and exhaustion of the race (Parisian pessimism from 1850 on); or by an incorrect diet (the alcoholism of the Middle Ages, the inanity of vegetarians, who, of course, have on their side the authority of Squire Christopher in Shakespeare); or by degeneration in the blood, malaria, syphilis and things like that (German depression after the Thirty Years’ War, which spread bad diseases in an epidemic through half of Germany and thus prepared the ground for German servility, German timidity).

These worm-eaten physiological casualties are all men of ressentiment, a whole, vibrating realm of subterranean revenge, inexhaustible and insatiable in its eruptions against the happy, and likewise in masquerades of revenge and pretexts for revenge: when will they actually achieve their ultimate, finest, most sublime triumph of revenge? Doubtless if they succeeded in shoving their own misery, in fact all misery, on to the conscience of the happy: so that the latter eventually start to be ashamed of their happiness and perhaps say to one another: ‘It’s a disgrace to be happy! There is too much misery!’ . . . But there could be no greater or more disastrous mis- understanding than for the happy, the successful, those powerful in body and soul to begin to doubt their right to happiness in this way. Away with this ‘world turned upside down’! Away with this disgraceful molly- coddling of feeling! That the sick should not make the healthy sick – and this would be that kind of mollycoddling – ought to be the chief concern on earth: – but for that, it is essential that the healthy should remain sep- arated from the sick, should even be spared the sight of the sick so that they do not confuse themselves with the sick. Or would it be their task, perhaps, to be nurses and doctors? . . . But they could not be more mis- taken and deceived about their task, – the higher ought not to abase itself as the tool of the lower, the pathos of distance ought to ensure that their tasks are kept separate for all eternity! Their right to be there, the prior- ity of the bell with a clear ring over the discordant and cracked one, is clearly a thousand times greater: they alone are guarantors of the future, they alone have a bounden duty to man’s future. What they can do, what they should do, is something the sick must never do: but so that they can do what only they should, why should they still be free to play doctor, comforter and ‘saviour’ to the sick? . . . And so we need good air! good air! At all events, well away from all madhouses and hospitals of culture! And so we need good company, our company! Or solitude, if need be! But at all events, keep away from the evil fumes of inner corruption and the secret, worm-eaten rottenness of disease! . . . So that we, my friends, can actually defend ourselves, at least for a while yet, against the two worst epidemics that could possibly have been set aside just for us – against great nausea at man! Against deep compassion for man! . . . If you have comprehended in full – and right here I demand profound apprehension, profound comprehension – why it can absolutely not be the task of the healthy to nurse the sick, to make the sick healthy, then another necessity has also been comprehended, – the necessity of doctors and nurses who are sick themselves: and now we have and hold with both hands the meaning of the ascetic priest.

When the feelings of fear and anxiety overwhelm us, it depletes our kidney both energetically and physiologically, and may result in symptoms such as lower back pain, anxiety, intense thirst, hypersensitivity, coldness, poor memory, impotence, prematurely graying hair, and frequent urination.

We human beings see with plants and animals just as poets see with words. Deep down, other life-forms are what make our own perception possible. When it comes to the realm of our own identity, we are blind, deaf, and dumb without other creatures - robbed of sensory organs important to the act of being. Without them, we are not, for all being is reciprocity and reflection. Only with others are we alive, present in the enlivened flesh of this Earth, which brought us forth and carries us. We have too quickly forgotten this fact. Now that many of us procures its food processed and packaged in the supermarket, it is no longer obvious that we nourish ourselves with life in order to be alive ourselves - physiologically, as well as emotionally.

People who don’t read it, and even some of those who write it, like to assume or pretend that the ideas used in science fiction all rise from intimate familiarity with celestial mechanics and quantum theory, and are comprehensible only to readers who work for NASA and know how to program their VCR. This fantasy, while making the writers feel superior, gives the non-readers an excuse. I just don’t understand it, they whimper, taking refuge in the deep, comfortable, anaerobic caves of technophobia. It is of no use to tell them that very few science fiction writers understand “it” either. We, too, generally find we have twenty minutes of I Love Lucy and half a wrestling match on our videocassettes when we meant to record Masterpiece Theater. Most of the scientific ideas in science fiction are totally accessible and indeed familiar to anybody who got through sixth grade, and in any case you aren’t going to be tested on them at the end of the book. The stuff isn’t disguised engineering lectures, after all. It isn’t that invention of a mathematical Satan, “story problems.” It’s stories. It’s fiction that plays with certain subjects for their inherent interest, beauty, relevance to the human condition. Even in its ungainly and inaccurate name, the “science” modifies, is in the service of, the “fiction.” For example, the main “idea” in my book The Left Hand of Darkness isn’t scientific and has nothing to do with technology. It’s a bit of physiological imagination—a body change. For the people of the invented world Gethen, individual gender doesn’t exist. They’re sexually neuter most of the time, coming into heat once a month, sometimes as a male, sometimes as a female. A Getheian can both sire and bear children. Now, whether this invention strikes one as peculiar, or perverse, or fascinating, it certainly doesn’t require a great scientific intellect to grasp it, or to follow its implications as they’re played out in the novel. Another element in the same book is the climate of the planet, which is deep in an ice age. A simple idea: It’s cold; it’s very cold; it’s always cold. Ramifications, complexities, and resonance come with the detail of imagining. The Left Hand of Darkness differs from a realistic novel only in asking the reader to accept, pro tem, certain limited and specific changes in narrative reality. Instead of being on Earth during an interglacial period among two-sexed people, (as in, say, Pride and Prejudice, or any realistic novel you like), we’re on Gethen during a period of glaciation among androgynes. It’s useful to remember that both worlds are imaginary. Science-fictional changes of parameter, though they may be both playful and decorative, are essential to the book’s nature and structure; whether they are pursued and explored chiefly for their own interest, or serve predominantly as metaphor or symbol, they’re worked out and embodied novelistically in terms of the society and the characters’ psychology, in description, action, emotion, implication, and imagery. The description in science fiction is likely to be somewhat “thicker,” to use Clifford Geertz’s term, than in realistic fiction, which calls on an assumed common experience. The description in science fiction is likely to be somewhat “thicker,” to use Clifford Geertz’s term, than in realistic fiction, which calls on an assumed common experience. All fiction offers us a world we can’t otherwise reach, whether because it’s in the past, or in far or imaginary places, or describes experiences we haven’t had, or leads us into minds different from our own. To some people this change of worlds, this unfamiliarity, is an insurmountable barrier; to others, an adventure and a pleasure.

biomedical view, for its part, increasingly recognizes the power of things like meditation and traditional talk therapy to render concrete structural changes in brain physiology that are every bit as “real” as the changes wrought by pills or electroshock therapy. A study published by researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital in 2011 found that subjects who practiced meditation for an average of just twenty-seven minutes a day over a period of eight weeks produced visible changes in brain structure. Meditation led to decreased density of the amygdala, a physical change that was correlated with subjects’ self-reported stress levels—as their amygdalae got less dense, the subjects felt less stressed. Other studies have found that Buddhist monks who are especially good at meditating show much greater activity in their frontal cortices, and much less in their amygdalae, than normal people.n Meditation and deep-breathing exercises work for similar reasons as psychiatric medications do, exerting their effects not just on some abstract concept of mind but concretely on our bodies, on the somatic correlates of our feelings. Recent research has shown that even old-fashioned talk therapy can have tangible, physical effects on the shape of our brains. Perhaps Kierkegaard was wrong to say that the man who has learned to be in anxiety has learned the most important, or the most existentially meaningful, thing—perhaps the man has only learned the right techniques for controlling his hyperactive amygdala.o

In Athens at the time of Cicero — who expresses his surprise at the fact — the men and youths were by far superior in beauty to the women: but what hard work and exertions the male sex had for centuries imposed upon itself in the service of beauty! We must not be mistaken in regard to the method employed here: the mere discipline of feelings and thoughts is little better than nil (—it is in this that the great error of German culture, which is quite illusory, lies): the body must be persuaded first. The strict maintenance of a distinguished and tasteful demeanour, the obligation of frequenting only those who do not “let themselves go,” is amply sufficient to render one distinguished and tasteful: in two or three generations everything has already taken deep root. The fate of a people and of humanity is decided according to whether they begin culture at the right place — not at the “soul” (as the fatal superstition of the priests and half-priests would have it): the right place is the body, demeanour, diet, physiology — the rest follows as the night the day .... That is why the Greeks remain the first event in culture — they knew and they did what was needful.

Your gut is deeply connected to your mind. There’s a physiological connection between your gastrointestinal system and serotonin production in your brain. Your vagus nerve runs from your gut to your head, acting as a communication device to help your system regulate.6 Your stomach and your mind are inherently connected, which is why people allude to just knowing something “deep down” or explain that when they’re upset, they’re “sick to their stomach” or had a “gut reaction” to something.

Here’s the information: To practice Wim Hof’s breathing method, start by finding a quiet place and lying flat on your back with a pillow under your head. Relax the shoulders, chest, and legs. Take a very deep breath into the pit of your stomach and let it back out just as quickly. Keep breathing this way for 30 cycles. If possible, breathe through the nose; if the nose feels obstructed, try pursed lips. Each breath should look like a wave, with the inhale inflating the stomach, then the chest. You should exhale all the air out in the same order. At the end of 30 breaths, exhale to the natural conclusion, leaving about a quarter of the air left in the lungs, then hold that breath for as long as possible. Once you’ve reached your breathhold limit, take one huge inhale and hold it another 15 seconds. Very gently, move that fresh breath of air around the chest and to the shoulders, then exhale and start the heavy breathing again. Repeat the whole pattern three or four rounds and add in some cold exposure (cold shower, ice bath, naked snow angels) a few times a week. This flip-flopping—breathing all-out, then not at all, getting really cold and then hot again—is the key to Tummo’s magic. It forces the body into high stress one minute, a state of extreme relaxation the next. Carbon dioxide levels in the blood crash, then they build back up. Tissues become oxygen deficient and then flooded again. The body becomes more adaptable and flexible and learns that all these physiological responses can come under our control. Conscious heavy breathing, McGee told me, allows us to bend so that we don’t get broken. •

Belief is a gritty, potent, primordial force. In the 1950s, a scientist named Dr. Curt Richter proved this when he gathered dozens of rats and dropped them into thirty-inch-deep glass cylinders filled with water. The first rat paddled on the surface for a short time, then swam to the bottom, where it looked for an escape hatch. It died within two minutes. Several others followed that same pattern. Some lasted as long as fifteen minutes, but they all gave up. Richter was surprised because rats are damn good swimmers, yet in his lab, they drowned without much of a fight. So, he tweaked the test. After he placed the next batch in their jars, Richter watched them, and right before it looked like they were about to give up, he and his techs scooped up the rats, toweled them off, and held them long enough for their heart and respiratory rates to normalize. Long enough for them to register, on a physiological scale, that they had been saved. They did this a few times before Richter placed a group of them back into those evil cylinders again to see how long they would last on their own. This time, the rats didn’t give up. They swam their natural asses off…for an average of sixty hours without any food or rest. One swam for eighty-one hours.

Here’s the information: To practice Wim Hof’s breathing method, start by finding a quiet place and lying flat on your back with a pillow under your head. Relax the shoulders, chest, and legs. Take a very deep breath into the pit of your stomach and let it back out just as quickly. Keep breathing this way for 30 cycles. If possible, breathe through the nose; if the nose feels obstructed, try pursed lips. Each breath should look like a wave, with the inhale inflating the stomach, then the chest. You should exhale all the air out in the same order. At the end of 30 breaths, exhale to the natural conclusion, leaving about a quarter of the air left in the lungs, then hold that breath for as long as possible. Once you’ve reached your breathhold limit, take one huge inhale and hold it another 15 seconds. Very gently, move that fresh breath of air around the chest and to the shoulders, then exhale and start the heavy breathing again. Repeat the whole pattern three or four rounds and add in some cold exposure (cold shower, ice bath, naked snow angels) a few times a week. This flip-flopping—breathing all-out, then not at all, getting really cold and then hot again—is the key to Tummo’s magic. It forces the body into high stress one minute, a state of extreme relaxation the next. Carbon dioxide levels in the blood crash, then they build back up. Tissues become oxygen deficient and then flooded again. The body becomes more adaptable and flexible and learns that all these physiological responses can come under our control.

Freedom from resentment and the understanding of the nature of resentment—who knows how very much after all I am indebted to my long illness for these two things? The problem is not exactly simple: a man must have experienced both through his strength and through his weakness, If illness and weakness are to be charged with anything at all, it is with the fact that when they prevail, the very instinct of recovery, which is the instinct of defence and of war in man, becomes decayed. He knows not how to get rid of anything, how to come to terms with anything, and how to cast anything behind him. Everything wounds him. People and things draw importunately near, all experiences strike deep, memory is a gathering wound. To be ill is a sort of resentment in itself. Against this resentment the invalid has only one great remedy—I call it Russian fatalism, that fatalism which is free from revolt, and with which the Russian soldier, to whom a campaign proves unbearable, ultimately lays himself down in the snow. To accept nothing more, to undertake nothing more, to absorb nothing more—to cease entirely from reacting.... The tremendous sagacity of this fatalism, which does not always imply merely the courage for death, but which in the most dangerous cases may actually constitute a self-preservative measure, amounts to a reduction of activity in the vital functions, the slackening down of which is like a sort of will to hibernate. A few steps farther in this direction we find the fakir, who will sleep for weeks in a tomb.... Owing to the fact that one would be used up too quickly if one reacted, one no longer reacts at all: this is the principle. And nothing on earth consumes a man more quickly than the passion of resentment. Mortification, morbid susceptibility, the inability to wreak revenge, the desire and thirst for revenge, the concoction of every sort of poison—this is surely the most injurious manner of reacting which could possibly be conceived by exhausted men. It involves a rapid wasting away of nervous energy, an abnormal increase of detrimental secretions, as, for instance, that of bile into the stomach. To the sick man resentment ought to be more strictly forbidden than anything else—it is his special danger: unfortunately, however, it is also his most natural propensity. This was fully grasped by that profound physiologist Buddha. His "religion," which it would be better to call a system of hygiene, in order to avoid confounding it with a creed so wretched as Christianity, depended for its effect upon the triumph over resentment: to make the soul free therefrom was considered the first step towards recovery. "Not through hostility is hostility put to flight; through friendship does hostility end": this stands at the beginning of Buddha's teaching—this is not a precept of morality, but of physiology. Resentment born of weakness is not more deleterious to anybody than it is to the weak man himself—conversely, in the case of that man whose nature is fundamentally a rich one, resentment is a superfluous feeling, a feeling to remain master of which is almost a proof of riches. Those of my readers who know the earnestness-with which my philosophy wages war against the feelings of revenge and rancour, even to the extent of attacking the doctrine of "free will" (my conflict with Christianity is only a particular instance of it), will understand why I wish to focus attention upon my own personal attitude and the certainty of my practical instincts precisely in this matter. In my moments of decadence I forbade myself the indulgence of the above feelings, because they were harmful; as soon as my life recovered enough riches and pride, however, I regarded them again as forbidden, but this time because they were beneath me.

Life is . . . a stream flowing from high mountain ranges which wring it from the clouds, coursing down through all the manifold ways in which the water comes down at Lodore to the sea of eternity. Adolescence is the chief rapids in this river of life which may cut a deep canyon and leave its shores a desert.

Their fasting, though physiologically undeniable, was artistically deep. Like artists, they forwent materiality for the numinous, the untapped, the lasting. If their hero Frieda could suffer locked away for two centuries, they could be hunger artists.

Symptoms of panic are fundamentally incompatible with deep breathing. Let me say that again. Symptoms of panic are fundamentally incompatible with deep breathing. Got it? What I'm trying I say is that the process of breathing deeply, focusing your mind on your breath, and taking in a larger amount of oxygen will start to break down those physiological symptoms of anxiety. Imagine that your anxiety symptoms are a raging fire. Deep breathing is like turning on the sprinklers. The fire might continue to smolder, but it's definitely not going to be raging anymore. The last time you were freaking the hell out due to anxiety and you were in the presence of someone else who told you, "Breathe. Just breathe," you probably felt like punching them in the face, right? That's because you suck at breathing. Let me teach you how to suck less.

As strange as it sounds, it is no longer possible to determine how many human genomes have been sequenced. At present the strategy of choice is whole-genome re-sequencing (Chapter 3) whereby next-generation sequence data are mapped onto a reference genome. The results have been breathtaking. The recently concluded (and aptly named) 1000 Genomes Project Consortium catalogued ~85 million SNPs, 3.6 million short insertions/deletions, and 60,000 larger structural variants in a global sampling of human genetic diversity. These data are catalysing research in expected and unexpected ways. Beyond providing a rich source of data for GWA-type studies focused on disease, scientists are also using the 1000 Genomes Project data to learn about our basic biology, something that proved surprisingly difficult when only a pair of genomes was available. For example, a recent GWAS taking advantage of the 1000 Genomes Project data identified ten genes associated with kidney development and function, genes that had previously not been linked to this critical aspect of human physiology. In 2016, Craig Venter’s team reported the sequencing of 10,545 human genomes. Beyond the impressively low cost (US$1,000–2,000 per genome) and high quality (30–40× coverage), the study was significant in hinting at the depths of human genome diversity yet to be discovered. More than 150 million genetic variants were identified in both coding and non-coding regions of the genome; each sequenced genome had on average ~8,600 novel variants. Furthermore, each new genome was found to contain 0.7 Mbp of sequence that is not contained in the reference genome. This underscores the need for methods development in the area of structure variation detection in personal genome data. Overall, however, the authors concluded that ‘the data generated by deep genome sequencing is of the quality necessary for clinical use’.

Here’s the information: To practice Wim Hof’s breathing method, start by finding a quiet place and lying flat on your back with a pillow under your head. Relax the shoulders, chest, and legs. Take a very deep breath into the pit of your stomach and let it back out just as quickly. Keep breathing this way for 30 cycles. If possible, breathe through the nose; if the nose feels obstructed, try pursed lips. Each breath should look like a wave, with the inhale inflating the stomach, then the chest. You should exhale all the air out in the same order. At the end of 30 breaths, exhale to the natural conclusion, leaving about a quarter of the air left in the lungs, then hold that breath for as long as possible. Once you’ve reached your breathhold limit, take one huge inhale and hold it another 15 seconds. Very gently, move that fresh breath of air around the chest and to the shoulders, then exhale and start the heavy breathing again. Repeat the whole pattern three or four rounds and add in some cold exposure (cold shower, ice bath, naked snow angels) a few times a week. This flip-flopping—breathing all-out, then not at all, getting really cold and then hot again—is the key to Tummo’s magic. It forces the body into high stress one minute, a state of extreme relaxation the next. Carbon dioxide levels in the blood crash, then they build back up. Tissues become oxygen deficient and then flooded again. The body becomes more adaptable and flexible and learns that all these physiological responses can come under our control. Conscious heavy breathing, McGee told me, allows us to bend so that we don’t get broken.

Most instincts are allied to specialized organs, it is true, but it is nonetheless true that perception and acquired behavior, including the higher types of operative intelligence, do, in a more supple way, manifest certain functional possibilities or "reaction norms" of the anatomical and physiological structure of the species. In a word, the general coordinations of action upon which the building up of most basic types of knowledge is conditional, presuppose not only nervous coordinations but coordinations of a much more deep-seated kind, those which are, in fact, interactions dominating the entire morphogenesis.

Yes,” Barnes said. “All the deep-diving studies show that women are superior for submerged operations. They’re physically smaller and consume less nutrients and air, they have better social skills and tolerate close quarters better, and they are physiologically tougher and have better endurance. The fact is, the Navy long ago recognized that all their submariners should be female.

Compassionate artificial intelligence and social robots frameworks work based on deep inter-brain synchrony, which couples the human brain with the robot’s physiology and behavior during the moments of social contacts.

Nothing is beautiful, except man alone: all aesthetics rests upon this naïveté, which is its first truth. Let us immediately add the second: nothing is ugly except the degenerating man — and with this the realm of aesthetic judgment is circumscribed. Physiologically, everything ugly weakens and saddens man. It reminds him of decay, danger, impotence; it actually deprives him of strength. One can measure the effect of the ugly with a dynamometer. Wherever man is depressed at all, he senses the proximity of something "ugly." His feeling of power, his will to power, his courage, his pride — all fall with the ugly and rise with the beautiful. In both cases we draw an inference: the premises for it are piled up in the greatest abundance in instinct. The ugly is understood as a sign and symptom of degeneration: whatever reminds us in the least of degeneration causes in us the judgment of "ugly." Every suggestion of exhaustion, of heaviness, of age, of weariness; every kind of lack of freedom, such as cramps, such as paralysis; and above all, the smell, the color, the form of dissolution, of decomposition — even in the ultimate attenuation into a symbol — all evoke the same reaction, the value judgment, "ugly." A hatred is aroused — but whom does man hate then? There is no doubt: the decline of his type. Here he hates out of the deepest instinct of the species; in this hatred there is a shudder, caution, depth, farsightedness — it is the deepest hatred there is. It is because of this that art is deep.

Osip Mandelstam in the context of early twentieth-century Russia, his wife Nadezhda writes, “The poet’s mode of thought is the product of all sides of his personality: the intellectual, physiological, spiritual, and emotional, a synthesis of what he perceives through his senses, his instincts and desires, and the higher aspirations of his spirit. All these can be bound together only by some dominant idea which shapes the personality. If there is no such idea, one will have, at best, a clever craftsman, a ‘translator of ready-made ideas,’ a mechanical nightingale. The unifying idea can be located at any level of the personality—in its deep reaches or on the surface.

Cutting and eating disorders serve such deep-seated psychological and physiological needs that to treat only the symptoms—by force feeding or hiding all sharp implements—will generally only set up a power struggle between parent and child, patient and therapist. If the coping strategy one has depended on for so long is suddenly taken away, a cutter or anorexic or bulimic will feel even more overwhelmed and out of control as years of suppressed emotions come roaring to the surface.

A factor that plays an important role in both self-mutilation and eating disorders is a distorted body image. Although many women suffer from poor body image brought about by oppressive public attitudes and media images, societal pressure alone does not cause the kind of deep-seated mental and physiological disturbance that leads to serious and chronic self-mutilation or eating disorders. Cutting and burning, starving and stuffing, bingeing and purging all reflect both an extreme preoccupation with the body and an equally strong sense of alienation from it. The body is viewed as the enemy—an adversary that must be punished and controlled at all costs. At the same time, the body seems dead, unreal, separate from the soul. It's reality must constantly be proven. The root causes of this are much more closer to home. Like the skin ego, body image begins to form with the earliest skin contact between parent and infant. Whether a positive or negative body image ultimately develops as the child grows into adulthood depends on, among other things, the sense of power, control, and autonomy the child feels over her physical self. Inviolate body boundaries are essential to a healthy body image. Intrusive and neglectful caregiving results in poor body image and the compulsive need to artificially create and enforce body boundaries though behaviors like cutting and eating disorders.

Where does the scene take place? Who else is present? What is their relationship to the model? What is the model doing in the scene? How is he or she behaving? By this we include asking, what is that physiology? What is their facial expression? What sort of gestures are they using? What are they saying? Where are they putting their attention: what are they looking at and listening to? Based upon this, what are they thinking, or at least what do you think they are thinking? Based upon this, what are they feeling, or at least what do you feel they are feeling? Based upon all of this, what you think is important to them? What do they believe about themselves, the world, and their place in it?

Understand: The social force is neither positive nor negative. It is simply a physiological part of our nature. Many aspects of this force that developed long ago are quite dangerous in the modern world. For instance, the deep suspicion we tend to feel towards outsiders to our group, and our need to demonize them, evolved among our earliest ancestors because of the tremendous dangers of infectious diseases and the aggressive intentions of rival hunter gatherers. But such group reactions are no longer relevant in the 21st-century. In fact, with our technological prowess, they can be the source of our most violent and genocidal behavior. In general, to the the degree that the social force tends to degrade our ability to think independently and a rationally, we can say it exerts a downward pull into more primitive ways of behaving, unsuited to modern conditions.

In order to prime your body to get to the gasp point earlier (and thus build a stronger wedge and activate the sympathetic nervous system), start with the basic breathing method for approximately 30 quick, deep breaths. Keep your eyes closed and breathe hard enough that you begin to feel light-headed. Now, instead of taking in a deep breath and holding it, let most of the air out of your lungs like you would at the end of a normal breath (by which I mean, don’t force it) and hold your breath with mostly empty lungs. Your body will quickly deplete the oxygen stores available in the lungs and have to rely solely on what is available in the bloodstream. When you get close to needing to gasp, you can extend your limits in two ways. The first is the same as with basic breathing, slowly letting out what is left of the air in your lungs. The second method will become critical later for controlling vasoconstriction. It consists of a rolling set of muscle contractions that you start at your feet and sequentially tighten until you reach up to your head. The process is as follows: Relax your body and clench the muscles in your feet. Then clench your calves, then thighs. Work the contractions up your body until every part of you is tight from the bottom to the top. Clench your stomach, your chest, fingers, biceps, and jaw. Tighten the muscles behind your ears and imagine all of this pressure that you’ve built up going out the top of your head like you were rolling out pizza dough. Whenever I do this I end up making all sorts of grunting noises and squint my face into awkward contortions. It feels like I’m going to pop. But I never have. Once you finally have to breathe, take in a half lungful of air and hold it for about 10 to 15 seconds. This is the recovery breath, and it feels awesome. Now start over from the beginning. Since your lungs start near empty, it won’t be possible to hold your breath as long as with the basic breathing technique. Aim to increase the amount that you hold your breath with each repetition. When I do it I start with a 1-minute hold, then 2 minutes, then 3. Even though everyone’s physiology is different, Hof says that at 3 minutes you’ve cracked into your sympathetic nervous system.

An organism is a living thing, an entity that functions as a physiological unit, the component parts of which operate with a high degree of cooperation and a low degree of conflict to help ensure well-being and sustain the life of the overall entity and to reproduce itself so that its kind can continue. The mission of an organism is simple: It is to acquire nutrients and energy so that growth can occur and life can be sustained to at least the point of reproduction.