Nerve Center Quotes

I moaned then, tilting my head back to give him better access. His hands clamped on my waist, then moved—one going to cup my rear, the other sliding between us. This—this moment, when it was him and me and nothing between our bodies … His tongue scraped the roof of my mouth as he dragged a finger down the center of me, and I gasped, my back arching. “Feyre,” he said against my lips, my name like a prayer more devout than any Ianthe had offered up to the Cauldron on that dark solstice morning. His tongue swept my mouth again, in time to the finger that he slipped inside of me. My hips undulated, demanding more, craving the fullness of him, and his growl reverberated in my chest as he added another finger. I moved on him. Lightning lashed through my veins, and my focus narrowed to his fingers, his mouth, his body on mine. His palm pushed against the bundle of nerves at the apex of my thighs, and I groaned his name as I shattered

We’re here to take over the world-- that’s why we’re starting here in Hamilton, Indiana-- the nerve center of the entire planet.

Chakras are not the nerve centers of the body but subtler than that. Chakras are mostly behave like quantum quasi particles - they control the collective behavior of the body, mind and soul at various levels.

When her blue-black eyes lifted to his, everything disappeared. Their bodies dematerialized. The room they were in ceased to exist. Time became nothing. And in the void, in the wormhold, Wrath's chest opened up sure as if he'd been shot, a piercing pain licking over his nerve endings. He knew then that there are many ways for a heart to break. Sometimes it's from the crowding of life, the compression of responsibility and birthright and burden that just squeezed you until you couldn't breathe anymore. Even though your lungs were working just fine. And sometimes it's from the casual cruelty of a fate that took you far from where you had thought you would end up. And sometimes it's age in the face of youth. Or sickness in the face of health. But sometimes it's just because you're looking into the eyes of your lover, and your gratitude for having them in your life overflows...because you showed them what was on the inside and they didn't run scared or turn away: they accepted you and loved you and held you in the midst of your passion or your fear...or your combination of both. Wrath closed his eyes and focused on the soft pulls at his wrist. God, they were just like the beat of his heart. Which made sense. Because she was the center of his chest. And the center of his world.

Perception requires imagination because the data people encounter in their lives are never complete and always equivocal. For example, most people consider that the greatest evidence of an event one can obtain is to see it with their own eyes, and in a court of law little is held in more esteem than eyewitness testimony. Yet if you asked to display for a court a video of the same quality as the unprocessed data catptured on the retina of a human eye, the judge might wonder what you were tryig to put over. For one thing, the view will have a blind spot where the optic nerve attaches to the retina. Moreover, the only part of our field of vision with good resolution is a narrow area of about 1 degree of visual angle around the retina’s center, an area the width of our thumb as it looks when held at arm’s length. Outside that region, resolution drops off sharply. To compensate, we constantly move our eyes to bring the sharper region to bear on different portions of the scene we wish to observe. And so the pattern of raw data sent to the brain is a shaky, badly pixilated picture with a hole in it. Fortunately the brain processes the data, combining input from both eyes, filling in gaps on the assumption that the visual properties of neighboring locations are similar and interpolating. The result - at least until age, injury, disease, or an excess of mai tais takes its toll - is a happy human being suffering from the compelling illusion that his or her vision is sharp and clear. We also use our imagination and take shortcuts to fill gaps in patterns of nonvisual data. As with visual input, we draw conclusions and make judgments based on uncertain and incomplete information, and we conclude, when we are done analyzing the patterns, that out “picture” is clear and accurate. But is it?

How many times, I wondered, would I have to deal with the betrayal of this mass of nerves and blood vessels and muscle and skin?

He began to explain to me that vegetation, and especially mature trees, are able to transmit harmony when one rests one’s nerve centers against a tree trunk. For hours he discoursed on the physical, energetic, and spiritual properties of plants.

we assert that in all mammals the center of primal, constructive consciousness and activity lies in the middle front of the abdomen, beneath the navel, in the great nerve center called the solar plexus. How do we know? We feel it, as we feel hunger or love or hate.

I culled poetry from odors, sounds, faces, and ordinary events occurring around me. Breezes bulged me as if I were cloth; sounds nicked their marks on my nerves; objects made impressions on my sight as if in clay. There, in the soft language, life centered and ground itself in me and I was flowing with the grain of the universe. Language placed my life experiences in a new context, freeing me for the moment to become with air as air, with clouds as clouds, from which new associations arose to engage me in present life in a more purposeful way.

He is a monk. On his card it says INNER PEACE CENTER. I will go there in February for a tea ceremony. Does he actually know more than I do about inner peace? If he met my relatives, would he have a nervous breakdown? What about his relatives? Do they drive him nuts? The truth is everybody gets on everybody's nerves.

For all the talk of education, modern societies neglect to examine by far the most influential means by which their populations are educated. Whatever happens in our classrooms, the more potent and ongoing kind of education takes place on the airwaves and on our screens. Cocooned in classrooms for only our first eighteen years or so, we effectively spend the rest of our lives under the tutelage of news entities which wield infinitely greater influence over us than any academic institution can. Once our formal education has finished, the news is the teacher. It is the single most significant force setting the tone of public life and shaping our impressions of the community beyond our own walls. It is the prime creator of political and social reality. As revolutionaries well know, if you want to change the mentality of a country, you don't head to the art gallery, the department of education or the homes of famous novelists; you drive the tanks straight to the nerve center of the body politic, the news HQ.

Imagine a brain floating in a tank with millions and millions of electrodes attached to specific nerve centers. Now imagine these electrodes being selectively stimulated by a computer to cause the brain to believe that it was walking down Hollywood Boulevard chomping on a hamburger and checking out the chicks.

Now, if there was a technological foul-up, or if the tapes got jumbled, the brain would suddenly see Jesus Christ pass by down Hollywood Boulevard on his way to Golgotha, pursued by a crowd of angry people, being whipped along by seven Roman Centurions.

The brain would say, "Now hold on there!" And suddenly the entire image would go "pop" and disappear.

I've always had this funny feeling about reality. It just seems very feeble to me sometimes. It doesn't seem to have the substantiality that it's suppose to have.

In ordinary breathing we absorb and extract a normal supply of prana, but by controlled and regulated breathing (generally known as Yogi breathing) we are enabled to extract a greater supply, which is stored away in the brain and nerve centers, to be used when necessary.

In ordinary breathing we absorb and extract a normal supply of prana, but by controlled and regulated breathing (generally known as Yogi breathing) we are enabled to extract a greater supply, which is stored away in the brain and nerve centers, to be used when necessary. We

The park was the heart of the city. He had come to the city – and with a knowing in his blood – he had established himself at the heart of it. Everyday he looked at the heart of it; every day; he was so stunned and awed and overwhelmed that just to think about it made him sweat. There was something, in the center of the park, that he had discovered. It was a mystery although it was in a glass case for everybody to see and there was a typewritten card over it telling all about it. But there was something the card couldn't say and what it couldn't say was inside him. He could not show the mystery to just anybody; but he had to show it to somebody. Who he had to show it to was a special person. This person could not be from the city but he didn't know why. He knew he would know him when he saw him and that he would have to see him soon or the nerve inside him would grow so big that he would be forced to steal a car or rob a bank or jump out of a dark alley onto a woman.

For as Molly looked at him, she felt an immediate … she didn’t know what. Despite her love of the language arts, she also possessed an analytic mind, and that mind straightaway tried to seek out the why. And it couldn’t unearth the reason apart from his smile. Or, rather, how he smiled at her—warm and full-armed, like the embrace from a long-absent friend, without the slightest trace of fakeness or concealed motive. His was the most open face she’d ever seen in her life. Concomitant with these sensations, all delivered within a split second, was a thought, seemingly originating not in her mind but from the center of her torso and radiating out to the ends of each nerve, inexplicable in its suddenness and surety. A thought that children and very young people might have, but never middle-aged adults, especially one with a divorce behind her and the conviction that she already knew the world and what it was able to offer. But there it was, undeniably, the thought: I’m on a great adventure.

..., its unity, unfolding through all the panels, would have given the illusion of an endless whole, of water without a horizon or bank; nerves tense from work would be relaxed there...and to him who lived in the room it would have offered the refuge of a peaceable meditation in the center of a flowering aquarium.

So if you cannot concentrate one of the following is the cause: 1. "Deficiency of the motor centers." 2. "An impulsive and emotional mind." 3. "An untrained mind." The last fault can soon be removed by systematic practice. It is easiest to correct. The impulsive and emotional state of mind can best be corrected by restraining anger, passion and excitement, hatred, strong impulses, intense emotions, fretfulness, etc. It is impossible to concentrate when you are in any of these excited states. These can be naturally decreased by avoiding such food and drinks as have nerve weakening or stimulating influences, or a tendency to stir up the passions, the impulses and the emotions; it is a very good practice to watch and associate with those persons that are steady, calm, controlled and conservative.

The major impairments of ADD — the distractibility, the hyperactivity and the poor impulse control — reflect, each in its particular way, a lack of self-regulation. Self-regulation implies that someone can direct attention where she chooses, can control impulses and can be consciously mindful and in charge of what her body is doing. Like time literacy, self-regulation is also a distinct task of development in human life, achieved gradually from young childhood through adolescence and adulthood. We are born with no capacity whatsoever to self-regulate emotion or action. For self-regulation to be possible, specific brain centers have to develop and grow connections with other important nerve centers, and chemical pathways need to be established. Attention deficit disorder is a prime illustration of how the adult continues to struggle with the unsolved problems of childhood. She is held back precisely where the child did not develop, hampered in those areas where the infant or toddler got stuck during the course of development.

she was a thin shell of glass and steel from the raw nerve at the center of herself.

I let the lights and the faces come at me. I let the nerves tap out signals to my brain center. I let go. The pink, green, and yellow neons flashed on and off with a definite rhythm, each with its own particular tempo. Together they screamed out a syncopated color rhapsody. The faces; the cafés; the speed of light, steel cars. Swift; quick. Red; green. Flash; off. Stop; go.

Among the studies conducted by the Center, four assessed smoked marijuana's ability to alleviate neuropathic pain, a notoriously difficult to treat type of nerve pain associated with cancer, diabetes, HIV/AIDS, spinal cord injury and many other debilitating conditions. Each of the trials found that cannabis consistently reduced patients' pain levels to a degree that was as good or better than currently available medications.

Something happens to you in an old-growth forest. At first you are curious to see the tremendous girth and height of the trees, and you sally forth, eager. You start to saunter, then amble, slower and slower, first like a fox and then an armadillo and then a tortoise, until you are trudging at the pace of an earthworm, and then even slower, the pace of a sassafras leaf's turning. The blood begins to languish in your veins, until you think it has turned to sap. You hanker to touch the trees and embrace them and lean your face against their bark, and you do. You smell them. You look up at leaves so high their shapes are beyond focus, into far branches with circumferences as thick as most trees. Every limb of your body becomes weighted, and you have to prop yourself up. There's this strange current of energy running skyward, like a thousand tiny bells tied to your capillaries, ringing with your heartbeat. You sit and lean against one trunk-it's like leaning against a house or a mountain. The trunk is your spine, the nerve centers reaching into other worlds, below ground and above. You stand and press your body into the ancestral and enduring, arms wide, and your fingers do not touch. You wonder how big the unseen gap. If you stay in one place too long, you know you'll root.

Environmental influences also affect dopamine. From animal studies, we know that social stimulation is necessary for the growth of the nerve endings that release dopamine and for the growth of receptors that dopamine needs to bind to in order to do its work. In four-month-old monkeys, major alterations of dopamine and other neurotransmitter systems were found after only six days of separation from their mothers. “In these experiments,” writes Steven Dubovsky, Professor of Psychiatry and Medicine at the University of Colorado, “loss of an important attachment appears to lead to less of an important neurotransmitter in the brain. Once these circuits stop functioning normally, it becomes more and more difficult to activate the mind.” A neuroscientific study published in 1998 showed that adult rats whose mothers had given them more licking, grooming and other physical-emotional contact during infancy had more efficient brain circuitry for reducing anxiety, as well as more receptors on nerve cells for the brain’s own natural tranquilizing chemicals. In other words, early interactions with the mother shaped the adult rat’s neurophysiological capacity to respond to stress. In another study, newborn animals reared in isolation had reduced dopamine activity in their prefrontal cortex — but not in other areas of the brain. That is, emotional stress particularly affects the chemistry of the prefrontal cortex, the center for selective attention, motivation and self-regulation. Given the relative complexity of human emotional interactions, the influence of the infant-parent relationship on human neurochemistry is bound to be even stronger. In the human infant, the growth of dopamine-rich nerve terminals and the development of dopamine receptors is stimulated by chemicals released in the brain during the experience of joy, the ecstatic joy that comes from the perfectly attuned mother-child mutual gaze interaction. Happy interactions between mother and infant generate motivation and arousal by activating cells in the midbrain that release endorphins, thereby inducing in the infant a joyful, exhilarated state. They also trigger the release of dopamine. Both endorphins and dopamine promote the development of new connections in the prefrontal cortex. Dopamine released from the midbrain also triggers the growth of nerve cells and blood vessels in the right prefrontal cortex and promotes the growth of dopamine receptors. A relative scarcity of such receptors and blood supply is thought to be one of the major physiological dimensions of ADD. The letters ADD may equally well stand for Attunement Deficit Disorder.

The data indicate that just before the eyes make their next jump (saccade), your nonconscious attention scans the next chunk, selects a meaty word for your center of gaze to light on (a word like murder, not a word like indeed), and guides the eye movement accordingly.

Seabiscuit took to stomping and bellowing for food day and night. His moans rang off the barn walls and worked on everyone's nerves, but no one gave in. "The whole ranch became centered on the job," Howard said. "Even the pigs quit grunting at him and the chickens kept out of his way.

You heard me. Let someone else send you to your blaze of glory. You're a speck, man. You're nothing. You're not worth the bullet or the mark on my soul for taking you out." You trying to piss me off again, Patrick?" He removed Campbell Rawson from his shoulder and held him aloft. I tilted my wrist so the cylinder fell into my palm, shrugged. "You're a joke, Gerry. I'm just calling it like I see it." That so?" Absolutely." I met his hard eyes with my own. "And you'll be replaced, just like everything else, in maybe a week, tops. Some other dumb, sick shit will come along and kill some people and he'll be all over the papers, and all over Hard Copy and you'll be yesterday's news. Your fifteen minutes are up, Gerry. And they've passed without impact." They'll remember this," Gerry said. "Believe me." Gerry clamped back on the trigger. When he met my finger, he looked at me and then clamped down so hard that my finger broke. I depressed the trigger on the one-shot and nothing happened. Gerry shrieked louder, and the razor came out of my flesh, then swung back immediately, and I clenched my eyes shut and depressed the trigger frantically three times. And Gerry's hand exploded. And so did mine. The razor hit the ice by my knee as I dropped the one shot and fire roared up the electrical tape and gasoline on Gerry's arm and caught the wisps of Danielle's hair. Gerry threw his head back and opened his mouth wide and bellowed in ecstasy. I grabbed the razor, could barely feel it because the nerves in my hand seemed to have stopped working. I slashed into the electric tape at the end of the shotgun barrel, and Danielle dropped away toward the ice and rolled her head into the frozen sand. My broken finger came back out of the shotgun and Gerry swung the barrels toward my head. The twin shotgun bores arced through the darkness like eyes without mercy or soul, and I raised my head to meet them, and Gerry's wail filled my ears as the fire licked at his neck. Good-bye, I thought. Everyone. It's been nice. Oscar's first two shots entered the back of Gerry's head and exited through the center of his forehead and a third punched into his back. The shotgun jerked upward in Gerry's flaming arm and then the shots came from the front, several at once, and Gerry spun like a marionette and pitched toward the ground. The shotgun boomed twice and punched holes through the ice in front of him as he fell. He landed on his knees and, for a moment, I wasn't sure if he was dead or not. His rusty hair was afire and his head lolled to the left as one eye disappeared in flames but the other shimmered at me through waves of heat, and an amused derision shone in the pupil. Patrick, the eye said through the gathering smoke, you still know nothing. Oscar rose up on the other side of Gerry's corpse, Campbell Rawson clutched tight to his massive chest as it rose and fell with great heaving breaths. The sight of it-something so soft and gentle in the arms of something so thick and mountaineous-made me laugh. Oscar came out of the darkness toward me, stepped around Gerry's burning body, and I felt the waves of heat rise toward me as the circle of gasoline around Gerry caught fire. Burn, I thought. Burn. God help me, but burn. Just after Oscar stepped over the outer edge of the circle, it erupted in yellow flame, and I found myself laughing harder as he looked at it, not remotely impressed. I felt cool lips smack against my ear, and by the time I looked her way, Danielle was already past me, rushing to take her child from Oscar. His huge shadow loomed over me as he approached, and I looked up at him and he held the look for a long moment. How you doing, Patrick?" he said and smiled broadly. And, behind him, Gerry burned on the ice. And everything was so goddamned funny for some reason, even though I knew it wasn't. I knew it wasn't. I did. But I was still laughing when they put me in the ambulance.

All men at heart, she thought—at bottom should I say?—are really queer. The way ballplayers pat one another on the fannies, running onto the field or coming out of the huddle. The Greek quarterback and the nervous center. Queer as clams. Though of course none would have the decency or honesty or nerve to admit it.

Deep belly breathing is one of the most commonly recommended on-the-spot practices to calm your nervous system and, thus, anxiety. The reason for this is that when you breathe deeply, pushing your belly out all the way like a balloon, your vagus nerve is activated in such a way that it calms your amygdala, the emotional response center deep within your brain.

was just what she needed, and even after the show’s ridiculously self-centered participants began to grate on her nerves she couldn’t summon up the energy to find a more congenial activity. She was too tired to read, too tired to tackle the mountain of laundry on her closet floor, and too tired to head downstairs and see if Michelle and Sunita felt like going

We are working toward unity, and mutual guarantee. We are rebuilding Banareng as a foundation of peace; constitution of harmony; vision of peace; abode of prosperity. At the end, Banareng will become habitation of peace. And Banareng people will be the abiding consciousness of peace, which will be the result of continuous realizations of power tempered with poise and confidence. At the end, Banareng will become a great nerve center and sends their radiance to all communities and people around them Power is man's innate control over his thoughts and feelings. This ower is implanted in us from the beginning, what we have to do is to reawaken it. And once that power has been reawakened, it can be increased through exalted ideas and shared vision, and shared values TruthUnity

Can I hold your hand?” he asked. I put mine in his. “The universe is seeming really huge right now,” he told me. “I need something to hold on to.” “I’m here.” His thumb rubbed the center of my palm. All my nerves concentrated there, alive to every movement of his skin on mine. “I am not sure I’m a good person,” he said after a while. “I’m not sure I am, either,” I said. “I’m winging it.” “Yeah.

But Keltner also found the compassionate instinct in the more instinctive and evolutionarily ancient parts of our nervous system: in the mammalian region known as the periaqueductal gray, which is located in the center of the brain, and causes mothers to nurture their young; and in an even older, deeper, and more fundamental part of the nervous system known as the vagus nerve, which connects the brain stem to the neck and torso, and is the largest and one of our most important bundles of nerves. It’s long been known that the vagus nerve is connected to digestion, sex, and breathing—to the mechanics of being alive. But in several replicated studies, Keltner discovered another of its purposes: When we witness suffering, our vagus nerve makes us care. If you see a photo of a man wincing in pain, or a child weeping for her dying grandmother, your vagus nerve will fire.

When jungles of neurons fire in unison to support a new thought, an additional chemical (a protein) is created within the nerve cell and makes its way to the cell’s center, or nucleus, where it lands in the DNA. The protein then switches on several genes. Since the job of the genes is to make proteins that maintain both the structure and function of the body, the nerve cell then quickly makes a new protein to create new branches between nerve cells.

The Babel fish,” said The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy quietly, “is small, yellow and leechlike, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy received not from its own carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centers of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish. “Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a fina and clinching proof of the nonexistence of God. “The argument goes something like this: ‘I refuse to prove that I exist,’ says God, for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.’ “‘But,’ says Man, ‘the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn’t it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don’t. QED.’ “‘Oh dear,’ says God, ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.

Few people put more thought into the tiny details than the team behind the ever-expanding Roscioli empire, one of the nerve centers of the cucina romana moderna, found just a few steps from the Campo de' Fiori. Sitting at a small table inside the Ristorante Salumeria Roscioli, a hybrid space that functions as a deli counter in the front and a full-service restaurant in the back, general manager Valerio Capriotti tells me with conviction that Italian food is flourishing- advancing in ways it hasn't in years, if ever, thanks in large part to the efforts of small producers who put their lives into raising rare breeds of pig, growing heirloom varietals of wheat, and milking pampered dairy cows and sheep to create the types of ingredients that drive restaurants like Roscioli forward. "Modern Italian cuisine isn't about technique," he tells me, "it's about ingredients. We know more now than we ever did about how things are made and what they do when we cook and eat them.

There is one fierceness of Jews that I like a whole lot", the Texan told her one night, during a discussion of the Virginal intercessions and saintly go-betweens, of the baroque hierarchy of priests and monsignors and bishops and archbishops and cardinals and pope that lay between God and the Catholic soul, which Sofia found pointless and mystifying. "Most people, no, they don't like to go straight to the top, not really. They need to sidle up to a proposition, come at the thing a little off-center. They feel better with a chain of command," D.W. said, an old Marine squadron commander whose years in the Jesuit order had done nothing to diminish his tendency to think in military terms. "Got a problem, you ask the sergeant. Sergeant might go to a captain he knows. Most folks would have a hell of a time getting up the nerve to bang on the general's office door, even if he was the nicest fella in the world. Catholicism makes allowances for that in human beings." ..."But the children of Abraham? They look God straight in the face. Praise, Argue! Dicker, complain. Takes a lot of guts to deal with the Almighty like that.

The human brain is the most complex entity in the universe. It has between fifty and one hundred billion nerve cells, or neurons, each branched to form thousands of possible connections with other nerve cells. It has been estimated that laid end to end, the nerve cables of a single human brain would extend into a line several hundred thousand miles long. The total number of connections, or synapses, is in the trillions. The parallel and simultaneous activity of innumerable brain circuits, and networks of circuits, produces millions of firing patterns each and every second of our lives. The brain has well been described as “a supersystcm of systems.” Even though fully half of the roughly hundred thousand genes in the human organism are dedicated to the central nervous system, the genetic code simply cannot carry enough information to predetermine the infinite number of potential brain circuits. For this reason alone, biological heredity could not by itself account for the densely intertwined psychology and neurophysiology of attention deficit disorder. Experience in the world determines the fine wiring of the brain. As the neurologist and neuroscientist Antonio Damasio puts it, “Much of each brain’s circuitry, at any given moment in adult life, is individual and unique, truly reflective of that particular organism’s history and circumstances.” This is no less true of children and infants. Not even in the brains of genetically identical twins will the same patterns be found in the shape of nerve cells or the numbers and configuration of their synapses with other neurons. The microcircuitry of the brain is formatted by influences during the first few years of life, a period when the human brain undergoes astonishingly rapid growth. Five-sixths of the branching of nerve cells in the brain occurs after birth. At times in the first year of life, new synapses are being established at a rate of three billion a second. In large part, each infant’s individual experiences in the early years determine which brain structures will develop and how well, and which nerve centers will be connected with which other nerve centers, and establish the networks controlling behavior. The intricately programmed interactions between heredity and environment that make for the development of the human brain are determined by a “fantastic, almost surrealistically complex choreography,” in the apt phrase of Dr. J. S. Grotstein of the department of psychiatry at UCLA. Attention deficit disorder results from the miswiring of brain circuits, in susceptible infants, during this crucial period of growth.

The Brits call this sort of thing Functional Neurological Symptoms, or FNS, the psychiatrists call it conversion disorder, and almost everyone else just calls it hysteria. There are three generally acknowledged, albeit uncodified, strategies for dealing with it. The Irish strategy is the most emphatic, and is epitomized by Matt O’Keefe, with whom I rounded a few years back on a stint in Ireland. “What are you going to do?” I asked him about a young woman with pseudoseizures. “What am I going to do?” he said. “I’ll tell you what I’m goin’ to do. I’m going to get her, and her family, and her husband, and the children, and even the feckin’ dog in a room, and tell ’em that they’re wasting my feckin’ time. I want ’em all to hear it so that there is enough feckin’ shame and guilt there that it’ll keep her the feck away from me. It might not cure her, but so what? As long as I get rid of them.” This approach has its adherents even on these shores. It is an approach that Elliott aspires to, as he often tells me, but can never quite marshal the umbrage, the nerve, or a sufficiently convincing accent, to pull off. The English strategy is less caustic, and can best be summarized by a popular slogan of World War II vintage currently enjoying a revival: “Keep Calm and Carry On.” It is dry, not overly explanatory, not psychological, and does not blame the patient: “Yes, you have something,” it says. “This is what it is [insert technical term here], but we will not be expending our time or a psychiatrist’s time on it. You will have to deal with it.” Predictably, the American strategy holds no one accountable, involves a brain-centered euphemistic explanation coupled with some touchy-feely stuff, and ends with a recommendation for a therapeutic program that, very often, the patient will ignore. In its abdication of responsibility, motivated by the fear of a lawsuit, it closely mirrors the beginning of the end of a doomed relationship: “It’s not you, it’s … no wait, it’s not me, either. It just is what it is.” Not surprisingly, estimates of recurrence of symptoms range from a half to two-thirds of all cases, making this one of the most common conditions that a neurologist will face, again and again.

Swift came to the table and bowed politely. “My lady,” he said to Lillian, “what a pleasure it is to see you again. May I offer my renewed congratulations on your marriage to Lord Westcliff, and…” He hesitated, for although Lillian was obviously pregnant, it would be impolite to refer to her condition. “…you are looking quite well,” he finished. “I’m the size of a barn,” Lillian said flatly, puncturing his attempt at diplomacy. Swift’s mouth firmed as if he was fighting to suppress a grin. “Not at all,” he said mildly, and glanced at Annabelle and Evie. They all waited for Lillian to make the introductions. Lillian complied grudgingly. “This is Mr. Swift,” she muttered, waving her hand in his direction. “Mrs. Simon Hunt and Lady St. Vincent.” Swift bent deftly over Annabelle’s hand. He would have done the same for Evie except she was holding the baby. Isabelle’s grunts and whimpers were escalating and would soon become a full-out wail unless something was done about it. “That is my daughter Isabelle,” Annabelle said apologetically. “She’s teething.” That should get rid of him quickly, Daisy thought. Men were terrified of crying babies. “Ah.” Swift reached into his coat and rummaged through a rattling collection of articles. What on earth did he have in there? She watched as he pulled out his pen-knife, a bit of fishing line and a clean white handkerchief. “Mr. Swift, what are you doing?” Evie asked with a quizzical smile. “Improvising something.” He spooned some crushed ice into the center of the handkerchief, gathered the fabric tightly around it, and tied it off with fishing line. After replacing the knife in his pocket, he reached for the baby without one trace of self-consciusness. Wide-eyed, Evie surrendered the infant. The four women watched in astonishment as Swift took Isabelle against his shoulder with practiced ease. He gave the baby the ice-filled handkerchief, which she proceeded to gnaw madly even as she continued to cry. Seeming oblivious to the fascinated stares of everyone in the room, Swift wandered to the window and murmured softly to the baby. It appeared he was telling her a story of some kind. After a minute or two the child quieted. When Swift returned to the table Isabelle was half-drowsing and sighing, her mouth clamped firmly on the makeshift ice pouch. “Oh, Mr. Swift,” Annabelle said gratefully, taking the baby back in her arms, “how clever of you! Thank you.” “What were you saying to her?” Lillian demanded. He glanced at her and replied blandly, “I thought I would distract her long enough for the ice to numb her gums. So I gave her a detailed explanation of the Buttonwood agreement of 1792.” Daisy spoke to him for the first time. “What was that?” Swift glanced at her then, his face smooth and polite, and for a second Daisy half-believed that she had dreamed the events of that morning. But her skin and nerves still retained the sensation of him, the hard imprint of his body. “The Buttonwood agreement led to the formation of the New York Stock and Exchange Board,” Swift said. “I thought I was quite informative, but it seemed Miss Isabelle lost interest when I started on the fee-structuring compromise.” “I see,” Daisy said. “You bored the poor baby to sleep.” “You should hear my account of the imbalance of market forces leading to the crash of ’37,” Swift said. “I’ve been told it’s better than laudanum.

Complex systems are more spontaneous, more disorderly, more alive than that. At the same time, however, their peculiar dynamism is also a far cry from the weirdly unpredictable gyrations known as chaos. In the past two decades, chaos theory has shaken science to its foundations with the realization that very simple dynamical rules can give rise to extraordinarily intricate behavior; witness the endlessly detailed beauty of fractals, or the foaming turbulence of a river. And yet chaos by itself doesn't explain the structure, the coherence, the self-organizing cohesiveness of complex systems. Instead, all these complex systems have somehow acquired the ability to bring order and chaos into a special kind of balance. This balance point—often called the edge of chaos—is were the components of a system never quite lock into place, and yet never quite dissolve into turbulence, either. The edge of chaos is where life has enough stability to sustain itself and enough creativity to deserve the name of life. The edge of chaos is where new ideas and innovative genotypes are forever nibbling away at the edges of the status quo, and where even the most entrenched old guard will eventually be overthrown. The edge of chaos is where centuries of slavery and segregation suddenly give way to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s; where seventy years of Soviet communism suddenly give way to political turmoil and ferment; where eons of evolutionary stability suddenly give way to wholesale species transformation. The edge of chaos is the constantly shifting battle zone between stagnation and anarchy, the one place where a complex system can be spontaneous, adaptive, and alive. Complexity, adaptation, upheavals at the edge of chaos—these common themes are so striking that a growing number of scientists are convinced that there is more here than just a series of nice analogies. The movement's nerve center is a think tank known as the Santa Fe Institute, which was founded in the mid-1980s and which was originally housed in a rented convent in the midst of

He ducked his head, and his whiskers scraped against her inner thighs as he settled between them. His broad shoulders pushed her knees apart, and he worked both hands beneath her hips and lifted, tilting her to the most favorable angle to receive his kiss. For a moment, the intimacy was too much, too uncertain. But when she heard his deep moan of satisfaction, her hesitancy disappeared. His tongue glided up the seam of her sex. Oh. Oh, God. She gripped the pillows on either side of her hips, sinking her fingers into the tasseled brocade. The fireworks overhead were nothing to the sensations exploding through her with every pass of his tongue. He parted her with his thumbs, opening her to his explorations. He centered his attention on the bundle of nerves at the apex of her cleft and worked it with his nimble, flickering tongue. Penny's head rolled back, and she closed her eyes, surrendering to his erotic talent and the delicious, mounting pleasure. She twisted her hand in his hair and arched against him, seeking more contact, more joy. Climbing higher and higher, until she was dizzied and wary of looking down.

Dex squinted at the palace. “Their queen is a white-haired lady, right? I think I saw some pictures of her when I was researching about the cameras.” “Yeah, Queen Elizabeth,” Sophie said. “I don’t know much about her. Just that she likes little dogs and wears a lot of hats. And I think that flag means she’s actually here right now.” She pointed to the red, gold, and blue standard flying from a pole in the center of the palace, instead of the British Union Jack. “Same with the fact that there are four of those guys instead of two.” She nudged her chin toward the four members of the queen’s guard, standing stolid and motionless in what appeared to be narrow blue houses. The soldier’s faces looked blank, but Sophie had no doubt their eyes were seeing everything, and it made her hope the obscurer was keeping them hidden—especially when she noticed their guns. “So wait—the dorky guys in the red coats with the big furry hats are important?” Dex asked, covering his mouth to block a giggle. “And you had the nerve to complain about our Foxfire uniforms!” “Hey—I never had to wear anything like that. That’s strictly a British soldier thing!” “Soldier?” Dex repeated, frowning at the guards. “So… is that uniform supposed to be intimidating? Because I feel like if a dude marched up to an army of ogres wearing that, he’d mostly get laughed at.” “Goblins definitely wouldn’t be able to suppress their snickers,” Sandor noted, his lips twitching with a smile.

Brummer was unique. His world was known as a haven for those who still refused to embrace technology. Like most Dragolians, he was similar to the original template of a human being. For ages, Dragolians had refused the implementation of advanced genes within their population. Whereas most humans had infrared, telescopic, and fractional vision that permitted them to observe and scrutinize four or five different things at once at various depths, Dragolians did not. While most humans could survive with their gills under oceans or with their skin sealant secretion in the vacuum of space and hostilities of planet atmospheres, Dragolians couldn’t. They lacked double genitals, temperature control genes and other basic comforts that were standards on any individual. They still possessed the original brain schematic, refusing to compartmentalize areas to specific functions with enhanced nerve terminals. It had been proven long ago that a triple brain split into small sectors connected with each other was the most functional intellectual state. One part was mainly used for the conscious state, one for the virtual state, and the other as the control center of the body’s physiology while also doubling as the backup copy of the essential traits of the other two parts. This third part of the brain also was the input/output terminal that interacted between the two other minds and the cyber world. Even so, this was all likely to change in a few years as research was on the verge of eliminating the need for intestines making room in the abdominal cavity for a smaller second brain.

The Book I am thinking about would not be religious in the usual sense, but it would have to discuss many things with which religions have been concerned—the universe and man’s place in it, the mysterious center of experience which we call “I myself,” the problems of life and love, pain and death, and the whole question of whether existence has meaning in any sense of the word. For there is a growing apprehension that existence is a rat-race in a trap: living organisms, including people, are merely tubes which put things in at one end and let them out at the other, which both keeps them doing it and in the long run wears them out. So to keep the farce going, the tubes find ways of making new tubes, which also put things in at one end and let them out at the other. At the input end they even develop ganglia of nerves called brains, with eyes and ears, so that they can more easily scrounge around for things to swallow. As and when they get enough to eat, they use up their surplus energy by wiggling in complicated patterns, making all sorts of noises by blowing air in and out of the input hole, and gathering together in groups to fight with other groups. In time, the tubes grow such an abundance of attached appliances that they are hardly recognizable as mere tubes, and they manage to do this in a staggering variety of forms. There is a vague rule not to eat tubes of your own form, but in general there is serious competition as to who is going to be the top type of tube. All this seems marvelously futile, and yet, when you begin to think about it, it begins to be more marvelous than futile. Indeed, it seems extremely odd.

FASCIA: THE TIES THAT BIND Imagine a collagen-rich, stretchy slipcover for every organ, nerve, bone, and muscle in our bodies, and you start to get a sense of how fundamental connective tissue—specifically fascia—is to the entire body. Suspending our organs inside our torso, connecting our head to our back to our feet, fascia protects, supports, and literally binds our body together. Fascia can be gossamer-thin and translucent, like a spider web, or thick and tough like rope. Ounce for ounce, fascia is stronger than steel. Other specialized types of connective tissue include bones, ligaments, tendons, cartilage, and fat (adipose) tissue. Even blood, strictly speaking, is considered connective tissue. But to me, the most exciting aspect of the latest research on connective tissue relates to fascia. Fascia is the stretchy tissue that forms an uninterrupted, three-dimensional web within our body. Our body has sheets, bags, and strings of fascia of varying thickness and size, some superficial and some deep. Fascia envelops both individual microscopic muscle filaments as well as whole muscle groups, such as the trapezius, pectorals, and quadriceps. For example, one of the largest fascia configurations in the body is known as the “trousers,” a massive sheet of fascia that crosses over the knees and ends near the waist, giving the appearance of short leggings. This fascia trouser is thicker around the knees and thinner as it continues up the legs and over the hips, thickening again near the waist. When the fascia trouser is healthy, supple, and resilient, it acts like a girdle, giving the body a firm shape. Fascia helps muscles transmit their force so we can convert that force into movement. The system of fascia is bound by tensile links (think of the structure of a geodesic dome, like the one at Epcot in Disney World), with space and fluid between the links that can help absorb external pressure and more evenly distribute force across the fascial structure. This allows our bodies to withstand tremendous force instead of absorbing it in one local area, which would lead to increased pain and injury. Fascia is also a second nervous system in and of itself, with almost 10 times the number of sensory nerve endings as muscle. Helene Langevin, director of the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine at Harvard Medical School, has done landmark studies on the function and importance of connective tissue and its impact on pain. One of the leading researchers in the field today, Langevin describes fascia as a “living matrix” whose health is essential to our well-being.

To give you a sense of the sheer volume of unprocessed information that comes up the spinal cord into the thalamus, let’s consider just one aspect: vision, since many of our memories are encoded this way. There are roughly 130 million cells in the eye’s retina, called cones and rods; they process and record 100 million bits of information from the landscape at any time. This vast amount of data is then collected and sent down the optic nerve, which transports 9 million bits of information per second, and on to the thalamus. From there, the information reaches the occipital lobe, at the very back of the brain. This visual cortex, in turn, begins the arduous process of analyzing this mountain of data. The visual cortex consists of several patches at the back of the brain, each of which is designed for a specific task. They are labeled V1 to V8. Remarkably, the area called V1 is like a screen; it actually creates a pattern on the back of your brain very similar in shape and form to the original image. This image bears a striking resemblance to the original, except that the very center of your eye, the fovea, occupies a much larger area in V1 (since the fovea has the highest concentration of neurons). The image cast on V1 is therefore not a perfect replica of the landscape but is distorted, with the central region of the image taking up most of the space. Besides V1, other areas of the occipital lobe process different aspects of the image, including: •  Stereo vision. These neurons compare the images coming in from each eye. This is done in area V2. •  Distance. These neurons calculate the distance to an object, using shadows and other information from both eyes. This is done in area V3. •  Colors are processed in area V4. •  Motion. Different circuits can pick out different classes of motion, including straight-line, spiral, and expanding motion. This is done in area V5. More than thirty different neural circuits involved with vision have been identified, but there are probably many more. From the occipital lobe, the information is sent to the prefrontal cortex, where you finally “see” the image and form your short-term memory. The information is then sent to the hippocampus, which processes it and stores it for up to twenty-four hours. The memory is then chopped up and scattered among the various cortices. The point here is that vision, which we think happens effortlessly, requires billions of neurons firing in sequence, transmitting millions of bits of information per second. And remember that we have signals from five sense organs, plus emotions associated with each image. All this information is processed by the hippocampus to create a simple memory of an image. At present, no machine can match the sophistication of this process, so replicating it presents an enormous challenge for scientists who want to create an artificial hippocampus for the human brain.

Meanwhile, scientists are studying certain drugs that may erase traumatic memories that continue to haunt and disturb us. In 2009, Dutch scientists, led by Dr. Merel Kindt, announced that they had found new uses for an old drug called propranolol, which could act like a “miracle” drug to ease the pain associated with traumatic memories. The drug did not induce amnesia that begins at a specific point in time, but it did make the pain more manageable—and in just three days, the study claimed. The discovery caused a flurry of headlines, in light of the thousands of victims who suffer from PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). Everyone from war veterans to victims of sexual abuse and horrific accidents could apparently find relief from their symptoms. But it also seemed to fly in the face of brain research, which shows that long-term memories are encoded not electrically, but at the level of protein molecules. Recent experiments, however, suggest that recalling memories requires both the retrieval and then the reassembly of the memory, so that the protein structure might actually be rearranged in the process. In other words, recalling a memory actually changes it. This may be the reason why the drug works: propranolol is known to interfere with adrenaline absorption, a key in creating the long-lasting, vivid memories that often result from traumatic events. “Propranolol sits on that nerve cell and blocks it. So adrenaline can be present, but it can’t do its job,” says Dr. James McGaugh of the University of California at Irvine. In other words, without adrenaline, the memory fades. Controlled tests done on individuals with traumatic memories showed very promising results. But the drug hit a brick wall when it came to the ethics of erasing memory. Some ethicists did not dispute its effectiveness, but they frowned on the very idea of a forgetfulness drug, since memories are there for a purpose: to teach us the lessons of life. Even unpleasant memories, they said, serve some larger purpose. The drug got a thumbs-down from the President’s Council on Bioethics. Its report concluded that “dulling our memory of terrible things [would] make us too comfortable with the world, unmoved by suffering, wrongdoing, or cruelty.… Can we become numb to life’s sharpest sorrows without also becoming numb to its greatest joys?” Dr. David Magus of Stanford University’s Center for Biomedical Ethics says, “Our breakups, our relationships, as painful as they are, we learn from some of those painful experiences. They make us better people.” Others disagree. Dr. Roger Pitman of Harvard University says that if a doctor encounters an accident victim who is in intense pain, “should we deprive them of morphine because we might be taking away the full emotional experience? Who would ever argue with that? Why should psychiatry be different? I think that somehow behind this argument lurks the notion that mental disorders are not the same as physical disorders.

Kashmir Shaivism also developed an integrated and effective method of spiritual practice that includes intense devotion, the study of correct knowledge, and a special type of yoga unknown to other systems of practical philosophy. These three approaches are meant to be carefully integrated to produce a strong and vibrant practice. Yoga is the main path that leads to Self-realization, theoretical knowledge saves yogins from getting caught at some blissful but intermediary level of spiritual progress, and devotion provides them the strength and focus with which to digest correctly the powerful results of yoga and so avoid their misuse. This is a practice for both the mind and the heart. The teachings offers offer a fresh and powerful understanding of life that develops the faculties of the mind, while the devotional aspects of Kashmir Shaivism expand the faculties of a student’s heart. Combined together, both faculties help students reach the highest goal to which Shaiva yoga can dead them. The yoga system of Kashmir Shaivism is known as the Trika system. It includes many methods of yoga, which have been classified into three groups known as sambhava, sakta, and anava. Sambhava yoga consists of practices in direct realization of the truth, without making any effort at meditation, contemplation, or the learning of texts. The emphasis is on correct being, free from all aspects of becoming. This yoga transcends the use of mental activity. Sakta yoga consists of many types of practices in contemplation on the true nature of one’s real Self. Anava yoga includes various forms of contemplative meditation on objects other than one’s real Self, such as the mind, the life-force along with its five functions (the five pranas), the physical form along with its nerve-centers, the sounds of breathing, and different aspects of time and space. Trika yoga teaches a form of spiritual practice that is specific to Kashmir Shaivism. This system, along with its rituals, has been discussed in detail in Abhinavagupta’s voluminous Tantraloka, which is one of the world’s great treatises on philosophy and theology. Unlike many other forms of yoga, the Trika system is free from all types of repression of the mind, suppression of the emotions and instincts, and starvation of the senses. It eliminates all self-torturing practices, austere vows or penance, and forcible renunciation. Shaiva practitioners need not leave their homes, or roam as begging monks. Indifference (vairagya) to worldly life is not a precondition to for practicing Trika yoga. Sensual pleasures automatically become dull in comparison with the indescribable experience of Self-bliss. This is a transforming experience that naturally gives rise to a powerful form of spontaneous indifference to worldly pleasures. Finally, regardless of caste, creed, and sex, Trika yoga is open to all people, who through the Lord’s grace, have developed a yearning to realize the truth, and who become devoted to the Divine. — B. N. Pandit, Specific Principles of Kashmir Shaivism (3rd ed., 2008), p. xxiii-xxiv

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones taught that the gospel emphasis on grace could be lost in several ways. A church might simply become heterodox — losing its grip on the orthodox tenets of theology that under-gird the gospel, such as the triune nature of God, the deity of Christ, the wrath of God, and so on. It may turn its back on the very belief in justification by faith alone and the need for conversion and so move toward a view that being a Christian is simply a matter of church membership or of living a life based on Christ’s example. This cuts the nerve of gospel renewal and revival.2 But it is possible to subscribe to every orthodox doctrine and nevertheless fail to communicate the gospel to people’s hearts in a way that brings about repentance, joy, and spiritual growth. One way this happens is through dead orthodoxy, in which such pride grows in our doctrinal correctness that sound teaching and right church practice become a kind of works-righteousness. Carefulness in doctrine and life is, of course, critical, but when it is accompanied in a church by self-righteousness, mockery, disdain of everyone else, and a contentious, combative attitude, it shows that, while the doctrine of justification may be believed, a strong spirit of legalism reigns nonetheless. The doctrine has failed to touch hearts.3 Lloyd-Jones also speaks of “defective orthodoxy” and “spiritual inertia.”4 Some churches hold to orthodox doctrines but with imbalances and a lack of proper emphasis. Many ministries spend more time defending the faith than propagating it. Or they may give an inordinate amount of energy and attention to matters such as prophecy or spiritual gifts or creation and evolution. A church may become enamored with the mechanics of ministry and church organization. There are innumerable reasons that critical doctrines of grace and justification and conversion, though strongly held, are kept “on the shelf.” They are not preached and communicated in such a way that connects to people’s lives. People see the doctrines — yet they do not see them.

Activation of this fear center triggers the cascade of stress hormones and nerve impulses that drive up blood pressure, heart rate, and oxygen intake—preparing the body for fight or flight.

Once a utopia in the eyes of many, San Francisco became the nerve center of a new dystopia.

Mr. Rutledge, please don’t take this as an affront, but you don’t have the qualities I seek in a husband.” “How do you know? I have some excellent qualities you haven’t even seen yet.” Poppy gave a shaky laugh. “I think you could talk a fish out of its skin,” she told him. “But still, I don’t—” She stopped with a gasp as he ducked his head and stole an off-center kiss from her lips, as if her laughter were something he could taste. She felt the imprint of his mouth even after he drew back, her excited nerves reluctant to release the sensation. “Spend an afternoon with me,” he urged. “Tomorrow.” “No, Mr. Rutledge. I’m—” “Harry.” “Harry, I can’t—” “An hour?” he whispered. He bent to her again, and she turned her face away in confusion. He sought her neck instead, his lips brushing the vulnerable flesh with half-open kisses. No one had ever done such a thing, even Michael. Who would have thought it would feel so delicious? Dazed, Poppy let her head fall back, her body accepting the steady support of his arms. He searched her throat with devastating care, touching his tongue to her pulse. His hand cradled her nape, the pad of his thumb tracing the satiny edge of her hairline. As her balance faltered, she reached around his neck. He was so gentle, teasing color to the surface of her skin, chasing little shivers with his mouth. Blindly she followed, wanting the taste of him. As she angled her face toward his, her lips grazed the close-shaven surface of his jaw. His breath caught. “You should never cry over a man,” he said against her cheek. His voice was soft, dark, like smoked honey. “No one is worth your tears.” Before she could answer, he caught her mouth in a full, open kiss.

Compare Holland with Russia; you see only marshy and sterile islands in the former, which rise from the center of the ocean: a small republic which is only 48 miles length by 40 wide. But this small body is the very nerve-center of the region: immense people live in it, and these industrious people are both powerful and rich. They shook the yoke of the Spanish domination, which was then the most formidable monarchy of Europe. The trade of this republic extends to the ends of the world; and new trade appears almost immediately; it can maintain in times of war an army fifty thousand men, without counting a many and well maintained fleet.

Kissing her all the while, he stroked toward her center, tangling for a few brief seconds in the nest of short curls he found there before slipping a single finger between the tender folds of her femininity. Wet heat dampened his hand, a reaction he seemed to expect and enjoy, the fragrant moisture turning her slick against his touch. She gasped, the sound muffled against his lips as he tilted her hips a little more to slide deeper, using his fingers, and even the heel of his hand, in ways that drove every rational thought from her brain. Tiny breaths panted from her mouth as he caressed her in the most shockingly delicious manner, her initial embarrassment fading against a compulsive need for more. Breaking their kiss, he pressed her face against his neck. "Let go," he murmured into her ear. "Let yourself fly." And after another pair of rapturous, stroking caresses, she did- her entire body shuddering in a great, cataclysmic burst of pleasure that set every nerve and sinew afire. He held her as she shook, her cries muffled against the starched linen of his neck cloth.

He couldn't resist her. He didn't want to. In torturously slow degrees, he lowered his head toward hers. Every sense, every nerve in his body was focused on the next few moments. He knew he would want to savor the memory of this, the first time he had kissed Lily. He pressed his lips to hers gently at first, not knowing what to expect. But even such a light touch sent a swift rush of sensation through him. It was unlike anything he had ever known. Delicate and passionate at once. The silken texture of her lips, her pliant softness, the little moan that caught in her throat. It stunned him. Stopped his breath and jolted his heart. Intent upon exploring this new experience, he shifted the pressure of his mouth, brushing his lips across hers before he flicked his tongue out to touch just the center of her bottom lip. Her lips parted on a sudden exhale. Her warm breath mingled with his. Something more than desire coursed through his blood. He lifted his hands to grasp her shoulders, and with a groan, he crushed her mouth with his. A voice in his head demanded he slow down, relish the sensations. But he was too desperate to know more. He tilted his head, craving the taste of her as though it could save his soul. He swept his tongue past her teeth, sliding it into the recesses of her mouth. She tasted of innocence and shadows, and he was ravenous for her. It shocked him- that desperate, obsessive need to consume her, to take all that she was into himself. To make what was hers, his. Her breath, her taste, her softness, and her need.

FOREWORD When Commander Perry opened up to the occidental world that shut-tight little island Kingdom, Japan, he did more than merely contact for our manufacturers a people who bought "Nifty Clothes," with two pair of pants. He gave us an insight into a world that was thoroughly organized and civilized long before Columbus discovered West where the East should have been. The Japanese learned much from the so-called civilized world, -but they taught us something we could never have learned from intercourse with any other nation. They gave our governmental forces of law and order a weapon that aided materially in the suppression of disorderly elements throughout our great cities. It took time, of course, to break down the prejudices that our early enforcement officers, in common with our then wild and wooly population, had against anything that was foreign. But when the great police forces of our largest metropolises realized that guns and billies alone would not be proof against big, burly lawbreakers, and that to instil respect in the hearts of "bruisers" they needed something other than armaments—pistols that could not be drawn fast enough,—they then discovered the wonder of Jiu-jitsu. They found that the wily little brown man depended on brain instead of brawn and that he had developed a Science and an Art that utilized another's strength to his own undoing. Strangely enough it was the layman who first appreciated the potential value of Jiu-jitsu. For many years before the Police Forces of our cities put a study of this Science into the training of every rookie policeman, there were physical culture experts in America who advocated the use of it by everyone who had any respect for physical prowess but who found the spirit more willing than the flesh. They showed that it needed no possession of unusual strength to overcome an opponent that depended entirely on his bulk and ferocious appearance to cow the meeker ones of the earth into submission. The Japanese, by the very fact of their small stature, are compelled to place more emphasis on strategy than on force. Thus they have thoroughly developed Jiu-jitsu and there is barely a saffron-hued tot in Japan that doesn't know something about the "Gentle-Art" as it is known. President Masaryk of Czechoslovakia, one of the world's greatest educators, who, together with millions of his enlightened and progressive countrymen, is a firm believer in "a strong mind in a strong body," sought to teach every schoolboy in his country some knowledge of the wisest of all physical sciences. While it does not itself develop and build muscle, it is an invaluable aid to the sensible use of the body. It is a form of wrestling that combines the cunning of the fox with the lithe grace and agility of the panther. It sharpens the brain and quickens the nerve centers. The man or woman who has self-respect must not sit by and permit our people to become a nation of spectators watching athletic specialists perform, while we become obese and ungainly applauders. Jiu-jitsu gives the man, woman and child, denied by nature a great frame, the opportunity to walk without fear, to resist successfully the bullies of their particular world, and the self-confidence which only a "well-armed" athlete can have. By its use, differences in weight, height and reach are practically wiped out, so that he who knows, may smilingly face superior odds and conquer.

ST-9 This point is a bilateral point that is found on both sides of the neck and is located about 1.5 inches to the outside of the edge of the Adam’s apple of the throat. The fact that the point lays directly over the carotid artery allows strikes to have an immediate reaction to the flow of blood to the brain and head in general. It has a cryptic name in Chinese, Ren Ying,9 which means “Man’s Prognosis” and provides no clues to its location or use from a martial standpoint. Its proximity to the carotid artery allows this point to be one of the weakest points on the human body and regardless of the size and muscular strength of an opponent it is extremely sensitive. The superior thyroid artery, the anterior jugular vein, the internal jugular vein, the carotid artery, the cutaneous cervical nerve, the cervical branch of the facial nerve, the sympathetic trunk, and the ascending branch of the hypoglossal and vagus nerves are all present. Just the structurally aspects of all these sensitive and vital nerves, arteries and veins should place it high on the list of potential targets. I personally consider it as one of the most important Vital Points because of this alone. Additionally, ST-9 is an intersection point for the Stomach Meridian, Gall Bladder Meridian and the Yin Heel Vessel. Strikes to this point can kill due to the overall structural weakness of the area. Strikes should be aimed toward the center of the spine on a 90-degree angle. A variety of empty hand weapons can be employed in striking this point. Forearms, edge of hand strikes, punches, kicks, and elbow strikes are all effective. The same defensive tactics outlined under the SI-16 should be employed against attacks to this extremely vital point. CV-22 This is one of the two most important acupuncture points to the martial arts that is concerned with the hostile actions of life-or-death combatives. It sets in the horseshoe notch located at the extreme upper part of the chest structure and at the centerline of the front of the neck. Resting under it is the trachea, or commonly known as the “windpipe,” and a hard and vicious strike to this point can cause the surrounding tissue to swell, which can shut off the body’s ability to pull oxygen into the lungs. A hard strike to this point can be deadly. Attacking this point should only be done in the most extreme life-or-death situations. Energetically, the Conception Vessel and the Yin Linking Vessel intersect at this point. The implications of that, from a Traditional Chinese Medicine perspective, is included in this book. Additionally, the structure of the suprasternal notch is an excellent “touch point” for situations when sight is reduced and you find yourself at extremely close range with your opponent. This allows for utilization of this point in a self-defense situation that is not as extreme as full force strikes, as only a finger or two are inserted and rolled to the backside of the notch causing pain for the opponent.

Dixie shook her head impatiently. “Not a chance, not a ghost of a chance! Our early-warning facilities are geared to detect the approach of missiles hailing from outside our borders, certainly not from Grizzly Gulch, Illinois! Try to imagine the resultant confusion, the bewildering questions—was the missile one of ours—was this an accident—what, where, how, why, whom? And all of this, mind you, with the very nerve center of the country obliterated!. Why, my God, Kirby, it would have been a scene out of a Three Stooges movie—we wouldn’t have known if our asses were punched or bored!

To him the area looked more like a prosperous international corporation rather than the nerve center of a city hospital. There was even a glass-fronted conference room with a large mahogany library table and captain’s chairs that looked to Brian more like it belonged in a bank.

ST-9 This point is a bilateral point that is found on both sides of the neck and is located about 1.5 inches to the outside of the edge of the Adam’s apple of the throat. The fact that the point lays directly over the carotid artery allows strikes to have an immediate reaction to the flow of blood to the brain and head in general. It has a cryptic name in Chinese, Ren Ying,9 which means “Man’s Prognosis” and provides no clues to its location or use from a martial standpoint. Its proximity to the carotid artery allows this point to be one of the weakest points on the human body and regardless of the size and muscular strength of an opponent it is extremely sensitive. The superior thyroid artery, the anterior jugular vein, the internal jugular vein, the carotid artery, the cutaneous cervical nerve, the cervical branch of the facial nerve, the sympathetic trunk, and the ascending branch of the hypoglossal and vagus nerves are all present. Just the structurally aspects of all these sensitive and vital nerves, arteries and veins should place it high on the list of potential targets. I personally consider it as one of the most important Vital Points because of this alone. Additionally, ST-9 is an intersection point for the Stomach Meridian, Gall Bladder Meridian and the Yin Heel Vessel. Strikes to this point can kill due to the overall structural weakness of the area. Strikes should be aimed toward the center of the spine on a 90-degree angle. A variety of empty hand weapons can be employed in striking this point. Forearms, edge of hand strikes, punches, kicks, and elbow strikes are all effective. The same defensive tactics outlined under the SI-16 should be employed against attacks to this extremely vital point.

ST-12 Chinese Point name: Que Pen;7 English translation: “Empty Basin;” Special Attributes: It is an intersection point of the Stomach Meridian and the Yin Heel Vessel. It is bilateral and is one of the 36 Vital Points listed in the Bubishi; Location: At the midpoint of the collarbone, which is about four inches lateral from the centerline of the body; and bilateral. Western Anatomy: The transverse cervical artery, intermediate supraclavicular nerve and the supraclavicular portion of the brachial plexus are present; Comments: This point is an excellent target when your opponent is at close range. By gripping the collarbone you can dig your fingers down behind the natural curve of the bone and towards the centerline of the body. It is most active when your opponent has their arms raised, given the structural weakness of the body at this location, will drop the majority of attackers. A sharp thrust down into this point will cause your opponents knees to bend. ST-9 Chinese Point name: Ren Ying;8 English translation: “Man’s Prognosis;” Special Attributes: ST-9 is an intersection point for the Stomach Meridian, Gall Bladder Meridian and the Yin Heel Vessel. It is a bilateral point that sets over the carotid artery. It is one of the 36 Vital Points listed in the Bubishi; Location: About 1.5 inches to the outside of the Adam’s apple on the throat; Western Anatomy: The superior thyroid artery, the anterior jugular vein, the internal jugular vein, the carotid artery, the cutaneous cervical nerve, the cervical branch of the facial nerve, the sympathetic trunk, and the ascending branch of the hypoglossal and vagus nerves are all present; Comments: This is one of the weakest points on the human body and regardless of the size and muscular strength of an opponent it is extremely sensitive. Strikes to this point can kill due to the structural weakness of the area. Strikes should be aimed toward the center of the spine on a 90-degree angle. A variety of empty hand weapons can be employed in striking this point. Forearms, edge of hand strikes, punches, kicks, and elbow strikes are all effective. BL-1 Chinese Point name: Jing Ming;9 English translation: “Bright Eyes;” Special Attributes: It is an intersection point of the Small Intestine Meridian, Bladder Meridian, Stomach Meridian, Yin Heel Vessel and the Yang Heel Vessel. It is also bilateral; Location: About .25 of an inch from the inner corner of the eye; Western Anatomy: The angular artery and vein and branches of the oculomotor and ophthalmic nerve are present; Comments: Strike this point slightly upward and towards the centerline of the head. This point is fairly difficult to strike in a combative situation due to the location. Forceful strikes to the eye socket area can activate this point, as well as traumatize the eye and possible breaking the bone structure in the general area.

Governing Vessel Point Descriptions GV-1 Chinese Point name: Chang Qiang;4 English translation: “Long Strong;” Special Attributes: the intersection point for the Kidney Meridian, Gall Bladder Meridian, and Governing Vessel. It is also listed as one of the 36 Vital Points of the Bubishi; Location: Just below the coccyx bone on the end of the spine; Western Anatomy: branches of the inferior hemorrhoid artery and vein are present. Also, the posterior ramus of the coccygeal nerve, and the hemorrhoid nerve are found; Comments: Remember that strikes to intersection points have greater energetic effect on the body. Strikes to this point should be upward at a 45-degree angle. This places the force of the blow as being aimed at the energy center of the body. From a martial perspective, this point is generally difficult to hit, but situations when you move to the back of your opponent open the possibility of knee strikes aimed in the coccyx bone. These types of strikes are extremely effective in dropping an opponent. Hard knee strikes to this region not only shock the energy core of the body, but also shock the entire nervous system with the connection of the coccyx bone to the spine.

LI-14 Chinese Point name: Bi Nao;14 English translation: “Upper Arm;” Special Attributes: It is the intersection point of the Large Intestine Meridian, the Stomach Meridian, and the Yang Linking Vessel. This point is bilateral; Location: On the upper arm near the insertion of the deltoid muscle; Western Anatomy: Branches of the posterior circumflex humeral artery and vein, the deep brachial artery and vein, the posterior brachial cutaneous nerve, and the radial nerve are present; Comments: Strikes to this point can cause damage to the shoulder joint. They are best if the wrist of the attacked arm is acquired. Energetically, it is a good target due to the three intersecting meridians. TW-13 Chinese Point name: Nao Hui;15 English translation: “Upper Arm Convergence;” Special Attributes: It is an intersection point of the Triple Warmer Meridian and the Yang Linking Vessel. This point is bilateral; Location: On the posterior border of the deltoid muscle about three inches from the tip of the shoulder; Western Anatomy: The medial collateral artery and vein, the posterior brachial cutaneous nerve, and the radial nerve are present; Comments: Strike in same manner as LI-14. SI-10 Chinese Point name: Nao Shu;16 English translation: “Upper Arm Point;” Special Attributes: This is an intersection point for the Small Intestine Meridian, the Yang Linking Vessel and the Yang Heel Vessel. This point is bilateral and extremely difficult to strike in a combative situation. This point is bilateral; Location: In the depression of the inferior of the scapula when the arm is raised; Western Anatomy: The posterior circumflex humeral artery and vein, the suprascapular artery and vein, the posterior cutaneous nerve of the arm, the axillary nerve, and the suprascapular nerve are present; Comments: A strike, if possible, should be directed towards the center of the body on a 90-degree angle. This is an important point because of the major energetic intersection, but is extremely difficult to strike.

CV-17 Chinese Point name: Shan Zhong;20 English translation: “Chest Center;” Special Attributes: Intersection Point of the Spleen, Small Intestine, Triple Warmer and the Conception Vessel. Additionally, it is the alarm point for the Pericardium Meridian; Location: On the centerline of the body on the same level as the nipples; Western Anatomy: Branches of the internal mammary artery and vein are found with the anterior cutaneous branch of the fourth intercostal nerve; Comments: This is a major point of interest to combative martial artists. A blow to CV-17 can affect the electrical pattern of the heart resulting in arrhythmia. Western science refers to this as Commotio cordis and it is documented with strikes to the chest as in a baseball striking the chest of a child. While interviewing a former infantry point man who served in Vietnam confirmation was added to the lethality of a strike to CV-17. According to this individual, a life-long karate practitioner, while he was walking point one night he actually bumped into an enemy soldier who was traveling down the same trail from the opposite direction. The American struck the Viet Cong with a strong punch to CV-17 killing him instantly. His small frame combined with the larger stature of the American allowed for a perfect 45-degree strike (strikes to CV-17 should be downward at a 45-degree angle). These strikes will generally be open palm or hammer fist type strikes given the height of an average sized opponent and the location of the point. Additional energetic disruption can be added by rotating your striking hand outward on contact.

CV-22 Chinese Point name: Tian Tu;25 English translation: “Celestial Chimney;” Special Attributes: this is an Intersection Point of the Yin Linking Vessel and the Conception Vessel. It is listed as a Vital Point in the Bubishi; Location: On the centerline of the body at the center of the suprasternal notch. That structure is the commonly referred to the “horseshoe notch” at the base of the throat; Western Anatomy: the jugular arch and a branch of the inferior thyroid artery are superficially represented. The trachea, or windpipe, is found deeper and the posterior aspect of the sternum, the innominate vein and aortic arch are also present; Comments: This point is of particular importance the martial artist as it is the intersection point of the Yin Linking Vessel and the Conception Vessel. The interrelationship between these two vessels will be covered in detail later in the book. Additionally, the structure of the suprasternal notch is an excellent “touch point” for situations when sight is reduced and you find yourself at extremely close range with your opponent. CV-23 Chinese Point name: Lian Quan;26 English translation: “Ridge Spring;” Special Attributes: Some Traditional Chinese Medicine textbooks state that this location is an intersection point for the Yin Linking Vessel and the Conception Vessel; Location: On the centerline of the throat just above the Adam’s apple; Western Anatomy: the anterior jugular vein, a branch of cutaneous cervical nerve, the hypoglossal nerve, and branch of the glossopharyngeal nerve are present; Comments: Strikes to this point should directly inward, or slightly upward, to bust the structure of the Adam’s apple and disrupt the energy flow to the head. Generally, any strike to the throat area will activate a number of sensitive acupuncture points and attacks the structural weakness of this part of the human body. CV-24 Chinese Point name: Cheng Jiang;27 English translation: “Sauce Receptacle;” Special Attributes: It is the intersection point of the Stomach and Large Intestine Meridians. Some sources state that the Governing and Conception Vessels intersect at this location. It is one of the 36 Vital Points listed in the Bubishi; Location: On the centerline of the head at the slight depression on the upper aspect of the chin; Western Anatomy: Branches of the inferior labial artery and vein are found with a branch of the facial nerve. Comments: The translation of the Chinese term for the point, “Sauce Receptacle,” is illustrative in that if one were to drip sauce from their mouth while eating it would accumulate at this point of their chin. This point is another interesting point for the martial artist. Strikes to this point are generally most effective when aimed downward at a 45-degree angle. A hammerfist strike to this point, with enough force, will not only cause an instant knockout, but can dislocate the jaw.

When you fill your tanden with power and with attention, what physiologic effects can be found?” The first effect he discusses suggests that, when the tanden is filled with energy and pressure, blood previously stored in the liver and the spleen is pushed into the capillaries. The physiological effect is such that one could say that the tanden acts like a secondary heart. Fresh blood, rich in red blood cells, is sent up to the cerebral center through the cervical plexus. As a result, the respiratory center is influenced in such a way that respiration is tranquilized. The second phenomena in this circulation is the neutralizing regulation of adrenaline by the cholinergic nerves of the parasympathetic nervous system when they are stimulated by pressure on the tanden. In short, a new world, completely different from the one in which the body used to breathe with chest and abdomen, comes into being through the pressure applied to the area in and around the tanden. It is indeed a “revolution of the living body.

The implants were removed, via the nasal cavity, from the nerve centers of the brain - some of her nerves were damaged in the process. This nerve damage resulted in a near-death experience following which, when she

The Circumcision Decision If you have a baby boy, chances are you’ll be asked whether or not you want to circumcise him in the hospital. Most of us have inherited a vague sense that circumcision is somehow cleaner or healthier. But these are myths. We’ll share a few facts to jumpstart your research. - The significance of the infant’s pain is often overlooked in circumcision. Hospitals use painful Gomco clamps that sever nerve endings, and most docs make the cut without anesthesia. - Many infants go into shock as a result of the pain they experience in circumcision, and the breastfeeding relationship may be compromised as a result. - The circumcised penis is no cleaner than an intact penis, and requires far more care during the healing process. - “...[P]rofessional societies representing Australian, Canadian, and American pediatricians do not recommend routine circumcision of male newborns.” ~American Medical Association What if you plan to circumcise for reasons of Jewish faith? In Jewish circumcisions, - Boys are circumcised eight days after birth, when natural levels of Vitamin K are the highest. - Anesthetic is traditionally given (in the form of a tiny amount of wine and/or numbing agents). - Mohels (traditional circumcisers) don’t use painful skin clamps. Overheard… After reading up on circumcision, I knew I didn’t want to go through with it. The first reason was medical: the AAP doesn’t recommend routine circumcision. My second reason was emotional. It went against my mama bear instinct to protect my baby. Convincing dad was more difficult. He wanted to have his son like him. (I asked him if he and his dad compared their penises; the answer was no.) My husband watched videos of the procedure being done but had to stop them before they were over. He’d thought it was a simple snip of the ‘extra’ skin, but it’s not. The foreskin is actually fused to the head of the penis, like a fingernail to a nail bed. We took our baby home from the hospital the way he was born, and we haven’t regretted it. ~Lani, mom to Bentley Want to learn more? Check out the Circumcision Resource Center online, a helpful resource filled with medical and psychological literature for those questioning the practice.

In a Vedic text known as the Samarangana Sutradhara, there is mention of manned rockets and their means of propulsion. In the Samara Sudradhara we find mention of the use of biological weapons, each of which produced a specific effect. The Samhara debilitated its victims by attacking the motor center of the brain, Moha caused blockage of nerve impulses, resulting in complete paralysis. In the Chinese Feng Shen Veni we find similar descriptions of germ warfare, and again reference is made to specific weapons causing specific results. Indian philosopher Aulukya discussed the miniature solar system within the atom, molecular construction and transformation, and and Theory of Relativity two thousand eight hundred years before Einstein.

impressions barrage, Lee could no longer grasp the meaning of Vivian's voice as it went on and on explaining things like "crystal cells," "selenoid cells," "grey matter pyramidal cells," powered somehow by atomic fission, "nerve loops" and "synthesis gates" which were not to be confused with "analysis gates" while they looked exactly the same…. Apart from this at least one half of his mental and physical energy had to be expanded in suppressing nausea and bracing himself against the gyrations which still jerked his feet from under him and made friction disks of his shoulders as his body swayed from side to side. All of a sudden he felt that he was being derailed. There was an opening in the plastics wall of the cylinder; a curved metal shield like the blade of a bulldozer jumped into his path, caught him, slowed down his momentum and delivered him safely at a door marked "Apperception-Center 24." It opened and within its frame there stood an angel neatly dressed in the uniform of a registered nurse. "There," said the angel, "at last. How did you like your little Odyssey through The Brain, Dr. Lee?" Lee pushed a hand through the mane of his hair; it felt moist and much tangled up. "Thanks," he said. "It was quite an experience. I enjoyed it; Ulysses, too, probably enjoyed his trip between Scylla and Charybdis—after it was over! It's Miss Leahy, I presume." The reception room where he

It is easy for the leader of a business to take a quick look at Kumasi, and at the thousands of up-and-coming cities in the developing world, and conclude that his or her company is not missing out on all that much by not being there today. But at a time of rapid, surprising change, snapshots that capture a moment in economic time can be deeply misleading. In this age of Instagram, we must apply new filters to the mental and financial pictures we take. Our intuition—the nerve center that turns images into narratives—has to reset so that it processes the incoming data intelligently. The portraits we take of cities must capture the dynamism underneath the surface and highlight the brightness of opportunities, while toning down the alarming flares of risk. Most of all, they must be able to project forward motion.

What did she pass from?” the girl asked. “M.S. Multiple sclerosis.” “What’s that?” “It’s a human disease where the body’s immune system attacks the coating that protects your nerve fibers? Without that sheath, you can’t tell your body what to do, so you lose the ability to walk, feed yourself, speak. Or at least, my mom did. Some people with it have long periods of remission when the disease isn’t active. She wasn’t one of them.” Mary rubbed the center of her chest. “There are more options for treatment now than there were fifteen or twenty years ago when she was first diagnosed. Maybe she would have lasted longer in this era of medicine. Who knows.

for sixty-one days.” I began questioning the makeup of the negotiation team I’d brought with me to convince the chief of the Northern Cheyenne tribe that he should allow my daughter to be married at Crazy Head Springs. “Don’t call the White Buffalo a joint; it’s the nerve center of the reservation.” My undersheriff, Victoria Moretti,

His thumb rubbed the center of my palm. All my nerves concentrated there, alive to every movement of his skin on mine.

I had not yet gotten around to the sociobiologist E. O. Wilson’s Consilience. When I did read it, I discovered on page 286 that people follow religion because it is “easier” than empiricism. That struck a nerve, and provoked a response I shall be candid enough to report. Mr. Wilson: When you have endured an eight-day O-sesshin in a Zen monastery, sitting cross-legged and motionless for twelve hours a day and allowed only three and one-half hours of sleep each night until sleep and dream deprivation bring on a temporary psychosis (my own nondescript self); When you have attended four “rains retreats” at the Insight Buddhist Meditation Center in Barre, Massachusetts, for a total of one complete year of no reading, no writing, no speaking, and eyes always downcast (my wife); When you have almost died from the austerities you underwent before you attained enlightenment under a bo tree in India; When you have been crucified on Golgatha; When you have been thrown to lions in the Roman coliseum; When you have been in a concentration camp and held on to some measure of dignity through your faith; When you have given your life to providing a dignified death for homeless, destitute women gathered from the streets of Calcutta (Mother Teresa), or played out her counterpart with the poor in New York City (Dorothy Day); When, Mr. Wilson, you have undergone any one of these trials, it will then be time to talk about the ease of religion as compared with the ardors of empiricism.

Every time we perform a conscious action, there is just such an interchange of messages between our nerve centers, our brain and our muscles.

Gracious Father, the past few weeks have been incredibly demanding and depleting. I’m thankful you understand our frailties and our need for refreshment. If you never commanded Sabbath rest, I probably wouldn’t take it. And if you never commended the enjoyment of life, I’d go to the extremes of either taking simple joys for granted or worshiping pleasure altogether. So today, I’m slowing down enough just to say thank you—thank you for designing us for pleasure, for the experience of delight. Thank you for putting sensate responders and nerve endings in our bodies. You are glorified in our enjoyment. Thank you for intending that joy would accompany us in our work (often exhausting, thankless, and seemingly fruitless work) all the days you have given us under the sun.

GOSPEL REDISCOVERY Along with extraordinary, persistent prayer, the most necessary element of gospel renewal is a recovery of the gospel itself, with a particular emphasis on the new birth and on salvation through grace alone. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones taught that the gospel emphasis on grace could be lost in several ways. A church might simply become heterodox — losing its grip on the orthodox tenets of theology that under-gird the gospel, such as the triune nature of God, the deity of Christ, the wrath of God, and so on. It may turn its back on the very belief in justification by faith alone and the need for conversion and so move toward a view that being a Christian is simply a matter of church membership or of living a life based on Christ’s example. This cuts the nerve of gospel renewal and revival.2 But it is possible to subscribe to every orthodox doctrine and nevertheless fail to communicate the gospel to people’s hearts in a way that brings about repentance, joy, and spiritual growth. One way this happens is through dead orthodoxy, in which such pride grows in our doctrinal correctness that sound teaching and right church practice become a kind of works-righteousness. Carefulness in doctrine and life is, of course, critical, but when it is accompanied in a church by self-righteousness, mockery, disdain of everyone else, and a contentious, combative attitude, it shows that, while the doctrine of justification may be believed, a strong spirit of legalism reigns nonetheless. The doctrine has failed to touch hearts.3 Lloyd-Jones also speaks of “defective orthodoxy” and “spiritual inertia.”4 Some churches hold to orthodox doctrines but with imbalances and a lack of proper emphasis. Many ministries spend more time defending the faith than propagating it. Or they may give an inordinate amount of energy and attention to matters such as prophecy or spiritual gifts or creation and evolution. A church may become enamored with the mechanics of ministry and church organization. There are innumerable reasons that critical doctrines of grace and justification and conversion, though strongly held, are kept “on the shelf.” They are not preached and communicated in such a way that connects to people’s lives. People see the doctrines — yet they do not see them. It is possible to get an “A” grade on a doctrinal test and describe accurately the doctrines of our salvation, yet be blind to their true implications and power. In this sense, there are plenty of orthodox churches in which the gospel must be rediscovered and then brought home and applied to people’s hearts. When this happens, nominal Christians get converted, lethargic and weak Christians become empowered, and nonbelievers are attracted to the newly beautified Christian congregation.

stretches mean to get rid of. Scars naturally contract toward their own center, pulling the surrounding tissues with them. If these tissues include a nerve or joint, the result is pain and restricted movement. That's one reason why surgery often fails to resolve pain and can even make it worse. Surgery should always be your last option.

Pain, fixed with laser beam focus on itself, is self-centered, allowing for thoughts only of alleviation. Even the pain of something as common and comprehensible as a toothache, one of those cavities sufficiently deep to expose the nerve endings, a cavity that feels like someone has jammed an ice pick through your eye, shrinks your world into an impenetrable bubble of agony. It hurts, and it hurts, and that, the hurt, is everything. You can’t think about anything except wanting the hurt to go away.

VX nerve agent stopped

Contrary to popular belief, government buildings and educational institutes are not the nerve centers of society - the true nerve centers of society are the streets - streets that bear witness to the struggles of life - streets that bear witness to the labor of liberty - streets that bear witness to the struggles of being treated as an equal member of the human family.

Chris was told he had been assigned to work in a communications vault that was the nerve center for this system of international espionage—a code room linking the TRW plant with CIA Headquarters and Rhyolite’s major ground stations in Australia. The continuing disclosures about the secret world fascinated Chris, and he was especially intrigued by what he saw as a bizarre contrast between the mechanical spies he had been told about and the location of the ground stations. The Rhyolite earth stations had been planted in a world that was about as close as man could find now to the Stone Age; they were situated near Alice Springs in the harsh Outback of Australia, an oasis in a desert where aborigines still lived much as Stone Age men did thousands of years ago. Under an Executive Agreement between the United States and Australia, Chris was told, all intelligence information collected by the satellites and relayed to the network of dish-shaped microwave antennas at Alice Springs was to be shared with the Australian intelligence service. However, Rogers told Chris, the United States, by design, was not living up to the agreement: certain information was not being passed to Australia. He explained that TRW was designing a new, larger satellite with a new array of sensors; the Australians, Rogers emphasized, were never to be told about it; anytime Chris sent messages that would reach Australia, he must delete any reference to the new satellite. Its name was Argus, or AR—for Advanced Rhyolite. Whoever in the CIA had selected the cryptonym must have enjoyed his choice, because it was appropriate. In Greek mythology, Argus was a giant with one hundred eyes … a vigilant guardian.

Then join our citizen “nerve center” at worldwithoutoil.org to track events and share solutions. Every day, we’ll update you with news about the crisis, and highlight our favorite stories from across the country and around the world. No expert knows better than you do how an oil shock could impact your family, your job, your town, your life. So tell us what you know. Because the best way to change the future is to play with it first.

In recent years, scientists have come to understand that consciously controlling your breath can have huge benefits on your overall system, primarily with regard to the regulation of your nervous system in relation to anxiety, depression, and restlessness. The vagal response is the stimulation of the vagus nerve, which runs down along the anterior portion of your spine from your brain to your internal organs. When the vagus nerve is stimulated, a signal is sent to the brain to reduce your blood pressure and calm your body and mind, reducing stress and helping to manage chronic illness, as healing can happen only in a more relaxed state of being. For example, if your amygdala, the nerve center at the lower-central part of your brain, is agitated, it triggers your sympathetic nervous system (SNS) and your fight-or-flight response. You may become anxious, fearful, reactive, or frozen. Once triggered, this response lasts at least 20 minutes, but you can often find yourself stuck in this state for much longer. According to Dr. Mladen Golubic, an internist at Cleveland Clinic’s Center for Integrative Medicine, when in this state, you take shallow chest breaths, sometimes halting the breath completely, extending the effects of your SNS response. By taking deeper and fuller breaths, especially by allowing the abdomen to relax and expand, the vagus nerve is stimulated, and calm can quickly be restored. This calming and stress-reducing response is called the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) response, or vagal response. When your SNS is calmed, you have more access to the prefrontal cortex of your brain, boosting your ability to think clearly and rationalize. Dr. Golubic goes on to say, “The vagal response reduces stress. It reduces our heart rate and blood pressure.” This regulation of the nervous system is one of the primary benefits of a consistent pranayama practice.

LV-14 Chinese Point name: Qi Men;8 English translation: “Cycle Gate;” Special Attributes: It is an intersection point for the Liver Meridian, the Spleen Meridian, and the Yin Linking Vessel. It is also the alarm point of the Liver. This point is bilateral; Location: Two ribs below the center of the nipple; Western Anatomy: The sixth intercostal artery, vein, and nerve are present; Comments: This point is of considerable value to the martial artist. Strikes to this point should be toward the center of the body on a downward 45-degree angle. Forceful strikes can shock or damage the liver. An interruption of the energy core of the body can result. The additional benefits to strikes to this location are the serious implications of the intersection with the Yin Linking Vessel at the sensitive Alarm point of the Liver. Strikes to this point can inhibit the ability to correct energy imbalances of the Liver caused by martial attacks. CV-22 Chinese Point name: Tian Tu;9 English translation: “Celestial Chimney;” Special Attributes: this is an Intersection Point of the Yin Linking Vessel and the Conception Vessel. It is listed as a Vital Point in the Bubishi; Location: On the centerline of the body at the center of the suprasternal notch. That structure is the commonly referred to the “horseshoe notch” at the base of the throat; Western Anatomy: the jugular arch and a branch of the inferior thyroid artery are superficially represented. The trachea, or windpipe, is found deeper and the posterior aspect of the sternum, the innominate vein and aortic arch are also present; Comments: This point is of particular importance the martial artist as it is the intersection point of the Yin Linking Vessel and the Conception Vessel. The interrelationship between these two vessels will be covered in detail later in the book. Additionally, the structure of the suprasternal notch is an excellent “touch point” for situations when sight is reduced and you find yourself at extremely close range with your opponent. CV-23 Chinese Point name: Lian Quan;10 English translation: “Ridge Spring;” Special Attributes: Some Traditional Chinese Medicine textbooks state that this location is an intersection point for the Yin Linking Vessel and the Conception Vessel; Location: On the centerline of the throat just above the Adam’s apple; Western Anatomy: the anterior jugular vein, a branch of cutaneous cervical nerve, the hypoglossal nerve, and branch of the glossopharyngeal nerve are present; Comments: Strikes to this point should directly inward, or slightly upward, to bust the structure of the Adam’s apple and disrupt the energy flow to the head. Generally, any strike to the throat area will activate a number of sensitive acupuncture points and attacks the structural weakness of this part of the human body.

The computer model gave the governor little choice but to shut down the entire state, and take responsibility for what should have been a national decision, because neither the Centers for Disease Control nor the president of the United States had the nerve to make it.

The social-engagement system depends on nerves that have their origin in the brain stem regulatory centers, primarily the vagus—also known as the tenth cranial nerve—together with adjoining nerves that activate the muscles of the face, throat, middle ear, and voice box or larynx.

But the most important part of planning and goal-setting is to see in our "mind's eye" the major objective that we are pursuing. This is the "magnificent obsession" that we discussed earlier. This is the very nerve center of our ambition. This is what drives us.

The sheer numbers associated with chronic disease, the magnitude of the medical and financial iceberg, make a mockery of this approach. The toll of the seven most common chronic diseases, in costs and lost productivity, was $4.2 trillion in the United States in 2012, up from $1.3 trillion in 2003.4 Chronic diseases account for more than 65% of corporate health-care costs. In a single year, there were almost 0.5 million new diabetes diagnoses for Americans ages twenty to forty-four, and 1 million new diabetics aged forty-five to sixty-five. Those are just the people who felt bad enough to see a doctor. The Centers for Disease Control estimate that 79 million Americans are pre-diabetic, which means their bodies are teetering on the edge of a disease that leads to blindness, kidney failure, nerve damage, and limb amputations if it isn’t controlled.5 Those people can be pulled back from the brink to some kind of normal future if they decide to make some significant changes in their lives. Unfortunately, 65% of employers in a large 2011 survey cited the difficulty of motivating employees to change their behavior as their top health-care challenge.

The Emory researchers who identified the four phases of meditation found that when meditators slip out of the focused attention of the TPN and into Mind Wandering, the DMN activates. The wandering mind of the DMN has a “me” orientation, focusing on the self. It may flit from what’s going on at the moment (“Is that a mosquito buzzing?”) to future worries (“I’m nervous about next week’s exam”) to the past (“I’m so mad at my brother Jim for calling me a sissy at my fifth birthday party”). The precuneus contributes to both self-referential focus and episodic memory. Disturbing memories are played and replayed. The idle brain defaults to what is bothering us, both recent and long-past events. These egocentric musings of the wandering mind form the fabric of our sense of self. When you quiet your TPN in meditation, you open up a big empty space in consciousness. For a few moments, the brain is quiet, and you feel inner peace. Then the engine starts revving. The DMN kicks in, bringing with it a cascade of worries and random thoughts. You’re doing 2,000 RPM in Park, but going nowhere. And it gets worse. The DMN has a rich neural network connecting it with other brain regions. Through this, it busily starts recruiting other brain regions to go along with its whining self-absorption. It commandeers the brain’s CEO, the prefrontal cortex. This impairs executive functions like memory, attention, flexibility, inhibition, planning, and problem-solving. 2.5. Nerves from the Default Mode Network reach out to communicate with many other parts of the brain. The DMN also recruits the insula, a region that integrates information from other parts of the brain. It has special neurons triggered by emotions that we feel toward other people, such as resentment, embarrassment, lust, and contempt. We don’t just think negative thoughts; we feel them emotionally too. At this stage, the meditator isn’t just wallowing in a whirlwind of self-centered thoughts. The DMN has taken the brain’s CEO hostage, while through the insula it starts replaying all the slights, insults, and disappointments we’ve experienced in our relationships. The quiet meditative space we experienced just a few moments before has been destroyed. This drives meditators absolutely nuts. No sooner do they achieve nirvana, the still, quiet place of Bliss Brain, than the DMN serves up a smorgasbord of self-absorbed fantasies. It pulls us into negative emotional states—then drags the rest of the brain along behind it. The DMN. Hmm . . . that acronym reminds me of something: “the DeMoN.” The DMN is the demon that robs me of the inner peace I’m seeking through meditation

American writer and biologist Frederick Kenyon (1867-1941) was the first to explore the inner workings of the bee brain. His 1896 study, in which he managed to dye and characterize numerous types of nerve cells of the bee brain, was, in the words of the world's foremost insect neuroanatomist, Nick Strausfeld, 'a supernova.' Not only did Kenyon draw the branching patterns of various neuron types in painstaking detail, but he also high­lighted, for the first time in any organism, that these fell into clearly identifi­able classes, which tended to be found only in certain areas of the brain. One such type he found in the mushroom bodies is the Kenyon cells, named in his honor. Their cell bodies -- the part of the neuron that con­tains the chromosomes and the DNA -- decoding machinery -- are in a peripheral area enclosed by the calyx of each mushroom body (the mush­room's 'head'), with a few additional ones on the sides of or underneath the calyces. A finely arbored dendritic tree (the branched struc­ture that is a nerve cell's signal 'receiver') extends into the mushroom body calyx, and a single axon (the neuron's 'information-sending output cable') extends from each cell into the mushroom body pedunculus (the mushroom's 'stalk'). Extrapolating from just a few of these characteristically shaped neu­rons that he could see, Kenyon suggested (correctly) that there must be tens of thousands of such similarly shaped cells, with parallel outputs into each mushroom body pedunculus. (In fact, there are about 170,000 Kenyon cells in each mushroom body.) He found neurons that connect the an­tennal lobes (the primary relays processing olfactory sensory input) with the mushroom body input region (the calyces, where the Kenyon cells have the fine dendritic trees) -- and even suggested, again correctly, that the mushroom bodies were centers of multisensory integration. Kenyon's 1896 brain wiring diagram [is a marvel]. It contains several classes of recognizable neuron types, with some suggestions for how they might be connected. Many neurons have extensions as widely branched as full­grown trees -- only, of course, much smaller. Consider that the drawing only shows around 20 of a honey bee brain's ~850,000 neurons. We now know that each neuron, through its many fine branches, can make up to 10,000 connection points (synapses) with other neurons. There may be a billion synapses in a honey bee's brain -- and, since the efficiency of synapses can be modified by experience, near-infinite possibility to alter the informa­tion flow through the brain by learning and memory. It is a mystery to me how, after the publication of such work as Kenyon's, anyone could have suggested that the insect brain is simple, or that the study of brain size could in any way be informative about the complexities of information pro­cessing inside a brain. Kenyon apparently suffered some of the anxieties all too familiar to many early-career researchers today. Despite his scientific accomplish­ments, he had trouble finding permanent employment, and moved be­tween institutions several times, facing continuous financial hardship. Eventually, he appears to have snapped, and in 1899 Kenyon was arrested for 'erratic and threatening behavior' toward colleagues, who subsequently accused him of insanity. Later that year, he was permanently confined to a lunatic asylum, apparently without any opportunity ever to rehabilitate himself, and he died there more than four decades later -- as Nick Strausfeld writes, 'unloved, forgotten, and alone.' It was not to be the last tragedy in the quest to understand the bee brain.

For most of the Middle Ages, the economic nerve center of the world economy and the source of its most dramatic financial innovations was neither China nor India, but the West, which, from the perspective of the rest of the world, meant the world of Islam.

Such was the headquarters of Janoth Enterprises. Bureaus in twenty-one large cities at home and twenty-five abroad fed this nerve-center daily and hourly. It was served by roving correspondents and by master scientists, scholars, technicians in every quarter of the world. It was an empire of intelligence.

Colorado Springs can be traced to the city’s founding, but it was in the post-WWII era that the city began to emerge as a nerve center for a politically engaged, globally expansive evangelicalism intent on winning the country, and the world, for Christ. The entrenchment of evangelicalism in Colorado Springs coincided with the growth of the military in the region. In 1954, the United States Air Force Academy was established in Colorado Springs. The city would eventually house three air force bases, an army fort, and the North American Air Defense Command. In the 1960s, the Nazarene Bible College opened its doors, and soon an array of evangelical, charismatic, and fundamentalist churches, colleges, ministries, nonprofits, and businesses took root. Lured by local tax breaks and drawn to the growing epicenter of evangelical power, nearly one hundred Christian parachurch organizations sprouted up within a five-mile vicinity of the academy, including Officers’ Christian Fellowship, the International Bible Society, Youth for Christ, the Navigators, Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Christian Booksellers Association, Fellowship of Christian Cowboys, Christian Camping International, and, most significantly, Dobson’s Focus on the Family. 2

Our study clearly showed that when traumatized people are presented with images, sounds, or thoughts related to their particular experience, the amygdala reacts with alarm—even, as in Marsha’s case, thirteen years after the event. Activation of this fear center triggers the cascade of stress hormones and nerve impulses that drive up blood pressure, heart rate, and oxygen intake—preparing the body for fight or flight.1 The monitors attached to Marsha’s arms recorded this physiological state of frantic arousal, even though she never totally lost track of the fact that she was resting quietly in the scanner.

Much as the din and the feeling of being an unwilling insect carrier wore on my nerves, I still loved the Brood V hatch experience, the way I love big surf, thunderstorms, and oversized rat snakes. They're all reminders that nature is bigger, far bigger, and more powerful than we usually care to admit. Just as the hatch was starting, I stood in line at my favorite garden center behind a young man who was buying two gallons of a deadly liquid insecticide. He was hoping to stop the cicada hatch, to save his trees from what he was sure would be the death of them. The nursery manager rang up the sale, and his eyes met mine as the young man handed over his money. We shook our heads and smiled. I went home to watch the celebration.

Indeed, for one day, William Frederick Cody stole center stage from a world war. The accolades were indeed impressive. Said Lieutenant General Nelson A. Miles: "Colonel Cody was a high-minded gentleman, and a great scout. He performed a great work in the West for the pioneers and for the generations coming after them and his exploits will live forever in history." In the years following, former president Theodore Roosevelt, in accepting an honorary vice-presidency in the Buffalo Bill Memorial Association, called Cody "the most renowned of those men, steel-thewed and iron-nerved, whose daring opened the West to settlement and civilization ... an American of Americans.... He embodied those traits of courage, strength and self-reliant hardihood which are vital to the well-being of the nation." If Cody's fame and popularity seem strange to us today-he was, after all, celebrated for his prowess in killing, both buffalo and Indians-it is because his virtues were nineteenth-century virtues, and we live in an age of disillusion and cynicism.

bloodied lace, which were both deadly in a very sedate way. "It was totally awesome! Yoyo Hal!" Juergen bounced up and down as an upright version of Hal falling repeatedly out of the tall wind oak only to be recaught and dragged upwards because he insisted on doing commentary in calm even tones. "It's important to note that a strangle vine can have as many as thirty-seven snare vines. Gak! You need to strike the base of the plant, its nerve center, to kill the strangle vine. Fuck! Never tackle one of these alone. Jane!" She stared at Juergen in dismay. He'd seen all that? Live? Unedited? With all the embarrassing parts still intact? How? The mechanic continued to act today's filming. "And you. Rawr!" He mimed the chainsaw. "That rocked! And then Brian! 'Don't try this at home, hire a professional pest control contractor.'" Brian was Brian Scroggins, Pittsburgh Fire Marshal and accidental guest co-host on a regular basis. "Just epic." She fled the embarrassing recount, ignoring the belated, "So how is Hal?