Archive for year: 2017

“Feed the world”….So sang Bob Geldof and Co at Live Aid.

A recent article in the Huffingtonpost looked at some psychological research that suggests that cooking for and feeding others is hugely satisfying for the cook as well as the recipients.

As a cook, I love it, I know that feeling of joy and satisfaction of watching and being with people who are enjoying what I have cooked for them. For me food is an expression of love that is the love of life itself.

Food is life and to feed others is to give them life

I wondered where such feelings come from and then listening to James Wong & Michael Mosley I realised that it all begins with breast feeding. He was explaining that the food we really crave have a perfect balance of sugar and fat. These two together in equal quantities do not appear naturally in nature, it would seem that we have had to learn to create them. It might be in chocolate or a wonderful savoury sauce it is the fats and sugars that get us going. Then he dropped the bombshell. Actually there is one place in nature where fat and sugar is naturally presented to us. It is in breast milk.

That would suggest to me that what we are really doing, in our fancy restaurants and with our fancy recipes and our Michelin stars, is to recreate the sensation, satisfaction and comfort of being breast fed.

Now, from the work I did, many years ago, with the breast feeding counsellors at the National Childbirth Trust, it appeared that breast feeding mums generally get a tremendous amount of joy and happiness from the act of breast feeding. I also know from neuroscience that breast feeding creates lots of oxytocin in the brains of both the mother and the child.

Oxytocin is a hormone that is made in the brain, in the hypothalamus. It is transported to, and secreted by, the pituitary gland, which is located at the base of the brain. Widely referred to as the love hormone, oxytocin has also been dubbed the hug hormone, cuddle chemical, moral molecule, and the bliss hormone due to its effects on behaviour, including its role in love and in female reproductive biological functions in reproduction.

Psychologically Oxytocin is the bonding chemical. Dopamine is the hormone of attraction that is the honeymoon period in a relationship. Couples that make the transition from dopamine to oxytocin become bonded and stay together. Those that remain in the dopamine phase tend to wander to new, more exciting and dopamine producing experiences.

Now, I may be bonkers but, it would seem to me that cooking, baking and breastfeeding are all doing the same thing. That is, creating oxytocin in both the cooks and the diners. After all once a mother turns from the breast and weans the child onto solid food the same action and intention of feeding is maintained in both the mother and the child and the bond, or oxytocin, is maintained. It is a short step to chefs and restaurants where both the feeder and the fed feel that bonded sense of belonging and the comfort of what is really comfort food.

We know that eating carbs causes the brain to secrete serotonin, the wellbeing hormone. It is the fats and the sugars that create oxytocin. It would seem that food and mood certainly do go together.

Take care and enjoy your meal

Sean x

Hey, we have got to number 200, that’s over 100 hours of podcasts and a lot of blogs. I have to begin with a big thank you to all of you who have read the blogs and listen to Ed and I over the last four years. You have a lot of sticking power. We have both been really pleased by the positive response that has come our way in both texts and emails.

So, this week we popped a bottle of bubbly and settle in, by a log fire (can someone wake up spring!), to talk about celebration and as usual we wandered around the subject. Our celebration was about having come this far with the podcast, share some ideas with each other about where we might go next.

I would also like to thank Ed for his steady contribution and continued commitment to the podcast. I remember the first ones that we attempted and than had to bin before we finally got to something that we thought would be good enough to put out on the air. Amazingly they were liked and we shot into the top ten ‘new and notable’ on iTunes where we stayed for some months and even hit the number one spot, fabulous.

The one person who should have been on this 200th celebration with us was Rie, who does so much behind the scenes. Sadly Rie suffers from some form of modesty, not shared by Ed and I, where she avoids cameras and microphones as much as she possibly can. Saying that, we did get her on one podcast when she was talking about the amazing work that she does at The Clatterbridge Cancer Centre. Half way through the episode she accidently knocked a glass of water into the keyboard of her mac and we had to pause the podcast and sort it all out. The laptop was repaired, but I doubt we will ever convince her to get behind a mic again, though we will carry on trying.

So, I want to thank Rie for all the work that she does for the Live in the present site, the podcast, books and courses.

And, to you reading this, and listeners of the podcast, I want to once again thank you. Without each and everyone of you the podcast would not have happened or continue to happen. Thank you all for listening, for your feedback and ideas and your ongoing support, cheers.

Last of all I want to thank all the guests who have given their time to come on the podcast and share their work and their lives with us all. You know there really are some amazing people out there doing some amazing things. Maybe you would like to come on the podcast and share the mindful things that you are up to in your life.

To the awake mind all of life is a celebration. Every morning when we wake into a new world we can celebrate the dawning of a new day. With every breath that we take we can celebrate the wonder of our life. life is a journey from our first in breath to our last out Breath.

Now I am off to finish this bottle of bubbly with Ed and celebrate just how good life is.

With love and gratitude

Sean x

This week an article, ‘How the happiest people on the planet keep smiling‘, made me laugh, especially as Ed has been trying to become a meditator. The article reported research that pinpointed what it is that makes some people happy while others are not. So what does science tell us.

Money. Many people consider higher per capita income is a precursor to happiness. Having sufficient resources to survive with comfort and to feel that there is no stress is certainly a part of happiness. However having more money that you need does not actually make you happy. We joke that at least with money ‘you can be miserable in comfort’ but it proves that money will never make you happy.

Health plays a good part in happiness. Health creates greater life expectancy, less time off work and more time being happy. Autonomy is important. People’s freedom to make life decisions is a part of creating their individual happiness. Generosity in both giving and receiving raises spirit. And friends, family and social support creates a sense of belonging and overcomes loneliness. Happiness does not need to come from big events, but often small ones.

“Happiness consists more in small conveniences of pleasures that occur every day than in great pieces of good fortune that happen but seldom”. Benjamin Franklin

Scandinavians are not dancing in the street, their happiness is more to do with well being and contentment. So what is the secret?

Genetics, in Scandinavians are shown to have an effect. There are three genes that, when activated, create increased levels of serotonin which is the natural precursor of wellbeing. Now, any country that, in history, was near to or invaded by the Vikings have this genetic structure, Guess what? British people have a genetic structure that is very close to that of the vikings. So why are us Brits not showing our happiness, rather than moaning about our lives? Or are us Brits happier than we let on?

All these issues, beyond that of genetics, are considered by scientists to be too subjective, too emotional. Associate professor Wataru Sato and his team at Japan’s Kyoto University went one step further into trying to understand the basis of happiness. The researchers used scans to determine which areas of the brain are involved in people feeling happy. The results showed that volunteers who rated highly on happiness surveys had more grey matter (cells) in their brains.

MEDITATION/MINDFULNESS
Now, this is the magic part of this research. We know how we can increase the grey matter in our brains, we meditate. Brains scans have shown, for years, that mindful meditation increases the grey matter in the brain, especially around the areas that control our emotional experience in the limbic system. The bottom line is:

It does not matter how good your life is materially,
if you do not have enough grey brain cells
it will never be good enough in side your emotions

So, what we have learned is that if we do have a genetic predisposition to happiness we might be ahead of the game, and that the nearer we are to Scandinavia the more likely we are to have a positive genetic makeup. But that is not the end of it. We now know, from the scientific research, built around brain scans, shows that if you regularly meditate you will create more grey matter in your brain, (it takes about two years of daily practice) and we know that more grey matter equals more positive control of our emotional self. In short it creates happiness.

Ed began this weeks podcast by telling us about his new meditation experience over the last two weeks. Well done Ed. The bottom line is that we all need to meditate and that we need to practise meditation persistently and consistently on a daily basis over time. If you know an experienced meditator you will be aware of their calmness and lack of stress. You may also be aware of their general efficiency in their work and their happiness in their life generally.

Devote some time to yourself, be happy and if you can, try some meditation.

Take care

Sean x

This is an interesting blog. We were contacted by a listener who wanted us to talk about abandonment in terms of being excluded from a group. In her case this was religious group. Having grown up in a Jehovah Witness family she decided that it did not work for her and she decided to leave the church. The result for her, as often happens is that once you leave the faith you are also then abandoned and often ostracised by the entire group or faith.

Years ago I had my own brush with the Moonies, or Unification Church. Their claim was that their leader, the reverend Sung Young Moon, was the second Messiah. They had written their own book of the word that was inspired by God that they saw as the New, New Testament called The Divine Principle. The punch line was that Mr Moon was the second coming predicted in the old New Testament. Having met Mr Moon in the flesh I felt that anyone less like a Messiah I had yet to meet. Saying that I have never met a messiah so who am I to judge.

Anyway, I decided that it was time to go, not such an easy thing to do. I was told by those that I had arrived with that it was the Devil in my soul that stopped me seeing the divinity of Mr Moon. They stayed and I left. In leaving I was no longer one of ‘Us’ and was now one of ‘Them’, the heathen non believers. Like our listener I was then abandoned.

Why have we been abandoned?
It is all down to core beliefs. People gather together in groups that are similar. The groups may be sport, racial, sexual, religious, political, socio-economic, academic, ethnic, the list goes on. When we create a culture of ‘us and them’ we loose the magic variety that is creation. We limit our experience and our knowledge, we become confined and inward looking. Most negatively we create prejudice in our unfounded beliefs in what ‘they’ are like because they are different to ‘us’.

When all is one there is nothing to abandon
What attracted me to Ayurvedic and Sankhya philosophy is that there is no ‘us and them’ because all of creation is one thing. It is as though the entire universe of creation is a gigantic jigsaw and that every idea or philosophy that there ever is, is simply just another piece in the jigsaw, another part of the picture.

If you are truly my family and if I see strangers as family that we have yet to get to know then we are approaching the one-ness that is creation. The divisions of ‘us and them and need to build walls, actual or metaphorical to keep them out leads to never ending conflict, pain and suffering. If the whole picture is of the oneness of creation do we also include all sentient beings as ‘us’.”

Peter Singer, author of ‘Animal Liberation’ said, If I could make everyone in the world see one film,
I’d make them see EARTHLINGS.”

EARTHLINGS is a 2005 American documentary film about humankind’s total dependence on animals for economic purposes. Presented in five chapters (pets, food, clothing, entertainment and scientific research) the film is narrated by Joaquin Phoenix, featuring music by Moby, and was written, produced and directed by Shaun Monson.
http://www.nationearth.com/earthlings-1/

If you can bear to watch Earthlings it might expand your ideas about abandonment.

Be happy and look after each other

Sean x