Out-of-body experiences

If you're into the brain stuff I've been posting, you might find this interesting.

Studies Report Inducing Out-of-Body Experience
By SANDRA BLAKESLEE

Using virtual-reality goggles, a camera and a stick, scientists have induced out-of-body experiences — the sensation of drifting outside of one’s own body — in ordinary, healthy people, according to studies being published today in the journal Science.

When people gazed at an illusory image of themselves through the goggles and were prodded in just the right way with the stick, they felt as if they had left their bodies.

The research reveals that “the sense of having a body, of being in a bodily self,” is actually constructed from multiple sensory streams, said one expert on body and mind, Dr. Matthew M. Botvinick, an assistant professor of neuroscience at Princeton University.

Usually these sensory streams, which include vision, touch, balance and the sense of where one’s body is positioned in space, work together seamlessly, Dr. Botvinick said. But when the information coming from the sensory sources does not match up, the sense of being embodied as a whole comes apart.

The brain, which abhors ambiguity, then forces a decision that can, as the new experiments show, involve the sense of being in a different body.

The research provides a physical explanation for phenomena usually ascribed to otherworldly influences, said Peter Brugger, a neurologist at University Hospital in Zurich, who, like Dr. Botvinick, had no role in the experiments. In what is popularly referred to as near-death experience, people who have been in the throes of severe and sudden injury or illness often report the sensation of floating over their body, looking down, hearing what is said and then, just as suddenly, finding themselves back inside their body.

Out-of-body experiences have also been reported to occur during sleep paralysis, the exertion of extreme sports and intense meditation practices.

The new research is a first step in figuring out exactly how the brain creates this sensation, Dr. Brugger said.

The out-of-body experiments were conducted by two research groups using slightly different methods intended to expand the so-called rubber hand illusion.

In that illusion, people hide one hand in their lap and look at a rubber hand set on a table in front of them. As a researcher strokes the real hand and the rubber hand simultaneously with a stick, people have the vivid sense that the rubber hand is their own. When the rubber hand is whacked with a hammer, they wince and sometimes cry out.

The illusion shows that body parts can be “separated” from the whole body by manipulating a mismatch between touch and vision. That is, when a person’s brain sees the fake hand being stroked and feels the same sensation, the sense of being touched is misattributed to the fake.

The new experiments were designed to create a whole-body illusion with similar manipulations.

In Switzerland, Dr. Olaf Blanke, a neuroscientist at the École Polytechnique Fédérale in Lausanne, asked people to don virtual-reality goggles while standing in an empty room. A camera projected an image of each person taken from the back and displayed that image as if it were six feet in front of the subject, who thus saw an illusory image of himself.

Then Dr. Blanke stroked each person’s back for one minute with a stick while simultaneously projecting the image of the stick onto the illusory body.

When the strokes were synchronous, people reported the sensation of being momentarily within the illusory body. When the strokes were not synchronous, the illusion did not occur.

In another variation, Dr. Blanke projected a “rubber body” — a cheap mannequin bought on eBay and dressed in the same clothes as the subject — into the virtual-reality goggles. With synchronous strokes of the stick, people’s sense of self drifted into the mannequin.

A separate set of experiments was carried out by Henrik Ehrsson, an assistant professor of neuroscience at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.

Last year, when Dr. Ehrsson was “a bored medical student at University College London,” he wondered, he said, “what would happen if you ‘took’ your eyes and moved them to a different part of a room.”

“Would you see yourself where your eyes were placed?” he said. “Or from where your body was placed?”

To find out, he asked people to sit in a chair and wear goggles connected to two video cameras placed six feet behind them. The left camera projected to the left eye, the right camera to the right eye. As a result, people saw their own backs from the perspective of a virtual person sitting behind them.

Using two sticks, Dr. Ehrsson stroked each person’s chest for two minutes with one stick while moving the second stick just under the camera lenses, as if it were touching the virtual body.

Again, when the stroking was synchronous, people reported the sense of being outside their own bodies, in this case looking at themselves from a distance where their “eyes” were situated.

Then Dr. Ehrsson grabbed a hammer. While people were experiencing the illusion, he pretended to smash the virtual body by waving the hammer just below the cameras. Immediately, the subjects registered a threat response as measured by sensors on their skin. They sweated, and their pulses raced. They also reacted emotionally, as if they were watching themselves get hurt.

Participants in the experiments conducted by Dr. Blanke and Dr. Ehrsson reported having felt a sense of drifting out of their bodies, but not a strong sense of floating or rotating as is common in full-blown out-of-body experiences, the researchers said.

The next set of experiments, they said, will involve decoupling not just touch and vision but other aspects of sensory embodiment, including the sense of balance and the body’s position in space.

Atlanta PDS

They came from Illinois, South and North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and Alabama for my first PDS outside of Florida. Keith Mathews hosted the seminar at his school in Canton, GA, just north of Atlanta. Keith and his wife Kim always show the best Southern hospitality. And I want to say thanks too to Kathy Vaughn, who was a big help as well.

It was great to see the guys from the Atlanta area who trained at Robert Ray Kenpo Karate. They're still working it even though their teacher has since relocated. Tony Velada drove down from Chicago and some of Bruce Meyers' guys came in from So. Carolina. It was a nice group.

We covered joint locks and manipulations, gun defenses, and multiple attackers. I taught the group some of the stuff we used to do for three attackers and how to adapt their standard one-man techniques for more than one attacker. We also worked a bit of how to handle the "thug" grip when faced with a pistol.

All in all, it was a good visit and all the post-seminar survey comments were positive. I'm looking forward to seeing them again soon.

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Lee Wedlake has been teaching Kenpo Karate for over 35 years and has written a variety of Kenpo Books about different kenpo katas and kenpo concepts. Mr. Wedlake has worked directly with Ed Parker and is generous with his knowledge and his time. He is available for Kenpo Seminars and camps.

Manchester Karate Studio

Last weekend I was up to teach at Steve White's school in Manchester, New Hampshire.
Steve and I have known each other for over 20 years. Steve did what many dedicated martial artists I know have done; he went to great lengths to get the best education he could in the arts. Steve was told about me by a mutual friend named Don MacKay and they made a trip from NH to Chicago to meet me. The rest is history. Steve has gone the extra mile to learn and not just from me. He regularly works with Jimmy Pedro, the Olympic judo medalist. Steve flies around the country to business seminars. As a result, he has one of, if not the largest schools in Manchester. He does have one of the most successful Parker kenpo schools in the country.
Steve's lineage is strong, his understanding of and proficiency in Kenpo is excellent, and his communication skills are outstanding. It's always a pleasure for me to watch him teach. Even more so it is a pleasure to sit and talk with him. We have had hours of engaging conversation over the years. A visit with Steve is always mentally stimuating.
I've watched him build a school and family, and seen him grow as a person. That rubs off on his people. He's has many long-term students and some of them now have their own schools spread throughout New England under the New England Chinese Karate Federation banner. They are not a "turn and burn" operation like many schools who actually say you won't see the same people on the mat a year or two from when they begin.
Steve and I believe that if you want to build a successful business you copy a sucessful business. And the same for successful martial arts. With that blueprint Manchester Karate Studio has become a strong school that provides way more that just punching and kicking to their students. Steve's staff is well-trained and they're good people.
It's always a pleasure to be invited to go work with the group up there.

The missing line on the IKKA crest

Some people are real collectors of Kenpo stuff, particularly the patches. I was witrh a guy who actually bought a Lima Lama patch right off a guy's gi. He gave the man the money and the guy tore it off on the spot and gave it to him. Go figure.
There are lots of "rip-offs" of the Parker crest, made without permission. The dragon looks like a lizard and the tiger like a housecat. In the course of looking over other's patches someone pointed out that some of the IKKA crests had eight lines in the gray circle and some had only seven. The owner of a seven-line patch offered that he had been told the missing line denoted that you don't show everything you knew, according to his instructor.
I am a collector of Kenpo stuff and a lot of it Kenpo stories. When I had the opportunity to ask Mr. Parker about some of those stories I could then confirm or deny "from the horse's mouth". I asked him about the missing line. He said "Simple. That patchmaker made a mistake."
While a patch should have meaning to everything in it, sometimes the meaning is just too simple. You can see this story on my youtube channel.

From NAFI

I'm a member of the National Association of Flight Instructors and I get an online newsletter from them. I pirated this short article from them because I think it is of benefit to instructors and school owners. I don't know who wrote it and I'd give them credit if I could.

Running at “Natural SPEED”

Running a flight training program—whether it’s your own, or part of a larger aviation business—can be like riding a roller coaster. Sometimes you ride high on success, other times there’s a drop and you scramble trying to hold on.

That’s a recipe for stress if there ever was one, and certainly, stress is a key component in burnout. But that stress can take a toll, says psychologist Mark Gorkin, author of Practice Safe Stress: Healing and Laughing in the Face of Stress, Burnout, and Depression. To reduce chronic stress and begin your burnout recovery, Gorkin suggests using “Natural SPEED.”

S: Sleep. “If you’re not getting enough sleep on a regular basis, that’s already a warning sign,” Gorkin says. “Because without enough sleep, your cognitive mind isn’t working as well, and you know you’re not making as good judgments, you’re not able to be as creative in your problem-solving.” The answer, of course, is not to take more Ambien; it’s to find better ways to relax.

P: Priorities. “You can’t do it all, and you can’t do it all by yourself,” Gorkin says. He points to the “80/20 Rule,” also known as the Pareto Principle. It says that 20 percent of something always is responsible for 80 percent of the results—for example, 80 percent of your customers will use 20 percent of your services or products. “Think of what’s that crucial 20 percent,” Gorkin says. “If you can’t do that 20 percent by yourself, then basic economics says find someone who can help you.”

E: Empathy. “You’ve got to find some way to make your emotional support systems give and take,” he says. Most people—especially those who are supervisors—help others deal with their stress instead of dealing with their own, acting like Superman, or a pillar of strength. While that’s noble, it’s not particularly healthy. Stress management isn’t a one-way street, Gorkin says, and those people need a person they can vent to, not just absorb stress from. He recommends having a stress buddy you can use as a sounding board.

E: Exercise. “Not only is it important because we know the health benefits—cardiovascular endurance—it also releases mind-relaxing chemicals like endorphins and dopamine.” For some people, exercise is a way of turning off the psychic motor for a while so they can focus on something they want to think about. Plus, it offers the sense of accomplishment.

D: Diet. “We know if you’re loading up on saturated fats, too much sugar, drinking more than you should, it not only compromises your energy level, but obviously in the long run, is a roller coaster formula for an artery-clogged machine.”

American Idol

Jan works with a guy who is supposed to sing on American Idol. So she told me he was going to be on the local TV news at 7am today, singing at a bagel shop as part of some thing they do where their roving reporter goes to local businesses and events early in the morning. They're at the bagel shop and dressed up in their bagel suits, dancing around and we're waiting to see her co-worker.
You can guess what happened. No singer.
She called me from work to tell me that the guy had overslept. Now, here's a guy who's excited and "really looking forward" to his big chance. Talk about self-sabotage. I think I'd have had three alarm clocks, hired people to call me and come to my house to make sure I was up.
How often do we do things like this to ourselves? And why? I've seen this a hundred times in my teaching career. People get right up to where they are about to succeed and then, poof, they quit. Is it a fear of success or responsibility? And there's the people who take lessons and don't practice at all. It seems some of them walk out the door and don't give it a second thought until they come back for class. Sure there are some who do and even some who make it anyway despite not practicing and all, but they are few and far between. The capper is when they blame us, as teachers, for their failure. I even had a mother ask me why her son wasn't promoted once and when I asked her how much he was practicing she looked at me with an incredulous look and said, "Practice? We don't let him practice." Hmm. Wonder why I didn't promote him.
One of the great things about martial arts is that it gives us an opportunity to know ourselves better. Get a little introspective, you may be surprised.

For your amusement

You may be able to use this for instructor candidates.

A SIMPLE TEST TO DETERMINE IF A PERSON WILL FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS

You have two minutes, which is plenty of time. However, you must concentrate and work rapidly. Read everything carefully before doing anything.
1. Print your name in the upper right-hand corner.
2. Circle the word "name" in the first sentence.
3. Draw two small squares in the upper left-hand corner.
4. Put an "X" in each square.
5. Put a circle around each square.
6. Write "yes" after the title.
7. Put a circle around each word in sentence six.
8. Put an "X" in the lower left-hand corner of this paper.
9. Draw a triangle around the "X" you just put down.
10. On the reverse side of this paper, sign your name.
11. Draw a rectangle around the word "paper" in sentence number 10.
12. Call out your first name when you get to this point of the test.
13. If you feel that you have followed directions up to this point, call out "I have".
14. Count out loud in your normal speaking voice, backwars from ten to one.
15. Now that you have finished reading carefully, do only sentences one and two.