What I'm Reading: The Okinawa Program

I finished Your Survival Instinct is Killing You the other day so it is time to pick up a new book. I have decided to re-read The Okinawa Program. It is a book I read almost two decades ago while I still lived in Okinawa. The Okinawa Program is a book that presents the results of a 25 year study conducted by a Ryukyu University professor conducted in to the longevity of Okinawans. With this English language book revealing the results of that story, Dr. Suzuki collaborates with twin Drs. Bradley and Craig Wilcox. The foreward is by Dr. Andrew Weil.

Since I have read this before I pretty much know what is in it but I hope to take it slow so and take detailed notes so that I can start to weave a story that ties together this book, The China Study by Colin Campbell, Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease by Caldwell Esselstyn, How Not To Die by Dr. Greger, etc. from all of the doctors I have met since switching to a whole food, plant based lifestyle in 2014. I hope to take the eCornell Plant Based Certificate program so that I get a really good grounding in the science of a whole food, plant-based lifestyle.

Unexpected Synergies

Not really a fan of the word "synergies" but when it is appropriate I use it. As you know I've been reading the Your Survival Instinct Is Killing You (blog post) personally and The Remote Facilitator's Pocket Guide (blog post) professionally. Interestingly enough, both are talking about how social fears or work stress can lead to problems. In the case of the former book it is focusing on how the survival instinct can turn in to maladaptive habits. In the latter book it talks about how social pain is the same as physical pain in that the same centers of the brain light up to process it; and therefore being exluded from participation in remote meetings can feel like physical pain to people.

Not earth-shattering revelation but the degree to which our bodies impact our mind, and our mind our bodies is an increasingly fascinating topic to me. And it is fun to find this type of unexpected synergy between books I'm reading for different purposes. Far out!

Magic 10 and Beyond

Tonight I am taking a workshop lead by one of my favorite yoga teachers, Jennifer Lenhart (Jivamukti Profile), and owner of Satasang Yoga in Berea. the workshop is based on the book The Magic 10 and Beyond by Sharon Gannon, co-founder of Jivamukti Yoga.

The Magic 10 itself is a series of yoga poses that takes about 10 minutes to complete. It moves the spine in every direction it can, with folds, twists and even handstand. It is a great warm up sequence for a long practice. If you are short on time, you can still get a yoga practice in.

The key to the book is the "beyond in the title of the book. The book goes into a whole series of activities that come together as a daily spiritual practice, allowing adopters to achieve greater peace and overall well being.

I am really excited to see what Jennifer is going to do with this. Whatever it is I know it will be good!

The Remote Facilitators Pocket Guide

Today I started a new "work" book having finished Team Topologies recently. I chose to read The Remote Facilitator's Pocket Guide since we're in a pandemic and are forced into remote interactions. It has been successful enough that I think for the most part we will not be going back to the office like we had before, or pre-pandemic.

I'm kind of excited to read this book as it takes in Agile methods and practical tips to improving online meetings that drive more engagement and collaboration. Some reviews I have had from colleaques was that the book wasn't ground breaking but was helpful nonetheless.

George's Website

My son George is in the process of writing a book, a young adult fantasy novel. The book is called Challenger's Chase. It is very hard to get published so he is taking on the new world introduced by internet technologies. He will be releasing the book one chapter at a time to Patreons. He's calling it an illustrated web novel.

It's pretty cool to see him give this a go, even though we have no idea if he'll be successful or not. At least he's giving it a good shot before he gets serious and has to go find a job. He's going all out and creating accounts on various social media including twitter, youtube, facebook, instagram, etc. He's created a website and a blog. It'll be interesting to see how he can keep all of those things up and running, I would have started with a shortlist, probably something like Youtube and anything an app like hootsuite can support (1 post to multiple sms). I'm doing my best to not say anything because it is his thing, not mine. He can do what he wants but it is hard to see a blog that doesn't offer an RSS feed. Part of being a parent to adult kids though, you gotta let them do their thing.

Here is the list of his online presence:

George Hawkins - Challenger's Chase

Website - ccghawkins.com

Blog - ccghawkins/category/blog

Patreon

Paypal

Twitter

Youtube

Instagram

Pinterest

Reddit

Tumblr

Facebook

Team Topologies

Today I finally finished Team Topologies. Really good book, kind of dense even though it is relatively short and very well written. There is just a lot to unpack. I'll do a brief overview here which will not do the actual content justice.

The basic premise of the books starts with Conway's Law

Any organization that designs a system (defined broadly) will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization's communication structure.^[2][3]

— Melvin E. Conway

The idea that Unfortunately, organization structures do not necessarily make the best design. In fact the first chapter goes into why that's true, the second chapter goes into why Conway's Law matters. The third chapter discusses a team first mentality. The rest of the book talks about what the authors are proposing as the fundamental team topologies and what goes into making them successful.

Vegan 21 Day Diet

Starting on November 1st, I am following the 21 Day Vegan diet as outlined in Sharon Gannon's Yoga and Veganism book. I will be making some changes to it as I don't think it contains enough greens. This post will outline what I'll be doing from November 1st until November 21st. I'll first review what Sharon recommends in her book, clarify how I am adapting it and why.

The 21 Day Vegan Diet as outlined in Sharon's book is fairly easy. There are only really two meals per day, not limit on how much you can eat at those two meals. However, what you can eat is limited.

Congratulations Joe Biden and Kamala Harris

Today, AP and the networks finally called the election as Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won Pennsylvania and subsequently Nevada. I don't know enough about how this works but they all called it even though the vote count isn't finished. We also know that the current resident of the White House will fight it in the court system, and considering how close the votes actually are that make sense. As much as I dislike them, if I'm them I'm forcing re-counts at a minimum. But of enough of that!

Biden and Harris are the next President and Vice-President of the United States!

Hallelujah!!

The amount of damage this current administration and its GOP enablers in the Senate is unreal and the absolute lack of ethics is truly astounding. I hope everyone involved in separating children from parents are indicted on crimes against humanity.

But none of that will come easily. Biden will be in full rebuild unity mode, understandably. However, it is always the democrats that are being open and compromising while republicans never do - and we slide further and further right.

Georgia senate seats are up for runoff that if the Democrats can win will split the Senate 50-50. That will be a better outcome than the situation President Obama had during his administration.

Celebrate this weekend, Monday get to work to win Georgia.

Yoga Sutras; Svadhyaya, Satsang

I've enrolled in an Embodied Philosophy 6 week workshop studying the Yoga Sutras with Edwin Bryant. I actually began reading his book The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali earlier this year in cominbation with two other versions (The Heart of Yoga by T.K.V. Desikachar and The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali by Sri Swami satchidananda) and I found Bryant's the most accessible to me. I also liked the Heart of Yoga which is more than just the Yoga Sutras. The last section of that book includes Sri Deskikachar's translation and commentary on the sutras so when I got their I decided to take do a comparison reading

What I'm Reading: Your Survival Instinct Is Killing You

I started a new book this last weekend It is called Your Survival Instinct Is Killing You with a subtitle of Retrain Your Brain to Conquer Fear and Build Resilience The author is Marcho Schoen, PH.D with Kristin Loberg. The link above takes you to amazon.

Premise of the book is that our flight or fight instinct that is controlled by the limbic or reptile brain is increasingly causing us to experience health, mental, emotional, and physical problems even though we are increasing safe and lead a live of relative ease and comfort. Many of our modern chronic diseases have at its root our survival instinct kicking in when we don't need it.

Well that's a loose summary, I'll let you know how close I was.

The Kid is using Krita

So back in the day when all my machines were Linux, our family were heavy KDE users. Used it for years and years never really liking Gnome. However, for photoshop type of work we generally used GIMP. Come to find out that my son, now 25 years old and an illustrator is a proud user of Krita. I was like, wait a minute I've heard that name before. Well, I looked it up and sure enough it was the same software from KDE. And I thought damn, ain't that cool!

Well I also found out that around 2009 after I had pretty much stopped using KDE and KOffice by that time largely because I wasn't on my machines as much by that point, that Krita changed direction and became a "painting" app. Which is exactly why my son switched from Gimp (on Windows) to Krita. He finds it much more useful and intuitive to use (he showed my the one exception) than GIMP so that's what he's using.

Open Source is still a cool place to be!

Bike Ride with Elly

I am currently in Washington DC to spend time with my daughter before driving us both back to Cleveland. Elly brought her bicycle from Japan so I brought mine from Cleveland. On Friday we were going to take a ride down to Mt. Vernon but due some other circumstances we were not able to do that so we just walked around DC.

This morning though we were able to go out for a ride which was fun. We rode around the Mall, rode through China Town which reminded me of all those Cavs vs Bullets games back in the Gilbert Arenas days. We stopped by the Supreme Court and rode by Union Station. Adding a few pics below.

Starting with Tiny Habits

A friend of mine mentioned to me the power of tiny habits. Simplifying the concept it basically means take baby steps. Yes really, really small baby steps. For example if you want to get into the habit of brushing your teeth after every meal, don't start with all your meals and brushing all of your teeth, start of with after one meal brush one tooth. It'll take you a second and your done.

Now that brushing your teeth example is a little silly, but that's the idea. Start small and go from there. If it is small enough it won't create the resistance to it that you naturally feel. If you are consistent you will gradually get there.

I have been trying to get back to blogging for years but never quite make it. I'm gonna try tiny habit, so my posts may be more like tweets than blog posts.

This is one

Seven Day Rescue Video

In yesterday's blog post about my new vlgo, I mentioned that the Rescue 10X is the 7 Day Rescue ten times in a row. Here is more info on the 7 Day Rescue:
https://youtu.be/AqgYL1mujUA. The first couple of scenes that are interviewing with Rip and Jane Esselstyn is in as at Hyland Software which was one of the two location Engine 2 conducted their programs in a non-immersion environment.

My Engine 2 Rescue 10X Journey Channel

I will be vlogging about my Rescue 10x hosted by Plant Strong by Engine2 on Youtube. I intend to embed the videos here on my blog to keep all my content in one place. This is new for me so the learning curve will be steep. It's not very good yet, but I published my first one.

I need to work at getting more natural at talking in front of the camera. I speak too fast, and not clearly enough. But I got the first one under my belt.

Lawn Chemicals

If you ever wondered why we seem to have more cancer, more digestive difficulties, more autism, more everything bad, look at the picture. You put toxic chemicals, strong enough to warrant a warning sign that says kids, dogs and adults should stay of the grass because it's been chemically treated. And it's like on every other lawn. Think people.

That shit also goes straight into our water system too. Granted, our water treatment centers run by our utilities do a fantastic job of treating our water before it comes to that, the reality in big storms they just open the valves and all the crap goes right into Lake Erie. I am not ripping the water department, I'm ripping the people that think dark green grass is more important than our collective health which costs well over a trillion dollars a year in the US.

Meet Debi, a husky formerly known as Queenie

This last Friday night, Arisa and I did a rash thing. We adopted a dog from a local rescue, the Berea Animal Rescue Fund. We had gone to visit a German Shepherd, which I love, but came away with a Siberian Husky instead.

Having moved to the west side, we had finally decided we’d get a dog. I’ve wanted one for quite a while but with the long commute it didn’t make any sense - 8-10 hours is way too long to leave a dog home alone in my opinion. Now, however, being just a 10-15 minutes away, we can come home at lunch, we are leaving later to get to work, and we are home sooner. So maybe 4 hours at time alone during the week, broken up by walks at lunch.

So we’ve been looking at websites like Adopt-A-Pet, Petfinder etc. and visited both the Berea facility as well as they Cuyahoga County shelter at least three times. We never quite found the right dog. We were also looking at puppies but couldn’t find the right one, or they were too far away.

Friday night I wanted to head to Berea Animal Rescue because they had a German Shepherd I wanted to see. We signed the waiver that’s good for letting us see animals for 24 hours, and as we were walking out to meet Paulie (the shepherd, they way they were putting away the other dogs made it clear this dog reacted to other dogs. In the neighborhood we are in that’s not going to fly, and it was a *big* German Shepherd, we probably would have had difficulty stopping it if it really wanted to do something.

“Queenie” caught our eye as she was the dog they cleared out from the cage we were going to see

Paulie in. Her tail was so far under her rump, she was clearly terrified. In the end, we didn’t even stay to see Paulie, went to the Cuyahoga County shelter didn’t find anything we wanted. On the way home, we talked about various dogs, and what we were looking for, etc, and we kept coming back to the husky. So we decided to go visit the husky one last time since BARF was open until 8pm on Friday nights. And we found Queenie, aka Debi, sitting in fear in her cage.

We did a meet and greet with her, and decided that we were going to adopt. Arisa in particular really wanted to get her out of that shelter. We decided after some discussion to take her home that night even though we weren’t prepared in order to give her some time to adjust to her new home before we had to leave for a work day. So we took her home Friday night, complete spur of the moment decision.

She is still really skittish though she has begun to eat and drink water, sometimes in front of us. She’s great on walks but is afraid of everything, or any loud sound. She shrunk away from a sewer in the street because the sound of the water scared her. She shrunk away from a tree with several loud and chirpy sparrows. Needless to say she is skittish around us as well.

We are looking forward to seeing her come out of her shell and show us who she really is. Already I can tell she is a chewer, and when she is really comfotable playful. I am also guessing that she is going to cause havoc. She already chewed up one plant, and was playfully jumping around last night. I plan to keep a running “diary” here: Meet Debi

2019 Intention - Summary : It's a Matter of Balance

This post will recap all three of my 2019 Intention posts, wrapping them all up in a nice little theme. And adding perhaps one or two more intentions for the year. I also intend to keep the door open for some additional goals and/or things I may want to add as go through the year. To start with here are the links to previous 2019 Intentions posts.

2019 Intentions

Part I Journaling #journaling

Part II Meditation #meditation

Part III Reading #reading #spiritualreading

Part IV Yoga Studies #yogastudies #yoga

As you have already guessed from the title of this post, this year will be about regaining balance or perhaps establishing balance. Let me explain.

2019 Intentions - Part 4 ; Yoga Studies

This post is number four in the series of posts I am making with regards to my 2019 Intentions. So far we have covererd

Part 1 Journaling

Part 2 Meditation

Part 3 Reading

Today's installment is to talk about my intentions to apply discipline and rigor to my study of Yoga. This post will cover a relatively wide range of topics that all fall under this category.

So hold onto your hats! Here we go!

2019 Intentions - Part 3 Reading

My continuing effort to clarify my intentions for 2019. This is the third post in the series and I'm guessing that there will be may 10 posts all told to clarify my intentions for this year. If you were curious, I do have a bullet list of handwritten goals and/or intentions for this year but writing these out help me clarify what I'm actually trying to achieve with each of them. In some cases writing them out is simply that I already know what I'm intending. In other cases I have an very general, vague idea of what I want to do and the blog posts will help me figure out the details.

Next up are my intention for reading in 2019.