Hasta La Gadget!

In a most unexpected way, physics has started to criticize its own sense of reality. Noted figures are speaking out against other noted figures, and heads are being knocked. A prime example: In the blog section of Scientific American, the highly respected South African physicist and cosmologist George Ellis says, quite bluntly, “The belief that all of reality can be fully comprehended in terms of physics and the equations of physics is a fantasy.” In the same vein, the esteemed British physicist Sir Martin Rees made a headline in 2010 that read “We shouldn’t attach any weight to what Hawking says about God.”

Stephen Hawking has been quoted around the world for saying that God isn’t necessary to our understanding of creation. Lord Rees, former president of the Royal Society and sometimes labeled “Britain’s greatest scientist,” expressed himself pointedly: “I know Stephen Hawking well enough to know that he has read very little philosophy and even less theology, so I don’t think we should attach any weight to his views on this topic.”

But physics has long disdained philosophy. The prominent PBS personality, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, recently called philosophy useless, asserting, as countless scientists do, the superiority of science in answering the big questions about existence. Richard Dawkins feels qualified to show the falseness of all theological ideas back to the beginning, ridiculing them without actually examining them. Ellis singles out a staunch Dawkins ally, physicist Lawrence Krauss, for making statements about the source of the universe without benefit of experiments or data. In other words, Krauss feels free to foist off his own philosophical baggage under the guise of being scientific.

He’s hardly alone in this. Ellis is one of the few famous physicists with a strong background in philosophy, and he shakes his head over scientists like Krauss who are faking their way through the field of great ideas: “It’s very ironic when he says philosophy is bunk and then himself engages in this kind of attempt at philosophy. It seems that science education should include some basic modules on Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hume, and the other great philosophers…” DeGrasse Tyson wouldn’t be on board with this suggestion, since he calls philosophical questioning “a pointless delay in our progress.”

Behind the physics versus philosophy debate lie some crucial issues that impinge on everyone’s life. The discussion can become very arcane, but the questions being tackled aren’t: What is the nature of reality? Where did the universe come from? What place do humans have in the cosmos? It’s probably safe to say that 90% of people look to science to answer these questions, yet if science itself is feeling wobbly about finding the answers, that’s an important shift, perhaps a seismic one.

So let’s examine the wobbliest issue of all: What is reality? If you toss out thousands of years of philosophy, what you’re left with is what you see with your own eyes: a world of physical objects. These objects–trees, mountains, houses, cats– look real. In everyday life we move through the world on the assumption that the five senses are delivering reality to us. The fact that this assumption, known as naïve realism, is completely false is what modern physics is all about, from Einstein’s proof that time and space are relative to quantum mechanics’ proof that physical objects are essentially clouds of energy, and this energy emerges from a “bubbling vacuum.”

If it’s ironic that some overly cocky physicists practice fake philosophy (an accusation that most people outside the field would shrug off as in-fighting), the double irony is that so many prominent physicists practice naïve realism. Their graduate-school training dismantled any faith they might have had in the five senses, yet their notions about reality stubbornly adhere to such faith, in subtle ways.

Examples abound: There is the naïve belief that the brain, a solid, tangible object, produces the mind. To believe anything else would place mind or consciousness squarely at the heart of creation, which is anathema to the vast majority of scientists. Second, there’s the belief that cosmologists and high-speed particle physicists will discover what came before the Big Bang. Ellis is quick to puncture this fantasy: “How indeed can you test what existed before the universe existed? You can’t.” Third, there’s the belief that with enough time and thought, a model of the universe will be completed, the famed Theory of Everything. Such a belief crashes when you realize that “everything” includes subjective experience, love, God, the soul, the purpose of existence, meaning, and the behavior of consciousness–none of these things, grappled with by philosophy for centuries, can be understood through physics.

(For background, see the three-part post co-authored by the eminent physicist Henry Stapp that precisely describes why the universe behaves more like an idea than like anything purely physical. Part 1, part 2, part 3.

The danger here is that we, meaning all of us, will get backed into a corner. With philosophy dismissed as useless, and science promising to answer questions that it is actually incapable of answering, what happens to reality? It will remain a mystery smothered by pseudo answers, until one day more people wake up to realize that Plato, Aristotle, Kant, and so on were wrestling with the meaning of human existence, and that’s very, very important.

At the level of educated popular culture (i.e., people who watch science programming on PBs or the BBC), naïve realism, backed by casual atheism and unspoken scorn for metaphysics, is the order of the day. Appealing presenters like deGrasse Tyson and Brian Cox in Britain smile their way through issues that have challenged the world’s wisdom traditions, as if a dose of basic science mixed with good old-fashioned rationality will tell us everything we need to know.

But in the background there is an acknowledgment, not only that naïve realism is false but that nobody can agree on a viable alternative. A single example will show what’s at stake: Imagine that you are looking at a chair. Apparently one physical object–the brain–is taking in true knowledge about another physical object, the chair. But that’s impossible. Both objects are made up of atoms that aren’t objects at all, according to quantum theory, but a set of invisible waves whose position can be known only as a smear of probabilities. As the chair vanishes into the quantum vacuum, so does the brain.

This is a devastating challenge to naïve realism, the belief that what you see is real. In fact, what you see is an image of your brain’s perceptual mechanism. Such images are severely limited, since your brain operates in linear time and perceives actions as cause and effect. In the quantum domain, time isn’t linear and cause and effect dissolves. Since we have no scientific explanation for perceptual experience it is unscientific to assume that what we perceive is real. Gazing out at the world, you are actually gazing at your brain’s imaging capacity. It may turn out, as the ancient Vedic sages held, that what the brain reports is a kind of neurological dream that we all inhabit.

The comfy certainty of Cox and deGrasse Tyson, like the skeptical hectoring of Dawkins and Krauss, gives a false sense of “everything’s okay, we’ll have all the answers shortly.” In fact, reality has become more mysterious than ever, and yet there is a viable alternative to naïve realism after all, as we’ll explore in the next post. Here’s a preview: Metaphysics counts, and it counts a great deal.

(To be cont.)

Deepak Chopra, MD is the author of more than 80 books with twenty-two New York Times bestsellers including Super Brain, co-authored with Rudi Tanzi, PhD. He serves as the founder of The Chopra Foundation and co-founder of The Chopra Center for Wellbeing. Join him at The Chopra Foundation Sages and Scientists Symposium 2014.www.choprafoundation.org

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Mirror, mirror on the wall:

Well, I do know I stole this line from the famous Snow White, but I just had to. You, my dear mirror have become my biggest enemy. I can’t even look at you without feeling sad. It seems like every time I try to sit and embrace what I see in you, I just look away.

I see the flaws and the wrinkles in my soul and in my face. I look at how lifeless and dry my hair and my smile have become. I criticize every nook and cranny in my face and feel unhappy and less fulfilled.

Why is that, oh Mirror? Why do you force us to take a closer look at ourselves; not just our physical self but also our mental self? Why can’t I ever see something beautiful when I look in your eyes?

I wish as humans we were less hard on ourselves. I wish we could see the beauty that lies in years of struggles and finding ourselves. Why can’t I see myself as a person who isn’t perfect, but isn’t even looking to be perfect, someone who is always surrounded by the love of friends and family and someone who has been able to follow her passion no matter what life threw at her. Maybe I have a few wrinkles here and there, but it’s because I love to laugh out loud, even when I’m not supposed to and I can laugh at myself when I do something dumb. I have been told that I have kind eyes because I believe in compassion and kindness and helping others. Maybe I don’t look like the fashion models that I see in magazines or on TV, but (hey, Marilyn Monroe wore the same size jeans as I do!) I try my best to stay healthy and active. Maybe I don’t have long, flowy hair but I do have shoulder length hair unlike many of our loved ones who suffer from cancer and lose their hair.

As humans we need to be more accepting of ourselves. We accept the flaws in our parents, children, siblings, friends and partners and still love them, yet we are so hard on ourselves. We want to look perfect, have a perfect house, perfect job, perfect kids and a perfect life. Why do we run after unreal perfection? Why can’t we just feel beautiful in our own imperfect skin?

So starting today, let’s fall all over in love with you, my dear mirror. Show me the flaws that have made me so perfect, the lines on my face that enhance my beauty and the imperfection that are just me!

I’m coming to the end of what has turned out to be a three-week international tour of sport psychology. During my trips, I have worked with athletes and coaches from the U.S., Australia, Sweden, Switzerland, and Russia in Argentina, California, Oregon, and Switzerland. One question that has emerged during my travels involves the role of mental preparation in athletic development. But before I get to that question, let me provide some back story.

Whenever I speak to athletes and coaches, I ask them how important the mind is to sport success. With few exceptions, the response is that the mind is as or more important than the physical and technical side of sports. I am obviously biased given my work in sport psychology, so I won’t take a position on which I believe is more important. But I will say that the mind is an essential piece of the sport performance puzzle.

Consider the top-10 athletes, male or female, in any sport. Are they all gifted? Yes. Are they all in exceptional physical condition? Yes. Are they all technically sound? Yes. Do they all have the best equipment? Yes. So, on game day, what separates the best from those who are close, but can’t quite get to the top? All of these other factors being equal, it must be what goes on in their minds.

I will also add that, in the greater scheme of life, it wouldn’t be difficult to argue that the mental side of sport is vastly more important than physical fitness and technical prowess, at least for young athletes. Why? Because, realistically speaking, relatively few athletes will make to the top of their sport. But, all of the attitudes, mental skills, and life lessons that athletes learn from their sport, for example, motivation, confidence, focus, perseverance, resilience, the ability to handle pressure, the list goes on, will serve them well in all aspects of their lives when they enter adulthood.

Yet, when I ask these same athletes and coaches how much time and energy is devoted to mental preparation, they indicate not very much and certainly not as much as it deserves.

Herein lies my question: Why isn’t mental training treated the same as physical and technical training? To be sure, sport psychology does have a presence in most sports. Sport psychologists work with many professional athletes and teams, as well as Olympic and collegiate teams. And I and many other sport psychologists work with youth programs in many sports around the U.S. and throughout the world.

Yet, when compared to its physical and technical counterparts, sport psychology clearly has second-class status. While all sports programs and teams at every level of competition have full-time technical and conditioning coaches, few have full-time sport psychologists. Moreover, when sport psychology is offered to athletes, its presence is usually vastly different from the physical conditioning and technical regimens that athletes benefit from.

Let’s consider what makes physical conditioning and technical development effective and then compare it to the use of mental training in most sports settings today. Two key elements come to mind.

First, when athletes work out, they don’t just walk into the gym and do random strength or agility exercises. Instead, they engage in organized workouts based on a structured program that coaches believe will result in optimal physical preparedness for their sport. Similarly, when athletes go onto the field, court, course, or hill, they don’t just play around and hope to improve. Rather, they follow a technical progression based on their level of development. In sum, both the physical and technical components of athletic development have an organized program comprised of a framework and process that guides athletes systematically toward their goals.

Second, athletes wouldn’t get more fit if they worked out every few weeks. And their sport skills wouldn’t improve if they only practiced once a month. What enables athletes to get stronger and perform better is that they engage in physical and technical training consistently. Day in and day out, week in and week out, and month in and month out, athletes regularly put time and effort into their conditioning and technical work.

Using these two criteria — a structured program with a clearly defined progression and consistency — it’s pretty obvious that mental side of sport isn’t getting the attention it is due. Yes, many athletes get some exposure to sport psychology either through contact with sport psychologists or directly from their coaches. But, based on my own experience and feedback I have gotten from athletes, coaches, and parents around the country, this exposure, for almost all U.S. athletes, lacks both a structured program and any consistency that is essential for maximizing its value to their development.

So, is there an immediate answer to my original question: Why isn’t mental training treated the same as physical and technical training in sports? I have a few theories.

First, though sport psychology has been a field of study for more than 100 years, it has not been a traditional part of training for most sports. Old attitudes, habits, and methods die hard and new approaches to improving athletic performance are not easily accepted. Perhaps it will take a new generation of coaches who have been exposed to sport psychology as competitors and then in their coaches’ education for the tide to turn toward wider acceptance and use of sport psychology with athletes.

Second, the reality is that the best athletes in the world have done pretty darned well without formal mental training. They simply developed mental skills through their training and competitive experiences. In contrast, I don’t think there has ever been a successful athlete who didn’t have a rigorous conditioning or technical program (at least not in the last 40 years). As a result, the need for structured mental training may not seem great. I would suggest, however, that for every successful athlete who develops mental toughness on their own, there are one or more who are equally talented and motivated to become successful, but need help in developing their mental capabilities.

Third, psychology lacks the concreteness of conditioning and technical training. You can readily see the areas in need of improvement physically and technically, for example, amount of weight lifted in the gym or technical problems revealed on video. The mental side of sport is not so easily seen, quantified, or measured. As a result, it’s harder to gauge where athletes are in different aspects of their mental preparation, what areas they need to work on, and any improvement that is made mentally.

Fourth, sport psychology can suffer from “guilt by association” with the broader field of clinical psychology that still carries the stigma that only screwed-up people seek professional help. This perception, however inaccurate it is, can prevent athletes, coaches, and parents from seeing mental preparation for what it is, namely, an essential contributor to sports performance that must be developed proactively. This fear can also scare them away from getting sport psychology help when it is needed.

I predict that it will take some time before mental preparation receives the same attention as its physical and technical counterparts. But, as the stakes get higher and the competition gets tougher, from the development level to the world stage, athletes and coaches will look for every opportunity to gain the competitive edge that separates success from failure. As the limits of physical conditioning and technique are reached, it will be both natural and necessary to leverage all that sport psychology has to offer athletes. Only then will sport psychology, at long last, stand as equal partners with physical conditioning and technical training as athletes strive to take advantage of every opportunity to achieve success in pursuit of their goals. I look forward to that day.

Listen, I also love and teach the various jump back, step back, and float backs to chaturanga, plank, bhujangasana, and upward facing dog vinyasa. However, as with any packed class you can’t always catch the ones that are cringe-worthy, and even if you could you can’t always stop the train and get someone up to speed without losing the momentum of the rest of the practice. So for my fellow yoga teachers, I’ll give you five ways to avoid the nightmares that can wake you in a cold sweat with visions of students looking like turtles in cobra or car crash whiplash victims in urdhva mukha svanasana right after they collapse, flop, crash and burn in chaturanga. And for students, theses five tips will help empower your yoga no matter who’s leading the practice.

5) Lets admit it, in the typical 90-minute flow class that’s popular these days we do too damn many vinyasas preformed either by rote and/or without skill. As Charles Barkley would say, “It’s just turreble.”

4) By at least limiting what I call the “automatic vinyasa” to only the A & B Sun series we will potentially save the over use of the shoulders, elbows, wrists and low backs. Also as an added bonus, the student will conserve energy that can be used for the rest of the practice.

3) The skill needed in the transition from chaturanga to upward facing dog is underestimated and complex. It’s a potential meat grinder for the shoulders if done in a repetitious flow without the necessary skill and form.

2) All these uninformed and unskilled automatic vinyasas are a can of worms that has the potential to leave you all jacked up and a physical mess. And feeling and looking like that will ruin your social and dating life. What, with the common co-dog contraption that leaves your shoulders crammed up around your ears like hoop earrings and the lower vertebra jammed together like stack of quarters leaving you about a dollar short and a day late. How could it not?

1) I have the cure for this yoga travesty that’s invading mats at studios and homes everywhere. I’ve coined this cure “The Delayed Vinyasa.” A delayed vinyasa provides an opportunity for a profound moment within the practice. It’s a moment between postures where we step back into downward facing dog vs. automatically slipping into the habit of entering into an over used, tired, misaligned and intention forsaken vinyasa. To employ “The Delayed Vinyasa” is as simple as skipping the habitual vinyasa from uttanasana or virabhadrasana or any posture that is preceded by the instruction of “and now go through your vinyasa.” It allows you to find your way back to dog where you can take a breath or two and either make a decision to modify or skip the vinyasa. After that pause for the cause you may decide to attack the vinyasa with renewed energy, mental clarity and technique. This will keep you honest and in control thus keeping injury at arms length.

A delayed vinyasa will buy you extra time to feel the energetic effects of the previous posture and gives you a moment to restore the breath and plug into the power and joy of a well-performed injury free-practice.

Try it. You’ll like it.

Now this is pretty incredible.

President Barack Obama continued to display solidarity with the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community over the weekend by surprising everyone at the Gay Games 9, held this year in Cleveland, Ohio. The pro-LGBT president recorded a heartfelt video that welcomed athletes from around the world to the games, and reinforced his administration’s commitment to equality for the LGBT community.

“I know some of you have come from place where it requires courage — even defiance — to come out, sometimes at great personal risk,” Obama states in the above video. “You should know that the Untied States stands with you and for your human rights, just as our athletes stand with you on the fields at these games. After all, the very idea of America is that no matter who you are, what you look like, where you come from or who you love, you can make it if you try.”

The Gay Games 2014 is currently taking place now through August 16. For more info, head here.

Check out Obama’s opening welcome video above.

(h/t Instinct)