Not all birds can sing. The passerines, or songbirds, comprise about half of the world’s 10,000 avian species. They are characterized by their special muscular voice box, the syrinx, which consists of one set of vocal cords located at the top of each lung. Each set of vocal cords is controlled separately, which allows birds to sing two different notes at the same time. Surprisingly, birds can also sing with their beaks closed or while they are eating.... Keep reading
Showing posts with label Education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Education. Show all posts
Birdsong: It's More Than Just Music To Your Ears
By Grrl Scientist
Not all birds can sing. The passerines, or songbirds, comprise about half of the world’s 10,000 avian species. They are characterized by their special muscular voice box, the syrinx, which consists of one set of vocal cords located at the top of each lung. Each set of vocal cords is controlled separately, which allows birds to sing two different notes at the same time. Surprisingly, birds can also sing with their beaks closed or while they are eating.... Keep reading
Not all birds can sing. The passerines, or songbirds, comprise about half of the world’s 10,000 avian species. They are characterized by their special muscular voice box, the syrinx, which consists of one set of vocal cords located at the top of each lung. Each set of vocal cords is controlled separately, which allows birds to sing two different notes at the same time. Surprisingly, birds can also sing with their beaks closed or while they are eating.... Keep reading
Why Children Love Dirt
By Monique Rodriquez
It is a question that many parents have asked themselves: "Why does my
child love playing with dirt?" One plain and simple answer may be:
children love the way dirt smells and feels. Another down to earth
answer could be: children play with dirt because as an element very
close to the composition of their very own bodies, they are
instinctively attracted to it......
Pricks and Pain
By White Feather
The neural synapses in our noggins that register sexual pleasure also register pain. There is no difference in the initial registration. It's the same thing. Subsequent noggin activity then measures the impulses and gauges them as to how they fit into the spectrum, or octave, of vibrations. The noggin then goes through its files to see what matches up with the particular vibration and then responds accordingly. The files we have for any level of vibration generally are a history, or conditioning, of how we have reacted to that particular vibration in the past. That conditioning is very much tied into our belief system. We can say that beliefs are thoughts that have been repeated so many times that they become automatic responses. They are like a file that immediately pops up in reaction to certain vibratory impulses registered by the noggin.
So if we believe that if someone hits us with a hammer that we will feel intense pain then we will experience intense pain. If we believe that if someone hits us with a hammer that we will get sexually aroused then we will get sexually aroused.
I recently read an article about hot chile peppers that was written by someone who abhors hot chile peppers and hates any food that is "hot." In the article, they said that our tongue has taste receptors and it has pain receptors. "Normal" food is sensed and tasted by those taste receptors but the hotness of hot chile peppers is registered by the pain receptors. The person who wrote the article said that anytime he ate anything that was "hot" that it "hurt." The pain receptors in our mouth were registering pain, not flavor. So therefore anyone who likes the hotness of hot chile peppers likes pain and is a masochist.
Well! You can just call me a masochist then because I love hot chile peppers. But the way I see it, when we eat food that food has vibrations that run the full length of food vibrations. Sweet foods vibrate at a certain level, salty food vibrates at a certain level, and so forth. Likewise, spicy hot food also vibrates at a certain level. The sensors on our tongue are equipped to register the full spectrum of vibrations. The sensors sense but it is the noggin and its conditioning that classifies and responds to the vibrations being sensed. Most people are conditioned to partake of only a narrow part of the overall spectrum of food vibrations. Hot chile peppers vibrate at the far end of the spectrum while most people are conditioned to stay within a narrow band in the middle of the entire spectrum. So anything outside of their conditioned comfort zone of vibrations is seen as "bad" or as a threat or as pain, which is seen as "bad." So what this article writer was classifying as pain was something that was simply outside his conditioned comfort zone of vibrations. What to him was pain, to me is an orgasmic culinary experience.
It all depends on how one looks at things and that is usually determined by how one is conditioned to look at things.
While we are on the subject of noggins I want to relate something I learned recently. There has been a lot of scientific breakthroughs in recent years concerning noggin science. One particular research study was attempting to figure how long it took for a nerve impulse to travel from a finger that had been pricked to the noggin and then how long the noggin took to assimilate the impulse and react. It was believed that as soon as a finger was pricked a nerve impulse immediately traveled from the finger to the brain where it was registered and then another nerve impulse would shoot back down to the finger where it registered as pain. This happens so quickly that it seems instantaneous.
Well, the researchers wanted to find out exactly how quickly this happens. To their surprise they learned that the sequence of events is not what we thought. They discovered that the noggin actually registered the finger prick BEFORE it happened and it sent the nerve impulse down to the finger just in time to meet the actual pricking.
Isn't that interesting? Does it mean that we are all psychic? Is it indicative of the possibility that we all create our realities? By the way, the test subjects were blindfolded and had no way of knowing when the prick was coming. Could this be an important discovery with mind-blowing consequences?
I guess it all depends on how you look at it.
© Copyright by White Feather. All Rights Reserved.
P. S. By the way, chile (with an e at the end) refers to a vegetable known as a chile pepper. Chili (with an i at the end) refers to a tomato-based meat stew (such as that found on a chili dog). This has been the proper usage of the two words for many, many years but chili (with an i at the end) has been incorrectly used so much in recent years that the newest dictionaries have started to accept it as a spelling attached to the chile pepper vegetable in addition to the meat stew. I may be silly but I am a hot chile pepper afficionado and I cling tenaciously to the older correct spelling usages.
The neural synapses in our noggins that register sexual pleasure also register pain. There is no difference in the initial registration. It's the same thing. Subsequent noggin activity then measures the impulses and gauges them as to how they fit into the spectrum, or octave, of vibrations. The noggin then goes through its files to see what matches up with the particular vibration and then responds accordingly. The files we have for any level of vibration generally are a history, or conditioning, of how we have reacted to that particular vibration in the past. That conditioning is very much tied into our belief system. We can say that beliefs are thoughts that have been repeated so many times that they become automatic responses. They are like a file that immediately pops up in reaction to certain vibratory impulses registered by the noggin.
So if we believe that if someone hits us with a hammer that we will feel intense pain then we will experience intense pain. If we believe that if someone hits us with a hammer that we will get sexually aroused then we will get sexually aroused.
I recently read an article about hot chile peppers that was written by someone who abhors hot chile peppers and hates any food that is "hot." In the article, they said that our tongue has taste receptors and it has pain receptors. "Normal" food is sensed and tasted by those taste receptors but the hotness of hot chile peppers is registered by the pain receptors. The person who wrote the article said that anytime he ate anything that was "hot" that it "hurt." The pain receptors in our mouth were registering pain, not flavor. So therefore anyone who likes the hotness of hot chile peppers likes pain and is a masochist.
Well! You can just call me a masochist then because I love hot chile peppers. But the way I see it, when we eat food that food has vibrations that run the full length of food vibrations. Sweet foods vibrate at a certain level, salty food vibrates at a certain level, and so forth. Likewise, spicy hot food also vibrates at a certain level. The sensors on our tongue are equipped to register the full spectrum of vibrations. The sensors sense but it is the noggin and its conditioning that classifies and responds to the vibrations being sensed. Most people are conditioned to partake of only a narrow part of the overall spectrum of food vibrations. Hot chile peppers vibrate at the far end of the spectrum while most people are conditioned to stay within a narrow band in the middle of the entire spectrum. So anything outside of their conditioned comfort zone of vibrations is seen as "bad" or as a threat or as pain, which is seen as "bad." So what this article writer was classifying as pain was something that was simply outside his conditioned comfort zone of vibrations. What to him was pain, to me is an orgasmic culinary experience.
It all depends on how one looks at things and that is usually determined by how one is conditioned to look at things.
While we are on the subject of noggins I want to relate something I learned recently. There has been a lot of scientific breakthroughs in recent years concerning noggin science. One particular research study was attempting to figure how long it took for a nerve impulse to travel from a finger that had been pricked to the noggin and then how long the noggin took to assimilate the impulse and react. It was believed that as soon as a finger was pricked a nerve impulse immediately traveled from the finger to the brain where it was registered and then another nerve impulse would shoot back down to the finger where it registered as pain. This happens so quickly that it seems instantaneous.
Well, the researchers wanted to find out exactly how quickly this happens. To their surprise they learned that the sequence of events is not what we thought. They discovered that the noggin actually registered the finger prick BEFORE it happened and it sent the nerve impulse down to the finger just in time to meet the actual pricking.
Isn't that interesting? Does it mean that we are all psychic? Is it indicative of the possibility that we all create our realities? By the way, the test subjects were blindfolded and had no way of knowing when the prick was coming. Could this be an important discovery with mind-blowing consequences?
I guess it all depends on how you look at it.
© Copyright by White Feather. All Rights Reserved.
P. S. By the way, chile (with an e at the end) refers to a vegetable known as a chile pepper. Chili (with an i at the end) refers to a tomato-based meat stew (such as that found on a chili dog). This has been the proper usage of the two words for many, many years but chili (with an i at the end) has been incorrectly used so much in recent years that the newest dictionaries have started to accept it as a spelling attached to the chile pepper vegetable in addition to the meat stew. I may be silly but I am a hot chile pepper afficionado and I cling tenaciously to the older correct spelling usages.
What To Do When Your Partner Lacks Empathy
By Margaret Paul, Ph.D.
Were you born with the ability to feel others' feelings? I was, and one of the issues that I had to face was that not everyone is empathic.
This was very confusing to me as a child. In school, I often saw children bullying and making fun of another child. The more the child cried, the more fun they made of him or her. It broke my heart and I would often try to come to the child's rescue. I was deeply perplexed at how these bullying children could stand feeling the pain of the child or the animal they were hurting. Couldn't they feel the pain?
I was perplexed too with my parents, who obviously couldn't feel my pain. How was that possible? Why could I feel their pain and they couldn't feel mine? I had the same experience in my marriage and it took me many more years to understand that some people either lack the ability to feel empathy, or they shut it down so early in their lives that they have no access to it.
I tend to believe that everyone is capable of empathy, but I don't know this for sure. What I do know is that many people have learned to shut down their feelings to such an extent that they can't feel even their own feelings - and they certainly can't feel others' feelings.
It's disconcerting to discover that your partner lacks empathy. This is the situation that Georgia found herself in:
"I was recently involved with a narcissistic man who was completely unable to empathize/care or even think about my feelings and needs. Sometimes I would have to explain how his behavior was affecting me and he would eventually acknowledge he could see how I might feel, but never changed the behavior. Can someone be taught empathy or if they don't have that ability, they never will?"
Being the optimist that I am, I think it's possible for people to learn empathy, but they would have to go through an in-depth therapeutic process of reconnecting with their own feelings first, and learning to love themselves. In my experience, narcissistic people often do not think they have a problem - It's always the other person who has the problem. Because they believe they are fine and others are "messed up," they are rarely motivated to do the inner work necessary to open to their feelings and to others' feelings. They likely shut down their feelings when they were very young and they might not realize that they lack empathy.
If you are with a partner who is narcissistic and lacks empathy, don't count on this changing. You need to either accept that this person will likely never truly care about your feelings and the effect their behavior has on you, or you need to leave. Trying to change a person who currently lacks the ability to feel empathy is a waste of time and energy.
Sometimes, a highly sensitive person who shut down their feelings early in life may suddenly find themselves feeling empathy, but I've not seen this occur very often, so it's not something to count on.
One of the hardest things to deal with in a relationship is when you can see the beautiful essence of your partner, but your partner can't see his or her own essence - or yours. Many people go into relationships because they fall in love with the essence of a person, only to find out that the person's narcissistic wounded self is in charge most of the time. I've often said that we need to be able to acknowledge and tolerate a person's wounded self - putting it into perspective - in order to create a loving relationship with them. If you are attracted to someone who has narcissistic tendencies, but are unable to put their narcissism and lack of empathy into a healthy perspective,, then that person isn't for you - no matter how much you love their essence. Being in a relationship with a narcissist is never easy, and it's especially difficult for someone with empathic tendencies.
Were you born with the ability to feel others' feelings? I was, and one of the issues that I had to face was that not everyone is empathic.
This was very confusing to me as a child. In school, I often saw children bullying and making fun of another child. The more the child cried, the more fun they made of him or her. It broke my heart and I would often try to come to the child's rescue. I was deeply perplexed at how these bullying children could stand feeling the pain of the child or the animal they were hurting. Couldn't they feel the pain?
I was perplexed too with my parents, who obviously couldn't feel my pain. How was that possible? Why could I feel their pain and they couldn't feel mine? I had the same experience in my marriage and it took me many more years to understand that some people either lack the ability to feel empathy, or they shut it down so early in their lives that they have no access to it.
I tend to believe that everyone is capable of empathy, but I don't know this for sure. What I do know is that many people have learned to shut down their feelings to such an extent that they can't feel even their own feelings - and they certainly can't feel others' feelings.
It's disconcerting to discover that your partner lacks empathy. This is the situation that Georgia found herself in:
"I was recently involved with a narcissistic man who was completely unable to empathize/care or even think about my feelings and needs. Sometimes I would have to explain how his behavior was affecting me and he would eventually acknowledge he could see how I might feel, but never changed the behavior. Can someone be taught empathy or if they don't have that ability, they never will?"
Being the optimist that I am, I think it's possible for people to learn empathy, but they would have to go through an in-depth therapeutic process of reconnecting with their own feelings first, and learning to love themselves. In my experience, narcissistic people often do not think they have a problem - It's always the other person who has the problem. Because they believe they are fine and others are "messed up," they are rarely motivated to do the inner work necessary to open to their feelings and to others' feelings. They likely shut down their feelings when they were very young and they might not realize that they lack empathy.
If you are with a partner who is narcissistic and lacks empathy, don't count on this changing. You need to either accept that this person will likely never truly care about your feelings and the effect their behavior has on you, or you need to leave. Trying to change a person who currently lacks the ability to feel empathy is a waste of time and energy.
Sometimes, a highly sensitive person who shut down their feelings early in life may suddenly find themselves feeling empathy, but I've not seen this occur very often, so it's not something to count on.
One of the hardest things to deal with in a relationship is when you can see the beautiful essence of your partner, but your partner can't see his or her own essence - or yours. Many people go into relationships because they fall in love with the essence of a person, only to find out that the person's narcissistic wounded self is in charge most of the time. I've often said that we need to be able to acknowledge and tolerate a person's wounded self - putting it into perspective - in order to create a loving relationship with them. If you are attracted to someone who has narcissistic tendencies, but are unable to put their narcissism and lack of empathy into a healthy perspective,, then that person isn't for you - no matter how much you love their essence. Being in a relationship with a narcissist is never easy, and it's especially difficult for someone with empathic tendencies.
* * * * *
Margaret Paul, Ph.D. is the best-selling author and co-author of
eight books, including "Do I Have To Give Up Me To Be Loved By You?" and
"Healing Your Aloneness." She is the co-creator of the powerful Inner
Bonding® healing process. Learn Inner Bonding now! Visit her web site
for a FREE Inner Bonding course: http://www.innerbonding.com or email her at margaret@innerbonding.com. Phone sessions available.
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