Small talk, or unsolicited advice?

A friend went to try climbing with family and friends the other day. Having to take care of their kids, watch their belongings, he did not get to climb, but instead took photos + film the others' climbing experiences + provide support. Upon hearing that I recently got into climbing, he unabashedly offered me advice on what I should do in order to improve my climbing. First, he said that I am already very good (having never seen me climb nor hear about my climbing experiences) and just need more practice and experience to "perfect it". If I want, I should take some classes on improving my techniques. Second, I should do probably do some auxiliary training exercises to strengthen my grip. Third, I can take some supplements after climbing sessions to help speed up recovery.

I must admit I had a strong reaction when I first heard his "advice", because it implies I don't know what I am doing. But now that I have organized and written out what he had said, I realize it's the most generic advice someone would say to a newbie starting any kind of new physical activity. So it was merely small talk.

Come to think of it, I would give the exact same advice if I had climbed maybe once or twice in my life (which is the case for him) and were asked to speculate what to do next to improve one's climbing. You can substitute the word "climbing" with "yoga", "strengthen your grip" with "lift some weights" or "pilates exercises" and so on.

Soooooo.... what are the problems with this seemingly accurate advice?

1) You are already "good" at climbing.

Define "good". I'm guessing he means I can move my hands and feet up a 15m wall on a beginner set-route. Most people in his social circles don't even want to try. That's kind of him, I guess, but it' feels very vapid. Climbing is one of the most intense physical activities I have done that I feel like I can improve with persistence. I have very strong feelings about this activity. I think something like badminton or soccer are "hard" for me because I don't have good coordination and people playing with me usually don't have the patience to train with me and wait for me to get good enough to have a enjoyable session with them. Climbing is something that one can work on at one's own pace, as long as one has the interest and patience to keep doing it.

2) You just need more practice and experience to perfect it get better.  

I'm not sure if an advice can get any more generic than that. I guess people say this to someone who claims an activity/goal is too hard and that he/she can never achieve it.

3) Take some classes to improve your techniques.

We are very lucky in this day and age to have the internet to provide a lot of written and video tutorials on how to do something. I already have a huge list of techniques that I know I need to work on. I think climbing mindfully provides great insights that differ from tips that someone tells you. Climbing, like yoga, shifts the center of gravity, ie. the hips, from directly above the 2 legs, to totally foreign places -- usually tilted sideways where your one foot is standing at a funny angle and you have no idea what to do with the other foot/leg. When this happens, the mind panics -- an alarm goes off in the head. At this point, you can have an instructor feed instructions to you (eg. "place your right foot on the foothold just below your right knee"), or you can just go climbing more often, wait for the "brain alarm" to subside (it usually does after you have been in a similar situation several times and/or when your muscles get stronger and can hold funny positions better), then you can look around the wall and try to figure out the next move yourself. I think a coach can be helpful when I get seriously stuck and frustrated at some point, but for now, I have a lot to learn from the climbing activity itself.

4) Do some auxiliary training exercises to strengthen my grip. 

Honestly, I actually bought some of those grip strengthening toys when I first started climbing. But I ended up not using them that often, and honestly, I'm not sure how much they help. I grip way, wayyyyyyyy harder on the wall when I am in fear of falling. Handholds on the wall feel totally different compared to these toys. A handhold can be gripped at different angles, with different fingers etc. In addition, my grip on the wall is always connected to my arm and/or body body weight. Again, the arms can be bent or be straight at different angles, and my body weight can be in so many different places in relation to my hands. At this point I don't feel the toys help at all with the climbing. Maybe when I become more experienced, the grip toys will come in handy when I have stronger hands (from climbing) and can train specifically while visualizing some specific moves. This is something one probably wouldn't know unless one has had some climbing experiences.

5)  Take some supplements after climbing sessions to help speed up recovery.

Guys with some body building background swear by this. My bf also feels like a protein shake helps him with recovery. I tried it a few times and I didn't feel a difference. My speculation is that some guys naturally recover faster + they really believe in the supplements, so there is an additional placebo effect. I naturally recover slower (coz I'm frigging old), plus I don't believe in supplements, so the effects are very minimal.

Basically, this is the type of generic advice you might blurt out if a reporter asks you "what is your advice for a beginner who wants to get better at climbing?" It's something to say so that one sounds like one knows something about the subject. Some people prefer to give superficial opinions than to admit they don't actually know much about this activity. It only works though if the other person also hasn't thought much about it. Conversations like these are deeply unsatisfactory to me, but my options are to unfriend these people (I might have very few friends left), or to take things less seriously. I need to accept the fact that my yearning to connect deeply with people will be satisfied very infrequently, and I should be mindful and grateful when those rare, precious moments in life happen.

Still don't have a good grasp of body awareness

There is this spot on my back on the right - not sure if it's the trapezius (trap) or the infraspinatus - that seemed to be bunched up after half a day of climbing. It was mostly aggravated when I moved my neck (so probably is the trap), but I felt like it didn't affect my climbing of easy routes so I kept going until my full body felt tired.

The next day when I woke up, my neck was sore (it always gets sore from climbing), and I felt like I probably shouldn't move my head too much because that knot really bugged me. I managed to get through the day being careful about how I moved. In the evening I decided to take an easy online yoga class. I could feel the presence of the knot in standing forward folds and downward facing dogs.

Towards the end of the class, when the teacher gets into a headstand, I thought I would give it a try, but for sure I wouldn't be able to make it with my sore neck and this knot in my trap. Turns out I could hold a sirsasana for like 20 seconds with a sore neck and the knot wasn't aggravated. 

Then the teacher went into urdhva dhanurasana (wheel pose) and I thought, this would for sure send my right trap into shooting pain. Nope. The pose felt strong. It didn't aggravate nor did it ease the tension in the knot.

This made me so confused. It's like an itch that can't be scratched. Neither climbing - arms pulling in different angles nor pushing - chaturanga, headstand, or wheel gets to this tension spot. Where the hell is this tension located? I tried some stretching... couldn't get to it.

I'm sure a good massage therapist would find it in no time and alleviate the blockage by pressing into it. Until then, it's a mystery tension that I'm hoping will go away on its own in a few days. I wish to understand my body better through yoga and climbing, but seems like these activities are not enough. Would be nice to take an in-depth anatomy/physiology class some day to get to know my body better.

Climbing as meditation

Recently I started doing indoor climbing regularly.  What can I say? The activity is  i-n-t-e-n-s-e. In the beginning I could only climb up ladder-like routes. Basically I needed at least 2 hands and one foot or at least 2 feet and one hand firmly on the wall before I dared to move the 4th limb. The fear of falling is strong. The brain feels like a car alarm is going off whenever a foot slips or when I'm letting the hands hold too much body weight. When I am too high up on the wall (doesn't matter that I'm secured by a rope and a belayer), then the fear of heights kicks in. So even when I have all both feet on nice footholds and both hands on nice handholds, I still have trouble breathing. Two conflicting thoughts occupy my brain:

1) I want to get to the top of the wall,

and

2) (Internal car alarm going off) This is too scary! My hands are not strong enough to hold me! I'm too heavy! I need to come down now!

So uh, why did I take up this sport? First of all, when I'm on the wall, these two thoughts are the only two thoughts on my mind. I don't worry about my struggles at work, what my colleagues think of me, what my mother said to me the other day, world politics, what to eat later... all the thoughts that normally occupy my brain. So my mind gets a break from the rumination.

Secondly, these two thoughts intrigue me. The second one is about survival instincts. But the first one is also some kind of instinct. I have been told I should pay attention to techniques: how to place my feet, where to shift my hips (center of gravity) in relationship to the feet, etc. Thinking about these will help me climb better. But the desire to get to the top of the wall is so strong that initially I ignored how I moved my hands, feet and hips. For the beginner level routes it is possible to get to the top with poor techniques, but for routes with higher difficulties one is forced to pay attention to the body positions in order to move up successfully.

Isn't this sport a huge metaphor for life? I have this raw instinct to move up the academic ladder that I ignored the techniques (social skills, writing skills, strategies, priorities). Now I am sort of stuck at half point. I ignore my breathing, and I have poor discipline of my thinking mind, so I am always stressed. I don't build good relationship with others, so I don't get the right help. I'm probably climbing up the wrong route.

What is the point of meditation? To discipline the mind. I think sitting or doing yoga are not enough to discipline my mind. Seems like I need to be in a position where I am (artificially) scared for my life in order to stop my mind from wandering all over the place. In the mean time, my muscles become strengthened as well. What a bonus!

I would like to comment on the fact that a good yoga sequence strengthens and stretches the body, while climbing works the body pretty unevenly. My neck hurts from looking up all the time belaying. My lower back (core muscles) get whooped after every session, and my shoulders (usually one more than the other) are super worked. So, I also try do a bit of gentle yoga to try to make my body feel better. Nothing as strong as a full Ashtanga primary series though.

I initially joined climbing because I liked to climb and hop on stuff (sofas, beds, window ledges etc.) when I was a kid. I wasn't planning to use climbing to examine how my mind works, but seems like climbing is all about the brain. Looking forward to sharing my new journey of brain exploration with you!

What Brexit and Trump taught me about a different thinking process

I guess I have been super naïve my whole life, but it took Donald Trump's win and Brexit for me to realize how differently some people view the world and how they make their decisions.

I recently came across a series of Youtube videos where Brexit supporters phone-in to a British national radio talk show to describe how they see Brexit will ultimately be good for the UK. The radio host, James O'Brien, asks them rather specific questions that they often cannot answer; for example: name a specific European Union law that they will be happy they won't need to comply with anymore after Brexit. Another example: name specific ways in which Brexit will benefit the caller's life.

The callers usually get stumped when asked about specifics, so they say, "That's not the point" and try to talk about another general aspect of Brexit that they feel would be good for UK, for example, they will save £350 million a week once they leave the EU. The host would refuse to let the caller move on to a different topic. He would ask the same question over and over again, until the caller blurts out something not nice, such as "I just don't like seeing people who look really different from me causing trouble on the streets!!" 

I listened to about 5-10 different conversations, where the host used the same strategy on each caller, always leaving the caller super frustrated. I'm surprised that they would keep phoning in to such a radio host who is known to hold the caller's feet to the fire. The point the host tries to illustrate is that people have very strong feelings about vague talking points they have been fed by propaganda ("we will take back control!"), but they don't have specific facts to back up their claims. For the callers, the facts are "not the point"; the point they want to make is that they feel weak and oppressed in the EU, and that they will "feel better" once Britain is out of the EU.

With Trump, I notice he would just paint a picture of how people kind of feel ("illegal immigrants are everywhere in the US, taking our jobs, committing crimes on US citizens"), and ignore the statistics that are presented to him. Climate change is inconvenient and costly to businesses, so he just says it's not really happening. People who like the same things as he does are totally happily with how he deals with facts (only believe the ones that support his worldview and ignore the rest).

I am the opposite of that. Normally when I hear something counter to my belief, I'm like "oh no! Maybe I am wrong", and start researching the topic like crazy (by that I just mean making several google searches).  Sometimes what I find strengthens my positions; other times I find I have to refine my opinions. Given that the internet contains false information and all sorts of opinions, this often means I have to go through copious amounts of information before I feel comfortable about making a more informed opinion. I understand this is a lot of work, but I used to think other people also feel this way even if they don't do extensive researches. Turns out some people just hold strong opinions and comfortably ignore evidence that don't support their opinions (or comfortable claiming a point when there is an absence of strong supporting evidence). People tend to trust those who appear the most confident, not the ones who are the most knowledgeable. No wonder I always appear weak to my mother, my family, colleagues, and bosses.

I finally understand why it is so difficult for me to interact with my mother! Whenever I present some facts that are counter to my mother's belief, she would just refuse to take what I present into account and change topic on me. Whatever the evidence presented are inconvenient to her, she would just say that's not important, or jump to something else. I used to be soooo frustrated. Now I know about 50% of the population in the world are just like her. I guess I am frustrated because all of my life she kept emphasizing the importance of school, but when I wish to share critical thinking skills with her she is not interested. I guess she just thinks good grades in school = smarter = more respect = more success in life. When it's clearly not the case she just tells me I have turned out much better than she expected already. Soooooo... she expected me to be a failure? 

It has been difficult for me to understand my relationship with my mother.  I guess from analyzing the radio conversations, some people have an opinion that they want to express; they have a story to support their claims, but the story is often not solid enough to be subjected to pokes and prods. Then they get angry that you weaken their house of cards, then the interaction turns sour. With my mother, what I care about are facts, but what my mother really wants is for me to go along with whatever it is she presents to me.

Knowing that about 50% of the world operates this way, I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to do. I know that appearing confident can get you very far in life. In Trump's case it made him the president of a very powerful country. The Brexit leave campaign sounded stronger than the Remain campaign, so it managed to sway more people. As someone who likes to let data and statistics tell the story, I really have to rethink how I should operate in this world.

To have compassion INSTEAD of empathy

I came across a very interesting podcast, where Sam Harris (neuroscientist/philosopher) interviews Paul Bloom about his latest research on empathy. Bloom defines empathy as the ability to put oneself in another person's shoes and understand what the other person is feeling in their situation. Bloom wrote an article called "Against Empathy" which understanding drew a lot of criticism.

I have always felt a lot of empathy for people (even to stories on the news), to the point that I feel so much pain for others' sad stories that I become just as depressed and not very helpful to anyone. Being a highly empathetic person actually makes me dislike being around too many people and makes me a difficult person to be around with. It drives me bananas how many supposedly good-hearted people can be generous and kind most of the time, but not feel bad about occasionally taking advantage of others, for the sake of say, defending their children or their loved ones. I walk around feeling confused and disgusted; meanwhile these people whom I consider to be selfish have moved on to service other people while I haven't done much to offer my compassion and service at all.

Putting it another way, I have been self-critical of how much I judge other people. But in fact, being overly judgemental of others really is being overly judgemental of myself. Since I am so strict with myself, I am incredulous how others could "get away" with the type of behaviours that I would not permit myself to do.

So what I really should do is to try to is to try to reduce my empathy for people's suffering, because it is more draining and paralysing rather than useful for me (or for the others). Instead I should learn to develop metta, or loving-kindness towards myself and towards other people. That is way more useful than empathy.

I am so happy to have stumbled upon this podcast. Society emphasizes the importance of empathy and I have not heard about empathy being discussed this way until now. Let's hope this will lead me to better directions out of misery and depression towards productivity and equanimity.

Is mindfulness making us ill?

I guess the title of the article is a click bait, where journalist Dawn Foster makes the piece controversial on purpose in order to get more readership. She started by describing her personal experience with meditation for the first time.  In the passage below, she described something I have also experienced myself:

"We’re told to close our eyes and think about our bodies in relation to the chair, the floor, the room: how each limb touches the arms, the back, the legs of the seat, while breathing slowly. But there’s one small catch: I can’t breathe. No matter how fast, slow, deep or shallow my breaths are, it feels as though my lungs are sealed. My instincts tell me to run, but I can’t move my arms or legs. I feel a rising panic and worry that I might pass out, my mind racing. Then we’re told to open our eyes and the feeling dissipates. I look around. No one else appears to have felt they were facing imminent death. What just happened?
For days afterwards, I feel on edge. I have a permanent tension headache and I jump at the slightest unexpected noise. The fact that something seemingly benign, positive and hugely popular had such a profound effect has taken me by surprise."

Instead of having a conversation with the meditation teacher about this experience, Foster went on to list a whole bunch more examples of negative cases that others have experienced, including a case as extreme as having to see a therapist for the next 15 years for psychotic depression. She ended the piece by saying that "there are alternative relaxation methods that can keep you grounded: reading, carving out more time to spend with friends, and simply knowing when to take a break from the frenetic pace of life."

Hmm.. I guess this is equivalent to trying out a "ballet for workout" class without anticipating how how intensity the class could be, getting a foot cramp from all the toe pointing, goes on to interview a bunch of other beginners whose experiences of the class also deviated from their expectations, and then concluding that there are alternative methods of exercises that could provide a good workout. Except reading, spending time with friends etc. do not quite achieve the same results as meditation. I suppose she was strictly talking about methods of relaxation.

The cases where people needed to go see a therapist... my guess is that they needed to see a therapist to begin with, but they had hoped that a session of a mass meditation class would magically make their inner problems go away. I would say meditation exposed the existing problems rather than causing them. How sad would it be, if the very simple act of concentrating on observing your breathing would make you depressed and go crazy?

As for the anxiety experienced from the first sessions, well, common sense should tell us that we shouldn't be able to hurt ourselves simply by sitting and having our eyes closed. This restlessness can be experienced when we wait too long for the traffic light, when airplane delay happens and we really need to get to our destination, and other situations in our life when our mind cannot anticipate what's going to happen next, or when our mind feels like the situation is not under its control. Hopefully the teacher will be understanding enough to let the student get up or at least shift positions.

So what the journalist main legitimate concern is that the meditation teacher isn't "qualified" enough to offer the class. Perhaps before one signs up for a meditation class, one should be given a short description of what mindfulness meditation involves, what mindfulness meditation is and isn't, and one should answer a medical questionnaire and sign a waiver just like the kind of forms they give out before you sign up for a gym. Um, I guess for legal reasons meditation teachers should have such a procedure to protect themselves from people's idiocy.

I would say that the journalist underestimated how powerful mindfulness meditation practice could be, and how erratic our minds are (which is precisely why meditation was invented in the first place, to deal with all our anxiety).

Another point is that if a company is not confident that it offers a great work environment for its workers, it might not be doing itself good by offering mindfulness class to its employees. One byproduct that could happen is that the employees may realize during meditation practice that they actually hate this job and need to make major changes to their lives. On the bright side good companies may use this to weed out employees that are not a good fit with this company. The ones who are left have hopefully decided that they want to grow at this company and can use the meditation classes to help clear their minds, solve their personal relationship issues, and be more focused at work.

I guess I wouldn't say that meditation is for everyone, since I have noticed some people reeeeeeally dislike the idea of examining their inner fears, shame, past traumas, and pent up grudges. They would prefer to stay in control by doing a lot of activities, taking food and other substances, using outer senses in order to suppress the unwanted thoughts and feelings that arise out of nowhere. I personally would prefer to look at my daemons in the eye and become aware of the list of issues that haunt me, figuring out which of my poor behaviours are coping mechanisms and which behaviours come from my authentic being. I would venture to guess that for those who don't want to examine their authentic selves, they are quite comfortable with their coping mechanisms and do not want to change their ways. To each their own, I say.

There's no internal vs external... It's all one consciousness

Recently I have been going through Sam Harris's videos. He's an extremely smart guy, who is trained in neuroscience and philosophy, communicates with brilliant logical reasoning, and has quite strong opinions about religion. He also happens to have spent quite a bit of time learning meditation and western religions/philosophy with spiritual teachers in Asia. I quite like how he explains meditation.

I used to divide the world into external (outside of the body) and internal (inside of the body). One thing that Harris discussed in his guided meditation is that whether our eyelids are open or closed, it's one consciousness. There is no inside or outside. We experience the world with one consciousness. I have never thought about it this way before.

So my tendency is to latch on to ruminating thoughts... there are a few points that I repeat over and over again in my head because they are not resolved. I want my life to be a certain way (X), but I have problems with A, B, C, D, E, F, G.... etc. Since no one is interested in hearing about my rants, I internalize my complaints but go through these same few streams of thoughts over and over again in my head, strengthening those pathways while ignoring what's going on around me and diminishing my more pleasant memories.

My current strategy is to stare at my surroundings with greater intent whenever I find myself ruminating. Since I have trouble focusing on one thing, I switch my focus between visual cues, hearing, and breathing, in order to try to break my repetitive thoughts. It's been challenging but at least it's a start.

The goal is to try to shift my attention to the present, to the more neural and positive things happening in my life, rather than the broken record of negative thoughts. This will be my practice for the year of 2016.