Great Storytelling Network Newsletter – 8 October 2014

This edition of the newsletter has a ‘relaxed’ feel to it: Rohi shares a story about meditation, I explain what I learnt about the vagus nerve and Charles tells about what can happen the harder one tries. I hope you enjoy all our stories.

Happy storytelling.

Aneeta Sundararaj

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If we look at how people process information, perhaps from an audience member’s perspective there really isn’t all that much difference between a read story and a heard story. (heresy in the storytelling world because we don’t read stories to audiences, we tell them, but perhaps because it’s considered heresy it deserves a closer look) Everything I say in this article about readers could be true about a story listener too….

What are the different ways a child (or even an adult) reads?
•You have your visual readers, who read quickly, processing sentences and even paragraphs at a time. The whole chapter is a painting for them, vivid and complete before their eyes, because as their eyes absorb the words on the page, they create the painting in their mind of the possible intentions of the words.
•You have the auditory readers, who perhaps move their lips as they read. They are repeating the words they are reading in that echo chamber in their head. They create this beautiful music in their heads with the words on the page. They love beautiful sounding sentences, and often want to read one out loud or read parts to other folks.
•You have your tactile readers, who move their fingers across the page as they read. (or even move their bodies as they read). They are touching each sentence, establishing intimate contact with every word their eyes and fingers lead them over. They dance with the words and the story, and they will perspire and swoon and even tingle with the story action.. …

To read more, please click here.

The Ebola virus disease hit West African countries Aug/Sept 2014 ravaging the health infrastructure of many nations in this sub-region, causing scare, death, pain, and anguish for citizens. The early symptoms are: fever, muscle pains, and cramps. The secondary are; vomiting, frequent stooling, and diarrhoea, bleeding from multiple parts of the body. It is highly contagious and kills within three weeks of infection. There is no known cure. Victims are quickly quarantined to check the spread.

The fever has come and probably gone in Nigeria, but the fear of the virus it still visible among 170 million citizens of the largest African economy. It has sharply increased the awareness of diseases among the people, personal hygiene, changed the way the people live and work, and kept everyone on alert for infectious diseases. It even forced government to extend the re-opening of schools for the 2014/2015 academic session. …

To read more, please click here.

What I like to do best is to meditate.
How do I do it, you ask?
I sit in a comfortable upright posture, close my eyes and focus all my attention on my breath coming in and going out.
I do this for a few minutes and sometimes for longer periods.
This sounds easy to do but it’s not. It’s simple but not easy.
Because when I meditate, I come face to face with the monkey in my mind.
And the monkey in my mind likes to chatter. A lot. All the time.
Before I know it, I am caught in its chatter.

To read more please click here.

… From what I can gather, transcendental meditation teaches you to focus on a mantra. You have to still your mind and recite a mantra over and over again. Your thoughts are bound to interrupt this recitation, but when you’re aware of your thoughts, let them go and return to focusing on the mantra. You can choose whatever mantra you please from Om to the Gayathri mantra. You’re even free to recite the Lord’s Prayer if you wish. There are no strictures and no one’s going to scold you. There is no right or wrong.

As I said, during the retreat, what we did was to focus, instead, on the breath. Like most breathing techniques, mindful breathing starts with correct posture. You must be comfortable and, ideally, you should keep your spine erect. Close your eyes and focus on your breath. Here’s where it gets interesting. What you aim for is to make the length of your exhalation twice as long as the length of your inhalation. For example, when you inhale, mentally count to four. As you exhale, mentally count to eight. One thing I did notice was that this was harder to do after a meal. I couldn’t hold for eight counts and managed only six when exhaling. Have you experienced this? Any explanations?

For years, the people I know who’ve been meditating daily have enjoyed good health. They’re in their eighties and nineties, alert and in good health. So, I’ve always known about the enormous benefits of meditation. The new discovery I made during the retreat was about the existence of the vagus nerve and it’s relationship with meditation.

To read more, please click here.

I think it’s a German saying that goes something like “the harder you try, the behinder you get.” What a saying! I’d like to examine what might lie behind its meaning. Most of us have been taught to “try hard” in order to achieve and get ahead in this world. In and of itself, there’s certainly nothing wrong with that philosophy and, in most cases, it pays dividends. However, have you ever had the feeling that you may be trying too hard? Others may say something to you like “just relax and let it happen. You’re trying too hard.” You mean what that old saying brings is not as true as it was meant to be?

Well, no, there’s really nothing wrong with the saying. The problem lies with our not realizing that there comes a point when our “trying hard” doesn’t need to continue. We have reached a point where the accomplishments that have resulted through our concentrated efforts are now quite well-engrained within us to the point that our need to continue to try so hard is no longer necessary. In other words, our conscious efforts at doing something have now become a part of our unconscious efforts which don’t require the effort that we needed to expend in the beginning stages of our attempts at mastering a particular technique. Our unconscious minds can now take over in that we now have a “feel” for what it is that we need to accomplish that doesn’t require the forethought that was required early on. …

To read more, please click here.

Bill Keeth concludes his happy memories of Mount Carmel Infants’ & Boys’ Schools, Manchester, in the late-1940s & early- ’50s

1953 There is no tuck shop in school as such. So everybody, or so it seems, goes over the wall at playtime to stock up on Ha’penny Chews, Banana Splits, Rainbow Crystals, Chocstix, Black Jacks, Licquorice Sticks and other confections at Mr Mac’s toffee shop on James Street, where Mr Mac (“Macdonald”, he once confided to me in his retirement), bespectacled, flat cap aslant, incessantly chewing on the remnant of some anonymous sweetmeat, takes slabs of Highland Toffee, chocolate, treacle (in season), and breaks them with a toffee hammer.

More seasoned wall-hoppers, bored with this perennial performance, take themselves off to the Little Woman’s shop beyond the off-licence where they splash out on Pendeleton’s Twicers.

1954 Mickey Mulligan, the new headteacher, introduces Music to the Curriculum. This innovation involves your class (Standard 5) being taken out to the Prefabs (to Standard 8) on a Friday afternoon to listen to Mickey Mulligan’s record collection – all two of them, as I recall: ‘Cool Water’ by Frankie Laine and the Oberkirchen Children’s Choir, singing ‘The Happy Wanderer’…..

To read more, please click here.

*** nothing to report *** However … one reader sent some interesting links and here they are:
Hi Aneeta,

Found this many weeks ago. Thought you may be interested.

Direct brain-to-brain communication demonstrated in human subjects

Same news here in Times of India too.

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