simra.net Doing stuff since 1973

http://www.wildmind.org/blogs/news/meditation-helps-kids-with-adhd

A story that I was inclined to take with a grain of salt- until a google search yielded a lot more info. Regular meditation apparently reduces the effects of ADHD, even to the point that kids no longer need their Ritalin.

I have way too many things to be grateful for tonight, but here's a quick rundown.

In the category of four things I got right today:

• Get down with some metta action, yo! I used my bus ride home from work to take some deep breaths and exercise my good-will neurons. The ride through Stanley Park helped keep it serene. I've found that although there are rarely any immediate effects, over the next 24 hours I usually feel a lot happier and more relaxed. So far so good...
• Get rid of worry. I've had a few things piling up at work and they kept buzzing in and out of my head on my way home. I could feel the creeping anxiety that I would forget them tomorrow, so as soon as I got home I plugged off a TODO email to myself and let it go. Worries resolved.
• Break the rules. Our building is horseshoe shaped with a little courtyard in the middle. Maya's befriended some of the kids in the building and they've been playing ball-tag. I joined them after dinner tonight to blow off some extra steam, and soon we had a small crowd of kids and dads making a lot of noise. Ordinarily, I'd feel pretty self-conscious in that situation, and I'd definitely be beside myself that someone would come out and shut us up. Tonight, though, I said "Bring it on!" and we had a blast until a neighbour obliged and came out to give us a piece of his mind. Good on him, too, for confronting us- we politely agreed that it was time to mellow out and the game petered out a few minutes later.
• Express some gratitude. Right here, right now. :-)

... and in the category of good listening...

• The fine sounds of Jesca Hoop, my latest find on Critical Metrics. Check out Intelligentactile 101.

Every so often you find a place that breathes a big sigh of relief into your over-extended adrenal system. Last summer we were in the midst of a lot of upheaval- I took a job at Microsoft that had me commuting between Vancouver and Redmond on a weekly basis. Our stress levels were high, and had been high for a good 24 months while we suffered through my academic job hunt. In the midst of all this, one weekend we decided to go blueberry picking. We googled an organic blueberry farm in Maple Ridge, about an hour's drive from UBC, and we made the trip out. We discovered a wonderful little family operated farm called Formosa and enjoyed a day of picking. When we finished we had a bundle of fresh hand-picked blueboos and, more importantly, we'd found a nice way to unwind. We felt relaxed and happy and we bought Maya a disposable camera and she took some great pics of the day.

Today we made the trip again. Circumstances are a lot better for us this time around, but we were still looking forward to a nice relaxing day. After the long drive with (now two) kids in the back we arrived at the farm just as the skies opened up and dropped a big storm. We took refuge under the canopy at the entrance until things calmed down, and when Maya and I had to run back to the car for a moment we had a chance to catch a few moments of hail. It was exciting for her and refreshing for me to walk in the rain- despite all of Vancouver's rain, big storms are actually quite rare out at UBC.

I discovered today that there's something really special about blueberry picking after a storm. Walking in the wet grass in sandals is so refreshing. Reaching and picking a handful of plump berries is also refreshing. But there is nothing quite like the sensation of standing in the wet grass, reaching out for a big handful of berries, and feeling the cool rainwater enveloping the berries drip into your hands. Then, after that moment you gently tug, or roll the berries together and all the ripe ones drop off their stems and into the bucket. Repeat like so, over and over again, reach, feel the cool water on your hand, feel the resistance of perfectly ripened berries in you hand and then let them drop. It was a kind of walking meditation that felt so good and so right. We were so lucky to have this experience and especially so because the sky remained mostly overcast, and the temperature was perfect, so we didn't get baked by the sun.

The story would end there were it not for some details that I've omitted. At some time over the winter, Translink, whose purpose is to manage transportation and roads in the greater Vancouver area (part of which is to promote public transit and sustainable transit solutions) and the Agricultural Land Reserve, whose purpose is to protect the belt of agricultural land in the Fraser Valley that services the needs of Vancouver and beyond, decided that a major road expansion was necessary in Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows, and that this expansion would have to cut the Formosa farm in two. Formosa is a labour of love for its owners, Ting Wu and Risa Lin, and they fought hard for a revision to the expansion plans, rallying community and political support.

Unfortunately, they lost their battle (you can read more about the illusion of community consultation in this open letter by NDP MLA Corky Evans), and this summer we arrived to see that half the field where Maya had taken so many of her wonderful first pictures was now fenced off, bulldozed and graded for a new road, not more than twenty feet from what remains of the blueberry field.

Let's see, where have we seen this kind of shit before? I took at swipe at NIMBY's the other day in my post about the Lion's Gate Bridge, but I find it incredibly ironic that, whereas most of the cases the Agricultural Land Reserve hears each year are from farmers who want to develop their land, here we have farmers who desperately want to preserve the viability and utility of their land, and the ALR gives them the cold shoulder in order that SUV-driving commuters out in the furthest reaches of the city should have an easier trip. Speaking personally, I thought we had escaped suburban Toronto to get away from this kind of crap. The Fraser Valley is a small place, but it is still largely undeveloped. Vancouver today is not much different from the Toronto of the mid-eighties, when local Mayors were just cluing in to in the payola that could be got out of the big developers, who leveled hundreds of thousands of acres of cropland to build vast homogeneous subdivisions, with two commuting vehicles in each driveway, all contributing to Toronto's spiraling air quality and traffic nightmares. With new, expanded roads come new tracts of big box stores, which are already infesting Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows like the plague. It is so sad to see history repeating itself.

And now, today, to add insult to injury, the Maple Ridge news reports that yet another road will bisect a corner of Formosa, effectively putting the hobbled horse out if its misery. Our hearts go out to Ting and Risa- they've built such a beautiful property that is the focal point for a lovely impromptu community, and a handful of worthless bureaucrats are not willing to even discuss their proposals for alternate routing. Ting and Risa have reiterated over and over that this is not a question of compensation, but a question of principle.

If there is one word that I hope will resonate with voters in the Vancouver area in the next provincial elections, it is Formosa. Our provincial government agencies are not protecting their mandates and are effectively handing viable, essential, cropland over to developers who do not give one whit about sustainability or even community. Indeed we have seen all of this before, and it can get mighty ugly.

Alas, I've had a lot less time on my hands this week. Here's a raw dose of things I'd say more about if I had some time:

http://petriproject.com/2007/08/09/get-your-head-in-the-game-kid/
Parents hiring sports psychologists to help their seven-year-olds excel. I think Noam Chomsky once had something to say about sports.

http://www.diylife.com/2007/08/10/legos-75th-anniversary-23-diy-lego-ide...
Ideas for celebrating Lego's 75 anniversary.

http://www.buddhistchannel.tv/index.php?id=7,4643,0,0,1,0
Meditation as a treatment for alcoholism.

http://newdharmabums.blogspot.com/
Dharma Bums. A new subscription in my feedreader.

http://community.livejournal.com/buddhists/2169684.html
Good vs Bad Buddhism. This week I'm a baaad Bhikku.

http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/10/2148253&from=rss
Long-time slashdotters/linux geeks will remember the SCO case. The last nail has finally been driven into the coffin.

http://pubs.acs.org/cen/news/85/i32/8532notw2.html
Death by bottled water. Increasing evidence of the toxicity of bisphenol-A.
Also: Plastic Bags are Killing Us.

http://smarterfitter.com/chain
Productivity: start your Seinfeldian Chain.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2007/08/09/bc-protesters...
B.C. protesters glad to be home after 36-hour detention in China. Two Canadians among a bunch of others detained for unfurling a protest banner related to the Olympics, Tibet and human rights at the Great Wall. It was disturbing to read comments in our local commuter paper this morning justifying the Chinese response. Most favored trading partner indeed.

http://smart-machines.blogspot.com/2007/08/urban-challenge-teams-down-to...
The Urban Challenge is whittled down to 36 contenders, including the usual suspects.

http://www.boingboing.net/2007/08/10/french_kid_who_trans.html
Evil children's lit publishing empire attacks over-enthusiastic teen fan.

Courtesy RenegadeBuddha, Tibetan monk and happiness expert Mattieu Ricard gives a fascinating tech talk at Google on the effects of meditation on the brain.

http://www.moonpointer.com/?itemid=1626

Think you're too busy to meditate? Try to meditate right now- if you do, you're not too busy. If you don't, you're too busy and you need to meditate.

I like this test. Meditation is such a simple thing. So is going for a walk or a run- really- what is ten or fifteen minutes of my time? How on earth do I justify *not* taking such a little bit of time for myself?

Woohoo! Facebook is down so I can come up for air and post something new and interesting. Tonight we went to a party a Jessica and Darren Irwin's place. Darren is an ornithologist who studies evolution, behaviour and other stuff I wouldn't claim to understand, in bird species. We got chatting and I shared with him how I learned a cool computational trick for averaging angles from an ornithologist who uses ...

My experience of meditation has been through the gentle introductions offered by the likes of Thich Nhat Hanh and Gil Frondsal, both of whom practice and teach Vipassana meditation. Vipassana has a focus on experiencing life moment-to-moment, and 'seeing things as they are'. Because these teachers are so gently disposed, it's a both jarring and enlightening to read the top hit for Vipassana on google. No funny business if you really mean to reach nirvana, apparently.

Image by
premasagar

http://simra.net/blog/meditation

Here are some assembled links on meditation- mainly some howto's and some articles on the science and health-benefits of meditation. Enjoy. :-)

http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2007/05/07/five-reasons-not-to-change-care...

Career upheaval has been my middle name for the past 2 years. Here's an excellent article concerning when *not* to turn your life upside-down, with a nod to meditation as a tool for cultivating happiness.