Successfully Yours Blog - irlenNY

"I never heard about Irlen...."

2/4/2019

...is a comment I often hear from people who call to make an appointment.
Others are "I've been trying to find a solution to my problem for years", and "my _____ (eye doctor, pediatrician, educational consultant, etc.) said it doesn't work or that there are no good studies proving it does (not true)."
I'm very empathetic, as I suffered for years with the inability to focus during reading. It wasn't until I "happened" to listen to a radio program called "Colored Glasses" that I found out about it myself.
I had tried for years to remedy the frustrating problem with all sorts of natural methods that I had studied...to no avail.
Hearing that Irlen practitioner ask during the interview, "do you have to use your finger to keep your place?" changed my life!
When I took my Screener certification, the trainer told poignant stories about people who the Irlen Method had helped. They even included the account of an ex-soldier who cried when he was able to read without distortion for the first time, saying "I'm not stupid!"
Not surprisingly, I say, "every teacher, parent, school administrator, pediatrician, opthamologist and educational "consultant" should know about Irlen--especially when I remember so many among the many hundreds of children and adults who walked out smiling after finally finding the solution to their struggles, after having been told countless fruitless times that their "eyesight" was fine. That's because Irlen isn't a vision problem, it's a brain issue. The visual cortex of the brain gets stressed and overworked from certain frequencies or types of light, glare or black and white patterns.
One of the best things abut the Irlen Method is that it works instantly! No "building up" or "getting used" to it. Walk in struggling, walk out better!
If you or someone you care about are experiencing difficulty or discomfort with visual tasks or have migraine headaches, don't wait. The cure could be right in front of your eyes!

It gets even better!

11/5/2018

Sometimes the degree or speed of improvement Body Code clients experience astounds even me! Such a story happened this the summer.
Rachel (not her real name), who brought a child in for an Irlen Syndrome Screening, shared with me that she had been diagnosed with Macular Degeneration--normally a problem of older people--even though she is in her 30's. Her vision in one eye had, in her words "exploded", leaving the center part of that eye's field "empty".
I offered that, although I didn't know anything in medicine that could help it, aside from drops to try to slow its usually inevitable progression to blindness, it was reasonable that anything which helped her emotionally could possibly reduce the resultant stress and prevent further deterioration.
She came for sessions, and was able to quickly reduce extreme anger she was experiencing. After the 3rd session, I had her use the Macular Degeneration sound track from one of my teachers 24/7.
At her 4th session, Rachel said, "You know, my eye is better."
When I asked how, she said, "the exploded area where I can't see is smaller."
I was ecstatic, although surprised.
At her 5th session, Rachel announced that her eyesight had returned to normal! It was subsequently verified by her opthalmologist.
She continues to improve her life in additional ways both for greater happiness and as prevention to her macular degeneration returning.
There's no way to predict how creating a favorable emotional and mental condition for healing can positively affect any given medical issue.

HOW QUICKLY CAN I SEE A DIFFERENCE?

6/6/2018

BS"D
Often people ask how quickly they will see a difference for themselves if they come to me.
Happily for people with Irlen Syndrome, the answer is "INSTANTLY"!
That's right. When the right combination of colors is found, the most common thing I hear is, "OH!" Then they usually comment on what has instantly improved, whether things have stopped moving or they feel less strain, pressure or pain.
It's one of the reasons my Irlen screening work is so gratifying.
With the Body Code, after a session people usually comment that they feel "more relaxed" or "lighter". Or they may notice they feel less stressed or happier. In the next days or weeks, their issue can stop or they may have a marked improvement
Of course, people who have Body Code sessions are usually dealing with years or decades of an unhappy life pattern. In this case, as they continue to do sessions, they gradually notice that the feeling or issue is less frequent, less intense, shorter duration. That is the indication that they're replacing the limiting pattern of thought or action with a more positive one, and attracting happier things into their lives.
Why don't you see how rapidly your life changes with either the Body Code or an Irlen screening. You will will be glad you did!

The past affects our future

4/23/2018

Did you know...
Negative emotions can be inherited--even more than 20 generations?
Family Systems can transmit limiting beliefs that influence the descendant's success?
Family Systems can have patterns of thought and behavior that go beyond reason or logic?
This is one reason that these influences are so important to change.
For more than two decades, I have sought out and learned various natural methods. While each has its benefits, the Body Code is unique in its ability to identify and eliminate these types of patterns and influences.
Let's take Jay (not his real name) as an example.
Shortly after completing my certification, I began working with Jay. A talented young athlete, he was very self-destructive.
He would leave one club after another in the middle of a contract, abandoning any benefits due him. He spent every dollar that he earned. He drank, stayed up late and hung out with many eager young women--very deleterious to the body and game of an athlete. Worst of all to his family, Jay stopped talking or listening to his parents. What a heartache to his father, a former athlete, who had coached Jay until he left home.
During our work together, many negative inherited and personal emotions were identified and eliminated, as well as limiting beliefs.
Jay began to reclaim his "self" and his life. He stopped hanging out, started taking care of his body, and honoring himself.
Today, 4 years later, Jay has made a total about-face. He is a successful athlete, with good standing in his league. He has a long-term relationship with a lovely young woman that he plans to get engaged to soon. He saves money and spends wisely. Best of all, he has close ties with his parents, who he speaks with frequently.
He had been on the road to "nowhere" and "no one". Today he is happy and thriving, with a lively following of fans.
How would you like to see your life change? What are you waiting for?
Schedule your free introductory Body Code session today and start your about-face!

Technology affects us and our children

3/9/2018

BS"D

A major problem today leading to many tragedies is the issue of addiction--no matter to how it is manifest. Addiction can exist in any area, it becomes a way to mood-alter. We can help ourselves and our loved ones avoid or escape the life limiting effects of addiction through healthy, positive emotions and beliefs, which the Body Code is uniquely effective with.

Dr. Norman Doidge, author of two excellent books on brain neuroplasticity, & Jim Balsillie, developer of the first successful smartphone, discuss below how technology is a culprit. I put in the entire article because it's of such importance to you and your loved ones--especially children. The most impacting part is that the underlying intention of manufacturers is to create addiction. Read further...

THE GREAT DISCONNECT
Digital technology is changing almost every facet of our lives, from the way we work to the way we parent. Our brains are changing, too. What does it say when we can't go more than a few minutes without reaching for our phones, or give our private information to faceless corporations without a second thought? Below, tech titan Jim Balsillie, and psychiatrist Norman Doidge wonder whether we'll ever kick this addiction, and what the internet is doing to our brains. Jim Balsillie is former chairman and co-CEO of Research in Motion (now known as BlackBerry Ltd.) the company that brought the world the first smartphone, and co-founder of the Institute for New Economic Thinking.

They held their discussion, by phone and over e-mail, in January and February.

JIM BALSILLIE: Will we ever kick our smartphone addiction?

NORMAN DOIDGE: Kick it? We're just getting started. Google's Project Loon is working on bringing wireless to the four billion people not yet online by using balloons in the stratosphere to carry signals to the remotest parts of the planet. And unlike other addictions that are opposed by mainstream institutions, screen time is being pushed by educators, governments and businesses. Not a chance we can kick it the way things are currently organized.

BALSILLIE: What's causing this addiction?

DOIDGE: Simply put, the chemistry and the wiring of the brain can be manipulated. There are all sorts of behavioural addictions - gambling, online porn, shopping - that take hold because they trigger the same areas of the brain as drugs. People are unsuspecting of digital addiction. That's because each addiction - cocaine, heroin, alcohol, video games - has a slightly different form and effect, so it takes a while to recognize any new addiction as such.

BALSILLIE: I recently experienced something fascinating that made me see smartphone addiction in a different light: I attended a dinner that included a young teenager. He was constantly engaging with his smartphone. His parents saw that it was poor table manners, so they took it away. The teenager then started to fidget.

His eyes darted everywhere. He couldn't calm down and was visibly uncomfortable for the next 45 minutes. I could see the kid was in pain and was manifesting it physically. I know there is always moral panic about technology, but this incident told me that, in the case of smartphones, it might be coming too late. Seeing this kid suffer and not say a word to anyone stayed with me. People now spend on average more than 10 hours a day on their screens.

This is no longer an attention economy, but an addiction economy.

DOIDGE: Digital tech is especially good at changing our brains without our awareness. The brain is neuroplastic, meaning it has a property that allows it to change its structure and function in response to mental experience. Digital technologies are uniquely "compatible" with the brain, because both are electric and also work at high speeds. Marshall McLuhan figured this out. He argued that all media extend us - the microphone extends the voice, the radio the ear, the computer the brain's processing power. In 1969, he said, "Now man is beginning to wear his brain outside his skull, and his nerves outside his skin." At the time it seemed like one of his more bizarre aphorisms. Few believed the brain was plastic and that the media could work by, in some way, connecting to and rewiring our neurons.

BALSILLIE: Are you saying that by using screens 10 hours a day we are, by definition, addicted?

DOIDGE: For some, "addiction" is just a metaphor meaning "too dependent on" or "a compulsion."

But for many, it is literally true, and they show all the signs of addiction: compulsivity, loss of control of the activity, craving, psychological dependence, using even when harmful. Everywhere we see people who must check their phones every few moments - according to Adam Alter's book Irresistible, the average office e-mail goes unanswered for only six seconds. That's compulsive! They check while driving - that's harmful - and feel agitation when they can't. They stay up late, stuck on their computers, and then can't sleep. In online-porn addictions, people develop tolerance and need ever more stimulation for excitement, start to crave the porn, without liking it, and feel withdrawal when they try to stop.

Addicts always underestimate the time spent on the activity because they're under a spell.

If you think of addiction only in quantitative terms, you worry about, "Am I spending too much time online?" But our brain is sculpted by whatever we do repeatedly, and 10 hours a day also drives huge qualitative changes. The most important factor in any technology is what it does to our brains. In this case, it's plummeting attention spans, patience, memories or how social media is creating insecurity. So there are significant mental health issues involved.

BALSILLIE: What do you think about personal responsibility?

Have we alone made ourselves addicted? Because I definitely don't think the blame should rest solely on users, especially since big tech companies now hire teams of hundreds of neuroscientists to teach what applications will have the "stickiest" effect on the brain, so they become deliberately addictive to their users. As a brain guy, does that make you feel guilty?

DOIDGE: Is it guilt we feel when we find out our relative is a snake?
These people are behavioural psychologists and behavioural neuroscientists whose focus is not therapeutic, but on manipulating behaviour to create craving and anxiety if we try to resist it.

BALSILLIE: So we should believe James Williams, the former Google strategist, when he said in The Guardian: "The dynamics of the attention economy are structurally set up to undermine human will." What are the techniques these behaviourists use?

DOIDGE: Originally, they mastered moulding complex behaviours incrementally by giving animals rewards. Doing so, they discovered important things about learning and even how to treat phobias and aspects of anxiety.

Now, they guide software engineers to layer each new pop-up or message or interaction with "juice" and clickbait - colour or novel stimuli - that connect to the brain's "orienting reflex" so that we involuntarily turn our attention to that thing. It also triggers chemicals that put the brain in a state that maximizes our readiness to attend to that thing. So, when something novel appears, it's pure neural "bling." You can't not look at it. These scientists are the true masters of the art of distraction. We look because this brain circuitry evolved over millions of years to make us reorient our interest to something novel, because it might be a predator or prey - our next meal - or a mate.

Then, if a quick reward is attached - such as buying a product with a click, a seductive image, a "like" or reading that some rival has just been humiliated - dopamine, another chemical, is released, consolidating that circuit. Our brain reward centre lights up and we feel a thrill. These behaviourists carefully engineer the timing of the stimuli they present. Neurons that fire together wire together, so that over time, links are moulded and we form new circuits and get addicted. Data gathered from our keystrokes can be used to further addict us, in a tailor-made way, and sold to advertisers and even to politicians, who use it to personalize their message to us, to get us to buy what they are selling.

BALSILLIE: But why would behaviourists do this?

DOIDGE: Not all do, but those who do would probably say, "For the reward." That's a joke, by the way. I would say that as their science became an "ism" - behaviourism, in this case - many leading behaviourists concluded that human beings are little more than a suite of reflexes and conditioned responses, determined by previous stimuli. And therefore we lack free will. And when you have such an impoverished view of people, what is to restrain you from doing what you did in the lab every day to those habit machines also known as human beings?

BALSILLIE: CEOs of big tech companies are simply capitalists doing what capitalists are supposed to do: maximize profit within the rules set by legislators.

And of course if you lobby those legislators, you get rules and regulations that help you increase profit. In an economy of intangibles, the marketplace frameworks are everything - absolutely everything. These companies benefit enormously from addiction so they build it into their products wherever possible.

DOIDGE: I have a colleague, perhaps the best known psychiatrist in the United States, who went to work for Google, to help them analyze all their data in terms of what it reveals about mental illness. I asked him what he thought about the industry leaders and their motivations. One of Google's founders told him, "I'm 40 years old and I'm worth $40-billion, and believe me, I really don't need more money. I want to make the world a better place." Perhaps they both wanted to believe that.

BALSILLIE: Don't ever believe a rapacious capitalist when they tell you they are not a rapacious capitalist. The joke is on those who take these "noble" pronouncements to heart. Global tech is a predatory, vicious game that very few people are built to play. It's a lot easier to virtue signal and say things such as "Money isn't that important to me" when you've got billions in your pockets. If you want to figure out the motivations of tech capitalists, look at the outcomes and infer from there.

DOIDGE: How did these companies position themselves so we can't do without them?

BALSILLIE: These companies are called "multisided platform businesses" because they bring together different groups of customers and suppliers in a way that would not be efficiently possible without the internet platform in the middle. Think eBay, Airbnb and Uber. Without any additional production costs, they attract more participants and become exponentially more valuable and entrenched. This is called "Metcalfe's Law of Network Economics." There was a common misconception that RIM's business was smartphones, but we made virtually all of our money - more than $1-billion profit per quarter - on our multisided service platform that made the whole BlackBerry system work.

We enabled mobile users to seamlessly connect to their chosen application using 600 carriers globally. But there's an important twist when services are free: Without paying anything, you're not really a customer any more - you are now the product being sold. These compelling free apps you're addicted to? They're what's needed to bait you in order to generate valuable data for an internet company.

DOIDGE: Well, how do you feel about this, as the rapacious capitalist who was there at the start? You ran the company that created the BlackBerry, often called the CrackBerry. I am a shrink. Help me to help you deal with all the guilt you must feel.

BALSILLIE: No guilt here! Our specialty was security and protecting individual privacy. We didn't take people's private data and sell it to advertisers so that they could then target them. And we certainly didn't have any professional behaviourists on staff or on retainer.

This is a totally, totally different realm. Today's smartphones are designed to be highly addictive and extract whatever information they can. I am still troubled by the sight of that vulnerable teenager I told you about.

DOIDGE: It's sad. He probably had FOMO - the fear of missing out - if not constantly connected to social media. Hooray for us - we've created a new social-anxiety neurosis! But, to be fair to you, you are not in that "we." The fact that there were no brain scientists at RIM explains why I was never really "addicted" to my BlackBerry any more than to a landline. Some people were perhaps co-dependent-lite on them, but not like on today's smartphones. I think that's because the original BlackBerry wasn't a fullblown computer. It was truly a "smart" phone, so I, like most, used mine to connect with people of my own choosing.

BALSILLIE: People are paying such a heavy price for their screentime addictions, with all the attendant issues: anxiety, depression, envy, etc. And everyone is losing their privacy, too. Because I've never used social media and am not addicted to my phone, I have very little understanding of why people are exposing their lives and their kids' lives online.

DOIDGE: Privacy and mental health are inextricably linked, especially for young people. You need periods of privacy to form a self and an identity, a task not completed until at least the late teens. Having an autonomous, spontaneous self is the result of a long psychological process where you have time to "step back" from the crowd, and from your parents, to reflect. It requires time to let that self - your true feelings, your own quirky, uncurated reactions - emerge, spontaneously. The new phones foster enmeshment with parents, and the world, and hamper individuation, the process of becoming a unique individual, because kids are overconnected. And peer groups at that age can be Lord of the Flies cruel - and often love to mercilessly hunt down, expose and denounce the eccentricities of emerging individuals.

The "wisdom of crowds" is overrated; many crowds are far more regressive mentally and emotionally - and stupider - than the individuals who make them up. Kids know this, but lacking a solid sense of self, still long for the mob's approbation and are terrified of its censure.

And so they keep checking for and fishing for "likes" and now are compulsively virtue signalling to avoid being disliked, instead of developing actual virtue. Fear is one reason that virtue signalling is our chief vice. Social media is a 24/7 hall of mirrors, with everyone watching themselves - and everyone else - and making comparisons, all the time. This hugely exacerbates the ordinary painful self-consciousness, insecurity, narcissistic vulnerability and drama of young people's lives. How can anyone not become thin-skinned living in a round-the-clock panopticon of peers, all competing with each other for attention in an electronic colosseum? Depression has increased since 2005, most rapidly among people 12 to 17. That's not all caused by screens, but if we're spending 10 hours a day looking at screens, it's definitely a factor. Leaked documents show that Facebook told advertisers it can now track teenagers who feel "insecure," "anxious," "nervous," "worthless," "stupid" and "useless." Great. Now we have people exploiting a kid's "confidential" data by selling it to businesses that will further exploit the kid's depression. Everyone knows that social media is a world of show: masks and advertisements for yourself. It develops what psychoanalysts call the persona, a false self or facade in which one is just playing a role to impress others. But kids know they can't live up to that role and therefore fear they are imposters. It also teaches kids precisely the wrong way out of the mess: grow your vanity.

Post selfies of your best underwear pic on Snapchat; airbrush your opinions to get likes. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the French philosopher, pondered the soul of the modern bourgeois as affected by social life. He observed - as beautifully summarized by Allan Bloom - that the bourgeois "is the man who when dealing with others thinks only of himself and in his understanding of himself thinks only of others." That is many kids today.

BALSILLIE: But if it's unpleasant, why do kids keep coming back?

DOIDGE: Because that is the world they know - and because it has a shiny surface. But you see what it hides when you take it away. Kids become insanely anxious when they don't have their phones, like that teenager you mentioned. They freak out if they go on a camping trip: Not bears, but wilderness without wireless is their nightmare. Parents increasingly discipline kids by taking away the phones, because that's the best way to get their attention. Then the kids have a meltdown and feel they've just had a part of themselves amputated. They have a point, in a cyborgian kind of way.

BALSILLIE: Actually, I know many people in Silicon Valley who deliberately constrain their children's use of the social-media applications that they, as parents, created at their companies. They send their kids to low-tech, or no-tech, Waldorf-like schools, complete with rolling hills and wildlife. They know smartphone addiction is a problem - they intended it just as it's playing out, but protect their families from it.

The Silicon Valley elites deeply value their privacy. Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, bought four houses around his home because he wants to ensure he and his family have privacy.

It's not a trivial matter to be the pioneer of surveillance capitalism as he is and still maintain his family's total privacy. As I said earlier, the joke is on the users ... But why do people sell their privacy so cheaply?

DOIDGE: I think one of the problems in a mass communications-based society is that we develop mass tastes, and then the meat grinder of globalization further homogenizes us, and the more similar we become, the more interchangeable and expendable we feel. We don't feel we matter as individuals. So, for the insecure, it's nice to know someone is watching, someone is taking notes, tracking my irrelevant existence online! But what terrifies me, Jim, is that this generation, which has never known much privacy, is understandingly indifferent to its loss. They don't understand that there can be no liberal democracy without privacy.

The whole idea of liberal democracy, going back to John Stuart Mill, is that the liberty of the individual is our best bulwark against authoritarianism and the tyranny of the democratic majority, or government, or the powerful, because they have the numbers, or wherewithal, and historically seek to dominate others and determine how they must live.

Liberal democracy is thus the form of government that is expressly designed to protect the individual's liberty against that authoritarianism. It does so by dividing life into a limited public sphere, for government, and a private sphere, where government cannot infringe and which it is also duty bound to protect. It is the idea of the private sphere that made us into a free people.

But these new technologies, as currently organized, are creating a generation indifferent to privacy, and giving governments, business and others tools to monitor it. And privacy monitored is privacy destroyed.

BALSILLIE: One of the things I've learned from you is that, in medicine, when you use drugs, there are no "side effects," only "effects." Drugs go everywhere in the body. While they might target an organ and do some good there, they also affect other areas. What we call "side effects" are just the drug doing what it does in places we don't want that to happen.

The designers of digital devices set out to addict users and there has certainly been more and more publicity on this lately. But are we fully aware of the consequences that they didn't intend?

DOIDGE: No, because they unfold incrementally, beyond awareness, and sometimes involve losing awareness, as the "specs" of our brains change. For example, our brain maps in relation to our bodies in space seem to be changing. Because we spend all day staring 18 inches ahead, we are losing bodily and peripheral visual awareness. People are walking down the street in a more disembodied, ungrounded way, bumping into others. Body therapists tell me they are seeing 20-year-olds with the posture of 75-year-olds now, stooped, with heads way forward, from screen time.

BALSILLIE: You've also talked about how exposure to screens affects infants and toddlers - how digital technologies that claim to be connecting people are also disconnecting us in important ways.

DOIDGE: They overenmesh and disconnect at the same time. A few years ago, I was at a lecture with clinicians, discussing visual changes, and a preschool teacher there observed that, increasingly, kids weren't looking at other people when speaking with them.

Another teacher there reported the same loss of eye contact. At first it seemed to them like these kids might have Asperger's, which is on the rise, and involves a discomfort with eye contact.

But as the teachers watched the parents picking those kids up, they saw they were constantly on their smartphones, not looking at their kids - or the teachers, either, for that matter. As cute as these people's own kids were, in the moment, the kids couldn't compete with an entire virtual reality engineered to keep their parents distracted.

BALSILLIE: Were they imitating their parents' bad manners, or is it something deeper?

DOIDGE: Possibly deeper. A big brain task of the first two years of life is wiring up the right hemisphere modules that allow us to read other people's faces to learn about their emotions and, in turn, about our own. This is learned by the rapid-fire exchange of glances between infant and mother when there is so much holding and leisurely gazing into each other's eyes. You know, baby swallows milk, grimaces, mother sees it and unconsciously makes the same face back - she mirrors the baby - showing the baby the distress it is expressing, then sweetly says, "There, there, honey, the milk went down the wrong passage, you're upset in your tummy, let me burp you. You'll feel better." Now, that feeding interaction does more than soothe the baby. It actually teaches the baby about emotions, and that facial expressions show emotions, and ultimately that you can read the internal states of others. That is how we learn about other minds. The same happens when a baby smiles: A healthy adult can't not smile back. You need thousands of those exchanges to develop that emotion-reading right hemisphere, and these exchanges, when they happen, occur very fast. If you are not paying close attention, you miss the baby's smile, or grimace, and your face won't mirror the right emotion back. Good studies show that when the parent doesn't mirror in real time, the baby gets extremely anxious, and if the face is "still" when it should move, babies actually freak out.

BALSILLIE: So, if parents are distracted, either by a screen or even waiting for a message - i.e., they are multitasking - and not giving the undivided attention required to wire up the brain in this period, you can't do it to your full potential. Because humans are born without a fully developed right hemisphere and we need parents to complete our development, right?

DOIDGE: Exactly. In brain terms, infants need people bonded to them so closely that they make the requisite sacrifices of attention. My fear is that we are slipping into a new kind of split-attentional-neglect, in a critical period of brain development, because increasingly parents, although physically present, are psychologically online. A large University of Texas at Austin study shows that even having a phone that is off within reach lowers your cognitive capacity, because it still steals your attention. You're so wired into it. If living in virtual reality means living in something that is a simulacrum of reality, we might say that we, by being psychologically online, are making ourselves into virtual parents.

BALSILLIE: Being mindful of these effects and limiting screen time definitely helps.

DOIDGE: Definitely, but only partially. Even if you limit your child's screen time to what you think is high-level educational television, if their school is pushing computers and pushing down attention spans, that is way more important than a hundred hours of Sesame Street. McLuhan's whole point was the medium is the message, meaning it isn't the content of the medium - Sesame Street - or even the time spent on it, but the way the medium sculpts the brains of an entire society, and now, the planet. Media gurus in our time are merely mouthfuls of praise for what high tech will do for you - and silent on what they will take away.

BALSILLIE: So when it comes to the brain, it's basically use-it-or-lose-it?

DOIDGE: Correct. McLuhan said that each medium can "step up" one sense and step down another. This has huge consequences. Reading books stepped up sight and created a linear habit of mind that valued logic: You go down the page line by line, then turn to the next. This gave rise to a habit of thinking in terms of logical progression of argument. The logician asks of any statement in an argument or conversation, "Does this follow?" But in the digital age, linearity is stepped down. We now ask, "Does it grab you?" Because now information comes at us from many competing directions all at once. Our so-called "great communicators" are those who can best distract us from all the other distractions. When you leave linearity and logic behind, life becomes a Twitter feed: a series of hyper-emotional non sequiturs. That's manifest in our deteriorating, increasingly ignorant public discourse. It's no accident that our education system - itself desperately FOMO - is both computer-crazy and in favour of dropping history, a linear discipline par excellence. That is exactly the wrong move. What we need are schools that teach what screens can't do - to immunize students from the medium's faults. They should get back to teaching the most important books ever written. But that's not enough, Jim. Where are the various levels of government on all these issues?

BALSILLIE: Canada lacks leadership on these issues. We need more people stepping up and engaging intelligently, with integrity and public-mindedness. For goodness sake, we have all three layers of government closely partnering with all of these companies, even at the expense of domestic firms and our national prosperity. They are all advancing foreign tech on a daily basis. So let's not confuse moralizing with either intelligence or commitment.

Just look at the recent "deals" our government made with Facebook, Google and, maybe soon, Amazon. I've never seen anything like this in all my business career by any developed nation. When that leaked memo showed Facebook pitching companies their ability to target kids with ads when they are feeling insecure, depressed or worthless, Australians freaked out. For the issues of data collecting and selling, privacy and transparency breaches, Germans investigated and litigated, the EU started regulating in earnest, and the United States began holding Senate committee hearings. And Canada? We rush to partner with them! Our public officials have to stop sucking up to big foreign tech and start regulating them. Who is governing who here?

DOIDGE: What are the governance tools policy-makers can use to address this?

BALSILLIE: First, we must begin regulating the dominant internet companies in areas such as transparency of their advertisers, the ethics embedded in their algorithms and anti-competitive practices. This is what responsible governments do.

DOIDGE: And then?

BALSILLIE: We must create sovereign laws regarding data ownership, which is a defining issue of our time. More than six years ago, the European Union presented detailed proposals in this realm called GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), which becomes law in May, 2018. European policy-makers have been working on this for almost 10 years. In Canada, all of our political parties and policy-makers have let Canadians down with their inaction on this issue. Like the citizens of the EU, Canadians could exercise our sovereign right to ensure we own our personal data, set clear rules on the collection of personal data and for governing how the rights to our personal data are transferred to others. Big foreign tech companies will lobby hard against these measures, but I would argue our governments have the duty and the power to protect Canadians, especially our young. Canada would be in a much better place than where we are today if we copied what the EU policy leaders are doing.

DOIDGE: I'd vote for a politician who would support this, because it would actually be getting a liberal democratic government to enhance liberty by protecting the private sphere. What else?

BALSILLIE: We can support an alternative technology architecture. Much of the root problem with these apps is their centralized corporate control, where company profit is based on selling more ads to addicted eyeballs. We can lessen this dominance by supporting emerging rival applications that use blockchain. Blockchain is a new kind of transparent and incorruptible internet system that allows you to better control your own content because it's designed in a way where there's no centralized database or point of control. No one individual or one company can control it. The trust is built within the system architecture.

And trust in the system matters especially now, when there is so much mistrust in centralized power structures. If Canada strategically embraces blockchain for social media and other important applications, we can address issues of privacy and manipulation. Plus, this creates an opportunity for our domestic innovators to generate inclusive prosperity. It sounds like a complicated thing to do but it's not. It's actually very feasible.

DOIDGE: We may be the last generation that understands that privacy is worth defending. But how will we know when we are on the right track?

BALSILLIE: People won't just click "like" when they read this. They will call their MPs, too.

Copyright 2018, Norman Doidge and Jim Balsillie
This originally appeared in the Globe and Mail.

Where did this come from?

1/21/2018

DID YOU KNOW...
Emotions can be inherited or "passed down" generations?
Your Family System beliefs can influence your health, finances, success or relationships?
Your choices can be influenced by mistaken assumptions?
Why is this important for you to know? Because the Body Code can identify and quickly clear inherited or Family System emotions and limiting beliefs. This benefit is like "washing your emotional blackboard", eliminating their effects on you (and any children you may have who have been affected).
The wonderful benefit can be illustrated by the following story:
When newly certified, I worked with a young athlete. Although he was talented, he would do self-destructive things like leaving in the middle of a contract, losing all benefits; he squandered every dollar he earned; he would hang out with girls and drink alcohol--poison for his athletic body; he refused to listen to or even speak with his father, who had been a professional athlete and had coached him until he left home.
Jay, let's call him, was barreling down the road to "nowhere" and "no one" in terms of having a career in sports, despite his talent.
Jay worked with me for 10 sessions. We identified and cleared many inherited negative emotions and beliefs, as well as many that weren't inherited.
He started to change.
Today--4 years later--he is doing well and stable in a good contract. He has a great relationship with lovely girl, who he plans to marry. He saves much of his salary, now having an eye to his future. He takes excellent care of his health. Best of all for his family, he is in touch with his parents frequently, discusses things with them and listens to sound advice.
His life has totally done an about-face.
Is this kind of success something you want for yourself or someone you care about?
Don't wait! Schedule your free introductory Body Code session now! You have everything to gain!

THE POWER OF INTENTION CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE

12/5/2017

BS"D
If the picture below makes you scratch your head and wonder, you will be amazed at the great work of Lynne McTaggart, former investigative science reporter. In her books and online experiments, Lynne has meticulously used science to design and describe her "intention experiments", one of which I personally participated in.
Basically, she has designed a protocol whereby a group (LARGE or small :) holds an intention to help someone or something. It might be a health issue, finances or even peace! The results are positive not only for the issue the group focuses on and sends the intention to help, but also for the participants!
In the latest of her four outstanding books, The Power of Eight, Lynne describes her intention experiment work and the science behind it.
I've been following Lynne's work for more than a decade. Years ago, I personally participated in her first Peace Intention Experiment, where over ten thousand of us focused ten minutes a day for a week on the 25 year civil war in Sri Lanka, with the intention of reducing violence and deaths and bringing peace to the area. You can read all about it in her book, but, in summary, the violence and death did, in fact reduce more and more, and within six months peace was declared!
Lynne more recently focused on small group intention. What it showed was that, not only did the person intended for by a small group have an improvement in their issue, overwhelmingly the majority of people DOING the intending also had a positive benefit in their own lives!
Intrigued?
I am also.
In fact, I'm taking the 2018 year-long master class in Intention with Lynne, and am very excited.
I've been "dabbling" myself already, though, doing intentions with my clients before their sessions. Honestly, the results have been even greater and more immediate successes, PLUS my practice has grown exponentially!
I'm starting my own two month weekly "group of eight" with clients and friends next week, and looking excitedly forward to what will unfold!
It's a way to be pro-active and partner in your own success. If you're interested in this notion, let me know on the Contact page. I'll put you on line for my next intention group!

Help for Holiday blues

11/26/2017

We're at that wonderful, sometimes terrible, time of year again, where all we are blessed with often mingles with unfulfilled wants, needs and hopes.
Trips home to family can be filled with joyous anticipation tinged with dread, as old "hurts" or disappointments may be anticipated to surface with the proximity to those involved.
It doesn't have to be that way, though. The Body Code is a fast way to let go of all those unpleasant, troublesome feelings, memories and more!
Recently, a client with a long history of family pain was able to forgive the family members who had caused it (while not condoning their actions, of course). She gained much peace of mind, and felt uplifted and hopeful for the first time in her memory--this despite her having previously gone to a parade of other therapists, healers and even a shaman over more than ten years!
In fact, she has felt more free in her emotions and lighter in her body and spirit, describing how her breathing is easier and fuller. Recently it even allowed her to gain peace quickly after the passing of a beloved pet.
The absolutely unique benefit of the Body Code is it's ability to release not only old hurts, but also the negative or limiting beliefs that the wounds created--allowing people to move on with life, free of attracting the same unhappy patterns again and again in different ways.
Would you like the freedom and happiness that only moving beyond where you're stuck can bring? Call for a FREE introductory Body Code session today!

Say "thank-you" for the bad?

10/15/2017

We all know that gratitude is a good thing. When we get or have something good happen, gratitude shows good character, makes us feel we're good people and encourages more of the same for us. But the concept of having gratitude for what we DON"T want in our life? How does that make sense? Shouldn't we avoid the unpleasantness? Gratitude is almost like REWARDING it!
At least, that's what I thought until I heard about the concept and got a book containing 180 stories of "miracles" that came after people expressed gratitude for problems ranging from finances to infertility. The book is Say Thank-you and See Miracles, written by Rabbi Shalom Arush. The stories in it range from impressive to unbelievable, but they are first-hand accounts of what people experienced when they followed his advice and said thank-you for their problems.
Rabbi Arush instructs people to say thank-you for half an hour a day, and for emergencies to do it for six hours! He says to really connect to the gratitude using prayer, singing and even dancing! What a concept.
Impressed by so many positive accounts, I decided to give it a try. The next day, during a 20 minute walk, I expressed thanks for a litany of issues that even included things from my childhood. I did it again as "pauses" in my day allowed for it. And again. And again.
After a week, I realized the phone was ringing more with clients, including some who had no longer been coming and referrals from people I had worked with years before! One person got my name from a vitamin company whose products are among the few I deal with as the only location to get that product in my area. I didn't sell it to him because he didn't need it yet, but after talking with me, he became a client!
Hmm. This thanking stuff has got something!
Always being one to incorporate anything that can improve results, I started recommending that my clients say thank-you at least ten minutes a day for their problems.
Interesting.
One man told me that a co-worker was so amazed by the transition he went through in a few weeks, that she asked for my number! She said he stood up straighter, spoke more positively, and even the tone of his voice had changed.
So, dear reader, my advice to you is simple--start saying, and making every effort to feel gratitude for what you don't want in your life. It acknowledges that the Creator is perfect and does everything for our highest good, so there must be an important reason that we have it happening. Saying thank-you helps strengthen our "faith" muscle, if you will.
What have you got to lose?

What can one session do?

9/7/2017

BS"D

People often ask "how many sessions will I need?"
They understand when I explain there's really no way for me to predict that. Usually they get to me after having gone through the gamut of many types of methods--medical and otherwise--without really progressing.
Recently I had a new client who had severe sensitivity to noise, plus gradual physical deterioration to the point where she could barely work. A relatively young 60's, she was desperate to be helped.
In her session the emotions of frustration, shock, worthless were identified and released, along with an intense reaction to her name as said condescendingly by her sister when they were children.
She said she felt more energy, but didn't "feel" any instant changes, to speak of, aside from feeling "lighter" and more relaxed.
Here, however, is the email I just got from her, four days later:

So far, this is what I've noticed after the work we did on Sept. 3:

* Didn't jump out of my skin Tues. when a bus honked repeatedly as I walked in front of it. If that wasn't enough, as I stepped on my bus, he yelled at me for making him stop his bus (was in the shelter, so couldn't see him arrive) to let me on. This is amazing, as I USED to startle extremely easily! Well, I did have earplugs in. Still, I absolutely startled less than I ever have both physically and emotionally.
* Felt more comfortable around a very difficult co-worker.
* Neck & shoulders looser for a couple of days -- reverted since.
* Felt a slight shift in my over-all emotional comfort.

Obviously, everyone is different, still it's a great indication of what's "possible" with even one session.
What are you waiting for? Put the sparkle back in your life (or get it for the first time!)