If ever there was a person who defined Trailblazer, it was Sally Ride. In 1983, she became the first American woman to boldly go where none had gone before. Out there – way out there. I was 7 years old and I distinctly remember watching the lift off and thinking at that moment that if Sally Ride could go into space, then I could do anything. I was only limited by my own drive and my own intentions. Everything was possible.
While her passing after a long and painful illness at far too young an age is a sad and terrible thing, the legacy she left behind cannot be overstated. Sally Ride showed all of us that with graceful courage and strength, the sky was no longer the limit. She didn’t tell people what she was going to do; she showed them. And the best we can do in her memory is follow that same example as we plot the course of our own lives. Get out there and do something amazing!
Yesterday Mom and I saw the Shuttle Enterprise move into her new home by way of the air space outside my apartment. She was a beautiful sight!
After snapping some photos, I wanted to learn more about the plans for her new home on the Intrepid. Over on the Intrepid website for the Shuttle, they’ve cataloged information about the Shuttle’s past, present, and future, complete with futuristic renderings of what they expect the new exhibit to look like later this summer.
If the final frontier gets your heart pumping, head on over and have a look at the site. Though the federal shuttle program has come to an unfortunate end, I’m hopeful that creative exhibits like this will inspire private funders to take up the cause to continue to go where none of us have gone before, to inspire us to seek out new boundaries.
I live half of my life intensely studying modern and futuristic technology and the other half deeply engaged in the ancient practice of yoga. Constantly, I look for ways to bridge the two. I’m sure my life would be must simpler if I could choose one path, but a one-pronged approach to my career doesn’t feel right. The two will have to come together
I’m halfway through my Bridge program at ISHTA Yoga, and one of the greatest pieces of wisdom I’ve heard in our lectures is that yoga is a spiritual technology. I turned that phrase over in my mind for several weeks – in my meditations, during my personal practice, on my way to work, while doing my laundry, and walking Phineas. I like the phrase, but I wasn’t exactly sure of its meaning under the hood.
Then I put the phrase aside and just thought about science in its purest form. What do scientists do during their waking hours? They investigate; they search; they form hypotheses and test them. Scientists and yogis – we aren’t so very far apart after all.
We’re all searching for truth, for meaning, for understanding. We’re all searching for a way to be free. Scientists search from the outside in and yogis search from the inside out.
I arrived in Florida yesterday after a too-long flight and after too many months without a vacation. I didn’t realize just how tired I was until I was on the bus to the airport. I felt out of balance; the past few months have been emotional and my schedule has been packed to the gills. It’s time to decompress and release.
The long and winding road
The labyrinth back to balance that Dr. Bhaswati speaks about hit me full force once we were airborne. My thoughts were jumbled, and I could feel my body racing despite the fact that I was sitting down. Since my therapeutic yoga teacher training, I’ve been very aware of the effects of the stress response, aka fight or flight, on my body. Stress triggers a number of changes in the body that we can actually feel if we tune into them: our muscles tense, our blood pressure rises, and our digestive system slows down.
In the last few months when I feel these changes kicking in, I stop and breathe as deeply as possible into my belly. It’s been a conscious, constant effort, though entirely worth it. I feel more in tune with the changes my body makes involuntarily in response to stress and I voluntarily make changes to counteract these responses. It is give and take, a long and winding labyrinth.
Stress doesn’t discriminate
We can’t control the initial reactions of our bodies to stress. Much of it is regulated by our sympathetic (involuntary) nervous system and there is a good reason for that. The fight or flight response is meant to keep us safe; however, it’s not meant to be turned on all the time as happens with today’s society of constant stress and so with constant stress we run into big trouble. Our body has only one set of responses to stress – whether our stress is caused by a deadline at work, a traffic jam, or a tiger who’s on our tail. What I’m learning through yoga and meditation is that we have the ability to talk our bodies down off the ledge. We can tell ourselves, “Look, I know you’re freaking out right now, but it really is going to be okay. Just breathe.” That breath – deep into the belly, even inhales and exhales – is our guide, our guru. It takes us up and away from where we feel trapped and scared into a space that feels open and safe.
All I really have to do is breathe?
It sounds so simple, and it really is. When everything else falls away, our breath is always with us. So get some bright-colored paper, grab a sharpy, and write out the simple word “BREATHE” in big, bold letters. Post it around your home, your office, in your wallet, and in your car. Type it up as a to-do in your calendar on your phone and set a reminder every hour or two. Breathe, and find your way back to balance. Let me know how it goes.
Physarum polycephalum variety of Slime Mold. Taken by Dr. Jonatha Gott and the Center for RNA Molecular Biology, Case Western Reserve University.While at SXSW I attended a Biomimicry panel. This was one of the panels I was most excited for. Ever since viewing Janine BenyusTED Talk a few years ago, biomimicry is one of those subjects that I could spend hours researching. Its applications to design are truly endless.
The panel at SXSW praised the brilliance of Slime mold. Yep, slim mold, that seemingly lowly organism that has been around far longer than we have has quite a bit to teach us about transportation. With maximum efficiency, slime mold grows and spreads itself out to acquire its food. The city of Tokyo used the growth and reach of slime mold as its model to design its transportation system with maximum efficiency. In the words of the great Paul Reubens, “I love that story.”
The Slime mold example again reminded me of the brilliance of our natural world. Too often, we see our environment as something to control and guide. I wonder how our society would change if we developed a much strong respect for the wisdom of the natural world that has had so many millenniums to adapt and change. It replenishes and nurtures itself. It is an adamant fan of cycles and self-care. The next time that we’re looking for guidance in our own lives or wrestling with a creative challenge, we would do we to take glance out the window or take ourselves for a walk with our eyes and ears wide open. All the answers are there, many under the care of an unlikely natural guardian like Slime mold.
From Treehugger.comI went to an incredible panel yesterday about biomimicry and its implications for the design of technology projects. The talk was put together by several key personalities in this space. If you are curious about bioIogy or design or both, I highly recommend taking a look at Biomimicry.net and Beedance.com. Representatives of both organizations were represented on the panel.
At the end of the panel Holly Harlan of E4S and Michael Dungan of Beedance said two very profound points that have stuck with me since the panel and I think they hold very important pieces of advice for living, particularly for people passionate about technology. Holly said that if we’re really curious about design, really interested in learning from nature then we need to dig around in the dirt. It’s all well and good to read and research and ask questions of others. It’s necessary, though the greatest learning is found through our own personal exploration of the physical world. Michael encouraged us to put down our devices, unplug, and look around. Really see what’s happening in our natural environment. It sounds so simple and yet the world is whizzing by us at a dizzying pace while we remain glued to our glowing screens.
I found these two pieces of info particularly poignant last night at the Foursquare party. I was with some friends from work and we were having a great time dancing and enjoying a really beautiful and balmy Texas evening. As I took a look around, I was blown over by the number of people who were with other people but not present. Every 30 seconds they were on their mobiles, half listening to the people talking to them, lost in some digital experience of some kind. It made me wonder and start to worry about what all of these devices are really doing to our personal awareness. Despite constantly being in the know, constantly being “connected”, flooded with information on every conceivable subject, we seem to be in a fog of our own design. Existing, though not living. We really may be entirely disconnected from our own intuition and from others.
I’ll be the first to say I love technology and its potential for good. I love piles of information. I love design. I also love, in equal if not greater proportion, the trees, the grass, and the sky. I have yet to come across any piece of technology that wows me more than something that the natural world has created from its own immense intelligence and experience. To design as nature designs is the ideal, is the genius we’re all so desperately looking for. To take in its teachings requires dirty knees and a clear mind. I’m making a vow to unplug more often, get out into the world with more compassion than ever before, and live. I hope you’ll join me.
Temple Grandin with one of her cows. From Nature's Corner Magazine“Temple is different, not less.” ~ Eustacia Cutler, Temple Grandin’s mother to Temple’s science teacher and mentor, Dr. Carlock
“The world is cruel, but we don’t have to be. We owe it to all animals to give them our respect.” ~ Temple Grandin
After having read several of Temple Grandin’s books about animal psychology and animal behavior, I knew what a remarkable person she was. When I saw the movie Temple Grandin recently, I was not prepared for the emotional tug that my heart would feel in learning more about her own personal story. Portrayed brilliantly by actress Claire Danes, Temple Grandin’s determination, passion, and conviction made her one of my heroes.
Autism is a very personal issue for me. My father, a clinical psychologist, studied it which led me to explore the possibility of building my career in development pediatrics while I was a student at Penn and a work-study student at CHOP. My nephew also lives with a specific type of autism that has prevented him from speaking to us since he was about 3 years old; he’ll be 13 in June. I have close friends whose lives have been touched in one form or another by the condition. I’ve known autism to be fascinating and heartbreaking. Temple Grandin’s story made me realize that it can also be triumphant and hopeful.
In this post, I could expound upon the spectrum of autism and how it commonly manifests in both young children and adults. However, Autism Speaks, an organization that has worked tirelessly to fund research and provide education and support services to individuals and families affected by autism, is far more equipped to do that.
What I want you to do is go over to Netflix and put the movie Temple Grandin at the very top of your queue. I want you to take yourself to Amazon or your local bookseller or the public library and check out Temple Grandin’s books. Poke around on her website and be prepared to be inspired.
Her personal passion is the well-being of animals, particularly ones that we raise for our own purposes. What she teaches us through that passion is how to be better human beings. And given all that’s going on in the world, it’s a skill that is desperately needed in huge heaping amounts. For too long we have looked at autism as this hideous disease rather than seeing that the many challenges it presents have so much to teach all of us about compassion, determination, and the universal acceptance of all people as different but not less.
This morning there was a total lunar eclipse coinciding with the Winter Solstice – it ended about an hour ago. The next time that will happen will be in 2096. My brother-in-law, Phineas, and I went out to see the beginning of it. I won’t be around to see the next one. My brother-in-law has a shot at the next viewing. We both figured it was worth the sacrifice of sleep to bear witness.
Astronomers must be the happiest people on Earth, the ones most at peace because any everyday annoyance actually doesn’t matter. 100 years in the life of the universe isn’t even equivalent to the blink of an eye. It’s practically insignificant. Every disappointment, sadness, loss, betrayal. None of it is really worth being that upset over when we consider that the night sky that we’re looking at actually happened a minimum of 100 years ago – the stars are that far away from us. It’s mind-blowing. What we were looking at last night, for the most part, doesn’t even exist anymore. When we gaze up at the starts we are staring centuries back into the past. It’s mind-blowing.
And it makes me think that to be in the presence of something so awesome there must be more out there. It just couldn’t all be placed this way by luck. Beauty of that magnitude, concepts that stretch out minds and move our hearts so much, can’t be generated solely by chance. I looked up at the Earth’s shadow crossing the moon so perfectly, feeling our insignificance and greatness all at once. And all I could think was that there must be some reason, and that we must have faith.
The image above depicts the beginning of a total lunar eclipse and can be found here.
My friend, Michael, author of Like a Fish In Water, sent me a link about environmental education in the Maryland Public School System. Previously, the system only required a single lesson on environmental education some time between kindergarten and 12th grade. Now, environmental science must be woven into the curriculum, covering specific topics. Originally, the mandate was to establish a separate environmental science as a graduation requirement. That original mandate didn’t pass but getting more environmental science into the curriculum within existing subjects is a start.
It still shocks me that many people don’t see the connection between caring for the environment and public health, that they don’t understand that there is no such thing as an unlimited natural resource. There are limits to the stresses that our environment can withstand, and we are running up against those limits at a frightening pace. Kids have to know how their actions impact the environment, and it’s our responsibility to teach them how to care for our shared world.
Additionally, the environment is a practical, truly tangible platform that can be used to enhance learning opportunities across a variety of subjects, physical and chemical sciences, math, history, and design to name a few. It opens the door to discussing higher education and career planning. It makes the facts we learn in school relevant and applicable in the world that surrounds us.
Nature is an infinite, wise, and patient teacher if only we will sit with her a while to hear what she has to say and see what she has to reveal to us. It’s a living, breathing lab for us to explore and wonder at It’s the closest thing we have on Earth to divinity, and I’m glad Maryland students will finally get the chance to learn more. Hopefully, other states will hop on board, too.
I’ve been thinking a lot about aging this week. During my yoga practice I noticed that my lower back had some weird pain, just a small twinge, when I flatten out my back and lift up. I’ve never had that pain before and I don’t know what could be causing it except maybe that I’m not as young I used to be. Not that I’m old by any stretch. Not by a long shot. I just have to actually be conscious of my health now.
This weekend, my niece is visiting me. She is 21 months. I’m having a blast chasing her around. Today we went apple picking and I got to experience that joy all over again with fresh eyes. I forgot how much fun it is to be out in the fresh air, picking apples, and running up grassy hills. When we got back to my apartment tonight, I went into the bathroom to wash my face and noticed that I look shockingly younger. And it’s not that I have some magic moisturizer. I think it’s just the glow of happiness that we gain by being around a little ball of energy.
Earlier this week, I heard Jean Chatzky speak. She’s been thinking a lot about aging lately, too. And she’s been doing some research involving neuroscience. Specifically neuroscience that relates to aging. As it turns out when we are very young, our grey matter is growing, too. Literally, the number of neurons is increasing, making us, well, neurotic. So all those crazy thoughts and emotions and mood swings we have in our teens and 20’s are to be expected. Blame it on the growth of grey matter. After our 20’s, the growth of grey matter slows and the growth of white matter, the part of our brain that connects our neurons, grows well into middle age. So this process of becoming older and wiser is not a nice metaphor to make us feel better about aging. It actually has some serious science behind it. As we age we become less neurotic and more able to see connections between thoughts, ideas, and experiences.
What keeps coming to the forefront of my mind is how do I keep my body young and my brain moving forward at the same time. The greatest question of our time, I suppose. How do we make sure to keep our outlook fresh while also preserving the wisdom we’ve worked so hard to attain? How do I keep the energy of youth and take comfort in having an old soul? Perhaps it’s just a balance – holding my youth in one hand and my age in the other. There is a time for age old wisdom and a time for a new outlook. The trick is to know when to utilize each.
Christa Avampato 