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What Goes In, Must Come Out

After having a conversation with someone close to me, I wanted to share some insights with you about ADD/ADHD, Dyslexia, Movement Disorders, Epilepsy and Learning Disorders. This may be a touchy subject for some of you, but by the end of this article, you may have a deeper appreciation and understanding, that you don’t have right now.

I studied and practised Chiropractic for close to 11 years. I spent my time learning about physiology, biochemistry, neurology, Chinese Medicine and several other disciplines. I’m going to explain how the human body develops disorders like the ones I’ve mentioned above, by drawing on all the knowledge I’ve accumulated over this time. I will also refer a lot to human behavioural principles and aspects of physics to illustrate my point.

Most of you may believe that the above ‘disorders’ are problems that need fixing, and that they are aberrations in function and should be dealt with. When we see these problems present themselves in children, we then perceive or believe that these ‘disorders’ are counter productive towards their growth and development. In reality, however, these ‘disorders’ are purely feedback mechanisms that have been designed by the body and the brain to alert us or you, to an imbalance occurring in a child’s environment.

Your nervous system, in simplicity, has two ways to manage life. It receives information through a number of different senses and, then depending on what information it receives you will, through a number of different connections made inside your brain, respond to that information accordingly. In other words, what comes in to the body, must come out in some other form. The nervous system works perfectly in this way, even if the stimulus is perceived to be negative or positive. It still outputs a response based on what it perceives that it’s dealing with.

Let’s use a computer as a metaphor. The hardware, which includes the processor, the memory, the hard drive, the graphics card and the motherboard, work together with the software or the programs. Computers are designed to have both of these parts, work together simultaneously. When we go and use a computer and load up 15 programs all at once, that use up a lot of speed, space, memory and power, what will be the output from the computer? Will it speed up and do what we want or will it crash or hang, until we shut down some of the input we just asked it to perform? Naturally, it will crash. It won’t be able to handle so much input, so it starts to do strange and unusual things that we don’t expect of it. When we put a lot of pressure on it to perform outside of it’s parameters, it let’s us down. We do the same thing to each other and to children.

Our nervous systems and bodies are highly individualised and unique. They can only process input effectively and efficiently, that fits in with their parameters. If you force input or software into another human being, that wasn’t designed for that person or is not in alignment with them, you will see an outpouring of unexpected reactions.

Each and every one of us has a set of values, that go from most important to least important. Everything we do is inline with those values and no two value systems are the same. We are all different. To use the computer metaphor, we are are all uniquely built computers. Our hardware and software don’t work in the same way as the next person. Although computers can be built and designed this way. Human beings cannot.

When we are confronted with ‘disorders’ like the ones mentioned above, the solution to transforming them is not to necessarily medicate them or fix them. The person is not broken. That person is receiving too much input, coming through a number of different senses, that is not aligned with it’s values – it’s working parameters. As a consequence, the output from the body is not balanced. It’s in excess. You’ll find that these people or children, who experience this type of input, will overheat, shutdown, hang, crash, perform strange and unusual behaviours and may need a reboot after all that energy is dealt with.

I know that I’m looking at these challenges very simply, yet they are not as complicated as they seem. When we can learn to communicate in our children’s values, when we can value them for who they are and when we can provide input into their bodies that is aligned with their specific parameters, we can transform all of these disorders. These ‘disorders’ are, in actuality, a way to balance out all the excess input they are receiving through their senses, that their nervous systems do not know how to deal with or manage. They are there to let you know, that what you think is best for them to be, do or have, is not necessarily in their best interest. In actual fact, it’s making them short circuit. Until their minds can perceive, that your input into their lives fits in with their parameters or their values, they will reject it and often use these ‘disorders’ to let you or society know.

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A Change in Education is the Solution to Transforming Violence

For almost a week, I have been following the shooting that happened in Connecticut. It was a tragic moment, in time, for all of us around the world to have witnessed. It is one thing when another person loses a life through an act of violence, but it is something altogether completely different when it happens to young children. Somehow, it becomes more tragic, more devastating and more eye opening. All of a sudden, we all stand up as a world nation, united in our cause to protect children from being hurt.

In a lot of ways, we could liken these events to the quality of suffering felt by people at the time of 9/11. It’s the same pain, it’s intense, it’s been felt worldwide and it’s shifted our awareness of life and each other, to some degree. It’s just appeared in a different form, but because it happened to children, the magnitude of the event is 100 times worse. Since this has all happened, people around the world are calling for gun reform and better approaches to mental health, as solutions to this confronting event in our lives. We are petitioning to the government, posting on Facebook and trying to get ourselves heard. We are trying, so desperately, to eradicate something that actually isn’t the real problem, but in some ways, as tragic as it is, could be alerting us to the true solution.

For those who know me, I am certainly not averse to challenging the perceptions of the masses in the world, and I am quite ok to be challenged back. I have a very strong and high value on helping children grow into who they are. It’s incredibly important to me. Now, if I asked you the following question, I would suspect that you may reject the question, think I’m crazy for asking it or would flat out say NO. However, it’s still worth asking. Before I do that, answer me this: do you, whoever is reading this right now, value your children or children in general, for who they are? I would suspect that most of you, if not all of you, would probably say yes. So here’s my controversial question. Knowing what you answered for the previous question, can you say that you value that young man, who killed all those people, for who he is? I would suspect, as I mentioned before, a NO response. Why is it that we, as a society, value people more for being more positive than negative or for being more kind than cruel? Don’t get me wrong, I would never wish for my future children or my nieces or nephews to experience this type of event, but there is a deeper and more profound lesson to be learnt from this. It would be wise to probe beyond the gun issues or the mental health issues.

There are a large majority of children around the world, who aren’t valued and appreciated for who they are. These children may be labeled as dyslexic, ADD/ADHD, ‘bullies’, criminals, terrorists, learning disabled, inattentive, unproductive, stupid and so on. The list could seriously go on and on. Imagine, for a moment, you were or are one of those children – constantly pushed aside, constantly perceived to be devalued, constantly perceived to be unappreciated and possibly even ignored. How would you feel initially? How would you feel if this continued over time? How would you feel if most of the attention you received was punishment for doing things or saying things that don’t fit into the box and are not perceived as ‘normal’ by society? Don’t you think you’d become angry, frustrated, depressed or even feel betrayed or rejected? What do you think you would do to get yourself heard or noticed? Have you never been pushed to such extremes when you felt like killing someone? We all have.

The degree to which we act out in the world, depends on the degree to which we receive the opposite in our lives. The less we perceive we get it, the more extreme the measures will be, in order to create it. I don’t condone murder or suicide as necessary action steps. That’s not my point at all, but this incident that happened just recently is a wake up call for humanity. Those people did not die so that we could continue doing the same things we still do – undervalue, judge, label, overprotect, impose our values or project onto children. This wasn’t designed by a higher order in the universe for us to medicate more children and eradicate drugs. Those beautiful children and teachers died to help us make changes to the way we educate, empower, inspire, encourage and collaborate with ALL children. I would recommend honoring them for that contribution. Unfortunately, when we don’t pay attention in other ways, sometimes we attract a crises into our lives to get us to pay closer attention. This is the crises the world has been asking for and it’s time we do something about it.

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“A Chair is Not Just a Chair” – A Metaphor for the Human Being.

A few weeks ago, I went out for dinner with my wife to a beautiful Italian restaurant in Toronto. After about an hour, we started up a conversation about one of her courses she’s been taking, as part of her Interior Decorating Diploma – the history of furniture. This is a course that she appears to be quite inspired by. She came to realise, through her learning, something so obvious, yet mind opening, about the furniture that was made in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries. They were all one of a kind and, not only that, there was so much that went into creating these masterpieces. She then said something so simple, yet incredibly profound and it got me thinking. Those words came out of her mouth and they literally brought tears to my eyes – A Chair is Not Just a Chair. What a revelation and a perfect metaphor for the human being.

Inspired by her insight, we continued our conversation about this idea and how it relates to people and the ways in which we could show the world that a ‘Chair is Not Just a Chair’. In other words, there is so much more beyond what you see on the surface. An intense amount of work and detail has gone into creating these and they are all unique – one of a kind. Our discussion went on for a few more hours and into the next day with ideas and the start of a potential project that we could embark upon to help the world truly understand this concept, as it relates to people.

We so often look at people and make judgements about who they are, what they’re like, how smart they are and so on, purely based on what we see. It is, in fact, the first response we have to our environment. We look before we touch, taste, smell or listen. Let’s take the new iPhone 5 as an example. It’s not a person but this example definitely illustrates the point. The iPhone 5 does not look too different from its predecessor. It may be a little longer and little thinner, but invariably, nothing has really changed. As a result of this perception, there are people who don’t value it, judge it and think it’s a wasted effort by Apple. However, upon doing more research, there is more to this new creation than meets the eye, and it’s all under the surface. I spent about an hour watching the presentation given by Apple, before the official launch of the phone, devouring the ingenuity, engineering feats and inventiveness that brought this device into our hands. It’s actually mind blowing. The amount of detail, focus on design, technological enhancements that impact design and so on really astounded me. My appreciation for Apple increased ten fold when they recently revealed the new iMac. Again, another breakthrough in engineering and technology.

I recently watched an episode of X-Factor in the U.S., where a very obese man was wheeled onto stage in his wheelchair to perform for the judges. The cameras panned around to see the audience and judges reactions to this person. From the expressions on peoples faces, it was clear that this man was immediately discounted based purely on the way he looked. He was judged before he even had the opportunity to reveal himself. Then he sang. Everyone was surprised that this man somehow had an immense degree of talent inside of him, waiting to be shared. It was evident to me, that he’d been hiding this part of himself for a very long time.

Human beings have lost the ability to appreciate and value each other beyond what they see. We walk past homeless people on the street, without a blink of an eye. I know I have been one of those people. We look at people with disabilities with feelings of discomfort and fear inside of us. We judge fat people by their physical size, rather than by the potential contribution to the planet they could make, that goes beyond their body size. We toss aside advancements in engineering, technology and design purely because of the way they look or appear on the outside. As a consequence of our actions towards each other, towards our children and towards the world we are the creators of the things we are trying so desperately to change and/or transform. We project our beliefs, our values and our wounds onto others expecting them to be the way we want them to be, the way we want them to look and the way we want them to function. They, as a result, place those same expectations on themselves. Ultimately we’ve landed up with a world of increased obesity, disease, mental health problems, suicides, bullying, economic crises, poverty and so much more.

So, a chair is not just a chair. A chair is so much more than what we give it credit for. It’s time to look beyond what we see on the surface, what we expect and what we project or believe others should be and allow their true brilliance to be recognised, acknowledged and appreciated.

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