This week on Systemic Effect we will be talking with Kaoverii, yoga instructor, yoga teacher instructor, author and blogger. Her blog is subtleyoga.com

Systemic Effect is on Sundays from 8-9AM on MAIN-FM, and archives are available at SystemicEffect.org.

Comments are welcome at SystemicEffect@main.nc.us

I invite you to check out this article I just read, about race, titled “Color-blind racial ideology linked to racism, both online and offline.”

I am very interested in this article because it discusses a major obstacle to whites in confronting and overcoming our racist attitudes. I think race is a really uncomfortable topic for most white people, including myself, but I agree that it is really important and essential that we learn how to talk about it. Our discomfort shelters us from being exposed to other group’s experiences, and keeps us from confronting our own privilege. Privilege is an especially uncomfortable topic in today’s economy, as people of all racial groups are struggling, but I think it’s important that white people, especially poor white people, realize that other racial groups in our country are often facing even more challenges than we are. I suspect sometimes that racial divisions are perpetuated by people in power (example, outspoken crazy right-wing talk show hosts) as a means of divide and conquer to keep poor, working-class and middle-class people from uniting and challenging corrupt power structures that prey on all of us. Also, of course, by getting racist dander up, these crazy radio (oh yeah, and TV) hosts make millions of dollars. Power and money…are these always the culprits?

So, if talking about race is a good thing, what should we talk about first? Any suggestions on where to start? Any conversations you’d like to see me initiate?

By the way, Facebook is a great venue for starting conversation about race and other uncomfortable topics. I have started a few interesting conversations on there. Sometimes I’m a little shocked at the reactions my friends have to comments I make, but I think it’s worth it. If I can challenge racist ideologies, I am doing something good in the world. Plus, you never know who is taking in what you say and not commenting.

So, how about it? What are the hot-button topics around race? What do we need to start talking about?

I think that health should be a basic human right, and yet it is not available for many people, including many Americans. Health is expensive, and we live in a system that is leeching money from all but the richest, making it difficult and sometimes impossible to be healthy.

Health insurance is of course the most timely and obvious example.

However, what about food? Healthy food is expensive. Crappy food is cheaper. Organic produce is more expensive than chemical-laden nasty veggies, and grass-fed meat is more expensive than factory farm hormone-added meat. I try very hard to eat organic produce and cruelty-free meat, but it’s hard. It often costs at least twice as much. The other day I went and bought non-organic produce, because I was hungry, and I wanted to stretch my money farther. Besides being less healthy, non-organic produce is also more bland. It has lost something.

GMO food is a whole different issue, and should be avoided at all costs. It has scary health effects, and there’s a lot not known yet. I think I’ll write a more complete post about this in the next few days sometimes. There are a lot of shady things going on around GMO foods.

Even if a person has health insurance, it usually doesn’t cover holistic practices like acupuncture, homeopathy, or yoga (which all have been scientifically proven to have positive health results).

All my life, I have shunned money, because I feel that there are more important things than money. However, I’m seeing right now the many problems with this attitude. One is that I can’t afford healthful products and services, because they are only for those who have more money than I do. Although this to me screams injustice, I feel helpless to do anything about it at this time. I was planning on joining a community garden, but I’m starting to realize I might not even be able to do that, because I might not be able to stay in Asheville.

The United States is a great place to live if you have plenty of money. If you don’t have money (either you can’t find work or your work doesn’t pay a living wage), you probably don’t have health insurance and you can only afford crap food. How many kids grow up on heavily processed food, because that’s all their parents can afford? Mac ‘n Cheese, anyone? Kids are eating loads of refined flour and sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils, besides chemical-laden vegetables (when they eat veggies at all) and hormone-filled meat. Yuck! All this nastiness is so bad for people, and yet it’s really what’s cheapest. Actually, it’s cheap because it’s produced to be cheap. It’s cheaper to shove chickens into tiny cages than to give them room to roam. It’s cheaper to create processed food than whole foods. But, what’s the real cost?

Using systems thinking, its easy to see that unhealthy food costs more money than it saves, when you look at the big picture and the long run. But, in typical American reductionist thinking, these things aren’t figured in. And, if individual American families want to break free of the cycles of nasty food, they might simply not be able to afford it. Talk about feelings of helplessness!

Just some more examples of our broken society…I think that poor people only being able to afford nasty food is an injustice. There are a lot of movements around food going on in our country, and I will highlight a few of them soon. For now, I invite you to think about the politics of food. What can be done to make health attainable for everyone?

One of the reasons I am writing this blog is because I feel that I have a unique perspective on the consciousness shift that is happening right now. There are a few reasons I have this unique perspective:

1) I am a systems thinker, so I can see patterns in systems that are not obvious to non-systems thinkers.

2) I have spent most of my adult life working on shifting my own cognitive structures and working on spiritual awakening.

3) I have a relatively strong relationship between the different parts of my mind (conscious and subconscious, left and right brains).

4) I think a lot about perception, and how to communicate with people with different perceptions. This is largely because of my complicated relationship with my Mom (who I am no longer in contact with), whose perceptions of static things changed frequently, and to try to connect with her, I did a lot of mental gymnastics.

I am working on building a visual image of the consciousness shift as I see it. I have known about it a long time. In fact, I originally thought I came up with the idea, until I started meeting people and running across books that also talked about it. Now, I think that its something that’s waking up in lots and lots of people everywhere, because its time for us to shift. It’s a survival necessity at this point.

Things worth knowing about this shift:

1) It is both spiritual and political.
a) spiritual- anything that creates a deeper sense of connection
with our deeper selves, other people and nature
b) political- anything to do with human structures and
institutions, as well as perceptions about these

2) It involves expanded ways of knowing and interacting

3) Hype and Spin are losing their power. Lies told at the media,
political and interpersonal level are becoming easier to spot and
disarm. More and more, mythologies created to divide and
conquer are falling away, leaving the potential for connection.

4) Corrupt power structures are failing and will continue to fail.
They are not designed for success, they are designed for
rapid profit and power-consolidation for a few.

5) New structures, based on balanced power relationships, are
forming and will continue forming in greater numbers as people
lose faith in the current power structures and wish to live lives
more in harmony with healthy and just values.

6) Natural ecosystems provide useful models for planning human
communities, and more and more people will turn to nature for
inspiration and connection.

7) Food is already a really hot topic among many communities, and
will continue to become more so as awareness increases about
the health consequences of non-natural “foods” become
increasingly well-known. The emphasis will become more and
more about local and organic.

8 ) Power will become increasingly de-centralized.

9) Many communities will adopt alternative currancies, or trading
systems, that value services and commodities valuable to
enhancing human life and strengthening communities. The
concept of “wealth” will become less and less relevant as
all members of the community are increasingly valued.

10) The internet will continue to be a valuable tool for sharing
information. Increasingly, even as our focus becomes more and
more local, we will also all become more global.

11) Humans will learn to live in greater and greater harmony with
their environment, and all endeavors will be evaluated as
systems within systems. Systems that are not balanced, and
which create imbalances within larger systems, will not be
pursued. Always, balance and sustainability will be priorities.

12) We will learn to live in greater awareness of patterns of life.
Most people will come to understand the cycles of personal
growth, and also nature’s cycles of life, death, life.

13) People will live more and more in community, and as such, will
develop greater communication and personal growth skills

14) People will become more aware of the stories that govern their
lives, and will learn how to actively create their own stories.

15) People will learn how to be more whole human beings. People
will learn how to be fully present in their hearts, minds, bodies,
and spirits all at once, causing them to be more powerful, more
effective in life, and more connected with their worlds.

16) We will start treating children very differently. Instead of trying
to force them into unnatural molds (like the worker mold by
forcing early daycare), we will respect and honor their natural
in-born wholeness, and we will learn how to let this wholeness
unfold into maturity without our own ideas getting in the way.

17) Racism and sexism will, if not end entirely, radically decrease.
Our current culture is based on power-over. Someone is in
power while someone is not. This ideology will end, as will the
power imbalances. Interestingly, this will nearly abolish child
abuse, as child abuse is an outpouring of power-over
structures.

18) Prisons will be abolished, and we will find different ways to
deal with infractions. Similarly, the drug war will end, and drug
addicts will get help not punishment. All “morality” laws will
end.

19) We will learn different ways to think about love, and current
definitions about what is “proper” for adult love relationships
will shift dramatically.

So… these are just a few things that I see. Perhaps some of this seems far-fetched, yet I see this all happening at some point. Some of this will be in the next few years, some may take a little longer. We are really at a critical shift point, and many of these shifts are necessary for human survival.

I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Here’s a cool blog entry from the Subtle Yoga blog, about the Vagus Nerve. Pretty cool stuff, huh?

There will no new Systemic Effect interview this week, because of a scheduled power outage at air time, HOWEVER

you can always listen to past shows at SystemicEffect.org

The interview that was scheduled for this week will play next week. The interview is with Kaoverii, Yoga instructor, Yoga teacher instructor, author and writer of the Subtle Yoga blog.

This next week, here on this blog, I will continue to discuss yoga, health and wholeness (as there’s still lots more to say!)

“People say they don’t care about politics; they’re not involved or don’t want to get involved, but they are. Their involvement just masquerades as indifference or inattention. It is the silent acquiescence of the millions that supports the system. When you don’t oppose a system, you’re silence becomes approval, for it does nothing to interrupt the system. People use all sorts of excuses for their indifference. They even appeal to God as a shorthand route for supporting the status quo. They talk about law and order, but look at the system, look at the present social ‘order’ of society. Do you see God? Do you see law and order? There is nothing but disorder, and instead of law, there is only the illusion of security. It is an illusion because it is built on a long history of injustices: racism, criminality, and the enslavement and genocide of millions. Many people say it is insane to resist the system, but actually, it is insane not to.”

–Mumia Abu Jamal, Death Blossoms.

I was just introduced a few days ago to the terms “system thinking” and “systems thinkers.”

I am a Systems Thinker, and according to the Army Corps of Engineers, about 3% of the population are Systems Thinkers naturally. However, as it seems to me that Systems Thinking is a great way to address a lot of the problems of our times, I think that Systems thinking is a great skillset for people to study.

Permaculture is one example of Systems Thinking. At some point, I would like to get training in Permaculture. I think permaculture theories could apply well to a lot of Systems, not just agriculture and human spaces.

The Farm in Tennesee is one of the places where you can get Permaculture training. Here are a few principles they list as being part of permaculture:

-Everything is connected to everything else. Recognize functional relationships between elements.

-Every function is supported by many elements – Redundancy Good design ensures that all important functions can withstand the failure of one or more element.

-Every element is supported by many functions Each element we include is a system, chosen and placed so that it performs as many functions as possible.

-Local Focus “Think globally – Act locally” Grow your own food, cooperate with neighbors. Community efficiency not self-sufficiency.

-Diversity As a general rule, as sustainable systems mature they become increasingly diverse in both space and time. What is important is the complexity of the functional relationships that exist between elements not the number of elements.

-One Calorie In/One Calorie Out Do not consume or export more biomass than carbon fixed by the solar budget.

-Stocking Finding the balance of various elements to keep one from overpowering another over time. How much of an element needs to be produced in order to fulfill the need of whole system?

-Edge Effect Ecotones are the most diverse and fertile area in a system. Two ecosystems come together to form a third which has more diversity than either of the other two, i.e.: edges of ponds, forests, meadows, currents etc.

-Energy Recycling Yields from system designed to supply onsite needs and/or needs of local region.

-Small Scale Intensive Systems start small and create a system that is managable and produces a high yield.

-Make Least Change for the Greatest Effect The less change that is generated, the less embedded energy is used to endow the system.

-Work Within Nature Aiding the natural cycles results in higher yield and less work. A little support goes along way.

-Law of Return Whatever we take, we must return Every object must responsibly provide for its replacement.

-Stress and Harmony Stress here may be defined as either prevention of natural function, or of forced function. Harmony may be defined as the integration of chosen and natural functions, and the easy supply of essential needs.

-The Problem is the solution We are the problem, we are the solution. Turn constraints into resources

-Mistakes are tools for learning

-The yield of a system is theoretically unlimited The only limit on the number of uses of a resource possible is the limit of information and imagination of designer.

-Dispersal of Yield Over Time Principal of seven generations. We can use energy to construct these systems, providing that in their lifetime, they store or conserve more energy that we use to construct them or to maintain them.

-A Policy of Responsibility (to relinquish power) The role of successful design is to create a self-managed system.

-Metastability For a complex system to remain stable, there must be small pockets of disorder.

– Observation Protracted & thoughtful observation rather than protracted and thoughtless labor.

Another type of systems thinking that I’ve mentioned before is holistic/natural medicine. Also, Yoga can be approached this way… as more than just asanas (poses) but a holistic approach to wellness (which I am sure we will be talking about in our upcoming interview). : )

So, being this week’s topic is health and wholeness, I thought I’d talk about things that are the opposite of wholeness.

I think a big part of our modern dilemma is that everything gets broken apart into pieces, and not re-assembled.

A few examples:

Reductionism: This seems to be the current medical model. The body is studied in tiny pieces, and potential treatments are broken down into parts. The body is not approached as a whole system, and a treatment for any one symptom can often throw off the balance of the rest of the system, and this is often not considered a problem. In contrast, many natural healing methods (acupuncture, homeophathy, etc) focus on the whole being. Natural healing methods also focus on fixing the problem, whereas most Western medical approaches approach most sicknesses as chronic, hence needing long-term or even life-long medication treatment.

Specialization: As most career paths become more and more specialized, a lot of knowledge is lost about how everything fits together. This is particularly visible in academia. Don’t get me wrong, I think some degree of specialization is good. I wouldn’t want my general family doctor to do brain surgery on me. However, I think in general, there needs to be more interdisciplinary approaches to everything. When we mix fields, we are apt to learn things we couldn’t have learned otherwise. As someone pointed out to me the other day, ecologists and sociologists would benefit from talking about how human societies can learn to take actions to prevent further climate change. That is just one example of where an interdisciplinary approach would be useful.

Fragmentation: I think the psyches of most human beings are increasingly fragmented. We have different parts of ourselves that often don’t communicate very well with each other. This is especially true with people who have experienced trauma, but I think it’s true of many people who haven’t, as well. I think this is the natural reaction to living in a toxic culture where the overarching social structures do not seek to serve everyday people, but in fact prey upon us. I think that becoming whole in ourselves is a key step to creating cultural change, and I also think that the fragmentation in our culture will always only lead to more fragmentation in our psyches.

So, what to do about all this? I’ll share some of my ideas about this tomorrow. : )

No conversation about health and wellness would be complete without a discussion of diet. What often passes for food in our current times is appalling, and many people don’t even realize HOW bad the “foods” they eat really are for their health and well-being.

Diet has always been an area of struggle for me, partially because I have always been working with limited funds (which will hopefully change soon!), and because I have an aversion to cooking alone (although I love cooking with friends or in community). But, learning how to eat healthy is a process, and one I’m always working on to some degree.

I try very hard to always eat organic foods, and certainly foods without GMO ingrediants or added hormones. I can’t always eat organic because it is more expensive, but I try. Organic food is not only healthier, it tastes better.

I almost always only eat meat that is raised cruelty-free, and cage-free eggs. This is, again, more expensive, but if I’m going to stay a carnivore (which I so far plan to do), I want to know that my meat was not raised on nasty and evil factory farms. Again, this meat is healthier AND tastier than meat raised otherwise. Cage-free eggs taste like eggs, and eggs from factory farms only barely resemble egg flavor.

The big change I am making right now is cutting out HFCS (High-fructose corn syrup) and refined flour. Actually, I’m almost entirely cutting out flour. A few months ago, we changed our diet temporarily because Joy had a thrush outbreak and I also suspected that both of us had systemic candida (which can cause lots of problems, like moodiness, body aches, low energy). We cut out all flour products, sugar, fruit and dairy. She got better, and I felt amazing! I have never felt so good!

Because my pantry was still filled with floury foods, and I was running low on funds, I returned to our old diet, but every week that we have been back on that diet, I have felt worse and worse. I’m experiencing more mood swings, lower energy and my body just HURTS all the time. Actually, about a week ago I woke up with a kink in my neck (you know the kind, where you can’t move your head one way), and it hasn’t gone away yet, in fact every day it gets worse. The mobility in my neck is becoming extremely limited, and the pain runs well down my back as well. I am in a lot of pain and I’m convinced that it’s the gluten in my diet.

So, because I cannot stand living in this much pain if there’s something I can do about it, I’m switching to a mostly gluten-free diet to see if it makes me feel better. I am emptying out my pantry of anything with gluten or HFCS, and I went on a big shopping trip yesterday to lots of good veggies, beans, grains and a little bit of meat. I’ll feel good just knowing I am eating healthier, and I hope that I start feeling healthier soon!