Beyond Limits: Power of the Mind, Power of the Body

Workshops and talks from a free-diving world record holder, neuroscientist, yoga philosopher, capoeira activist and cognitive hypnotherapist investigated the direct affect of our outlook on our health, wellbeing and reality. As a group we looked at practices we can implement in our daily lives and ways we can discover and harness our depths, power and true potential.

The day started with a choice of workshops, including Kundalini Yoga and Meditation with Sara Campbell, Capoeira with Goia and ViniYoga with Miranda Taylor. Opening our bodies and coming back to the physical allowed the group to connect to what we were working with on the most immediate and essential level. The talks in the afternoon went on to explore what was subtly encountered in the morning, and each workshop held a resounding and strong energy that sustained everyone through the day.

Piccalilli Caff provided a nurturing and wholesome vegan lunch using organic vegetables and grains and spices of the Middle East to fire up our digestive systems and balance our blood sugars for the afternoon. We moved through to the two dining rooms and sitting on the long tables had the chance to meet and connect with the other participants of the day.

At 1330 we welcomed everyone into the talks, and the group was brought together again with an ancient Vedic chant to Patanjali by Miranda Taylor. Then Guy Hayward, compere extraordinaire, set to task introducing the first speaker, four-times freediving world record holder Sara Campbell. In Sara’s fascinating and quite literally breath-taking talk she explained the mental, emotional and spiritual journey that she went on from London-based, chronically ill PR-girl, to four-times World Record holding freediver, living in the desert on the Red Sea in Egypt. Sara spoke about how freediving is not the adrenalin-fuelled, high-risk sport many people make it out to be. It is a process of deep meditation, aligning the body with the vibration of the ocean and tapping into its deep innate wisdom, one which is at one with Nature, as we recognise we are part of Creation. Sara practices and teaches freediving as a spiritual path and on the day shared her profound insights of the potential for humans within Nature when we interact with Her on Her terms. This is where the magic occurs.

Miranda was next to take the microphone with a talk that presented the beauty of Yoga as a toolbox of practices that we can call from in our daily lives as we work to achieve clarity, stability and peace - from Asana, Mantra, Pranayama and Mudra, to Action (Karma Yoga), and Kriya. Miranda demonstrated some of the current drawbacks we might experience on the level of the mind, and ways we can work to harness these and overcome them, enabling us to live fully in the present, balanced and focused.

Jo Marchant spoke after the break and in her perspective shifting talk we understood the power of the mind from the scientific angle. Jo used the example of the placebo to illustrate the potential of our outlook on our medical health and wellbeing, or more specifically how the way we think and feel about medical treatments can dramatically influence how our bodies respond. Accordingly, simply believing that a treatment will work may trigger the desired effect even if the treatment is inert – such as a sugar pill. For a wide range of conditions, from depression to Parkinson’s, osteoarthritis and multiple sclerosis, it is clear that the placebo response is far from imaginary. Trials have shown measurable changes such as the release of natural painkillers, altered neuronal firing patterns, lowered blood pressure or heart rate and boosted immune response, all depending on the beliefs of the patient. There is even evidence that some drugs work by amplifying a placebo effect – when people are not aware that they have been given the drugs, they stop working. On the flip side, merely believing that a drug has harmful side effects can make you suffer them. The nocebo effect, as it’s known, can even kill (New Scientist, 13 May 2009, p 30). It has always been assumed that the placebo effect only works if people are conned into believing that they are getting an actual active drug. But now it seems this may not be true. Belief in the placebo effect itself – rather than a particular drug – might be enough to encourage our bodies to heal….

The final talk of the day came from capoeira specialist and political activist Jorge Goia. Goia looked at play and physical games as a way to rediscover the body and rethink relationships. Goia explained the history of capoeira among the Brazilian slaves as a way to disguise their martial arts beneath music and dance, providing an outlet for expression on the physical level, and thereby working to overcome the suppressive forces of society. We then came to understand Soma as it was created by Roberto Freire in Brazil, as an anarchist therapy for activists fighting the military dictatorship in the 1970s. Accordingly, Soma focuses in challenging hierarchical relationships, observing the body as material to talk about collaboration, trust, self-esteem, emotions and feelings. An opportunity to study the micro-political and the everyday through our bodies’ response to certain physical exercises, the sessions work out of a framework which incorporates the theories of Wilhelm Reich, anti-psychiatry, Gestalt, the Afro-Brazilian art form of Capoeira Angola and the practice of self-organisation and solidarity. Soma thereby seeks to inspire skills that can transform the way we perceive the world, re-building the body, its dwelling and livelihood. The collaboration resulting from the shared playfulness (and subsequent reflective dialogue) of soma games stimulates the whole being to engage more fully with the world. The somatic experience places the body at the center of the personal, socio-political, and cultural project of affirming wellness, as we practice taking risks to thrive in healthy ways and be creative in everyday life.

We then ended the day with a standing ovation and smiles all around.

Until the next time!!