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A Fast Way To Stop Past Traumas & Harmful Emotions
When something traumatic happens in your life it rocks you to the core. The world is no longer a safe place. It becomes somewhere that bad things can and do happen. (source)
Do you have painful memories and experiences holding you back from being truly happy and healthy? Have you spent years in therapy, spent a lot of money on it, only to realize that you aren't really that much better?
The American Psychological Association defines trauma as "an emotional response to a terrible event like an accident, rape, or natural disaster." Life experiences like divorce, illness, and death can also be traumatic. You typically feel shock and denial following a trauma. In the long term, you may experience flashbacks, volatile emotions, and physical symptoms like headaches, nausea, and fatigue.[1]
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Is Much More Common Than We Think
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, affects many of us, probably way more people than what we may actually think or even statistically measure. There are a few types of PTSD:
- Delayed-onset PTSD – if your symptoms emerge more than six months after experiencing trauma, this is often called 'delayed PTSD' or 'delayed-onset PTSD'.
- Complex PTSD – if you experienced traumas at an early age or it lasted for a long period of time, you can be given a diagnosis of 'complex PTSD'.
- Birth trauma – PTSD can occur after a traumatic birth.
Most of us are victims of painful childhoods which can be very hard to break free of and it can leave us with very low self-esteem. We tell ourselves things like 'I am not good enough' or ' I am ugly' or 'nobody cares about me' If you have too many of these self-limiting beliefs floating around in your psyche, it can really impact many different areas of your life, from work to relationships.
What is very important to realize is that these harmful emotions can really impact our health in the long run. From chronic fatigue to gut issues and cancer, emotions can play a big role in the underlying cause of these issues. It is therefore important to try and do something about these emotions and past traumas.
Any sort of painful experience can stay stored in our subconscious and according to some experts, these painful memories are also stored in our cells. Unless they are removed, this can then wreak havoc to our health and wellbeing.
There are many therapies available these days, but they can be very expensive, time-consuming, and are not always effective.
I, like many others, am someone who has had a lot of traumas, that left many layers, which have been very painful physically and mentally to deal with. I fought to survive my own mind on a daily basis for decades.
I spent many years talking about all of the things that had happened to me, only to realize that I was constantly re-triggering all my initial issues. Whilst some people find comfort in sharing their problems, is there really proof that talking alone gets rid of the memory that is causing harmful physical reactions?
How Memories Get Triggered
Recently, I saw a young girl break her wrist at a local farm. It was horrific to witness how much pain she was in, the terror that she was experiencing, and to also see how badly her wrist had been damaged. This actually brought back painful memories from my own past. When I was 12, I dislocated my right elbow which looked equally as gruesome.
Here I was at the age of 42, about to pass out at the site of the poor young girl's wrist because it triggered my own previous memory from all those decades ago. This is how PSTD occurs, We store the initial traumas in our subconscious, and if that pathway is somehow reignited, it brings back harmful memories and releases chemicals through our bodies again which affects our emotions and our health.
I couldn't sleep without thinking about the poor girl. Each time I closed my eyes, I saw her badly damaged wrist and heard her terrifying screams.
Abusive Relationships Are So Damaging
I told a friend about what had happened who had also experienced her own severe traumas over the last few years, her ex-boyfriend used to physically and emotionally abuse her and after it finally ended, she admitted that she was so 'broken' she didn't know if she could survive.
It was awful to see a once-powerful woman have her spirit broken by a mentally abusive man, and I remembered feeling scared for her, as I too, know what abusive relationships can do to a person's health and well-being.
My friend had said that she was so much better, and had tried something that took her only 6 sessions for her to be able to think about all that had happened over the last few years by the hands of her ex-boyfriend without it making her feel sick, scared, unloveable and weak. The memories hadn't been erased, but she could think of them, and 'see them' without it causing her any physical reaction. She said it was a miracle.
Sonic Reset Therapy
My friend had been using something called Sonic Reset Therapy (SRT) SRT uses the latest research in sound to produce a carefully calibrated tone, which activates negative neural networks. It then overlays the sound with a Reset Tone which gently reduces the strength of the problem memories/feelings/states that you began with.
What is the evidence base for SRT?
SRT is a type of Neuro Remodulation Therapy. These approaches, such as Eye movement desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) all aim to change the way a brain stores information, so that memories and feelings are healthily processed and no longer feel overwhelming.
How Does Sonic Reset Therapy Work?
Sonic Reset is a therapy that you can do at home, through the use of an audio file and your headphones. You can do it any time of the day or night (never during driving of course!). You basically listen to a specific tone, for 20 minutes, whilst focusing on the bad memory or emotion as much as you can during that time. Then you have a break for 10 minutes and listen to it again for another 20.
You can do this as many times as you need until you can think of the memory without it making you physically feel something harmful. For me, and many others, they often only need to listen to the audio file once or twice depending on the memory. It worked immediately for me in regards to the young girl. I was gobsmacked at how fast it worked. I also noticed that I had the best sleep that night after listening to the audio file before bed. It was such a deep sleep and I had vivid dreams!
The second time I knew this worked really fast was during my sister's wedding. She had asked me to say a poem during her ceremony, in front of 60 wedding guests. I have always been terrified of public speaking so the night before her wedding, I listened to the audio file, just once.
The next day, I was able to get up and speak without shaking like I normally do, and whilst I can't say I had zero nervousness, It was indeed much less severe than it normally would have been. I have no doubt that if I listened to the audio file a few nights before in a row, I would have felt even far less stressed about speaking in front of all of those people.
You Can Try Sonic Reset Therapy Right Now For Free
We would really love you to try Sonic Reset Therapy out, and are pleased to let you know that there is a free 3 day trial period (yes, this is enough time to know how it works if you do it every day at least twice) You do have to put your CC details in (it is normally a monthly subscription – cheaper than seeing a therapist/counselor!) but you can always cancel (easily) before the 3 days trial is finished.
There are a few courses you can do:
|Anxiety & Stress
|Fast track to optimal functioning
|Bespoke SRT With Edward
|Loss & Feeling Low
|Break Ups & Heartache
Sonic Reset Therapy, in my and many other's experiences, is a real game-changer. No longer do we have to try many things to help make big strides in releasing us from painful traumas!
To check out the programs and to get your free 3 day trial, please visit www.soniceresetherapy.com
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Parables For The New Conversation (Chapter 13: The Marriage)
The following is a chapter from my book 'Parables For The New Conversation.' One chapter will be published every Sunday for 36 weeks here on Collective Evolution. (I would recommend you start with Chapter 1 if you haven't already read it.) I hope my words are a source of enjoyment and inspiration for you, the reader. If perchance you would like to purchase a signed paperback copy of the book, you can do so on my production company website Pandora's Box Office.
From the back cover: "Imagine a conversation that centers around possibility—the possibility that we can be more accepting of our own judgments, that we can find unity through our diversity, that we can shed the light of our love on the things we fear most. Imagine a conversation where our greatest polarities are coming together, a meeting place of East and West, of spirituality and materialism, of religion and science, where the stage is being set for a collective leap in consciousness more magnificent than any we have known in our history.
Now imagine that this conversation honors your uniqueness and frees you to speak from your heart, helping you to navigate your way more deliberately along your distinct path. Imagine that this conversation puts you squarely into the seat of creator—of your fortunes, your relationships, your life—thereby putting the fulfillment of your deepest personal desires well within your grasp.
'Parables for the New Conversation' is a spellbinding odyssey through metaphor and prose, personal sagas and historic events, where together author and reader explore the proposal that at its most profound level, life is about learning to consciously manifest the experiences we desire–and thus having fun. The conversation touches on many diverse themes but always circles back to who we are and how our purposes are intertwined, for it is only when we see that our personal desires are perfectly aligned with the destiny of humanity as a whole that we will give ourselves full permission to enjoy the most exquisite experiences life has to offer."
13. The Marriage
On the patio of the village restaurant on the island of Allandon, the restaurant chef and the village florist sat uncomfortably on a hot afternoon waiting for their children to arrive. The daughter of the florist was to marry the son of the chef, and the two women, who had not met previously, both felt it was important to all get together to set the wedding arrangements in motion.
"Where are those two?" asked the florist.
"No sense of responsibility, their generation," said the chef.
After a few more minutes of uncomfortable silence, the chef said, "Well, let me be the first to welcome you into our family."
"No, no, it is I who welcome you into our family," replied the florist.
They gazed out towards the East Beach and still saw no signs of their children.
"Well, perhaps we might start," said the florist.
"Yes, we should," replied the chef.
"I will be happy to help you select an appropriate gift for your son to give me," said the florist.
"Gift?" asked the chef.
"Yes, during the ceremony the groom is joined with the bride after his gift to her mother is accepted," the florist said.
"You mean the groom is joined with the bride after her father walks her down the aisle and gives her away," quipped the chef. "There is no aisle," said the florist. "It is more of an open space, so there is room for the drummers—and the chickens."
"Chickens?" the chef responded. "Do you think this is a wedding or a circus?"
Just then the chef's son plopped down on an empty chair beside them, surfboard in hand and wearing only a bathing suit. "The circus sounds fun," he said.
"You're wet!" said the chef.
"And you're late," said the florist.
"I know," said the florist's daughter, who leaned her surfboard against the wall. "The ocean was so perfect, it just kept pulling us back in."
"Be serious," said the chef. "We are having some problems with the wedding arrangements."
"How can there be problems?" asked the boy laughing. "You cook the meal and she'll arrange the flowers."
"No, the ceremony," the chef said. "She is saying it should be outside with loud noises and wild animals…"
"You are talking about our tradition!" replied the florist. "And it's better than being cooped up inside watching a stiff procession."
"Our ceremony is sacred, and it respects the seriousness of the event."
"We feel a marriage should be a celebration."
"I agree—a celebration, not a farce," said the chef.
The florist took a deep breath, not wanting to cause a scene. She turned to her daughter. "See then, you need to make a decision now. Arrangements have to be made."
"So are you going to do it our way or her way?"
"Yes," the girl said with a smile.
"What?" asked the florist.
"Yes," the boy repeated. "Our answer is 'yes'."
"What's that supposed to mean?" asked the chef.
"We trust you can figure it out," said the boy. And with that, they took up their surfboards and trotted back towards the beach.
In our world of duality, opposition would seem unavoidable. We have noted that it is the perpetual opposition of yin and yang that keeps our world and our lives in motion. However as we become more aware that we are beings that can choose to come from a place of unity, our Dao Self, rather than a place of duality, our Ego Self, we create the possibility for dealing with opposition as an occasion for fostering harmony rather than as a reason for conflict.
In the new conversation there is a subtle shift away from the need to stand firmly on one particular side of an issue. While converse can mean opposite, conversing does not have to imply opposing. When presented with a choice between opposing ideas it becomes possible to say yes—not to one or the other choice, but to choice itself. In celebrating together the very fact that we have choice, we honor our differences. The prospects of this awareness are exciting. Once it is grasped by a critical mass of people, it will suddenly become unthinkable to engage in a serious fight about anything on the planet.
But first, we have to work through some long-standing habits of thought that our ancestors left us with. We are still in a place where having differences continues to have negative connotations, because we continue to believe who we are is grounded in those differences. For example, if our identity is mainly tied to the particular culture, nation, race or creed we belong to, we are already setting up barriers to the possibility of dissimilar people and groups coming together as one.
Historically, tribal groups brought people together into a view of the world that established rules and values for all the individuals of their group to follow. These tribes tended to be very protective of the values that distinguished them from others because it was thought to ensure their survival. Nietzsche said it this way:
No people could live without evaluating; but if it wishes to maintain itself it must not evaluate as its neighbor evaluates. Much that seemed good to one people seemed shame and disgrace to another: thus I found. I found much that was called evil in one place was in another decked with purple honors. One neighbor never understood another: his soul was always amazed at his neighbor's madness and wickedness.
Now there is much to be said about the beauty and magnificence of human collectives such as cultures, races, or religions that are bound together by common values and a shared way of thinking. They represent a form of fulfillment of our most basic desire as human beings—the desire for unity, the desire to be part of something larger than our individual selves. But while cultures may have become strong and able to maintain themselves based on the values they adopted, there was often an inbred tendency to hold all other ways of experiencing the world as wrong. To actually give credence to the value system of an adversary was a most dangerous and self-defeating strategy. It demonstrated weakness, and was a threat to a people's survival and proliferation. To some, protecting their collective identity even meant promoting their views and traditions beyond their boundaries. In the process, instead of exchanging divergent ideas and practices with others in the pursuit of higher knowledge and mutual understanding, people exchange swords on the bloody battlegrounds of war, with the objective of establishing one set of beliefs as 'right' and the other as 'wrong'.
In recent times there has been a shift in the manner in which cultures interact. Modern transportation has facilitated travel and immigration as never before. Living in modern cosmopolitan cities exposes us to many of the world's cultures in everyday life. If nothing else, this exposure forces us to acknowledge that there are many habits, customs, and lifestyles that are different from our own. As well, technological advances such as the Internet and an increasingly mutually-dependant world economy has amplified cross-cultural communications exponentially. The man-made walls around cultures and nations have never been more porous. And as the nations of our world are compelled to pull open their curtains and face each other, tolerance for diverse ideas and perspectives on how to live is the rule of the day. In other words, tolerance has become an economic necessity.
The allure of a tolerant world is that it provides the perception that all ways of life are respected, and that matters of difference will be resolved peacefully and without blame or judgment. In reality this is not the case. A show of tolerance is often done more for convenience and prudence rather than as a true recognition of the potential value of another culture's ideas and values.
During my time in Korea I discovered some of the limits of the mind-set of tolerance. Now first, understand that I had always considered myself wonderfully tolerant of other cultures. While I had not adopted all the ways of Korean culture during my three plus years living there, I never considered them to be wrong or inferior to my own ways. I enjoyed Korean food and learned to be quite proficient with chopsticks. I had picked up enough of the Korean language to live and get around. I even started to realize that certain behaviors, ones that would have been considered 'rude' in my own culture, were perfectly natural in the context of Korean life, and I could adjust my reactions accordingly. And so when I happened to fall in love with a Korean girl and eventually asked her to marry me, I was doing so with no fear of experiencing the proverbial 'culture shock' often associated with such unions since I felt I had already embraced her culture. In fact I was the one who pushed for a traditional Korean wedding ceremony.
My wife-to-be Hyun and I planned to pay for the wedding ourselves. She suggested that her parents were not in a financial position to pay for the wedding, and to her delight I was in full agreement. As we were discussing the guest list, she informed me that all the friends of her parents whose children's weddings they had gone to had to be invited. Although I didn't really like the idea, I went along with it when I heard that they would all be giving substantial amounts of money as gifts. Later on, as I was adding up the costs for the wedding, I asked her how much money we could expect to get from these friends of her parents. She looked at me a bit strange. "None," she said, "all that money is going to my mother."
"Excuse me?" I asked, incredulous. I figured I must have misunderstood something. She repeated what she had said. I must have asked her five times to make sure I got the story right before finally exploding into a rage.
"How could that money be going to your mother? It's our wedding! It's our gifts! It's for us! We're even paying for the wedding! That's ridiculous! That's the most selfish thing I've ever heard of!"
Hyun was fully taken aback by my outburst, and was in tears for over an hour. When she finally mustered the strength to respond, she came out angrily: "She had to pay out money at all their weddings! It's normal. It's the only way she can get that money back. It's her money!"
In Korea, money is traditionally distributed up through the family, usually the mother, and redistributed down to the children. It's a complex system that ties in with family real estate, in a way that protects its members and helps them make prudent decisions. I had heard about this, but never gave it much attention. The idea never bothered me because I was never affected by it. But now that it was affecting me, I was angry about it. All I could think of was that I was paying for a stranger's meal so he could put some money in my mother-in-law's pocket. My anger was an indictment not only against Hyun's mother, but also against the whole culture in general for having what I suddenly felt was a ludicrous system.
But it really wasn't. It was just different, and totally self-consistent. Hyun's parents had always been honest and very generous with me. The last thing they would want to do is take money that they didn't think belonged to them. Hyun's parents worked hard and scraped by to help Hyun and her brother and sister get through university. In contrast, my brother, sister and I all paid our own way through university. This was not because our parents loved us any less. Our culture tends to put a high value on independence and fosters autonomous separate family units, while Koreans put more emphasis on interdependence and keeping family ties strong. If I was to be married to someone of a different culture, I suddenly realized more was needed from me than mere tolerance.
Tolerance still maintains the notion that ours is the 'right' way and theirs is the 'wrong' way. This polarity lays in wait, potentially manifesting as violent opposition when triggered by circumstance. Without a real desire to actively delve into the way others see the world, and be challenged by these different views in ways that matter to us, it might be difficult to fully come to grips with our own ethnocentricity. Today I feel very fortunate to be married to someone of a different culture. I am reminded in the daily events of our relationship that simple tolerance is not enough to heal the conflicts and misunderstandings that arise in a way that generates true harmony.
It is striving for what I call true acceptance, not simple tolerance that opens the door to overcoming the opposition that leads to conflict. Through acceptance we entertain the possibility that our own way of thinking may need to come under scrutiny from time to time, and that perhaps the other person's way of thinking is right. And in its purest form acceptance even goes beyond that, to the most subtle and uplifting precept of them all: that all ideas have value, that it is not a question of right and wrong, but simply a matter of perspective. Here, the ideas that make us different are no longer obstacles but opportunities, to learn, to grow, to come to a greater awareness of what our lives are really about. In my marriage, striving for this kind of acceptance for my wife and her culture has not only meant greater harmony but also a fuller, richer appreciation for the diversity that exists around me.
Humanity as a whole suffers when groups of people remain too attached to their own collective identity and world-view. It seems a not-so-divine comedy that the history of humanity has been marked by an inability to embrace our cultural and racial differences, one of our greatest gifts to one another. This inability is at the core of the racism and discrimination that is still active in the world.
In his speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, Martin Luther King spoke of emancipation from the slavery of outmoded ideas. He spoke of a day that would see the Negro, as he called his own, liberated from oppression and racial injustice. But even beyond a vision for his own people, his dream had universal significance. He sought to advance the truths that the Declaration of Independence, written almost two hundred years earlier, had deemed self-evident: that all men (and women) are created equal. He dared to speak of a day in the future where different races and creeds would walk side by side, beyond the clutches of discrimination, and "all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: 'Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!' "
His speech remains one of the most dramatic appeals for all of us to liberate ourselves from our deeply rooted habit of judging one another. And this appeal has been taken up by the new conversation. The new conversation is not about changing the words we use while leaving the beliefs intact. Certainly words are powerful, and to some extent they are transformative, but simply being proficient in politically correct terminology is not enough. While some of us pride ourselves on our ability to suppress judgment from our world and hide it from ourselves, this does not bring about healing. It only puts off confrontation until another day. If judgment and discrimination are still our inner guiding principles, the damage will eventually manifest.
At the same time the new conversation is not designed to censor judgment and discrimination. If a racial slur is someone's deepest truth, we are better to allow its expression than to suppress it. If we really want to be helpful, we will do best not to judge the person for saying it. In this way we are helping the person get an unimpeded look at themselves. When they are ready to learn from it they will.
I have personally found this to be one of the most challenging aspects of the new conversation. I don't want to condone discrimination, but at the same time I don't want to be judgmental. I'm not always sure if simply being silent is enough, but I do know that it would be inauthentic for me to go along with the joke (i.e., smiling or nodding when asked, "You know how those people are, eh?") Certainly if I am directly asked what I think, it is incumbent upon me to take the risk and speak out from my heart. But if I am not asked then I realize I need to muster some compassion for where the other person is coming from. It's a bit of a high wire act, and I have needed lots of practice to learn to balance myself.
In the new conversation we are asked to walk this thin line because we have seen that discrimination cannot be healed by confrontation, and have learned that judgment can only melt away in a larger space of acceptance. If we are going to come together in any profound way, we all need a space to expose our whole selves. That means our light and our darkness. Let's face it: none of us are completely free of judgment. And if we accept this, it helps us to be easier on each other, and more importantly on ourselves. After all, the ability to listen and speak with acceptance comes from self-acceptance which, paradoxically, is cultivated when we feel accepted by others. At stake in this is our shared longing to fully express our unique selves, and the hope that our diversity can lead us to experience our most sublime sense of unity.
Today, there are signs that we have gotten closer to Dr. King's lofty vision. True, the world as a whole does not yet value acceptance as the highest attribute of discourse. In some parts it remains forbidden to access or speak about ideas different from the accepted norms of the nation or culture. Wars based on ideology continue to be fought because we continue to fear that accepting those whose ideas are different from ours will threaten our survival. But despite all appearances, I believe our world is evolving from a scattered collection of bordered nations into a harmonious global village. One day we will all be free. The nature of our consciousness, like the universe, is to expand. And while we are going through some growing pains today, no longer certain about what is right and wrong, about how our differences can all fit in together, there will be no turning back. We have become alienated from the identities we were born into, and we are getting too smart to label ourselves by the founding ideas of our cultures. The Pandora's box has opened and the conversation has begun. And the more we talk, the more we will enjoy the fact that each of us seems to see things a little differently, no longer satisfied with being pushed back into a box that has become too restrictive to contain us.
As we endeavor to become fully human, to actualize ourselves, we get a glimpse of the importance of being informed by the distinct character and nature of all human beings, not just those who think the way we do. We are gaining the courage to question our deep-seated beliefs that there is only one view of the world, and only one meaning to life. The slowly emerging consensus is that the seemingly disparate ways of seeing the world and giving meaning to life are all dazzling colors that together form the mosaic that encompasses the human experience.
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The Power of Human Emotions & How Schools Are Failing To Teach Children How To Deal With Them
In Brief
- The Facts:
Human emotions effect our physiology, state of mind as well as others around us. Modern day education does not teach children about the importance of emotion and how to regulate and deal with it.
- Reflect On:
How are children supposed to be mentally 'fit' as adults if they are not taught how to deal with the various emotions they experience throughout childhood?
What exactly is education? Today, many view it as an opportunity to learn, thrive, and excel in the world. Others see it as a necessary step toward obtaining a piece of paper that ensures one's entrance into the professional world. Regardless of your take on it, however, one thing is certain: From a very early age we are forced into a system that demands our presence and attention for hours a day and for years of our life. Each child is required to learn an accepted version of reality in order to fit into the specific mould desired by the elite. Just like television, a large part of school is simply programming, and we don't really learn much about the world — or ourselves.
Perhaps this is why Mark Twain said, "I have never let me education interfere with my intelligence," or why Einstein told the world to "never confuse education with intelligence," and that "education is what remains after one has forgotten one has learned in school."
School these days seems less about learning and more about rote memorization. Are we critically thinking enough, or questioning enough? Or are we simply being bred to become robots, all of us entering into the same human experience, "educating" ourselves in order to further perpetuate a broken system? We learn concepts and ideas that fit within the current paradigm and structure of society, but not about how to care for ourselves and become well-adjusted adults. Are we really being educated? Or simply groomed to become 'good' consumers?
"I don't want a nation of thinkers, I want a nation of workers."
– John D. Rockefeller
Another problem with the current education model, as pointed out by world renowned education and creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson, is that it was designed and conceived for a different age. Today, new information and discoveries are constantly emerging in all fields, questioning what we once thought we knew, and that includes how people learn. Unfortunately, unless you have an amazing teacher who is passionate about our world and new information, children suffer in this system.
In fact, prior to the late 1800s, education was a private practice that took place in private institutions or through home schooling. That all changed in 1902 when John D. Rockefeller created the General Education Board in conjunction with Frederick T. Gates, a close friend and business and personal advisor. The General Education Board was responsible for funding the American public school system, and provided over 100 million dollars in 1902 while continuing their support beyond 1902. If we follow the money, it becomes clear the general education board was responsible for the creation of the American public school system. Does education not play a large role in manipulating the consciousness of human beings?
"Knowledge has to come from somewhere, and that can't be a classroom."
Emotions in School
School is an experience primarily comprised of learning information — rarely questioning it, but rather taking it in as fact. While we learn about many subjects, very few of them have any real impact on our lives. There are absolutely no classes dealing with human emotions, for instance.
According to sociologist Thomas Scheff, a big supporter of emotional education from the University of California, many Western societies simply view emotions as an indulgence or a distraction, and less important than other things. And he's right — we are often taught to bury our emotions so we can be more productive, and we are made to feel as though our emotions are not as relevant or important; they always seem to come secondary, if at all, especially within an educational setting. Scheff, among many others, believes that emotions provide valuable information, and yet we are taught not to listen to them. "Just as dangerous," Scheff said, "is the practice of hiding one emotion behind another." He has found that "men, in particular, tend to hide feelings of shame under anger, aggression and, far too often, violence."
Many of the issues and problems that arise in our lives stem from the fact that we really have no idea how to process or address our emotions. As a result of this lack in our education, a child who has not paid any attention to their emotional body develops bad habits and behaviours to compensate, until they learn how to properly process their emotions, if they ever do.
How Do We Go About Doing This?
The good thing about teaching emotions is, they can be implemented into any class and any grade. For example, if you were trying to teach emotions in a class with a number of kids who are about to graduate high school, a great starting point might be to illustrate just how much of an effect emotions can have, not just on a mental level, where unresolved emotions lead to negative action, but on a physical level as well. The Institute of Noetic Sciences is doing some great work in this area, creating more awareness about non-material science and how our thoughts/emotions have an observable effect on physical material reality. The mind-body connection is truly powerful, and we should be teaching people how to harness that power.
An internationally recognized nonprofit research and education organization, the Institute of HeartMath dedicates itself to helping people reduce stress, self-regulate emotions, and build energy and resilience for healthy, happy lives. HeartMath tools, technology, and training teach people to rely on the intelligence of their hearts in concert with that of their minds at home, school, work, and play. They've discovered that emotional information is "actually coded and modulated" into the magnetic field that surrounds all living things.
As HeartMath Director of Research Dr. Rolin McCratey tells us, "By learning to shift our emotions, we are changing the information coded into the magnetic fields that are radiated by the heart, and that can impact those around us. We are fundamentally and deeply connected with each other and the planet itself."
All of these facts, published researched papers, and more can be accessed at heartmath.org.
Related CE Article: What Science is Telling us About The Heart's Intuitive Intelligence
One the most popular programs to begin teaching emotions was developed in 2005 by Marc Brackett, David Caruso, and Robin Stern of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence.
It's called RULER.
"The Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence uses the power of emotions to create a more effective and compassionate society. The Center conducts research and teaches people of all ages how to develop their emotional intelligence."
It's currently being used in more than 1,000 schools in the U.S., implemented for grades k-8.
The name, RULER, is an acronym for its five goals: recognizing emotions in oneself and others; understanding the causes and consequences of emotions; labelling emotional experiences with an accurate and diverse vocabulary; and expressing and regulating emotions in ways that promote growth.
What Exactly Are the Kids Taught?
RULER teachers kids to to focus on the underlying theme of an emotion they are experiencing rather than wasting energy trying to define it precisely. Grace Rubenstein from Ted.Ideas reports:
When an emotion grips you, explains Stern, understanding its thematic contours can help "name it to tame it." Even though anger is experienced differently by different people, she explains, "the theme underlying anger is the same. It's injustice or unfairness. The theme that underlies disappointment is an unmet expectation. The theme that underlies frustration is feeling blocked on your way to a goal. Pinning down the theme can "help a person be seen and understood and met where she is," says Stern.
Just taking the time to contemplate an emotion when you feel it, and think about why it might be arising, is critical for emotional health. Typing these words here and now, I still find it unbelievable that we have chosen not to deal with such an important aspect of what it means to be a human being. Emotions are something all of us experience, yet we have no guidelines or advice on what we're supposed to do with them.
Rubenstein offers an example of how RULER functions in the classroom:
RULER's lessons are woven into all classes and subjects. So, for example, if "elated' is the emotional vocabulary word under discussion, a teacher would ask students in an American history class to link "elated" to the voyage of Lewis and Clark. Instruction reaches beyond the classroom, too; kids are prompted to talk with their parents or caregivers about when they last felt elated. Researchers at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence has found RULER schools tend to see less-frequent bullying, lower anxiety and depression, more student leadership and higher grades. So why isn't emotional education the norm rather than the exception?
Emotions are something all of us experience, all the time, every single day. They can be confusing, and hard to navigate, especially when they're negative. By including emotional education into the school system, I believe future generations would be far less depressed, angry, and confused. They would be better equipped to handle difficult situations in their lives, and find it much easier to express their feelings in a healthy, productive way.
There's still a long way to go when it comes to understanding human emotions, and how to teach/discuss them in the classroom at different grade levels, but RULER is an amazing step in the right direction and I hope we see more programs like this being developed in the future.
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Mercury Retrograde Is Sick Of Being Blamed For Your Problems
In Brief
- The Facts:
Poor Mercury retrograde, it gets blamed for so many of the problems that people feel come up during the cycle. But the truth is, what gets triggered in us is no one's 'fault' but our own.
- Reflect On:
Is it better to look outward for why we feel a specific way? Or to perhaps look inwards and explore what may be triggering us within?
This isn't meant to offend anyone, it's simply here to spark a meaningful reflection. I have long said this, as we do have astrology content posted on CE a couple times per month–astrology can help you with reflections, but it is not meant to be a crutch or meant to explain away your challenges as something you don't have to take any responsibility for or action on.
Think about it. You wake up late, you speak poorly to someone, someone speaks poorly to you, you have a bad day, something doesn't go right… in these moments people will become wonky, triggered or upset. Then, they may blame Mercury retrograde, or maybe the full moon, or maybe something else for why they are feeling this way. And while there can be truth to cosmic cycles having an impact on humanity's consciousness, this doesn't explain how we react. It's also true that as we deal with that which triggers us, these energies don't affect us in the same way any longer. I covered this in significant detail in my favorite documentary I've made called CE3: The Shift, which you can watch on CETV here.
Things happen in our lives, someone says something, we see something, or something occurs in our day, if we have a trigger within us that gets struck by these events, that external event is merely acting as a mirror for you to reflect on that particular trigger you have. We often feel that "someone else's" or "something else's" stuff or energy is always imposing on us and making us feel bad and thus there is nothing we can do, except of course just wait for the Mercury retrograde cycle to end or block the person that is triggering us.
But let's think for a moment, is blaming how we feel on Mercury Retrograde, any other astrological cycle, or someone else really going to get us to a point where we are empowered and have moved past the habits, patterns, beliefs and limiting blocks we have in our lives? Or might we be better off seeing what might be coming up in our lives in a given moment, writing it out, taking some time to reflect on how we truly feel about it and seeing what changes we can make? After all, don't we sometimes use beliefs about something to explain why we feel a certain way? Is it really true that we never have 'problems' outside of these cycles or triggers?
The truth is, social media is rife with posts about "no bad vibes allowed," "cut out anyone who is not right for you," or posts blaming astrological cycles for everything we feel. There is this 'pop spirituality' culture of seeming spiritual in our lifestyle as a trend, but perhaps not truly living authentically to the teachings or reflections we're trying to represent. This often keeps people remaining as a victim and in blame mode when it comes to what gets triggered within us. In many ways, we'd rather run away from or block the things that bother us than face them head on and ask, "why does this bother me to begin with?"
Sure, that's not always a comfortable question, and no I'm not saying simply let an 'abuser' continue to abuse without getting out of the way, I'm simply saying there is a difference between an abuser and someone who has a different opinion than us that we can't seem to handle and triggers our emotional state. What better definition of slavery is there than to be allowing other people to control our emotional state and send us off into rollercoasters because we don't want to focus on asking why we are so bothered by something?
The truth is, if we block that person or run from that person, we will be met with someone else who will once again trigger that same pattern in us because on a deeper level, don't we want to be free? Doesn't it make sense for that trigger to be struck once again so we can deal with it this time?
The point here is in self responsibility and taking action on being different. Perhaps many of the challenges we experience during something like Mercury retrograde are actually always there, we just pay closer attention to them during this time because we're clearer on who to blame for it.
Accidents happen.
Computers break.
People forget things.
We feel emotional.
And people can be mean or inappropriate.
… regardless of Mercury retrograde or any other cycle.
The only questions we really have to ask ourselves are: what life do we wish to live, and what state of being do we wish to be in? One where we are empowered and working through patterns that hold us back or create unnecessary suffering? Or one where we sit back, point to external cycles as a reason for why we feel the way we do, only to repeat that cycle once again shortly thereafter?
The Takeaway
Personally, things can sometimes come up in my life as a challenge, whether it's Mercury retrograde or not. Do I have more during Mercury retrograde? I can't honestly say that's true. What I can say is that if I'm struggling with something in particular and not making the time to address it, I can come up with all sorts of reasons as to why I feel the way I do and why things happen, most of which all point outwards.
But I know deep down that it's me that can do the work to free myself, and so I've always been one to swiftly do the inner work instead of waiting around and making excuses or blaming outside forces.
If something triggers how you feel during the next Mercury retrograde, or anytime for that matter, set 30 undistracted minutes aside for yourself and write out how you are feeling and why. Push yourself to go deep and ask yourself the tough questions. What is truly bothering me about this? What belief system is being triggered? Did someone really do something wrong to me? Who says it's wrong? Can I put myself in their shoes and understand their position? Am I repeating a pattern of negative self talk or self-imposed limitations? What stories am I telling myself?
Do this, and the next thing you know the worst thing that may happen during a Mercury retrograde is you may have to restart your computer–if you even notice Mercury retrograde at all.
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Social Events
The Venue
Located in one of the hottest neighborhoods in New York City just minutes from Flatiron, Chelsea, and major transportation hubs, HELEN MILLS is the perfect place to host your next celebration.
The venue features a spectacular 4,000 square foot, street-level Event Space with a beautiful 37-foot long, hand-crafted bar and a 140-seat theater. Venue rentals include use of our state-of-the-art tech, ample branding and signage opportunities, sleek cocktail furniture, lighting, and decor pieces (details below).
Our experienced team team offers a number of all-inclusive packages for a seamless planning process and can also work with outside caterers of your choice.
See above and here for photos of recent social events at HELEN MILLS.
Up to 300 guests for cocktail-style receptions and up to 140 guests for theater-style or seating at rounds. 140 seats available in the theater. See below or here for additional capacities and sample floor plans and here for a virtual tour of the venues.
Catering & Packages
We offer all-inclusive catering packages to fit your event needs. We also offer a variety of beverage service options, including a full bar with an assortment of premium brands and local craft beer.
We welcome licensed, outside caterers and food trucks. We offer sponsored beverage service if your event includes a liquor sponsor. See here for vendor insurance requirements.
Amenities, Decor & Signage
Venue rentals include our in-house furniture and decor inventory. The collection features a sleek mix of white leather ottomans, brushed metallic cocktail tables, white acrylic reception chairs, and more.
The venue is fully brand-able with a number of creative street-level and interior signage opportunities available. The two spaces features gallery molding along the walls and a ceiling grid in the event space for hanging additional signage or decor. See lighting (below) for more branding options.
Tech & Lighting
HELEN MILLS features state-of-the-art tech & lighting, included with all rentals when an a/v technicians is hired. Details include:
3 projectors in event space, 1 in theater
Sound system and PANDORA for business in the Event Space, surround sound in the Theater
Dedicated, high-speed wireless and wired internet (100 mbps)
Single-color wall wash and gobo projection
One wired / Wireless microphone
We offer additional items for rent and welcome outside A/V rentals and production companies.

subset: commoncrawl


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As Drew Peterson awaits sentencing for murder, a new attorney is seeking to overturn his conviction based on possible mistakes made by his defense team leader, court records show.
Naperville attorney John Paul Carroll filed documents Tuesday in Will County Court asserting that he now represents the former Bolingbrook police sergeant, who was convicted last month of killing his third wife, Kathleen Savio.
In the documents, Carroll accuses lead defense attorney Joel Brodsky of lying about his courtroom experience, forcing Peterson to engage in pretrial publicity and ignoring his request for a speedy trial. He also claims that Brodsky threatened to share unspecified information about Peterson if he fired him.
"Attorney Brodsky had lied to Mr. Peterson on a number of occasions, and when Mr. Peterson discovered the lies and talked about possibly discharging attorney Brodsky and retaining other counsel, attorney Brodsky indicated that in the event he was discharged, he would be ethically bound to publicly reveal some things that were discussed between him and Mr. Peterson," the motion states.
The move seemed to stun Brodsky, who denied the allegations and insisted Peterson did not hire Carroll to handle post-trial motions. Brodsky, who said he spoke with Peterson by phone Tuesday, contends that Carroll was retained solely to represent Peterson as he tries to preserve his police pension following his conviction.
"I can state unequivocally that John Paul Carroll was not authorized to file any motions," Brodsky said. "Drew is absolutely boggled as to how he could do something like this."
Court records show that Will County Judge Edward Burmila, who oversaw the trial, granted Carroll permission to meet with Peterson at the Will County Jail last month.
A spokesman for State's Attorney James Glasgow declined to comment, saying prosecutors had not yet seen the motion.
Several jurors have placed Peterson's conviction directly at Brodsky's feet, saying the decision to call Savio's divorce attorney, Harry Smith, tipped the scales in the prosecution's favor. Smith told jurors that Peterson's fourth wife, Stacy, asked him if she could get more money in a divorce if she threatened to tell police about her husband's role in Savio's death.
Burmila had warned Brodsky that he could be opening Pandora's box by putting Smith on the stand. Despite that caution — and against the rest of the defense team's advice — Brodsky called Smith anyway.
Defense co-counsel Steve Greenberg later referred to it as "one of the worst mistakes in the history of jurisprudence."
"Mr. Peterson did not want, suggest, agree to or authorize attorney Brodsky to call attorney Harry Smith as a witness for the defense," Carroll's motion states.
To win an ineffective counsel claim, Peterson must show that Brodsky's representation fell below acceptable standards, and that the outcome might have been different because of it. It could be an uphill battle, however, given that he had five other attorneys on the trial team, and that courts rarely overturn motions based on tactical moves such as which witnesses to call.
"People can raise ineffective counsel, though it's so hard to prove," said Kathleen Zellner, a civil rights attorney who followed the Peterson trial. "But this may be one of the cases where you make that argument."
Carroll's involvement in the case marks another twist in a post-conviction drama that has consumed the defense team in recent weeks. One attorney quit last month while Brodsky engaged in a very public war of words with Greenberg over the trial's outcome.
Brodsky and Peterson have walked lock step since 2007, when Peterson chose the then-unknown attorney to represent him. Though an experienced law-enforcement officer, Peterson opted to keep Brodsky as his main attorney after his 2009 arrest even though he had never tried a murder case.
Carroll said he does not fully understand Peterson's deep-rooted loyalty to his lead defense attorney.
"That's the $64,000 question," Carroll said. "I don't have an answer to it."
Carroll said he is not being paid for his services.
A colorful and controversial lawyer, Carroll first represented Peterson in 2007, when he went to court seeking the return of guns and vehicles from authorities investigating Stacy's disappearance. Though Brodsky had announced that Carroll would join the defense team for the murder case, those plans were scuttled when the Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Committee began investigating Carroll for failing to tell a client about a proposed plea deal.
The matter is still pending before the committee.


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ONARCHITECTURE- Shabby slab? Old Mall studies raise new questions
A pair of recently discovered Mall studies say the heaving bricks are the result of the failing concrete slab beneath them.
For months, the debate over the $7.5 million renovation of the Downtown Mall was all about the heaving bricks. But a pair of recently discovered studies say the real problem is what lurks beneath.
In 1989, locally-based Wood, Sweet, & Swofford Architects was commissioned to study the Mall's condition and develop a design plan and renovation strategy, and was again engaged 10 years later for the same purpose. In both studies, the architects determined that the mortar bed beneath the bricks had deteriorated due to freeze-thaw damage, and recommended removing the existing mortared brick pavers and replacing them with bricks set in sand.
The firm also recommended replacing the concrete accents with granite ones, using mortared brick pavers along expansion joints and drainage areas, updating the mechanical and electrical equipment, and phasing the project over a number of years– virtually the same recommendations made in a City-funded study in 2005, and nearly identical to the renovation plan that was recently approved, with the exception of the construction phasing, which instead of years has been reduced to five months.
So why did the City buy a new study after WSSA had issued reports on what the problem was and how to fix it?
Architect Don Swofford of WSSA thinks some information he presented was information the City may not have wanted to hear. Namely, that that the massive concrete slab beneath the bricks might need to be completely replaced.
In 1989, WSSA suggested that the slab was showing signs of damage due to drainage and moisture problems that were causing it to settle. A contractor in charge of maintaining the Mall was interviewed, and he said that the slab was occasionally found to be broken where such settling had occurred. Further examination of the slab was outside the scope of the 1989 study, but it was recommended that it's soundness be verified. However, by 1999, WSSA was calling the concrete slab the Mall's "biggest problem."
Ten more years of poor drainage and moisture seeping through the crumbling mortar between and beneath the bricks had begun to take its toll. In addition, there was concern about the damage the moisture seepage might be inflicting on the metal rebar within the slab.
As evidence of slab failure, WSSA cited the cracked and shifting bricks, which the firm called "typical of subsurface heaving" and noted that the condition of the bricks had become noticeably worse since they had last studied them in 1989.
"The slab will need to be inspected, and possibly, replaced," the 1999 study determined.
As for the bricks themselves, such a hot topic in recent months, the WSSA study was less concerned with their size (they make no recommendation about what size bricks to use) than with their bulk. Calling them "too strong, too big," they determined that the "spalling" and "breaking apart" that was occurring was being caused in part by their sheer mass. Indeed, a Hook reporter recently lifted and replaced a loose brick on the Mall, and was surprised by how thick and heavy it was. Swofford, in joking, refers to them as "Roman-like bricks," which he says were not made for mortared joints. "The spalling and exfoliation of the brick was due to the mortar strength not being matched properly to the brick," he says.
As for the slab, eight years later Swofford appears to have no doubts about its condition. "My impression from our past research is that the slab will need to be replaced, potentially in its entirety," he says.
However, based on information in the 2005 Wallace, Robert, & Todd study, specifically the engineering part of study that determined the slab was in good condition, City planners have repeatedly assured the public, City Council, and the Board of Architectural Review that the concrete slab is in good condition.
Re-presented with the WSSA findings, and asked if City planners are sure the concrete slab is in good condition, City spokesperson Ric Barrick, speaking on behalf of the MMM Design Group, designers of the brick replacement project, acknowledged that some slab damage might be encountered, but said the City is "confident that whatever limited repair work that needs to be performed on the slab will be possible in our time frame."
"We will remove the bricks, assess the slab, and repair any damage as we go, with a contractor who can handle it and is skilled in various repair and construction tasks," says Barrick. "If plumbing or slab repair work is necessary, they will be able to take care of it before the new bricks are scheduled to be placed."
But Bill Letteri, who was head of the City's facilities management department when both the WSSA and WRT reports were done (he now works for the County in a similar capacity), says only sample tests on the slab were done during the WRT study, and he say's he'd be surprised if they didn't find significant damage.
Given his experience with the moisture problems the Mall has experienced over the years, Letteri is not optimistic about what contractors will find once they pull up the bricks. "They may well find that entire sections of the slab are damaged," he says.
Letteri also said that the proposed five-month timetable for the project struck him as optimistic, an opinion shared by others as well.
Indeed, both the WSSA and WRT reports recommend phasing the project over a number of years, but under pressure from the Downtown business community, who want the project done as quickly as possible, those recommendations were ignored.
"This schedule was largely a product of intense discussion with mall businesses," says Barrick, "who pushed us for a quicker and less disruptive process."
Barrick believes the five month schedule is reasonable. "Originally, the project was gong to be done with only one crew, but we are planning on using four crews," he says. Barrick also points out there will be some prep work done this fall, such as renovating the drainage runnels and the bricks that directly butt up against the buildings.
However, some Mall business owners are skeptical.
"They want to get it done in May– May of what year?" said Men & Boy's Shop owner Mike Kidd, who was around for the original Mall project. "Once a project like this gets started, you can't stop it. I wish them all the best, but if they get it done in that time frame, it will be a miracle."


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Discover a new point of view on photographing buildings, architectural details, and structures with your iPhone or iPad. We'll show you how to combine angles and lines to create perspective, add textures and shapes to bring out details, and set the composition. iPhone or iPad devices will be provided, or bring your own. Recommended for all skill levels.
More about Walks
Walks let you experiment with creative techniques on a guided walk around the neighborhood. Walks are for all levels, from beginner to seasoned pro.


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The woman in the photo is my husband's great grandmother Flora Mae Manning. In the photo is her husband Ernest Gahmo Connor.
The fell in love and were married. Ernest was part Native American and Flora was not. This created a rift with her family and she became estranged from them. They lived near Ernest's parents in a little shack in Hominy, OK.
In that little shack Flora gave birth to a set of twins on 29 May 1929; a girl, Estelle Connor (my husband's grandmother) and a twin baby boy whom left us the same day. To hear grandma talk about them you can tell that they were deeply in love. They were always loving on each other. She had three more children after they moved to Amarillo, TX; Mattie, Lotti and Billie.
Flora had a heart of gold. I wished I had a chance to meet her. I'm sure she is where grandma found her heart of gold. Always giving and always loving. At one point they lived along a railroad track. Life was good then. Grandma remembers there being parties and a lot of get togethers with friends. They were happy. Flora must have felt blessed. Many times she would bring a plate of food out to men who were traveling on the railroad. If Ernest wasn't home she would keep them outside and not let them in the house, but she never turned anyone away from their door. When they got back on the railroad it was always with a full stomach.
In March 1940 she was pregnant again with their fifth child. She gave birth 11 Mar 1940. It was a difficult birth. They named the baby girl Geneva, though she also left them the same day. The real tragedy was a few days later. Flora never recovered from that birth, and on 15 Mar 1940 she joined her two baby's in heaven. She and Geneva were laid to rest beside each other at the Llano Cemetery in Amarillo, TX. I wrote about finally finding their graves in a previous post and how emotional it was for grandma when she discovered that they barely had a marker.
The loss of a child is a tragedy, but the loss of a mother can have staggering effects on the family she leaves behind. Grandma experienced this first hand. She was the oldest child, and basicly became the mother. At first Ernest needed help, so he went back home to be close to his mother who could help him with the raising of four children.
In those days, sadly, society thought it wasn't possible for a father to raise his children on his own. All four children were taken from him and placed into an orphanage, we believe in OK, for a while. He had to remarry in order to get his children back, so he did. This time it was not for love, it was out of desperation. It soon became clear to him that he couldn't stand the woman enough to be married to her. She was mean to all of them and he couldn't take it any more. He packed up the kids and took off one day while she was away. They ran to Arizona. Here's what isn't clear, either Ernest was like many men and had the inability to remember those important dates and ages of his children, or he did it on purpose as a way to hide his trail. But when they settled in Arizona he used incorrect dates for the children's birthdays when he registered them for school. To this day grandma had celebrated the date of her mother's death as her birthday, until I finally found her true birth certificates which had mistakes that made it impossible for the state of OK to find her actual birth certificate. None of us new what the significance of that date was until I began to do our research.
Ernest and the children lived from one farming tent community to another. Grandma says that she never knew what The Great Depression was because they were already living it. They continued to live it long after The Great Depression was over as well. She lived from one farm to another in a tent harvesting. She meet her first husband on one of those farms in CA. Eventually they found a way to get on their feet and live in a home.
Ernest did once again find love and married another woman whom they all loved as a second mother. Though they all found their way in life and got back on their feet, it is clear that Flora's death left a huge hole in all their lives.


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Cheap prices from over 900 car rental suppliers
SUV rental cars available in Istanbul - Sabiha Gokcen Airport (SAW), Turkey
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Dacia Duster
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Information about SUV car rental class in Istanbul - Sabiha Gokcen Airport (SAW), Turkey
A sport utility vehicle, better known by the abbreviation SUV is a large car with raised ground clearance and plenty of space that is usually accompanied with 4-wheel drive. Cars from this rental class are great for active tourism and family holidays outdoors.
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Driving a 4x4 SUV is also very comfortable and will definitely make you feel like you are the real boss on the road.
SUV SAW Airport car rental
SUV car rental class in Istanbul - Sabiha Gokcen Airport is presented by the following car rental models: Dacia Duster, Volvo XC90, or similar SUV rental vehicles.
SUV car rental locations near Istanbul - Sabiha Gokcen Airport
Don't forget to check car rental deals in on-site and off-airport car rental locations closest to Istanbul - Sabiha Gokcen Airport. The prices and availability of cars are usually different. Make sure you make the best selection.
Istanbul - Kartal Region
11.11 km / 6.9 mi
Istanbul - Kadikoy Region
23.16 km / 14.39 mi
Istanbul - Uskudar Region
25.5 km / 15.85 mi
Best suppliers of SUV Istanbul - Sabiha Gokcen Airport car rentals
To make the best choice of SUV car rental deal in Istanbul - Sabiha Gokcen Airport [SAW], pay attention not only to car rental model and its price, but also to car rental vendor who provides this deal. Car rental agencies that offer SUV vehicles in Istanbul - Sabiha Gokcen Airport have different car rental conditions and rating average scores from our previous customers.
The biggest variety of SUV car rental deals in Istanbul - Sabiha Gokcen Airport is provided by AVIS EUROPE FRANCHISE.
Avis 15 reviews
8 / 10
Enterprise 74 reviews
7.5 / 10
Hertz 44 reviews
7 / 10
BUDGET 13 reviews
6.8 / 10
SIXT 53 reviews
6.7 / 10
Circular 43 reviews
6 / 10
Rhodium 6 reviews
5.9 / 10
ALAMO 9 reviews
5.6 / 10
EUROPCAR 18 reviews
5.2 / 10
Goldcar 80 reviews
4.9 / 10
Essence 7 reviews
4.9 / 10
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4.1 / 10
FAQ - SUV rent a car in Istanbul - Sabiha Gokcen Airport
How to book SUV car rental in in Istanbul - Sabiha Gokcen Airport?
Start typing the necessary pickup location and return address in the search form and select the most suitable one from the drop-down list. Choose the required date and time of your rental. On the search results page, you will be able to filter and sort all car rental deals based on your preferred car rental class.
What is the cheapest SUV car rental in SAW Airport?
The cheapest SUV car in Istanbul - Sabiha Gokcen Airport is Dacia Duster from circular. The current relevant price is $32.40 per day.
How much will I spend on fuel for SUV car in Istanbul - Sabiha Gokcen Airport?
The gasoline prices near SAW Airport varies from $4.45 to $5.04 per gallon.
So, you will spend about 10.8 $ to drive SUV car for 100 km. A 100 US mile drive in SUV vehicle will cost you approximately 17.4 $.
What do I need to have when picking up SUV rental car in Istanbul - Sabiha Gokcen Airport Airport?
Generally, it is enough to present:
- A full driving license. UK licence holders also need to provide the photocard. If your Driving licence is not in the Roman alphabet (i.e. in Arabic, Greek, Cyrillic, or Chinese), you are required to bring an International Driving Permit along with your domestic licence.
- A valid photo ID (passport or national ID).
- A valid credit card in the name of the main driver. It is needed to pre-authorise a car rental deposit at the rental desk.
How old do I have to be to rent SUV vehicle in Istanbul - Sabiha Gokcen Airport Airport?
You usually have to be between 25 and 70 years of age to rent SUV car in Istanbul - Sabiha Gokcen Airport. Age restrictions of car rental companies in Istanbul - Sabiha Gokcen Airport differ dramatically.
If you fall outside these age limitations, you always can find car rental suppliers who will allow you to rent a vehicle on condition that you pay an additional young driver surcharge or senior driver fee or purchase additional insurance.
Is it possible to rent SUV car one way?
Yes, some vendors provide one way SUV car rentals in Istanbul - Sabiha Gokcen Airport. Be attentive when selecting a provider. If you are looking for one way rentals, be prepared that some restrictions and additional payments may apply. Don't forget to contact the company to make sure of actual availability and cost of one way rentals.


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|Exercise Help & Tips: Lateral Lunges
|Starting Position
Begin by standing with your feet shoulder width apart, hands on hips.
INHALE: Step out to the right and shift your body weight over your right leg, squatting to a 90 degree angle at the right knee. Try to sit down with your butt, keeping your back as upright as possible.
EXHALE: Push off and bring your right leg back to center to complete one rep. Finish all reps on this side, and repeat on left side to complete one set.
Special Instructions
Keep your weight on your heels and make sure your knees don't go over the plane of your toes. Hold your arms out in front of you to help with balance.
Muscles Worked: Quads, Glutes, Inner thigh


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Experimental Lamarckism
By Brian Hayes
Would this evolutionary strategy be worth the investment?
Would this evolutionary strategy be worth the investment?
A curious young elephant got its nose stretched by a crocodile, with the result that elephants everywhere now carry a trunk. What this story tells us is that Rudyard Kipling was a thoroughgoing Lamarckian—a believer in the inheritance of acquired characteristics. As it happens, Lamarckian ideas were already in disrepute when Kipling wrote his "Just So" stories. The German biologist August Weismann, in a remarkably Kiplingesque experiment, had shown that chopping off a rat's tail did not lead to the birth of tailless ratlets. Experimental protocols have gotten more sophisticated since then, but the verdict is the same: There's no sign of Lamarckian inheritance anywhere in the kingdoms of life.
But why not? A few years ago Colin McGinn wrote (in a review of a book by Daniel Dennett): "Why have Lamarckian organisms never evolved? Surely a mutation which made the genes responsive to changes of phenotype ('learning') would have selectional advantage, and there seems to be no physical impossibility in such a set-up. Wouldn't natural selection favour a physiological mechanism that allowed learned characteristics to be passed genetically to offspring?"
These are good questions. One way of answering them is to note that the molecular pathways needed for Lamarckian inheritance just don't exist. Within the context of life-as-we-know-it, there's no way for the elephant's nose to talk to the elephant's genes—especially the germ-line genes. The "central dogma" of molecular biology says that information flows from DNA to RNA to protein, not the other way around. A Lamarckian feedback loop would seem to require some mechanism by which the proteins of the phenotype could alter the DNA of the genotype.
The trouble with such an answer is that it invites a further annoying question: Why is it that such feedback loops have never evolved? Given all that has evolved in the way of genetic detours and shortcuts—plasmids, transposons, retroviruses, prions—it seems a bit arbitrary to declare this one pathway out of bounds. The case of retroviruses is particularly provocative, since they produce an enzyme (reverse transcriptase) that violates the central dogma, copying information from RNA back into DNA.
Here's another possible reason for the absence of Lamarckian inheritance in nature: Maybe it's just not worth the bother. Many authors seem to take for granted that a genetic means of passing on learned traits would be beneficial if it could exist. They assume Lamarckism would make for a smoother and quicker kind of evolution than Darwin's blindfolded selection of random variations. But what are the true costs and benefits of Lamarckism? Perhaps the reason we see no Lamarckian organisms is not that nature cannot invent the necessary apparatus but rather that the result is maladaptive. Lamarckism could be a trick that nature has tried and discarded.
I have attempted to investigate this issue through some simple computer simulations. Specifically, I've addressed the following question: If you were offered a Lamarckian capability, how much should you be willing to pay for it, when the price is exacted in the form of some compensating detriment to fitness? My experiments in free-market genetics are too crude to yield a definitive answer, but I can report that within the rather narrow bounds of this one model, I've been unable to find any situation where the benefits of Lamarckism would justify paying more than a small price.
Jean Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de Lamarck, was treated badly by his contemporaries and worse by history. At the Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle he held the lowliest professorship, namely Professor of Insects and Worms, but he turned this academic insult to good advantage, establishing the division between vertebrate and invertebrate animals. And he devised a theory of speciation through gradual evolution 60 years before Darwin published his Origin. Today, however, Lamarck is remembered only for his great error—his thesis that evolution works by the transmission of traits acquired through habits of use or disuse.
The idea must have seemed irresistible. If you play a lot of basketball, Lamarck says, you'll have taller children. And he appears to be right: The children of basketball players surely are taller than average. Likewise, if you want your children to get into Harvard, go to Harvard yourself; the high rate of acceptance for children of alumni argues that education too is heritable. The fallacy in this reasoning is now plain, and no one would propose a Lamarckian mechanism to explain such correlations. Nevertheless, the suspicion lingers that if only the world did work Lamarck's way, it would work a little better.
The Harvard basketball team is not the most convenient context for a computer model of Lamarckian evolution. In searching for a simpler system, I have been inspired by the famous case of the melanic moths in industrial Britain. Dark-pigmented forms of the peppered moth Biston betularia were first noticed in the 19th century; they grew in abundance for several decades and then receded again after the 1950s. The cause of the original color shift was apparently the darkening of tree trunks by coal soot, which impaired the camouflage of lighter moths and left them exposed to predators. The later reversal of the trend coincided with measures to reduce air pollution.
My model of these events is highly abstract, with all the naturalistic details stripped away. It is not meant to reveal anything new about melanic moths but merely uses the idea of selection based on camouflage to explore some mechanisms of adaptation. The computer model is written in the programming language StarLogo, created by Mitchel Resnick of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (I discussed StarLogo in the January-February, 1999, "Computing Science" column.) For this project I employed StarLogoT, a variant developed by Uri Wilensky of Tufts University. The model and additional technical details are available here.
The rise and fall of melanism in the peppered moth was unquestionably a Darwinian event, brought about by natural selection acting on random mutations. Inheritance of acquired characteristics was impossible simply because there were no acquired characteristics to inherit. A moth has no way to change its color over the course of its lifetime, even if it could somehow figure out that making the change would be advantageous. And if the moth cannot adjust its color, it obviously cannot transmit any adjustments to its descendants.
But in imagination—or in the computer—we can rerun the experiment without the constraints of insect physiology. We can create chameleon moths that sense the color of their environment and adjust their own color to match. I shall refer to this adjustment process as learning, although it needn't imply any kind of cognitive capacity; the term is meant to encompass any adaptation within the lifetime of an organism.
Would moths that learn have an advantage over those that don't? It seems like a sure bet—and yet if adjustable camouflage is such an obvious asset, why don't all prey species have it? A likely answer is the no-free-lunch theorem. Learning has a cost, which in some cases may outweigh the benefits. At a minimum there is a complexity cost: Sensing the state of the environment and responding to it requires metabolic machinery that a simpler organism could do without. Building and maintaining that machinery incurs an energy cost; resources that might have gone into growth and reproduction have to be diverted into learning. Thus a creature that does a lot of learning could be expected to have a slower reproductive cycle than one with more hard-wired traits. (H. sapiens takes 20 or 30 years to accomplish what E. coli can do in 20 or 30 minutes.) Thus adjustable camouflage might reduce mortality, but the price would be reduced fertility.
The cost-benefit analysis for Lamarckism is similar. In a Darwinian world, any acquired improvements cannot cross the generation gap. A smart moth born with white wings might darken gradually to match a sooty environment, but the moth's offspring would be white again (barring mutations). The moth's acquired pigment is no more heritable than a suntan. Lamarckism creates a link between learning and genetics. A moth that adjusts its color during its lifespan will give birth to offspring that share at least some of this adjustment. Is this shortcut advantageous? Again it would seem so. The young moths are hatched with protective coloration already in place. But, as with learning, maintaining the Lamarckian mechanism imposes a metabolic cost, so that lowering the death rate limits the birth rate. The balance between these two effects determines whether Lamarckian inheritance pays off. Finding the point of balance is the aim of the computer simulation.
The main actors in a StarLogo program are mobile, animal-like objects. For historical reasons they are known as turtles, but they can just as well represent moths. Each moth has its own internal state, which includes a genome, a camouflage color and a level of energy reserves. The moths move over a background of "patches," which represent the color of the environment.
Melanism is often a polygenic trait, producing a more-or-less continuous range of hues. For simplicity I encode the camouflage color in a single gene with a continuous range of alleles; color can take on any value from 0 (darkest) to 1,000 (lightest). Separate variables represent the color genotype and the color phenotype; at birth the two variables have identical values, but in animals that learn they can later diverge. Lamarckian inheritance is implemented as feedback from the color phenotype of the parent to the color genotype of the offspring. In the extreme case of perfect Lamarckism, the color gene of the offspring is set equal to the parent's color phenotype; lesser degrees of Lamarckism interpolate between the original genotype and the acquired phenotype.
The moths have three other genes, which also range in value between 0 and 1,000. Following the custom of geneticists, I give the genes names: kudzu, harvard and vanderbilt. Kudzu is a growth gene: It determines the rate at which the moth absorbs resources, gains weight and grows toward reproductive maturity. Other things being equal, natural selection would drive this gene toward its maximum value, and that's what happens in the purely Darwinian case. For learning and Lamarckian moths, however, kudzu is linked to the harvard gene, which governs the rate of learning, and the vanderbilt gene, which controls the inheritance of acquisitions. The linkage is negative, so that faster learning or more complete inheritance of acquired traits entails a more severe penalty in growth rate. The constants that determine the degree of linkage—the tuition charged for learning and the inheritance tax imposed on Lamarckism—are the main parameters under investigation in the model.
A simulation begins with randomly assigned genotypes. Each moth grows at a rate determined by the value of the kudzu gene. On reaching a threshold weight (which takes 100 days at the highest possible growth rate), the moth produces two offspring and immediately dies. Meanwhile, each day a fraction of the moths are killed by predators. The probability of being killed increases in proportion to the difference between the moth's color and the background color. The overall death rate is adjusted to match the birth rate, keeping the population constant.
In those moths that learn, the color phenotype is adjusted every day, bringing it into closer correspondence with the background color at a rate determined by the value of the harvard gene. In the same way, Lamarckian inheritance adjusts the color genotype of the offspring toward the parental phenotype by an amount proportional to the value of the vanderbilt gene. All of the genes are also subject to random mutation and natural selection. (Even in Lamarckian moths, only the camouflage gene evolves by Lamarckian methods; all the other genes are purely Darwinian.)
When I first started up the model, I got an immediate reminder of a fundamental principle of evolutionary biology: No organism evolves in isolation. Evolution only makes sense as an interaction between the organism and its environment. I should not have needed a reminder—after all, the driving force in the peppered moth story was environmental change—but in fact I had given too little attention to the backdrop against which the moths play out their drama.
What matters most about the background is not its specific color but the rate at which the color changes. In a static environment, learning is useless; there's nothing to learn. Darwinian mutation and selection can match an unchanging background just as closely as learning can, and so organisms unburdened by the overhead of learning will be favored. Running the model with an unchanging environment illustrates this effect clearly. Starting with random values of the harvard gene, the distribution shifts within a few dozen generations to favor the lowest values—those that produce the least learning but also incur the least penalty. In a mixed population of nonlearning Darwinian moths and learners, the outcome is even more dramatic. The Darwinians take over the population and drive the learners to extinction. And if learning is disadvantageous in these circumstances, then Lamarckism must also be unfavorable, since organisms that don't learn acquire nothing to bequeath their offspring.
The rate of environmental change does not have to be exactly zero to favor Darwinians. The rate merely has to be low enough to ensure that change is insignificant within the lifetime of an individual. Even a world with large and abrupt environmental transitions can penalize learners if the upheavals are separated by long interludes of stasis. Learners are better equipped to deal with the upsets, but they are wiped out by the faster-breeding Darwinians during the periods of calm.
Watching the simulations in action gives a new perspective on the relation between learning and life cycle. The idea that learning takes so much time and energy that it delays reproductive maturity is only half the story. The other half is that only a long-lived organism has any use for learning. Bacteria can rely on Darwinian evolution to fine-tune their metabolism to seasonal changes in temperature; as individuals they don't need to learn about hot and cold. Large mammals, on the other hand, would get no benefit from winter genes and summer genes, because they must cope with both seasons.
If slow change favors Darwinian selection, a rapidly fluctuating environment is where learning proves its worth. What is a little less obvious is that evolution becomes irrelevant here.
Even in the absence of learning, natural selection is helpless when change is faster than a generation time. If bark color can go from black to white in a week, and moths live several months, then the genotype can't keep up. Light-colored specimens might be favored one week, and produce more offspring than dark-colored moths, but the genes for paleness would be maladaptive by the time these descendants reproduced.
Turning on the harvard gene does nothing to restore the efficacy of natural selection; on the contrary, learning further decouples the genotype from the phenotype. When learning is rewarded, it becomes so efficient that there is little selection pressure on the genotype. Learning provides any newborn moth with excellent camouflage in a day or two, and so survival is essentially independent of the color gene.
What happens if Lamarckian inheritance is turned on in this rapid-change regime? Not much. If Lamarckism is assessed the same penalty as learning, the vanderbilt gene is disadvantageous, and the distribution of values slides toward the low end of the scale. This result is not hard to fathom. In the model the sole benefit of Lamarckian inheritance is being born pre-adapted to the color of the environment. But if that environment is changing rapidly, the benefit won't last long. Furthermore, in a population dominated by fast learners, most of the newborn moths would come to match their background in a few days anyway, even without the Lamarckian head start.
To put it another way: Learning is a valuable survival skill every day of your life, whereas Lamarckism helps only on the first day. This formulation suggests a way to quantify the worth of the vanderbilt gene. If your expected lifespan is L, then you should be willing to pay about 1/L as much for a Lamarckian legacy as you would pay for learning. In the model, learners live more than 100 days, so Lamarckism should be worth less than 1 percent of the price of learning. If the penalties are adjusted accordingly—making the vanderbilt inheritance tax less than 1 percent of the harvard tuition—Lamarckism ought to spread through the population. In my experiments I could not see this effect clearly. Even at a cost of zero I couldn't be sure whether the vanderbilt gene was growing in frequency or merely drifting neutrally, but it may be that I wasn't patient enough to wait for the trend to become apparent.
If Lamarckism has no value in a static environment and only the slimmest of marginal benefits in a fast-changing environment, it's natural to wonder if there might be some intermediate condition where the utility of Lamarckian inheritance is maximized. This would be a condition where change is quick enough to make learning worthwhile, but not so rapid as to make genetics irrelevant. I have surveyed a broad range of rates of environmental variation looking for this point of optimality, without reaching any firm conclusion. The level of statistical fluctuations in the output of the model suggests that much longer runs and larger populations would be needed to settle the question. I do feel confident in saying there is no level of variation where Lamarckian inheritance is worth as much as learning is, or even half as much. But there may be a range of variation rates where a species could benefit from a Lamarckian mechanism if it cost no more than a tenth of what learning costs.
Even where the model's answers are clear, they are at best preliminary and provisional. The model is too simple to capture much detail about the lives of real organisms. On the other hand, it's not simple enough to explore the entire space of parameter values. Another reason for caution is that the model sometimes behaves in ways I don't understand. For example, in certain mixed-population experiments the Lamarckian gene is driven toward the lowest possible values, indicating it is unfavorable and "wants" to be zero, yet at the same time the Lamarckian breed drives its competitors to extinction. What does that mean?
It would be interesting to test the model on problems other than moth camouflage, especially problems where the environment is not a passive background but can react and evolve on its own. One realm where Lamarckian mechanisms look particularly attractive is the immune system. Every child must reinvent immunity to measles and chickenpox and other diseases. It's done through a miniature Darwinian process of generating many random antibodies and selecting those that recognize a pathogen. Wouldn't it be better to pass on the selected antibody genes to later generations, so that babies would be born pre-immunized? Edward J. Steele of the University of Wollongong in Australia argues that something like this does go on in the immune system, through the agency of reverse transcriptase. But Steele has won few converts. It's hard to be a believer in genetically transmitted immunity when your parents had chickenpox and you had chickenpox and your children get chickenpox.
If Steele's mechanism could exist, would it prevent disease? The obvious drawback is resistance: A generation born with a high titer of antibody would exert powerful selective pressure on the pathogen, so that mutants with slightly different surface markers would proliferate. Thus every generation would have to come up with a new defense anyway, and Lamarckian inheritance would be rendered superfluous. But this is speculation; a model might well reveal subtler effects.
In closing, I want to say a word about cultural evolution, which is often described as a Lamarckian process. Suppose it were truly Lamarckian: Suppose some neurogenetic innovation allowed your children to be born already knowing everything you know. What a boon to humanity! What a head start! No one would ever again have to spend all those years learning the alphabet and the multiplication tables and the conjugation of Latin verbs and the law of cosines and the preamble to Evangeline and the date of the Battle of Hastings and how to ride a bicycle. But the more items I add to this list—let's not forget the state capitals or the nine orders of angels or the 20 amino acids or the recipe for mom's meatloaf—the more I'm struck by the fundamental problem of Lamarckism. Which acquired traits do you choose to pass on?
© Brian Hayes
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