Latest / Wanzology / Stopping The Blender
Transcript
- Stopping The Blender Hey, what's going on? Whuz happening? Uh, welcome to another episode of WANZOLOGY! I am your host, The Wanz. It's very good to be with you. So the mystery of the mind is never, ever ending. Sometimes things can get so jumbled. It's like watching the middle of a blender. You ever opened up a blender while it's running slow speed or something like that, and you look down and you can see the middle and all the stuff that's getting pureed around the sides and stuff. Do you ever think like that, ever feel like your brain has got so much going on? It is just somebody forgot to put the lid on the blender and stuff is just spilling out everywhere, getting up against the counters and the walls and the floors. Yeah. Yeah. The fifth Beatle, Billy Preston, he had a song, a hit song called “Will It Go Round In Circles?”, “Will it fly high like a bird up in the sky? Mm-hmm, I got a song that ain't got no melody, And I'ma going to sing it to my friends.” Now, why do I mention that? Why? Where does that come from? Well, that comes from the deepest recesses of my mind of me trying to get back on track because today has been one of those days where the mind is like a blender. It's just going around and round and round and things get put in it and they keep getting put in it, and you're almost to the line where things are gonna start flying out. And then you finally finish something and then it starts all over again. You take a pause, but it doesn't last very long. 'cause once you start doing something, same thing happens. These thoughts come in from outta the side and you don't know where they're coming from, and why am I thinking about eggs when I don't have any eggs? Oh, maybe I'm just trying to remind myself to go shopping or something. How do you stop that? How do you stop the blender? There are a few tried and true techniques that therapists suggest psychologists use, but I have one that for me, works every single time when my mind starts spinning uncontrollably, the whirling dervish of my imagination cannot be contained, and I really, really can't focus on whatever it is I'm trying to do, I close my eyes and I take a deep breath, and then I hold it to the count of five. Then I exhale to the count of five. Then I inhale to the count of 10, then exhale to the count of 10. Then I open my eyes. Sounds really simple. What that does is puts my focus on the breath, my breathing, the intake, and exhaling of air. The mechanics of which are still insanely amazing, but it also has the, ‘excuse me’ effect, what do I call that ‘the excuse me effect’, I've always said the two most powerful words in the English language when used together are, “excuse me”. When you say, excuse me to somebody, they pause, they stop. That's why you, it is like something's going on, you say, “excuse me”, and you take your leave and you go somewhere. “Excuse me, I have to go to the restroom.”, “Uh, excuse me, I have to go pick up the kids from karate practice.” Well, it also works when your brain is like, totally whirling outta control and you're not really sure what the heck is going on. You can close your eyes, breathe in, “excuse”, exhale, breathe out “me”. Excuse me, focusing on the breath, is the best way. I mean, it works for me every time, the best way that I've found to stop the blender, the cool thing about it is it works everywhere, anywhere, at any time. This has been a challenging day. Turned out the light last night about 12:30, like I'm known to do. Next thing I know, my eyes are wide open. It's 3:00 AM and I know I'm not done sleeping, but I also know that I'm not gonna get back to sleep, either. So the tossing and the turning starts and the deep breathing starts. Then comes the relaxation technique that I learned a long time ago where you focus on the furthest extremity, which is usually your toes, and then you can ‘feel’ relaxation coming down your feet and up your ankles and then up to your knees, and then up your thighs into your hips, and all the while you're trying to breathe regularly, slowly but regularly and relax. Well, the idea is to get all the way up, go down each arm and up each arm to your neck, to your ears, then to the top of your head. Usually by the time you get to the top of your head, couple of inhales, exhales, and you've relaxed enough to get to sleep. At least that's the way it is for me, usually. Usually under normal circumstances, once I get to that point where, oh, I've reached my shoulders and I'm trying to get my shoulders to relax. When that happens, oh yeah, the yawn comes and then poof, I'm out. But this didn't, this time, that didn't work this time, this time I was counting the breaths. Inhale/exhale equals one. Inhale/exhale equals two. Ooh. I yawned at five, so I started over. Inhale/exhale, one. Inhale/exhale, two. Yeah, that's what happened. Mind went blank, I didn't really know where I was, all I knew is I wasn't sleepy. Crap. Crap, crap. It's now four-thirty in the morning and I can't get back to sleep. What the hell am I gonna do now? What any red-blooded American child of the seventies would do, turn on the television. So I turn on the television and there's only three things that are on at four-thirty in the morning, the end of a really crappy movie, the beginning of a local newscast or cable news. And I always go to cable news because I'm gullible. I actually went to the local news first and saw an amazing video of a car that jumped and opened drawbridge, like in real life. We have like two or three of those around Seattle and this guy was trying to get away in a, in an Audi station wagon. He's trying to get away from the cops, breaks through a barrier on the wrong side of the road as the bridge is opening. It's a drawbridge! Yes, and it's opening and he jumped to the other side. Dash cam on the police car, watched him do it because cops are pretty smart and this officer was not gonna follow him. So 5:00 AM comes, then six, and I figure, well, why don't I just get out of bed and do what? Oh, that's right, I tore apart the studio and have to put it back together again so I can get a ology podcast episode Done. So now it's quarter of 9:00 AM when I finally swing the legs out, put the feet on the floor, close my eyes, try to get a little centered, a little ten second meditation, get up and actually start doing stuff. Come into the studio and it's gonna be a lot of crawling on the floor. Gotta run cables and plug things in and get computers connected, and then get sound interfaces connected. Five hours later, it's all put together and I'm taking a break. But while I was taking that break, I noticed that my mind had not stopped spinning. I was still trying to think of, well, what do I do now? Do I record a song? Do I, do I write something? Maybe I could just, maybe I'll go to YouTube and just get something just to make sure that the speakers work? Oh, I haven't dialed in the speakers yet, I still have to go do sound manipulation to contour the speakers towards my room because they've moved. But first I have to leave and I have to take a guitar over to a friend's house who's gonna put new pickups in it. Oh, but before that, I have to do something else, and before that, I have to do something else for me. It just never stops. Finally, after I got done with the first task, I'm getting the guitar stuff together and I'm telling myself on my way over to my friend's house, don't stay, don't stay, but of course, get there and I'm meeting people that I've never met before and then he and I get the talk and about guitars and all of a sudden it's after four and I have to leave because I have a voice lesson at four 30. I don't wanna be late because I have a substitute taking my normal voice teacher's place. So it's rush hour everywhere and I'm trying to get somewhere quickly (you can spot the flaw in that plan), but I get there two minutes late and go through the exercises and it was a nice lesson and then it was time to go. Great. Went by the gas station and started filling up my car and started thinking again. Remembering how my day had gone and how it started out incredibly busy like a blender just buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz as I was crawling on the floor and connecting things, and maybe I wanna run this wire this way and maybe I want to do this here and put this microphone here and as the tank filled, I put the nozzle back in the holder and started to get in the car, I started thinking, “Damn, I should really figure out how to stop my brain from doing that.”, and so the 20 minute ride home, all I did was think about times that my brain is gone just berserk, and it's just like buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz. How did I stop it? How did I do it? How do I explain what I did? I don't know, until I sat down at my desk here in my office and pressed record. Stopping the blender is fairly easy. The two things that you have to remember is one, recognize that your mind is spinning, almost uncontrollably out of control. Two, breathe. That's right, breathe. But you have to concentrate on breathing. Forget about all that other stuff that's spinning around in your head and just focus on taking air in and pushing it back out. Taking it in, pushing it out. And every time you pull air in, you think about all the little oxygen cells that are going into your lungs and into the cilia in your lungs and mixing with blood vessels, and they're blue, but then they turn red because they now have oxygen in them and they're gone on their merry way and gonna go to the heart and get pumped out somewhere. The process is quite amazing. The human body is a mastery of engineering, but if you do it right, that spinning will stop. What's the benefit of the spinning ceasing? Well, it helps you get a little more organized. It helps you get centered and reevaluate what you want to do, and a pathway to actually go and do it. Like I said, it's not extremely easy, it's not So don't be surprised if, “Oh crap, I'm just thinking about something!”, “Oh crap, I can't seem to stop my brain!”, “Oh, Wanz, this isn't working for me!!”, oh, ye of little faith. Just try it again. The object is not to ‘get it’, the object is to practice it and that's it. Practice it. Each breath you focus on individually, in and out, like a sandwich with nothing in the middle, two slices of bread, the bottom and the top. Top and the bottom, bottom and the top. It's like a sandwich! Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Now, once you've conquered this technique, you'll find that it comes in handy when you're upset. When you are depressed, when you're excited, maybe overexcited and everywhere in between. The recognition is the key. Do I feel like things are just circling the brain at warp speed and causing friction burns? I should. I should take a couple of breaths. Try it. You just never know. It might work. Thanks for being here this week. I really appreciate you. Now, go forth and live your life 'cause today is the only day in your life that you know you have, tomorrow's promised to no one. Ciao for now.