> By the way, I know that “parar” means “to stop” in
> Spanish, which is how I distinguish between the
> parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems.
It's a nice mnemonic, but the medical "para" comes from Greek, meaning beside or near.
You might look at the work of Philosopher Humberto Maturana and Biologist/Philosopher Francisco Varela. In particular, Varela's work The Embodied Mind may be of interest. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_Varela
Mind/body connection is something I am also interested in exploring. For example, I can often tell when I am going to miss a basketball shot by feeling a creak in my kness. Sounds crazy but I'm sure there's a reason for it. This is a different phenomenon from people anticipating when it's going to rain by feeling pressure.. I think it's something like my predictive intuition has been working in the background outside of conscious awareness, and only becomes conscious through tells that I've learned.
It's possible, attention and performance are intricately linked (c.f. http://hpl.uchicago.edu/Projects/Projects_1.html). However I find that the knee-creak is also a predictor of things I no longer have control over (and for which I am only awaiting an outcome). Of course, I'm biased, but I think the heuristic is useful for me.
You seem to be in the right track about the mind/body connection. Daniel Siegel has this to say about Intuition (see the "The Mindful Brain"):
Intuition seems to involve the registration of the input from the information processing neural networks surrounding our vicera; for example, the heart, lungs, and intestines. Our body's wisdom is then more than a poet's metaphor, it is a neural mechanism by which we process deep ways of knowing via our body's parallel distributed processing surrounding these hollow organs. This input registers itself in the middle prefrontal cortex and then influences our reasoning and our reactions.
This was the only index on Intuition in that book. Going by this definition of intuition, you should feel it in your chest or abdomen not your knees. But I'm really new to this, so I'm not going to claim to know anything:-)
That took me on a discovery path of the philosophical approach to mindfulness. There seems to be a whole body of literature analyzing this from various angles. In particular, Varela seems to very influential. He is also cited in Daniel Siegel's book called "The Mindful Brain" (I was just referred to this book by a student of Psychology). Good stuff.
I wish mindfulness was based on some simple guiding principles/laws like with classical mechanics. But as with a lot of Biological processes, it seems to be a large complex system. Varela's "Theoretical Biology" book sounds interesting but I suspect it is a complex model of the body+mind rather than a simple one.
Thanks for the article. It's a very good read. Definitely going to check out the book. I meditate once in a while and when I do, I find out that I can concentrate better. It's great for those who have or suspect they have ADD.
If you're into meditation, I would also definitely check out Eckhart Tolle's book, The Power of Now, mentioned in this article. Besides a lot of religious elements, Tolle has some real insights into how the brain really works that you may find very useful.
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