sofie-a-w-blog

[sofie-a-w-blog]

Good Morning

Happiness this morning was a shock: your boots And your glasses; studious you ignore me, Polite in your trundling tram nook, well that book Must be absorbing, and when I knew ahead Of time, you skepticised and still you smiled. You must think me a sage-waving seer here, Pink face window facing (still life with iPod). When at stop and crosswalk you have claims. Small white words drift under our feet, the platform. For the clock, the distance, the coincidence I am grateful; and for cold wall corridors, Along which I bring the only lightness. Lit only by your boots and your glasses On an otherwise stormy morning.

[sofie-a-w-blog]

Your gut knows what’s up

It’s 2018, and thanks to human ingenuity and elbow grease, many of the freaky contraptions people imagined in 1981 are upon us. Helpful robots. Self-driving cars. 3D printed ears. Like Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting, humans are wicked smaht.

Whatever your thoughts about our cumulative brilliance though, there’s a lot to be said for the older kind of human intelligence – the one that comes from the gut.

Intuition is a peculiar thing. If you’ve ever picked up weird vibes from a place for no apparent reason or followed a hunch all the way to a moment of synchronicity, you’ll agree that there are imperceptible doings afoot in the lizard brain. Do we all have tiny, paranoid gnomes overseeing our choices from a control panel in our frontal lobe? Or is intuition more unfathomable than that?

You decide. And while you’re at it, let these links be a reminder to appreciate (and listen to) your innate spidey sense – no genetically-altered arachnids required.

Mine your subconscious gems with Rorschach.

You’ve probably heard of Rorschach, the Freudian psychiatrist who devised inkblot tests designed to reveal associations hidden in the subconscious mind. Well, Rorschach tests are still a thing in psychology – and while they do tend to evoke images of straitjackets and claustrophobic white rooms, they don’t have to be scary. Techniques like this come under the heading of free association, and they’re considered useful for mapping whatever’s hanging around in your brain without your (conscious) knowledge. The Museum of Modern Art in New York has some activity ideas to get you started.  

https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/themes/surrealism/tapping-the-subconscious-automatism-and-dreams

Gut on holiday? There’s an app for that.

Life’s big choices are best made from the gut, but if your gut is out of action and there are important decisions to be made, ChoiceMap can help. Enter your conundrum into the app (you can choose from pre-mapped dilemmas or input yours if it’s more unique) and bring influencing factors into the equation. This is like the app alternative to flipping a coin – and feels more considered.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/choicemap/id632370293?mt=8

  You’re not crazy. You do have a connection with that guy on the bus.

Marina Abramovic’s The Artist is Present took the frissons we sometimes feel when we first encounter a person, transported them to a gallery space containing a huge audience and packed almost 1400 of them into 736 hours. Discussing the time she spent looking strangers in the eye in the documentary Innsaei: The Power of Intuition, Abramovic recalls sensing the energy of the people sitting in front of her ­– and feeling their pain. In the wake of Abramovic’s piece The Artist is Present, US scientists asked her to take part in tests which would map her brain activity on a screen. These tests helped to demonstrate that in circumstances where two individuals gaze at each other for prolonged periods of time, their brains often begin to make the same connections.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Fs1cmYghDs

  Intuition is a thing: Science.

You may have heard a friend say that they feel a conviction ‘in their bones’. While this is compelling in the ‘is Sarah a witch?’ way, it doesn’t hold up under empirical scrutiny – or didn’t, until recently. In 2016, researchers from the University of New South Wales exposed study participants to emotional images (such as puppies, or a snake poised to strike) outside their conscious perception, using a tool called continuous flash suppression. Participants then answered basic sensory perception questions. The majority were influenced by the images, despite not actually ‘seeing’ them. The more you know.

https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/minds-business/intuition-its-more-than-a-feeling.html