I had read about Mr. Kotler, but hadn't seen a review of his book. I think the title is a grabber for sure. Looks like he did his homework and it might be a really interesting read.
I,too, believe that exercise has a big part in recovery and maintenance.
"West of Jesus" - Surfing, Science and the Origins of Belief - A Spiritual and Scientific Surf Quest
Surfers Village Global Surf News, 4 October, 2006 : - -
After spending two years in bed with Lyme disease, Steven Kotler had lost everything: his health, his job, his girl, and, he was beginning to suspect, his mind.
Kotler, not a religious man, suddenly found himself drawn to the sport of surfing as if it were the cornerstone of a new faith.
Why, he wondered, when there was nothing left to believe in, could he begin to believe in something as unlikely as surfing. What was belief anyway? How did it work in the body, the brain, our culture, and human history?
Into this mix came a strange story. In 2003, on a surf trip through Mexico, Kotler heard of ``the conductor,'' a mythical surfer who could control the weather.
He'd heard this same tale eight years earlier, in Indonesia, but this time something clicked.
With the help of everyone from rebel surfers to rocket scientists, Kotler undertakes a three year globetrotting quest for the origins of this legend.
The results are a startling mix of big waves and bigger ideas: a surfer's journey into the biological underpinnings of belief itself.
Also noteworthy about this book is that the author had Lyme and surfing cured it, here's a bit about why:
Surfing--especially the intense focus required to ride a wave--mimics the intense focus of meditation.
Lyme, among other stuff, destroyed the author's short term memory, concentration, and ability to learn (Lyme experts call these features `brain fog'.
But researchers have shown that meditation boosts learning, memory and concentration.
Moreover a recent study done by University of Wisconsin neuroscientist Richard Davidson, working in concert with Tibetan monks, shows that meditation physically alters the structure of the brain, producing higher levels of `gamma waves,' the brain waves most often associated with happiness, heightened awareness and coordinated thinking.
Which raises another question, Can action sports really cure disease?
Lyme and every other auto-immune condition (MS, Chronic Fatigue, AIDS, etc) have built in stress triggers.
The more stressed out you get the sicker you feel...this is the terrible catch-22 of disease.
One of the other things that surfing/action sports release is the performance-enhancing drug dopamine.
Used to be that scientists thought dopamine was the reward portion of the need/reward system.
Turns out they now know that dopamine isn't produced when you've completed the task, rather when you take the risk required to complete the task.
Thus anyone with an auto-immune condition who isn't actually pushing themselves to take a few risks (even if that means just leaving the house and going for a walk) can't get the benefit of dopamine.
And without this it's very hard to be happy/lower the stress levels that are keeping one sick.
Couple this to the above info about meditation and you start to see that yes, actually, they can cure disease even though it's completely counter-intuitive.
Posted by trails (Member # 1620) on :
Ann--thanks for the review! I posted about this over in general last week under the titlte--surfing and LYME. got about half way thru the book so far.
Surfing has been more healing for me than almost anything in my treatment. I always feel better coming out of the water no matter how lousy I felt going in. I dont get to go often though and would like to go more!
Funny they speak about it as meditation--I have repeatedly said that and non-surfers just roll their eyes. But surfers nod in appreciation. for me surfing is very much like meditation and it is a spiritual journey. I rec it for ANYONE--no matter age or ability. get yourself a good teacher and get out in the water!
The book has begun to get a bit philosophical now and i enjoy a good story instead of philosophy---so I am stalled out on it.
I dont see that surfing will cure my lyme and I worry about that message of the book. but I havent finished it yet so I cant really judge! see ya in the water, trails
Posted by rcs2 (Member # 9663) on :
I agree with you,
I have been practicing Yoga (start just before got sick - and still fighting to learn what I have - MS?Lyme?). Anyway, this is not the case.
I feel great during and after the class (and you kind of control your mind, you need a lot of concetration, and there is the meditation part).
I confess that most of the time I have to drag myself to class, but after I just thank myself that I went.
I think the same can happens with surf and other "sports". I'm sure if it wasn't for my yoga practice I would be even more miserable!
Posted by char (Member # 8315) on :
The thought of surfing with extreme fatigue is a bit overwhelming. and dangerous. smile
Posted by treepatrol (Member # 4117) on :
Probaly got cured soaking in the salt water of the ocean everday.
Posted by trails (Member # 1620) on :
baby waves and warm water are the key for me char. hence I dont go much.
Posted by shazdancer (Member # 1436) on :
These sentences interest me...
quote:Turns out they now know that dopamine isn't produced when you've completed the task, rather when you take the risk required to complete the task.
Thus anyone with an auto-immune condition who isn't actually pushing themselves to take a few risks (even if that means just leaving the house and going for a walk) can't get the benefit of dopamine.
As a dancer, and now a gymnastics/dance coach, when I get ready to demonstrate something, I know I must use my whole body properly. And when I do, I feel better. When I'm working, you'd never know I have arthritis issues.
Sounds a lot like your experiences with surfing and yoga, both "whole body" sports.
The trick is not to overdo it. When i was acutely ill, there was no way I could work like I am working now, though I could push it for a day if I had a day to recover.
I recall pushing it when I was first sick in '01, to take my son on a trip for his birthday. I rested up for it, and had a blast in NYC all day. Ran out of energy around 5 pm or so, and needed the whole next day to sleep it off.
(So glad we did -- one of the things we did was go up in the World Trade Center. A month later, it was gone. )
So I'm a big advocate of "move it or lose it," but when you're recovering.
Regards, Shaz
Posted by Lymetoo (Member # 743) on :
quote:Originally posted by Ann-OH: Turns out they now know that dopamine isn't produced when you've completed the task, rather when you take the risk required to complete the task.
Now, THAT's interesting!
Posted by tickedntx (Member # 5660) on :
Here's a first person account from the New York Times: --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
June 4, 2006 Lives Wave Rider By STEVEN KOTLER My earliest childhood belief was a sneaking suspicion that the world was more mysterious than people were letting on. It's hard to say how much of this was suburban boredom and how much heartfelt sentiment, and in the end it didn't matter. By the time I got to college, that little notion had grown into a bad case of Jonathan Livingston Seagull-itis. When two semesters of philosophy failed to satisfy, I dropped out and moved to Santa Fe because the New Age was booming.
Santa Fe was the rabbit hole, all right. There were ashrams, monasteries, strange teas, stranger mushrooms, Sanskrit chants, Native American medicine men with headdresses made from whole otter skins, folks on the run from the law, folks on the run from much worse. I signed on for the whole tour; it lasted for years. By the time I returned, I could sit in full lotus for six hours at a time, but I never, not once, achieved a mystical anything.
During the next decade, I lost interest. I still hoped there was a place where exalted magics were possible but no longer lived in that part of the world. Since I didn't go in for the big-invisible-man-in-the-sky theory, there wasn't much left. Instead I went in the opposite direction, becoming a science geek, a fervent devotee in the high church of observable phenomena. And then, in my mid-30's, I got Lyme disease and whatever faith I had in the miracle of modern medicine -- for me, the apogee of rational materialism -- was lost, too.
My first year was spent with doctors who were convinced that I was faking my sickness, my second with doctors who were unable to cure it. By then I had lost 25 pounds. Truthfully, I was done. Long ago I decided that given the right set of impossible circumstances, calling it quits was always an option. There was a lot of melodrama that year: sleeping pills in the medicine cabinet, a couple of bottles of bourbon for added insurance, a trusty ballpoint for any sad-sack attempts at epic poetry.
It was around that time that I got a phone call from a friend who wanted me to go surfing. For certain, it was a ridiculous request -- even if you ignore the Lyme fatigue that kept me in bed many days. My last wave-riding experience took place almost a decade earlier, in monstrous Indonesian swells, and that time I nearly drowned. But even before that, the sport was never much fun for me. I learned to surf in San Francisco, where the water is freezing and the waves are serious. Just paddling out often felt like a life-threatening experience. I remember days when I never made it to the lineup, never mind catching a ride. The few rides I did catch were often short, often mean, the currents often treacherous. Eventually I stopped trying.
But here was my friend, telling me the waves would do some good. And I suppose I was just too depressed to argue. What the hell, I thought, I could always kill myself tomorrow.
My friend took me to Sunset Beach; unlike its Hawaiian namesake, Southern California's version is a beginner's wave predominately peopled by geriatrics, the unskilled, the terrified. Most surfers learn there and never go back. The waves are soft and slow, and on the day we went, there was no swell in sight. The surf was barely two feet high, but the water was warm and the tide low, and despite my wobbliness I could just about wade to the lineup.
Thirty seconds later, a wave came. Because it was a junk day at a junk break, there were no other takers. I was rusty, but I spun my board around, paddled twice and was on it. Somehow I got to my feet and drove down into the wave. There was a gauzy line of foam forming on the crest as a cradle rock of acceleration sped me into the trough.
Surfing is not found among remedies -- common or otherwise -- for chronic immune conditions, and since I had rejected just about every mystical system known to man, I didn't think it was time to start believing in some aquatic hippie nonsense about communion with the water. All I know is that when that ride was over I wanted another and another and another. The ocean was offering me a taste, no more, but for the first time in two years, for that one wave-riding instant, I felt the thrum of life, the possibility of possibilities.
Five waves later I wasn't just exhausted, I was disassembled. Those five waves led to 15 days in bed, but on the 16th I drove back for more. I caught five more waves and spent another two weeks recovering. The ratio would stay bad for months, but there was no way around it: I started to feel better, and the world started to feel mysterious again.
Steven Kotler is the author of "West of Jesus: Surfing, Science and the Origins of Belief," to be published this month by Bloomsbury and from which this essay is adapted.
Posted by Ann-OH (Member # 2020) on :
Thanks so much for this, Suzanne!
He is an able writer, I must say. Looks like the book will be a good read.
Ann - OH
Posted by lymie tony z (Member # 5130) on :
Having been an athlete all my life I am quite familiar with this mental conditioning.
It's the place athletes go when they're "In the Zone"...ya don't feel anything negative...including pain...
Unfortunately...in the begining of neurolyme I was incapable of going there....and a total lack of confidence swept over me as well...
Now at least I can get there when I bowl....occasionally...however while I'm walking out of the alleys...I can feel everything again and the next day or so also....
a real bummer.......zman
Posted by jif (Member # 9215) on :
I still catch the wave-- of powder that is outside my home town in the winter--skiing and I so hope I can do this, knock on wood
with extra fluid in my spine (another disorder-unrelated?, that doc worries about me falling, which i do)
warm packs on my wrists to keep the circulation, or whatever it does to keep my hands working, and going and the lightest poles i can find
but i totally understand the meditative state
used to get it w/ running
NEVER really got it w/ meditation or yoga, i have to admit
wonder if they could creat a biofeedback computer program for us--to get us in the doped up state, with out risk of injury or for those of us that can't go out
think i'll be getting this book
jif
Posted by trails (Member # 1620) on :
I just finished the book.
KUDOS TO Steven Kotler!
He does NOT say that surfing cured his lyme and he does seem to alude to the possibility that he is still rather sick as late as 2005 and several years into his surfing spiritual journey.
The book was riveting for me for the first half but the second half got bogged down in too much history and philosophy. Some of the parts about quantum physics were rather interesting and the bits about nueroscience too! He seems tohave really done a lot of research.
I think what he writes about illness in the end is directly related to my own experience.
I think if you are not a surfer you might find yourself skipping ahead a lot in this book, but the parts NOT describing surfing or the history of it are worth a good long look from anyone with lyme.
Posted by trails (Member # 1620) on :
ps--i just sent steven kotler an invite to the lyme movie preview in mountain view this weekend. not sure if he is around though.
Posted by trails (Member # 1620) on :
Steven Kotler wrote me BACK! He couldnt make it to the film and he had a good excuse--wedding. I am very excited to be in contact with a lyme surfer.
Buy the book, support other Lyme victims in theiir efforts to tell their stories and make a living while super sick!
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