LOSING floods the brain with neurotoxic endorphins, enkephalins, and dynorphins.
These internal opioid peptides – and the ones absorbed from FOOD – can eventually cause brain damage and rigidity of the neck and back muscles.
Humans LOSE from time to time, and that’s OK, so internally produced opioids (along with serotonin) are a SECONDARY REWARD.
But don’t SEEK them as a GOAL.
Dependence on endorphin “highs” is consciousness-depressing and leads to an addiction to losing – “winning” at the “limbo-sick game,” or “how low can you go?”
Dopamine, adrenaline, noradrenaline, and a proper mix of catecholamines raise consciousness.
Endorphins lead to what Adano Ley (Swami Nitty-Gritty) called “stone Buddha meditation” or “sit-ta meditation” – sitting on your ass and thinking you’re accomplishing something spiritual.
He walked big circles around ANALGESIC or HYPNOTIC meditation techniques, therapeutic modalities, or eating protocols.
He was way north of the cheering section when it came to what was described in the August 22, 1990 issue of Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise as …
“… prolonged rhythmic exercise can activate central opioid systems by triggering increased discharge from mechano-sensitive nerve fibers (Group III or A-delta) arising from contracting skeletal muscle. Evidence is reviewed that supports the concept that many of the cardiovascular, analgesic and behavioral effects of exercise are mediated by this mechanism and that the same or similar mechanisms are responsible for the central and peripheral effects of acupuncture.”
Acupuncture? Any questions? :)
Remember Gurdjieff’s “Three Ways and a Fourth” …
The Way of the Fakir (First Chakra),
The Way of the Monk (Second Chakra),
The Way of the Yogi (Third Chakra), and
The Way of the Sly Man (Fourth Chakra).
The Fifth Level requires a MENTOR to take you through the Rings-Pass-Not (neti-neti).
Gurdjieff also called his Way of the Sly Man HAIDA YOGA – “hurry-up yoga,” or working in the midst of life.
The SHATTARI “HURRY UP” METHOD of the Sufis is similar in concept.
My Sufi teacher Adnan Sarhan is a teacher of the Rapid Method.
'Endorphins Are Spare Donut Tires' have 8 comments
January 16, 2012 @ 6:45 am atomb
If you fall sleep right after sex due to endorphins, you may be headed in the direction of diminished libido and erectile dysfunction.
You’ve also flunked Introduction to Tantra 101. :(
January 16, 2012 @ 3:38 pm suz
At-OM,
This should be a warning sign posted in all men’s bathrooms;
“If you fall asleep right after sex due to endorphins, you may be headed in the direction of diminished libido and erectile dysfunction.”
Is this what TM is about? “sitting on your ass and thinking you’re accomplishing something spiritual.”
January 16, 2012 @ 6:46 pm atomb
Great idea for a sign, Vibrant Gal! :)
Men are much more prone to the “roll over and snore” syndrome than women.
Stefan Bechtel & Larry Stains (Sex: A Man’s Guide, 1996) wrote …
“Women tend not to get sleepy after orgasm, and their genitals don’t become hypersensitive like men’s do, Masters and Johnson found. And they have no refractory period either – with sufficient stimulation women are capable of having another orgasm with no time-out at all.”
Men are more prone to endorphin damage because they’re usually more catabolic and ALKALINE than women.
Women live longer because they’re usually more anabolic and ACIDIC than men.
The REAL anabolic steroid is ESTROGEN.
80 percent of the 300-plus “Incorruptibles” – the bodies of Catholic Saints not subject to the same laws of decomposition as the other 99.9 percent of humanity – are WOMEN, not men.
A man’s sex life tends to be VOLCANIC and a woman’s OCEANIC, but men CAN LEARN. (Some of us, anyway.)
When meditators talk about “transcending,” they’re usually practicing a sedating form of meditation I call “sleep-itation.”
To Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s credit, he cited the real purpose of meditation is for the effects outside of the meditation itself.
Back in the day (I was initiated into TM on Valentine’s Day, 1961, in Beaumont, Texas), I regularly followed my “twenty minutes in the morning and twenty minutes in the evening” routine.
I’ve moved on to more productive types of meditation – for me, maybe not for others – but I still have respect for the technology that saved me from my exceedingly stupid 1961 New Year’s Resolution to “take LSD every day.”
So I gave up both drugs and alcohol while continuing to work at The Lighthouse Club, a bowling alley converted into a psychedelic nightclub in Nederland, Texas, where more than 600 people regularly showed up on a single Friday or a weekend night.
January 16, 2012 @ 7:12 pm atomb
In case the reader thinks I’m overstating the potential downside of endorphins, James H. Austin, M.D. (Zen and the Brain: Toward an Understanding of Meditation and Consciousness, 1998) wrote …
“Sometimes, children develop an abnormal elevation of beta-endorphin in their spinal fluid. In such instances, these high levels may indicate that the opioid release is reaching concentrations high enough in the brain to cause the child to stop breathing. As we have just seen in the example of the overdosed adult patient, treating the child with the opiate blocker naloxone also improves breathing. When this treatment begins, some children then develop symptoms of the opiate withdrawal syndrome. This makes it even more likely that the elevated endorphins had, indeed, been the cause of their prior episodes of respiratory arrest.”
January 16, 2012 @ 8:56 pm atomb
Re: If men were to increase their estrogen levels, would they live longer?
Only in context. :(
Those skillfully-drawn chemical cascades (domino cascades) you see in pharmaceutical journals – and inevitably in Time, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report, and Scientific American – are mostly bogus.
These tandem reactions appear contextual by including “reactive intermediates,” but it’s still ridiculously-partitioned biochemistry far removed from The Big Picture.
The easiest way to live longer is to meditate correctly.
Meditation is the optimum way to ACIDIFY oneself.
You almost HAVE to eat low on the food chain to buffer your meditation.
Breathing too fast results in respiratory alkalosis and TETANY – like during the rapid breathing used in “Rebirthing Breathwork.”
Breathing too slow results in acidosis and COMA – like in hypoventilation or asthma.
The breathless delta brain wave state of meditation is a condition of CONTROLLED CONSCIOUS COMA.
So is HIBERNATION.
You can quickly grasp the longevity opportunities of REGULATED ACIDOSIS when you consider hibernating bears are virtually immune to cancer, radiation, osteoporosis, and a host of other syndromes. :)
Maybe we’ll rename meditation Biological Terrain Acidfication Technique (BTAT) to take it out of the Vagueness Zone. :)
January 16, 2012 @ 11:48 pm atomb
Re: When an organism is in the delta brain wave, or hibernation state, it is breathless, no breathing at all?
Swami Nitty-Gritty said, “Breathfree, you didn’t make it. If you breathe and you master breathless, you’re hanging around a long time.”
It’s being “breathless with joy,” and he called it HIBERNIA.
January 19, 2012 @ 4:56 am SEED
“Dependence on endorphin “highs” is consciousness-depressing and leads to an addiction to losing”
That sentence and idea has been popping up in my head ever since i read it. I wonder if i’m suffering from it. Is this about an addiction to complain? Is it about loving to hate? Righteous anger? All of the above?
I’m sure it’s linked to Law of Attraction but there must be a lot that can be said on that count.
I’d really appreciate more than a short reference to this idea. Could you elaborate or even write a blogpost on this, please?
January 23, 2012 @ 3:00 am atomb
If two people fight, the winner often gets an adrenergic and dopaminergic surge while the loser takes an opioid endorphin bath.
It’s OK to lose and experience endorphins from time to time, but seeking an endorphin high is not one’s highest choice.
Health is when both fighters win. :)
I’ll address it more in future blogs. If I forget, please feel free to remind me.